Together (Demi Lovato Adoption)

Chapter Nine

DEMI'S POV

Later that day, I went to find Ellie to talk to her about not only what happened last night, but also about what Sam had said this morning. I needed to make sure she was comfortable with opening up to me about anything, and the only way I felt I could get her to open up to me was to make myself open up to her. 

I knocked on her door and waited for her response. Opening and closing the door with a click behind me, I moved over to Ellie's bed and took a seat across from her. Just like last night, she didn't look up from her notebook, scribbling across the page with words. Once I placed my hand on her knee, I snapped her out of her trance, making her look at me.

"Oh, hi Demi. Sorry." Ellie said, fidgeting around with her hands. It seemed as though she was itching out of her skin to move around, and I just didn't understand where it was coming from.

"Don't be sorry, baby. I just wanted to talk to you." I responded, smiling in her direction.

"Okay. Is everything okay?" I watched as Ellie's eyes darted across the room quickly. I passed her a hair tie for her to fidget with and she seemed grateful.

"I just want to tell you a few things about me, about my past. I want you to know that I trust you, and I hope that you trust me too." I began, waiting for a response. 

"Okay," Ellie smiled at me, ushering me to continue.

"Uh, so I guess I'll just start from the start yeah? Pretty much, when I first got into acting and started booking shows, I was about 8 years old. I booked a show called Barney and Friends — you're probably old enough to remember it."

Ellie nodded enthusiastically and I could tell she could remember exactly what I was talking about.

"Barney is a dinosaur from our imagination. . ." Ellie sang, nodding her head back and forth.

"That's the one!" I chuckled. "Anyway, after Barney, I booked more and more jobs and had a hell of a lot of pressure on my shoulders. I was getting bullied at school really terribly — people made a petition that everyone signed to convince me to kill myself. I was 12. I remember calling my mom crying, begging her to pick me up from school, and once I got home, I straight up told her that I wasn't going back and from that day, I was homeschooled. I think it was a mixture of the bullying and hate that drive me to cut myself not long after."

I knew it was vital for me to study Ellie's expression while talking about my brush with self-harm. Her reaction and the way she moved or even looked would be able to tell me enough for me to consider confronting her further. But of course, luck wasn't on my side today. Due to the fact that Ellie was already bouncing around all over the place, it made it exceptionally hard for me to read her. I couldn't stop and think for long though, knowing that Ellie would get suspicious.

"That went on up until I was 18 or 19. In between that, I was able to star in heaps more shows and movies, particularly on the Disney channel. First was As The Bell Rings, which ran for about two years. I started filming that when I was fourteen, and then when I was 15, I got the part to play one of the main characters in Camp Rock. That was pretty much my big break — It's what made me famous. It's as if it happened overnight. It was crazy. The pressure got to be so much, that I was not only cutting myself, but I went from starving myself, to purging any food I was forced to eat and still in my head, it wasn't enough. I was so hard on myself Ellie, you have no idea. Nothing I did was good enough for me."

Ellie looked at me with a sympathetic smile. She didn't want to interrupt, so I kept going.

"When I was 17, I tried cocaine for the first time. I was terrified, but in a sick, twisted way, I liked it. It was messed up. I couldn't go a few hours without it at one point, and if I didn't have coke, I would mix up other drugs, prescription and recreational ones. I started drinking a lot too. A lot of shit happened, but the time that confirmed it for everyone was during the Camp Rock 2 tour. My friend Nick had noticed that I was going off the rails a bit, and tried to tell my manager, but they just thought I was trying to be a 'normal' teenager. That night made it sink in just how serious the problem had gotten. I booked a hotel room, paid for a shit ton of alcohol and popped a few Adderall before inviting random people off the street. People turned up with drugs I hadn't even heard of before. Long story short, we trashed the hotel room and the hotel was threatening to sue us, but then someone told my manager that I was on Adderall. She was one of my backup dancers, and I cannot even begin to tell you how betrayed I felt. She was one of my closest friends — I was furious. I ended up manipulating my manager into telling me who had told him, and when we went to board the plane later that day, I saw she was already on there. I walked up to her, punched her square in the face before sitting down in my seat. After that, my parents put me into rehab. When I came out, I still wasn't ready to recover. I faked drug tests to convince people that I was clean, I even filmed a documentary talking about staying strong and sober while high on cocaine. I tricked everyone. I hate looking at the person I used to be, because I was just so terrible."