Hidden Fame

Call Me Maybe--Or Not.

All Rights Reserved, 2012

Call Me Maybe--Or Not.

"Lily, get your lazy butt out of bed and down here!" my older sister Kristen yelled at me. 'The Living Alarm Clock' would be a great nickname for her. Everyone found her obnoxious, and I had a large suspicion that everyone in my family was counting down the days, hours, and minutes until she went off to a private boarding school for "elite girls yearing for a higher education.'' At least that is what the flyer explained, but no one should trust fliers. Those brochures are the reason why I loathed attending my new school.

Ever since I began my new life as an international pop star, I had loathed school. Everyone I knew wanted a favor from me, or they hated me and my music and were constantly swearing at me and telling me how much I stunk. I always felt their eyes on me, criticizing everything about me: my clothes, my voice, my friends, my spirit, my grades(even though I secretly recieved straight A's), and my connections.

This year, however, was going to be different. This year the famous Lily had been replaced by a nerd, Lily Stephens. To utilize my new facade, I had to look the part, which was tricky. So, I hired a professional makeup artist that had helped me in one of my movies(did I mention that I acted as well?) to help transforme me into an ugly teenager. As I stared at myself in the mirror, I realized that she had been given a hard task. Even though I had just gotten out of bed, my light blonde hair was shining in the early morning sunshine. My blue eyes twinkled as I smiled at myself in the mirror, striking my signature pose, one hand on my hip, while the other gripped the back of my head with my leg jutted out in the typical teenage way. That same pose could be found plastered all over every billboard or magazine in the world.

I pulled on one of the less absolutely hideous outfits in my 'new' wardrobe which my manager kindly put together for me. My manager was someone who enjoyed driving people nuts, and, at only twenty-seven, he was one of the best people at doing it. In reality, though, most of the outfits looked like they had been pulled out of a 1970's sitcom. The outfit that I chose was composed of an orange tanktop and a huge sweater over it, which was black and orange with a bright orange flower the size of my head to top it off. Then of course, the typical pleated khaki skirt to top it off, and not the good kind either.

I drew back from the mirror to take in the first effect of the outfit. It looked hideous! However, I wasn't done yet. I still had a few more tricks up my sleeve. The repulsive sweater covered up my perfect hourglass figure, making it almost seem as though fat dripped off of me in long slabs. The long khaki skirt covered up my slim legs, and that took care of that problem, so now I moved on to my face, one of the more difficult things to cover up.

First, I jammed braces onto my teeth, giving the illusion that my teeth were all crooked and ugly. I decided that I had to do something with my hair. I played around with it for a while until an idea struck me. Grabbing a comb, I made determined strokes up, frizzing my hair as an effect. I continued until my hair was undicernable from what it had been onlly minutes ago. My thin, straight, dishwasher blonde hair had now been transformed into a brown rat's nest. I began jumping down the flight of stairs to present my new and improved--okay, maybe not improved, but definitely new--self to my family.

I thudded down the stairs two at a time, shifting my weight to make it sound like I weighed two hundred pounds instead of the one hundred fifteen that I truly weighed.

Maybe that's not quite true, I might weigh a couple more pounds than that. But only a couple. Definitely not ten or fifteen, that would be crazy. Afterall, I am not a liar. So now that all of your fingers are pointing at me, I do lie. My whole life now is basically going to be a lie; no one at school besides my wonderful brother will truly know my identity.

At the bottom of the stairs I was greeted by my truly stupid fourteen-year-old brother, Nathan, who was about to start High School with me at my school. Sudddenly, and definitely out of the blue, he began yelling. "Mom! Quick, call the police! An ugly hag has broken into our house, hopefully to steal some soap, because she most definitely needs some." He couldn't help himself as he burst into giggles at his own cockiness.

Of course, my mom came running with her frying pan which currently held the remains of some burnt scrambled eggs--my mom is a terrible cook--and looked ready to use it as a weapon. However, when she saw me coming instead of this so-called "Ugly Hag," she smacked Nathan across the forehead.

Needless to say, that did not make him happy, even though it was just a teasing hit. The teasing hit ended up being quite a bit more vicious than any of us had expected, as the sound of the slap cut through the air like a knife. The fact that her handprint remained on Nathan's cheek told me that my mother definitely was not happy with Nathan for being so unkind and unsympathetic to my cause of trying to hide myself.

I quickly rushed past Nathan on my way to breakfast, slightly brushing shoulders as we passed each other. My goal was to retreat from Nathan's line of vision, because when he got mad, he got really, really mad.  

Our relationship was one of strong love and hate. Also, when we were having our little fights, I lost ninety-nine percent of the time. I ran past him because I had no desire for a black eye to mar my perfected facade.  

Once I was safely past my monster-of-a-brother, I skipped over to the kitchen island and jumped onto one of the most awesome bar stools that existed on the face of the planet. The stool looked like a pair of legs, and each separate stool was unique, as each wore either a skirt, jeans, a dress, etc. Today I decided to 'wear' purple skinny jeans today, which was normally my brother's favorite chair. We had hired someone from Europe to make them for us in my tour bus, but since I was currently at home taking a break, we had no need for them to be in my bus.  

Hiroshi, my private chef, was making me my favorite breakfast on the kitchen island.  My private  chef had really only been hired because I loved breakfast more than any other meal in the world.  When Hiroshi makes breakfast for me, it tastes ten times better than it does when my mother makes it.  Now he had almost finished, and I got out all of the necessary utensils for the meal.

He set a plate loaded down with eggs, waffles, french toast, fruit, yogurt, and every other food you could imagine, and I began devouring it with passion.

After I finished my breakfast, I realized that I had some time to waste, so I ran back upstairs to make sure that my diguise would serve its purpose.  

I spent several minutes scrutinizing my appearance until I deemed myself ugly enough that no one would recognize me.  

Still having several minutes to waste, I collapsed in a heap on my bed, the rough pink comforter digging into my arms.  My butterfly chandelier on the ceiling filled my view, and I watched as all of the multi-color lights flitted about, carefree and beautiful.  

Finally, my brother screamed up for me to hurry up, as he did not want to be late on his first day of school.  I stomped downstairs in a huff, off to what would be a hilarious, but very nightmarish, first day of school.

(Dedicated to missymaris, because she made the awesome book trailer for this book, and I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT!  It is incredible, and it really represents the book!  Yay!  Go check out her stories, too, and you will see why I find her so awesome!)