California Sunshine

“ANAAAAAAA!” Ana hears her name bellowed into the air. She has just gotten off the plane at LAX and while heading to baggage claim, she gets engulfed by two lanky arms that belong to her sister, Jessica.

“Oooof, hey Jess,” Ana is able to breathe out after being pummeled by her sister. Jessica is 5’5, just a couple inches shorter than Ana. In fact, Ana always teased Jess about how she was shorter than her sister that is so much younger than her. The two sisters had been told on occasion that they looked a lot alike, but they only saw it in certain pictures or angles. Both had bright blue-green eyes that were similar in shape but Jessica’s seemed to be a bit bigger in size, a trait that she had received from their dad.

One of the bigger differences between the two, however, is that Ana had light sandy brown hair that was a little wavy, but annoyingly impossible to hold an actual curl. While Jessica had natural dark brown curly locks that were effortlessly flawless everywhere she went. Jessica almost has an exotic beauty that Ana was always jealous of. Needless to say, she attracted a lot of guys’ attention, as well as the attention of casting directors in Hollywood.

“Hey Sista-girl!” Jess exclaims whilst embracing her sister, “It is SOOOO good to see you!” Jess’ warm personality never failing to display itself.

“It is good to see you too, I feel as if it has been ages!" Ana says while squeezing her sister back.

“Well I suppose it has been since Christmas, so that is probably correct!” Jessica replies with a laugh. It was almost September after all.

Despite all the other turmoil going on in her life, Ana definitely missed her sister. Even though Jessica is about 5 years older than Ana, the two of them were basically inseparable in their home-life. This proved to both a good and bad thing as Ana had never had a person whom she had loved and hated so much, so simultaneously. Despite all of their stupid fights though, Ana really looked up to her older sister in many ways and was sad to see her move away.

“So do you still have to get your bags?” Jess asks her sister after they released each other.

“Well I literally had just walked up to the baggage claim before I was attacked by you, so yes, that is a safe assumption,” Ana sassily replies.

“Alright, alright!” Jessica jokingly throws her hands up in the air as if to surrender, “How about I go get the car and bring it out front while you wait for your luggage? That way we can skedaddle right away and try to avoid the rush. Traffic around this airport can be an absolute bitch I tell ya.” She has a point, Ana thought, LAX is just a tad insane, being an international airport in all.

“Yeah that sounds good, I’ll see you in a bit!”

“Okay perfect, I am pumped! We are finally going to live together!” Jess practically flutters with excitement and with a turn of her heel she is off in the direction of what was presumably the parking structure. Ana watches her walk away and stop every so often to take a picture with a couple of fans that appear to have recognized her.

Jessica had started acting when she turned 18. She was mostly in some small stuff at first like cameos in TV shows and whatnot. It wasn't until a few years after that when she landed her role as Vanessa in Gossip Girl that her career and fame seemed to take off, not to mention... her as well. At that point she had packed up and left Midwestern Wisconsin to live in bright and sunny California, and she has never looked back since. As cool of a life that Jessica seemed to have, Ana was glad that she, herself, was able to stay out of the limelight. That lifestyle looked way too stressful and exhausting to be enjoyable.

Once Jessica is out of sight, Ana digs out her headphones from her bag and puts them in her ears. It is a nice effect to drone out all the sounds of the busy airport and go into her own little world. She then proceeds to continue the “adventure” of locating where her bag is going to come out. She eventually finds the station with her flight number on it, but has to continue to wait for the carousel to move.

While waiting, Ana starts to look around and notices that to her left, there is a decent sized crowd gathering around something way down at the end of the large room. Whatever it is, it is blocked from her sight. She also notices that there is a specific type of crowd that is gathering; Preteen girls. Ana begins to idly wonder what is occurring within. It isn't until she sees photographers rushing to the area as well that she realizes that it isn't a what per se, but a who. There is most likely a celebrity of some sort at the core of all the hysteria.

Ana is in the midst of trying to guess who it was (she was thinking a Disney Channel star or someone, based on the apparent fan-base) when she gets distracted by the baggage carousel starting to move and bags making their way down the ramp. All thoughts of the potential celebrity in the vicinity are then pushed from her mind as she directs her focus to finding her bag.

After a good deal of bags had passed, Ana finally spots her floral suitcase making its way down the ramp. She grabs it when it gets near and immediately picks up her phone to get a hold of where her sister is. As it turns out, there is already a text waiting for her from Jess;

*Hey I am parked right outside the door with my hazards on!*

*K. On my way out now.* Ana responds quickly.

She then takes off to the doors to her right while rolling her massive suitcase behind her.

After taking a few steps in that direction, multiple things happens all at once. As Ana walks through the long hallway, she notices that the crowd directly surrounding her has gotten much larger in quantity. So crowded in fact, that she is bumped into a few times and on several occasions has people obstructing her walking path. However, since she still has her headphones in, she hadn't heard them all approach at all. She is also impeccably aware that it is an uncommon amount of preteen girls again, all with their phones out. She assumes that the celebrity excitement must have faded and they were all headed out the door. But wait a second, are they...crying? Why in the heck are they crying?

The thought of stopping to ask a group of them if they are okay briefly crosses Ana's mind when all of a sudden, she feels her overly stuffed luggage wobble and fall to the side mid-roll. It seems as if one of her wheels has broken off. As Ana turns around and bends over to examine her broken luggage, a cluster of the preteens who aren't paying attention to where they are going simultaneously collide right into her. Ana then loses her balance from the encounter and falls backwards, head smacking into the hard ground of the airport.

Ana notices the small pain in her head from the collision, but is more acutely aware of the fact that her luggage has just broken and she is now lying flat on her back on the ground, in a crowd of swarming people. Upon realizing this, Ana feels her heart rate elevate as a moment of pure panic floods through her.

They always say that in moments like this, humans will have a fight or flight reaction. Since there are so many people (so many stomping feet), Ana’s body chooses to fight and attempt to shield herself from the potential trampling that is likely to happen. All she is really successful at though is make herself even more aware of how much of a defenseless position she is in. To make matters much, much worse, there is now blinding flashing lights going off every couple of seconds.

As she struggles to protect herself and tries to get off the ground, Ana all of a sudden sees a hand in front of her offering to pull her up. She takes it graciously and is lifted from her previous spot off the hard ground beneath her. She takes a deep sigh of relief and then looks up into face of her savior; she is met with a pair of handsome green eyes that are furrowed in concern.

He is mouthing something. What is he saying? Oh right my headphones. Ana thinks to herself as she proceeds to take the buds out of her ears, although she immediately regrets this action because the level of noise and screaming that she is greeted with isn't helping her headache.

“What did you say?” She asks back to him.

“Are you alright?” Whoa, this guy was British. Ana takes a second to look at him more closely and notices that he appears to be close in age to her. He is a few inches taller than her, maybe 5’10 or 5’11, and has a mop of curly brown hair on top of his head. She also notes that the yelling and the hysteria are most definitely directed at him, even though she has never actually seen him before in her life.

Still feeling overwhelmed, Ana meekly replies “Yeah I s’pose so, thanks for helping me up.”

“Okay good, I was concerned when I saw you fall. Would you like a picture or an autograph?” The British dude replies. Wait what? That was a weird question to ask someone who almost got flattened by young’uns.

“Uhh," Ana hesitates, totally thrown off by the question, "With whom exactly?” she lets out with a confused expression, briefly forgetting that this British boy is most likely a celebrity of some sort.

“With me, of course,” British Dude responds in a matter of fact tone. Apparently, this guy assumes that everyone in his vicinity is a fan of whatever it is he does. How pretentious.

“No but thank you, I’d really rather just get out of this mob actually,” Ana replies, attempting to be polite but quickly losing her patience as her head pounds and claustrophobia starts to ripple through her. Her head hurts way too much to deal with this situation. She starts to look around to see if there is a gap in the ever-looming crowd, and she realizes that these people were enclosing the two of them in a tight circle. This is ridiculous, who in the heck has a fan-base like this?! Her sister definitely has fans approach her, but never in herds like this that she knows of.

“Oh okay, I guess I just assumed you were a fan and I wanted to help y---”

“Look, I’m sure you are super talented and all that on the Disney Channel or whatever it is you do, but I have no clue who you are. I just want to get the hell out of THIS,” Ana snarkily interrupts while gesturing at their surroundings. She knows she is overreacting a bit, but she is a bit too flustered by the cameras and the loud and abrasive crowd to continue any sort of politeness.

At that moment, she sees a small gap between a young girl and a photographer and decides to seize the opportunity. Not saying another word to British Boy, she proceeds to push past the wall of preteens and paps, dragging her broken luggage behind her. He is then left in the middle of the horde of people all wailing at him, and he watches her go with a dumbstruck look on his face.

As soon as Ana breaks free of the intense crowd, she sees her sister hurriedly walking towards her, having witnessed the whole thing. It is quite the relief after that stressful incident to see a familiar face.

“Celebrities, I tell ya!” Ana sarcastically jokes as she approaches Jessica.

“Yeah they are the worst huh?" Jessica answers with a smirk, “You’ve literally been on L. A. ground for what, a total of 15 minutes? And you already have the paps after you.. That must be a new record!”

“Yeah, yeah, can we just get out of here? I mean this in the best way possible but you being here will probably only attract more attention.” Ana tiredly replies, fatigue running through her system after her adrenaline starts to crash

Jessica, being used to paparazzi and crowds, finally seems to sense how overwhelmed her sister is so she doesn't say another word, but rather puts her arm around Ana in an attempt to soothe her. They both decide it is best for them not to linger in the area any longer. The two of them then quickly take off towards the car, and away from the mania of the airport.