emeray
When I was younger, and unaware of the world's cruel capabilities, I never thought I'd get used to being hated. Hate is never something you anticipate having to consistently face in your everyday life. It's not something vitally present in your thoughts when you're learning how to walk, and talk, and eat without someone there to hold the spoon to your lips. Hate isn't something you hope for when you're walking into class on your first ever day of school.
When you're young, really young, all you know is the color of your parents' eyes when they look at you, and the wallpaper in your room, and the glint of your spit on chewed-up train sets. You only see hate in unpleasant little glimpses. Slight arguments. Tiny disagreements. A scolding or two.
But sooner or later it hits. Hate is a most unwelcome gift on the birthday you never really wanted, nor asked for. You don't always remember the first day you knew somebody hated youââwe as humans tend to block it out of our minds or let time take it away for us. But every year, that fatal day passes you by, as casual as the notions that slip from your memory when you fall asleep at night. It is a birthday nobody celebrates, the day you first were hated.
It exists nonetheless.
Somewhere in my first or second year of attending school, I started believing that my real birthday and this awful one had likely both come on the same day, within the same establishing moment. The doctors and nurses must've hated me the moment I came into existenceââthe moment they saw my eyes and realized they were supposed to be brown, not that unnatural, icy blue. My family, despite their best efforts to hide it, must've hated me too as I grew from an infant and my completely incorrect dark hair began to grow in with me. There I wasââsomething I shouldn't have been. Something to be hated.
They should've told me then, before I went to school. Some emotions are better being first displayed in a safer setting than out in the big bad world. A younger Carstan van Horne waited no time to show me his own hatredââI'm almost positive his first words to me were, "Freak, I hate you," without a second's hesitation.
The moment we were dismissed to recess he took his gang of littler boys and he had them each take a turn pushing me into the wood chips on the playground. All the while, he stood by watching and repeated again and again that I was an abomination, and I was crying and bleeding and asking him over and over, "What is an abomination?" He just shook his head and told me it was better I didn't know what I was, just like everyone else didn't.
I would've liked to have known hate before Carstan van Horne hated me. Maybe I would've been stronger. Maybe I would've handled it better.
But nobody told me, flat-out, until he did. And every single day since then he'd put it in his scheduleââblocked off a couple minutes to showcase this immense hatred for me in any convenient way.
Consequently, I became used to it. I had to get used to it. Soon enough I expected it from everyone I met, because they all showed that same shocked face, and those same curt responses, and that same pressing thing they needed to get to that made them have to walk away from me so quickly. I grew to presume a person hated me by default, and that this presumption would never waver for a moment, no matter what I did or how kind I was to them. There was no need for me to try to make someone like me, because they'd never want to be seen with the different girl. My own siblings didn't even want to be seen with meââhow could I expect that somebody who wasn't so unfortunate as to share my last name?
When I joined the Famoux, I'll admit that a part of me thought my struggles with hatred were over. Must've just been silly, naive Emilee, thinking and hoping for solace in a group of which everybody she'd lived around loathed with an unwavering passion. And initially, I have to admit, even Emeray Essence was starting to believe it. Crowds looked at me in unison, like a grand waltz between me and the world. They smiled, shouted my name, held a hand out to touch me. Nobody was trying to throw a punch. Nobody was trying to ruin my day with a glare.
Of all the grace and open arms I got in the beginning, however, the honeymoon period always has to come to an end. I'd never been loved long enough to even know a honeymoon period, much less the it wouldn't last forever.
But I do now.
Three months have passed since we lost Foster, and the world is on edge. There is nothing like losing someone to realize how messed up everything you're left with is. Foster was an irreplaceable part of the Famouxââthe part that kept everything fun, and brighter, and sunnier in any sort of raincloud we faced. There was no man who could make you smile like Foster Farrand could. In his absence, and in this ongoing, absolutely merciless winter, we are quickly realizing that there never will be, never again. The weather is as bad and raging and desolate as our spirits.
It's been the worst for the members and I. Three months, and the scabs haven't healed yet; the scars haven't surfaced. We keep picking at our wounds and they start bleeding again, and become a scab once more. It's never ending. We've even reverted to past statesââones we used to wear before we donned new faces and names.
Like Emilee, I can't fall asleep anymore like I used to. At first, there was too much to think of, too many things to consider, too many nightmares of the Fishbowl to keep me up for centuries. It took until much later before I stopped thinking of how it could've been different and instead thought about how there was nothing I could do to reverse that night. There came a moment when I had to realize nothing was going to change. Blind hope is nothing. I knew better nowââbetter than Emilee Parvenu ever believed she did.
I thought accepting that would give me less to think about; would give me enough solace to sleep through the night. And yet, to this day I still can't find peace in sleeping. Whenever I wake, everything falls on me again. The visions return. I see him slumped over the table all over again, the blood everywhere.
The blood, the bullets, the pieces of glass in his ruffled blonde hair.
It's unbearable.
All our moping has made the world a little down, a little bored. They decided that needed something fresh to do to get them united againââfeeling alive again.
And nothing unites the masses better than accumulatively focusing on people you've never met. Nothing makes a down person feel more alive than completely and utterly hating somebody, anybody.
Since Norax didn't allow any of us to stop our schedules to breath after the funeral, we were back in the limelight full-throttle, stumbling and suffering and not nearly at our best. Some pitied us, but others took it as bait. Kaytee sang just the slightest hint off-key at a small event for a group of music critics, and the tabloids absolutely ripped her apart for it. It circulated across the world as her Worst Performance Ever, paired with deprecating articles calling her the monster who cheated on Cartney Kirk. Absolutely harsh, but in some eyes, absolutely necessary.
In fact, Cartney tells me that this moniker isn't much of a surprise. He's found out from the last couple years that people need a monster to spar when they're sad or bored, and that the best monsters are the ones they make themselves. Paintings are pretty and all, he tells me, but you're only proud if you painted it.
And so it the five remaining Famoux members who have to be the monsters, and slowly but surely we are all meeting our makers.
Intricate scrutiny of Chapter's latest candid photos have sparked the most ridiculous accusations of a drug problem. They've never really seen his face strained, or ever noticed a hint of bags under his eyes, and so the moment there's a hint of thatââbam! He must be making reckless decisions. Meanwhile, he just can't sleep either.
If he's bothered by the rumors, he doesn't tell us so. When Norax shows him the photos at our member meetings, Chapter only shrugs, asking aloud, "Well who can blame them?" The fans are noticing traits he's never wornââtraits that the Fissarex usually guards against so long as we're taking proper time to rest. Apparently, sleeplessness does a number on even the most perfect individuals.
Race didn't want to greet a few fans clustered outside the building he was entering, because all they wanted to do when he walked by was remind him about Foster and ask about Kaytee. As a result, people all over the world panicked and called him heartless. He had Norax track down every single fan's name from the cluster and sent them formal apologies. They've yet to be circulated to the public, so as of now, everyone still finds him cruel, especially after the Till rumors.
At Foster's ceremony, someone happened to get a video of he and Till hugging, and suddenly there was unavoidable talk about another inter-Famoux relationship scandal. Race isn't allowed to stand anywhere near Till for fear that more conspiracies will arise due to mere proximity. Kaytee and Till have gone out to lunch everyday do appear friendly and perfectly content. No animosity here!
The rumors don't slow, regardless.
For me, the hate is much different than that of my childhood. It's not what I look like anymoreââit's what I do, how I act. I tried to see Marlon one week, and the world nearly exploded with a cheating rumors. According to Norax, the friendship needed to be extinguished. No more seeing Marlon. Foolish selection of company.
The only company I'm advised to be keeping is Cartney's. My contract makes it impossible to do anything that isn't work-related with Chapter, and being seen anywhere with Race would create too much talk because of his and Cartney's history. With Till and Kaytee making so many public excursions, some fans are starting to believe they've ganged up against meââtwo Famoux girls against one.
With the exception of Cartney, I'm all alone.
Every single day I can't seem to ignore the crippling thought of how if Foster were here, he would've been with me. I suppose that's half the trouble now.
I thought that after the loss we've all experienced, the people would understand if I wasn't constantly smiling on outdoor walks with Cartney Kirk. But I guess that's just my lack of experience in the constant public eye coming out. Instead of understanding, they chock my sadness up to trouble in paradise. They decide we must be fakeââa plant from Cartney's management team. (And as true as that may be, it's not something the world should be catching onto.) They bring back photos of Cartney and a smiling Kaytee McKarrington and proclaim to one another about how great those days used to be. Emeray Essence is just so blue, they say. It's been months already, and she's still only wearing black. It's almost as if she loved Foster, or something.
That's the kicker. There's a growing population of fans who believe that I was the reason Foster and Marilynââtheir most coveted coupleââbroke up before everything in the Fishbowl. Just another hidden relationship they didn't know about.
Before they found out about Kaytee and Race, the public never knew it was possible for us to be hiding things. Now that they do, however, they're trying to be detectives and find hidden relationships where they don't exist. Everything we do is a clue. Everything we say can be bended to fit the narrative.
If I have learned anything from both Carstan and these fans, it is that hate is like a trainwreck. Once the car has started teetering off course, it is near impossible to stop it without some destruction along the way. When we make even the slightest diversion, there are no pliable means of extinguishing the hatred that thousands, no, millions of Famoux fans may have in store for each one of us. There is no amount of words that can stop a moving train on its way to crashing and burning. Words, I've found, don't always have that kind of healing power.
But throw a couple sticks, place a couple stones on those once fresh, glistening tracks and you've only got enough leverage to create turbulence. Turbulence doesn't help you hit the breaks any. All that's left to become when a train cannot break is an unstoppable force, and an unstoppable force's screeching crash of halt is never all too pleasing.
Thus, the best I can doââwhat any of us can do, with all the new rumors and lies and tension between the Famoux and the worldââis live on through the stoning. We can only lift up our chins and remind ourselves how we must be elevated to some degree if they are trying to knock us down.
Nowadays I reckon that the longer I can postpone the evident crash ending of my celebrity life, the better for me. The longer I can maintain my patience and shut my mouth, the better for everybody. It shouldn't be too hard. Even before all this I was used to suffering through life. This time there are things worth it. This time, I have people who care about meââNorax, Till, Kaytee and Race, Cartney, Callan, and yes, definitely Chapter Stones. I have people to be concerned over. I have people concerned about me.
For the past three months, Cartney's is the hand I've had to hold, and patience is the action I've had to practice. Every day is a new opportunity to crash completely, yet every day I manage escape the inescapable fate. I wouldn't exactly call it a win, but it's the best prize I've been given.
For a while, we dissolve this way. Slip right into the routine. Get up, take a deep breath, brace the turbulence.
And then, abrupt like a train crashââ
Everything changes.
xxx
IT HAS BEGUN.
This wasn't the "Perfect for Valentine's Day" chapter I mentioned in my Wattpad message, but I realized that chapter one is no where near good enough to post today. I'm hoping this little preface suffices!
I am so excited to begin this journey with you. I've accomplished more than I could've ever dreamed of with The Famoux, from a million reads to a Watty Award to ranking number TEN in the Story of The Year contest. Honestly, I don't think I've nearly done enough good in this world to deserve what I've been given, so I want to do everything I can to express my gratitude. I want to read your stories. I want to make you a character in my book. I want to exchange all-caps messages about a new song or whatever is on your mind.
I want you to know that I love you, and that I'm never going to (falsely) assume that what I've been able to accomplish puts me on some sort of caliber above you. It makes me completely livid when I see a writer treat their readers poorly. I know very well that your life doesn't revolve around my Friday updates, and that there are plenty other stories you frequent just as much as mine. That being said, I am so thankful that you give my story your time, because all of my time goes into writing it. The fact that you care enough to be here at book 2 with me is beyond anything I could've ever hoped for.
Well, with that, I believe that's all I have for you this Valentine's Day. I can't wait to show you chapter 1. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that I post a lot about a handful of certain scenes I cannot write for the life of me. Luckily, I push right through my comfort zone IMMEDIATELY!
The rest of the character interviews from book 1 will continue to be posted throughout this whole month. Those are much harder to do than I anticipated! Don't archive book 1 yet!!
That's all for now. Enjoy your Valentine's Day, you wonderful human being. And remember this:
Sticks and Stones may break your bones, but haters make you famoux.
Stay classy, stay classix.