Intertwined - Tangled series (Overprotective famous brothers)

Exposed

Salman

It wasn’t very pleasant to face paparazzi after an eleven hour flight back to my home, but only the thought of being back with my family after more than a week thrilled me. Getting into the Range Rover waiting for me, I waved and smiled for the tired paparazzi.

“Mike?” I raised my brows at him and he smiled at me, honking at the paparazzi and fans to give him way. His shift ended earlier and started early with Alisha. He being up at past midnight to pick me up from the airport was odd.

“You should have reached home hours ago.”

“Well, this couldn’t have waited for that long.” He clenched his fingers over the steering wheel, turning towards the exit. That itself got me nervous. Mike was in charge of Pixie’s and Arhaan’s security, and also looked after Lizzie when there was no family around for her. If there was something important, it had to be about her.

“Look at this.” He handed me the month’s teen vogue issue, with my sister on its cover. I remembered this one, I remembered calling her up and telling her of how proud I was of her.

“Ever since this,” he spat, not taking his eyes off the deserted road, “she has been increasingly rude. Swearing, rolling eyes, you name it.”

Was he suggesting she was getting out of our hands? Getting arrogant? I knew my baby sister well; she was a teenager with dreams. She could be straight-forward, and fierce in her own way, but deep inside she lacked confidence. And now, in ten days, she was over-confident? I knew as her legal guardian and eldest brother that she had always struggled with esteem issues, I had to keep reminding her how important she was. And now, this? It didn’t make sense for her to get arrogant just because she landed a teen vogue cover. It wasn’t even on her bucket list, she probably didn’t care much by now.

There was more to it than it seemed.

“Dimitri called,” Mike went on, turning left towards our locality, “Said something was wrong. She wasn’t keeping well, couldn’t concentrate, and couldn’t perform the skills she could execute with grace once. She didn’t talk much, forget smiling. And she refused a chocolate shake, like, snapped at him when he pressed.”

We had reached home now, and someone opened the door for me.

“You mean, she’s…”

“I don’t know. But you should know about it. I think.” I got down and thanked him, making my way to Lizzie’s room. She was asleep now, under the tons of sheets. Like a ninja, I opened her thrash bin. Bags, so many little bags. Opening one of them, I found food. Those little bags contained all the food she was supposed to have.

I sat on her bed, looking at her. I could see she was getting thinner, I could see her collar bones more defined than they already were. Her hands were clenching the covers, like she was scared of something. I felt something below my thigh, under the covers. Groping around, I found a bottle of pills lying there. I didn’t know what they were, but they were on her medication list.

One way to find out. Google.

I goggled the name and thousands of pages turned up. Everywhere, the same exact thing. The new breakthrough for weight loss, getting skinny, getting thinner. These pills, they were killing my baby sister.  I saw her twitter in the favorites and opened it, reading through her tweets. She hadn’t tweeted in days now, and I had figured it was some new bet with someone. But this told an entirely different story. Her mentions were flooded with all kind of hate- racist abuse, swears, gossip, and jealousy. There were people who loved her, but the hate was far more than the love.

“Oh God…” I ran a hand through my hair, going to her facebook fan page. More hate posted by people, even on her website. The simple fact that I gifted her emerald earrings earned her thousands of haters. All this hate, this negativity at the age of fourteen? What did she even do?