Eyesore

Just like it looked like it was going to be, it should’ve been your typical beautiful California day with the sunshine shining, waves roaring up to the hot gold sands, roller skates running against the boardwalk pavement, but over in the thriving montroplis of downtown Anaheim, dreams were being crushed where dreams were allegedly made, Disney Headquarters.

Sliding in a moment after his oldest brother, Joe listened to his legs press against the leather of the back seat and groaned. They were leaving the Anaheim office building where the head of their management team, the man who picked them up right where Columbia Records dropped them on their flat teen asses, Gaston Savard, worked.

For a man going on 45, Gaston looked youthful with a sharply chiseled chin and only a few fissures in his face from decades in a cut throat industry. However, along with two of his brothers, Joe was convinced that he would be that stress-free to if he owned the souls of many teens and young adults and had his hand deeply rooted in the flaps of their wallets.

When it came to many crevices of his life, Joe owed Mr. Savard nothing, but thanks. If it wasn’t for him, he’d probably still be in a bungalow in the Midwest, rocking out in his basement and looking for a part time job at the nearby strip mall. He wouldn’t be internationally known and cared for, he wouldn’t have millions of dollars to his name, he wouldn’t have a record contract and budding acting career, there was no way he’d get to rock the labels that he did for free, and many other perks that Joe wasn’t willing to give up, but in other corners of Joe’s life, Mr. Savard deserved a huge kick in the gut.

“Who else here is as excited as I am to guest star on Clubhouse Disney?” Widening his eyes to reach where his bushy eyebrows usually sat, Joe nodded like a bobble head doll and asked both his unimpressed brothers. “Raise your hand.” He sarcastically smiling and threw his arm up over his head.

“Can it, Joe.” His curly head pressed against the car window, Kevin had his cell phone out in front of him and was texting an old friend, complaining about the huge string of self-deprecating TV spots they were just forced into filming, only a week after they voiced their desire to grow as a band and find an older demographic.

“Come on, Kev, it’ll be fun.” Joe reached over and punched Kevin’s shoulder in a brotherly manner. “Maybe, you’ll get to dress up like a wizard again!” He chuckled, watching a vein form in his oldest brother’s forehead. “What about you, Nick?” He jolted foreword in his seat and pat his brother, who was slouching down in the passenger seat, on the shoulder. “What happy thoughts are you keeping to yourself?”

“I think this is stupid.” Very poignantly, Nick snarled. “Honestly, what did he think we meant when we said ‘older audience’?” Already getting himself worked up, Nick hiked up his knees onto the chair and turned around to stare at his two band mates and brothers. “I hate being treated like a joke.”

“Should we start a fight?” Joe raised both his eyebrows rhythmically, smirking at a thought so devious and out of character for him. He’d been poked and prodded by cigar-smoking and sausage-eating Disney executives for four whole years now, he was nineteen and tired of it. He was ready to put his foot down and fight for his own career.

“No, we’re just going to grit our teeth and bare it.” Kevin spoke just like Eeyore would, his head slapping against the window as they sat in downtown traffic.

“I’m sick of doing what they say. If I’m going to do a kid’s show or write another sappy song where we have to use the words “baby” and “girl” at the end of every line, it’s going to be because I want to, not because Gaston’s leathery face is threatening to terminate my career, if I don’t!” Joe triumphantly rambled, sitting up tall and shaking both of his fists in the air.

“Yeah, what are you going to do, Hero, huh?” Kevin rolled his eyes over and sat them plainly on the side of Joe’s flushed red face. “Just politely decline the offer and expect him to smile and pat you on the back?”

“No, I haven’t figured out my plan of attack yet, but once it comes to me, I will serve Gaston a big spoonful of his old medicine. I’ll make him know what it feels like to be jerked around and made a tool of.”

“Oh, Danger.” Watching Joe get himself theatrically worked up, always put a smile back on Nick’s face. He shook his head and turned over to face the row of slow moving cars that lie ahead.

XXX

Curled up in the fetal position on the soft cushions of her family room love seat was the sleeping body of Minnie Savard, a five two brunette who had a mind that never slowed down. It was judgment day everyday inside the wires of her brain.

Yawning and dropping one arm over the couch, she was awoken from her long sleep by the high decimal screams of her younger sister, Brier. Even though she would be turning fourteen in a week or so, Brier hadn’t hit puberty. Her body was still as even and flat as an ironing board, she had metabolism so quick that it could burn an entire triple chocolate milkshake before it fully traveled down her throat and into her large intestine, she could still walk outside without deodorant or a dab of make up on and she’d still smell like fresh linens and look as beautiful as a cover model after airbrushing. For those reasons, and only those reasons, Minnie resented her baby sister.

Brier jumped, wildly like a caged monkey, taking the staircase steps by two’s and pounced onto Minnie’s exhausted body.

“You will never guess what!!!” Straddling her big sister’s side, Brier clapped anxiously with a smile stronger than the Hulk.

“Mom’s finally buying you a muzzle?” While she rummaged around her head and underneath a couch pillow, Minnie muttered, looking for the red hood of her oversized hoodie to pull over her face.

“Well, that was mean.” Brier dropped her arms down to her sides and came down from the cloud she had been walking on. “Seriously, Min, why can’t you ever just be happy for me?” She dug her hands into her sister’s thigh and climbed right off of her, ready to stomp away furiously.

“I don’t even know what you’re happy about today.” Sluggishly, Minnie curled over and laid on her back, looking up to notice her sister had already left her sight.

“Well, not that you care, but Dad managed to score my favorite band, in the entire universe, for my birthday party!” Opening up the kitchen door and hoping to find a fresh carton of chocolate milk, Brier exclaimed.

“So, The Moffatts are going to sing at your party?”

“I haven’t listened to The Moffatts since I was, like, ten, and you better not tell a Jonas Brother that I listened to them back in the day. Especially, not Joe!” Pointing over at her sister on the couch, while pouring herself a tall glass of cold chocolate milk on the counter.

“Please, in what situation would I have to talk to any Jonas brother?”

“Why is there so much screaming going on in my house?” Even though Brier and Minnie’s mom worked out her bedroom, running a successful Internet floral business, she still dressed everyday in a suit jacket and black shoes. She said if she just rolled out of bed and stayed in her pajamas that she wouldn’t feel like she was providing her customer’s with good service, even though she never had to see them face to face. She stopped herself half way in the kitchen due to being greeted by a surprising hug from her youngest daughter. “Sweetie, you almost knocked the wind out of me.” Giggled Adrienne Louise. “What’s got you smiling today?”

“Dad got the Jonas Brothers to play at my birthday!” She screamed, jumping off of her mom to grab her glass of milk before running back upstairs to her bedroom. “I have to call everyone! They’re going to hate me!” Brier celebrated before slamming her bedroom door behind her.

Adrienne expected nothing less of her ex-husband, he rated everything by appearance and material value. So, of course, he couldn’t just show up to his daughter’s birthday with a gift card to the mall like every other father in the Anaheim Hills area, no, he had to show off how flashy and powerful he was by booking one of the world’s hottest bands for his little girl’s fourteenth birthday.

“Mom, may I remind you that when I turned fourteen, you took me and two friends to the skating rink and bought us all hot chocolate.” Minnie managed to stand up off of the couch, dragging the tattered bottoms of her grey sweatpants against the ground. “And if I recall, I had the time of my life.” Sloppily, she balanced her elbows on the counter and watched as her mom cleaned up the mess Brier had made on the counter with a wet rag.

“Well, you and Brier are very different, Minnie.” Sweetly, Adrienne told her daughter and then gently kissed her forehead, that she had once again picked until it bled the night before. “Did you just wake up, Minnie?”

“Yeah, Brier’s screaming kind of did the trick.”

“It’s one in the afternoon.”

“Yeah, well, I was up late.”

“You fell asleep on the couch again, didn’t you?” Holding her side that was pointed out the most, Adrienne questioned with an unimpressed look wiped over her beautiful face. Adrienne was Miss Teen Dallas when she Minnie’s age and still, to this day, carried that aura about her. “You were watching E!, weren’t you?” Just like a few of Minnie’s high school teachers were, Adrienne was growing very concerned about the state of her daughter’s mental health. In the last two months alone, she’d shrunk in inches and there was no longer any pigment in her skin, just a pale matte that hung off of her face. The usual stars that shone inside Minnie’s brown pupils were burnt out and her cup size had dropped from a double C to a double B almost over night. Plus, Minnie used to love shopping and would always come home with no money left over, but bags of tight fitted crop tops and low rise jeans, now she lived for oversized tee shirts and anything with an elastic waist band. “I really wish you wouldn’t watch that garbage, Minnie, there’s nothing substantial on it.”

“They were doing a special on the top ten sexiest girls in film. Lindsay Lohan is still number three, I don’t know why because she’s ridiculously sexy, like if she’s number three, I probably wouldn’t make the top one thousand.” Minnie told her mom while using her hand to turn away the juicy red apple that was being offered to her like it was forbidden fruit.

“Minnie, you wouldn’t make the list because you’re not an actress, but if you were, you would be number one.” Adrienne had been extra generous with compliments in the past few weeks, constantly going out of her way to shower Minnie with uplifting and encouraging words.

“You have to say that, you’re my mom.” Crashing back down on the couch and turning the television onto her favorite channel, Minnie rolled her dead brown eyes.

“You know, I have to go pick up a shipment of tulips in about an hour. Do you want to make the run with me?” Adrienne couldn’t recall the last time she saw Minnie leave the couch for something besides school, and even that was a struggle.

“Not today. I look like crap.” Her eyes never left the screen, she was diligently watching the way Madonna’s legs perfectly complimented her shape.

“Well, go have a shower and throw on something besides your sweat. I’m not going to leave for an hour.” Adrienne fought. “We can stop by Liz’s house and pick her up, if you want. You haven’t hung out with for a bit.”

“I just don’t want to be seen today, okay?” Tossing the channel changer off of her leg and into the cushions by her feet on the floor. She finally took her attention away from the television and stared her mom down with a look so serious, Adrienne worried that it might break Minnie’s face which was caving inward these days.

“Okay.” She backed down, slowly, wishing that she could force her daughter to do things the way she could when Minnie was in middle school.

Once Minnie heard her mom’s feet finally step out of the kitchen and the door of her office shut, she returned her addicted gaze onto the screen, watching as Madonna’s abs thrust flawlessly as she danced through a concert sequence.

She felt guilty when she let her hand slither underneath her cotton sweatshirt and squeeze the layer of loose skin around her waist, feeling for bones and hoping that the countless crunches and new diet of water and rippled carrots was helping her abs come through faster.