Upper Class Love (a Justin Bieber love story novella)

Chapter Seventeen

            My house was a complete wreck when I returned home. First off, as soon as Justin dropped me off, I had to elbow my way through nosy paparazzi. As soon as I entered my house, sorrow immediately smacked me in the face. The entire living room, kitchen, and office radiated sadness everywhere. And there, on the couch, was my dear mourning mother.

            She was wearing the same clothes as she was the previous night, her make up was severely smeared, and her hair was a treacherous bush on top of her head. My sad, sad mother was curled in the fetal position on the very right corner of our couch, staring at nothingness. How long had she been like this?

            “Mom, are you alright?” I asked, cautiously moving closer to her.

            Mom’s response was rocking back and forth, just once. Uh, am I the only one who thinks this is creepy?

            “Mom, Marcus was such a sleezy guy. You’re way better than him!” I leaned in closer to her, now only inches from her left ear, “And I didn’t want to tell you this, but he always looked at me in a weird, pedophile way.”

            This caught my mother’s attention. She snapped straight up and threw her legs over the couch. “Why—” Mom erupted in a fit of coughs before continuing, “Why didn’t you—insert disgusting, phlegm-filled cough—tell me this while we were still…”

            “You guys just seemed too happy together that I didn’t want it to end.” I answered when Mom wouldn’t finish her sentence.

            “Oh sweetie,” Mom started, grabbing me in for a hug, “if you would’ve told me this when it started, I’d have dropped him faster than that time you handed me a dead squirrel.”

            “You have to let that go, Mother.” I fake-huffed.

She’s referring to the time when I was in about kindergarten and found a dead squirrel a dog must’ve killed. Not understanding it was dead, five-year-old me was extremely excited to finally get close enough to a squirrel without it running away! Immediately, I shuffled right next to my new pet squirrel and scooped it up in my arms, running to my mommy who was decked out in a sundress, floppy hat, and sunglasses that covered half her face.

“Look, Mommy, look what I found!” I joyously exclaimed, handing my pet to my mommy.

“Mommy” smiled at me, but the smile quickly faded as she took a double take of my find. Mom lifted her sunglasses, and immediately her body froze. Only for a moment, of course, ‘cause just as quickly she snapped out of her trance and threw the squirrel in the opposite direction of us with seemingly all of her force.

I stuck my bottom lip out and wailed. “Why did you throw my squirrel?!”

Mom didn’t answer. Instead, she grabbed my left hand with her right and stomped to our car.

And for some reason my mother will never let that event go. For shame.

“I had to scrub my hands to the bone! I’ll never let it go, Marley.” Mom giggled.

I threw a couch pillow at her, also giggling now.

Mom and I had a nice mini-pillow fight until I stopped mid-throw. “Do you hear that?” My ears perked.

“Hear what?”

“Exactly…” I suspiciously whispered, sauntering over to the front window. Cautiously, I separated the curtain just a crack. Long-lost sunlight flooded into our dining area, but I wasn’t concerned with that. “Where’s the paparazzi?”

The outside world in front of our house was a ghost town compared to the past few days. Still cautious, I closed the curtains and exited my home, walking at a snails pace, turning my head viciously at any sound.

Nothing.

“What’s going on?!” I yelled, frightened by the sudden change. Did something happen to cause the paparazzi to leave?

My pulse quickened. “Mom… Mom! Turn on the news, please!” I pleaded, rushing back inside. Something wasn’t right.

My mother obeyed, turning on CNN. Both of us sat close to one another on the couch. What was I looking for? I never watch CNN, so how should I know if my ol’ paparazzi were somehow connected to them? After four painfully-elongated minutes passed, I couldn’t take it anymore. “I’ll look online.”

Mom nodded at me, her face pitiful. She really did care about me, enough to somehow understand my actions better than myself. When I left for the office area, located directly behind the couch in the corner of our small home, Mom continued watching CNN for me.

“Why would you turn off the computer?!” I screamed, overwhelmed by my worst-case scenario thinking. Did something happen to Justin? I mean, those paparazzi only followed me because they thought I was dating him, so they must mainly follow any story related to dear old celebrity Justin Bieber, right?

Mom rushed to my side, placing her arm over my shoulder. “Sweetie, stop over thinking everything. The paparazzi could’ve left because they gave up on the rumor that you’re dating Rustin.”

“Justin…” I mumbled my correction, shaking off her arm, not believing her. With all my pent up confusion, I slammed my index finger on the power button of our computer.

“And not to point fingers, but Mike was the last one I saw use the computer. He must’ve turned it off.” Mom slyly added, returning to her place on the couch.

At this point it was already booting up, so I couldn’t care less who turned it off. I quickly clicked on Google Chrome and waited for it to load. My top eight visited sites consisted of Facebook, YouTube, Gmail, Yahoo!, Neopets, Google… Just everyday things. From previous knowledge, I know Yahoo! has juicy gossip constantly rippling through, so they should have what I’m supposedly looking for, right?

Click. All my worst-case scenario and negative thoughts pulsed through the mouse, up in the wires, and ended with a loading webpage. My entire life hung on the fate of the twirling hour-glass’s shoulders. But I was totally overreacting, right? Def. I’m being really stupid for even thinking Justin was hurt, or in trouble. Where did I even get an idea like that?

Bing. My IM ringtone-blurb-thingy was dinging a tad bit too much. Wait, why was my Facebook even open? Force of habit, second-nature, I guess.

Maura Montgomery’s IM rectangle at the bottom of my page was dark blue, with a red speech bubble with a number “2” in white.

Marley, im really sorry for everything ive done to you. I finally get how stupid ive been and ive been spending the past few days thinking about our friendship, and i realizd hw stupid ive been. OK how stpid weve both been, to b honest. Im not taking over all teh blame. But forreals, i miss you. I even called my aunt maria,who is a therapist cuz i was so conflicted. Can we stil be friends?

Call me assoonaspossible once u get that messuge. I no how much pain ur in rite now. Im not even dating the guy, but i still no u must be hurting, i guss thats y were best friends forever, rite?

I’m so used to the way she types, so full of grammar mistakes. We really are best friends, I know that now. Both of us fight constantly, but what’s a friendship without conflict? But that last part… She knows I’m hurting?

Yahoo’s homepage finished loading when I clicked back on the tab. The little picture-changing-thingy was featuring today’s top news. Some celebrity divorce, an article about some new medicine…

The next thumbnail has a picture of Justin Bieber on it.

The next article summary sentence was about a car crash.

The next article went into detail about Justin losing control on his way home from dropping me off.