One more corner and the thick leafy trees had vanished only to allow Lee and Lotus passage over a small bridge. Lee could see it now; before her lined at the base of the jagged mountains stretched an endless row of warehouses. For a moment, the sight reminded her of the horrifying car chase back in East Side. She and Ace had thought they were safe after emerging from a storage unit only to realize the hunt was only beginning. Before Ace could dwell in her mind too long, Lotus was already across the bridge and parking her car in front of a large warehouse shaped like a barn.
“This is where they film a TV show?” asked Lee stepping out and slamming the car door shut.
From the base of the mountain, Lee could still hear the rushing of traffic from the highway above chorusing with the sound of rushing water beneath the bridge they just crossed. As Lee rotated in a slow circle just to gather her surroundings, her small flats crunched against the loose gravel.
“Well, this is Dylan Dade’s studio.” Replied Lotus as she crouched beside the side window to check her lips. “He’s the only one with a studio because he’s the only one that has a consistent show.”
“What does that mean?” asked Lee gazing up at the mountains towering over the already huge studio. From the base, the mountain climbed so high, even with the cloudy overcast, Lee had to shield her eyes. As she continued to pan the scene, Lee noticed that a good sized parking lot separated each of the huge warehouses and with Jurassic Park fresh in her mind, Lee figured each warehouse could fit three tyrannosaurus-rexs.
“That’s a pretty big studio just for one man.” Lee continued. “What are those?”
Lotus stood up and glanced at her sister over the convertible top only to follow her gaze up the mountain. “The radio tower?” Lotus guessed
Against the deep kiwi colored trees and just beneath the overcast, a narrow steel tower rose from the leaves. A rusty antenna drooped from its hinges as if it were a stuck in sadness; probably because no one had used it in years.
“I’m not sure.” Lotus replied hastily hurrying to the small front door, “Maybe one of Dylan’s guys can give you a tour when the interview is done.”
Lotus held the door open as Lee hurried inside. Lee wasn’t sure what to find considering the closest thing to stardom she had ever had was living on Hollywood Avenue in Tarrillian. But for such a large warehouse, Lee had expected the lobby to be a little bigger and a little more upper-class. Instead, a wooden receptionist’s desk sat empty against the far wall as four fold-out chairs leaned against two other vacant walls. On either side of the big desk, dark hallways lead to someplace unknown.
Before Lee could ask where they were going, Lotus had tugged Lee through the hallway on the right of the wooden desk. For a moment they hurried in silence and near darkness. Only every third light had been turned on giving the place an eerie abandoned feel. Several doors lined the halls and Lee glanced inside the only one that had been left open. A vast office work space took the inside of the rooms.
They rounded the corner and came face to face with a flight of stairs. “There isn’t an elevator?” questioned Lee as Lotus continued up.
“I think there is,” she replied as her heels clomped against the cement steps, “but I have yet to find it.”
Lee hadn’t realized how odd the layout of the building had been until Lotus’s remark, but for some reason, Lee figured if her sister hadn’t been there, Lee would have been more lost then a toddler in a corn maze.
A fire escape door blocked their way from entering the second floor’s hallway but before Lotus could even wrench it open, Lee could see through the glass window that the workers from below had found their way up here. Men and women with suits and clipboards scurried around from office to office shouting things in their ear pieces and trying not to spill mocha on their white shirts. The sisters had managed to take two steps into the hall before a balding man with a sharp nose and an egg-shaped gut hurried to great them.
“Oh Lotus darling!” he exclaimed with a lisp.
“Good morning Francis.” Smiled Lotus casually. “Sorry we’re late.”
“Oh don’t you worry about that.” As the man spoke, he continued to walk backwards in front of the girls as if he had eyes in the back of his head. No doubt it was a technique developed over many years of his career. “You’re co-star Zach only arrived minutes before you. My goodness!” he exclaimed after seeing Lee for the first time. “The resemblance is remarkable! Oh dear gracious, I cannot believe you are Haileigh Stelter!!”
Lee smiled as the man clapped his hands in admiration before whirling around and walking like a normal human. With the man on the other side of Lotus, Lee could see the other workers stop thumbing their papers to glance at her as she walked through.
“You’re makeup artist is ready for you,” continued Francis, “But you already look marvelous Lotus. Maybe just a few tweaks to the hair and—What?!” his voice had suddenly changed to a rage as he cocked his head to the side. For a moment Lee thought he had gone mental until she realized he was shouting into the earpiece mounted to his head.
“Well clean up the set and get a fan to help dry it off. We are live in thirty!! And check Dylan!! Make sure he’s ready!” Francis cleared his throat before returning to Lotus and by that time, they had managed to make it through all the commotion in the hallway and had rounded down another less crowded hall. “I’m so sorry gorgeous, Francis has some things to do. You know where your room is.”
Lotus smiled, “Same place as usual.”
“Only for you, lovely.” Replied the man already turning back to head for the chaos. “You’ll be phenomenal!” He called then hurried back to finish something else.
Only a few women stood in the doorways lining the hall now and when the Stelters walked passed, Lee felt them glare at her from her toes to her head. Before she could ponder too long on why they seemed to hate her so, Lotus had tugged her into a dressing room.
A director’s chair was already waiting for Lee when the sisters entered and more tugging occurred when the artists snatched Lee like vultures and threw her down in the seat. And for the next thirty minutes Lee listened to them gabber about her looks as they smeared things across her face and tug at her hair until Francis came back in to tell them they were ready to be interviewed.
~The smell of mold and mildew had suffocated Larissa since she decided to make an abandoned radio tower her home, but now that she had lined the floor with a coat of fresh palm leaves, she only noticed the smell when she thought about it. Rust covered almost every inch of the small room like a layer of chipped paint except the rust had practically eaten everything to the point that Larissa didn’t bother to wipe the dust off the electrical boxes attached to the walls for fear the entire thing would crumble off.
Ithaca, her cousin, had invited her to a cleaner home only if Larissa would add her unstoppable powers to their supremacy or something like that. But Larissa had been in such a miserable mood after Ammon that she didn’t even try to understand what she was talking about. Besides, Larissa remembered never liking Ithaca’s family. They were the rich Americans that would only visit her family to boast about how wealthy they were. Or that was just one of the very few things she remembered…
Either way, living in a sanitary hazard was better than living with Ithaca any day. The small shack was hardly the size of a bedroom. Perhaps even less so since the windows had caved in to allow tree branches to climb through. But nonetheless, it was home to Larissa. She had lived so many years of her life in a dirty orphanage. In more ways than one, this new abode reminded her of it and Larissa was more comfortable than she was willing to confess.
Because the place was so abandoned and filthy, it was sure to ward off any hikers or photographers, which was exactly the way she preferred to live. But at the same time, having no social life only sent her mind wandering and remembering things that had hurt her too much. In those moments Larissa would simply stop time and rob something. She wasn’t sure what it was that gave her the idea, but even though she kne
w it was impossible to be caught, the rush of doing something illegal lessoned the pain of reality.
A sofa so new the stench of leather mixed in with the surroundings as she rested supine atop it. A row of designer clothing hung from a rope that stretched the length of the room complete with matching shoes piled into a hammock she had nailed into the rusty metal wall. Even the fuzzy yellow tennis ball being tossed from her hand had a family of lookalikes hanging from a bucket on a branch and with her new supernatural abilities; Larissa hardly had to watch where the ball was going to land in order to catch it. Instead she kept her auburn colored eyes glued to the small flat screen hooked to a solar panel.
“Welcome back to the Dylan Dade Show!” Dylan was exclaiming as the camera panned to his face.
Larissa had misplaced the remote and the gravitational pull around the couch seemed to grow every moment she tried to look for it. So she just laid there with her eyes glazed over in an incomprehensive haze. Lotus Stelter had just been interviewed and though Larissa giggled once or twice at some of her comments, their conversation about her latest movie bored her nearly to tears. Now they were going to bring out Lotus’s long lost sister and Larissa could only anticipate double the boredom so her need to find the remote eventually over powered the comfort of the couch.
“I’m back with heiress Lotus Stelter and long lost sister of six years, Haileigh Grace Stelter.” Dylan exclaimed as Larissa turned her back to the TV and began searching the small room.
“Long lost sister,” Larissa grumbled swatting a designer dress out of the way so she could search behind the row of clothing. “Woopty-flipping-doo.”
“My, oh my, the resemblance is amazing.” Dylan said just as Larissa spotted the remote sitting on the cracked window ledge. She was about to change the channel from behind the curtain of clothes when a familiar laugh made its way to her ears.
“Well Dylan we are sisters.” The voice chimed right after her giggle.
Those words sent chills down Larissa’s spine and even the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Her hand shook as she reached to pull back the stolen clothes. As if everything were in slow motion, the dress took forever to brush to the side. But once she had moved it, there was not a doubt in her mind that the girl on the screen was Lee. Even though the smoky shadow and glossy pink lips masked her usually bland features; that was her best friend.
Larissa wasn’t sure how she did it, but suddenly she was kneeling beside the TV with her hand pressed to the screen like a starfish. Not a broadcasted word was understandable through Larissa’s utter shock. All she could register was the hope now thundering through her veins. She was living in an unsanitary shack after the only man she had ever loved had turned back into a beast because he realized who she was. After hitting the lowest of lows, seeing Lee bounced her right back. There was finally a companion she could trust.
Not a moment later did it dawn on her that Lee was only just down the mountain. Larissa had broken into one of those large studios in search of food, water, and a shower, but had instead discovered it was the filming station for the Dylan Dade Show. Not a moment later and suddenly her bare feet were flying down the damp soil. The humid air stuck to her face and made her already dirty hair feel even more disgusting. Twigs clawed at her jeans and t-shirt, but at that moment, Larissa couldn’t care less if holes were tipped into them. Even with supernatural speed, her feet couldn’t take her down the mountain fast enough and when Larissa finally needed to stop, she practically left a cavern across the loose gravel when she dug her feet into the ground.
The front door was right there, but the only thing holding her back was the idea that barging in on a live TV show was probably a one way ticket to getting the TCPD on her tail. By now Ammon would have exposed who she was, not to mention that her barging in on Lee might remind them about the fair haired criminal in cahoots with the villain supernatural. This was time for strategy, and after glancing at the Stelter Hailstorm parked by the front door, waiting for Lee to come back to the car was a better idea. Just the thought sent her hands shaking with anticipation though. She could be waiting for hours if that was even her car! Suddenly the idea of sneaking into Lee’s dressing room crossed Larissa’s mind and having never been rational, Larissa darted into the studio.
She remembered seeing dressing rooms on the second floor- or was it the third floor? Either way, as Larissa hurried through the dimly lit hall to the stairs, all she could remember was that the dressing rooms neighbored the filming studio.
After climbing the stairs, her hand had grabbed onto the fire escape’s door handle just as she glanced through the glass window. Oddly enough, all the lights were on as several suited people scurried around. Larissa wasn’t sure why all the commotion raged in the floor above, but she knew for a fact that if she were caught, security was sure to show her the door.
So Larissa did the only thing she knew how to do. Time stopped the moment Larissa pulled the door open. A woman’s curls froze in mid bounce and fortunately the woman had already opened a separate door wide enough for Larissa to peek into. The office workers seated before computer screens seemed to swallow every open space from within the room. As Larissa continued to search room after room, she was hardly surprised to find the same result.
It wasn’t until she had rounded the corner at the end of the hall did she finally notice she was getting somewhere. The first door she peered into was the vast back stage of the show which made Larissa pretty confident that the next door she opened would be a dressing room. And she was right. However, she hadn’t expected the room to be occupied.
A brown haired boy sat on a stool with his back to the studio mirror. Even with a magazine covering his nose, Larissa recognized him in a heartbeat. How could this be? She hadn’t seen him since the orphanage. In fact, he hadn’t even crossed her mind until just then. When she finally gasped his name, time was sent ticking once more.
The boy, after hearing his name, glanced up from his magazine. His playful green eyes widened with shock the moment they held onto hers. “Larissa?”
“Zach!” she wailed once more feeling hot tears spring to her eyes. She wasn’t sure if she used supernatural speed, but the next thing she was aware of was her thin trembling arms around his taller shoulders.
“My goodness, Larissa,” he said patting her dirty auburn waves, “I didn’t know you could cry. Did the mayor send you to some finishing school where they feed you estrogen like ice cream?”
Through the tears trickling down her cheeks, Larissa managed to giggle against his collar bone. Zach had grown nearly half a foot since she last saw him and as she pulled her arms back to her sides, she didn’t need a second glance to see that he had filled out as well.
“What brings you to Honolulu?” Zach asked. Larissa never realized that when he smiled, his left cheek dimpled. But then again, they had all been so scrawny at the orphanage that he never had the cheeks to dimple.
Larissa wiped her last tear before gawking up at him. The back of her mind buzzed as she tried to figure where to even begin. Car chases, supernatural, Ammon, the mayor; she even forgot to mention Lee until the door behind them burst open.
“You’re not supposed to be here!” A man barked before Larissa could even spin around. “Security!”
“It’s cool Francis,” Zach replied with a casual smile. “Larissa’s an old friend. I haven’t seen her in months.”
“I’m sorry but no one is allowed back here without a card!” Francis explained holding up the laminated square attached to the end of his lanyard. “It’s a security policy. I’m sure you’d understand.”
Zach glanced down at his blank torso then pulled off his invisible lanyard only to drape it over Larissa’s head.
“Well you’re our guest. You don’t need a card to be back here.” Francis sputtered just as two bodyguards cast their shadows in the door way. “Now we only have a commercial break and the Stelters just got off the stage so please hurry.” Without another word, the man turned arou
nd and squeezed through the bodyguards.
“Alright girl,” one of the big men said advancing to Larissa, “Come with us.”
Before they could come any closer, Zach had grabbed Larissa by the arm and shoved a pen and paper in her hand. “Leave me your hotel address and I’ll meet you tomorrow at nine in the morning.”
Larissa stared at the pen blankly then blinked back up at her friend, “But I’m not…”
“And leave your number too.” Added Zach.
“But I don’t…”
“Come on girl.” One of the guards said as they grabbed onto Larissa’s arm.
“Hey, knock it off.” Zach snapped, “She’s no harm to me, big boy, so seriously just back off for a moment.” Once the men receded by only a step, Zach turned back to his friend, “Just leave any address and I’ll make sure I see you tomorrow. My schedule is jammed pack or else I say we have dinner or something- but I really can’t today.”
“That’s fine.” Larissa replied scribbling the first address to pop into her head. “Waikiki Beach just behind the Stelter Hotel.”
Larissa handed over the note and Zach tucked the paper in his breast pocket. “Nine o’clock, alright? I know it’s early but can you at least try to not rip my head off?”
Larissa scoffed. One of the last memories she had at the orphanage was staying awake all night then grouching at Zach in the morning. “I’ll see what I can do.” She grinned just as the guards grabbed her shoulders. “Hasta manana.” She called over her shoulder.
Zach followed her out the door and gave her a salute. He couldn’t believe he had just run into one of his greatest friends, and yet he hadn’t a clue that the other was also in the same building. As Zach watched the last of Larissa’s hair disappear around the corner, he hadn’t the faintest idea that Larissa was the only friend he would see and that this day was the last day the three of them would ever be under the same roof.
~The small gems of city light swirled in the soft orange air of sunset just before Ace and Ithaca’s feet slammed down on the penthouse property. Due to exhaustion, Ace stumbled around for a moment with his sight sliding to the left as if he had just finished spinning around with his forehead on a baseball bat. If it weren’t for Ithaca’s firm grip, he just might have toppled over into the gleaming turquoise pool.
The Stelter City Saga: Ultranatural Page 29
