Chapter One
-- 2006 --
"No fucking way. It's broken."
"It's not broken."
I swallowed hard.
"Does it really say 224?"
Leslie knelt down.
"Yup."
"Dammit."
I was 224 pounds. Somehow I had gained fifty pounds without realizing it. How did that happen? Maybe it was the fast food. Maybe it was the alcohol. It couldn't have been the cocaine. Cocaine made you lose weight. Right?
"You need to go on a diet bro," Angel said gently.
"The camera adds ten pounds," Aaron added. "You're going to look like a fatass on TV."
I stifled a growl. Filming had just wrapped on House of Carters. The five of us were getting ready to go our separate ways again.
The only thing I wouldn't lose was the roll of fat around my waist.
Nick Carter, teen heartthrob, was a fatass.
"Great job guys. Here's hoping there's a season two!"
I stepped off Angel's scale. She scooped it up into her bag. The executive producer for the show, Kenneth, was roaming around the house congratulating everyone. People were dragging furniture out all around us.
It was hard to call what we had just done 'reality' when the falseness of it was being torn down all around us.
"Maybe season two can be about how I'm the hot brother," Aaron said. He was hanging over the balcony. Again. His legs dangled in the air.
You would think that after the surfing accident he would learn not to be an idiot.
That was only wishful thinking. I wished more than anything he was eight again.
"Out of shape, huh?" Kenneth said. He came up and slapped my back. I closed my eyes and stifled a bitter comment.
The last five years had been rough. After me and the guys had split, my solo album had flopped, mom and dad had fucked me and my siblings up, and my relationship history had gone from bad to worse. Even though Backstreet was back and Never Gone had been fairly successfully, I could sense a change was in the air. I feared that Kevin was getting tired of the whole thing.
I think my stupidity was finally wearing him out. AJ kept falling off the wagon and I had started taking the same road. I was just better at keeping it a secret.
"Y'know, I'd love you n this new show I'm doing," Kenneth said. I opened an eye. He was circling me like a vulture.
"What show?"
"It's a weight loss show. VH1 has been having success with their Celebrity Fit Club and E! wants a piece of the pie."
I shook my head. "No way."
"C'mon. It'll be a nice paycheck just for being on the show. And if you win there's an even bigger payout."
I bit the inside of my cheek. I hated this business. I hated how it all came down to money. It shouldn't have been this way. Mom had been a shitty manager. Lou had been a fuckin' pissant.
And I had just been a dumb kid.
"How nice of a paycheck?"
The number he quoted me sparked my interest.
"What do I have to do?"
"Just follow the diet and exercise regimen."
"When do you film? I've got some commitments with BSB coming up in four months," I explained.
"We start filming next week."
"Next week?"
"Are you doing anything else?"
I wasn't doing shit. I didn't have a girlfriend. The one chick that had slept with me during the show was just in it for a second of screen time and the notoriety of sleeping with 'Nick Carter' the celebrity, not 'Nick Carter' the person.
I scratched a blemish on my skin.
"I'll do it," I said. I didn't have anything to lose. If I lost weight, great. If I won the whole damn show, even better.
"This will be good for you."
"I don't like to sweat."
"Well, try to imagine that each drop of sweat is a dollar."
I bit the inside of my cheek.
"That would be nice," I admitted.
My sister Francie rooted through my duffel bag and took out a package of chocolate Hostess cakes out of my bag.
"This is officially contraband," she explained. She tossed them in the trash, pulled the bag out and headed towards the door.
"WAIT!"
She didn't listen. My bedroom door closed. I sank down on my bed.
Francie meant well, but she didn't understand. She was 5'9, 110 pounds and accentuated with silicone buddies that made a guy's head practically do a 360 degree turn when she walked by.
She got her genes from mom, the famous Tiffany Sullivan, who was the most favorite character on the soap opera Heartbeat.
And I was famous just because I was her fat daughter.
It wasn't like she called me her fat daughter. She wasn't like that. But the rest of the world was. At 186 pounds, I was ten pounds lighter than I was a year ago.
But I was still fat.
When Kenneth Grahaems had called to offer me a spot on his weight loss reality show, I had been skeptical.
Why did the world want to see me?
Kenneth told me the world loved to see people lose weight. I was pretty sure the world just wanted to dissect how different I was from mom.
"They've been destroyed," Francie announced as she walked back into my room. "You're not hiding anything else, are you Shay?"
I wasn't, but even if I was, I wouldn't tell her.
"I wonder who else is going to be on the show," she said as she sat beside me. She barely made a dip in my mattress. I shifted; the springs creaked softly.
"Probably more sad losers like myself," I said.
"You're not a loser."
I snorted. Francie had just snagged a role on Heartbeat as mom's younger sister. Compared to her, I fit snugly into the loser category. My big claim to fame was a Huggies commercial when I was a year and a half old. Other than that, all I had was a Liberal Arts degree and no enthusiasm to use it, liberally or artistically.
"I hope you get a dose of self confidence at least," she said.
"If I didn't live in L.A. I would be totally confident," I said. "I swear I should live in Nebraska."
Francie laughed. "What the hell's in Nebraska? Isn't that where guys marry like five different women?"
"That's Utah," I pointed out. Francie waved her hand in the air carelessly. Her blonde hair (which was once upon a time brunette like my own) was cut short and perfectly styled. She looked like an adorable little pixie.
And I was the Jolly Green giant.
"You're beautiful Shay," Francie added. "The outside just needs to catch up to the inside."
I rolled my eyes. She was using mom's line. No matter who said it, I hated it all the same.
"I'm fine with the way I am thank you," I said a little more coldly than I had intended. "I'm just doing this for the money."
"Or you could just wait two years until you get mom's money."
I shook my head. Mom, on the advice of our grandfather, had locked Francie's and my nest egg up until we reached twenty five. Francie had four more years. I had two. But she was happy in L.A.
I wanted money to get the hell out. There was no way mom was going to give me money just so I could leave her.
This was something I had to do on my own.
And if it meant eating a few more carrot sticks, then so be it.
