The Consequence of a Dream

Ch. 10

Demi's pov

I don't get to the hotel until 7 pm. Much longer than I anticipated, but sometimes you can't really put a time on when rehearsals will finish.

"I'll see you tomorrow. Don't leave the hotel room without contacting me first." Max says.

"Alright." I say.

I pull the hotel key out of my pocket and shove it into the doorknob and watch the light turn green on it. I pull the key out and open the door quietly and close it even quieter.

The second I walk into the hotel room I look at Phoenix asleep in her bed. I smile at the sight, she's at least gotten some sleep.

I lock the door behind me and walk to my bed where my smile quickly fades. With the comforter almost entirely off the bed and her sweatshirt raised, I see the extreme bruising on her stomach and ribs. But the sleeves of the sweatshirt are also raised and I feel a knife be shoved into my heart when I see her arms.

There's fresh cuts on her forearms with a mix of old cuts. Her arms just look completely mutilated. It looks as if she was in a den with lions who just scratched her arms unforgivingly. But also on her arms are bruises and what look to be burn marks.

She is being abused. The level of bruising on her body proves that. Her dad is abusing her.

I walk to her bed and pull the comforter back over her body as carefully as I can to not wake her up. But I don't want her to wake up and know that I've seen what I've seen. I'm not going to force her to tell me anything. If she wants to talk, that's one thing. But I won't tell her everything I find out and push her into a corner and make her talk. I think that's the absolute worst thing I could do.

I sit on my bed and look at her sleep peacefully. Something I know will be ruined if she knows I'm in the room. So as much as I need to shower, I won't. I can do it in the morning, it's not a big deal. She needs to sleep and she won't if she knows I'm in the room. She proved that last night. She's proved that sleeping at my house.

But when you're abused, then yeah, it probably is hard to sleep around someone you don't know. If this is what everyday for 14 years of her life has been, I understand completely why she doesn't trust me. I couldn't trust myself if abuse was my life everyday for 14 years either.

She's such a sweet girl, I don't understand how her father could possibly hurt her. Why would he hurt her? She's so smart, beautiful, kind, caring, respectful, mannered, talented, and so much more. I don't understand abuse. If you don't want your child why keep it? Just do it a favor and give it a chance at a better life and put it up for adoption. Because abusing it and causing it pain isn't the right thing to do. You aren't just effecting them while they live with you, you're effecting them the rest of their life. Abuse isn't something you can do to someone without it causing psychological problems later in their life.

I don't even know her full story, but there's no way I'm letting her go home to that environment. Not when her entire stomach in nothing but purple and blue, her ribs are purple, red, and blue. Not when she's wearing make up to hide the probable bruising in her face. Not when she's suffered long enough.

As far as I'm concerned, she is my responsibility now. Her dad wanted me to take good care of her, I will. Little is he aware, that means he won't be seeing her after this tour. I don't care what Phil wants me to do or not, I can always find a new manager. But I won't be able to ever forgive myself if anything happens to Phoenix after this tour. Her life is something she won't get back, a new manager is something I can get. So if firing Phil is what I have to do in order to help Phoenix, I will. Because right now, she's all I'm focused on and will be focused on. She's all I will stay focused on for a while.

I walk to my suitcase and grab the clothes in top of them and quietly walk to the bathroom. I get changed into the comfortable night clothes and use a few make up wipes to take my make up off. I then throw those away and walk to my bed.

I grab my phone from the bed and unlock it then go to my texts only to see some texts from my younger sister.

Mads: Phoenix is getting a lot of hate on her social media from your fans :(

Mads: I think you should maybe ask your fans to stop attacking her. She's getting worse comments than I ever have.

Mads: Well not Nicks fans are doing the same thing.

I sigh reading the texts and then go to Phoenix's Instagram page and her last post. When I do that I see her total comments are 10,127 which is more than she's ever had. I tap them and once they load I just go through what I see first.

@/demismyworld: she literally looks like a wanna be emo girl but can't handle emo listen and listens to 5sos, tell me I'm wrong 💀

This is more than likely why she has so many cuts on her arms. She's probably already read so many of the comments herself.

@/demispickles: who's gonna tell her she's paler than Casper the ghost?

@/praisequeendemi: hun if you jump off that building, we'll just tell everyone it was accidental. We know you wanna 😂

@/nemiforever: your hairs greasier than my fries at McDonald's.

@/welovedemi: Aw how cute she's one of Eugenia Cooneys fans. Aw skeleton twins 😍

@/confidentdemi: If her music career flops, she can always turn her account into a pro Ana page.

A few comments in and I realize how awful the rest of her comments probably are. I stare at them disgusted. How could my own fans do this? I've been so vocal about bullying and how much it effects me. How could they turn around and bully someone I brought on tour? Or bulky anyone? That isn't what I want in my own fans.

I open twitter and think the tweet through. I don't want it to come off too harsh, but I need the point to be made in it.

@/ddlovato: Bullying isn't funny or cool. Think about what you say before you comment it and think about the impact it could have when you do comment it. Your words can hold a lot of power. Use them to uplift someone, not hurt someone.

Satisfied with the tweet, I tweet it out and not a second later, see Phoenix's phone light up. I take a glance at it to see my tweet on her phone and smile knowing she's got my notifications on. That's cute.

I put my phone on the nightstand and turn the lamp off in the room creating utter darkness in the room. I'm not too tired, but there's not much of anything I can do without waking Phoenix up. So it's best to just go ahead and go to sleep. So that's exactly what I do.