LOOK UP AT THE STARS

CHAPTER 1 - MONSTER

Camila

I don't know when it happened. Did it happen slowly or was it sudden? I met Tyler on a boat party that I went to under sufferance, set up by a friend, who is no longer a friend by the way. He seemed charming and interested in what I had to say, and how I felt about things, and as time went on he seemed really interested in a future with me. That was something I had been longing for but had been unable to attain. He won me over. My parents were not fond of him, and when he offered to fulfil my dream of living in New York (at my expense of course) he gradually replaced my attachment to them with attachment to him. I couldn't do anything without him, and he inveigled a spot on my team although I pushed back, a rare occurrence, when he wanted me to get rid of Roger and let him manage me instead.

I had dreamed of a big wedding with all my friends but by the time we had out quickie wedding in a seedy Vegas chapel five months after we had met, I had very few friends left, and those I did have he didn't like so I rarely saw. He leaked the photos to the press himself and we went to St Barts for our honeymoon where he was romantic and attentive and loving. I wondered what I had been worried about.

Back home after the trip, everything changed. Tyler was an artist when he felt like it and he suddenly did feel like it, and he said I was his muse, and he needed me there. I decided, at his suggestion, that I should take a year off. I was supposed to be working on a new album and touring it but that was all put on hold. I was at Ty's beck and call and I barely left the apartment. Whenever I started to waver, he'd shower me with affection and gifts and take me out to dinner and I'd forgive him.

I always thought I was a strong woman, independent, intelligent, and I never thought I was the kind to get manipulated by this sort of man, but until you are in this kind of web, you can't even imagine it. We had been married almost six months when I got the text from my mother. She was in New York and wanted to see me. I was standing in the kitchen of my converted warehouse apartment and Tyler was passed out on the bed after a vodka-fuelled painting session the night before. I didn't think twice, I slipped into my coat and boots and grabbed my purse.

Mama said she would meet me at a coffee shop not far away and I trudged through the slush past the boarded up pawn shop and the sex shop with it's half-working neon flashing lights, even in the daytime, and found the cafe. I had never been there, it was grubby and there were only two other patrons there, neither of them looking very reputable. I ordered a coffee although I knew I wouldn't drink it, and I sat opposite my mother.

Tyler always told me my attachment to her had been unhealthy and that my parents liked to keep me close to control me and make money from me. I nervously wondered if that was why she was here, because I wasn't out earning the dollars for them anymore. The voice in my head didn't sound like me, it sounded like Tyler. I took one look at Mama's face and knew without a doubt that everything he had told me had been a lie.

"Mija," she said sadly, tears pouring down her face. She seemed to have aged since I last saw her. Was I responsible for that? Was she sick, or was Papa, or Sofi? "What has he done to you?"

I looked in the rust-spotted mirror on the wall opposite and felt myself start a little. I liked to live a casual life at home in Miami, I didn't wear make-up, just pushed my hair up into a bun, liked to wear sweats and loose clothing, but this person was someone altogether different. My skin looked unhealthy, deep dark smudges beneath my eyes. My hair was straggly and in need of a cut, my sweater had a stain on the front. What had he done to me?

We talked for two hours and then my phone started blowing up. He had woken up and wondered where I was.

"Just come with me, we can get your stuff later. Let's go home, to Miami. Papa and Sofia and the rest of your family, we miss you so much, we want you to come home mija."