The real test of my ability to fake it came when the record label asked me to date someone. I didn’t understand why they wanted me to date. Mia had gotten in trouble for getting caught making out with one the stars of a show we had done a cameo on; she had been fourteen at the time and the tabloids had a field day over it.
***
“Jazzy, don’t you see? This will be perfect publicity for you and it will even out the negative effects your sister has put on your image as a duo,” said Troy, our brand new manger, our old one Matt had retired several months before.
“I’m not seeing how me dating someone will help our image improve. I’m fifteen, I don’t want to date yet, not after what I’ve seen it do to Mia.”
“With you though, it will be a first love scenario. People will see how innocent you are and they will fall in love with Jazzy and Melody again. I’m not asking for much. Go on a few dates, laugh, play, hold hands. Maybe even a simple chaste kiss for the cameras. We’ll make them think it’s your first kiss.” It would be my first kiss.
I folded my arms across my chest. “I don’t want to do this, get Mia to do it, she would love the chance.”
“Melody no longer has that… how should I put it… childlike innocence about her. It has to be you. Do it for your dad, he thinks it’s a wonderful idea.”
“That man is not my father. I haven’t even seen him in three years. He was just the one to sign the adoption papers.”
He scowled at me. “Fine, if you won’t do it for your image or the president then do it for yourself. If sales go down anymore for Jazzy and Melody then we will have to terminate your contract and the president will return you to foster care. Is that what you want?”
I gaped at him, he was blackmailing me and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I missed the old life, but at the same time, I had gotten used to the new one and having the freedoms that I wouldn’t have had in the system. Plus, Mia would be horrible if she didn’t have the luxuries she had then. “Who do you want me to date?”
He smiled. “Josh from Heart Maps. He is starting his solo career and this would be the perfect opportunity for him and us.”
I had a funny feeling that Josh may have asked for this. He had been trying to get me to go on a date with him for a year by that point. “Fine.”
Three days later the date had been set. Josh and I would be seen going to a movie and then a meal at a small restaurant.
I was dressed in a cute sundress that my stylist said would make me look innocent like an angel. Josh chose a comedy for us to see. He turned out not to be so bad. He didn’t try anything during the movie and he was nice during the meal.
“Thank you for coming on this date with me,” he said. We had just sat down to the meal and were reading the menus.
“I’m just doing as I was told.” I said with a smile, we were in front of the window and the paparazzi stood outside, watching us and taking pictures. Both our record labels had tipped them off that we would be there.
“Maybe with a few more dates you’ll see that I’m not so bad.”
“It has nothing to do with you. I don’t want to date. I’m doing this so that my sister and I won’t be sent back to the system. She would be a nightmare to deal with if this life was taken away from her.”
“The system?” he asked.
“Foster care. We were adopted by the president of our record label when we were twelve.”
“Oh, yeah,. I remember hearing about that. Why would they send you back if you didn’t go on a date with me?”
“Lately, Mia… I mean Melody’s behavior has been getting her in a lot of trouble and causing issues with sales. People don’t want to support a troublemaker idol that’s supposed to be a role model for their children. If sales drop anymore, they will terminate our contract. The president says he will return us to foster care stating that we are unmanageable and he can’t handle it anymore.”
He looked shocked. “Can they really do that to you?”
“I wouldn’t put it past them. They think me dating you, while maintaining an innocent front of a first love will make people want to support us again.”
“Well, let’s help each other then, I guess.”
We ordered our food then and the rest of the date was spent talking about various things. We laughed and smiled for the cameras. At the end of the date, he walked me to the car outside the restaurant. The paparazzi didn’t swarm us like bees, I had expected them to. They stood back, watching and waiting to see what we would do. As planned, Josh leaned down and kissed me on the cheek, holding himself there long enough for them to take several pictures. He then opened the door and helped me inside. “I look forward to our next date, Jasmine.” He closed the door and that was when the paparazzi moved in on him. Asking him questions about us and when we had started dating.
I looked back at him as the car pulled away and I couldn’t help but wonder how he knew my real name. After being Jazzy for three years, hardly anyone ever called me Jasmine, not even my assistant.
We continued to go on small date every few weeks when both our schedules allowed it. He was always nice and at the end of every date would kiss me on the cheek. The tabloids loved us. They called us the cutest couple in over a decade. Eventually, they would have us make a romantic comedy together for TV. People couldn’t wait for it.
Any and every interview Mia and I went to, half of it would be them asking me about Josh, if I loved him, what he was like in private. I would appropriately answer each question, but would still leave a lot of mystery about our relationship. The more mystery the higher our sales went. We climbed back to the number one spot for teen idol.
Mia didn’t take the whole charade too well. She was mad that she didn’t get chosen to date Josh in the public eye. It only seemed to make the rift between us grow even bigger. I never told her I was doing it for her, so that she could keep all her fancy clothes and fake friends that only wanted to hang out with her because she was famous.
Any chance she got, she would tear me down with back handed compliments. She would say in interviews how the record label was thinking of having her go solo. When asked if I would have a solo career also she would say that my singing voice wasn’t good enough for that.
It hurt to hear her say things like that. We would go months with uttering a single word to each other unless it was something said on stage to get the crowd going or in an interview to make it seem like we were still sisterly towards each other.
The highlights of my week became when I would see Josh. I wouldn’t admit it, not even to myself, but I had fallen for him. He would listen to me when I was feeling down about Mia and he would comfort and hold me when I needed to cry. The paparazzi learned that if they didn’t swarm us everywhere we went in public that they would get even better pictures. Josh and I would play a game to see how many hidden photographers we could find around us at one time. Still, after several months, he had still yet to kiss me.
So then the record label had let it leak that I had never been kissed and so everyone was on pins and needles wanting to be the first person to get a picture of the once in a lifetime shot. I started to wonder if he would ever kiss me and butterflies would enter my stomach anytime we went on a date. He would hug me, hold my hand, kiss my cheek or my forward head, but he never ventured past that. Until, the 4th of July, a month before my sixteenth birthday. It was also the month before we were scheduled to start filming the TV movie. I wondered if my first kiss was going to be on set, I didn’t want it to be.
He took me on a picnic in the park, that night; we would end up having the perfect view of the fireworks. We sat on a classic red-checkered picnic blanket and we were eating our food while playing a game of ‘spot the photographer’.
“So is it true?” he asked me.
“Is what true?”
“That you’ve never been kissed? It seems the only question I get asked right now is when I’m going to kiss you and make myself your first kiss.”
�
�It’s true.” I didn’t add that I had been wondering the same thing.
“Would you be mad if I kissed you?”
“Why would I be mad?”
“You said you’re only dating me because you’re being forced to. I don’t want to steal your first kiss if you don’t want me to. The tabloids can go without it if that’s what you want.”
By that point, we had been dating half a year. “I… well... I think I have come to like you a little bit, Josh. And we’ll have to kiss on the set of the movie next month and I would like it if my first kiss isn’t captured on the movie screen.”
“You like me?” he asked with a wide grin.
I had blushed ten shades of pink, but nodded. “I think I do.”
“I like you too.”
That night, while the fireworks show was at the climax. He reached over and cupped my face gently, pulling my attention away from the display. He kissed me softly and sweetly. I couldn’t have asked for a better first kiss. The next day the photo of the kiss was everywhere with the headline: Jazzy gets her first kiss! The picture was beautiful and whoever took it had gotten a nice payday for it. I ended up getting a copy of it and framing it.
I was coming to realize that not all aspects of my life were faked. I hoped that Josh and I were real and that we could continue dating.
5.
Artificial Energy
I wish someone had warned me of the darker side to the entertainment world. I thought it was bad enough acting like someone who wasn’t fully the real me, but there was so much more to it than that. If I would have known what to look for, I would have seen the changes in Mia and that she was falling apart at the seams. Though, I hardly ever saw her, unless we were required to be together. Our relationship was completely gone. Nothing I did seemed to bring her head out of her butt and she refused to talk to me about anything personal. We were two identical strangers that every once in a while had to share their bubble and make it seem like we got along.
I know that if I had tried harder to take a part in her life, the months after our sixteenth birthday would have never happened, and I wouldn’t be writing in this journal as a part of therapy. I can still remember the night when the wheels were set into motion, the wheels that would render me a zombie for a year, and the wheels that would take Mia away from me before I got a chance to apologize to her.
I had been exhausted to the point I could barely stand up. I was still filming the movie with Josh and recently had been having back to back concerts also. Between it all, I had been getting about two hours of sleep a night. It was a miracle that I hadn’t become sick from it all. The record label had no sympathy for me. My assistant was the only one making sure that I was eating enough and taking vitamins to boost my immune system.
It was on a night after shooting several scenes of the movie and getting ready for a concert that everything changed.
***
I was falling asleep as Trish put on my makeup and styled my hair in spikey pigtails. “You need to get more sleep, hon. You look like the walking dead.”
“Thanks, Trish, that’s what I needed to hear right now,” I had snapped at her. She frowned at me and then I frowned back. “I’m sorry; I’m just moody from the lack of sleep. I’ll be better once shooting the movie is over and I can get more sleep.”
Suddenly Mia slammed a bottle of water down and a white pill down on the vanity in front of me. “Take this and shut up, you’re giving me a headache.” That was the most she had said to me in four months.
I looked at the pill and then to her retreating form, she was going back to our band. “Mia, what is it? Where did you get it?” I called after her.
“It’s like a caffeine pill and none of your business!”
It had hurt a little to hear her say that, but I knew that she was right. We hadn’t been a part of each other’s lives for over a year by then. I looked at the pill. If it was like a caffeine pill then it would give me a small jolt of energy, which would get me through the concert. Slowly, I picked it up.
“You’re not going to take it, are you?” asked Trish.
I opened the bottle of water. “I need something to wake me up, or I’m going to collapse on stage.”
“But what if it kills you?”
“Mia and me don’t get along, I know. But I don’t think she would kill me and if this thing does kill me then you’re my witness that she gave it to me.”
I put the pill on my tongue and drank the water. I started to feel its effects by the time they were calling five minutes to show. I could feel the energy coursing through my veins. I felt more awake than I had in months. Everything seemed brighter and I was able to put on a good show. The part that sucked was the coming off the pill. Just like a sugar high, I crashed and I crashed hard. I ended up sleeping half the day after and no one was able to rouse me. I had gotten in trouble because they had to cancel the concert for that evening and the scenes scheduled for that day.
It wasn’t long before I was going back to Mia for more of the energy pills. It seemed that the longer I took it the more of them I had to take for them to work. I never did reach the same euphoria as the first time, though. If only I had known what they would do to my personality and how they turned my life upside down, I never would have taken them.
6. Untitled
Three weeks after taking the first pill, I was taking them continuously throughout the day to keep myself from crashing. I would take small naps when I had the chance, but nothing more. I was growing irritable. Snapping at people and acting like I once had when I was younger and turning into a diva. My relationship with Josh started to become strained because of it. He tried to comfort me, knowing that I was under a lot of stress, but I would push him away.
My hands would shake because of the pills and the lack of food. With them in my system, I had barely any appetite. Soon I began to lose weight and I was skinny to start with. Like always, the tabloids had picked up on my odd behavior and the way I was pushing Josh away. I had gone from being an innocent princess in their eyes to being nothing better than my sister.
At first, they suspected I wasn’t getting enough sleep because of the hectic schedule I was keeping, but then the drug rumors started. By then, I knew what I was taking wasn’t just a caffeine pill. I was disgusted with myself, but at the same time, I didn’t want to stop taking it. It was the only thing that was keeping me going and I was addicted to the rush that was becoming harder and harder to achieve with each passing day.
Once the drug rumors for both Mia and I got out, the record label decided to take action. Both of us were required to take a weekly UA and they had us take a month off work so that we could go cold turkey without it being seen by the public eye. Mia had the hardest time of it; she wasn’t just taking the pills, like me.
***
After having the pills taken from me it felt as if I had slept for a week afterwards. I was told it was only a day. I found myself craving the energy that the pills gave me, but I had to remind myself that I didn’t need them and if I wanted to keep my job I would have to go without them.
Mia had a harder time. I don’t know how long she had been taking the pills and I know that she was also doing other things than just that. She had withdrawal; bad. She threw up for several days afterward. She would get cold sweats, headaches and her moods were extreme. One moment she would be fine, the next she would be crying on my shoulder and wouldn’t tell me why and if she wasn’t crying on my shoulder she would be throwing things at me and accusing me of things that I had never said or done.
I had a hard time dealing with her and I couldn’t leave our apartment because I was under house arrest until we were both better.
Luckily, we were able to still get visitors. Josh visited me every other day. Without him, I think I would have gone insane. We would go to my room, away from Mia who didn’t like him.
“How are you holding up, lemon?” he would ask. Lemon was the nickname he gave me after a certain day on set, where I was requi
red to eat a lemon. My face would scrunch up and pucker every time I had to eat it and he would end up laughing instead of saying his line. It took us forty takes to get the scene right, after that, he started calling me lemon. The tabloids thought it was adorable when he accidently dropped the nickname in an interview and had to explain what it meant.
“All right, I think. Mia is wearing me out. Her mood swings are so unpredictable. She goes from being the Mia I remember in the system, to Diva Mia on steroids.” I sighed. “I’m afraid she’s going to seriously hurt me or one of her nurses. They say she’ll calm down once she gets past the withdrawal, but it’s been a week. How long has she been on drugs for it to take so long? I’ve been a terrible sister. I should’ve seen her change and stopped her before she got to this point.”
The Shattered Image Series (I Was a Teen Idol) Page 3