Say Anything You Want, I'll Turn the Music Up

Say Anything You Want, I'll Turn the Music Up

Chapter 11: Big Time Recovery Plan

"Oh my God," Rain said, pulling me into her house and shutting the door. "What's wrong?" She wrapped me up in a hug. "What happened?"

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop crying. Not only was I sick of hiding everything under my hard-ass exterior, my words to James not only succeeded in hurting him, but they struck my heart as the absolute inescapable truth. "James came to my house," I told her.

"Oh my God," she repeated, furrowing her eyebrows angrily. "I'm gonna—"

"Don't," I interrupted her. If my death threats were bad, Rain's were twenty times more graphic, gory, etc. Not that hearing the ways she would mutilate and torture and decapitate James wouldn't make me feel a whole lot better, right now I just felt like feeling sorry for myself and having the focus on my pain and actually doing stuff to make me feel better and get my mind off of everything.

"Come on," Rain said, taking my hand and pulling me toward her room, "I know exactly what will make you feel better. Big Time Recovery Plan part 1."

I didn't ask. Part of me was already sort of feeling better just from being here, was excited to see what she would come up with, but the other part of me, as always, was wary of her craziness. That was just my best friend though, and I loved her for it.

Rain's room, as it had been for as long as I could remember, was covered in large posters of shirtless Taylor Lautner and Zac Efron (this one had a white frame around it, though I had no idea why, since Rain swore up and down she didn't like Zac Efron), along with small posters from those teen-y magazines Popstar and Bop and Tiger Beat.

The small magazine posters were the ones she headed for, reaching out and ripping a few with four very familiar faces off the wall. "I hope you know I love you a lot to take away from my wall of sexy," she said jokingly. I knew she was serious though. If it weren't for my plight the posters of Big Time Rush would stay on the wall for her to make out with every day.

Then she went to a dresser drawer full of CDs, rummaging through then pulling one out and holding it up for me to see: BTR's CD.

She walked out of her room, and I silently followed, not asking what in the world she was up to but figuring it had something to do with destroying every shred of her BTR merch. She went into the kitchen and pulled an Aim 'n Flame out of a drawer, then headed out the adjoining door that lead to the garage. So we were setting stuff on fire. Excellent.

Rain's house didn't have a backyard, which was a foreign concept to me. But none of the houses in her neighborhood did. The houses' garages were in the back, connected to the driveways which were connected to the alley you drove in to get to your driveway or garage. It was so weird; I'd always had both a driveway and garage at the front of my house, as well as a spacious backyard.

Since there was no backyard, her stepdad kept the grill in their garage, which was unused by cars unless it was rainy. She pulled the grill out to the driveway; neither her mom nor stepdad was home, so the driveway was empty. It was perfect.

She dropped the ripped and rumpled posters into the grill. "Wait," I said. I pulled them out and if any of them were not so torn that you could still see James, I tore his face off and ripped it up into a million little shreds. I dropped all the tiny pieces into the grill, then put the posters back in. I felt really bad about burning Logan, Kendall, and especially Carlos, but some sick part of me said they were associated with James, it had to be done. "There."

Rain grinned. She flicked the Aim 'n Flame a couple of times until she successfully had fire.

"Would you like to do the honors?" she asked.

"No duh!" I said, grabbing the lighter out of her hand, trying to put my hand exactly where hers had been on the trigger so I didn't have to re-try for fire (it always took me forever). I lit the posters, turning the lighter everywhere until every part of them was in flames. I smiled.

Rain then handed me the BTR CD. I dropped it in, and the lit paper engulfed it with flames. I didn't care about the smell of the burnt plastic, and neither of us cared if the neighbors complained. I felt so released. One less person hearing James Diamond's stupid singing.

"Do you want to watch it burn for a while?" Rain asked.

Just then my phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my back pocket.

New Message
From: Camille

I opened the message.

You should probably turn on the TV. Any tabloid channel.

That was suspicious. "We can come back," I told Rain.

We walked into her house and I was turning on her big screen as there was a knock on the door. "Got it," she said as I channel surfed.

She walked back over with Faith in tow. Right as I found a channel ostensibly playing what Camille wanted me to see.

"Look what—" Rain started, but I cut her off with a loud "shhhh!"

James Diamond was on the TV.

Both girls turned their attention toward it. "Holy—" Rain started, but cut herself off before I could shhh her again.

"In a press conference," a voiceover said, "James Diamond, from the popular boy band Big Time Rush, apologizes to fans and friends." The audio cut to what James was saying.

"I'd like to apologize," he said, flashing a perfect white smile and not looking very apologetic at all, just looking like he was playing up his hotness for the cameras. "At our L.A. show a few nights ago, I sang a song; I had no intention of offending anybody." Using big words. Ha. I knew someone had to have written that for him, probably Logan. He didn't have the capacity.

"See, the song was actually an inside joke between me and a friend of mine: Harper—the girl the song was named after." Inside joke. Yeah. I wanted to strangle him more than ever. "We have this thing where we prank each other, then try to get revenge with a better prank." Oh. My. God. He was NOT making up some bull story.

"As a disclaimer"—another big word, who was feeding him this crap? His brain was smaller than a pea—"Gustavo Rocque nor the other members of Big Time Rush had anything to do with writing this song. It was all me. And it was pretty great, if I do say so myself." He grinned at the cameras again, flipped his perfect hair, and everyone in the press conference laughed.

"So what I'm trying to say is, Harper is not really a lesbian, and I was never in love with her, and she never broke my heart. It was all a joke. I hope I did not disappoint any of my fans." Of course, turn this back to himself.

I couldn't watch anymore. I turned it off.

"He sickens me," Rain sympathized for my benefit, even though I knew she had mentally squealed and melted inside when he flashed those pearly whites and flipped his hair.

"Brutal," Faith agreed; her favorite out of the band was Kendall anyway, which was completely fine with me, and got her more friend points than Rain—okay, maybe not really—since I had no beef with Kendall and he was really cool. In fact, Faith had never seemed to like James at all; she didn't even think he was hot. Which, again, was fine with me, but even though I hated him with every cell in my body even I couldn't deny he was hot...

"Sorry," I said, apologizing for cutting Rain off earlier and not really paying attention to Faith. I hugged her.

"It's cool. I understand," she replied. Then she got excited. "So. Who wants to crash the BIGGEST party of the year?"

"OhmyGod, ME!" Rain said.

"Uh, YEAH!" I replied. I may not have been the clubbing or partying type, but crashing a party of a popular that I was not invited to... that was a different story. Plus, it would make me feel even better, especially after my better mood had been almost completely shattered by his press conference stunt.

"Big Time Recovery Plan part 2!" Rain said as if she had read my mind. "This will be fantastic!"

Faith smiled. "It's a big costume/masquerade ball, for Brie's 18th birthday." Brie was a senior at our school, a popular, who I had no idea how she was even popular, and I didn't really like her because she always tried to one up me in any classes we had together, even though I was totally smarter.

"EVEN BETTER!" Rain cried. "Oh my God, they will NEVER know if we're in costume, and we have those sexy feather masks; I want one with diamonds..."

I turned to Faith as Rain, per usual, rambled on. "When is it?"

"Saturday night," she said.

"That barely gives us time to find sexy costumes," Rain continued, "but we'll so do it. We'll totally be able to sneak in even if there's like a guest list or something."

"Doubt there will be," I said. "Even though us lowlifes didn't get invites, it's still gonna be too huge for that."

Faith nodded in agreement.

"Shopping!" Rain said. "Another part in the Big Time Recovery Plan!"

Faith was starting to ignore her rambling again. "I can give you guys directions if you don't know how to get there."

"Where is it?" I asked. She looked at me as if I should have known, as if everyone in the school knew. But how could I since she had told me about it?

"It's at The Palm Woods."