Diva Princess (Laurmani / DC3)

Chapter 19

Dinah, Normani, and I were sitting in lawn chairs in front of the house after rehearsing coming up with a group name. We settled on calling ourselves LND even though Normani felt that her initial should come first because she's "the most attractive." Coco was running around us in circles. I told Normani that she needed to walk that dog more; she was constantly bouncing off the walls.

"We're going to be gone for at least 14 hours tomorrow," Normani told us. "I can't leave Coco by herself for that long. She'll use the restroom inside the house."

I saw our neighbor's toddler son playing with his toys in front of his house unsupervised. "How about you ask our neighbor to watch Coco? She seems to be doing such a great job of watching her son," I said sarcastically.

"Do you know if Child Protective Services ever made it out here?" Normani asked.

"I saw someone who looked like a social worker go to their house last week," Dinah chimed in.

Normani sighed, "They're probably not going to do anything until he gets hurt or she gets busted for drugs."

We all sat quietly for a few moments until Normani spoke again. "Lo, do you think your parents will watch Coco?"

"Maybe," I answered. "As long as she can get along with their dogs."

Normani's cell phone was laying on the armrest of her lawn chair. She called my parents' house, and I could hear her converse with my mother. Judging from what I could hear on Normani's end of the conversation, my mother had agreed to watch Coco.

"I'm just going to drop her off tonight since we have to wake up super early tomorrow," Normani informed us.

Dinah stayed behind while I rode with Normani to my parents'. I figured I'd take the opportunity to see them since I had been mad and avoiding them for months after what happened on Thanksgiving. On our way there, I decided to bring something to Normani's attention.

"Did you hear about how Chris Brown was talking shit about Kehlani's suicide attempt on Twitter?" I asked her.

"Yeah, I unfollowed him. That was the last straw. I couldn't take seeing those tweets anymore," Normani responded.

"So, NOW you stop supporting him after all these years of him being your ultimate celebrity crush and you buying every single one of his albums making him rich. You know, because his beating the crap out of his girlfriend and showing little remorse afterward wasn't bad enough," I said.

"Lauren, don't start," Normani replied.

"I'm just saying..."

Normani interrupted me. "Well, here's what I have to say. All of these years, you've been buying John Mayer's albums, and he told Playboy that his dick was a white supremacist and like David Duke, the former grand wizard of the KKK, to describe how unattractive he found black women. And, this is all while singing in a genre created by black people."

Welp, that shut me up. I had no idea he said that. But, in my defense, if I would have known he said that, I would have stopped supporting his music. Oh, well. You live and learn.

When we got to my parents' house, we hung out for about a half an hour to catch up. Surprisingly, Coco was getting along with the other dogs. Normani warned my parents about Coco's occasional habit of eating poop so that they could keep an eye on her when she played in the backyard. As we were about to leave, Normani gave Coco a goodbye kiss, and I swear I saw her eyes tear up. Jesus, she was only going to be away from her dog for a day.

In the morning, we made the drive to L.A. During the first round of auditions, they eliminated hundreds of acts narrowing the number down to 50. After the second round of eliminations, they planned on only having 12 acts that would end up competing on the reality show. From what we heard, they were going to eliminate one act every other week during filming.

We sat in the auditorium with the 49 other girl groups waiting for auditions to begin. When T-Boz and Chilli came out, they were met with much fanfare. After they took their seats at the judges' table, they let us know what was going to happen.

"We have a surprise for you ladies," Chilli beamed. "We have a celebrity guest judge. Come on out!"

A few seconds later, we saw Demi Lovato come from backstage and take a seat at the judges' table. I immediately screeched and went into fangirl mode. Dinah and Normani looked at me as if I were crazy, but I didn't care. Demi was one of my idols growing up.

Waiting for our turn, we watched group after group perform. Some of the ones I remembered being very good bombed. It must have been the pressure. Despite my worrying about how I would stay in this competition and finish school, I hoped that wouldn't happen to us.

Eventually, an act I was really looking forward to seeing had their turn. I knew all three of us wanted to see how Ally and Camila would do. Camila was....Camila. She has her "unique" voice that some people love and others hate. Ally started off a little pitchy, but hit a few power notes and a whistle note toward the end. I was impressed.

T-Boz looked down at her notes after the duo finished singing. "It wasn't as good as the first performance, but still good."

"I agree, but I really liked it," Chilli added.

Demi hesitated for a moment. "You know....I'm gonna be honest. Only one person really did it for me. Only one person really nailed it."

"And, who was that?" T-Boz asked.

Demi blushed. "I'm not going to say."

"Spit it out, girl," Chilli demanded.

"Alright, alright. It was Camila," blurted Demi.

"What in the hell?" Normani muttered. "All Camila did was crack, squeak, and screech through the song, and she's getting all the praise. Did they not hear Ally's whistle note?"

"If they love Camila that much to ignore all of her flaws, we're screwed," Dinah commented.

I tried to reassure them. "We have something they don't. We're a dancing group. It makes us a little more interesting. Don't worry about Camila."

About an hour later, it was our turn. It seemed like our performance went well. I was so nervous that everything was a blur. We were happy to hear that TLC liked our second audition even more than the first. We even got high marks from Demi. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves, but didn't get our hopes up too high. They were about to eliminate 38 acts, and we could easily be one of them. The producer told everyone to hang out or roam around the city and be back in two hours as T-Boz, Chilli, and Demi deliberated.

"Alright, ladies," Chilli announced exactly two hours later. "After hours of comparing notes and making our cases, we have finally agreed on which 12 groups will go forward."

I could visibly see T-Boz take a deep breath. "Here we go. The first act going through is LND."

All three of us screamed and jumped out of our seats. We jumped up and down flailing our arms about like little kids who just heard they were going to Disney World. As we stood up on stage, I was on cloud nine and not paying any attention to who else was called up until they got to the last group.

T-Boz looked down at the card in her hand. "The last group going through is Camila and Ally!"

Oh, shit! They had to ruin the mood. My god, what if we have to live in a house with them? That would be a nightmare.

The three of us in LND grabbed hands and skipped outside into the setting sun. Dinah told us that she needed to sit down and found a bench to rest on just outside the building. I wrapped my arms around Normani and slowly kissed her.

"Get a room!" Dinah shouted.

We both grinned at her and went back to what we were doing. Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice.

"There they are. I told you," said Camila talking to the show's producer with Ally standing by her side.

The producer nodded her head while staring at Normani and me. "I see."

She walked back inside the building, and Camila and Ally went in a different direction. Ally looked a bit saddened, but Camila had a sneaky grin on her face.

"What was that all about?" I questioned.

Normani answered, "I don't know, but Camila is definitely up to something.