Phoenix was hope, she was different, she was a fire burning through a forest of adoring fans. But fires burn out.
Carrie Lockwood had been sinking for awhile. But today she hit rock bottom. Her last concert had been a feast for the gossip magazines that would end her career. She had put out all the stops. The designer dress, the extravagant special effects, all to lure the public back in. But the only thing she accomplished was to mess it all up. Carrie was Phoenix to all of those people but she wasn't sure she wanted to be Phoenix anymore. After last night, Phoenix was dead.
It was a great concert. Carrie had sang her new song, Breaking Hearts, Which she thought would be her best yet. She even hired the guy who did the Katy Perry tour to do her lighting and stuff. But after harsh words with her manager, she had stormed back on stage and declared she was done being Phoenix.
Carrie's temper had always been crazy. Her mother had this strange saying about it, "all roses have thorns", she always chuckled to herself when she said that.
Carrie's mother, Deanna, was on the strange side of things. Since Carrie's father had left when she was very young, she had loved her mother dearly, as she was all she had. She remembered a tattoo Deanna had, a small rose surrounded in flames. It suited her. Carrie always wondered the meaning of it but if she asked, she only got more questions than answers.
Now Carrie remembered her mother as she sipped her coffee in small little gulps. She drank it black out of respect for the smooth and bitter caress of the drink. It was the perfect day for contemplating your life. Fat, wobbling drops of diamond fell in a relentless beat against the earth. Carrie loved rain, it was somehow calming, as if it meant the sky cared enough to water our little speck of dirt we call home.
A buzz of her phone shook Carrie out of her thoughts. It was Odessa, her best friend from childhood. She stared at the message. "I'm almost here!" the text read. Crap, Carrie thought. "I need to get up" she muttered to herself.
After she threw on black leggings and a pale yellow button up, Carrie bothered to glance in the mirror.
Her eyes were always weird, a pale grayish silver, but not this weird. One eye was the same, but the other was a fiery bronze. Before she could think, the doorbell rang and she dismissed it as a trick of the light.
