Eyesore

Straight through the front door of her house, jumping over the mess of shoes that were toppling out into a mountain from the closet, Minnie dashed into her mother’s house fresh from her non-stop one hour run through out the neighborhood. Every single rib ached differently from one another with each inhale, but they were equally as painful in her chest, but she swore that all the unbearable pain just meant her body would be beautiful come morning.

The bottom of sweatpants draped over her feet, once she’d kicked off her dirty sneakers, and went straight for her cell phone that she had left on the coffee table. Her huffing and puffing increased when she noticed that she hadn’t missed any calls. It was five days since Allen Trope’s retirement soiree and Joe still hadn’t contacted her.

At the end of the day, all Minnie could do was blame herself and that meant pointing a finger at her thighs. All of the girls at the party, the two she say Joe juggling his time between the most, had thighs like clay that had been left out of the jar for too long. Their’s were hard as rock, they didn’t look like they could move or jiggle the way Minnie felt hers do with every step. She buried her cell phone into the pouch of the sweatshirt that was eating her body and spun around, giving herself a headache, to seek refuge in her room.

"Honey, don’t be discouraged," From the kitchen island, slicing up uncooked chicken for dinner, Adrienne watched her daughter. Minnie didn’t have to fill her mom in on the situation or say a single word, she knew exactly what it was all about. Adrienne had spent countless nights waiting for guys to call, Gaston especially, so she could fathom what her daughter was feeling, if the emotions were unnecessary. "He’ll call."

"It’s been five days." She stopped half way, hunching over like she belonged in a bell tower and pouting melodramatically. "Either I really was repulsive or he’s found someone else." Both options seemed like they could be the answer to Minnie. She knew for a fact that based on her appearance alone, she was disgusting with her big owl-like brown eyes, dark hair that kept thinning and losing it’s shine, breasts that always just hung like heavy grocery bags and never perked up like they should, hips to carry triplets with, and no matter what angled she stood, she always saw two more chins than before. Also, Joe was a Jonas, girls crawled over them regardless of "the great purity ring sham" as Minnie used to jokingly call it with her friends, back when she hung out with them, and Joe was surrounded by beautiful models, actresses, singers, and other talentless household names all the time. Minnie couldn’t believe she let herself be stupid enough to hold onto a single shred of hope when it came to getting to know him. Somewhere, in the deepest crevice of her mind, she had imagined, like all girls do, that they’d really hit it off.

"Minnie, he is an international superstar." Adrienne said while taking a cooking brush and beginning to glaze the pink meat sitting on her wooden chopping board, adoring the chicken with her eyes while talking graciously like she was answering a question on Miss America. "He has a lot of obligations, he said he would call and he will. Give the boy a break, he hasn’t screwed up just yet." She finished with a perfectly curled toothy grin, Minnie half expected her mom to wave and curtsy as well.

"I don’t know, I don’t think I made a good impression." Minnie fretted out loud, pulling open the freezer door and popping in a cold cube of ice between her teeth. It was a technique she had created on her own whenever she felt her stomach contracting out of hunger.

"Why? Did you say something rude?"

"No, I just...I don’t know, I’m just not his type." She didn’t know for sure, but Minnie would’ve put good money on a sexually active robot to be Joe’s type and considering she’d only had sex once, and she still wasn’t sure if it counted since it only lasted thirty three seconds, and she definitely was not a bimbo, Minnie didn’t think Joe cared about her.

"Why don’t you let him decide that for himself, Minnie?" Though Adrienne was suspicious of the rock star, she did want to see her daughter happy and if that meant Joe Jonas would have to call her, then she had her fingers crossed that he would. "Anyway, I’m making teriyaki chicken, do you want rice with it or salad? Maybe, both?" Lighting her eyes up like fresh flakes of snow hitting the ground, Adrienne looked up from the dinner she was preparing and met her daughter’s mundane gaze, enthusiastically.

"I’m not hungry." She lied, one hand in the pouch of her sweater and pushing her stomach inward, feeling it ache for any single nutrient.

"Minnie," Adrienne couldn’t force her daughter to eat, but she could surely try. "I’m worried about you, you eat like a rabbit." That was an overstatement and Adrienne knew it.

"I told you I wanted to lose weight, Mom, you said that you supported that." The more Minnie talked about food, the hungrier she became and her stomach cried out louder, so she opened up the freezer again and began to bite down onto another cube of ice.

"I do, but starving yourself isn’t the way to go about losing weight. When I was in the Miss Dallas contest...."

"I’m not starving myself!" Minnie shrieked, trying to drown out the sound of mother’s story and convince herself of what she unconsciously knew to be true. "I don’t want to talk about this." Defiantly, she said with one last bite on the pellet of ice and scurried out of the kitchen and towards her bedroom, slamming the door harshly before collapsing down on her bed. She was exhausted all the time now, but she was happy to sleep the days away, it meant less time that she had to think about food, fight temptation, and be seen by people.

To her bones that were being worn down to just white dust, she felt like she’d only captured an hour or so of sleep, but her cell phone began to sing at nearly three in the morning, which meant that she’d slept away the rest of the afternoon and all of the evening. Her mom had tried calling her for dinner and to check if she wanted to grab frozen yogurt with her and Brier, but Minnie had slept soundly through both pleas.

Minnie answered her phone to the sound of dead air and then, squinting at the screen, realized she’d received a text from the number she recognized as Joe’s since she hadn’t programmed it into her cell phone yet.

FR: 1-714-289-9235
Hey - Wanna come to a video shoot this weekend?

A combination of a both a yawn and a groan escaped her dry lips as she adjusted herself onto her side, underneath the covers, and began to text back.

That wasn’t a phone call.

Minnie had read in the countless beauty magazines that she was a shameless addict to, that sarcasm really doesn’t come through over the phone, but she assumed that Joe wasn’t that thick and would catch on eventually.

Her eyes were lowering down again as her brain had just about shut off, when three minutes later, her phone began to sing on her night stand.

"Hello?" Groggily, she answered. As much as she had wanted him to call, three in the morning didn’t seem at all reasonable, no matter what his profession was.

"Hey," Joe spoke fast and in a whisper over the phone, holding his shirt against his sticky chest as he was trying to tip toe out of a hotel room without being seen by anyone. Even though he would be dead if either one of his parents caught him sneaking back into his hotel room, Joe was more concerned about a fan or hotel employee noticing him. His hair looked akin to a treasure trolls while he reeked of some Victoria Secret body lotion, and if that wasn’t enough, the fresh red claw marks on his back almost spelt out ‘sex’ in big letters. He’d blow everything, if people found out he wasn’t a clean alter boy like they sold out to people. "Uh, so we’ll be in Hollywood Studios come Friday, filming the video for our new single, you got to come." By the end of it, since he’d entered the fire escape stairwell, he was speaking a regular voice, but he didn’t pose it like a question to her, it was more like a request.

"No, thanks." He waited five days to call her and he wasn’t even apologizing, Minnie wasn’t going to cater to that kind of behavior. If she wanted to be treated like that, she wouldn’t have pulled away from her dad the way she had. Hell, if she wanted to be treated like that, she would flirt with the boys at her high school.

"Come on," Joe cooed at her like he did all girls he was pursuing. "Your dad will be supervising it, you know you want to."

"Oh, I get it," She sank slower underneath her dirty sheets that were beginning to smell as unwashed as they were. "You only want me around when it’s convenient for you, when my dad is there for you to piss off. Well, count me out, I’m no one’s door mat." She wished she’d finished more powerfully, but her perpetually tired body let a long yawn out instead.

"That’s not true, Minnie," He rolled his eyes, annoyed by all the work he was having to do just to convince this girl to come hang out at a video shoot. Most girls would re-arrange their entire calendar to hang out with him on set, sometimes the promise of free craft services was enough, but Minnie was a chase, and one that he was too tired for. "I like you and I want to get to know you." He lied, stretching the line out in the same fashion that he had a dozen times to girls before her. Sincerity wasn’t Joe’s most dominant quality, but he could fabricate it seamlessly.

"Really? That’s why you waited five days to call me? That’s how interested you are."

"Minnie, I have a busy schedule, if we’re going to try and work, well, you’ll have to understand that. I have obligations to a company, my family, press, fans...." He listed off, feeling nothing as he spoke about truthfully about the duties his life consisted of. He entered the top floor of the hotel, which his band and family, was occupying. He tipped his messy head of hair, thick and untamed like pubes that he’d glued on his head, at a pack of security guards and waited for them to open his hotel door for him. "I can’t be as attentive as I’d like." He lied.

"Do you think I just sat at home and waited for you to call?" Joe knew that she probably had. "I’m in my Junior year and I have finals coming up, I do have a life." Minnie wasn’t sure why, but she was very engaged in arguing with Joe, even though she didn’t know him at all. It must’ve been the idea of someone pursuing her or finding her interesting that ticked her off, it just made no sense. She couldn’t find a single thing about herself that she liked, so how could anyone else?

"Look, I’m sorry," Finally, he had to pull out the mother of all lies, the one that never failed him: the apology. "If it’ll make things better, we could go somewhere and hang out after the shoot."

"Don’t do me any favors, Jonas." She scoffed at the way he had worded his last comment.

"No, I want to." Joe assured her with a thick sleazy accent that no girl would be able to see through, no matter how adverse she was to him.