Read Lipstick & Zombies (Deadly Divas Book 1) for Free Online

audition process, she'd managed to keep herself from thinking about that. It was when they'd shook her hand and said, "Congratulations, you are now one of the Deadly Divas," that it finally hit her.
    She was a member of something. A group. She was one of five. A small crowd. This was happening now , not someday, but today.
    She had spent most of her life fighting: smiling, struggling, pushing everything out of her life that wasn't going to get her to exactly this fate. And now she'd done it. And she spent the whole night awake, not bursting with excitement, but terror. Who were these girls? Would they like her? Would they talk a lot? Would they expect her to talk a lot? If they didn't like her, would that hold back her career? Was that the next fight she had to face?
    She ran through conversation topics, practicing in front of the mirror as she'd done with pretend interviewers for years.
    When she glanced at a clock and realized she'd been in front of the mirror, pathetically practicing fake conversations for over an hour, and had spent two hours before that worrying away the time in bed, she gave up on any plans for sleep. She spent the next hour picking an outfit for the day, two hours after that getting dressed, and then went to the roof to wait for it to be time to leave. The hours on the roof helped calm her. Her energy was flowing freely again. Peace didn't seem like such a far-fetched idea. And then the alarm went off and it was time to leave.
    "Positive. Mental. Attitude." She ran her fingers over her topaz bracelet. Her mom had given it to her when she noticed how scared Carrie was around people. It had been how Carrie coped with the world before therapy or anything else. Yellow, she'd told Carrie, would help her balance her energy, boost her self esteem, and give her a sense of calm. She would emanate that calm and get back a confidence in her abilities from other people, establishing her role as a person of influence. Yellow was everything Carrie wanted in life.
    The secretary at the record company who led her to the meeting room wore a yellow skirt. It looked ridiculous on her, but was exactly the fabric Carrie needed to see before going into that room. She ran her thumb over that topaz bracelet, let out a deep breath, and strode confidently into the room.
    She was pretty sure she didn't even flinch when she locked eyes with that girl.
     
    JO
     
    She was a popstar now. It still seemed like a joke; she wasn't sure that was ever going to wear off. They told her to go home and get her things. She needed to be back the next day for a meeting where she'd get to know the other girls. Then they'd be given living quarters and get to work. They had lots of work to do, they'd promised her.
    No one asked her if she still wanted to do it. They'd just assumed, and so she assumed, too, that this was still the right decision. That was the thing, though: she wasn't sure she'd ever made the decision. Not in any real way. She'd never said to herself, "I'm going to be a popstar and live in the city!" It was more like, "Jo, here's a way you can completely change your life." And so she did.
    Jo hadn't bothered going home, or telling anyone what was going on. She didn't think she could do that. She couldn't even imagine how that conversation would go. You know that thing you've been making jokes about? That awful new thing the city dwellers are doing? Well, I'm in it.
    She spent the night walking around the city, watching people go about their normal lives. Their normal lives that were completely foreign to her. She waited for her new reality to sink in. It didn't.
    The meeting room was sleek and shiny and smelled like citrus. They grew oranges behind her house, but the smell of actual citrus was different. Artificial scents were always like that: a slap in the face. For a world constructed of such sharp colors, and scents, and bright, overpowering greetings from people paid to be nice to you, the streets sure had been full of people