June 9th, 2011

Sierra lives in what I can only describe as a hut.

"Where the hell are you?"

She very politely misunderstood my question. "Hawaii!"

"Oh, wow. Not a long train ride home for you, then, I guess."

She laughed and the familiarity of the noise warmed my chest a bit. "Nope! I actually called my mom from the scene of the finale and asked her to come pick me up in her car…"

The mental image of that made me laugh, and she did too. For a minute, we seemed like two good friends, giggling over gossip on a skype call. It felt very normal.

"I like, picked up my phone and dialed my mom and was like, uh… Mommy? The volcano kind of.. erupted… and she was like I know, I could feel it from here! I was literally like, fifteen minutes from my house."

"That's… hilarious. By the looks of your house I bet the plane must've felt like a five star resort."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh Heather, you're just as mean as I remember!"

I smiled wide. "Thank you!"

"You look… nice…" She forced through a smile. I rolled my eyes, leaning back on my bed and putting my laptop on my stomach.

"Oh shut up. I look like hell."

"I suspect the finale's taken something of a toll on you?" she asked, sounding almost sympathetic. I didn't respond. "Are you… okay?"

She caught me before I could snap, talking over my objections. "It's just! You look.. thinner. And not in a healthy way. Like, I've-stressed-myself-half-to-death-thinner."

I blinked a few times in consideration. "Do I really?" I looked down at my arms and wondered if I really had lost weight without realizing. Were my cheeks sunken in? Did I really look overstressed at a glance? I studied my image in the webcam and deflated.

"You're not going to post about this on your blog, are you?" I asked, sounding a little more worried than I meant to.

"Of course not!" she chirped, though she sounded almost offended. "Especially since you just asked me not to… I mean, why do you think I didn't just send you what you wanted over text? I do respect people's privacy…"

I snorted despite myself. "Um, if I remember World Tour correctly, and I think I do, Cody's largest complaint about you was an inability to respect people's privacy."

At first she looked sad. Then she looked angry, arms crossed over her chest. "Forgive me if I'm wrong, Heather, but didn't you call me to ask for a favor?"

I sat back a bit, impressed. "Look who's growing a backbone! Congrats, crazypants! You're almost cool enough for me to fuck with you."

"Um, excuse me? You want to what me?"

I turned red but rolled my eyes as hard as I could manage. "Figure of speech, you moron!"

"Wow Heather. Don't get me wrong, I watched season 3 enough times to pick up on your blatant lesbian subtext, but until now I thought it was just fan-pandering. I hate to break it to you, but I'm a one-Codykins kind of girl!"

My mouth hung open for a second before I started sputtering to explain myself and call her a couple of rude names, but… Then I saw the smirk spread across her face, and the laughter she was trying to hold back. It dawned on me that she was tongue-in-cheek. She was making a joke.

My expression relaxed, then coiled into something bewildered and impressed.

"Wow. When did you turn into somebody cool to talk to?"

She burst into Sierra-like giggles. "Eh… I know a month isn't an incredibly long time, but.. I've done a lot of self reflection since the last time you saw me."

I nodded slowly, cocking my head a bit at the image on my screen.

"No, trust me, I… know what you mean," I said quietly. She smiled a bit, and I actually returned it. "Let me just say, if you'd acted more like this in World Tour, we could've had a pretty kickass alliance together."

"Seriously, Heather? You're being kind of gay."

I lowered my head into my hands and just laughed.

I felt suddenly like Sierra… Spoke my language. Like she knew how to talk to me; how to joke with me. I guess that's one of the perks of befriending someone who's obsessed with the TV show you were on and hyper-analyzed all of your interactions. At the same time, I wondered why she somehow seemed so different now than she did on the show.

A part of me wondered if the difference was that Cody wasn't around now. Had his presence sucked her personality up like a black hole of love?

Had Alejandro ever done that to me?

Sierra and I's skype call timed out at 6 and a half hours. I didn't even think I was capable of that. We talked all night, talking about things that had happened since the end of season three and sending really ugly screenshots of one another back and forth to laugh at.

I even ended up telling her about the Alejandro roleplay account and how I masqueraded as a fan, and the last message they sent me insinuating I hadn't done a very good job at being myself.

She laughed so hard she had tears in her eyes, and I crossed my arms and pouted, regretting ever having told her. I hadn't really expected her to make fun of me. … and she wasn't.

"Heather, I'm sorry, just…" she paused to laugh a bit more, wiping one of her eyes. "That is the most adorable thing I have ever heard in my entire life."

The call eventually came to a close because my dad wanted to take me out to dinner - but not before I made sure to get Cody's phone number. That was the entire reason I'd skyped her, after all.

My dad took me to my favourite restaurant that I know he hates, which told me immediately that he was trying to butter me up for some reason. Why, I wasn't sure yet.

We settled into a booth with two oyster pails of rice and a container of sweet and sour chicken, and my dad gave an annoyed sigh.

"Heathen, I really don't understand why you like these Americanized "Chinese" restaurants so much. We're Japanese. And even if we weren't, this is hardly authentic…"

I shoved a piece of chicken in my mouth and grinned. "What, because I'm Japanese I'm not allowed to love racist depictions of Asians?"

"...Pretty much, yeah."

"Fuck the status quo." I popped open one of the oyster pails and spooned some rice on my plate, and he laughed a little.

"You seem to be in a good mood."

I kicked my feet happily beneath the table and nodded, popping another piece of chicken into my mouth. "I am!"

"Has.. something changed since the other night?"

I realized then why he was taking me to my favourite restaurant. My mom had told him about the breakdown she'd walked in on.

"Kind of." I was being vague, but only because I hadn't given it much thought myself yet.

Talking to Sierra really had cheered me up a lot. She was so shameless, it allowed me to be kind of shameless myself. I finally had a person to talk to about my problems other than my diary or Dr. Kenwar - neither of which actually responded to the things I said like Sierra did.

"What changed?" he asked, pulling the open oyster pail towards himself.

I rolled the sentence over in my head a few times before voicing it. "I made a friend."

My dad dropped his spoon and placed a hand over his chest melodramatically.

I laughed despite myself and told him to stop it, but he continued on his little act. "MY Heathen? Made a FRIEND?"

"Yes, dad, a friend."

He smirked and leaned forward on the table. "Who is it?"

"One of the girls from the competition," I replied, the normal bitterness in my voice lifted.

"Oh man…" He slumped suddenly and looked annoyed. "Please tell me it's not Gwen!"

. . .

I knew I loved my dad for a reason.

-ℋ

June 9th, 2011

I went to see Dr. Kenwar today and didn't actually take him up on the opportunity to write all hour instead of talking to him. I talked to him about pawning the gold tooth, and saving the money to eventually see Alejandro. I explained my roundabout plan for getting ahold of him through Sierra and then Cody.

"Right… They were the other two in the bottom four, correct?"

I paused. "Wait, you've seen the show?" That seemed really, really weird. I felt almost like he'd invaded my privacy, even if it was a public show.

"Well, of course I have. I do a background check on all of my clients."

Suddenly I wasn't sure which would be weirder: him having seen the show, or him not having seen the show. I just nodded.

"Yeah. Sierra and Cody were the other two in the bottom four."

"Well, I think it's good that you've been reconnecting with old friends. How have the night terrors been? You haven't mentioned them in a while."

Oh… He was right, wasn't he? I hadn't had one of those in a little while! I hadn't even realized they were gone well enough to appreciate their absence. I smiled a little.

"Yeah I've been.. getting some pretty good sleep lately."

"Well, Heather, it looks like things are looking up for you. Before long you might not even need me."

I don't know why, but that insinuation kind of scared me.

-ℋ

[ Author's note:

Sorry for the slightly shorter chapter. :) I'm not going to be able to post for a little while, so it may be a bit of a break before the next addition. Thank you all so much for reading, and if you like it, be sure to hit follow so you'll be notified of the next post.

Until the bitter end,

-ℋ ]