A New Playing Field

Megan's POV

The next morning, I returned to Colin’s hospital room directly after practice. When I walked in, my siblings all looked at me with a facial expression that mixed anger and frustration.

“Why are you guys looking at me like that?” As I asked the question, my phone rang. It was an unknown number, but I answered it anyway.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Megan Gibson?”

“Yes it is.”

“Hi, this is Pamela Sanders from People magazine. We were wondering if you wanted to release a statement on the comments Miley Cyrus made about you.”

“What comments?” My siblings shot looks at each other. They knew something.

“Oh, Miley recently made some comments about you in our interview. We put the article online last night.”

“Can I call you back, when we’re on the same page?”

“Absolutely. Sorry for the confusion.”

"Not a problem. Bye." I ended the call and turned to my siblings. “Alright, what is going on?”

“Miley Cyrus is stupid, that’s what’s going on,” Colin said with attitude.

“Megan," Kristen turned Colin’s laptop to face me, “come read this.” As I began to read the article on People.com, my jaw dropped.

“When asked about her ex’s (Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers) new girlfriend, Cyrus said, ‘Nick and I have a lot more in common. We’re both famous singers and actors and we work really hard. What Megan does, playing a game, that’s not hard work. Putting on a rock show as two different people and acting on your own TV show, that’s hard work. Plus, Megan doesn’t even wear a purity ring.’ When asked if she’s simply jealous of Gibson, Cyrus replied, ‘Jealous of what? I clearly have more fame than her, and Nick and I dated for a longer time than they will. She doesn’t deserve Nick.’”

“This is so ridiculous, that it’s actually kind of funny,” I said after reading.

“She is going to be ripped apart by any professional athlete that reads this,” Mike added.

“Well this is going to be an interesting day. I’m going to go home and shower. Then I’m going to print out this article and go to the set and show Nick and them. I’ll be back later.”

As I walked out to my car, I tried to imagine how Nick is going to react to this. If he dislikes Miley as much as he told me at her party, this is not going to go over well.

Nick’s POV

Acting in a TV show is very different than playing a rock show, but it’s a cool different. We have so much fun on set and the show is looking like it’s going to be pretty good. We were getting ready to shoot another scene when I saw Megan talking to Mom.

I didn’t know Megan was coming, but I’m happy she’s here. When we made eye contact, I gave her a wave and a smile. She gave a wave back, but something seemed wrong. Megan handed Mom a piece of paper and I watched Mom's eyes wandered up and down the page. Megan had folded arms and Mom had a wide open mouth and a furious look on her face.

The need to know what was on that piece of paper encouraged me to do the scene perfectly. Thankfully, everyone else did it perfectly too. Tom called out for a fifteen minute break and I ran over to Megan.

“Hey,” I said kissing her on the cheek, “is everything okay?” Without saying a word, Megan handed me the piece of paper.

It was an article printed out from People Magazine’s website. Miley was quoted saying all these bad and false things about Megan. After reading the article, I could have punched Miley in the face.

“Megan, I am so sorry. How’d you find out about this?” I handed the article to Joe and Kevin, who are just as angry about it as I am.

“This isn’t your fault Nick. I was at the hospital when I got a call from someone from People asking me if I wanted to respond.”

“Jeeze. I would expect her to do something like this to me, but not to you. This just reaches an all time low, even for her."

“I met the girl once and she’s passing all these judgments on me saying I don’t work hard and I don’t deserve you. If any professional athlete sees that, she’s going to be ripped on.”

“You know nothing she said is true, right? I just want to make sure. I know you have worked extremely hard to get to where you are and you continue to work hard everyday. And the part about you not deserving me couldn’t be more wrong. If anything, I don’t deserve you.”

“Seriously, you know that’s crazy, Nick.”

“Yeah, we deserve each other because, quite frankly, we’re both awesome,” I said laughing. I put my hands around Megan, pulled her into a tight hug, and kissed her on the forehead.

“So,” I said pulling away, “are you going to respond?”

“Do you think I should?”

“I think you should release a small comment. Nothing that can be twisted the wrong way, but something to the point of you don’t care what she thinks.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

I gave Megan a quick kiss and ran back to set. “I’ll call you later, love you!”