One Night Only (Season 1: Deni's Story)

Chapter Thirty-Six

I'm far from the first pop star or celebrity to get fed up with the paparazzi. My outburst at the airport probably doesn't rank in the top ten from the last five years. But screaming at them is out of character for me and my carefully-crafted Cayden Indigo image, and the number of chirps and dings that come from Mom and Elton's phones during the drive home tell me the scene at LAX has already become news. I don't bother to check my own phone to confirm it. I already know.

Mom glances at her screen a couple of times, but she mostly ignores her phone. Elton concentrates on driving. Neither of them mentions what just happened, and Mom seems more worried about not having food at the house. She asks if I have any special requests and gets to work on an online grocery order, swiping away the notifications she gets while she shops.

"The air here isn't great," I remark to no one in particular. The sky's brownish haze is visible in the dwindling light of dusk, and the air smelled of smoke outside at LAX. I'm a world away from the fresh air and clear blue sky I woke up to this morning.

"Wildfire season is in full swing already," Elton answers. "It will be bad for a few weeks."

What he really means is it will be like this on and off until October or November. This makes me miss being at the lake even more, but I withhold my comment. Guilting Mom won't change anything, and I'm sure she'll be dealing with enough grief from other people over the next day or two. She doesn't need me piling on.

My gut tells me a request for damage control is coming from my record label. It might already be sitting in Mom's messages. I've always been the label's perfect little pop star who is poised and polite with the paps. They'll want to set up scripted interviews, or to have me create cute videos for my social channels, or something along those lines.

What they won't anticipate is that I'm not having it. Not this time. I'm not sorry for losing my temper or for anything I said, and I'll yell at the paps all over again if I have to. Hunter is off limits to them, even if he never speaks to me again.

If there's a silver lining in this, it's that I've finally been pushed far enough to find my voice and stand my ground. What the cameras saw today was my authentic self. It went against all the media training I've had, and everything I've been advised to do. Video of me screaming at the paparazzi will likely be on entertainment shows and replayed across the internet for the next few days, but it's almost like a weight has been lifted from me by expressing how I really feel.

"He was right, you know," I say.

"Who was right?" Mom asks. She's still scrolling through the grocery app, tapping once in a while to add things to her cart.

"Hunter, when he told me he doesn't like celebrities because they're fake and manufactured. I didn't even see it."

Mom sets her phone down in her lap and turns around in her seat to look at me. "Whatever generalizations Hunter made about celebrities, you have to know you're an exception to it. You're one of the most genuine and sensitive people I know. There isn't a fake bone in your body."

"No?" I challenge. "My voice is real, sure, and I've put a ton of work into my albums and tours and career, but what about the rest? It's all fake. Everything I've said to the media until now has been in line with what I've been told to say and how I've been told to behave. My appearance on stage and in interviews is completely different from my everyday life, to the point where people didn't recognize me without my wigs, makeup, and stage clothes until Bowie told everyone who I was."

"Performers wear costumes sometimes," Mom points out. "It doesn't mean you're fake."

"Tell me something," I say. "How many of the notifications that have popped up on your phone since we left the airport are messages from my PR rep and someone at the label, asking to give a statement and brainstorming how to spin this into something that puts me in a good light?"