Smoke And Mirrors

“Okay, can everyone hear me?” Peter, the manager of 30 Seconds To Mars has climbed on box so he reaches out above everyone else. He goes on when he hears a chorus of ‘yeah’s. “We, the managers, have the feeling that the bands don’t really mingle. So we want to change that a little bit. Tonight we sleep in a hotel again and you’ll have to share a room with someone from a different band.”

Sierra rolls her eyes. She really doesn’t like that man and know he wants them to sleep with people from other bands. They barely know these people. This is not some kid camp where you have to make friends. You can’t push these things.

“Right, I hear no protest. I’ll go on with the room divis-“ Peter is cut off by Matt. “Sierra?” Sierra turns her head to her manager, all eyes now on her instead of Peter.

“What?” She looks puzzled at Matt. “You wanna sleep alone? Since you’re the only girl.” Sierra quickly shook her head. She doesn’t want to sleep alone again. It took so long the fall asleep the other night.

Peter looks at Sierra with a little anger in his eyes, but he goes on with his speech. “Like I said, the room division: Jared Leto, Garrett Nickelsen and Blake Harnage sleep in room one, Shannon Leto, Jared Monaco and Sierra Kusterbeck sleep in room two, Tomo Miličević, Pat Kirch, John O’Callaghan and Kennedy Brock sleep in room three and Tim Kelleher, Nick Osborne and Chris Pollock sleep in the last room. You can go now.”



Sierra closes her eyes again and chuckles a bit at the soft snores of Jared Monaco and Shannon Leto. They’re her roommates for the next couple of nights. She’s glad she doesn’t have to sleep alone anymore and Shannon looks like he could handle a bear without a problem.

But she still finds it hard to find sleep, even though there’s company right now, even though she is not alone. She doesn’t know if it’s her mind trying to torture her or if it’s real, but she’s hearing weird noises all the time.

She throws the blanket of her small frame and gets out of bed. Or better, she falls out of bed, not quite elegant. She stumbles across the room in the dark to find her bag. But she hits her foot against something, yells and falls to the ground.

“What the fuck is happening?” The light is suddenly turned on. Jared sits up in bed with sleepy eyes, not really knowing what’s happening and Shannon is already half out of bed, ready to make a move. He’s also the one who turned the light on.

Sierra gets up, but her leg and foot kind of hurt, so it isn’t going really smooth. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” She finally manages to get up and she half walks, half limps toward her bed to sit down. Her leg is already turning blue and purple and any other kind of colors a bruise can possibly have.

“Are you okay?” Jared asks, also getting out of bed. He walks toward Sierra and takes a seat next to her on her bed. He looks at her look. It’s pretty swollen already.

“Maybe you should put some ice on it,” Shannon says, looking at her leg as well. “It doesn’t look too good.”

“Thanks, mister obvious,” Sierra says, though there’s a grin on her face. She got quite used with getting bruised and cut a lot and she barely feels the pain anymore. “Where the hell do I find ice at two o’clock?”

“There’s a fridge with a freezer in the room,” Jared says. “Maybe there’s some ice in it.” He gets up to have a look at the fridge.

“Found it!” he exclaims and he puts his arm in the air with an icepack in his hand. He walks over back to Sierra and puts the icepack on the blue and purple swollen part of her tan leg.

“Thanks,” she says, squealing a little at the cold feeling on her warm skin. She puts her hand on top of the icepack and presses a little harder.

“I see why you got a tattoo of a plaster on your knee,” Shannon says looking at her not bruised knee. “It fits quite well.”

Sierra grins at him. “It sure does.”

She limps a little bit when she arrives at the breakfast the next morning and the pain got a bit worse. But it’s not that bad. But of course Blake is worried about her the moment he sees that she limps.

“What happened? What have you done now?” He looks at her in shorts put legs. Her leg was too swollen to fit into a normal skinny jeans so she put on some cut offs. But her blue leg is now clearly seen and people stare at it. It’s makes her a little uncomfortable.

“I just tripped, nothing too worse,” she answers Blake’s question. She takes a seat in the chair next to him. “Would you mind to get me some food?”

Blake shakes his head, while grabbing her plate and walking toward the buffet. She’s unbelievable. There’s “nothing too worse” with her, but she can’t get even go for her own food. It must hurt pretty bad. He just hopes her leg will be okay before the have their next gig, so she can perform. He knows that she will, even though it’d still hurt and he doesn’t want that. It will only get worse then.

“Thanks,” Sierra says as Blake returns with her plate full of food. She starts to eat as Blake speaks up to her.

“You better get some rest with that leg of yours, or otherwise I won’t let you perform.” Blake looks at her with a stern look in his eyes. He sounds like her father. She’s old enough to decide what’s can do and what not. But she agrees, because she knows it’s no use

“Of course I’ll rest.” Her leg hurts too much anyway.