Cigarette Stained Lies

Chapter 10: Any Publicity is Good Publicity

Sorry but i forgot to mention in the story that Mr.Collins works for Columbia Records and thats where Jessica is recording.

__________________________________________________________________

I was sitting in the living room at 5:30 in the morning. I woke up an hour earlier and tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t. I laid in my bed for an hour, then decided to sit in the living room knowing that I was not going back to sleep any time soon. I sat on comfortable cream-colored couch pulling my feet under me, and wrapped myself in the blanket that my mother left probably the night before. There were streaks of sunlight slipping through the curtains making the room dim. I sat there for about 20 minutes staring at the blank television screen. I mostly thought about yesterday’s events. After meeting Logan back at the studio, he invited me to go see a movie with him and Darcy, but I said no knowing that I was going to end up as the third wheel and I also felt I was not wanted there.

My thoughts then went to what happened at the ice cream parlor, and then I realized Darcy’s pool party is today. I really did not want to go, and tried to think of ways to get out of it. The excuses I came up with were:

A.Pretend to be sick

B.Just not show up at all (which will maybe make Logan a little pissed off)

C.Say there is an emergency

D.Say a pimp kidnapped me and I was forced to become one of his many prostitutes.

I looked at the clock on the cable box to see the time. It was now 6:19 and I had 41 minutes before I had to get ready to go to the studio for 8:30. I decided to distract myself by turning on the television. Since there was nothing on at this time of morning, I settled on watching the news. As I was watching the television, I didn’t realize my mother entered the room.

“Can’t sleep?” she asked from behind the couch. I jumped as I heard her voice, which scared me half to death.

“Yeah.” I replied looking at her then back at the television. 

It feels like I haven’t talked to her in a week with recording and all. While we were in California, my mother decided to look for a job just in case we are going to stay here. She told me that she doesn’t want to stay in the house all day and wanted to feel useful so she decided to go around California job hunting. But what kind of job can you get without a college degree?

She went around the couch and sat next to me, also looking at the television. The anchorwoman was talking about a house fire in San Francisco that killed two people and left three severely injured. A slight frown made its way onto my face thinking about the family that was affected by it. 

“What time do you have to leave?” She said looking at the news. The weather came on the screen.

“7:30.” I said copying her actions. There was silence for a couple of moments until she broke it.

“So how you liking it?”

“What?” I turned to her. “Liking what?”

“You know, California, your career, the big change?” She met my eyes. I could tell that she was worried by the look in her eyes.

“It’s okay, I guess. It just been really busy and everything seemed to be moving fast.” I shrugged and turned back to the tv, but she kept staring at me. My mother and I didn’t have the best mother daughter relationship. Throughout many years she and my dad argued a lot. If it wasn’t my dad, it was me, but i guess that's what every teenager goes through... I think... There were times were she tried to have a decent relationship with me, but we didn’t really connect very well. This is one of those times where she was trying to have a good relationship with me.