One in a Million

“Are you crazy? What did you do that for?”

It was odd to see him so perplexed.

“I gave them what they wanted. Now they’ll leave me alone.”

He laughed sarcastically as he drove down the road faster than necessary.

“You really think that now that they know you’re name, they’ll leave you alone? You think it’s that easy?”

She remained silent.

“Aalia, they’re gonna be after you even more now. Now, they’ll never leave you alone. You shouldn’t have done that. It was so much easier when they didn’t know.”

“They’d have found out sooner or later.” She was trying to justify her own actions even after the sudden realization that what she’d done was nothing but stupid.

He opened his mouth to reply but decided against it. The creases between his eyebrows deepened with worry and she still fought to make them go away despite knowing she deserved the scorn.

“You never know. It could work,” she said in a small voice.

“No, it’s not gonna work. That was the most ridiculous thing to do. The worst idea you’ve ever had. Shit, Aalia…”

“Well sorry I’m not better at this. I was just trying to help,” she said bitterly.

The rest of the ride was silent as both of their minds raced. He feared the worst. Now that she wasn’t safely concealed anymore, the world could get their hands on everything. Everyone was about to know everything there is to know about Aalia Hart, even the things he knew she wasn’t ready to let out. Things she had trouble talking about even with him. She still had an ounce of hope left—that perhaps she was right and they’d finally leave her alone. But somewhere underneath that lie stood regret and she shared that same fear Nick was trying so hard to control.

Slowly, she was slipping from him.

-----------------

He dropped her off at her hotel, walking her inside to help her through the barricade of cameras still camped out front.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he muttered when they reached her door.

She nodded, avoiding eye contact.

Brief moments of silence passed before he gave her an awkward one-armed hug and finally departed, never looking back.

She hated that he wasn’t happy, and she hated that it was her fault.

Inside her room, she sprawled on the bed and opened up her laptop to write an email to Dylan. She needed someone, anyone to talk to about what was going on, especially with Caroline deciding she’d forgotten her completely.

Dear Dylan,

It’s been a while since I’ve heard from you and that needs to change, stat. How are things in sunny Florida?

LA is crazy. Your weirdo boy band is so dramatic…Well, only one-third of them. Anything you know from those fan sites that should help me deal with the youngest? :P

Sorry this is short. Just write back soon. I miss you, Dyl.

Love,
Aalia

-------------------------

She barely slept that night as she’d done nothing but think of the disappointment on his face whenever he looked at her. She tried to shake it off like it was no big deal, just something that would blow over eventually.

The next morning, after getting out of bed and ordering a bowl of oatmeal from room service, she jumped in the shower and tried to simmer her thoughts. Emerging from the steamy bathroom, she spotted the tray of food left on her desk by the staff and quickly got dressed. She had nothing planned that day—Nick hadn’t asked to hang out again—so she settled for a basic t-shirt and pair of yoga pants.

She sat against the foot of her bed and pulled her laptop onto her lap with her oatmeal bowl balanced in her hand. She opened up her email to check if she’d gotten a reply back from Dylan.

One look at her inbox and her eyes widened.

Hundreds, thousands of new emails from addresses she didn’t recognize were all she saw. She read a few, and then she didn’t want to read any more. Some of them—mostly from what looked like fans—were pleasant. Some of them were pushy and too polite from news reporters and other paparazzi. But most were just nasty. She read heartless insults and frightening death threats, and her eyes filled with tears just looking at the words.

Stay away from Nick, you whore.

Ew, you’re so ugly!

Nick deserves better than a slutty party girl.

You looked so fat in that dress! Lose some weight!

She stared in pure disbelief at each individual word. Her heart was falling deep in her chest and suddenly she didn’t even want to touch her computer anymore. She unsteadily shoved it to the side and held her head in her hands.

She could somewhat deal with the paparazzi. If that’s as worse as it could’ve gotten, she could deal with them. But she couldn’t deal with people hating her. She cried at the fact that she was being called those spiteful names that she tried to convince herself she wasn’t every single day. Ugly, fat, inadequate, not good enough—all the things she felt every time she looked at herself, especially after Aiden and especially next to Nick. She didn’t even know these people sending her emails. She didn’t even know how they managed to get her address, but somehow they did. She shuddered at the thought of what all the tabloids were saying about her now.

She didn’t belong in that situation and she knew it.

Quickly, thankful they hadn’t been barricading her cell phone as well, she grabbed it and dialed his number. Her heart thudded with fear against her chest as it rang repeatedly, but she was never given the chance to hear his voice on the other end.

Before the automated message could finish, she hung up and tried again. She lost track of the amount of calls she made and suddenly frustration was all that filled her. Why wasn’t he answering? He must’ve known what was going on by now. He should’ve been the one to call her.

“Nick,” she breathed into the phone to record a voicemail, “Call me. Please. It’s an emergency. They got my email and I don’t know what to do. I need your help.”

She hung up and tried again with no luck.

Out of desperation, she called the only other person she could hope to be there for her.

“Nice of you to remember me,” Caroline said bitterly on the other end after answering quicker than normal.

“I need to talk to you,” Aalia said, trying to soothe her headache with her fingers.

“Like shit you need to talk to me, Aalia. You haven’t bothered to call for days.”

She took a shaky breath. “Now isn’t really the time for this.”

“Then when is? You forgot me.”

Aalia’s attitude was already snappy and her anger surfaced. “Don’t give me this bullshit, Caroline. You’re the one who never bothered to even check on me after I left Nick’s house that day. I never forgot you. You’re the whole reason I even came to this stupid state. This is the last thing I need right now. So don’t even, okay?”

When Caroline remained silent on the other end, she tried to steady her voice to ask, “Is Joe with you right now?”

“I dumped Joe,” she replied in a quiet voice.

“What?”

“I dumped Joe,” she repeated.

“Why?”

“It was time to move on.”

Shock was then added to the chaotic mixture of emotions Aalia felt. “What the hell, Caroline? He’s the father of your kid!”

“I lost the kid.”

For the brief moment that the words left Caroline’s lips, she sounded like the little girl Aalia first met in grade school all those years ago. Her voice was small and helpless, and Aalia shut her eyes to grieve for her.

“I found out days ago,” Caroline went on, her voice slightly breaking.

“Where are you?” Aalia asked.

“My parents’ house.”

“I’m on my way.”

“No, you can’t come.” Her voice intensified for a second. “Haven’t you been online today? You’re everywhere.”

She sighed. “I was afraid of that.”

“What happened?”

“I gave them my name because I’m an idiot,” she said quietly, “But Caroline, that’s not what’s important right now.”

“I’m fine, Aalia.”

She couldn’t tell if that was a lie or not.

“I’m upset, yeah. Of course. But to be honest with you, I’m a little relieved, too.”

Aalia knew Caroline would never let anyone in on how she really felt, especially with something as delicate as that. That was her way of saying she really was disturbed by it all but didn’t want to talk about it.

“I want to see you,” Aalia told her.

Caroline made a sound that resembled a small laugh.

“If you leave that hotel, teenage girls will strangle you to death.”

Aalia tried to laugh with her, but it just didn’t feel right.

“I’m sorry for not calling,” she said after some time, realizing that it’s equally her fault for them not keeping in touch the past few days.

“No, I’m sorry. I knew something was wrong when you just stormed out and Nick kept almost breaking things afterwards. I should’ve called.”

“It’s no big deal.”

Silence passed but it was never awkward. All Aalia could think about was how everything was falling apart, but at least things between her and her best friend were alright. At least when the entire world was going against her, she had Caroline to fall back on.

“You know it’s okay to be sad,” she told her and herself at the same time, “Don’t keep everything bottled up inside.”

“I know,” Caroline assured her, “I’m alright.”

She heard her take a deep, unsteady breath. “I know. I just don’t know how.”

“It’ll come to you with time. Tell him when you’re ready, but do it soon.”

----------------

The days went by too slowly after that. Aalia never left her hotel room out of fear. She’d asked the lobby to send up her mail so she wouldn’t have to go near the main door where too many people waited for a glimpse of her face. She couldn’t even see Caroline, which bothered her especially because she could only comfort her so much over the phone.

But the worst part of it all was that Nick was nowhere to be found.

He never called, never texted, never bothered to check on her or see how she’s handling things. She couldn’t make complete sense of how she felt about that. On one hand, it made sense for him to forget about her just like he had done the first time. It made sense for them to live separate lives because maybe all those people were right. Maybe she just wasn’t good for him. Maybe she wasn’t good for anyone.

At the same time, something inside told her this couldn’t possibly be the end. But how could she be sure? She was tired of trying and tired of a living in a world she didn’t belong in.

A sharp knock at her door startled her away from her thoughts. When she answered, a panicked bell boy handed her a thick envelope, muttered about something being crazy, and scurried off before she could thank him.

She eyed the large envelope carefully, noticing that the return address was Caroline’s. She flipped it over and just above the flap was a message: Thought you’d need to see this.

Anxiety crept into her nerves as she predicted what it was. Her fingers slipped inside and pulled out a magazine with a collage of pictures on the cover.

Pictures of her.

She thought about throwing it to the side and never looking at it again. But Caroline had gone through the trouble of mailing it for a reason. She flipped through the pages with reluctance.

It amazed her how thorough they always were. They’d dug into every crevice of her life. At first, she questioned why they bothered so much. In her mind, she was still a nobody. She didn’t belong on magazine covers and online tabloids. She wasn’t interesting or glamorous. People shouldn’t care about her so much. But after reading a few lines of the cover story, she understood.

In their eyes, she was ruining Nick.

In his world, a reputation was everything, and hers was already deemed as the “party girl.” She read on as they accused her of trying to steal him away from some model named Melissa. The reference sounded familiar as she remembered the paparazzi mentioning her, but he hadn’t said anything about Melissa to anyone.

Including Aalia.

Maybe he didn’t tell her everything after all.

The story concluded with a look at how Nick is supposedly “coping with the scandal.” There were pictures of him with a tall, tanned woman with platinum blonde hair and striking features who had to be Melissa. It was hard to assess the look on his face when he was with her, but he didn’t look unhappy. They were going all sorts of places: the beach, the ice cream parlor, and even out to dinner at the exact same place he had taken Aalia.

The magazine said he’d “quickly replaced Aalia.”

She sighed deeply. That was why he never called. Why he never bothered to check on her. He was busy with a model. A famous, thin, beautiful model.

Her heart stung with the familiarity of the situation. She was reminded of Aiden and Amy almost instantly.

Things weren’t right. Seeing him with her felt wrong and she couldn’t fight the jealousy building inside her. She had wanted to be in his life so badly. She missed the way it used to be when, for a few hours every night, it was just the two of them. Nobody else. No fans, no paparazzi, no reporters, no models. Part of her still believed it was all her fault and she’d messed everything up, but most of her believed none of it was ever supposed to happen.

He was the star. She was just the normal kid. A nobody. When two completely opposite lives like that try to join, they do nothing but clash and cause nothing but chaos.

After that, she knew there was nothing left for her in California. She could convince Caroline in an instant to go home with her, so that’s what she planned to do.

It was time to say goodbye.