“You know what to do,” the cartoon whispered. That night, backstage at the Colosseum, the noise was deafening. Paolo adjusted her microphone, his smile razor-sharp. “Remember, tesoro —just move your lips.”
The floor tilted. Paolo wasn’t offering her a dream. He was using her as a weapon to destroy his ex-partner’s reputation. The applause, the spotlight, the glitter—it was all a trap. And Lizzie McGuire, the girl who couldn’t even pass her math test without a panic attack, had walked right into it.
Lizzie, who had spent her entire life as the girl next to the spotlight, felt a dangerous flutter in her chest. For once, her cartoon double wasn’t panicking. She was putting on sunglasses.
The past forty-eight hours had been a beautiful, terrifying lie.
Lizzie laughed—a real, unapologetic, snorting laugh. “Yeah,” she said, bumping his shoulder. “But I think I’m okay with that.”
“Isabella is gone. The crowd won’t notice the switch. You will lip-sync. I will sing live. The press will call her a fraud. The career is mine.”
Gordo’s jaw tightened. He had known Lizzie since they were five, when she fell off the monkey bars and he gave her half his sandwich. He knew the difference between her “I’m fine” smile and her real one. “Just be careful,” he said quietly. “You’re not a replacement. You’re a person.”