Than Yesterday
She tells her trainer to add more weight to the bar.
"Honest, It's really easy. What are we at? One hundred even?"
He blinked, "Brit? You're lifting three times your own body weight."
At this she takes her hands off the bar and slides out from under it. "Excuse me?"
He points to the huge weights on either end of the barbell. "You've never benched more than 150. And remember that? You could've killed yourself. And you ran twice as long and twice as fast this morning. Now, answer me honestly. Are you on speed?"
She half-laughs, blowing strands of blond out of her face. "What? No!"
"Steroids?"
"No." She insists, softly. "Maybe it's like, hormones. PMS working like triple time, right?"
"I've never heard of that happening."
Neither has she.
She hears things differently. Notes are crisper to her, she can listen more easily. And, at the same time, she can see details as she concentrates on the studio, on the beat. She can feel people behind her.
In the dark, she sees remarkably well. When Jamie Lynn starts a tickle fight, Britney accidently throws her across the room. Tears fill her eyes as she helps her sister up, "I'm so sorry...I just meant to push you off...I don't even--"
Jamie stares at her, eyebrows pulled close together "Yeah...it's...fine."
"Don't tell mama."
She's in make-up for another Pepsi shoot when she hears someone grunt behind the door of the trailer before the door swings open. Leaning forward, behind hips clad in tight denim, Britney can see the security guard assigned to the makeup trailer sprawled on the ground.
"You should really get security in this place checked."
Britney stares at the source of the voice--low, throaty, dangerous-- "Who the hell are you?"
The woman smiles with scarlet red lips, and flips her almost-black hair out of her face. "Would you believe it if I said that I'm a vampire slayer. And now we're linked by a magical bond because this chick I kinda used to know did a funny spell and woke up all that hidden fun locked up in that tight little body of yours. Vampires are real, demons are real; werewolves, ghosts, witches. Fuck, probably leprechauns, too..."
"Get out." She orders in her best pop-diva voice, wondering if the sound stage is close to a mental institution or something and wishing she hadn't given Fi her cell phone before she'd gone to makeup. Britney makes a move to leave, tries to brush past the woman and yell for security but is grabbed quick, pushed back into her chair.
"LOOK, Christina or Jessica or whichever the fuck you are–"
Britney kicks out, knocking the woman back, is up before she even knows what she's doing, and has Ms. Skanky Jeans pinned to the trailer wall. And, now, there is a pause.
"How did I just..."
The woman laughs. "Welcome to the club."