The Shattered Image Series (I Was a Teen Idol) Read online

  The Shattered Image Series

  I Was a Teen Idol

  By

  Kristie Langford

  Copyright © 2013 Kristie Langford

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or

  stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  The Shattered Image Series – Sign Up for Updates

  First Edition: 03/13

  Table of Contents

  1. Suddenly

  2. Everybody Loves Me

  3. Money

  4. Fake It

  5. Artificial Energy

  6. Untitled

  1.

  Suddenly

  I never thought I would find this type of peace. Even when Mia was alive, there was always chaos somersaulting its way through my mind, like a hyperactive gymnast. Most of the time, she was the one causing it… Being on the Ironic Zero tour bus seems to calm the rampant thoughts, I no longer crave a life that went by faster than a speeding bullet, but it took having to face my demons in order to get here. Now, I can find peace in the rushing scenery, the sound of the boys playing video games in the back and the soft scratch of the pen against the paper in my journal. To think, it only took six years to get here and I’m not even halfway close to healing myself completely, if that will ever happen. I think it’s time I write down everything that has happened up until now; maybe seeing it all down on paper will help me bury the parts of my life I no longer want to remember. Putting them on paper, will be like cutting them out of my head and locking them into the ink flowing onto the paper here.

  It all started six years ago. I was twelve and sitting in the backseat of a car, with my twin sister Mia…

  ***

  I took Mia’s hand. I knew I was more nervous than she was. She fed off the attention that came with exciting situations. She held onto my hand, knowing I needed the comfort. I was just glad that she hadn’t pulled away from me.

  I looked in the rearview mirror; I could see part of Patricia’s face. She was the current social worker and had the longest record with us, three years. That was until the record label and the adoption. . She had been a haggard looking woman, graying dark blonde hair and blue eyes with heavy bags under them. Someone who had seen too much of the crap in the world and no longer had the dream of saving children who were growing up in dismal conditions. At the time, she was in her thirties. She no longer had the perky kindness of a twenty something college student, who was out to change the world one poor child at a time.

  That day, she was taking us to callback auditions for a record/talent company. It had all been very hush, hush. The president of the record label said he wanted to do the right thing and adopt a child from a local orphanage; well, that’s what he told the tabloids. No one knew that he was actually auditioning orphans for the spot. In truth, they were looking for the next child that they could mold and shape into a superstar and still have full control over the contracts involved. The president would be their legal guardian and have the power to sign them into a contract that would last until their nineteenth birthday, the age when pop star idols were seen as old and has been. After that, the kid could go find another company, or disappear into the woodwork.

  My sister and me went for separate auditions at first. When they realized we were twins, we became a two for one deal. If they wanted to, they could pull the old switcharoo while on stage or at events and no one would notice unless they knew us really well. The callbacks were to see us together, to see if they could market us as a double act.

  “Remember, girls, be perky and nice. If you get this you’re set for life.” Patricia looked back at us using the rearview mirror. We both rolled our eyes. I couldn’t speak for Mia then, but I didn’t want the star life. I just wanted a family. I never knew my father or my mother, not really. Supposedly, they raised us until we were three and then CPS got involved and we had been bouncing around foster homes and boarding houses ever since. No one wanted to adopt two three year olds with behavior problems. It was too much work and a newborn was easier to care for.

  She pulled into a parking space with a loud screech of her brakes and turned off the engine. She turned and looked back at us and frowned. With haste, she pulled a comb from her ancient leather purse and threw it at Mia. “Both of you brush your hair, you’re not homeless. And pinch your cheeks, Jasmine; you’re paler than a piece of printing paper.”

  There was no use fighting her at that point. If we didn’t do as she said she would do it for us and it would probably hurt worse. I pinched my cheeks while Mia combed through the tangled, light brown strands of hair that was identical to mine. However, her hair was probably messier than mine was. She had roughhoused with the boys from the foster home we had just been bounced from. The woman there just couldn’t handle Mia’s wild nature anymore and wherever Mia went, I went. It was just how things worked. I couldn’t imagine not being by her side. We were lucky, we had made it nine years without being separated, some siblings weren’t as lucky.

  Once we looked as good as we were going to get. Patricia hurried us inside to wait for our turn before the deciding panel. The waiting area had been chaos and didn’t help to settle my nerves. There were kids from the ages of three to fifteen there. All of us had similar backgrounds, we had been in the foster care system for all of our lives, and we were the ones that no one wanted. There would be no parents coming to try to get us back and that’s what they wanted. Someone who was not wanted, so that they didn’t have to worry about parents trying to get their kid back once they became famous.

  Mia had us practice the dance we had put together. We were going to sing and dance for them and we hoped that it would be good enough. Patricia was counting on us to get the contract. If we didn’t, we would have been sent off to a different county for another foster home and she would no longer be the social worker in charge of our case. If we couldn’t stay in the county we had been in for nine years, where the social workers knew us, there was no guarantee that we would be sent to the same foster home in the next county. We could be separated and there was less than a fifty percent chance we would be put back together later on. So, even though I didn’t want it, the fame and being an idol, it was necessary if I wanted to stay by Mia’s side.

  “Jasmine and Mia!” called out the assistant that took the children back to the audition room. Patricia pushed us forward and toward the woman. I looked back at her and she made the motion for me to pinch my cheeks again. I did and Mia followed my example. We followed the woman back to the room and before we walked inside, we placed smiles on our faces. “This is Mia and Jasmine. They are here for a callback audition.”

  We stood in front of the panel that consisted of two women and three men. I don’t know what their job titles were, but their intense stares unnerved me. I involuntarily grabbed for Mia’s hand and luckily, she didn’t shy away. Maybe she had been nervous too.

  “Show us what you two got,” said the man on the far left. He had sounded tired and like he didn’t want to be there any longer.

  We got into our positions and started to dance, there wasn’t any music for us to dance and sing too, but it was better that way, we didn’t have the music for when we practiced either. Mia took the lead singing; I was just her back up. She was always the better singer. We finished our song and dance with splits and smiles on our face.

  There was no c
lapping or smiles on the panels’ faces. We stood slowly and one of the women leaned over and whispered something in the man’s ear. He nodded and whispered something back. As a group, they discussed us in hushed tones and the butterflies in my stomach had grown worse than they were before we had auditioned. Finally, the man on the far left nodded and looked at the woman who had brought us back to the room. “Mary-Anne, take them back to waiting room B.” She nodded and left the room. We curtsied to the panel, like Patricia had told us to, and followed the woman.

  Waiting room B was much smaller than the room we had waited in before they called us back to audition. “Wait here.” Was all the woman said before leaving us there. We weren’t the only ones in the room. There were three other children besides us. A boy who looked to be about our age and two girls who were several years younger than us.

  Mia and I sat down. I wondered what we were doing there. Had we made the cut or were we in the room where they sent the rejects? I also couldn’t help but look at the boy who was in the room with us. He was cute. I was just getting to an age where I no longer saw every boy as a repulsive slug who rolled around in dirt and burped all day. Being ever the extrovert, Mia easily struck up a conversation with him and I couldn’t help but feel jealous at how easy she was able to do it. We were identical twins, why couldn’t I be extroverted like her also?

  “So what you do for the audition?” Mia asked, looking at the boy.

  “Sung and played the guitar.” He pointed to the guitar on the floor next to his feet. I hadn’t even noticed it sitting there when we walked in.

  “Wow, you can play the guitar? How’d you even manage to keep something like that? How long have you been in the system?” Mia asked, like a game of twenty questions. She leaned over him and picked up the guitar. I marveled at how easily she could invade someone’s personal space without a care in the world. She went to open the case, but he stopped her and gently took it from her.

  “Yeah. One of the few things I keep with me and guard with my life. Ten years.”

  When you live in the system, there’s only a handful of personal things you can keep with you. Together, along with the clothes we shared, Mia’s and my life could fill half a large black trash bag and that was how we carried around our life from place to place. If there was anything personal you didn’t want stolen by another kid you held onto it 24/7. Otherwise, it was as good as gone if there was someone else who wanted it. I remember thinking the boy must be tough if he had managed to hold onto the guitar for who knows how long. Anything that big, would be hard to protect.

  “We’ve been in nine years. I’m Mia and this is my sister Jasmine.” She pointed at me and I blushed when he looked at me.

  “Luke.”

  “Cool. Can you play us something? It’s been ages since we ran into a kid who could play an instrument and been able to hold onto one when they had it.

  He looked at Mia for a second, I could see a slight irritation in his eyes, but he opened the case anyway. I watched as he moved a tiny leather book out of the way and pulled out the guitar. It looked slightly beat up, but when he strummed it to make sure it was in tune I could tell that he had taken care of it the best that he could.

  He sung us a song that I didn’t recognize as being on the radio at the time. It sounded like it was a mash up between country and rock and roll. When he sang, a slight Southern accent came out in his voice that wasn’t there when he spoke. I liked the song. It was about a boy who met a girl at a roadside diner, they had good conversation and food until the sun rose up, and he had to go on the road again. We clapped when the song was over and he put the guitar back in its case.

  “That was awesome!” said Mia.

  “Yeah, well I just wish I knew whether or not it got me this stupid adoption thing.”

  “Well, you’re cute and you sing and play the guitar. I think you’re in the running for it and if you are then this must be the right room to be in.”

  “So you think we did a good job?” I asked her.

  Ever the optimist, she said, “I know we did. We’re awesome and if they didn’t see that then they’re blind and stupid.”

  One thing I didn’t know at the time, but later was told about, was that they had been watching us the entire time in that little room, seeing how we acted and what our personalities were like.

  Two hours later, we were still in the room. Two more boys had been added to the room and Mia had run up a conversation with everyone there. I stayed quiet and listened. I was bored out of my skull. If I had known we would be there for so long, I would have brought one of the few books I owned, Green Angel by Alice Hoffman. It was a small book, barely a novelette. I cherished it and had memorized the entire thing… loving the main character and how she overcame her hardships, it gave me hope that I could overcome mine as well. A Language Arts teacher who saw that I wasn’t being challenged enough gave it to me when I was ten. She said it might have been above my reading level, but she thought I could handle it. I read the entire thing by the end of lunch the same day.

  Finally, the assistant came back to the room, this time she didn’t have another kid with her. First she called one of the little girls that had been in the room before we got there. Eventually, she called Luke and not long after, us. I was relieved. I thought we would never get to leave the small room. But the day wasn’t over yet. She led us back into the same room where we had done our audition. The panel of people sat there, looking as tired as ever. I wondered why we were back; I thought they had wanted us to do the song and dance again.

  They ended up asking us a dozen questions each. We both had to answer each one on our own. Which was hard for me, since Mia usually spoke for both of us. They asked us things like our favorite colors, singers, foods, actors, subjects in school. I couldn’t understand why they needed or wanted to know such trivial things about us. At the end of the twenty questions, they went back into the huddle again and talked in hushed voices.

  After an eternity, the man on the left spoke again, “We like you.” He pointed to Mia, “But not so much you.” He pointed to me. I took hold of Mia’s hand. I knew I had failed her. They were going to separate us, I could just feel it.

  “Well, that’s all just cookies and cream, but if my sister isn’t with me then you have no deal,” said Mia.

  The man looked at us both for a long second before he burst out laughing. My grip on Mia’s hand tightened. “You have spunk, kid. I like that. Fine, we’ll keep your sister too. You both need vocal lessons and dance training and you,” he pointed to me. “Need to be more outgoing and likeable.”

  It took a moment for his words to sink in. Mia spoke our thoughts. “You’ll keep us? Does that mean we’re getting adopted?”

  “Yes, it does,” said the woman in the middle with a smile.

  Mia smiled and hugged me with joy. I hugged her back, but I wasn’t as excited.

  “Get ready for your lives to change, girls,” said the man on the left.

  And our lives did change. From that point on, we were ‘owned’ by the record label. Suddenly, literally overnight, everything was different.

  2.

  Everybody Loves Me

  Two weeks after they chose us, the adoption was finalized. My sister and I were now the ‘daughters’ of Richard Price. I still don’t think that’s his real name. We met him briefly during the week that everything went through. The tabloids wanted photos of him and us together. We did a set where we hugged him, another where he put matching necklaces on us and finally one where he had taken us dress shopping. We smiled and laughed in the fake way that we had been taught to.

  I didn’t like him, still don’t. He reeked of money and overpriced cologne. After that photo shoot I didn’t see him again until the accident, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The weeks that followed the photo shoot and our newfound fame were some of the busiest weeks of my entire life. Everyone wanted to interview us; we were America’s new media sweethearts. Mia did most of the talking in the interviews,
warming people’s hearts to us. With coaxing from her, I was able to come out of my shell when in front of the camera and become outgoing like her. She was still the one everyone loved most.

  After the interview frenzy died down the lessons started: dance, vocal, public speech, education (with private tutors). Day in and day out for weeks were a slew of things that we needed to learn in order to be the perfect pop stars, the perfect idols. They wanted us to rocket to platinum stardom and for children, teens, and adults to idolize us until they went crazy with their love for us.

  It was hard to get used to the lessons and the need to be perfect when we were out. People constantly took our pictures, wanted us to say something for an article. We needed to be angels almost 24/7 in the public eye. Mia loved every second, the constant moving schedule and the people always wanting our attention… it was her version of paradise. I could have taken or left it. I was just happy to be with her, all we really had was each other. We hardly ever saw other kids during those weeks when they were grooming us. I would have gone insane if I didn’t have her to talk to. I missed the simple things though: like sneaking a sleep in on the weekends, or being able to read a book under a tree when the weather was nice.