Page 226 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

When the clock strikes five.

“Brooke,” I announce,

grinning into my creammee.

She blinks to life through the speaker.

AI Brooke: “Yes, Miss Allison?”

“It’s time.”

AI Brooke: “Now playing “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” by Celine Dion at maximum volume.”

The piano trickles in as I slide off the chair and tiptoe toward the counter to the intro, my sweats loose around my waist, eyes puffy from crying all night.

I pluck a spatula from a drawer.

Somewhere behind a door, a boy’s about to regret clicking I agree on the DocuSign.

After last night, Andrew thinks I’m something sad and soft, a girl who needs to be held, comforted. But give me a Celine-level power ballad, and I transform into the most annoying bitch on earth. One who’ll refuse you sleep during your eighty-hour workweek, who’ll make you dwell in remorse for not leaving sooner.

Every single thing men find sexy in me? I take it and crush it under the heel of a seven-minute, thirty-six-second vocal seizure.

I stand in front of my bathroom door,

waiting for the opening note.

The strings are rising,

piano’s shivering.

Then—

I kick my bathroom door open,

wait only a half-second more

before Celine’s voice detonates,

and the door slams against the wall with a BOOM—right on the downbeat, as if I rehearsed this shit.

(Which I didn’t. I’m just that good.)

Then I fucking unleash, belting the lyrics with Celine straight into the spatula, throat-shredding, eyes watering from the force of my own power.

Andrew startles,

hands scrambling across the marble,

his head flying back from his knees

and hitting the wall behind him,

hair wild, chest heaving,

eyes screaming what the fuck is happening.

Then he sees me,