Heartbreak Hotel: This Place Hotel

Chapter 17: Disbelief

"Girl, are you nervous," Danny was standing before me, touching up make up as I sat quietly in my seat. "Or are you just on your period."

I shook my head, staring back at myself through the vanity mirror. "Neither," I said.

"Then why are you so damn quiet?" He was staring at me intensely through the mirror with his arms crossed and his head cocked to the side. As if he was a parent how wouldn't rest until they got a straight answer.

"I'm just tired," I shrugged. That was not a lie. I was tired. My day had consisted of album signings, photoshoots, and interviews. Being in crowded places around hundreds of people and flashing lights. Having to smile while my feet were aching in the heels I wore. How could anyone not be tired from that?

I was now sitting back stage at the NBC's studios in Burbank California preparing for a performance and a another interview with The Tonight Show. While Danny and Alana talking about whatever it was they were talking about, I sat in the chair and  played with my nails as I tuned them out. A skill that I had learned to perfect at a very young age.

A lot had been on my mind for the past month. I wasn't sure how I was able to continue to think about the same thing over and over again, but I was. I guess I felt like somehow, someway, I could come up with a solution for all my problems. I thought that it would miraculously come to mind the one hundredth time I meditated on the manner.  Of course, it never worked. I still left as conflicted and confused as I was just hours before.

Good things did come into play. Nikki was now out of the hospital, and now in comfort of her own home. As soon I had the time, I would have to go talk to her about going to a rehabilitation center once I had a clearing on my busy work schedule. I thought that would wait because I knew how it could be once you got out the hospital. People thought you were incapable of taking care of yourself. They treated you as if you were handicapped, and you needed someone to weigh on you hand and foot. It was very annoying. I thought that giving her breathing room would help her clear her clouded and make sense of the things that had been happening.

Apart from that, I was still slightly bruised by the big life altering news I had found out just a month before. I wasn't so much upset about the facts in general. I was more upset with Sasha for not telling me. I was pissed that she went so long without telling me. And I couldn't quite understand how someone who was like my mother didn't inform me about the most important information about myself. I didn't understand what could have possibly gone had through her mind when she found out about it. And I definitely could not understand what it was that was going through her mind that made her think I didn't need to know. The bad part about it was, she was acting so selfish about the whole situation, too. She thought that just because she raised me that I didn't need to know where I really came from. I didn't need to know who I really was. I spent my whole life feeling like an outsider in my family. I knew something wasn't right, and she never thought for second that I didn't need to know?

Is this what children who had found out they were adopted felt like? Did they feel like they didn't even know who they were anymore? Did they feel like something was missing? Because I felt like half of my heart had been ripped away, and the other half was slowly dying without it.

There was a knock at the door that pulled me out of my thoughts. "Mrs. Liyah! We need you by the stage soon."

"She'll be there soon," Alana answered for me as she walked up to the chair. Her twenty week baby bump was slightly poking me in the arm. "Stand up, I need to see if there is anything else I need to alter in the dress."

"The dress is fine," I assured her with a sigh. I stood up and straightened out the black lace, skin tight dress that clung against my body like a glove. "It fits fine, I swear."