I wake up in my bed, strangely since I don’t even remember being asleep, and the last place I remember being was in the back of Oliver’s car. I look at the clock and notice it’s 10:00am. The light is reflecting through my half open curtains; the sun burns through onto the side of my face. As my eyes look around me room, not yet ready to get out of bed, they come into contact with the Headmaster’s Achievement Award I was given that’s now stood up on my dressing table.
I smile to myself, proud of the hard work I had done to get it. As I lay in bed, looking at the award triggers something in my head. I jump up, out of my bed, faster than I have ever moved in my life, and pull open my wardrobe doors.
“Crap. Crap. Crap.” I mutter to myself, eyeing the clock beside my bed again.
I look through my clothes for my black skinny jeans, but see that they are nowhere in sight. I shut the doors, running a hand tiredly through my notty bed head and sprint out of my bedroom door.
“Moooooooom!” I yell whilst running quickly down the stairs. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
When I run into the kitchen, the first thing I see is a confused looking Katy and Shannon having what looks to be, coffee. I throw open the refrigerator door, my eyes scanning through whatever was in the fridge. I didn’t see anything that filled my appetite (I was quite fussy in a morning you see) but I settled on a chocolate milkshake and a banana. Banana’s were what my teachers called ‘brain food’ because apparently it helps you concentrate at school and gives you energy, so whatever.
“Why the rush? What’s going on?” Katy asked me, closing the refrigerator door behind me.
“It’s just gone ten. I’m late! Why didn’t you wake me up?”
As I turn to run back upstairs, I feel myself moving nowhere because of the hard grip someone has on the back of my top.
I spin on my heels and frown at Katy, “are you trying to make me even later that I already am?”
“Late for what?” She says, looking completely oblivious to the fact every child in America has to go to school. Or maybe she was just playing dumb.
“School? I was supposed to be there an hour ago,” I tell her in frustration, starting to peel my banana, in the hope I can eat it as I make my way upstairs to save me time - that’s if I don’t choke on it on the way.
Katy chuckled at how fast my words are coming out, before sitting herself up on a stool beside Shannon.
“Hun, you don’t have school. I pulled you out,” she shrugs.
“Y-you what?”
Katy frowns at me and looks at Shannon, then her eyes return to me and a confused look appears on her face, “I thought that’s what you wanted?”
I feel a sudden release off my shoulders, and I smile at her. It’s one of those ‘thank you for listening to me’ smiles, because facing school everyday now would have been tough.
“I do! I just didn’t think you’d go with it that’s all,” I tell her in all honesty.
Katy only ever wants to best for me, so convincing her to take a chance on me doing education somewhere else was tricky. But it seems this time, I succeeded.
“You have her wrapped around your little finger that’s why,” Shannon smirks, sending a wink over in my direction.
I nod my head, me and Shan smiling at one another knowing she was probably right, but that wasn’t the case in this situation. If Katy didn’t agree with something; if she had her mind set on an answer, she would go through with it - no amount of pleading and a few guilt looks from me would change her mind. Yet I didn’t have to attempt any of that this time.
“No, I thought about what you said and it made a lot of sense. If you think about it, you don’t see David Beckham sending his kids to a school so public, because it’s kind of dangerous. Paps, fans and all that. This is a good idea, and my mind will be settled all day knowing you’re at home doing school work and not being chased home from school by one of them idiots with their cameras.”
“Ou David Beckham,” Shannon says with a lick of her lips, “The things I would do to him.”
“The things you would do to any guy with a pulse Shan,” I mutter, making Katy break into fits of laughter.
“Now that, my child-” she says pointing at me, “-was a good one!”
“Funny little girl, aren’t you Sammie?” Shannon says sarcastically. “Bitch.”
“I love you really,” I mime over to her then continue laughing along with Katy.
I turned away to leave the kitchen, another hour in bed would probably do me good. I was still a little tired and since I had no school today, why not? As I walked away from them both, I only managed to get to the door before Katy called me back.
“Erm, Sammie?” She says, her voice a little on edge and I know straight away there’s something wrong.
“Mother?” I reply as I turn around, doing a 180 degrees spin so that I’m then facing her.
“Are you okay? You seem a little chirpier this morning,” Katy tells me with a smile.
She probably didn’t want to ask, since yesterday’s subject would then be brought back up and she didn’t know what to expect from me. But with it being Katy, her mind wouldn’t rest until she knew I was okay.
“Yeah, I feel better. I’m just not going to let it bother me anymore,”
Katy’s smile turns into a grin, “Good girl. Uh, listen, I got a visit from Tam last night…”
“Okay…” I say, motioning with my hand for her to carry on.
“Well, I’ve been asked to do Jay Lenno tomorrow. This is going to be my first interview since I told everyone that you were my daughter, and I’m not making any decision without you saying first what you want me to do,”
I shrugged my shoulders. Katy doing a live interview couldn’t be bad, she’s an expert at things like this, so I’m positive she’d know what to say and what not to say on this particular subject.
“I’m fine with it. You can tell them what you think is appropriate.”
Katy continues to stare back at me for a couple of seconds, before breaking into a smile. She nods agreeingly, her eyes not leaving mine as she does.
“Where’s Oliver?” I ask her, noticing I hadn’t seen him this morning, nor had I heard him upstairs like I would sometimes do on mornings after he’d stayed over the night before. “Didn’t he stay?”
“No he couldn’t. Work needed him early this morning,” she told me.
I nodded at her and began to make my way upstairs, stretching my arms out as I yawn loudly. Katy and Shan carry on their conversation in the kitchen, and I decide that now was the perfect time to have a well deserved hour in bed.
[Katy’s POV - next day]
“Thanks Todd,” I say with a cute smile as my friend and make up artist Todd finishes up my eye make up.
I look at myself in the mirror, making sure I look okay and presentable for live television, especially with it being my first public appearance since I’d told the world about Sammie actually being my daughter. As I look at my reflection, I notice another imagine staring back at me wearing my favorite smile; her beautiful smile. I lock eyes with my daughter and smile, wrinkling my nose as I do.
“Hey babe,” I say to her, motioning with my finger for her to come over.
Her hands are locked together in front of her as her petite figure walks over. I notice how much more alike than usual we look today; maybe it’s the fact she’s wearing her black leather jacket with gold studs, the one kind of similar to the one I have at home. Her hair is straightened perfectly, not a blonde curl in sight, and her eyes beam with an even brighter blue than usual.
“Are you nervous?” She asks me.
I fiddle with the material on the bottom of my blue dress and flick my short black hair over my shoulder.
“A little, yeah,” I say completely honest.
“You’ll do great, I know you will. I love you,”
I feel my heart melt with her words. Her sweet, beautiful words. I grin and give her a confident nod. I managed to perform in front of millions of people in Brazil whilst my marriage was falling apart before my eyes, and I had no control over it what-so-ever. I can’t control what questions I get asked, but I can control how I answer them, and If I got through the stage of being bombarded with questions about my divorce, then I guess I can do this too.
“Katy, hello!”
I’m dragged out of my thoughts by a deep, masculine, but familiar voice coming from behind me. As I turn around I see Jay Lenno approaching me with a hand held out in front of him, wearing a black blazer, white shirt, but matched cleverly with a purple tie.
“It’s great to see you Jay. Thanks for inviting me onto your show again,” I say, shaking his hand firmly. I quickly turn my head away to the side and let out a small sneeze. “Oh god, sorry, I’m a little sick today,” I apologize as I turn back to face him.
Jay laughs at me and puts one hand on my arm, “I’m exactly the same, I’ve got a box of tissues all prepared for me on my desk,” he chuckles. His eyes then focus on my nervous looking daughter and I see him give her a smile, “you must be Sammie, right?”
Sammie’s hands were now behind her back and I see her put her shy face on, looking so innocent and quiet. She cutely nods her head and says quietly, “Yes, it’s nice to meet you.”
“And it’s a pleasure to meet you, young lady,” his eyes switch back to me and he grins warmly, “I think we’re ready for you now Katy, so i’ll see you out there.”
“Alrightey! See you in a minute.” I said, waving him off.
Once Jay was out of sight, out in front of the cameras continuing his show, I spun back around to Sammie and took a deep breath. Come on Kate, you got this. You got this. I looked down at my daughter and gave her a smile.
“Katy Perry on in thirty seconds,” One of the men said from behind me, making me look over my shoulder and give him a confident nod.
“Good luck,” Sammie says to me sweetly, resting her hand on my arm and giving it a light squeeze.
I lean forward and kiss the top of her head, my lips leaving a small glossy mark in their place. “I’ll be back out soon. In the meantime, you wait right here with Tam okay?” I looked around the area we were stood in, being able to see Jay beginning to talk about my album PRISM to introduce me, “Wherever she is.”
“I think she’s just gone to the bathroom,”
I nod my head and stroke her cheek, giving her a wink before making my way over to the producer waiting for me at the entrance to the set.
“Oh Sammie?” I say quickly, looking over my shoulder and seeing Sammie’s eyes lock with mine, “I love you.”
She smiles beautifully and blows me a kiss. I turn back around and take a breath, hearing Jay mentioning my name and getting cheers from the audience. I look at the producer and he gives me a thumbs up, telling me that it was my time to go on.
“And please welcome, Katy Perry!”
As I walk out confidently, smiling and waving to the people in front of me, the audience erupt into cheers and to my surprise, all get on their feet. I feel that same feeling that I got the first time a crowd cheered for me; it honestly never goes away. I see a banner being held up in the audience by five people, saying ‘Katy we love you!’ and it immediately makes my heart warm at the love I’m being given by my incredible fans.
I see Jay walking over to me with open arms, and I quickly engulf him in a hug. The audience continues to cheer as we make our way over to the black leather couch that was beside his desk and chair.
I look out towards the audience and hold my hand over my heart, “That was incredible, thank you,” I tell them from the bottom of my heart.
“They love you,” Jay says, and I smile shyly at him. “So Katy, how are you?”
“I’m very well thank you, well actually, should I let them into our little secret?”
Jay looks out to the audience and nods, “I think you should.”
“Well truth is, we’re both actually sick right now.”
“But we’ll make it through the interview,” Jay adds.
“We will.”
We laugh for a moment and I flick my hair over my shoulder, removing the little strands that had fallen onto my face. Jay looks down at the cards he has on the table, probably seeing what questions he has down for me, then looks back up and holds a picture up to the audience of the album artwork for PRISM.
“Let’s start with your new album, PRISM,” he says, gaining more cheers from our audience. “How is this different from your last album Teenage Dream?”
I hold my hands together in my lap as I remember the times I spent writing Teenage Dream, “Well, I think Teenage Dream is fun and cartoony, but PRISM is more raw and stripped back- still fun of course!. I write autobiography, so it’s basically my real life experiences. You get to see a more vulnerable side to me in this album.”
“You say to your fans that if they want to hear the truth, then to just listen to your songs,” he quotes, something I had said previously a couple of months ago.
“Of course. I like to keep the truth in my music, because I think the music industry can lack that sometimes.”
Jay nods along with me, “definitely yeah. And there’s a congratulations in order because Roar has done so well in the charts, right?”
“Yeah it has! It was number one in over fifty countries,” I look out to the audience again, “so thank you all for that.”
Another roar of cheers were given in response and that crinkle returns in my nose as I smiled back. I really love getting the chance to hear my fans’ responses to the music I make, it’s an amazing feeling.
“Incredible. Incredible. I love it too, it always comes on in the car and I’m just singing along to it - well I say singing, but it’s more of a sound of pain that comes out.”
I laugh along with him and the audience and shake my head at him jokingly, “oh dear.”
“Okay, so you were promoting PRISM in the big gold truck that you had drive around the country-”
“yes, that’s right.”
“You released Roar and had all the success from that-” He carries on.
“Yes sir.”
I feel the palms of my hands get warmer and slippier as I feel what’s about to come.
“But after that you spent a little time out of the public eye for a couple of weeks, didn’t you?”
I nod, trying to show no signs of nervousness in my posture and face, “I did yeah.”
“Yeah. I’m just going to start, and say uh-” he looks out to the audience again, “I just met a girl backstage just before who was with Katy. Very lovely and well mannered,” I smile at his words, then he looks over at me and gestures a hand in my direction, “and she’s the spitting image of you.”
“Yeah, she is. I think she was nervous because Sammie’s not usually that quiet,” as I laugh at what I’ve just said to Jay, I see Sammie and Tamra watching me from the side of the set with smiles on their faces. I winked over in my daughter’s direction then looked back at Jay.
“You shocked the world a couple of weeks ago Katy, when you wrote on your website that the little girl that the press, your fans and everybody else had known as your younger sister, wasn’t actually your younger sister.”
“That’s correct. I mean, this was a huge secret of mine that I had carried around with me for almost sixteen years now, so it was quite hard for me to open up and kind of say ‘alright, this is what I’ve been hiding’,” then I add with a giggle, “or more like ‘this is who I’ve been hiding’.”
Jay and the audience laugh along with me, then he looks down at his cards another time and returns his stare back over to me.
“It must have been so hard for you to do, but why now? You know, you’ve been in this job for a great five years now. Why was this time so efficient for you?” He says, and leans forwards a little bit in his chair.
“Samantha was actually in a terrible car accident with my mother last year, which everyone knows about, and the secret was kind of let out soon after. As I said in the letter I wrote on my website, we’ve been working on our relationship to the extent of her actually calling me ‘mom’ now. I feel that hiding her from the world would be wrong, and I’m a proud mother so I don’t want to hide her from the world. I’m an honest person, mostly, and I will always like to remain that way. I guess with how amazing our relationship is right now, and has been for a while, I felt it was the best time for me to just tell everyone the truth, because I wanted it to come from me in my own words, and not from some ‘source’ that had made up a load of trash and sold it to a paper.”
“Oh yeah, I completely agree. There are people that write all sorts of lies in the magazines these days. So, I mean, this is a huge secret, were you scared to share that with the world?”
“Of course,” I reply in honesty, “Like I said before, this is something I’ve had to keep to myself for nearly sixteen years. I was scared of everyone knowing something so personal to me, and mainly I was scared for Sammie. I’ve lived this life for five years now so I can deal with the press, but she’s just a little girl and I never want her to get hurt.”
Jay smiles at me and moves around his seat a little bit, “is that why you took a little time out after you’d told everybody?”
“That’s exactly why. I just thought I needed to let it settle down a little bit because I knew everyone was going crazy with shock. So I made sure I had no major plans for the next two or three weeks after that and spent that time with my daughter.”
“It’s so weird but great hearing you say ‘my daughter’.”
I smiled and looked over at Sammie, “It’s the best feeling in the world to be able to say it.”
“I bet it is. She’s living with you now, and even calling you mom, that must be so amazing for you! How’s everything going? Are you both happy and enjoying your relationship?”
“Honestly Jay, it’s incredible. I love her more than anything in the world, and we’re having an amazing time together. I wake up in the morning and she’s there... actually that’s a lie because when I wake up in the morning she’s still in bed sleeping.” Everyone laughs as I flick my hair over my shoulder, “I really do not know where she gets that from.”
“Teenagers. They’re all the same.”
“Tell me about it. So yeah, she’s there in the morning, I get to see her before I go to bed, and we also have all the time during the day where I’m not at work or she’s not learning.”
A picture is held up of me and Sammie. We’re coming out of a Taco Bell in Beverly Hills and I have one arm over her shoulders. We’re laughing hard on the picture at something that I can’t quite remember.
“She is honestly so much like you.” Jay says in almost shock as he looks at the picture. “And you’re a natural blonde too, right?”
“I am yeah, but my blonde isn’t as blonde as hers. She’s also really clever. Sometimes I’ll be trying to work something out and she’ll know when I’m confused or something, and she’ll just be like ‘Oh you need to do this and add that’ and I’m just stood there in awe like ‘how do you even know that?’ And I’ll actually even let you in on another secret.”
“Go on, go on,” Jay urges me, looking at the audience and then back at me.
“Well there’s a song on my album called Double Rainbow. I’d brought Sammie into the studio with me one morning for a couple of hours. I was working with a good friend of mine, Sia, at the time - she’s who wrote Double Rainbow with me. So we had a good verse, and when we got to the chorus we were a little stuck. The chorus starts off ‘Cause I understand you, we see eye to eye, like a double rainbow in the sky.’ We’d gone over what we had a couple of times with the music but we’d always stop on the chorus because we couldn’t find what to add for the last part. I just remember Sammie looking up from her phone and saying ‘And wherever you go, so will I, because a double rainbow is hard to find.’ Me and Sia literally looked at each other with our jaws open and I just went ‘what?’. She’s just super talented, we were really really impressed.”
Jay’s eyes widened a little bit, “wow! And did that make the song?”
I nodded enthusiastically, “Yeah yeah, that’s the chorus. You’ll see on my credits in the album where it says who co-wrote the songs with me, Sammie’s name is on Double Rainbow. And it’s not the first time she’s helped me with a song.” I say seriously, then quickly add, “I think she’s after my job!”
Jay laughs and shrugs his shoulders, “She has the blood of a very talented song writer.”
“Thank you,” I replied nervously, looking at the audience and back.
“Well Katy, it’s been so amazing to have you on the show, it really has.”
“It’s been amazing to be here,”
“I really wish you all the happiness in the world with your daughter. And I hope you have as much success with PRISM that you did with Teenage Dream.”
I smile at him warmly, “Thank you so much Jay.”
“Katy Perry everybody!”
I walk offstage and look around the crew filled room for my daughter and assistant. Hearing Tamra’s hilarious laugh led me straight to the laughing pair by my dressing table.
“What’s so funny?” I ask with a giggle, loving seeing them both in such fits of giggles.
“Oh nothing, nothing.” Tamra tells me, waving a hand in front of her, “just Sammie being her hilarious self.”
I was quickly engulfed in a warm hug from Sammie, her head buried into my neck. I was a little taken back at first as how fast she had got to me from being stood beside Tamra, but I instantly wrapped my arms around her and inhaled the beautiful scent of her conditioned hair.
“You did so good, I know you would,” she says proudly to me.
“I did? Thank god!”
Tamra approaches us and ‘aw’s’ at our mother-daughter moment, “I was surprised actually that you didn’t mention Oliver.”
“I think one revelation at a time is enough,” I laugh, but knowing that very soon I hope to let everyone know of the beautiful relationship I am in; the beautiful family that I have.