The day I'm released from the hospital is a mess. Everyone is crabby and ignoring me. Josh is snappy with anyone who talks against him. Samantha is about to lose it with the press trying to get a word from me. Liz is the only one who seems to take care and notice me. I was a little disappointed Chloe and Nick or Ethan couldn't come, but they had work and they called me every few hours.
Finally, the nurse handed me and Josh forms and packets and we were on our way; Liz with our small over night bags, Josh with all the paperwork and a nurse pushing me in a wheel chair.
My head was still pounding a bit, but I've been through worse. At the door, cameras were flashing and people were arguing with the front desk. We tried to hurry through them, but there was no way.
"Damn reporters," I heard Josh mutter. I felt the same way. Couldn't they have a little decency? Finally, Samantha got us through the door and in to the car. We made it to the studio and I was ushered to the conference room. Josh stood outside the room with me while Liz went to unpack my things. I saw through the crack in the shades of the window that the judges and Tim were sitting at the long table with some people I had never seen before. They all looked deep in a conversation and none of them looked happy. I had a feeling the conversation was about me and my 'problem'.
I knew I had a problem, but I didn't think it was any of their business. It was my life, not theirs. Yeah, I know I'm on their show and they technically own me, but that's not the issue. They want to control me. I'm my own person, I just tend to think to much of what others think.
Samantha comes out of nowhere and tries to get me to go in the room.
"Is the conversation about me?" I ask. She grabs my wrist. I wince. That was where the IVs were stuck in at. She looks at me and let's go.
"Sorry, and of course it is, or else you wouldn't be going in there." She flicked her hair out of her face and smoothed out her expensive-looking pant suit. I reluctantly went with her with Josh following me.
Everyone looked up and the conversation stopped as we entered. No one offered a friendly smile or anything. Just glares. I was seated in a chair at one end of the long table with Samantha on one side of me and Josh at the other. They took up right where they left off.
"She can't stay on the show! Think of all the bad publicity that will bring us," says a man in a dark blue suit and gelled hair.
"Again, she can't be kicked off. She's one of the best ones we've got," said a woman in a dark purple blouse. Dark colors must be the dress code. No bright colors were to be seen on any of them. It looked very drab and depressing. I looked down at my Aerosmith t-shirt, jeans and dirty Converse.
"We could go with the other plan," Tim suggests. The other plan? Everyone looks at me.
"The offer is definatly on the table," he says, taking a drink of the water glass that was sitting in front of him.
"She's right there," someone says. Tim looks at me from the opposite end of the table.
"I know," he says. "Ever been to New York, Kelly?" he asks. I shake my head. Samantha looks at the papers in front of her.
"Tim," she starts warningly.
"Samantha, calm down. I say we go with the second plan," he says. I really wanted to know what the other plan was and what it had to do with New York. "All in favor of the second plan?" A few people raise their hands.
"Wait, wait, wait," Bridgette says, holding her hands up as to stop them. Everyone looks at her.
"Give it another week, if she's up to it," she adds with a glance to me. "It'll give everyone a chance to see that she can still sing. Then we'll talk," Everyone nodded.
"Wait, you're kicking me off?" I finally ask. They were really kicking me off? It felt as though a hole was being dug in my stomach and my heart was sinking farther and farther.
Everyone looks nervously at each other.
"No, Kelly. Something different. Something we've been planning all along," Tim says. Samantha stands up.
"That's enough. She doesn't need to know anymore. Come on Kelly," she says. She walks over to the door and holds it open for me. I stand up hesitantly and follow her. She shuts the door in our face and Josh and I just stand there for a moment.
"This is it then," I say. "My careers over." I say, sinking to the ground. My back is up against the wall and I pull my knees up to my chin. I wrap my arms around my knees and put my head in them.
"Your career isn't over," Josh says, crouching down so he's eye level with me. "It's just being delayed," he says. I crack a smile.
"You're not helping," I say. He sits beside me.
"Never said I was trying to." I lay my head on his shoulder.
"I don't want to grow up anymore," I say. He chuckles softly.
"You don't have a choice anymore, kiddo," he laughs. I sigh. My body felt heavy and I didn't want to move. Why was life so difficult? Why can't we just wake up one morning and everything's easy. The birds would always be singing and the sun would always be shinning. But that never happens. Because nothing is ever perfect. Everything has flaws. That's what makes the world function. We run on flaws. We need them. Nobody would work without them. So why do we want to change them so much?
The sound of Liz walking down the hallway snaps me out of my daydream. "What's going on?" she asks when she sees Josh and I sitting outside the door.
"My career's ruined," I say. The look on her face causes me to laugh.
"Really?" she asks, uncertain.
"No," Josh says. "She's over reacting." We fill her in on what happened in the conference room. Liz wrapps me in a hug once we finish.
"Kelly, everything's going to be okay," she says. I nod but I know it's not true. Nothing will ever be okay. I was never one of those kids who looked to music for an escape or for soothing, in fact, I ran away from it. All those years Mrs. Berry begged me to sing, but I turned her down. Now, I wanted more then anything to make a living off of music. It was now a part of me. A part of me that would never go away. Yes, it may not be as noticeable as it is now, but in my heart my love for music will never dimmer. I loved music. I needed it. I just wanted to storm in to the meeting and tell them all of this but I knew I couldn't. The old me would have done it in a second, but that was the old me. I've changed.
***
"Was there any cute doctor's?" Chloe asks as we're painting our toe nails in her room later. I giggle. She had asked me to come and visit with her after she got done with recording for the day. I had agreed and here I was, telling her all about my hospital experience.
"Well, was there?" she pressed. I shake my head and apply another coat of sparkly purple polish to my nails. She laughs and grabes a cotton ball and the nail polish remover. She poured some on the little fluff of cotton and rubbed it on her toe.
"Green is so not my color," she muttered. She selected a bright pink and unscrewed the cap.
"Did you ever call Amanda?" she asks. I froze. I hadn't. She would kill me.She made me swear I would never cut again, and now I was just hospitalized for doing just that. I felt terrible. "Well?"
"No," I admit. I layer the paint on my toes. I look up to see she's staring at me. "What?"
"You really haven't told her?" I shake my head. "Kelly!"
"I'm sorry, okay! I really haven't had time to call her and explain why I was doing what she told me not to!" I look down at my nails. I was a little embarrassed for losing my patience like that, but I was frustrated with myself. Why had I even done it anyway? Everyone's telling me to kill myself and then when I attempt to harm myself everyone thinks I'm even crazier than before.
Chloe was silent for a while; the only sound in the room was the radio playing a pop song. "I'm sorry," I finally say, breaking the silence. She blows on her nails.
"Kelly I'm not mad. I'm just concerned," she says, still avoiding my eyes.
"Well you're the only one not mad," I say. To me, that seemed true. Liz was nice to me though and shared her story with me but I still felt that everyone was against me.
"You're being stubborn. If you stopped being stubborn maybe you would realize the world isn't against you," she says casually. Throughout my life, I have been told multiple times that I'm stubborn. I knew I was, but I didn’t want them to know that. So I acted like I refused to believe them. But now, hearing Chloe say it made me think about it. Maybe if I tried to get along with people, things might go better. It was worth a shot.
I went to bed that night trying to think positively. Ethan actually did love me and I saw myself with him in the future. Not marriage, but a relationship. Amanda didn’t abandon me, her mother just couldn’t leave her with her father because he was so busy with his law firm and she was too young to be alone in a big city for several months. Mom left for a reason.
That was the one I couldn’t see positively.
But I refused to let one little thought drag down my positive evening. I grabbed my iPhone and plugged it in to some speakers and turned on an up-beat, happy song. I danced around my room while I made my bed. I put my hair up in a messy pony tail and slipped in to my Winnie the Pooh pajama bottoms. I grabbed a bottle of apple juice from my mini fridge and took a sip. There was something about apple juice that made me feel like a kid again. Not that I really had a childhood. But I refused to think about that on my positive evening.
I grabbed my laptop and looked at my email. I wasn’t fired because there in my inbox was a song for the next weeks show. There also was a very strongly worded letter about how I needed to not look through those messages and how I needed therapy from Samantha. I deleted that message and looked at my song. It was a song that a new song writer had wrote and I was supposed to make it popular and the writer would get popular. That’s how the cycle works, I guess.
Then I searched the internet for a movie to watch, but I saw that Twitter was still on the history browser. It was tempting to scroll through the page and read what people really thought of me. It was so tempting, but I shut the laptop and sat it back on the shelf. I checked the clock on the wall. Quarter after ten. It was starting to get late and I didn’t know if I had recording in the morning so I decided I should probably hit the hay. So I turned off my happy music and crawled under the covers to end my positive evening.
When I woke up, I still didn’t feel any better, and nothing seemed any different. I was kind of disappointed. I got out of my nice warm bed and put on a pair of the dreaded skinny jeans and an over sized sweater. I brushed my hair and put on my usual mascara and Lipsmackers. I dug my pair of Converse out from underneath my bed and put those on, also.
I walked to the lounge by myself. The halls were a lot quieter than I remembered, and I wasn’t even gone for a few days. I made it to the lounge and saw that everyone was eating quietly. All eyes were on me as I walked in. I walked over and sat in the empty seat besides Nick.
“What’s going on?” I ask, stealing a roll off of his plate.
“I have no clue. Just whisper or don’t say anything like everyone else,” he says in a very loud whisper that everyone heard. A few people laughed quietly. I looked over at Ethan, who was sitting by the guys.
I waved at him, but he just looked away. What was that about? He avoided me the rest of the morning. It stung a bit. Was he embarrassed of me? I was embarrassed of myself, but I would live with it. Wasn’t he supposed to love me? The last time I checked you loved someone through everything, even the bumpy parts. And this was a major bump. Ethan never seemed to be the type of person who would let other people take him down, but maybe I was wrong.
After we ate, I was sent to the recording booth to work on my track. I decided the melody was a little high so I changed the pitch a bit. I was turning in to a bit of a computer geek. I knew how to work the booth and all the controls and everything. I was proud of myself because three months ago I would’ve never guessed I would be doing this stuff. I was going to be stuck in the same situation the rest of my family did. You end up broke, no job, no home, and eventually you just disappear. That’s the sad circle of my life.
The song honestly wasn’t that bad. It was pretty catchy, especially the chorus. The lyrics were nice and true, even though I had to change a few words. I bent over the table with a pencil and started scratching out words and writing in mine.
“We should write our own song,” says a voice behind me. I jump. I wasn’t expecting visitors. But the voice was familiar and I smiled.
“Then what?” I ask, laying down the pencil and turning around. I lean a little on the table.
“You sing it on the show for your final four performance. Or, perhaps your wining show?”
“I’m not going to win. You and Chloe both keep saying that.” I say. Nick walks over and grabs the music sheet I had just been writing on.
“Looks like you’ve gotten a head start,” he says examining the paper.
“It’s not all my work. It’s the one I was assigned for the show that some undiscovered person wrote. I was just writing my own lyrics.” I say, trying to keep my voice level.
He clucks his tongue as he scans the paper. He looked so serious as he looked over the notes I had made and the notes I had put in.
“Kelly, I’m not gonna lie,” he starts. I wait for the ending but he just stares at the paper. He finally looks at me and smiles widely. “It’s awesome.” I laugh.
“Thanks, but it’s really nothing.” I say, trying to sound as casual as possible, but inside I was excited. He really enjoyed my work and I could tell he wasn’t lying because Nick would never lie to me. Well, at least I hope he wouldn’t.
“Do you have any more lyric sheets?” he asked. I handed him a few and we started on the song. As we worked, I realized Nick wasn’t just this bubbly, sassy, fun person as he was on the outside. He was very passionate and thoughtful on the inside. He spoke of love and hardships and everything I would have thought Nick would never write about. I added in bits on how life is never fair but you have to live with it. Once we were done, it truly was a song to represent the both of us. It involved our fears, strengths, and weaknesses. I could relate to every word in the song. I hoped I wouldn’t be the only one.
We made the pitch perfect for the both of us. It was truly our song. I was in love with it.
“You have to sing this for your winning song,” he says. I shake my head.
“It’s our song. I’m not singing it without you,” I say. I knew I would never sing it by myself. It meant too much for the both of us for me to sing it solo.
“Well nobody will ever hear it from the both of us, our duet days are over.” Nick says. I chew on the pencil eraser. He was true. We had our one shot at a duet and almost went home. “Do you want to go in and sing a bit of it?” he asks. I nod. I really did want to. There was no music, so it was just going to have to be my voice and the words, those oh so meaningful words.
I sat on the stool and Nick nodded at me. I held the sheet in front of my face so I couldn’t see Nick. I didn’t want to look at him while I sang.
It seemed as if the world was against us
I loved the song. I could tell by the look in Nick’s eyes he loved it also. Once I finished, I took off the head phones and gave Nick my biggest smile and I felt tears forming in my eyes. We both looked at each other and started laughing hysterically. I had finally found someone who has felt some sort of pain like me. Me with my mother leaving and the rest of my messed up life and him with not fitting in and feeling like he didn’t belong.
Maybe the world wasn’t completely against me. I had Nick, Chloe, Ethan and most of all: Josh. Without them, I surly would not of made it this far. But if Ethan kept acting like he did this morning, I don’t know what I would do. I knew at that moment I was in love with the boy. I couldn’t stand the thought of him not being a part of my life any more. I needed him. I loved him.
I hopped off the stool and ran to Nick. After the best hug in the history of hugging, we went our separate ways to our rooms. I skipped to my room. I was just so happy that I finally knew what I thought of Ethan now. I knew that I loved him and that Carter and I were never meant to be. He was everything I wanted a few months ago, but now I knew. I knew it was Ethan.
I put on my happy music and danced around my room like an idiot, but I didn’t care. I was in the best mood I had been in for a long time. And that’s all that I cared about. I looked on my dresser mirror at the picture of Nick, Chloe, Ethan and I hanging out in the lounge, eating pizza and making silly faces. Ethan had his arm around me and I had my tongue stuck out. I loved that picture. It showed me that the world really wasn’t against me