Teen Idols And Happy Meals

Grapes And Ghosts

 That night my parents had made me come home. I slept in my own bed, and I had the worst nightmares of my entire life. I woke up screaming like a mental patient. Joey had burst into the room with a bat - and having realized nobody was trying to take me away again, had dropped the bat, wrapped his arms around me, and cried. I didn’t join in. I just sat there, and told him everything was alright, because that’s what I’d been raised to do.

 And that was how we arrived at this day - the third day. I’d driven to the hospital by myself, thinking some alone time would do me good. All it did was give me time to obsess over the fact that I was a technically a murderer, and soon the whole world would know. So I put on the radio, and when I got to the hospital, I put my hood up and ran past the paparazzi. I didn’t even hear their voices anymore. Just noise.

 So that was how I ended up like this - thinking about what my life had become, slumped in a plush chair in Jacen’s private sitting room. His quarters were luxurious to the point where he not only had his own bedroom, he had a sitting room outside of that. I hadn’t even realized hospitals had rooms like this, but that was the power of money, I supposed.

 Normally, I’d be inside the bedroom portion, keeping vigil over Jacen as he slept, but the doctor was giving him an examination, and only Odette was allowed inside.

I ran my fingers over the smooth surface of my locket, a habit I had adopted recently. There was a glass coffee table in front of me, stacked with magazines. In the glass I saw my face - bruised under one eye with stitches over the other - and on the magazine covers I saw my face as well, but that picture was airbrushed.

 I couldn’t stand to read magazines anymore. I couldn’t even turn on the TV these days. On the news they showed pictures of Eleanor, and the cabin, and Victor - and interviewed people who claimed to know me. And on talk shows, hosts teared up as they discussed what an inspiration we were.

 It made me want to scratch my skin off. Looking into the glass surface of that coffee table, I didn’t see an inspiration. I saw a murderer.

 “Nicolette?”

 The sudden intrusion of sound got my attention. A voice - the voice of Jacen’s bodyguard, Tyson actually - had floated through the intercom. Tyson, along with another bodyguard, were posted outside of Jacen’s door at all times, as a twenty four hour security detail. There were even guards at the elevator.

 "Yes?” I responded, pressing down on the intercom button on the wall next to me, which was made of smooth wood of a light, cheery color.

 “There’s a girl here, claims she knows you,” his voice crackled through, “Caddie?”

I sat up straighter automatically. I hadn’t seen Caddie since - well, since everything had changed. She was the only one of my friends who hadn’t come to visit me since my return.

“Oh, yeah . . . yeah let her in,” I replied, taking my finger off the button and getting to my feet. Across the room, the door opened and Caddie appeared in the glow of harsh hospital lights from the hall.

She looked different. And by that, I mean she looked the same as she used to, before Sylvia’s disappearance. She was still pale, but there were no more frantic patches of red across her face. Instead of hanging in greasy strands, her dark hair hung in freshly scrubbed waves. She was even wearing makeup - light gold eyeshadow and pink lip gloss. Her jeans had rips in the knees, but her sweater was clean.

“Nikki!” she exclaimed, rushing across the small room and enveloping me in a hug that nearly rocked me off my feet. I was so surprised by the gesture, it took me a beat to react.

“You little bitch,” she lamented tearfully, her thin arms transforming into steel bars as she trapped me in an almost violent embrace. “Don’t you ever do that to me again! What would I do if something happened to you? I would just - Christ I wouldn’t even -,”