Aura In LaLaLand Read online

  Sitting in what can only be described as the world’s largest bathroom, which takes up a majority of Monroe’s second story, Aura sighs, staring at the stiff cocktail that Monroe’s makeup artist and sometimes assistant, Vega, has set in front of her. She doesn’t want to keep drinking: all that champagne from earlier had made her groggy, not to mention the fact that she wanted to stay upright for her party.

  Besides, she was feeling a little nervous, mainly about the guys, but also the fact that she had never been to a club before. Ugh, yes, you have! It was as if her inner voice and the glass were shouting ‘Drink me! Drink me and you’ll remember, you’re not as lame as you think!’ Aura sighs, picking up the cocktail and taking a sip.

  “Don’t you make decent money now, Monroe? Why must you continue drinking cheap whiskey?” Aura says with a laugh and Monroe blows a giant cloud of cigarette smoke that surprisingly doesn’t make Aura cough, and she realizes she must be used to it by now. God, Monroe is such a ginormous brat, America’s bad girl, and for some reason I just love her more than most things.

  She giggles as the star alternates between Fleetwood Mac and gangster rap, dancing with a cigarette in one hand and a curling iron in the other, swaying her hips to the beat. She takes another sip, trying to remember how their friendship got here, and is only picking up bits and pieces; getting escorted out of a club and narrowly escaping paparazzi, she and Monroe starring in one of Monroe’s music videos together… She remembers that the video has nearly a billion hits on something called YouTube. But how did it evolve into this?

  “Monroe, will you tell Vega the story of how we met?” she deflects, and Monroe just eats it up. She takes a shot of something Aura thinks looks rather rough, but not for Monroe, who simply adjusts her nose ring, clears her throat, and puffs her chest, ready for a tale.

  “Once upon a time, in a land very, very close to here, little miss Princess Aura was invited to her first real awards show!” Aura gasps, the recollection shoots from her long term memory, shrouded in time travel dust of some sort as it heads straight to her short term.

  “It was the teen awards show! This was right before I started filming ‘Girl Gang,’ I was only there because Alexis brought me! But they made me sit by myself instead of with-”

  “Ah-hem!” Monroe interrupts. “Excuse me, I thought I was the one telling this story?”

  “Fine!” Aura huffs, impatiently waiting for the rest of her Monroe memories to come flooding back to her.

  “So, Aura was seated at a table different from her beautiful little dolls, and was all alone. She was afraid! She was frightened, she felt 3 inches tall!”

  “I really don’t remember it being this dramatic,” Aura teases with a smirk.

  “Nonsense! She just wanted to go home until, finally, her queen joined her!” Monroe breaks momentarily from her big, loud, and obscenely phony presenter voice to mention, “The queen in this story is me, bitches.”

  “And you’ve been friends ever since?” Vega asks, hoping the story is over so she can actually have Monroe sit still to get her face done.

  “I’m not done!! Okay, where was I? Oh yes! Princess Aura and the Queen, for some godforsaken reason, had no dates that night. So they sat together and talked and talked until the time had come to go. The Queen, by no fault of her own, the show was rigged, didn’t win best new pop artist that year, but that’s beside the point! They thought they would never see each other again!”

  Another memory seems to chip off and float into Aura’s consciousness. This really can’t be a dream, she begins to internalize, I don’t think you can feel so awake, so alive, and remember things from the past so clearly.

  “The after party!” she declares. ”I didn’t know you were in front of me, as we walked into that party. I stepped on your dress and you almost killed me!” she exclaims with a laugh, it was so fresh in her mind now.

  “The Queen’s claws were sharpened, she was ready to pounce! She’d heard a little rip in the seam at the bottom of her scarlet gown, the tear angered her! She whipped around fiercely, in attack mode, and sees to her surprise, that it was not some drunk kid’s show star turned hot mess strumpet but rather, the beautiful, agreeable Princess Aura that had so won over the Queen earlier that night.”

  “I apologized profusely, of course,” Aura adds to Vega.

  Monroe cackles manically, “And I said, ‘Bitch, this dress ain’t even mine!”

  Aura stuffs a hot pink cupcake in her mouth and washes it down with a healthy gulp of whiskey coke. Fuchsia sprinkles glitter her lips as she beams at Vega and says, “Couple of open bar hours later and we’ve been best friends ever since.”

  Monroe hands the curling iron over to Vega who lets out a sigh of relief, starting to curl the singer’s hair into something remotely presentable. The Queen leans over to Aura, wrapping her glittery arms around her shoulders. “I could never stay mad at you girl, even when you ripped that hot gown. Even when you moved to New York and abandoned me,” she says, suddenly sullen.

  “How could I possibly abandon a pop star constantly on tour, hmm?” Aura asks with a smirk, smacking her sugar crystallized lips on Monroe’s cheek. “Focus on the good, girl, now we’re together. And when we’re together, we’re unstoppable!”

  Surging with a refreshed sense of confidence, bestie by her side, Aura pops up from her chair and grabs her bag, shaking out the little black dress.

  Monroe turns and watches her inspect the garment with a microsmile, completely tickled with herself. “A little wrinkled, Aur?” She asks innocently.

  “Yeah, a little…” she replies with a sour grimace.

  Monroe cackles, standing up and dancing over to her. “Good thing you’re not wearing it tonight, buttercup.”

  “I’m not?”

  “There’s been a change of plans, birthday goddess,” Monroe admits while running to her massive walk-in closet. She can no longer hide her shifty eyes and cunning birthday plan, or at least certain details of it.

  Vega groans in frustration, “Aura, will you at least get back in the chair and sit long enough to let me do your makeup? Maybe your hair? I’ll even put a tiara on you if you promise not to get up, I think Monroe’s a lost cause…”

  Aura laughs; she can feel the confidence blooming inside her once again, and knows that if she does somehow wake up tomorrow as a still insecure sixteen year old, that she will have wanted tonight to be worth it. Wanted the memories of tonight to last ten years if they had to. “I’ll sit! But no tiara, darlin’, I’m already wearing one.”

  “Metaphysical, I dig it,” Vega starts massaging makeup primer in little circles along Aura’s cheekbones, who’s starting to relax a little into the chair until Monroe bursts back into the cavernous powder room with the power of a thousand suns.

  “Like I said, change of plans!” she proclaims, holding up a white mini dress in each hand, one slightly different from the other.

  “A white party?” Aura whispers, a little in shock, not just at the wardrobe change but also at the fact that she even knows what that is. Monroe justs nods vigorously, not the least bit guilty that her agreement is only a half truth. Aura will just have to find out the rest tonight, knowing that deep down, she really does love surprises, even if she won’t admit it.

  A stranger that no amount of alcohol would help her remember exclaims, “I love you!” while the girls are gathering their fast food dinner from the In ‘n Out Burger while the driver waits in the car out front. She feels an almost high from the adoration mixed with the junk food and, well, whatever Monroe was pouring from a little silver flask into their diet cokes. She wasn’t even mad that Alexis and the rest of the gang had to take a rain check on the fancy birthday meal they had planned for her, something Monroe was rather shocked about.

  “Why aren’t you pissed at them?” Monroe had asked as they pulled up to the burger joint. She didn’t have an answer, but something in the air told her it was going to be an amazing night, gourmet dinner plans or not.

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sp; The girls run from the restaurant in their skimpy, skin tight bandage dresses with smiles on and their hands full of greasy take out bags. Aura almost can’t wait and starts to dig her hand in the bag before the car door is even open; it’s already dark out and she is decidedly ravenous. You can’t just eat like this whenever you want. You’re gonna undo everything I’ve worked so hard for. She hears that catty inner voice instruct her and she replies snidely under her breath, “I don’t care!”

  “Oh no! This won’t do!” exclaims their driver, a man in his late 30’s with wildly curly lemon colored locks, crazy eyes, and a fabulous purple velvet jacket to match. He runs to the trunk and grabs two navy folded blankets, shaking them out vigorously before wrapping them around each girl. “I’d hate to see your beautiful dresses become an In ‘n Out casualty!”

  Chapter Six

  Their dresses survive the ride to the club, and Aura doesn’t worry an inch about her full tummy, her dress being shorter than her fingertips by far, or fret about any friend, boy or otherwise. She wears a perma-grin as Monroe leads her through the snaking line in front of the club and up the stairs to an expansive VIP section that Aura has very little time to marvel at. Suddenly, she’s in a room of people, and she’s imbibed enough spiked soda to magically recognize nearly all of them.

  “Happy birthday!” All the beautiful people shout, also all dressed in white, and Aura feels like fireworks are going off in her brain as they all grin at her. Her head spins as she lunges in to hug each person on the front lines of her greeting committee.

  Of course, all the stars of ‘Beautiful Deception’ are there in front to squeeze her tight, but as she moves along the line of gorgeous people –Alexis, Taylor, Sage – that she’d spent the morning with, she spots Quinn. The tiny, dark haired beauty with the giant brown eyes and impossibly perfect red lips and raven locks, styled to perfection, squeezes Aura with her little bird arms in a somehow breath-draining grip.

  Her first instinct is to be insanely jealous of the gorgeous girl, the one she had spent the whole morning watching on TV. She just plays Liam’s love interest on the show, Aura. They’re close, but you know they’re not an item. Fine, not competition, Aura allows, listening to the supposed voice of reason, but decides to keep the actress at arm’s length, if possible.

  Next to Quinn is, of course, Liam. She can’t breathe. The Liam. Her heart skips a beat or three as he flashes his beautiful, pearly white smile at her, his dark hair perfect, blue eyes sparkling in the club lights as he outstretches his arms. Her eyes seem glued to his until she breaks the stare, her arms sliding under and around him. Warm breath on her ear, he whispers, “Happy birthday, Gorgeous,” to her before breaking the embrace.

  “Liam…” is all she can breathe out before Alexis is grabbing her by the wrist, dragging her around the nightclub to show her how many of the friends on her impressively long guest list had actually arrived early.

  She grins at the thankfully now familiar looking face of each person that hugs her, wishing her a happy birthday. She also finally gets a chance to look around the large, black room to realize that not only was every guest wearing white or some shade of it, but also that the leather couches and bar were all white, and everything else surrounding her was pop after flash of bright color, illuminating all the ivory furniture in the brightest shades of rainbow.

  “Down the rabbit hole,” the girl of the hour gasps as she spots the 12-foot tall orange, purple, and blue mushrooms that have accompanying ladders so people can sit on them, 15-foot poppies and roses that lead the way to the expansive dance floor area, topiaries in impressive shapes, even servers roaming around taking drink orders dressed as flamingos and teapots.

  “It’s amazing,” she whispers in wonder before spotting her cake, a 5-foot, tiered masterpiece, a Mad Hatter cake engineered to look like it’s toppling over, and her breath is taken away, officially.

  “The best is, as always, yet to come Aur,” Alexis winks, scratching her best friend’s back sweetly as the birthday girl’s head practically spins to behold everything in the room that Alexis has expertly coordinated.

  Oof! With a huff, Alexis smiles as Aura unexpectedly traps her in a tight embrace. How did I get so lucky? Aura wonders happily until a throat is cleared roughly behind her and Alexis breaks her grip with an expression of polite, pretend enthusiasm for whoever’s behind her.

  Aura whips around and her face drops as she sees the three women staring at her with expectant faces. She recognizes them instantly, not just from earlier today on their DVD cover but, unbelievably, from what feels like nearly every day for the last four years. The squeal that escapes her lungs startles even her as she lunges at the girls with such intensity that she nearly knocks them backwards.

  “Happy Birthday, Pookie!” The girls laugh as Aura fuses them into one tight little cuddle puddle. The closeness, the affection she feels for these three very different girls surprises her, and at the same time, it doesn’t. She peels back a little to get a closer look at their smiling faces.

  She looks at Whit first, as people usually do, who is not only their writer, director, producer, and star, but also friend, confidant and fearless leader. The dirty blonde sports a courageous pixie crop and has a curvaceous, non-Hollywood apple shape that she never hides but rather, flaunts quite well. She is incredibly intelligent, opinionated, and always unapologetic for who she is. Aura can feel right away how in awe of her friend she has always been, and yet a sense of anxiety and time-sensitive decisions clearly lie beneath.

  Lacie, the party girl and social media icon, girly, goofy, and always there for her; the memories of late night laughs and TV binges with her flow through Aura’s consciousness. She makes her instantly at ease, her spastic energy and loud mouth, her bleached blonde locks contrasting with her thick, dark eyebrows. But little, she is very fierce.

  Nina, whom Aura always considered the serious one, was also ferociously caring and gave the very best advice, with her natural beauty, smooth honey brown hair and giant copper eyes that always seem to see straight through her bullshit.

  Whit starts in on her typical statement about how hard life is without Aura in New York with them, but all Aura can think about is how much Rowan would love this party. Why couldn’t Rowan be my co-star? I’m sure I love these girls but I just… Lacie and Nina seem to have their minds on other things, as well.

  “Aura…” Nina whispers with her eyes wide, snapping Aura from her Rowan-centered thoughts.

  Whit huffs a little, annoyed with the interruption. Lacie’s eyes open even wider than Nina’s.

  “Code red Aura, code red!” Lacie gasps. “Hot for the boy next door, right behind you,” Lacie grabs her by the arms and spins her around with a slight shove at the end and Aura is tumbling in her silvery, holographic stilettos straight into the arms of a smiling Liam. Alexis seems to have disappeared and the gorgeous Liam has taken her place. Her hand on his shoulder steadies her and he laughs a little.

  “You okay?” he asks with a grin and she nods, his ashy blue eyes leaving her as close to speechless as she gets. “I noticed you didn’t have a drink,” his eyes sparkle as he hands her a martini glass filled with a sky blue cocktail of some sort, “The bartender called it ‘The Alice’ and I just had to,” he grins. “Cause it all revolves around her, right?”

  “Right… how fitting,” she mumbles.

  A violently faux COUGH COUGH comes from behind them.

  Aura takes a sip and almost chokes. Scrum, the girls. Of course they want to meet Liam. A vision of a text message she’d sent them not two days ago flashes across her mind. ‘I think Sebastian’s out, and Liam’s in. Like, I think he’s… the one!’ Ugh, am I always this annoying?

  “Liam,” Aura starts, gently touching his arm, leading him over to her costars. “Whit, Lacie, Nina.” She could physically feel him winning the girls over with just his perfect, gleaming smile alone.

  “Of course, girls…” he shakes each girl’s hand. “So nice to meet you, I am such a
fan of the show. I mean who isn’t?”

  “Oh, I love you already,” Whit says and a prickle of sweat creeps across Aura’s brow bone. Something tells her the girls are bound to embarrass her at any minute. Her mind screams. Abort mission. Abort! Abort!

  “Aura’s got us all hooked on ‘Beautiful Deception’ too,” Nina beams.

  “Who’s the killer?” “Is your character going to jail next season?” “I think I know why Aura wanted to come back to LA so badly!”

  This is it. This is how I die. Death by embarrassment. Perfect.

  Before Liam can respond to the ridiculous questions with more than an awkward smile, Alexis and Monroe swarm Liam, quickly request his help, and whisk him away. Thank you, thank you, she attempts to project to them mentally.

  She attempts to move away from said awkwardness, towards a dark, expansive dance floor lit only with the most colorful rainbow lights, but the trio follow her. The sight of a handsome, young DJ in white rabbit ears and a tailcoat playing a remix of Monroe’s biggest hit makes it so she can’t help but crack a small smile.

  Before they can pass the point of no return to where no one can hear anyone, even while yelling, the girls stop her and grin as they sway back and forth to the music. She takes a deep breath and can almost relax a little when the girls all start asking questions at the same time.

  Sheez, do they always do this? How have I stayed sane over the past few years? Aura asks herself. She gets a nearly immediate response from herself, of all people. You do it too, trust me, that’s the only way this works.

  She has to take multiple long sips of her blue Alice concoction before the questions make any sense at all, and then she wishes right away that she could un-drink them. A hot panic spreads in a pink flush across her skin as she recalls upcoming events.