"So, you two kissed?" My sister slowly asks for the billionth time, and I wish that she had actually been in her room during my conversation with Demi instead of eavesdropping from her doorframe.
"How many times do I have to say it for you to actually believe it?"
Rolling her eyes, my sister arches an awaiting eyebrow at Demi.
"Your brother's telling the truth, sweetheart," she nearly whispers, her fingers tangling together and twisting the rings that adorn them.
"Don't sound so proud about it," I sarcastically scoff.
"And you have a girlfriend?" Kelsie continues to interrogate Demi, who nods. "But she's..."
"Crazy? Psychotic? Sick? You name it, I've probably called her it," the pop-star flatly shares with pursed lips and still hands.
Silence falls over the dining room table where we sit, trying not to make awkward eye contact, trying to swallow back prying questions.
"Is it bad that I want to run her over with a car?" Kelsie finally breaks the silence with a question that has my lips twitching upwards. "Not to kill her or anything," she hastily adds, "but just enough to get my point across."
To my surprise, Demi lowly chuckles. "My Lovatics are fucking insane."
"You're just now realizing that? I should be offended." My sister pauses, her eyebrows scrunched together in thought. "How did you find out where we live? I mean, I'm assuming that you're the reason our car has magically been returned to us."
"You," Demi points a finger at me, "keep your driver's license in your glove compartment."
"You searched my car?" I ask, amused.
"I had to figure out where to drop it off, right? Stop complaining."
"I still need to pay you back for-"
"No, you're not. Like you said, I'm the pop star worth twenty million; I'm sure your car didn't put a dent in my bank account." Her amused expression morphs into one of slight confusion as she studies me with a tilted head.
"Why are you staring at me like that?"
"She's actually paying attention to you, yet you're questioning her," Kelsie mutters.
"It's just...you said that you would need to pay me back," Demi slowly says.
"Yeah, so?"
"Wouldn't your parents be willing to pay the bill? Or should I not assume that, just because you live with them?" Her tone is light, and her lips form a crooked smile as she glances over the house from her chair.
Her question, however, is heavy - a punch to the gut. Kelsie flashes me a panicked look, her eyes wide and lips parted, ready to spit out lies and excuses if needed.
Though Kelsie and I have grown used to living here alone after our parents' deaths, I know, to an outsider like Demi looking in, our house doesn't look like one occupied by a broken family. Over the years, I have tried to keep everything exactly how my parents left it.
I'm about to invent some bullshit answer about our parents wanting me to be more independent. I'm about to ask her why she's being so nosy anyways. But then her cell phone rings.
"Hello?" she answers with an eye-roll. "Yeah, Addy, I'm on my way home now." She rises from her chair, and I find myself almost asking her to stay. "The team and I had some last minute things to wrap up, with the tour ending and all. Yes, I promise. Okay, I'll see you soon." She ends the phone call in a haste, only emitting a frustrated sigh once her phone is stashed away in her purse.
"I'm surprised you didn't tell her that you love her or something," I blurt out.
"I usually try to end our discussions before she can say it first." She winces at her own words. "I only say it after she does, like it's some obligation. That sounds terrible, I know, but I hate lying to her, believe it or not." She shakes her head as a soft exhale escapes her lips. "I'm not in love with her anymore, so why should I tell her otherwise?"
"Why didn't you just tell her that you're with a friend or something?" I wonder, after a pause.
She laughs, but it's not her infectious laugh. It's bitter, and I almost feel stupid for asking anything at all. "If I tell her that I'm with a friend, she will then proceed to interrogate me about that friend. My sexuality certainly doesn't help ease her suspicions." Another sigh passes her lips as she glances around the room again, almost wistfully. She eventually locks eyes with me. "Talk to you soon?"
"I'll text or call," I reassure, knowing that she doesn't have my number.
"Good." She smiles. "There's more that I need to say."
"I will be here to listen."
After Demi has left, Kelsie seems to recover from her fangirl-induced semi-quiet, but not quiet enough, state of shock. "The sexual tension between you two is weird and gag-worthy."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Then you're either gay or losing your eyesight."
"Isn't it your bedtime or something?"
"It's not even three yet."
"I'm stuck here with you all day," I jokingly groan.
"Don't you wish Demi had stayed now?" She chuckles.
Yeah, I actually do.
~Demi's POV - ONE MONTH LATER~
Do you have plans today?
Yes.
I sigh at Banner's one-word text.
Care to elaborate?
Or share?
Is Adaliah getting on your nerves again?
I chew on the inside of my lower lip, contemplating if I should call him out on changing the subject or ignore it and answer his question. After one month of talking to him every single day, whether it be in person or over the phone, I know better than to treat him like I do the flashing cameras - with beaming grins and calculated, vague words. He sees right through my lies and facades, and I doubt that there are any secrets of mine that he too isn't harboring. I just wish the same could be said about him. After one month, he's even more of a mystery to me than the day that I met him.
She hid my car keys and my purse in our closet this morning so I couldn't leave.
That's so messed up.
My eyebrows furrow at his short answer. Any other time, he would be telling me that I should leave the house, even leave her, because I "deserve so much better than being trapped in a relationship with a paranoid and selfish person".
Yeah...
I almost ask if I can join him in whatever he has planned for today, but I'd rather him not think of me as needy or incapable of fighting my own battles. I chose and dodged fights with Adaliah before meeting Banner. Nothing should change.
Busy. Got to go. Talk to you later?
I don't respond. Any response of mine would probably sit in his inbox, unopened, anyways, waiting for "later" to arrive.
God, I really do sound so fucking needy, and I hate it. Especially because he means almost absolutely nothing to me. Almost.
I almost chuckle at my own thoughts. I can't even fool myself into believing my lies about him anymore. There's just something about him, something different, something intriguing. Or maybe it's me, finally taking his words to heart and believing him when he says that I deserve better. Either way, it's wrong.
"You okay?" The sudden sound of my girlfriend's voice startles me, reminding me just how very wrong all of this - my thoughts, the text messages and phone calls to and from Banner that I delete from my phone, Addy being paranoid and obsessive and manipulative - truly is.
"Um, yeah." I try to swallow the shakiness in my tone that threatens to reveal my lies. "Why do you ask?"
"You seemed completely zoned out, just staring at your black phone screen." Her tone is not shaky, but is almost and would be pleasant if I wasn't capable of hearing the edge to her words, cold and sharp like an icicle.
"I was just thinking," I almost mumble.
"About what?" She sits beside me on our couch, so close that I almost shrink against the armrest that digs into my lower back.
I should feel guilty for wanting to flee from her, and a part of me does. But the other part of me wants to grab my car keys from the kitchen drawer where I stashed them after she hid them, and drive and drive and drive. Far away from here. Far away from her. A thought has me picturing picking up Kelsie and Banner, taking them with me, but I push that thought aside. It's an irrational and stupid thought anyways.
"You're doing it again," she says. "Spacing out. What's on your mind?"
"Nothing." The only reason I say anything at all is in hopes that she'll finally be quiet and not turn this into a massive argument, even though she has every right to do the opposite.
"Okay," she pauses, almost as if to build up suspense or something, "who's on your mind?"
"Nobody!" I scowl at her. "What are you even implying, Adaliah?"
"You're being really defensive. All I did was ask a simple question."
"No, you're the one who is accusing me of cheating on you again!" I know that I'm being really defensive right now. Way too defensive. Maybe even more defensive than when she first started accusing me of messing around. Now I have something worth trying to cover up.
"I'm not accusing you of anything." The fact that her voice is still calm irritates the hell out of me. It won't be long until she's screaming and crying and using every trick in her playbook to manipulate me and make me feel even worse than I do now. "I'm just being observant."
"Observant?" I snort incredulously and shake my head before standing. "I guess you can observe me leaving then."
"Leaving?" Her voice is now shrill, coming from behind me as I retrieve my car keys from one of the kitchen drawers. "To go where?"
"Out," I dryly respond.
"You can't just leave, Demi!"
"And what are you going to do, Addy?" I stop in the foyer to turn and look at her enraged yet crumbling expression. I remind myself that it's just an act, nothing that I haven't seen thousands of times before. "Call the fucking cops?"
"Maybe I will!"
I roll my eyes. "And tell them what? That your girlfriend, who you don't even want to be seen out in public with, has left her own damn house for a few hours?"
"You can't leave, Demi." She repeats, no longer yelling, but pleading in a near whimper. "Seriously, I can't lose you."
I bite my lower lip to prevent myself from saying something really nasty and hurtful. "I'm just going to go to the studio, Addy." I sigh. "I'll be back before dark, I promise."
"You always make promises that you can't keep," she mutters, staring at her bare feet with the nails painted a shade of lime green that contrasts heavily against the dark wood flooring.
Without another word, I leave. I don't even look behind me as I go, no longer caring if she's watching me, no longer caring if she herself cares.
~
I'm not even halfway to the studio before my phone rings. Not only does it ring once, but it keeps ringing. It eventually becomes a constant hum in my ears that forces me to, with white knuckles gripping the steering wheel, pull my car over to the side of the road. I take a deep breath before I answer the call, willing myself to not snap at Adaliah. I don't want to start another argument.
"Hello?"
"Demi?" To my surprise, it is not my girlfriend's voice that I hear, but it is Kelsie's voice. "Can you please come pick me up?" Why does she sound as if she has been crying? Her words sound heavy and clumsy, desperate and panicked.
"Kelsie, sweetie, what's wrong? Where are you?"
"I'm at school. In a bathroom stall." She mumbles those last four words, and I am instantly reminded of the way that I called my mom that one school day so many years ago and said the exact same thing.
"Kelsie, what happened?"
"Please don't tell Banner," she cries. "I did try to call him, I swear, but he wasn't answering, and you're the only other person I could think of to call and -"
"Okay, sweetheart, calm down. I'll be right there. Do I need to sign you out or something?"
I can hear her breathe a sigh of relief. "No, no. They won't notice if I just walk out the front doors. Thank you, Demi."
When I pull up outside of Kelsie's school, I find her hunched over on a bench with her blue eyes squeezed shut. I honk my car horn once, jolting her up from the bench and twisting her face into an expression of pure agony. She hobbles to the passenger side door, still hunched over, and gingerly slides into the passenger seat.
"Thank you for picking me up," she says, a slight grimace on her face. Her voice sounds raspy now, like a phone call broken by a weak signal, and the putrid stench of vomit lingers off of every syllable.
"You're welcome." With clammy, shaky hands, I slowly, hesitantly, drive away from the school, wondering if I'm doing the right thing. "So, did you get sick? Is high school cafeteria food really that dodgy?" I force a laugh, knowing that it sounds fake, knowing that it's inappropriate, but not being able to stop it.
"You promise that you won't tell Banner?"
I sigh and guiltily bite my lower lip. "Kelsie, you know that I can't promise that. He's your brother, and he cares about you. He deserves to know."
"God, you two are so close," she says, not unkindly, but teasingly. "It's disgusting."
My cheeks burn, and I hope that they don't appear as red-hot as they feel. I clear my throat. "Just tell me what happened. Please."
It's her turn to sigh, and I almost hate myself for trying so hard to pry an answer out of her. "I took some pills."
My foot slams down on the brake pedal, hard, just as we're about to run through a yellow light. Kelsie slings forward in her seat-belt, her hands slamming against the dashboard to protect herself. "You did what?" I shriek, deciding right then that I'll take her to the hospital kicking and screaming if needed.
"So, I guess the inside-fandom joke about you not being able to drive really is true then, huh?" She slowly leans back against her seat, then sighs. "I've been taking diet pills for a week or so, I guess," she mumbles. "Different ones. A Combination of them. Some girl at school has been selling them to me really cheap."
"You don't even have a job," I blurt, my thoughts reeling. "Don't your parents realize that their money is disappearing?"
She takes too long to respond, or maybe it's just my overprotective, over thinking mind being paranoid. "Guess not," she mutters finally. Maybe she's not taking her parents' money. What if she has been stealing Banner's money? Either way, how could somebody not notice?
When the light turns green, I have to force myself to not go over the speed limit in an effort to reach the hospital quicker. "What kind of symptoms are you experiencing?" I ask. "And don't you dare lie to me. It's obvious that you're in pain, and it's well-known that hardly any of those pills achieve anything good."
"I don't know," she speaks slowly while her fingers fidget in the empty air in front of her, dancing as if moving across a keyboard. "Everything hurts, I guess. My head. My chest. I spent an entire block at school in the bathroom, puking my guts out." She pauses. "Demi...am I going to die?"
"No. No, baby-girl, not under my watch. Not if I can help it."
Two stoplights later, I hear her breathing become ragged, and she sniffles a couple of times. She's crying, I realize. "I don't want to die like this." Her words are almost incomprehensible, drowned by her half-subdued sobs. "I don't want to die because of my own mind. I don't want to die at war with myself. I don't want to die because I'm too stubborn and scared and stupid to ask for help."
"You're not stupid, Kelsie."
She emits a tearful snort of incredulousness as I park near the hospital's entrance. "I don't want to die young. I want to die when I'm at peace and when I'm happy. I don't want to die now, knowing that the only thing I have ever achieved at is being skinny. I don't even fully believe that I've actually achieved that. God, Demi, I'm sick, but I don't want to be sick anymore!" I watch as the young girl falls apart in the passenger seat of my car. I wrap my arms around her, and she surprises me by returning my hug so fiercely, so tightly, that it makes me feel as if I'm her lifeline, her buoy helping her navigate treacherous waters.
"You're not going to die on me, Kelsie," I whisper in her ear. "I refuse to let that happen."
~
After begrudgingly allowing doctors and nurses to whisk Kelsie away, I call Banner. He needs to be here, supporting his sister while she lays in a hospital bed. At the very least, maybe he can give the uptight nurse at the front desk an all-clear to let me sit with Kelsie.
"Hello?" I'm shocked he even bothered answering the phone for me. "Demi?"
"Banner, Kelsie's at the hospital," I say, shuffling away from the entrance to the hospital and sitting on a bench tucked off to the side. "She became sick at school and-"
"It had to do with her eating, didn't it?"
I close my eyes and tilt my head back. The sun is too hot on my face. "You know?"
"She doesn't eat, Dems. I've tried to help her, but..." He trails off, probably blaming himself.
"Look, Banner, it's not your fault." I sigh and open my eyes. "Can you just meet me at the hospital? I think Kelsie would love to see you right now. They won't let me in her room without family approval, and I don't know your parents well enough to call them from Kelsie's phone."
"Wait, you're at the hospital right now?"
"Yeah, I'm sitting out front." He curses softly, almost too softly, as if he doesn't want me to hear him. "Banner, what's wrong?"
"Nothing." His answer came too quick, or maybe that's just me being paranoid again. Maybe I've been spending too much time around Adaliah lately, adapting her bad habits. "I just..."
But he doesn't need to finish his sentence because I already see what's wrong. He stands at the curb in front of the hospital, his phone pressed against his ear, one hand fisting his hair rather tightly. He has already been here, was inside the hospital when I demanded that Kelsie be checked out immediately. A bright orange wristband hangs loosely from his wrist, similar to the one that I helped Kelsie put on before they admitted her. Her's was a teal color, though.
"Banner, do you know if the hospital has color-coded wristbands for patients?"
"Yeah, they do." His hand glides through his hair as he talks. He's probably stressed out, probably trying to figure out where the hell I am so he can keep hold of whatever secret that bright orange wristband represents. "Why do you ask?"
"Kelsie received a teal wristband when she arrived. I guess that's because I brought her to the ER." I pause, wondering how I should confront him, wondering if I even should. Fuck it. "Can you tell me what the orange wristbands are for?"
He slowly lowers his phone from his ear and turns so that he's facing my direction. When his blue eyes lock with my brown ones, a deafening dial tone begins to buzz in my ear.
ns 15.158.61.48da2
