The Shattered Image Series (I Was a Teen Idol) (3 page)

The paparazzi stood outside, waiting to take pictures of us through the glass. We also weren’t the only stars in the restaurant that day. The hot sensation boy band, Heart Maps, was there too.  The tabloids were hoping to catch one of us cuddling up with one of the boys like an innocent crush. It had been gossiped for months that Mia and I were wanting to date one of the five members. I hadn’t even turned fourteen yet, I didn’t want to date yet and even if I did, I didn’t want it broadcast all over the rumor mill.

A little girl walked up to our table, she couldn’t have been older than six. She was cautious and looked back at her mother several times before coming fully up to the table. I smiled at her. Her shyness was adorable. “Yes?” I asked, with a smile. I knew a picture of this moment was going to be taken and would earn us brownie points among parents of children three and up.

She smiled and held up a teddy bear along with a black marker. “Will you please sign my teddy bear?”

“Of course,” I took the teddy from her and used the marker to sign my name. I then handed both to Mia. She sighed heavily and I could imagine her rolling her eyes behind her pair of sunglasses. With a jerk and a huff, she pulled the teddy roughly from my grasp and signed her name. She handed it to the girl without a word and would have almost dropped the thing on the floor if the girl hadn’t caught it.

The little girl looked and Mia with a look I can only describe as broken hearted, slowly her eyes met mine and something in me switched at that moment. It was as if I realized it wasn’t all about me anymore, children looked up to me and I needed to set an example. “Thank you,” she said softly to me before running back to her mother.

For months, I had been walking around as if my farts didn’t stink. I would throw tantrums if I wasn’t given the right brand of bottled water, or I was asked to do something I didn’t like. I had acted as if everyone, except Mia, was below me. I did it all because I had gone from having nothing, but a black trash bag, to having the addictive power of a pop star that got anything and everything she requested. No one was there to tell me no, or humble me and tell me to get my head out of my butt when I was acting like an overly spoiled brat.

It took having to see my sister treat a little girl like dog crap she scraped off her shoe. To understand that I had become something I had at one time no desire to be.  For a thirteen-year-old, it had been one of those moments where a brief moment of clarity and maturity had settled in my brain, even though its stay wouldn’t be long.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked in a high whisper. I sat forward, pulling off my sunglasses.

She gave me a look and a shrug of arms as if she had no idea what I was talking about. “What?” Before I could say anything about how she had treated the little girl, she took a bite of burger and promptly spit it out. I wrinkled my nose. “Idiots!” she snapped.

“What? Did you find like a finger or something?” I looked at her food, but it looked fine to me.

My words went unheard as she snapped her fingers and called over the waitress, who rolled over to us on her skates. “Is something wrong, miss?” The waitress was young, still in her teens, not quite college age. She looked frazzled and my sister’s impending tantrum was the last thing she needed.

“Yes there is a problem, you moron. I told you well done. Does this look like it’s well done to you?” She held up the plate and showed the girl where she had taken a bite.

“Uh…” the waitress looked confused.

Mia dropped the plate and it clattered on the table, fries flew and the burger fell apart. I turned the plate, so that I could see where she had taken a bite out of the patty. There was perhaps a small amount of pink and it didn’t even cover a quarter of the bite she had taken.

“Mia, chill out. This burger is cooked just fine.”

She gaped at me as if I had slapped her across the face. In a fit, she swiped her hand across the table. Sending our food to the floor, the plates smashed as they made contact. I can still hear the gasp of surprise from several of the women in the restaurant. It was the first time in my life that I had felt utterly humiliated in front of a group of strangers. It was also the first time in my life that I looked at Mia and didn’t recognize her at all. We had been together since before birth and I felt, in that moment, as if I had never met her.

Except for the radio music playing a slow rock balled through the speakers, everything had gone still and no one said anything as they looked at us, at her. The still moment was broken by the sound of an uproar outside. The paparazzi was going wild, taking pictures, and yelling at us through the glass windows. I looked at them, then at the mess on the floor and finally to the poor waitress who didn’t deserve any of it.

Slowly, I dropped to one knee on the floor and started to pick up the shattered plates and food. I didn’t know what else to do. In the period of less than half an hour, I had gotten a reality check from a little girl and saw my sister in a light I had never dreamed of seeing her in. My brain couldn’t compute all the new information and still act like Jazzy. I had reverted to Jasmine, the girl that lived her life bouncing to and from foster homes and her prized possession was a tattered book from a teacher she couldn’t even remember the name of. I was the introverted girl, depending on my sister to be my voice, but she was no longer there to speak for me also.

I barely could even register the fact that someone had crouched down next to me and had started to help me collect the mess into a neat pile. “Well, that was a whirlwind of a show.”

I looked to see who was talking, the person next to me. It was Josh, the undeclared leader of Heart Maps. He was the main heartthrob of the band, at fourteen he could make any girl swoon. I didn’t want to date him, but that didn’t mean his smile didn’t work its charm on me and make blush.

“Miss, sir, you don’t have to do that. I’ll take care of it.” The rest of the restaurant had returned to normal. Our waitress kneeled next to me and took over clearing up the mess at a record speed, dumping it all into a dish bin. Josh and I stood.

I don’t even know what I should’ve done next. Mia still sat in the booth with her arms crossed, unashamed of her outlandish behavior in front of so many people. I wondered if I should apologize for her behavior, or if I should pull her by the arm out of the restaurant and to our waiting car. I chose the latter, but not before giving my thanks to Josh and throwing a handful of twenty dollar bills on the table. I hoped that it would cover the cost of the food and the broken plates, not to mention a nice tip for the poor waitress.

As I pulled Mia out of the booth she squealed at me, but I didn’t let up. I briefly heard Josh tell me, “No problem,” as I pulled her out of the burger joint and through the horde of photographers to the waiting car. I was glad our security guard was there outside waiting for us, or I wouldn’t have gotten through the horde in one piece. I pushed Mia into the car and got in as well.

“Have you lost your mind? Has that blue wig attached itself to your brain?”

Like a fish out of water, she gaped at me and then tore off her sunglasses. “You’re asking me if I have lost my mind? How could you think to treat me that way in front all those people? I have never been so humiliated!”

I couldn’t help but think that her words should have been coming out of my mouth. I took off my wig; it had suddenly irritated me beyond belief. “Mia, do you hear yourself? Is this really what we have become? We’ve been pop stars less than two years and you already act like a glorified diva manic.  I can’t believe I was acting like this. Who knew it would take seeing you break a kid’s heart to set me straight.”

“What kid?”

I looked at her for a long second and could tell that she truly didn’t remember the little girl with the teddy bear. I shook my head in disgust for both her and myself. “I want to go back to the old life.”

“Why would you want to do a stupid thing like that? We had nothing, we were nothing and now we’re famous and we have more money than we know what to do with and that’s just what they give us to spend.”

“I'd still trade it all right now to get rid of this feeling. I feel like a stranger in my own skin. I don’t even recognize you right now.”

She frowned at me. “Ditto.”

After the blow up at the burger joint, my relationship with Mia slowly started to deteriorate. She continued like a selfish brat and I made more of an effort not to be one. We both got in trouble with the record label for the tantrum at the burger joint.  On top of that, rumors circulated that Josh was trying to woo me so that I would go out with him. Every teen gossip mag wanted to know if I liked him in return, I never answered the question when they asked it.

The tabloids said that the fame was going to Mia’s head, that being Melody and Jazzy were corrupting our childhood. It was being called into question whether or not we should continue to be the pop stars. They weren’t far off from what I was thinking. Between the feud with Mia--which she hadn’t let up on-- the current tour we were on and reminding myself to keep up a happy face in front of all the cameras… I was starting to grow exhausted at having to fake everything about me in the public eye. By our fourteenth birthday, we were secretly pulling sixteen hour days with school, rehearsals, lessons, concerts and events. By our fifteenth birthday, the record label got us a band to back us up and give us more of an edge. This only added more hours to our daily schedule. They started giving us more of a punk princess look and actually started dying our hair the pink and blue.

I felt stuck as Jazzy; I could no longer take off the pink wig at the end of the day. Over time, Jazzy became more like me. She was known for charity work and going to hospitals to play with the children. I would request different things like that, so that I could be away from Mia. As we got older, she only got worse with attitude, divaness and an indifference to the fans.   It seemed she was being scolded on a weekly basis for one thing or another that had landed her in one or all of the tabloids.

The record label tried to punish her by taking away her allowance. The first few times they did this, she just ended up taking my card. Then they took away both our allowance and had her go with me to the children’s ward at the hospital. It was horrible. The children had been so excited to see her and all she did for the two hours we were there, was sit on a chair in the corner and look at her nails. She wouldn’t join in on anything and it made the children who loved her the most, sad. It broke my heart. I tried talking to her, but she just gave me the cold shoulder. Acting like it was my fault that she was supposed to be there.

The real test of my ability to fake it came when the record label asked me to date someone. I didn’t understand why they wanted me to date. Mia had gotten in trouble for getting caught making out with one the stars of a show we had done a cameo on; she had been fourteen at the time and the tabloids had a field day over it.

***

“Jazzy, don’t you see?  This will be perfect publicity for you and it will even out the negative effects your sister has put on your image as a duo,” said Troy, our brand new manger, our old one Matt had retired several months before.

“I’m not seeing how me dating someone will help our image improve. I’m fifteen, I don’t want to date yet, not after what I’ve seen it do to Mia.”

“With you though, it will be a first love scenario. People will see how innocent you are and they will fall in love with Jazzy and Melody again. I’m not asking for much. Go on a few dates, laugh, play, hold hands. Maybe even a simple chaste kiss for the cameras. We’ll make them think it’s your first kiss.” It would be my first kiss.  

I folded my arms across my chest. “I don’t want to do this, get Mia to do it, she would love the chance.”

“Melody no longer has that… how should I put it… childlike innocence about her. It has to be you. Do it for your dad, he thinks it’s a wonderful idea.”

“That man is not my father. I haven’t even seen him in three years. He was just the one to sign the adoption papers.”

He scowled at me. “Fine, if you won’t do it for your image or the president then do it for yourself. If sales go down anymore for Jazzy and Melody then we will have to terminate your contract and the president will return you to foster care. Is that what you want?”

I gaped at him, he was blackmailing me and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I missed the old life, but at the same time, I had gotten used to the new one and having the freedoms that I wouldn’t have had in the system. Plus, Mia would be horrible if she didn’t have the luxuries she had then.  “Who do you want me to date?”