by Kelly Oram
“Again, you’re my doctor. You have to say that.”
Daniel didn’t laugh. He looked straight down at me, as serious as I’d ever seen him. “Breathtakingly beautiful,” he insisted. “You have eyes that could haunt a man’s dreams.”
I wanted to make a joke, but something in Daniel’s face made it impossible, so I just whispered “Thanks” as my face turned bright red.
“There are people out there that will be able to see past your scars to the girl inside,” Daniel said, “but you’re not going to find them if you hide away in this house all day. Don’t think I forgot about that, missy. I’m warning you now that I am totally going to rat you out to Dr. Parish.”
I groaned. My sessions with my psychiatrist were almost more painful than my physical therapy.
“Don’t give me that face. It’s for your own good. Sitting around this house all day is not what you should be doing, and you know it. You can digress, Ella. You don’t want all your past months of hard work to go to waste.”
“But I’m doing my exercises every day. I promise I am.”
“It’s not the same. You need to be active. You need the variety in your movements. You need to be doing all those things that you used to do without ever thinking about it. Besides, you’ll get depressed, and then you’ll stop working so hard. Then I’ll look bad and your dad will fire me. You might want to get rid of me, but I promise you any replacement he finds will torture you just as much—only they won’t be as cool as me.”
The man had a point. If only everyone were half as cool as Daniel.
My father came into the room then and silently examined my skin as Daniel finished moisturizing it. His brows fell low over his eyes and he pointed at my skin. “Why is she like this?” He’d been there to witness many a rub downs when I was in the hospital in Boston, so he could see the difference.
My father was looking at Daniel, so I let Daniel answer the question. “She’s used to the humidity in Boston. You might want to have her nurse check on her more frequently until her body has time to adjust to the California weather.”
Dad nodded. “I’ll call Cody today. Is she okay to leave the house like this? I need to take her to register for school.”
Ugh. Physical therapy, horrifying my stepmother to tears, dry skin, extra visits from my nurse, and still, my day just miraculously got a lot worse. Amazing.
Daniel—who was self-aware enough to realize that talking about people as if they weren’t in the room when they were actually standing right there was beyond rude—spoke to me when he answered my father. He winked and said, “The fresh air will be good for you.”
. . . . .
My father enrolled me in the same fancy private school the twins went to. The closest I’d ever been to private school was watching teen dramas on TV. The school claimed a 98% success rate for their college placement program. My high school in Boston sported metal detectors and boasted a 63% graduation rate.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the school required uniforms. They went with the traditional white polo shirts, or turtlenecks in the winter, and navy blue pleated skirts. I’d spent the summer locked up in the house, and the few occasions my dad and Jennifer had forced me out in public I’d covered myself head to toe. Now they expected me to go to school wearing short sleeves and a knee-length skirt? Didn’t they understand how mean teenagers were?
My father was all smiles as we got back in the car after our meeting with the principal. “So?” he asked. “What do you think? Are you excited? It’s nice, isn’t it?”
It was too nice. The school was caged in behind enormous iron gates and a guard shack, and was perched on a giant sprawling lawn. It was made up of a number of smaller buildings that were connected by covered archways, reminding me of an old mission. I could hardly believe the place was a high school.
As Dad navigated us out of the parking lot, my heart started fluttering in that familiar way I’ve come to recognize as a panic attack. I turned fully sideways in my seat and grasped his arm. “Dad, please don’t make me go there.”
He was startled by my sudden intensity. “Why, what’s wrong?”
“School is going to be hard enough as it is. Please, please, please don’t make it worse for me. That place is crazy. At least in public school I’ll know what I’m getting into—same crap, different school. The doctors said I needed ‘familiar.’ That”—I waved my hand toward the school behind us—“is not familiar. I can’t do it. Don’t make me go there.”
My panic was one hundred percent sincere, but my dad had the nerve to laugh at me. He brushed my anxiety off as if it were nothing. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll be fine there, you’ll see.”
“Why can’t I do online school? I could probably make up the time I missed and get my diploma in a few weeks instead of repeating my whole senior year.”
“You know why you can’t do online school. Your doctors have all told you the importance of getting you back into a normal routine as soon as possible. The longer you stay a shut-in, the harder it will be for you to ever live a normal life.”
I scoffed at that. “You think I’ll ever live a normal life again?”
“What do you want me to do, Ella? I’m just trying to follow the doctors’ orders. I’m trying to do what’s best for you.”
I wanted to scream. He didn’t have any idea what was best for me. “Fine. Can I at least go to a public school, then?”
My dad looked appalled by the suggestion. “Why on Earth would you want to do that?”
“Uh, no uniforms, for starters, and because kids are allowed to express themselves there and be individuals. There will be a lot more freaks. I’d have a much better chance at blending in.”
“You’re not a freak.”
I shot my dad a disbelieving look, daring him to say that again. He didn’t.
“Even if I weren’t crippled and scarred, I wouldn’t want to go to that school. I’m not like Jennifer’s daughters. I don’t belong at some snooty, over-privileged, fancy rich-kid school.”
“You’re being very judgmental, Ella. At least give it a chance before you decide you hate it.”
“But—”
“Besides, no daughter of mine is going to go to public school when I can provide her with a better education.”
I found that completely offensive, considering my entire education thus far had been from public school. “It didn’t seem to bother you last year,” I snapped. “But then, I guess I wasn’t really your daughter last year, was I? Or all the years I attended public school before that.”
My dad froze, his expression sliding into a serious poker face. I could only take that to mean I’d really pissed him off or hurt his feelings. Probably both, but it didn’t matter at that point. I was too angry, too scared, and I missed my mom too much to care what the man who’d left us thought.
“You’re already enrolled. I’m not sending you to public school. End of discussion.”
I shut my mouth and flopped back in my seat, opting to stay silent and glare out the window the rest of the way home. End of discussion? Fine. I didn’t care if that was the last discussion we ever had.
Brian
I slumped back in my chair and plugged my earbuds into my phone. Maybe Katy Perry’s newest album would keep me from dying of boredom. I hated these meetings.
Once the music filled my ears, I breathed a small sigh. Much better. Nothing calmed my soul like Katy’s sexy voice. And she was so beautiful. I let my eyes drift shut and imagined her roaring for me in my own private serenade. Maybe she’d go out with me. One of the idiots in this room had to know how to get in touch with her people. As soon as they stopped talking—if they ever stopped—I’d ask. Hopefully they could do something useful for once.
A finger tapped me on the shoulder, but I ignored it.
“Brian!”
Sighing, I yanked the headphones out of my ears. Those moments of reprieve never lasted long enough. I opened my eyes to find the majority of my management team
glaring at me. My father, popular film director Max Oliver, sat directly across the large conference table from me, looking as though he wanted to strangle me. Good.
This would be the last time I ever worked with my father. If it hadn’t been The Cinder Chronicles, I would never have taken the job in the first place. Family and business should never mix—especially not when it was my screwed-up family.
My new assistant, Scott, set a paper in front of me and then reached around me to pass the stack on to my co-star, Kaylee Summers. I groaned at the list of dates printed on the paper. Crumpling the schedule into a small ball, I leaned far back in my chair, aimed, and tossed. The makeshift basketball dropped into the wastebasket across the room without touching a single side—swish. “Ha! Two points!”
Holding up a hand for a high five, I turned to Kaylee. “Did you see that? Maybe I found my calling too early in life. I think I’ll try out for the Lakers next season.”
Kaylee gave me her usual disdainful look and left me hanging. Whatever. Scott would be good for one. I turned to him next. He glanced nervously around the room, but was ultimately too chicken to ignore my request and slapped my hand.
I laughed at the guy’s nerves. “Relax, Scotty. I’m the only one in this room that can fire you, so when in doubt, indulge me, not them. They won’t blame you.”
“Are you finished wasting all of our time?” my dad snapped.
Rage swept through me, as it often did when my father was around. I swiped Scott’s copy of the schedule and waved it around. “This stupid meeting is a waste of everyone’s time.”
My entire management team took great offense to my statement, but it was my agent, Joseph, who spoke up. “That is the outline for The Druid Prince publicity tour. You need to pay attention to it.”
“Why? That’s what Scotty’s for.” I threw my arm over my assistant’s shoulder. “This guy has mad scheduling skills—that’s why I hired him. He’s probably already got eight different backups of this list printed out and stashed away for emergencies. There’s no way he’d ever let me miss a meeting. Believe me, I tried my hardest to miss this one.”
Joseph sighed. “You’re here because your assistant can’t approve the schedule for you.”
“You need my approval?” I scoffed. “As if I have some kind of say in any of this?”
“Of course you do.”
I wanted to laugh, except it really wasn’t funny. I hadn’t had a say about anything since my first teen movie hit number one in the box office. Agents, managers, publicists, lawyers, image consultants, personal trainers, a million others… They controlled my life now—what I could and couldn’t wear, what I could and couldn’t eat, what functions I could and couldn’t attend, what I could and couldn’t say. Hell, they’d scheduled this entire publicity tour without once consulting me. What they’d handed me just now was an itinerary that was already set in stone.
Scanning the list, I saw that there were weeks of interviews, photo shoots, public appearances, movie premieres, guest appearances on both radio and TV talk shows. LA, New York, Chicago…
I met Joseph’s eyes and raised a brow into a challenging arch. “I’m sure you already have the flights and hotel rooms booked, so what the hell does it matter if I approve of any of this or not? What if I don’t approve of any of it? The Kenneth Long Show? That guy’s a total douche. I definitely don’t approve of that.”
Joseph grimaced, but his face settled into a look of grim determination. “The Kenneth Long Show is primetime network television. It’s the most popular talk show in existence. He has millions of viewers. You can’t pass up an interview with him because you don’t like him.”
“Fine, but what’s this Celebrity Gossip crap? They’re a damn tabloid.”
My publicist—also a total douche—cleared his throat and jumped in to defend the schedule. “They’re the largest tabloid in the world. If they like you, they can make you the most famous person in world, and if they don’t, they can turn you into the biggest joke to ever come out of Hollywood.”
“They’re already watching you, Brian,” my manager, Gary, added, scowling at me. “It’s better to work with them and get on their good side than have them plastering stories like this all over the media every week.”
Gary threw the latest copy of Celebrity Gossip down on the table and slid it to me. I read the caption and smirked. Getting Adrianna Pascal to come home with me last weekend had been the most worthwhile thing I’d done all year.
“You made out with world-famous rock star Kyle Hamilton’s girlfriend at his own birthday party.”
Heh. We did a lot more than make out that night. I looked around the room with big, innocent eyes. “Were they still together?”
“You broke off their damn wedding.”
I shrugged. “The guy’s an egotistical prick. Besides, if she really loved him, she wouldn’t have been all over me all night.”
My father finally lost it. “This is not the kind of press you need right now!” he roared. “You think you’re the first hot shot teen star to try and run with the big boys? You’re not! Hollywood sees new assholes like you every year. If you can’t get your shit together, your next big gig is going to be some where-are-they-now reality TV show twenty years from now.”
I glared at my father with more loathing than I’d thought physically possible. My dad had never respected me, never had faith in me. He made fun of every movie I ever did. He constantly said I couldn’t handle “playing with the big boys” ever since I told him I wanted to make my own way in the movie industry rather than just let him cast me in his movies. Now he was just waiting for me to fail so that he could throw it in my face.
“I’ve had enough of this bullshit.” I pushed my chair back from the conference table, crumpling the second schedule into another ball. This time I was too angry to concentrate, and my shot missed the trash can.
Before I could storm out of the meeting, Lisa, the executive producer of the film, and the only person in the room besides Scott I could actually stand, met me at the door and blocked my way.
“Brian,” she said, taking my hand. Her smile was completely patronizing, but I still softened to it. “We know you’re frustrated. You’ve had some bad luck with the paparazzi over the last year, but this press tour is important.”
Some bad luck? Ever since I was cast to play Cinder, I’d become the paparazzi’s new golden boy for the entire female market. They’d stuck to me constantly in order to sell millions of magazines to every woman in the country between the ages of twelve and sixty. They followed me everywhere. I couldn’t wipe my ass anymore without having it plastered on every magazine cover in America. I hadn’t had a moment’s peace in over a year.
“It’s important for all of us, Brian, but especially for you,” Lisa said. “You’ve been handed a gift with this part. Cinder is the role of a lifetime and you nailed it. Everyone, critics and the average moviegoers alike, is going to fall in love with your performance. If you play your cards right, you could have a shot at an Academy Award nomination.”
That made me pause. Joseph jumped on my hesitation. “She’s right, Brian. There’s been some buzz.”
Heads bobbed in agreement all around the conference table. Everyone smiled except for Kaylee, who probably couldn’t stand that I’d completely outshone her in this movie. There was definitely no Oscar buzz around her name.
Unable to help myself, I glanced at my father. The guy was one of the biggest names in Hollywood. As much as I hated the man, I could never help trying to earn his approval.
Dad met my gaze with a serious expression. “You did really well.”
The praise shocked me so much that I returned to my seat. “Thanks.”
My dad nodded. “This movie could earn you a lot of respect around town. It could transition you out of teen idol status and make you a serious A-list player.” He picked up the magazine off the table and added, “But Hollywood’s elite don’t like to let in people who bring this kind of drama with them.
It doesn’t matter how good of an actor you are—if they don’t respect you or they think you’re going to cause them trouble, they’re not going to keep working with you.”
Unfortunately, he was right. If my team was serious about the amount of buzz I was getting for this performance, then I was going to have to step up my game a little. I was going to have to find a way to make people take me seriously. That wasn’t easy to do when the world considered me nothing but a yummy piece of eye candy.
“What am I supposed to do?” The antagonism was gone from my voice, but not the bitterness. “I can’t help it if all people want to talk about when they interview me is my abs and whether or not I’d ever consider dating a fan. It’s not my fault that I’m too damn good-looking to be taken seriously.”
“What if we get him involved in a charity?” someone asked.
“Too gimmicky,” someone else responded. “It’s been done too much. People would see right through it.”
“How about enrolling him in college?” another person suggested.
Yes! I could get on board with that. I’d always wanted to go to college. I’d been homeschooled with a private tutor my whole life. The closest thing I’d ever gotten to a real school was playing a high school student in the movies.
“Hey, yeah, I could do that. I could go to UCLA—go Bruins! I’d like to study English Literature.”
Joseph shook his head, sending me a sympathetic smile. “That’s a really good idea, but you wouldn’t have the time.”
“But we’ve wrapped on The Druid Prince,” I argued. “I don’t have anything going on right now. I could totally do it. I can take a couple years off and go to school. It’d keep me out of trouble.”
Everyone in the room collectively shook their heads.
“Why not?” It pissed me off that they were so quickly dismissing the idea. “What would prove that I’m responsible more than getting a college degree? I’m plenty smart enough. I’d get good grades.”
Lisa smiled, but it was full of pity. “Of course you would, but there are five books in The Cinder Chronicles series. When The Druid Prince hits theaters and breaks box-office records—which it will—the studio will green light the other four movies. They’re already working on the next script. You’ll be filming again by spring.”
