Here's the next chapter, you guys. I'd planned on uploading this sooner, but I got a serious case of writer's block and then there was some (incredibly procrastinated) Christmas shopping and then I was hanging out with some friends I haven't seen since we all went away to college in August… It's been a seriously busy few days for me. I hope you can forgive the delay. Especially since it was much shorter than the last one. C:
Enjoy!
Summary: The cast of Mackenzie Falls and the paparazzi: two things you don't want in your relationship when you're dating Chad Dylan Cooper. The cast of Mackenzie Falls and the paparazzi: two things you will have in your relationship when you're dating Chad Dylan Cooper.
Disclaimer: Me no own, you no sue. (Anything you recognize is not mine. Anything you don't recognize probably is mine. Probably.)
Four Seasons
By EmbracingRain
Arc One
Spring
Chapter Two
April 22nd
12:13 p.m.
Condor Studios
So Random! Set
Prop House
The five teens were huddled around the coffee table in the crowded, cozy prop house. Spread out in front of them was a series of magazines, each splashed with pictures and headlines. Each teen had a marker and was circling small things in the pictures and discrepancies in the articles. For the past month, Sonny and Chad had been the target of the media all thanks to one article and a few terribly Photoshopped pictures on the Sharona Knows website. Both teens had been accused of infidelity, both had been branded with slanderous names, both had been the victim of surprise attacks by the paparazzi. Tawni, Nico, and Chloe had become their only allies (Tawni was still kind of unwilling, but she was steadily coming around).
Grady and Zora had tried to help, but Grady's idea of helping was telling Sonny and Chad that they should escape somewhere low-profile like Antarctica until it all blew over. As for Zora…well, her master plan included monkeys, her cold cut catapult, several hundred pounds of rice pudding, and several other things that made no sense.
This week, Chad was under attack and the five actors were trying to find anything and everything wrong with the articles and pictures that featured him.
"Wasn't this from the surprise party you threw me for my birthday? I swear that's the dress I wore," Tawni queried, holding up her magazine Sonny could see the picture she was pointing at. Sonny stopped scrutinizing the page she was currently looking at to help out her friend. The small square featured Tawni (who's face was blurred out) and Chad standing outside of Sonny's barely-opened apartment door. Chad was facing Tawni and appeared to be either opening or closing the door, but Sonny could see the pink and gold decorations just inside the door.
"Yeah, that's from your party," Sonny told Tawni, returning to her own magazine. "We sent Chad out to distract you, remember?"
Nico chuckled. "Man, I remember that! I'm surprised she believed you, dude. You don't lie very well."
Sonny smirked. "Isn't that the truth." She circled the number on the door of the apartment Chad was leaving (it was actually his, not the unknown girl's from studio six).
Chad frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"I was at a funeral on New Year's Eve?"
He paused for a moment, thinking it over. "Okay, yeah. Maybe that wasn't the best lie, but I don't suck at lying! Lying is acting and I'm the best actor of our generation! How can I be a terrible liar when I'm such a friggin' fantastic actor?!"
Tawni and Chloe both groaned; Nico stared at Chad with his mouth open; Sonny just giggled and went back to work. True, Chad was egotistical. True, Chad overestimated his abilities sometimes. True, he was a jerkthrob when he was around more people than just Sonny. True, he said the wrong thing sometimes. But he was her egotistical, overconfident, wrong thing saying jerkthrob.
Chloe looked up suddenly, capped her marker, and tossed it to the table. "Why don't you guys just tell all these reporters the truth? Nobody's getting cheated on so you should just tell them."
Sonny raised an eyebrow. "You think we haven't tried telling the truth?"
"See that stack of magazines over there?" Chad added, nodding over to a sloppy pile of glossy pages by the couch. "Those are from two weeks ago."
"And three weeks ago-"
"And last week."
Chloe fiddled with the marker, lining it up with the top edge of her assigned magazine. "Then why not something like a press conference? You know, a situation where the stalkerazzi can ask you questions in a controlled environment."
"We've agreed that it's not that serious." Chad highlighted a sentence and turned the page.
"Ooh! I've got an idea!" Tawni exclaimed, leaping up from the floor. She picked her phone up off the table and scurried from the room. "Just give me five minutes!"
Sonny and Chad exchanged a look.
"Why do I feel like this won't end well?" she asked him.
Chad shrugged and shook his head then went back to work. Sonny frowned at him across the table. Lately, it seemed like he wasn't as concerned about this scandal as he should have been. Sometimes it felt like she was figuring things out on her own, floundering in a sea of slander, accusations, and lies. Sonny had suggested a press conference, Chad had shot her down. "It's not that serious. It'll seem like we're overreacting to something that people have been experiencing for forever." She'd tried arguing her point to no avail. Chad was firm in his decision, like he was only going through the motions of telling the real story to the paparazzi just to appease her. Her frown deepened; Chad looked up at her questioningly.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing," she replied quietly.
April 22nd
2:24 p.m.
Condor Studios
So Random! Set
Sonny and Tawni's Dressing Room
Sonny shrugged Chad's arm off her shoulder for the third time in ten minutes, scooting further away from him on the couch, hoping the sounds of the movie disguised her frustrated sigh. She could feel his eyes on her, studying her as she sat moodily on the couch, but she kept her own on the screen and pretended she was actually watching Adam Sandler put a penguin wearing a shirt in the middle of a Hawaiian road.
"What's wrong with you today, sunshine?"
Shrugging, Sonny's glanced over at the door as somebody knocked on it. "I'm just not in the mood for touchy-feely stuff today, alright?" She was up off the couch and walking over to the door before Chad spoke up again.
"Is it, you know…that week?" he asked, making a face.
"Oh, my God." Sonny wrenched open the door to her side of the dressing room. "I can't believe you actually just said that, Chad. Just because I'm upset doesn't mean I'm PMSing!"
"It was just a question!"
"…Is this a bad time? Because I can totally come back."
Sonny finally looked at her visitor, blinking at her own rudeness. "Chloe! Hi, come on in," she blurted out, moving aside so the Mackenzie Falls actress could step into the room. Chloe hovered in the doorway, still looking unsure.
"Are you sure? I don't want to interrupt your arg- I mean, movie."
"No, it's fine," Sonny said with a smile. "Chad was just being a guy. No worries!"
"O-kay." Chloe stepped into the colorful dressing room, looking around in interest. Dressing rooms on the set of Mackenzie Falls weren't anywhere as cool as the one Sonny and Tawni shared. At Mackenzie Falls you could expect a detached coolness that wasn't at all homey. Here, Chloe could see two distinct personalities on either side of the room and the place where they meshed together in the middle. She could see why Chad hung out on the So Random! set more than he hung out at the Falls.
"So what's up?" Sonny asked as she shut the door.
Chloe shrugged, glancing between Sonny and Chad. The latter was looking at the two girls in confusion. "Not much, really. I was just wondering if I could talk to you about something."
"Well, yeah! Of course," Sonny said as she paused the movie and looked over at her new friend in concern.
Looking back at Chad and feeling more than a little awkward, Chloe pursed her lips. "I was kind of hoping it could be a private discussion," she told Sonny quietly.
"A private…?" Sonny began to shake her head, but then caught on to Chloe's meaning and laughed a little bit at her own stupidity. "Oh! Okay! Yes. Chad," she addressed her boyfriend, "you have to leave."
"What?!" he exclaimed, rising from the orange couch. "Why do I have to leave? I'm Chad Dylan Cooper! I'm great with secrets. Have I ever told anyone that you talk in your sleep?"
Sonny threw her hands up in the air. "Well, now you have!"
"What? No I…" Chad's eyes shifted back over to Chloe who waved at him as though she was reminding him of her presence in the colorful room. "Oh. You know what, sunshine? Maybe you're right. Maybe I should just…" He trailed off, motioning toward the door on Tawni's side of the room.
When he had finally disappeared, Sonny turned back to Chloe. "It's not that uncommon, you know. Talking in your sleep, I mean. Approximately one-hundred seventy million adults in the world talk in their sleep," she babbled nervously.
"Oh. Um…okay."
Sonny nodded, rocking back on her heels and exhaling deeply. "So…what'd you come by to talk about?"
"Well," Chloe started. She began to pace, and Sonny watched her with a raised eyebrow. She'd never seen someone quite so nervous in a long time. "I actually came by to ask you about…about Nico."
"Nico?" Sonny repeated, confused. Normal girls rarely asked about Nico, and girls from Mackenzie Falls never asked about him. "What about him?"
"I noticed he hangs out with Portlyn a lot. But it's kind of like secret hanging out. I was just wondering if you knew if they were…dating. Or something of that sort." Chloe looked up at Sonny as she sat down on the couch primly, the way she'd seen the other girls on her show do.
Sonny furrowed her brow, thinking hard about Chloe's question. "Well," she said, sitting down next to her friend and tapping her chin, "I don't think they're dating, per se, but I have seen them hanging out. And Chad says he saw them giggling behind Josh's mail cart last month. But dating? Eh…I don't know. Nico doesn't strike me as Portlyn's type. Why do you ask?"
Chloe looked down at her hands which were fiddling with the hem of her skirt. "Well… I mean, it's nothing big. I was just curious."
Sonny let a grin slowly spread across her face. "You like him, don't you?"
"Maybe. But it's not like it matters that I like him if he's dating her. She's like the girl every guy wants. So if he has her…what's the point?"
"The point is that Portlyn's the biggest snot on the face of the planet. She's got nothing on you. What you should do is put on an outfit you feel good in, maybe do something different with your hair, and just talk to Nico," Sonny suggested with a comforting smile.
Chloe smiled back. "You know," she said standing up, "Tawni told me you give really bad advice, but that's actually some of the best I've gotten. Thanks!" She scurried out of the room, and Sonny sat back on the couch with a satisfied smile. Another day, another good deed done. Maybe things would start looking up.
April 22nd
2:40 p.m.
Condor Studios
Mackenzie Falls Set
Hallway
Chad had booked it out of Sonny's dressing room as fast as possible, scared of what she would do to him when she finally had the time to hunt him down and make him pay for telling Chloe that Sonny talked in her sleep. Really, he didn't see what the problem was. It wasn't a big deal that she talked in her sleep; it was actually kind of cute. But with the way she'd been acting recently, he wasn't risking anything.
He didn't know what Sonny's problem was lately. If it wasn't - ahem- lady issues, then it was something else. And she wasn't telling him which was what was truly bothering him. If Chad knew what Sonny's issue was, then he'd try to help her out or something, whether she had an attitude or not. It seemed like there had been a breakdown in communication between them lately, and he was having a hard time thinking it was all his fault. Sonny was the one with the attitude. Sonny was the one who wasn't communicating her problems. Chad was an open book!
O-P-E-N.
Open.
"So you got the pictures?"
Chad stopped walking, paused to make sure he'd heard Skyler correctly, and then backed up a little bit. Skyler (the actor who portrayed Mackenzie's half-brother Devon) was hiding behind a rack of clothes and talking on his cell phone. The whole situation seemed a little bit fishy to Chad. Who hid behind women's clothes and talked super quiet to someone on their phone?
"Hey, brah!"
Skyler visibly jumped and snapped his cell phone shut, whirling around to face Chad, his face as red as a stop sign. "H-hey, man."
"Who was that on the phone?" Chad asked, nodding toward Skyler's cell phone.
"O-oh! Th-that? It…it was just my mom," Skyler stammered, backing up slowly in the direction of his dressing room.
"You were talking to your mom behind a rack of the girls' uniforms?" Chad said skeptically. "That's kind of weird, dude."
"Yeah, I know. I just…didn't want anyone to know I call my mom," Skyler replied, his eyes looking anywhere but at his costar. "It's not exactly…cool, you know? Man, please don't tell the guys!"
Chad held up his hands. "Believe me, dude. I'm not telling anyone you still talk to your mommy. I wouldn't want them to know I know you."
"Well, you're one to talk!" Skyler shot back, sounding panicky. "You're the one who goes to visit yours!"
"Family functions, dude. Totally different from calling your mom at work," Chad scoffed, walking away and shaking his head. He made a mental note to tell Sonny what he'd heard. If they could figure out who was tipping Sharona and the rest of the stalkerazzi off on where he and Sonny were going and what they were doing, then they could do something about it. Skyler was definitely someone who was bitter enough to send the media after Chad and his girlfriend. Chad's phone buzzed in his pocket and he took it out to answer it after checking the caller I.D.
"Hey, babe."
"Tawni wants to talk to us at three-forty," Sonny told him, seemingly ignoring his greeting. "She says it's really important."
"Why three-forty?"
"That's when we get done rehearsing our next sketch."
"I'm filming scenes until four," Chad replied. "I can't do three-forty."
He heard Sonny sigh and repeat his message to someone (apparently Tawni) in the background. Something slammed either down or shut.
"Well, my world doesn't revolve around your stupid, inconsiderate boyfriend!"
"Tawni, you don't have any plans until eight o'clock tonight. And Chad isn't stupid and inconsiderate!"
"Four doesn't work for me!"
"Oh, that's a bunch of hooey! You don't like your date enough to spend four hours getting ready! Maybe three, but not four!"
There was a lot of rustling and scuffling from the other end of the phone, then Sonny yelling, "Ow!" and Tawni bursting into tears.
"Chad? You still there?" Sonny asked, sounding slightly breathless.
"Yeah."
"Four works. Get here as soon as you're done filming scenes for the day, okay? Tawni's…not happy."
"What'd you do to her? It sounds like someone's killing a cat," Chad said, wrinkling his nose in disgust as Tawni's wails grew steadily louder.
"Well, she bit me-"
"She bit you?"
"What? Does that surprise you or something? Anyway, she bit me so I took her new tube of lipstick."
"She's crying over lipstick?"
"Clearly, you don't spend much time around her."
"Sonny-girl, we gotta go to rehearsal like right- Aw, man! Why's Tawni cryin' again? Marshall's gonna be so mad!" Nico exclaimed.
"Maybe somebody should slap her!" Zora suggested.
"Has anybody seen my cheese pants?" Grady asked. "I wanted to wear them tonight…"
"Nobody's seen your stupid cheese pants, Grady," Sonny told him. "Why are you all in here anyway? This dressing room is mine and-"
Click.
"Sonny?" Chad asked. "Sonny, are you there?" He peeled his phone away from his ear and stared at the screen, seeing nothing but a picture of his car. Sonny had actually hung up on him! The audacity!
April 22nd
4:03 p.m.
Condor Studios
So Random! Set
Sonny and Tawni's Dressing Room
"You did what?!" Sonny and Chad said in unison as Tawni giddily jumped up and down in front of them, clapping her hands and smiling widely.
"Well, I had to pull some strings," Tawni said impressively, but I got you an interview with Helen DeGuinness. Aren't you guys super excited?!"
"Tawni, how could you arrange that without asking us first?" Sonny asked as Chad mouthed at the female blonde wordlessly. "I mean, it's not that we don't appreciate it, but we so didn't plan on going on a talk show about this whole fake cheating scandal thing. We were perfectly fine just telling the press our side of the story."
Tawni sank to the couch, deflated. "B-but it's Helen DeGuinness. And…and I pulled strings!" she whined, mimicking pulling on a string that appeared to be attached to the ceiling. "Plus, it's obvious that what you're doing right now isn't helping any. And when Chloe suggested a press conference, you guys shot her down."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Sonny said, throwing out a hand to stop Tawni. "Chad's the one who said no to the press conference. I had no say in that matter."
"That was something we agreed on!" Chad exclaimed.
"Who? You and your reflection, Chad? Because if I recall correctly, I suggested that idea to you even before Chloe did and you totally shot me down."
"Maybe I should get you guys on Dr. Bill, too," Tawni joked with a smile that quickly disappeared when Chad and Sonny both glared at her. "Kidding!"
Sonny thought about the interview for a minute before turning to Chad. "Look, why don't we just do it?" she asked quietly. "It can't hurt anything. And maybe people will actually listen to us for once since it's a live show and the words are actually coming from our mouths and can't be taken out of context."
Chad sighed, running a hand over his face. "What day and time?" he asked Tawni.
"Next Wednesday night at eight," Tawni said promptly. "Are you really gonna do it?"
Chad nodded slightly. "Yeah…I just gotta go move some stuff around," he said, holding up his cell phone as he left the room.
"Seriously," Tawni whispered to Sonny, "I could totally call up Dr. Bill and ask if he can talk to you two."
"Leave it alone, Tawni. We're just stressed, okay? I'm sure we'll be fine once this is over, once and for all," Sonny hissed back.
"Are you sure?" Tawni looked concerned.
Sonny glanced over at the door Chad had exited through. "Well…I hope so."
Next time there's a delay in updating, I recommend that you read "A Long Way From Here" by Chaos Dragon. It's an excellent read. Beautifully written, entertaining, emotional… Overall a fantastic story. And still in progress, so there's more to come!
Shameless advertisement of my own story:
I recently came up with this little five chapter Christmas piece that I think you guys might enjoy. It's still in progress and probably will continue through Christmas, but we'll just say I'm keeping the holiday spirit alive, haha. Anyway, it's called In the Spirit of the Season and it's pure Chad/Sonny goodness, so head on over there and check it out!
Helen DeGuinness and Dr. Bill: a parody of Ellen DeGeneres and Dr. Phil. I had fun coming up with those names (no, seriously. I had a blast!). C:
IMPORTANT QUESTION
It'd be really cool if you guys came up with some questions for Helen DeGuinness to ask Sonny and Chad (aside from whether or not it's true they're cheating). Or maybe some rumors for her to address. I'd love to have some reader generated content for that part of the next chapter! You guys will totally be acknowledged, too.
I hope you enjoyed this (admittedly dramatic) chapter!
Love,
EmbracingRain
P.S. Who can name the Adam Sandler movie featured in this chapter?
P.P.S. Can you guys hit sixty reviews? That'd be really awesome. And I promise not to hold chapters hostage. C: I also like getting constructive criticism in reviews, so feel free to tell me what I could've done better if you want.
