Fate Girls: Aura

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Aura leapt down the stairs two-by-two and almost slammed her face on the bend.

Her mother came next to her and grabbed her by the arm. “What is this sort of entrance? Behave young lady!”

“As if anybody bothers with me. All they wanna see is dad anyway. Don’t care,” she said in the tone of voice teenagers adopt when whining like that.

Mother patted Aura’s hair down and pulled her rebellious clothes in check. Aura winced and pulled away every time like a cat avoiding a bath. Mother muttered, “I told you to wear that top with the deep décolletage. Show them while you have them dear, it will be much harder and more expensive after a few years, trust me. What is this fabric? We have Andre on call you know, you must sit down with him and let him pick some clothes for you.”

Mother dragged Aura into the centre of the gathering. Everyone was bunched up in a corner, around the place with the band instruments. A middle-aged man with meticulous hair and a custom-tailored suit was finishing his solo on the bouzouki. His voice was deep, the microphone was on the precise position to fit his height, the audio set up on the mixer to bring out the best inflections in his voice, the speakers top-notch and arranged for the precise amount of people attending. The band-instrument corner was lit from a permanent arrangement on the ceiling and across the room, to light him up perfectly, hide what little double-chin the years had brought on him, and make him look like a star.

Everybody clapped and cheered. The crowd opened and let Aura and her mother space to approach.

Mother said to everyone, “What a performance! My husband didn’t want to sing today but he couldn’t say no to you, could he?”

People smiled and said no in unison.

Aura went up to her father and the phones already recording the impromptu performance were now focused on them both. Flashes fired.

Tony Nightingale grabbed his daughter in a fatherly tight hug and said to the people, “My lovely daughter, top of her class! Couldn’t be any more proud than that.”

A man asked, “Will Aura follow in your footsteps and record an album anytime soon?”

Other people looked at her in anticipation, “Yeah, will she?”

Tony looked at Aura in the eyes and smiled. “Well. If Dionysos wishes to. Who are we to deny him such pleasure, right?”

People applauded. As Tony stepped down they spread across the room again, in the relaxed groups that people in parties usually tend to form.

Tony held Aura by the hand and brought her to a group of supermodels and pop stars.

Literally.

The group of teens had hundreds of millions of followers between them, about a hundred fan sites and topping the charts regularly.

Every single one of them signed and owned by Dionysos Entertainment of course.

Aura forced a smile at them and said simply, “Hey…”

“I bet your classmates are wondering where you’ve been since they came to the party!” Tony said, practically shoving her into the group. He turned to them, “I’m sure her mother said something to her like, arrive late, leave early, that sort of thing,” and laughed. Everyone laughed along.

“Haha,” Aura added like a dead fish.

“Yeah, make a splash!” one of the superperfect girls said.

Viko hesitated for a moment and then walked up to Tony. He showed his phone and said, “Should we pay tribute?”

Tony smiled and put a hand on Viko’s shoulder. “Of course. We all know Dionysos can never have enough tributes, don’t we?”

The group laughed and agreed. Viko took the selfie with the legendary Tony Nightingale and sent it up to the digital cloud, tagging it with #dionysos.

“Right! But this is your own party dear, not mine alone. Here, I’ll let you youngsters alone, I know that you are dangerously near the recommended exposure to old-people,” Tony said, and they all laughed at the joke with perfect smiles showing perfect teeth.

“Riiight…” Aura said, and she was left with her frenemies.

“So, won’t you sing for us tonight Aura?” a blonde girl said. Her name was Desha or something, a made-up name that Dionysos’ analysts had come up with to force the next Madonna to the market.

Aura squinted at her and said, “No, I’ll save it for the recording room. You know, make a splash and everything.” She pantomimed the effect with both open palms.

“That’s cool,” Desha said and laughed. The girl laughed at everything.

Aura wanted to yell in her face but decided against that. She took in a couple of deep breaths and then snatched a drink, non-alcoholic of course, from a server who was too delighted to be there amongst the pop idols.

She gulped it down and burped.

Desha of course giggled at that.

The boys high-fived her and for a moment, Aura thought about leaving them hanging. But she high-fived them in clockwise order while making sure she was totally bored by this.

She wasn’t bored. The teen supermodel-s***h-former-child-actor-s***h-pop-singer in front of her had a six-pack that Aura dreamed about every day. Not that hard to do since she had his poster glued on her ceiling over her bed, so the first thing she saw when waking up every day was him on top of her.

Aura blushed bright red. She took another non-alcoholic drink that Tony Nightingale endorsed in bill boards and video ads, and turned her face to the side, throwing tufts of her hair down to hide her face.

Viko, the teen guy from the poster stepped close to her and tried to strike up a conversation with her. Aura tried to avoid that.

She thought that there were teen girls, as well as plenty of older ladies, who would have killed without second thought for a chance to stand so close to Viko, let alone have his attention.

Aura sighed and glanced around the room. Yup, her mother had arranged that. She didn’t know what she had told the young man, but it had worked. People were taking selfies of themselves but tilting their pose to get the young pair framed in the background.

This was already up on social media.

“How are you Aura?” Viko said. “I see you at music classes but you don’t really participate or hang out with us. I send you an e-vite on my last party, didn’t you get it?”

The girls behind Viko were on their phones. Latest tech of course, sponsored by Hermes Information Technology and given to them to advertise the latest model to the teen masses. They were standing beside one another, tapping away at their screens, but Aura knew they were gossiping about her.

She played with her hair and told Viko, “Yeah, must have been lost or something. Spam, you know?” She was so uncomfortable.

He, on the other hand, was relaxed and confident. Extremely confident for such a young man, but fame gets to your head. Now that he was close enough, Aura could see that he was wearing makeup. Airbrushed invisible makeup, but makeup nonetheless. “I’ll text you directly next time then,” he said and touched her on the cheek.

Touched. Her. On. The. Cheek.

Aura would never wash that cheek again.

“Okay,” she wheezed out and met his gaze for a moment.

She could see Desha and her stupid supermodel friend mouthing O-M-G.

“Perfect. Can’t wait to show you my pool.”

Aura thought about wearing a bikini next to those supermodel-perfect girls who giggled at everything and perched up their butts nicely and made their boobs bounce with every step.

She would rather die.

Aura smiled and mumbled some excuse and went away. She went in the kitchen, past the chefs and the sous chefs and the waiters and got into the pantry, and shut the door.

Yes, it was a closet, and she shut herself inside like a little girl.

She picked up her phone and called her only friend.

“Oh hi,” a young voice said that was deep and melodious like her father’s.

“Orestes! Where the f**k are you?” she angry-whispered.

“I’m on my way. I thought you said you’d attend the party later.”

“I was planning to. But mama sent a poor servant every three minutes to knock on my door, and after a while he was crying that he was gonna lose his job. I had to come down,” Aura explained.

Orestes was speechless. “I’m not sure what to say to that.”

“Don’t say anything! Just come here so that I have a regular person to talk to till the end of this hellish party.”

“You are in the closet aren’t you?” Orestes said, certain of the answer.

“Pantry,” Aura said with surrendered fury through her teeth. “There’s pickles and everything. Smells have seeped into my panties. Mama won’t look in here.”

“I’m on my way.”