The Shattered Image Series (I Was a Teen Idol)

by Langford, Kristie

  I started to cry and he pulled me into a hug. “It’s not your fault, Jasmine. These things happen. All we can do is wait for her to get better and help her heal after. I’m more worried about you, why didn’t you tell me? I would have helped you instead of yelling at you when you would fight with me.”

  I pulled away from him and shook my head. “At first, I didn’t know what I was taking. Then when I came to understand I didn’t want to stop. I was ashamed and I didn’t want to tell you. Then a few weeks later the record label put us under house arrest and made us get better. I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you over the past couple of weeks.”

  “Well, now that we know what the problem was we can move past it, right?” I nodded in agreement. I was lucky to have him by my side.

  Two weeks after that, Mia and I were finally released from house arrest and I was able to go back to work on the movie shoot, which was almost finished. I tried to spend more time with Mia; I wanted to get back some semblance of what we were. I would’ve been happy with that.

  The rough and tough tomboy of a sister that I had known in the system was gone completely. A girl who once rather play baseball in the street and wrestle boys for the last push pop… now liked glittering high heel shoes and the most psychical thing she did was the dance routines for the concerts.

  Bringing up the old times only seemed to aggravate her and not because she missed it, but because she hated to think about a time when all we had was a trash bag of clothes and books. She would say, “We have the world now. We can buy or do anything, why do you want to remember the time when we were nobodies?”

  “Because I miss who you used to be, Mia.”

  She looked at me long and hard after I admitted that. I watched her lean down and pick up her purse, she pulled a pack of cigarettes out of it before dropping back on the floor. “Want one?” She offered me the pack. I shook my head and stopped her before she could get one out for herself.

  “You’re smoking now? Hasn’t being locked up in this place for a month made you see that things like that will only get us in trouble?”

  “What rock have you been under? I’ve been smoking for a year now. Troy says I can do it as long as it isn’t where the camera’s can catch me. Besides, it helps with not being able to drink, or do anything else fun. You had to go and mess that all up for me.”

  My head had swarmed with what she had told me. Smoking, drinking… I thought the only bad thing we had done was take those pills. It was the worst thing I had done thus far. To hear that my sister had been doing other things since we had been fifteen was mind-boggling.

  “When did we become such different people? What happened to when we would sleep in the same bed because we weren’t used to being apart… to us holding hands when we were scared?”

  She had taken a drag of the cigarette and blew out the smoke to the side. I think she thought she looked cool, but I couldn’t help but be repulsed by her. “We also used to say we would die on the same day. Now, do you think that’s really going to happen? I’ve learned to appreciate all that the record label can give me. You on the other hand, can’t simply learn to even like it. You think you are at the same level as our fans. The sooner you learn that we’re gods to them, the sooner you and me can get along.”

  “We aren’t gods, we aren’t even demi-gods. We haven’t been popular since the nose dive we took after you got me hooked on those pills. Mia, if we don’t get our act together and make people love us for being sweethearts, we’ll be out of a job and then we will be sent back to the system until we’re eighteen!”

  “We will always be loved and worshiped by our fans. You’ll see.”

  She had been half right. Once the TV movie featuring Josh and me came out our sales did spike. People did start coming to our concerts and eventually we were back to selling out everything, but people only wanted me at the events and most the time in the interviews they didn’t even talk to Mia. I had become a wholesome image. I might have gotten a little lost because of the exhaustion that led me to the pills, but the people forgave me because I had asked for their forgiveness and apologized for my behavior during the prior months.

  They hadn’t been as forgiving to Mia. She had been a horrible role model for kids for such a long time, that they didn’t see a reason to forgive her. It wasn’t like she made them want to. She still acted like a diva no matter where we were and she didn’t apologize for her behavior. I had a feeling she was back into the drugs, but her UAs kept coming out clean. I started to wonder if she was using someone’s clean urine, because she wasn’t acting the same way she did when she was sober.

  I went to Troy with my feelings about her and he blew me off, saying that as long as she wasn’t on the cover of every celebrity gossip magazine for bad gossip, he really didn’t care what she did. He made it perfectly clear that until her half of our sales went up, she was basically trash to the company.

  I decided that I would need to talk to her and see if I could talk some sense into her. I thought about asking Josh to be with me while I talked to her, but I knew she wouldn’t like that, she didn’t like him. One night, after a concert, I followed her to her car. It had been her birthday gift to herself that year.

  “Mia, can I talk to you before you go?”

  “Well, I have somewhere I need to be, but if you want to come along, I’ll spare you a moment.”

  I rolled my eyes at her, but I got into the car, not knowing her plans. She started the engine and gunned it as she pulled away from the curb. I held onto the door handle. I had yet to be in a car with her when she was driving, her skills left less than to be desired, and I couldn’t understand how she had been issued a driver license.

  “Where are we headed?” I asked.

  “Not really sure yet, but I’ll know when we get there.”

  “What? But you said you had somewhere you needed to be.”

  “I do, so what did you want to talk about?” She had hit the brakes as she came up on a red light. I held even tighter onto the door handle.

  “I’m worried about you, Mia. Are you back on the drugs?”

  She started driving again when the light turned green. I couldn’t help but notice that she was going way over the speed limit. Without signaling when she changed lanes and then did it again.

  “My UAs are coming out clean aren’t they?” she flipped off someone in the car behind her. They had honked at her.

  “I think you’re using someone else’s pee for that. You’re behavior lately has been like it was before we had to get sober. You don’t seem to care at all anymore.”

  She swerved around another car and more people honked and yelled at us. “What’s there to care about, Jazzy? You’re the one they love, you don’t need me. Your voice is even better than mine now.”

  Never once in the entire time that we had been pop stars did we call each other Jazzy and Melody while in private, “What did you just call me?” I looked at her then and I could see that something was off. Her eyes didn’t appear normal; they had a distant, almost disconnected look to them.

  “You heard me. Everyone loves the great Jazzy. No one cares about her messed up sister. I could just disappear and no one would care.”

  “You’re wrong, I would care.” I had to close my eyes when she took a sharp turn without slowing down.

  “Oh, I feel so loved now that I know my twin sister would miss me.” She laughed cynically.

  “We could go back to being like we once were. The fans would love you again. The drugs and the partying have to stop. Once they do, people will see that you’re a good role model for their kids.”

  “What if I don’t want to be a role model, what if I want to be one of those has been pop stars to go out in a blaze of glory.”

  I had frowned, not having any idea what she was talking about, or where her train of thought was leading her. “We aren’t has-beens. We still have a few years before that happens to us. What are you talking about, a blaze of glory?”

  “I
think it’s rather poetic. We always said we’d die on the same day, I never thought it would actually happen.”

  A chill set in my body at her words. “Mia, what are you talking about? You’re scaring me.”

  “I’ve been scaring myself, lately. I can’t help but have these thoughts… they have helped me understand what I need to do. I need to die now, in order to preserve my legacy.”

  “Mia, pull the car over. You’re having a bad reaction to whatever you took. You don’t want to follow those thoughts you’re having. You don’t want to die now… I don’t want to die now.”

  “Because it’s all about you, isn’t it? Why don’t we do something I want for a change? And then people will love me too. Look, Jazzy, I found the place!”

  The place was in the other lane and an oncoming semi-truck. I remember hearing its horn blare and the sound of Mia’s laughter. I also remember thinking that I didn’t want to die yet, not like that. I had reached out for Mia’s hand and she took it. It was the last time we held hands. I have no memories after that, just of what came to next.