Fly Girl | [Novel] (Wattpad Version)

Prelude : Interview With Broken Idols

May 2004 :

"Major success. At the height of it all, you were considered to be one of the bestselling groups; along with TLC, Spice Girls, and Destiny's Child. 90s elite with multi-platinum selling albums, sold out national and international tours. Three Grammys, a couple AMAs. It's been said that by now, you all could have been gearing towards a major, star-studded celebration and tribute by up-and-coming artists for your tenth anniversary. Certainly there were more albums, tours, movies, shows, and endorsements in the works, planned to further the success and I guess legend, that was Fly Girl as a complete group. And then, you were done after seven short years. What happened?"

As she sat among the very women she'd grown up watching, adoring and admiring, wishing she too had had just as much talent, Andrea Harper asked the same question of all four members of Fly Girl as she interviewed them separately, per their request. It had been over a year since any of them had been out in the spotlight, and even longer since any of them took to doing interviews that would include talks of a part of their past that they felt had dragged them all down in one way or another. Even longer since any of them had seen or spoken of one another.

Though they were all within the same age range, it was quite clear what the years of stressing and trying to be perfect, trying to appease everyone around them had done to them.

Troy; the youngest member of the group, often deemed the lead singer though she wasn't, sat comfortably in her chair. If you were to simply look at her, the smile she always wore, whether happy or sad, would give the appearance that all was quite well in her life. After all, once Fly Girl split, it was said that she'd be the one to leave the entire ordeal unscathed, destined for solo stardom whether she wanted it that way or not. But, if you were to look past that smile, and down just a little bit towards where her right arm rested, you'd see a cane resting next to her chair, waiting to be used if she chose to stand. Only twenty-four, the rest of her life had already been mapped out as a lifetime of medications to manage pain and spasms that came and went as they pleased. If she took it easy, as she'd been instructed more than a year before, she could get away with continuing her singing career.

Torii; Troy's older sister, bore a different struggle. One that she saw as a type of confinement. Though she'd initially been happy to end matters with Fly Girl, it came at the cost of what she felt had been the freedom that came when she and Troy left their hometown of Mount Pleasant, Tennessee once and for all. She too had been set up to have solo success following the group's disbandment, and for a time she'd found it. But much like being in Fly Girl all decisions made about her life, how she acted, and what she did were not decided by her. There was always someone looking to change her, someone to make decisions on her behalf, someone's hands in her pockets, her life and career while she'd been instructed to sit back, look pretty, and sing well. Those demands, along with being a wife and young mother had become too much too quickly in what had seemed like the shortest year in her life. If she could finally have her way, she figured she'd settle for a quiet life as a mother and that would be the end of it.

Leann; the oldest, who at one point had been the most sensible, and a bit of a mother figure for the other girls, had taken the worst fall from grace. Trying to raise herself after being removed from an abusive home and life in New Orleans, Louisiana; she felt there were nothing but good times ahead when she'd been selected as the lone rapper of Fly Girl. A once in a lifetime opportunity that came with perks and benefits far beyond her wildest dreams; she was certain there was no way she'd go back to her old life. She wouldn't trade her new success and joy for anything. However, it's never easy out running personal demons and as she'd often feared, they'd caught up to her when she least expected. If she were as lucky as her former group mates, if she was certain that anyone truly cared for her best interests, she'd be able to pick up the shattered pieces of her career and pull them back together with a little bit of support.