Текст книги "Child Star: Part 3"
Автор книги: J. J. McAvoy
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Copyright
This ebook is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.
This ebook may not be sold, shared, or given away.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Child Star: Part 3
Copyright © 2015 J.J. McAvoy
ISBN: 9781943772292
Cover Design: J.J. McAvoy
Photo Credits: Georgijevic @ istockphoto.com
lenaer @istockphoto.com
conrado @istockphoto.com
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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“When you say a ‘former child star,’ you may as well say ‘failed child star.’”
~ Wil Wheaton
Chapter One
Noah
Fifteen years ago
“You hear me, boy?” Frank grabbed my neck. “The only reason why you are alive right now, the only reason why you’re here right now, is ‘cause of me. Act up, just try it, and I will snap your fucking head off.”
Glaring at him, I nodded as best I could, and when he let go, I slid back to the ground. Coughing, I held my neck, turning my head as he reached to pet my hair with his smelly hands.
“I’m gonna go for a smoke,” he lied, grabbing the black helmet with a red X on top from the dresser. “You need anything?”
I didn’t reply. I just sat there.
“I asked you a question, boy!” he said, kicking my foot.
“I’m fine,” I muttered, pushing myself off the ground.
“Don’t get fired. We need this cash,” he said to me, slamming the door behind him. Every part of me shook. I hate him. I hate him!
“Ugh!” I picked up a glass on the table and threw it against the wall.
Adults.
I hate them all.
They never listen. Maybe it’s because they think we’re stupid, or maybe it’s because we’re too small to do anything back. They are all messed up, and I don’t know why. What’s so hard about being an adult? And why do we have to get in trouble for whatever it is that is wrong with them? None of it is fair. Even the ones who aren’t that bad are still bad. I hate—
“Amelia!”
Not again. Getting off my chair, I cracked open my dressing room door.
“Amelia!”
She passed me in a blur of brown curls, running as fast she could down the hall. However, that wasn’t fast enough. Her mom grabbed her arm, pulling her back. But she didn’t stop trying to run, her white shoes sliding against the ground as she tried to get away.
“Amelia, enough!” her mother shouted, pulling so hard with both hands that she hit the wall, a picture of Mr. Disney falling to its side. Amelia moved to pick it up, but her mom grabbed her chin, forcing Amelia to look at her.
“You are too old to be acting like a baby, Amelia. Do you hear me?” she screamed in Amelia’s face. “How many days has it been since you got this part, and you still can’t do it right? What’s so hard about a few lines? What’s the matter with you?”
Amelia clenched her fist, but mumbled a response. “Nothing.”
“What was that?” her mom shouted again, still holding on to her face.
“Nothing! Let go!” Amelia cried, her face getting red.
Sighing, her mom let go, and she fell back against the wall, her hands going to her face to stop the crying, but it wouldn’t work. When Amelia started crying, there was no stopping until she cried it all out.
I wanted to go her. But if I did, I would make it worse.
Like last time.
“Sweetheart.” Her mom bent down in front of Amelia, patting the sides of her face and tucking her hair behind her ear. “You will have other birthdays, Amelia, but you may never get this chance again. One day, you will look back and thank me. Don’t you know how many people would kill to be you? Everyone wants an Amelia doll for their birthday. But you get to be Amelia everyday. Think how special that is.”
Wiping her face a few more times, Amelia nodded, but she looked like a deflated balloon.
Don’t take it! I thought when her mom offered her a hand. But Amelia did, like always. She took it, and like a zombie, she followed her mother back to her dressing room. I knew I should have closed my door, but I couldn’t look away. Mrs. London didn’t look at me; she walked with her head up high like she was trying to smell the ceiling. However, Amelia did, still holding her mother’s hand, her sad blue eyes drifting over to mine as she tried to force a smile.
She always tried to smile for me.
“Happy birthday,” I mouthed to her as she passed by.
“Noah?”
I looked away from her, and there was Kat, my manager, with something different about her blonde hair.
“What happen to your hair?” I questioned, not able to look away from it.
“Oh this?” she grinned, gently patting it. “It’s called ‘The Rachel.’ Do you like it?”
“Yeah. It’s cool.” No, it was not. But it was almost always better to lie to adults.
“You’re so cute!” she laughed, messing up my hair, even though I told her a thousand times not to do that. “I was just coming to get you. They are ready for you on set.”
“Okay.” I closed the door behind me and followed her through the studio hall. The walls were all white, and it always made me feel like I was in hospital. I pulled my Game Boy from my pocket as she kept talking.
“Do you remember your lines?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure we—”
“Yes,” I cut her off.
“Okay, are you hungry?”
“No.”
“You should eat anyway,” she pressed. “How about a grilled cheese sandwich? Did you like the one from yesterday?”
No. “Yeah.”
“Fine. We’re here,” she said, and I glanced at the fake kitchen set, with the lights and cameras surrounding it.
“Noah on set,” someone announced.
Giving her my Game Boy, I walked over to the table, and no one really talked to me; they were all just like Kat. They thought that they knew what was right all the time and they asked my opinion only to ignore me. Maybe they thought I was too dumb to understand what they wanted. They all just smiled and gave me a thumbs up, so I did the same as they put a bowl of cereal in front of me.
“Amelia on set!”
“Hi, everybody!” she said, smiling brightly, her face no longer red as she waved at everyone and then skipped to her place behind the fake door.
“Okay everyone, places.” The director waved his hand to get everyone’s attention. “Noah?”
“Ready,” I said, sitting up.
“Amelia?”
“Ready!”
“Action!”
Picking up the spoon, I took one bite before she burst through the door.
“Hold it right there, mister!” she shouted, pointing at me.
“What?” I answered with a mouth full of cereal.
Her mouth made a straight line, and her nose bunched up as she put her hands on her hips and stomped right up to my face. As I leaned way back, she leaned forward more and more as I chewed slowly.
“That’s my cereal,” she said, sticking her tongue out at me as she grabbed my cereal and made a run for it.
“Hey!” I jumped off the chair and chased her around the kitchen table. “Give it back, pig face.”
“I don’t have a pig face, butt brain!” she yelled from behind a chair.
“You do too!”
“Do not!”
“Do too!”
“Hey! What is going on here?”
We both turned around to face our ‘mom’ as she glared at down at us.
“She stole my cereal,” I said, pointing at her.
“He took the last of it, and I called it yesterday,” she pouted. “It’s the most delicious cereal ever!”
“Yeah, that’s why it’s mine!” I said, pointing to myself.
Sighing, the woman in front us pulled out a new cereal box and said, “Guys, there is more than enough for everyone.”
“Yes!” We both threw our hands in the air. But as Amelia did so, the cereal and milk went flying from the bowl and onto my head.
That was not in the script.
Turning to face her, I saw her eyes go wide. She hated making mistakes. She would start to freak out. So I wiped my face and took a deep breath.
“You are so gonna get it, pig face!” I yelled, hoping she understood to run. And she did, breaking out into laughter.
“You said it was yours!” Her voice sounded like little bells.
They played the voice over; “Kercurns Cereal—so delicious and nutritious it’s the logical choice!”
“Cut!”
Amelia and I immediately stopped, looking to the director and hoped he was okay. Getting up from his chair, he walked right up in front of us, bent down, and said, “You two have bright futures ahead of you, you know that?” Smiling, he glanced between us, and I saw the same thing I always saw in adults’ eyes: dollar signs.
“Thank you,” we both said.
Kat came over with a towel for me, then proceeded to talk to the director. Amelia looked around, but her mom and Ollie were talking to the director as well.
“This is our chance,” I whispered to her. Confused, she glanced over to me, and not wanting to waste time, I grabbed her hand, making for a run for it.
“Amelia!” someone yelled. But she ignored them.
“Noah?”
“Just trust me!” I laughed, taking her with me: right, left, down. Then we got to the large black studio doors.
“Noah…”
“Shh.” I turned back to her, and she was too busy looking around. “Amelia.”
“We are going to get in trouble—”
“Who cares? It’s your birthday, and you need a present,” I reminded her.
“A present?”
“Yeah. Come on.” We slipped through the door together, Amelia holding on tightly with her hand.
The moment she stepped inside, she froze, her mouth dropping open as she stared at the set and cast in front of us.
“Awesome, right?” I whispered.
She didn’t answer, but a smile spread across her face. And it wasn’t her fake smile—this was real.
I didn’t want to get caught staring, so I looked away from her and back to the circus act in front of us. They were making a movie, but right now, we got to see them flip and throw fire in the sky.
There were lightshows.
Elephants.
A bear.
And a lion. When she saw it, she squeezed my hand tighter, taking a step behind me.
“You scared?” I asked softly.
“No, I’m ten now. I don’t get scared,” she lied.
I didn’t say anything for a moment, just watched with her, until the lion roared and she jumped beside me.
“Amelia?”
“Huh?”
“I can’t help you all the time now,” I said. And I hated it. “But when I’m older, when I’m an adult, I promise I will. No matter what, okay? I’ll even fight that lion.”
She giggled, shaking her head. “He’d eat you.”
“That’s okay. As long as he doesn’t eat you…I mean it. When I’m older, you can count on me.”
I’d fight the adults as an adult.
“Noah.”
“Noah?”
When I faced her, she kissed my cheek. Her face was super red, but she did it anyway.
“I count on you now,” she said.
“Okay,” I muttered, rubbing the back of my head. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I said nothing and watched with her.
Everything would be easier when we became adults.
Present
“Hello, little brother,” Bodean said, standing head to head with me, his green eyes piercing into mine when I cracked open the door. Like a snake, he slithered inside, and I shut the door quickly behind him. “What, you ain’t even gonna say hello? I heard you’d be comin’ to Chicago. Has Frank visited you…?”
He stopped speaking when he saw the body still lying on the living room floor. A normal reaction, for a normal person, would be to panic, scream, or go into shock like Amelia. But Bo and I were anything but normal.
“Just like old times,” he smirked, taking off his shirt. He had even more tattoos than the last time I saw him. They covered his right arm and part of his chest now. When he took off his baseball cap, I saw that he had even cut his blonde hair into a buzz cut.
“She can’t just disappear, Bo.” Austin stepped out from the kitchen. I had called him right after I had called Bo. He was wearing a bowtie and suspenders, and from the look Bo was giving me, I knew he thought I had lost my goddamn mind.
“You still have this fucking clown around you?” he hollered at me.
“As his manager—”
“Well, that’s nice. Why don’t you get me a coffee or—” Bo started.
Before he could finish his statement, Austin grabbed him by the neck, pushing him up against the wall.
“I have a Hollywood legend on my floor. I do not have time to deal with your pathetic display of testosterone. The only reason why you are here is because Noah says you can keep your mouth shut. Can you do that? Can you keep your mouth shut?”
“Austin,” I called, and he let him go. Everyone thought Austin was a teddy bear, but in reality, he was an actual bear. He wasn’t above doing anything if it was in my best interest. He knew where all my skeletons were buried because he was the one who buried them.
“Bo.” I put my hand on his shoulder, trying to calm the rage that was ready to explode. “It can’t be like old times. This isn’t Frank’s mess. It’s mine. I’m begging you. As my brother, do what he says.”
He glared at Austin, tensing his jaw before facing me. “Fine. Only ‘cause you’re family.”
“Thank you,” I said, moving so that we could face our problem. “Like Austin said, she can’t just vanish.”
“But with the recent scandal, she can’t appear right now,” Austin replied.
The ‘recent scandal’ being me coming out of jail and the downfall of Ray Mallory. I glanced to Austin, motioning to the bedroom. I didn’t want Amelia to be alone for too much longer.
“Go. I got this,” he said, and I trusted that between him and Bo, they would get it done. There was no other choice.
Amelia
All I could do was watch.
3:17 a.m.
3:18 a.m.
3:19 a.m.
The numbers changed right before my eyes, and I could do nothing but watch, clenching the pillows under my head. Two hours. That’s how long it had been since I killed … murdered … my mother. Noah hadn’t come in the bedroom since then, and I was too scared to leave. I’d taken a shower, but I wasn’t even sure if I was supposed to get dressed. My head felt like it was spinning, and resting in bed seemed like my only choice. But the moment I laid down, I felt like the whole world was now on my back, smothering me. I cried, and if my throat hadn’t ached so much, I was sure I would be sobbing as well.
I didn’t mean to.
I swear to god, I didn’t mean to kill her.
It didn’t matter, did it? Whether I meant to or not, a murder was a murder. There was no undoing shit like that.
What happens now?
What do I do now?
I heard a door open and shut—I heard a lot of things. But again, I didn’t move.
3:29 a.m.
“Amelia.”
For the first time since I’d lay down, my eyes shifted from the clock to him. He stepped in from the doorway, dressed only in his boxers. Where his clothes had gone I wasn’t sure. He came over slowly, and I was grateful for that for some reason. Lying down to the right of me, he rolled over on his side, blocking my view of the clock and forcing me to stare into his eyes.
“You. Did. Nothing. Wrong,” he asserted clearly, so clearly I almost wanted to believe him.
I opened my mouth to argue, but nothing came out.
“Amelia, you did nothing wrong,” he repeated. “If you’d called the police, they would have taken you in. You would have gone through a public trial and been ridiculed and torn apart by every TV personality, radio host, and blogger. Your career would be over. But in the end, you’d be found not guilty. They’d say it was self-defense. So I see no reason for you to go through all of that. I find you not guilty and refuse to let this destroy you.”
“H—ow…” my voice cracked and it took me a second to get the words out. “How do you know? You weren’t even here.”
“Because I know you,” he said, smiling as he placed his hand on my waist. “Amelia, you are not just a good person—you’re a beautiful one. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be so distraught right now. You need to know you are not a murderer. You are a woman who fought back and won. There is no shame in that.”
“She was my mother,” I said, stumbling over the past tense.
“That never gave her the right to abuse you.”
For some reason, that one statement was like a light bulb being switched on in my mind. I would never have to hide from her again. I would never cry because of her again. I was free. Slowly, all the guilt, anger, sadness—everything—just faded into the background, and my tears stopped.
I only had one question.
“What happens now?”
He rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling. I copied him. It was like he wasn’t sure what to say.
“Noah, I need to know,” I pleaded.
“Austin and I came up with a plan.”
Austin? “What?” I sat up immediately. “You told Austin?”
“Amelia, do you trust me?” he asked softly.
“Always.” I didn’t even have to think about that.
Taking my hand, he kissed the back of it. “Then know that I trust Austin. Both him and my brother.”
“Your brother? Noah, how many people—”
“Just Austin and Bo,” he replied, sitting up and resting against the headboard. “Do you remember when I got emancipated from Frank? I was fifteen, and Austin became my manager.”
I would never forget. He had never been so happy in all the time we had been together. That year was amazing.
“You told me your dad was taking all of your money.” Which didn’t surprise me at all.
“He was,” he replied, frowning as he opened the bedside drawer and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. I didn’t bother fighting him this time when he lit it up. “But Frank had been stealing from me all my life. I could have left earlier, but I never did because of my half brother, Bo. I didn’t want to abandon him, not after his mother did. She just left him, but we couldn’t blame her. A person can only take so many beatings from Frank. With her gone, he tried to beat on Bo, but each time he did, I would I put myself in the hospital. Stupid things like breaking my arm or leg.”
“Noah…” Back then, he had told me he had gotten hurt trying to do stunts.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he laughed, cupping my face. “I wasn’t doing it out of depression or anything. I did it to teach Frank a lesson. After those two times, he never laid a hand on Bo again. I was his ATM, and each time I got hurt, he lost money. There is nothing Frank hated more than that. We had a plan. When Bo turned eighteen, I’d get emancipated and we’d leave. But since I was child star, and those accidents didn’t line up with my film schedule, children's services got involved. The person working my case was Austin Kugelman. Not only did he figure it out, but he knew everything about Frank—what he did to us, what he was involved in, and what he had done Austin covered up as much of it as he could. He told me that the only way to survive in this world is to be important. He wanted me as far away from Frank as possible and actually made it happen. He even set up Bo, but he told us to keep our distance from each other.”
“Why?” He’d never told me anything about his family life. I knew him. But anything beyond that, he always told me not to worry about. Now, everything was spilling out of him like he was in confession.
“Because Austin knew something I didn’t want to accept.” He took a long drag of his cigarette and blew the smoke out from his nose. “Bo is a failure. He is a second-rate version of Frank, and if it weren’t for me, he’d stealing cars or slinging dope for a living. If we were together, he’d just be another anchor around my neck.”
It was harsh, and he looked so heartbroken to admit it.
“You know what was worse?” he whispered, dropping his head. “The moment I moved out, when I didn’t have to think about them, I was grateful. For the first time, my family wasn’t my burden.”
“But because of me … of Esther … you still have to deal with Frank.” He was only free for a year. After that, our parents’ sins had ruined us.
“Yes,” he admitted, and that guilt started to creep back up. “But it was still different. I was no longer just his doormat. I couldn’t do much, but I could protect you.”
“You protect me. Then who protects you?” I didn’t want to be his burden, either.
“You do,” he replied with a look on his face that said he didn’t understand how I could ask that. “Between you and Austin, no one else has ever had my back.”
“And Bo? The fact that you called him means you trust him, right?”
He shook his head. “It means I know he will get rid of the body without asking any questions.”
I wasn’t sure what to think of this Noah. He was the same and yet so different … no, not different—100 percent himself now, with no reservations. “You’re telling me this now because …?”
“The realization that the world is fucked-up place. And no matter what you do, you can’t change it. I’ve had it since I was seven, and I can see it in you now. I couldn’t tell this to the old Amelia.”
The light bulb in my head kept getting brighter. I couldn’t deny anything he said, and worst of all, none of it bothered me.
“When you realize it’s a ruthless world, all you can do is be ruthless in return,” he whispered softly, blowing out smoke. “There was no going back, Amelia. We can cover this up, but it doesn’t matter, if you can’t move on from it.”
Reaching over to him, I took the cigarette from between his lips and placed it between mine, copying his actions and taking a long drag off it.
“Ahh! Fuck!” I coughed, my throat burning. Being the asshole he was, he laughed at me.
“You’re cute,” he said, taking the cigarette, though I almost threw it at him. I was still trying to breathe.
“That was so much cooler in my head,” I muttered, lying down beside him. He wrapped his arm around my waist and only then did I realize I was naked. But I didn’t care. There were no secrets between us anymore.
“Try and get some rest. We have to be up in two hours,” he whispered, and I couldn’t help but snicker. Confused, he glanced down at me.
“What?” He questioned.
“In two hours, we will be acting as Blair and Damon, criminals and lovers … does art imitate life, or does life imitate art?”
The corner of his lip turned up, and he put his cigarette out on the drawers. Rolling on top of me, he pinned both of my hands down at the sides of my head. His face hovered so closely to mine that every breath he breathed, I took in.
“Don’t you know, Amelia,” his eyes dropped to my lips, “everybody is a sinner.”
Not even giving me a second to reply, his lips were on mine, his tongue in my mouth, his body pressed up against mine. And I knew then that I was in. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the unspeakable—I was in.
I wouldn’t look back.
I wouldn’t feel guilt.
I would trust him completely.
The old Amelia died with Esther … and I could live with that.
