*-- the broad in the bookstacks

[Channing Whitaker]

VALKYRIE, CALIFORNIA, BORDERS BOOKSTORE, JANUARY 2008

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-----”last stair.” channing said aloud, hefting her side of the box once more in her hands in an attempt to get a better hold on it. her foot finally found the last stair and she nearly dropped the box in relief. four floors up was certainly a killer. channing had movers that were pretty much hired to do the very job she was doing at this moment but with the dark clouds she had seen looming overhead, the young starlet figured that a helping hand wouldn’t kill her. after all she really didn’t want to risk surrendering her things to torrential rain. the movers took the elevator, bringing her boxes in and stacking them high, moving twenty or so with one push of a button. it was a good process, a clever one at that, but it was a little too slow for channing’s taste and a little too slow to be tempting the weather. she didn’t want to leave anything to chance. so, being the “normal” teenager that she was, channing grabbed a piece of that box and she heaved. thankfully about halfway up to her floor some nice boy had taken pity on her and helped her the rest of the way up. getting things done on her own was going to have to be something that channing did a little more often. it wasn’t necessarily something that channing would be complaining about either. that was after all the entire point of packing up her things and moving from her parent’s mansion in los angeles to a cozy, yet snug little dorm room on the valkyrie academy campus. she wanted to get away. she wanted to pretend to be normal even if it was supposed to be just for her “break.” that was just who growing up in the spotlight had turned her into. instead of being like other children in search of fortune and their fifteen minutes of fame, channing was getting back to a place where she could put down some roots to help her distinguish what really defined normal. after all this time channing had portrayed many a “normal” person’s role in films but had she ever been one? had she ever gone running to a pond out back and dove in with her day clothes still on? had she ever had a sleepover at someone’s house? the answer to all of the above and many more unasked questions was no. channing had spent the entirety of her life jumping from one project to the next. while it hadn’t been a problem back when she was a kid and she’d enjoyed it, now that someone else had taken the reins all of the fun had been sucked out of a career she so enjoyed.

-----the amount to which her life had lacked normality had been slightly ridiculous before and up until now she really hadn’t cared. her career really was just taking off. what was sad about that? only the fact that she was sixteen years old and already burnt out. it seemed as though she was the only one to care too. her family was made up of people in this business. her father was a second generation, award winning actor. her mother was a supermodel-turned-actress. people from other branches of her family were in the business as well. her uncles her both directors, producers, and one owned a small independent music company, her cousins were all aspiring somethings, and one cousin in particular was channing’s agent. lola. she hadn’t had as many breaks in her career as young channing had but her one break had indeed come in the shape of a pre-teen budding actress in need of supervision, i.e. channing. who knew what it was that lola had actually set out to do in this business but taking on the role of an agent and controlling channing’s life had gone relatively well for her. it’s not to say that channing was ungrateful, per se. lola was family and channing cared for her the same way she would anyone else who was related to her in some fashion. it was the senseless need for lola to take charge of every aspect of her life that drove channing bonkers. she wouldn’t normally say it in such brash of terms but her damn cousin was doing everything she could to squelch her career. she constantly tried to make channing out to be something she wasn’t, so much to the point that she would even be so bold as to pick out her outfit for the day, something that was as outlandish and anti-channing as could possibly be found. she would release statements in channing’s name that would cause some kind of controversy, etc. it was like she enjoyed toying with the fragile nature of a person’s acting career. I mean lindsay lohan may very well have made a good run but even that reputation is dead in the water. even if by some miracle in the future she gets her act together, she’ll always be known as the drinking, drug addicted, car crashing imbecile who used her fame as a springboard for her addictions and as a lifesaver when she came face to face with her suckish reality.

-----that in particular was the last kind of person channing wanted to fake being. true that lola had pushed her into a few movies that had indeed gone well, because channing would never sacrifice herself in a project to make it any worse simply because she wasn’t happy. though lola seemed to want nothing more than to smother her career, at the same time she’d done a lot of good for channing’s celebrity. channing didn’t so much mind making the movies her cousin signed her up for, what she did mind was the lack of say she had in the matter. it was like she was a puppet in a box her cousin could whip out any time the situation called for it, happily stuffing her back inside the dark gloom until the next time she became of use. it was strange. maybe channing’s ideas of what family was was a little more…caring. it was just unsettling to time and time get the feeling that her cousin was doing anything she could to ruin her. call the teenager paranoid but what other options did she have? it was just because she was a minor. apparently she hadn’t the sense enough to make decisions for herself. emancipating herself and going out on her own had two downsides, one she’d be separating herself from parents who hadn’t done anything wrong other than trusting a shady family member with the career of their own daughter. it didn’t seem right to fault them for her cousin’s mistakes though they seem to have made a point of always believing lola over herself. two, channing didn’t want to be on her own. she wanted to be able to have some say in what projects she took on, sure, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be on her own. channing loved her parents and she had no doubt that something would happen media-wise to blow it all out of proportions and take anything she said out of context. no, the safest bet was for channing to just muscle through it until she turned eighteen and could politely tell her cousin to shove off, even if waiting was the absolute last thing she wanted to do.

-----she headed backwards down the hall until she reached her single, both she and the kind boy walking in until they found a place good enough to put her things. ”thanks for that.” she said with a smile as the guy backed up slightly. ”I don’t know how much further I would have gone without you.” by then the movers had started bringing in the second or third batch of boxes, giving the boy an out which he took. probably a good idea. channing didn’t really want to try to explain why she was moving into the academy at the beginning of the spring semester. that usually only happen with delinquents and failed rehabbers. after about two more hours all of channing’s things were moved to her bedroom and the movers had driven away leaving channing with nothing more than a room filled with boxes, boxes she would have to unload, by herself…ugh. rather than getting to work, channing was more keen to explore the city she now called home. sure she’d likely be sleeping on a bare mattress with her arm as a pillow but she could tackle unpacking another day right? she grabbed her purse and made sure her keys were in tow before she headed out the door, off the academy campus and into the city. she would have to invest in a car later but as of right now she was too excited to explore to let a simple lack of wheels keep her indoors. she slid sunglasses on as she hit the more crowded streets. channing didn’t want to be presumptuous and conceited but she was in a few good movies that might have gotten recognition. the only thing she didn’t want right now was to have to explain herself to a few tourists and wind up doing an impromptu autograph session. her hair was terrible and she looked like she was wearing clothes from last night. not good in her opinion. she turned the sidewalk to see a borders bookstore. boy had it been a while since she picked up a good book. she headed inside, slipping off her sunglasses as she entered the store. she immediately headed toward the fiction section, browsing for a bit before she grabbed a book and plopped her butt down on the carpeted floor beneath her. she sat there for a few minutes before a store clerk came by asking her if he could help to which channing replied ”how do I know if the book’s any good if I don’t get a preview?” she figured that was enough to satisfy him but a few moments later she heard another pair of feet. figuring it was the same guy she spoke without looking up, ”still previewing…”

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status • finished
words • 1902
tagged • OPEN !
clothes • click !
listening to • -- - --.
notes • got a little carried away and it ended weird but anyone feels like jumping in, go for it.

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[Artemis Ellis]

ARTEMIS EVELYN ELLIS



MY LIFE WAS DRIFTING, OOH, OOH, OOH TOO FAR
FROM HOME AND MY GUIDING LIGHT, MY MIND WAS
LIFTING, OOH, OOH, OOH OVER A WAY TO A
MYSTICAL HEIGHT, THEN THE NORTH WIND BLEW SOUTH

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"milo's gonna be late for dinner!" artemis ellis's careless voice rang out into the valkyrie mansion her family called home from where she stood, on the threshold of the front entrance, her head stuck through the door. "oh, and some douche bag keyed joyce's car earlier! bye bye!" she swung the door shut behind her as she walked briskly down the walk to where one of her father's cars was parked in the driveway. she hadn't the slightest idea if her parents - who were presumably in the house but she wasn't completely sure - had actually heard what she had just hollered, but she wasn't much concerned about it. she had tried, hadn't she? besides, they'd find out soon enough; when milo showed up a half hour or so late for dinner (for some reason he cared about that kind of shit), and then whenever one of them happened to take a look at the driver's side door of joyce ellis's car. the thing that artemis was absolutely certain about was that she was definitely not going to waste any more time than absolutely necessary within the premises of the ellis estate.

it was actually part of a little experiment she had going. she was trying to see how much time she could spend away from home before her parents bitched her out and told her that she had to stay x amount of time at home before she went out again. so far she had slept the past three nights at the places of various friends and had only stopped home quickly in the mornings and afternoons to change her clothes. on the first day, her mother had insisted that she eat dinner with the family and a few of her fellow valk mothers. artie had obliged meekly enough, and she was rather glad she had, because it had been most amusing to hear a couple of the women gushing about how their children were so wonderful never gave them an ounce of trouble, ever. because artie knew for a fact that among those "perfect children" there were, most prominently, a guy who sold high end heroine and cocaine, another guy who was completely addicted to that high end heroine and cocaine, and a hardcore party girl who would fuck just about anything with a pulse. it had been all artie could do to not completely choke to death on the pasta she had been in the process of trying to eat. it was a true testament to just how much the teenage population in valkyrie, california, was able to get away with. it was kind of sick, if you asked artie. though she wasn't really one to talk, was she? she was completely certain that her parents didn't know anything about what she was getting up to, because if they did and simply weren't saying anything... well, even they would not sink to shitty parenting of that magnitude. it was quite easy to keep it from them, though. they both kept rather busy schedules, and it was practically effortless to hide herself and many facets of her life from them within the confines of their spacious mansion.

hell, that was probably why it had been so easy to be spending so little time at home. the house was big enough that in a normal day it wasn't entirely unusual for her to hardly see her parents at all. everybody rather seemed to like it that way, too. they could all wrap themselves up in their own affairs and forget about everyone else for a while. artie was almost past the point of having this neglect sting too painfully, partly because she had become accustomed to it and partly because she understood it. the loss of her brother and sister had been more than her parents could take, and even though they were carrying on with their lives, there was a part of them that broken beyond repair, and they just didn't have it in them to... well, she didn't really know of the right word.... it was kind of like they didn't have enough of themselves left to be truly good parents to her. and thus she was able to get away with what she got away with.

she was thinking absently about all of this as she pulled her father's car out of the driveway and started down the street. she didn't really know where she was going... all she knew that she wanted to get a good, big distance away from herself and home as quickly as possible. the only reason she had stopped was so that she could give them the update from milo (who was doubtlessly out somewhere with his girlfriend, sophie... artie didn't even know if he even talked to anyone else anymore) and trade in joyce's keyed car for one of her father's. she had discovered the mild act of vandalism when she had exited the movie theater about a half an hour ago. some pussy had apparently felt like trying to be a bad ass while in the movie theater's parking lot. or maybe there was someone that she had recently pissed off... eh. she couldn't think of anything off the top of her head. so probably not.

she found herself humming absently, driving aimlessly in the commercial area of valkyrie, not quite sure of what she wanted to do. on a complete and total whim, she pulled into the parking lot of borders bookstore. she didn't have the slightest notion of what the fuck she would do there, but what ever. she would figure something out. she almost regretted her decision, however, when she set foot into the building and was hit with its atmosphere, which was too intellectual and black and white for her taste. nevertheless, she pressed onward. after a minute or two of pointless wandering, she found herself in the general area of the nonfiction section, which was pretty much completely deserted. struck by an impulse, she did a quick scan of the region, just to make sure she definitely was alone. she then gathered up an armful of books and set to work. a significant amount of armfuls later, she was finished and reveling in the good luck that had been tossed her way in that no totally square employee or customer had caught her. the end product of her endeavor were the words 'reading aint fun' on the floor, the letters shaped out of books lined up together. yes, it was lame, yes, it was pointless. the only reasoning artie had come up with was a simple question: why the hell not? she then got out of there as quickly as she could without looking too conspicuous, even though for all she knew a security camera had captured the whole thing on tape, which would mean that attempting to deny her guilt would be rather pointless. but, again, why the hell not?

she didn't pay much attention to where she was going as fled the nonfiction section, but soon enough she realized that she had managed to work her way over to the fiction section. cool beans. she spent another couple of minutes wandering around some more, contemplating the idea of trying to shoplift a book, just to see if she could get away with it. the idea was intriguing her more and more, until she wandered into an aisle where a blonde chick was sitting on the carpeted floor, perusing a book. artie did a small double take, positive that she looked familiar...

oh dude. no way.

unless she was mistaken, this chick was none other than channing whitaker, one of those semi famous actresses that a lot of people have at least heard of, but might not necessarily freak out over seeing them, say, in a bookstore. artie personally had decided that she wasn't the type of person to freak out over any celebrity, anyway, but whatever. with a small smile, artie walked forward a few steps, stopping within a few feet of the actress. "i didn't know that valkyrie had any sort of appeal to you hollywood types." she said cheerily.

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STATUS done, yay!
TAGGED channing whitaker!
TIME & PLACE borders, january 2008.
THREADS right about here.
FORMAT mine.
LYRICS headless heroes.
NOTES my first post in forever, i'm pumped.

[Channing Whitaker]

VALKYRIE, CALIFORNIA, BORDER'S BOOKSTORE, JANUARY 2008

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-----celebrity wasn’t what it always appeared to be…at least in channing’s eyes. it looked like all glamor and easy living and that wasn’t necessarily the case. after all the business wasn’t made up of all george clooneys and meryl streeps. sometimes those in the hollywood industry spent their entire lives holed up in some crappy apartment just waiting for the day when their big break would come and they would be thrust into the limelight so fast it would made their heads spin. the break that, for most, would never come. sure the roster of a through d list celebrities and so on looked like a long one but when you considered all the people who actually tried to get into hollywood, all the background players, the sound guys, the production guys, the stand ins and everyone else whose name wasn’t big enough for a trailer of their own, then you would see that the number of actual celebrities was actually pretty elite. the roster for a list celebrities alone was a short one and a list that didn’t include channing, though it did spare space enough for both of her parents. it was pretty inevitable though. if channing continued on the film-making path she’d taken there was no doubt in her mind that real fan-screaming fame wasn’t too far behind her. it was inevitable for the sixteen year old starlet simply because her parents were members of the a-list club. just bringing her around other such celebrities would help boost her to incredible fame. of course if channing had to label herself as a certain brand of celebrity she would have to say that the popularity of her childhood, the caliber of her past project, and the amount of fame she’d earned on her own would have at least earned her a b-list status. at the same time that didn’t necessarily mean that she was popular amongst kids her own age. channing had only ever been that type of “teeny bopper” or “pop culture celebrity” once before. a long time ago she had been a part of a television series that really shined a light on her skills as an actress apart from her family. it had a decent following amongst people she would have considered her peers, people her own age, but after the show had ended she’d begun doing much more serious kinds of work and her children’s fan base had kind of dwindled.

-----channing wasn’t necessarily sure of whether or not she minded her fame or not. her popularity had risen throughout the years to the point where her parents had hired a member of the family to be her first, and so far only, agent. apart from lola, channing had enjoyed this different part of her life. hollywood had been good to her too. the industry had welcomed her as a strangely mature child and had even given her specifically designed roles a time or two. though she didn’t amass people her own age behind her, channing still had a big group of fans. she didn’t know why she let it matter who followed her or not. this was the hollywood starlet who was supposed to not care about her fame factor or where it would get her. in reality channing would say that she didn’t care and a part of her didn’t really care. channing could get by without people recognizing her walking down the street and without interviewers asking her what was coming up next for her and all that. unfortunately channing couldn’t get by unless she had some kind of fan base. she needed a hint of popularity in order to get hired. that was the only thing about hollywood that channing didn’t like. no matter how much you tried to stay sane and tried to not give a damn what other people thought, you still had to care. popularity and what people thought got you jobs. throwing away hollywood and pretending like you didn’t care about everything it was and could give you came across as callus and we all know that first impressions are the only things people go by in hollywood. channing didn’t want to care. she wanted to just be the daughter of a man and a woman who loved her and supported her like they would had she chosen any other profession. she wanted to just be a normal teenage girl. but normal teenage girls didn’t exist. not in this business.

-----the funny thing was that channing didn’t feel all too deprived of a normal childhood. she certainly didn’t have one but it was hard to miss something you never had to begin with. channing knew that there was very little hope of her ever reverting back to that stage of normality, you know where kids came home from school and didn’t have to worry about anything other than homework and whether johnny so and so liked them or their best friend. it almost seemed trivial when you think about it but for channing it was an experience she would never have. at the same time there were plenty of girls her age out there living what she considered to be a normal life and dreaming of the kind of experiences channing had already had. she’d been in front of a camera doing something she loved. she’d been to an awards show where her masterful work was highlighted. she’d made friends with some of the biggest celebrities in the world, people who were just that, people, but people that a lot of others fantasized about meeting. she’d traveled the world and she’d made enough money to keep her comfortable for a long time. so why couldn’t that be enough? why did she feel the need to revert back to this somewhat dull and dreary life? well in all honesty channing just wanted to get away. she’d been consumed by the hollywood scene pretty much since birth and it was nice, but she’d done movie after movie after movie which came with promotion after promotion after promotion. she was sane to want a break right? of course her break came with a million thoughts of just saying goodbye to the business forever. god she sounded bipolar or something. sounded like she could never make a decision for herself.

-----the real reason behind that was the fact that channing had never had to make a decision for herself before. since before she could talk she’d always had someone talking for her and making her decisions for her. when she found her voice she still hadn’t learned how to use it and as a result people just kept talking for her. she had her agent who sent out her comments without them being channing’s actual words. she had people picking out her clothes because channing didn’t really know who she was or what she’d liked to wear. in all reality channing was the shell, the pretty, blond, perky little shell that people had filled with who she was supposed to be. now she was reaching that age where people were going to stop making decisions for her and she needed to step up, only channing didn’t know how to do that. she didn’t know how to be her own person because she’d never had to before. did it sound completely ridiculous? oh completely. she sounded like she was flying off the handle more and more every day. but at the same time she sounded like a frightened child, the same way a teenager would feel if they were facing that next step in their lives like college or getting into the work force. channing felt similarly only she’d never had the experience of speaking for herself to use as a springboard for jumping into life for herself. it was scary. doing just about anything on your own for the first time was terrifying but when you had absolutely no grip on who you were? or weren’t? that made the journey twice as difficult. channing liked to consider this trip/stay in valkyrie to be a trial period. could she handle herself away from the business and glamor of it all for a strict regimen of school, homework, and real life? would she crumble? all good questions and all would be answered in good time. channing had absolutely no doubts about that fact. so when things got overwhelming or when she just needed a break after a long day of unpacking box after box of her crap, channing liked to get away to some place, preferably new, to take a breather. it was why people stumbled upon her at the bookstore. what place could be quieter? a library maybe? a cemetery? whatever. point was that she was here and she was planning on enjoying herself. she looked up as she heard a voice. bagged. that certainly hadn’t taken long. ”is my disguise really that bad or am i just lucky?” channing said with a smirk as she pulled her eyes away from the book to look at the girl looming overhead. ”yeah i’m not exactly valkyrie’s cup of tea but i figured i was in need of a change and my magic wand pointed me in this direction.” she chuckled, closing the book seated in her lap. ”what about you? you always go around calling people out in the middle of bookstores?”

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status • finished
words • 1771
tagged • artie !
clothes • click !
listening to • -- - --.
notes • sounds disjointed, i apologize.

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