𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 ,, walker scobell

𝐈 : elena needs to be kept away from very tall somethings

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐈

❝a delusional best friend.❞
★

Elena Sinclair was the epitome of how a reputation could precede someone, acting as both a blessing and a curse. Her reputation spread like shattered glass; everyone avoided it to escape the cuts they might receive. Protect your reputation, for what was once a beautiful piece of glass could become a weapon that draws blood from an unsuspecting hand.

Most reputations are ruined unintentionally—whether by a stupid tweet resurfacing before a rise to fame, leaked footage of a conversation with someone you thought you could trust, or insensitive word choices. The list goes on longer than Kanye West's obsession with Taylor Swift.

But that isn't always the case.

Elena's reputation was wrongfully ruined; she had been framed, forced to live in silence while attempting to rebuild the legacy that Anthony Braun unraveled like a ball of yarn. Once an uprising singer noticed by several pop stars around the world, she became a pariah, despised by nearly everyone who listened to music.

The industry was a complex place; those outside the fame didn't care about what happened on the inside. Not the perverts with their eyes peeled for vulnerable kids at events, not the millennials obsessively tracking whether Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds were getting a divorce, and certainly not the editors—nobody.

And those same people were just as quick to strip someone of their fame the moment something went wrong, no matter the circumstances. Elena could have transformed into a goddess, a villain, or a fool, but nobody would have cared. They didn't want her opinion; they had isolated her voice into a box and forced her to live in silence.

Her castle crumbled overnight; what was once her dream morphed into a nightmare—she felt defenseless and powerless to change it. Trapped behind glass, she couldn't post without her comments being flooded with snake emojis. Sometimes, she wondered if the hate would ever end.

School was horrible, to say the least. The same friends she once bonded with now whispered insults about her in the hallways. Her teachers became stricter, no longer treating her as a normal student. The only positive outcome of her situation was her grades; after her fall from fame, she stopped writing music completely and began focusing on school instead.

Walker Scobell, however, epitomized how a reputation could precede you in a beneficial way. Having been in the acting industry since he was young, he had built friendships with many other actors. Now that he was the lead in a new series set to premiere soon, it was almost as if all eyes were on him.

He was the type of celebrity people loved to watch; they wanted to hear his opinions; his reputation was only being built brick by brick—maybe even with some of the same bricks they had thrown at Elena.

Walker Scobell and Elena Sinclair were complete opposites in the eye of anybody who knew even a little about the entertainment industry; one was at the peak of fame (and continuing to rise), while the other had reached her highest point—but not in the way that most would want.

That was the sole reason Elena was staring at her phone, specifically at an invitation to the Percy Jackson and the Olympians season one premiere.

"This could be a setup," Elena suggested after she and her best friend, Diana, had stared at the invitation in silence for the past five minutes.

"What are they going to do? Murder you?"

"I wish."

Elena had received countless invitations to premieres, podcasts, interviews—you name it—but she hadn't attended a single one. She hadn't really been in the public eye for the past few months, with only a few random photos taken by creepy paparazzi every once in a while. However, she had never been invited to the premiere of a show expected to succeed; she felt like poison, ruining any good expectations. If you weren't against her, you were against the media.