Free The Shattered Image Series (I Was a Teen Idol) by Kristie Langford Page A

you’re not homeless. And pinch your cheeks, Jasmine; you’re paler than a piece of printing paper.”
     
    There was no use fighting her at that point. If we didn’t do as she said she would do it for us and it would probably hurt worse. I pinched my cheeks while Mia combed through the tangled, light brown strands of hair that was identical to mine. However, her hair was probably messier than mine was. She had roughhoused with the boys from the foster home we had just been bounced from. The woman there just couldn’t handle Mia’s wild nature anymore and wherever Mia went, I went. It was just how things worked. I couldn’t imagine not being by her side. We were lucky, we had made it nine years without being separated, some siblings weren’t as lucky.
     
    Once we looked as good as we were going to get. Patricia hurried us inside to wait for our turn before the deciding panel. The waiting area had been chaos and didn’t help to settle my nerves. There were kids from the ages of three to fifteen there. All of us had similar backgrounds, we had been in the foster care system for all of our lives, and we were the ones that no one wanted. There would be no parents coming to try to get us back and that’s what they wanted. Someone who was not wanted, so that they didn’t have to worry about parents trying to get their kid back once they became famous.
     
    Mia had us practice the dance we had put together. We were going to sing and dance for them and we hoped that it would be good enough. Patricia was counting on us to get the contract. If we didn’t, we would have been sent off to a different county for another foster home and she would no longer be the social worker in charge of our case. If we couldn’t stay in the county we had been in for nine years, where the social workers knew us, there was no guarantee that we would be sent to the same foster home in the next county. We could be separated and there was less than a fifty percent chance we would be put back together later on. So, even though I didn’t want it, the fame and being an idol, it was necessary if I wanted to stay by Mia’s side.
     
    “Jasmine and Mia!” called out the assistant that took the children back to the audition room. Patricia pushed us forward and toward the woman. I looked back at her and she made the motion for me to pinch my cheeks again. I did and Mia followed my example. We followed the woman back to the room and before we walked inside, we placed smiles on our faces.  “This is Mia and Jasmine. They are here for a callback audition.”
     
    We stood in front of the panel that consisted of two women and three men. I don’t know what their job titles were, but their intense stares unnerved me. I involuntarily grabbed for Mia’s hand and luckily, she didn’t shy away. Maybe she had been nervous too.
     
    “Show us what you two got,” said the man on the far left. He had sounded tired and like he didn’t want to be there any longer.
     
    We got into our positions and started to dance, there wasn’t any music for us to dance and sing too, but it was better that way, we didn’t have the music for when we practiced either. Mia took the lead singing; I was just her back up. She was always the better singer. We finished our song and dance with splits and smiles on our face.
     
    There was no clapping or smiles on the panels’ faces. We stood slowly and one of the women leaned over and whispered something in the man’s ear. He nodded and whispered something back. As a group, they discussed us in hushed tones and the butterflies in my stomach had grown worse than they were before we had auditioned. Finally, the man on the far left nodded and looked at the woman who had brought us back to the room. “Mary-Anne, take them back to waiting room B.” She nodded and left the room. We curtsied to the panel, like Patricia had told us to, and followed the woman.
     
    Waiting room B was much smaller than the room we had waited in before