Hello Beautiful

“I missed you guys so much!” I said after the movie, which had been perpetually embarrassing. “How have you been?”

“Recess isn’t the same without you. It’s not as much fun to play football without a girl,” said Jack. He laughed and sighed, remembering the good old days.

“Besides, you’re better than most of the guys that play for the varsity team,” added Jason, laughing as he said it.

“Lacrosse sucks without you,” said Michael. He smiled.

“Yea, now we have this thing where, whenever one of us gets injured, as a joke, we always say ‘Take it like Laura would’ and whenever we get checked, Coach won’t let us complain, cause when you were there, every time you got checked, you never cried, or sat out, or complained. Come to think of it, I’ve never even heard you say ‘Ouch’,” said Jake thoughtfully.

“But it’s hard to believe you’ve ever even seen a football, what with how gorgeous you look now,” said Connor, placing a lingering kiss on my cheek. I could feel my face turning red.

“Boys, stop sucking up to her, she’s not gonna introduce you to Miley Cyrus. Besides, I heard that Miley was dating Nick Jonas,” said Anslee.

“She’s not.” I said, maybe a little too sharply. I hated that rumor. Nick actually was friends with Miley and I knew how it felt to be paired up with someone you cared for. There had been more than a few articles about me and all three of the Jonas Brothers.

“Speaking of Nick Jonas,” Sophia said casually, “When do we get to meet your new boyfriend and his brothers?”

“I’m not dating Nick either.” My face turned bright red again and everyone laughed at me.

“Come on, Laura, seriously, we know you like him, you hang out with him all the time. There’s tons of pictures of you guys in every magazine, and I know that you do lots of photo shoots and stuff-“ began Casey. I know she wasn’t trying to, but she was acting like she knew what it was like to be famous. I don't know why, but that was all it took for me to snap. Suddenly I was releasing all of the stress from them past few monthes and aiming words of hatred at my best friends.

I interrupted Casey harshly:

“Oh, shut up! You have no idea! How would you like it if I went around telling everyone that you-" I pointed at Christian, “and you-" I pointed at Kendall, “were going out? I hate all the stupid tabloids and rumors and teen magazines and paparazzi!!! It sucks!!! How would you like people taking pictures of you all day, everyday? Do you know how much it sucks? No, you don’t, you don’t know how it feels for everyone to tell you that you’re dating your best friend, and that you’re the reason that he ‘lost’ his purity ring! It sucks! I hate that I haven’t had a moment of privacy since I first met the Jonas Brothers! I hate that part of being famous! Have you ever had someone take an embarrassing picture of you? How would you like for that picture to be plastered all over the internet and in every teen magazine in the world? How would you like it if people mobbed you when you walked into Starbucks? How would you like it if you wrote a song and 20 million people told you that they hated it? How would like it if you did a rehearsal for a kissing scene in a movie with your friend and someone taped it and put it on YouTube and millions of people watched it? How would you like going to sleep with people looking in your windows? People with cameras? Yea. You guys have no idea, and that’s not the half of it! How would you like getting hate mail? What about marriage proposals? Yea, I’ve had some weird ones! Think all that sounds fun? Wait ‘til you go to the beach with your friends! Wait ‘til you give someone a hug! You’re automatically dating! I’m telling you, fame really bites! If it weren’t for Nick, Kevin, and Joe, I’d give it all up right now and never write another song! You think your parents don’t give you enough privacy? Try telling that to half the population of America! It doesn’t work!” I ranted.

They just looked at me like I was nuts.

“You don’t get it do you? It’s horrible. How can you not understand that?” I whispered. My voice cracked from the display of raw emotion.

“Laura, you’re living the dream, how can you say that stuff?”

“Casey, I know this is hard for you to understand, but no one, not even you, can look perfect all the time," I spat.

“I beg to differ. You look good in all your pictures Laura; you always look beautiful. Don’t deny it, you know it’s true,” said Nick as he walked through the door to the hotel room where my friends and I were gathered. Just by Nick's presence entering the room, I could feel my temper drop and return to almost normal. I was so in love with him.

“No way, remember the swimsuit picture?”

“It was me that looked bad in that picture.”

“No, it was me.”

“No, it was me.”

“No, it was me.”

“No, it was me.”

“Ok, we get it, you’re both ugly,” interrupted Joe.

“HEY!” me and Nick exclaimed.

“You said it first!”

“Joe, shut up, leave, or both.”

“Wow, pissed off much?”

“Yea, I’m a little bit annoyed by the fact that you’re interrupting my time with my friends that I haven’t seen in three months.”

“No, it’s ok Laura, we gotta catch a plane tomorrow, so we need to head off to our hotel to pack.”

“Oh. Ok guys. It was really great to see you,” I said. I thought I was gonna cry. I felt like they had just gotten here. I tried to hold it back, but tears started streaming down my face. Kendall and Didi came over and gave me a hug. Jack came over and wiped the tears off my face and gave me one of those big bear hugs that only football players seem to be able to give.

“You’re amazing, and you’ve done such great things. I’m so proud to call you my best friend. I love you Laura.” He gave me a kiss on the cheek and hugged me again.

“Keep on making those touchdowns and when you come back to HIES, I want you on my team.” Jason smiled and gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, like Jack.

“No, she’ll always be on my team, right Laura?” said Jack.

“No, she’s gonna be on my team.”

“She’s mine!”

“No, she’s mine!”

“You guys are impossible,” I said jokingly and gave them both hugs. “I’ll be on both of your teams,” I reconciled.

Everyone cracked up.

“Laura, the Fine Arts Depot isn’t the same without you. We don’t have any good girls to play the leads for the plays and musicals anymore,” said Hunter. This got a lot of protest from all of the girls sitting on my bed.

“It’s true though, the musical is gonna be bogus without you,” said Michael.

“What are you guys doing this year?”

“High School Musical 2”

“NO WAY!!!!!” Joe started laughing his butt off.

“Who’s Troy?”

“Me,” said Alex.

“I should have known. And who took my part?”

“Lindsey Miller.”

“Are you serious? She can’t sing to save her life!”

“I know, she sucks.”

“Alex has to kiss her.”

“Please don’t remind me. I’m dreading rehearsal tomorrow. That’s when McClymont said we’d do the kissing scene.”

“Alex, I had to kiss that-“ I pointed at Joe, “for Camp Rock. It was by no means fun, but what I did was practice the whole scene with someone I didn’t mind kissing.” I saw almost everyone’s eyes flicker over to Nick, then back to me. “Then when I was doing the actual kissing scene with Joe, I just pretended that I was kissing the other person instead.”

“You only did that for one take. The other shot you were focused on biting my tongue off!!!”

“Because you filmed my rehearsal with Nick and were going to send it off to Popstar, J-14, Blast, M, and every other teen magazine out there!!”

“Whatever. I was just trying to be funny.”

"Yea, you were laughing real hard when you and Nick tried to kill each other!”

“Guys! Cool it!” said Kevin.

Silence.

“Guys…” Kevin repeated

I sighed, “Sorry Joey, I didn’t mean that.”

“It’s ok, I shouldn’t have interrupted. Finish what you were saying.”

“Right. Like I said, just practice with someone else and when you do the play, pretend that you’re kissing the other person.”

“Ok, that might work. Thanks for the tip. Who wants to rehearse with me? Come on, don’t everybody volunteer at once…”

We were listening to Austin’s iPod, and right then a song I recognized came on. “You put my album on your iPod?” I asked him.

“Of course I did. It’s awesome,” he replied as if it was obvious.

“What’s your favorite song?” I asked him.

“I’m caught between Don’t Forget and The Middle."

“Those are two of my favorites.” I said.

“Hey, Laura, will you sing us a few songs off your album?” asked Lindsay.

“Yea, please.”

“Come on Laura!”

“Will you?”

“Just a few?”

Then they started chanting and I knew I would have to sing.

“Hey, Nick, where’s my instrumental CD?” I asked.

Everyone cheered.

“On the table by my bed, from practice the other night, remember?”

“Right. I’ll go grab it. Give me one second you guys.”

They cheered louder and Joe told them to quiet down or the people next door would get jealous and want to come listen too. I jumped over legs and slid through six-inch gaps to get to Nick’s room. I grabbed the CD off the table and dashed back to my room. I put the CD into the stereo system and turned it down a lot. We had had it on really loud this morning to wake us up.

I grabbed the remote and plopped down on the bed next to Jessica.

“What do you want me to sing first?” I asked Payton.

“La-La Land,” she said immediately.

“Ok, sure.”