Chapter 9                  Liam POV                  Day 6 of Tour: Los Angeles

It was the next day; late Thursday morning to be exact. I was just cleaning up the sink after I had shaved, glimpsing up into the mirror. Louis’s reflection came closer. He leaned into the doorway of the bathroom that we shared.

“Harry still isn’t answering his phone,” He told me.

I turned to face him. “Niall?”

Lou shook his head no.

“That’s weird. Did you try texting Charlotte?”

“She accidently left her phone with me.”

“Oh that’s right.”

Louis dipped his head to the front door. “Do you want me to go check on them?”

“That would be good. Tell them we have to be in the lobby by eleven. Oh, their key’s on the nightstand.”

“Thanks,” Louis nodded and took off.

About two minutes later Louis was back. His eyes were wide and his mouth cracked into a grin. “Liam: you HAVE to see this.”

My brows raised and my stomach did a flip. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll let you see for yourself, man.” He passed me the plastic room key and slapped me on the shoulder.

With a nervous scowl on my face I pounded to the room across the hall. I came up to the big oak door; taking a deep breath. I set the key in the slot and quickly pulled it out, hearing a little click and seeing a small green light. Slowly and quietly, I pushed the door inwards…

I ran a hand through my hair and sighed.

Feathers littered the ground; settled along the dresser tops like thick blankets of dust. Charlotte was curled up in the fetal position in the middle of the room, her two stuffed animals curled to her chest. Two mattresses were piled up on one bedframe; with Harry lying on the very top. Niall was on the couch, wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and his Goofy hat.

“GOOD MORNING!” I hollered.

All three of them sprung to life.

“Liam…?” Charlotte mumbled.

“Yes. Now everyone get up,” I said even louder.

Niall rubbed away at his eyes with his fists. “That was fun.”

“I’m sure it was, but we have things to do today. So go make yourself pretty.” I walked towards Harry. I reached up and yanked at his arm, which he blindly tried to slap me with.

“It was like… the world’s best sleepover,” Charlotte yawned. She wrinkled her nose. “I wish I would have done more sleeping, though.”

“How late were you up?”

“Erm,” Niall glanced at the analog clock that dangled above the plasma TV. “About seven.”

I raised a critical brow, “So you got three hours of sleep.”

“We’re big boys, we can handle it.”

“I’m not a big boy,” Charlotte whined, stuffing her face into Flounders fluffy blue and yellow fuzz. “I’m tired, Andy. I want to go back to sleep.”

“Nope.” In five big strides I was towering above her tiny body huddled on the floor. “You have classes today, lovely.”

She flipped her head up at me. “Come on!”

I puckered my lips and set my hands on my hips. “I told your mum that I would make sure you passed those classes. You can’t miss two days in a row, missy.”

“I don’t feel like it today.”

I stared down at her innocent face. Her thick lashes and eyebrows framed her pleading chocolate eyes. I really hated to be the bad guy. But it was times like this that I honestly had no choice.

“I’m sorry. You're going to be sitting in my room on those courses today; no option.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Fine. I don’t want to, but I will.”

“And you two,” I directed my attention to Niall and Harry. “We have to be in the lobby in an hour. You might want to think about putting on some clothes and showering the feathers out of our curls.”

I walked back to the front door of the suite. Harry jumped from the high tower of beds and sauntered to the bathroom, which happened to be right next to where I was standing.

Before I ducked out of the room I caught Charlotte’s eye. “Stop by room when you’re ready. I can get you set up on my laptop before the rest of us head out. Alright?”

She opened her mouth wide; a huge yawn escaping her pink lips. “Yeah. Sounds good.”

Charlotte POV

I leaned in closer to the laptop, my eyes squinting behind my glasses. The math problems on the screen made no sense at all; just a bunch of big numbers smacked under the square root symbol and jammed into a set of parenthesis.

“I hate math,” I told Flounder. He sat wordlessly still. “I mean, since when are letters in math problems? Y equals MX plus B…What?”

Crinkling my nose, I started to chew on my cracked lips. I glanced to the clock in the far right corner of Liam’s fancy laptop, satisfied that I had spent five hours studying already. It was four o’clock.

“I can take a break, right?” I picked up my dog stuffed animal and baby talked her.

“Good God I’m losing my mind,” I thought with a cringe as I carefully set the innanament toy back in my lap.

I turned around in my swivel chair, throwing my feet up on the table. My pink and blue Christmas socks had little holes in the fabric so my toes peaked out. I traced my finger across the mouse pad and turned up the song on Itunes; which just happened to be I Want by One Direction. It had always been one of my favorites, even long before I met them. It was really strange listening to their songs now though. They weren’t just singers that I liked; they were people that I loved.

I minimized the page Liam had brought up with my classes. I decided to take a quick break, just to calm my stressed out math nerves. And maybe I could have Niall help me out when he got back later. Any of the guys, really. They were all smarter than I was.

I pulled up a new page on the internet, ready to do some random looking around. Cat videos always made me happy!

I was ready to click on the YouTube link when I saw the Google search bar lining the top of the page.

A crazy idea popped into my head.

Biting down on my lip, I positioned my fingers above the keyboard. With my fingers flying across the keys I typed in: CHARLOTTE HEMMING.

The few milliseconds it took to bring up the results were the longest moments in my entire life. What were people saying about me? Would I even be on there?

MILLIONS OF RESULTS.

My heart started to do jumping jacks.

I curiously clicked on the top result:

THE ONE DIRECTION BLOG!!!!

I felt my stomach turn to stone as I read:

“Hey blog followers that I love!

It’s Maggie here with your weekly up1Date! The winner of the One Song contest has been announced! If you haven’t heard about her lately, her name’s Charlotte Hemming. At first I was like, oh that’s cool. But have you seen her? She hangs on those poor boys like an annoying leech or something! Now she has sweet Niall wrapped around her middle finger. Apparently the two of them are like, really serious. COME ON! How serious could they be? The slut doesn’t look a day over fourteen. I promise you, she’s going to break his heart. There are so many other faithful Directioners that deserve to be in her shoes. From what I hear, she never even liked One Direction to begin with! She probably didn’t even write I Would by herself: if she had any part in it at all. Don’t worry Niall; I’m willing to be your shoulder to cry on…”

My breath caught in my throat and my lip started to drip red. They couldn’t all be like that… could they? I clicked the back arrow, scrolling down on the page and clicking on the next one.

Hot tears stung the corners of my eyes. I was drawn to the negative; never even noticing the positives. The hurtful words and nasty phrases hit me like a dozen bullets to the heart.

“A waste of time, if you ask me!”

“Such an ungrateful bitch.”

“What do they see in her? All I see is a chubby cheeked, money sucking, lying cow.”

“Such white trash!”

“Charlotte Hemming got Niall Horan? Does he know she has herpes?”

“Skank.”

“Her hair is like a braid of dead straw. I own goats prettier than her!”

“Worthless.”

“She’s about as interesting as a documentary on dirt.”

“Dirty conniving slut…”

“Someone get this girl a pair of tweezers for those rats above her eyes!”

“Talk about a grade A whore.”

“How could anyone ever love THAT?!?”

It was the last one that sent me over the edge.

My dad had said the same thing when I was seven.

The girls at school would say things like that all the time.

Blurry tears filled my eyes. I slowly and carefully closed the laptop lid, trying to erase my mind of what I had seen. My head rattled with awful pictures of myself; head covered in straw and an ugly fat face. I glanced down at my old Oregon State sweatshirt that covered my entire body. Was I really a slut?

Slowly, as if in a bad dream, I wandered over to Liam’s bed. Lady and Flounder were clutched to my chest. I crawled up into his sheets; hoping his familiar scent would comfort me.

It only made things worse.

Who did I think I was? I didn’t deserve to be here with One Direction. I was only a lucky fan who overstayed her welcome… and was pitied on.

I stood up and threw on my ballet flats. I set my stuffed animals on the bed next to my phone and purse. I left the room; not even bothering to grab my room key. I took the elevator down to the lobby. I clambered out of the doors, tears staining my cheeks. People turned and stared at me; only making me cry harder.

I ran back into the doors and clicked the highest floor.

When I got to the rooftop I was immediately hit with a wave of fresh air. The sun shone down bright and the birds sang happily.

I wiped under my round glasses lenses and sulked over to a table and chair set. It was tucked away in a corner next to a storage unit, under the shade of a black umbrella. I pulled out the wicker chair and slowly eased into it.

I tucked the backs of my feet under me, pulling my knees up to my chest. I covered my face and cried into the fabric of my jeans: where I spent the next four hours beating myself up inside.