Setting: Los Angeles Superior Court, Los Angeles, CA
"You're sentenced to 26 weeks of community service and 52 sessions of outpatient treatment. Since you're a minor and generally remorseful of your actions, this will not go on your record as long as you complete the terms of your sentence. Any objections?"
Demi felt like she was having an out of body experience until the judge banged the gravel and dismissed them from the court room. Robert Shapiro whispered something in her ear about how she should've thanked the judge but Demi didn't respond. Someone placed their hand on her arm and then she was ushered out of the court room. She blinked and they were outside in the California sun. No paparazzi, no press, no cameras. It was quiet.
"Demi?" Demi turned her head to face Kris who had a sympathetic look on her face. "You wanted to get some more stuff from your apartment after this, remember?"
Oh yeah...her apartment. Her apartment in Studio City that she had basically been banished to after she decided to get emancipated from her parents. Her lonely, cold apartment. Every teen probably dreamed of living on their own but not Demi. She wasn't every teen. She really valued her family time and the fact that they hadn't spoken or even seen each other in so long gnawed away at her soul until there was nothing left. She had lived with Miley for a little bit but her family was chaotic. Before tour, Mama Jonas had given her a guest room but then her and Joe broke up. She wasn't speaking with Selena. Her last resort was that stupid apartment that never felt like home.
Kris drove her there in silence. There really wasn't much for her to say. She had just gotten sentenced in a freaking court room for punching who she thought was her friend in her face. Demi didn't even know that you could get charged for something like that. To her, it really wasn't that serious. Besides, what did Shorty think was going to happen? She had gotten upset and fought people over way less and never got in trouble for it. Now she had to do community service and even more therapy in addition to what she was already doing. It's like they were trying to make her miserable.
Demi fumbled with the key before she finally opened the door to her glossy high rise. She had never gotten around to decorating and everything in here was so basic. It didn't feel like her. It was dark and cold and messy. A part of her felt ashamed for Kris to even see the place like this, in the aftermaths of a party that she had thrown before tour kicked off. It had gotten crazy and Demi hadn't even bothered to clean the place up before she left.
"I'll call some cleaners to deal with this mess. Let me help you with your clothes, sweetie," Kris said, whipping out her Blackberry as she followed Demi down the hallway to her bedroom. Demi flicked the light on but nothing happened.
"Who usually pays the bills, Demi?"
"Uh...Phil?" Demi guessed, because she truly didn't know. Her management company had placed her here and Demi just assumed that they took care of that stuff.
"Okay, I'll open the curtains. Just get your clothes so we can meet the girls for dinner."
Demi walked into the closet while Kris stepped around the piles and piles of clothes on the floor to get to the windows. She opened the black curtains and the windows just for good measure. When she turned around to head to the closet, a white powdery substance on the nightstand caught her eye. It didn't take a genius to figure out what that was.
And then it hit her all over again, that somehow she was dealing with a drug addicted teenager on top of her six other kids, and she felt completely overwhelmed. But she was trying her best not to show Demi that. Demi was a kid after all, and all Kris wanted was for her to be okay. And Kris loved Demi like she was her own daughter. It's just that she felt completely over her head sometimes with this whole thing, but not enough to give up on her.
"I'm sorry. I should've cleaned up before I left," Demi said when she came out of the closet and saw what Kris was staring at. "Guess you know what harder drugs I was talking about..."
"It's...it's not okay but it's going to be. I'll have someone come clean this place up so that whenever you're ready to come back you can. But there's no rush. You know you're open to stay at the house for as long as you want," Kris said, wrapping an arm around her and partially shielding her from what was on the night stand. God knows everyone else in her life had done a terrible job at simply protecting the younger girl from the world. That's all that Kris wanted to do now, or at least as much as she could.
Setting: The Jenner House, Calabasas, CA
Although Caitlyn had moved out of the house shortly after Demi had moved in, her and Kris were always fighting. Always. Demi didn't even know it was possible to fight with someone who you saw so little. And Demi was sure that they thought the house was so big that she just couldn't hear anything, and that their fights were at such irregular times that she wouldn't even be around, but the house echoed a lot and Demi hadn't been sleeping much. So she wandered and sometimes she heard them. The latest fight had been about her.
Caitlyn thought she was a bad influence on Kylie and Kendall. The girls were kind of obsessed with her and tried to be with her every second of every day, especially now that they were homeschooled. Demi had grown to love the girls like sisters but hanging with them made her heart ache, because she missed her real sisters. But she had gone no contact with her family since she had gotten arrested and none of them had tried to contact her either. Another reason why she couldn't sleep. The whole thing left her with a permanent feeling of nausea but Kris and the girls were slowly healing that. Slowly.
Anyway. Demi wasn't surprised when she heard Kris rehashing the details of her fight with Caitlyn to Khloe. They did that a lot for the show, especially when the cameras weren't around to capture the drama, although it felt like the cameras were always around. Demi had become a master at evading them, or Kris would just make sure she was edited out.
"She thinks Demi is a bad influence on Kylie and Kendall? I think it's the other way around," Khloe chuckled as Demi leaned against the wall in the hallway leading to the black and white kitchen.
"What do you mean?"
"Your girls are wild. Demi's a sweetheart compared to them. Plus they're sneaky as fuck. All Demi does is mope around all day," Khloe said as Demi chewed on her bottom lip. That was accurate. When she wasn't in one of her mandated therapy sessions she was just lounging around the house unless Kylie or Kendall dragged her out somewhere.
"Well good. I want her to be a teenager. She should be able to let loose a little bit. Not in the way that she's been doing it but in a fun, safe way, like Kylie and Kendall do. As long as they're all being safe I don't mind them being a little wild. I just don't want them doing anything illegal," Kris said as Demi's mind briefly flashed back to the look on her face when she saw the cocaine on Demi's nightstand.
"Mom, how long are you gonna do this? Like how long is she going to stay with you and how long are you going to be responsible for her?" Khloe questioned. Demi could see Khloe's face but she couldn't see Kris's.
"For as long as she needs," she said without hesitation. "Listen...I know everyone talks about me exploiting my children and things like that but with you guys...we made those decisions about your careers together. It was never me forcing any of you to do anything. Demi thought she was making decisions for herself when she really wasn't. They were all just using her, including her own family, and she never truly had a say in any of it. She thought she was living her dream and look what happened. And then they all abandoned her like nothing happened. It makes me sick. So, she's staying here until she decides she no longer wants to and I will continue to support her even after that."
Demi felt tears pool in the bottom of her eyes and all that she could think about was how tired she was of crying. But that really brought her to tears because Kris was absolutely right. She hadn't heard from anyone in at least two months. Not her parents, not her managements, not her so called friends. Life had gone on without her and none of them had bothered to check in. They were all on the road living the dream like she never even existed, like she never meant anything to them. And sure she was better now...she was maybe even okay now...but to be completely abandoned like that by people she thought were so close to her that they were family...it was slowly killing her soul. And she didn't know how to heal that part of her. Kris was trying her best, she really was, but it wasn't enough to make her stop feeling dead inside. Demi didn't know if that feeling would ever go away.
