I am awake, showered, and dressed, with coffee in hand from the well-loved cafe down the street before my seven o’clock alarm chimes. My intensive class schedule over the past four years usually had me up by six o’clock most mornings anyway, and my internal clock never lets me sleep in. Still, don’t confuse me for one of those peppy morning people who do ten asanas and jog for six miles before blending up a kale smoothie. I am not a morning person, and until I have my coffee, I am a completely neurotic bitch. It’s not something I’m too terribly proud of.

And truthfully, I had spent most of the night thinking about my mother. There were two versions of her life: the story of the small-town choir girl who’d made it big, and then the true story.

Through fragmented stories and quiet investigations, I was able to piece together the truth about the woman behind the pleasant and carefully manicured façade she’d always shown the rest of the world. The life I had managed to deduce was nothing like the one she presented to the magazines—one of a young woman born and raised in a good Christian home outside Nashville, who’d been discovered in a local talent show and brought to Hollywood to be the star she was born to be.

My version started when my sixteen-year-old mother escaped her Oklahoma trailer park by following an abusive boyfriend to Nashville, where he was convinced he would become the next Johnny Cash. After too many failures and far too many bruises, my mother fled, and supported herself by singing and dancing in an Arizona strip club called “The Thorny Cactus.” There, she captured the attention of a talent agent on vacation. He worked for a large record label in Los Angeles, and when he saw my mother’s long, blonde hair, gleaming emerald eyes, and other ample assets, he brought her back with him. Luckily for him, she could also carry a tune.

Even though he was a married man, my mother and the talent agent carried on an affair for a few years. Under his tutelage, she transformed from Jessie Lee Danforth to Jessica Banks. Though he helped give her a career that had her touring a bit throughout the country, he was primarily fascinated by her “off-stage” charisma.

In fact, it was her looks that first captured my father’s attention. Back before he was a focused businessman with a secretary who scheduled forty-five minutes of “recreational” time with his children weekly, he had been a spoiled, carefree playboy with a new woman on his arm each week. That was, however, until he met my mother. Though she was technically still dating her agent, they began a whirlwind romance that resulted in a surprise pregnancy. My grandmother was horrified, of course, and insisted that the two marry immediately. It was obvious they weren’t in love, but my grandmother wanted my father to settle down, and my mother wanted stability. Thus, a marriage—and a business arrangement—was born.

Though they were legally bound in holy matrimony, my father had a terrible wandering eye. I would never say it out loud, but deep down I believe knowing this had broken my mother’s heart. I’d be lying if I said my father’s enormous assets didn’t play a significant role in her love for him, but a part of her always remained that hopeless little girl, stuck in a trailer somewhere in Oklahoma, waiting for her prince to come.

My mother, however, was far too proud to ever leave, so she kept up the charade of a happy marriage. Witnessing my parents’ misery had only helped convince me to completely forgo the whole institution of marriage. Our family history was riddled with failed marriages, poisoned by simmering resentment and animosity that slowly and painfully ate away at once-happy unions. I used to be in denial myself, convinced that the mistakes of my parents, and theirs before them, would never impact me. But then I saw how Lawrence’s failed love life had left him a single parent to an incredible girl whose mother never visited, and Daphni sabotaged the one relationship that actually made her happy in favor of dating idiots who treated her terribly. It turns out we weren’t immune after all, and if there was one lesson I had learned above all, it was that falling in love was never worth the risk of heartbreak.

And with that depressing thought, I quickly run a brush through my thick, damp waves and gather my toiletries, throwing them into my suitcase. They easily fit into my carry-on, along with the clothes I had thrown in earlier. Growing up, I had been quickly initiated into the strenuous lifestyle of constant travel and touring. I had learned the art of condensing my entire life into a carry-on and, more importantly, learned never to get too attached to anything that could get lost in the chaotic shuffle of staying in a new city every night. At first, I found the celebrity and touring life exciting and glamorous, but eventually it lost its luster. It was hard not to be turned off by all the sycophants and the backstabbing nature of the business.

Much to my mother’s chagrin, I had chosen school and my books over the chaotic and tumultuous celebrity life. My mother’s heart truly broke when she would catch me secretly reading the latest issue of TIME, covertly nestled in between the pages of a People magazine. As I grew older, I began to more confidently assert my desire to educate myself and go to college. Rather than deter my mother, it only seemed to make her even more determined to convert me into a celebrity clone of herself. And since I couldn’t sing, was a terrible actress, and had no other discernible marketable talent, she decided to turn me into a model.

For instance, exhibit A: When I was fifteen, my mother had falsely lured me to a modeling casting call with the promise of a trip to the National History Museum. Instead of exploring Paleolithic dinosaur bones, I had been forced to strut around in a grotesque bathing suit while a table full of walky old men made marks on their clipboards. That singular experience scarred me, and I hadn’t spoken to my mother for a whole week, which of course, she had not even noticed. Only when she finally realized that I wasn’t growing past five foot five did she finally concede defeat and focus all her energy on Daphni, ascending to her rightful place as Daphni’s full-time momager.

Though Daphni would ferociously deny it, her catapult to fame was thanks, in large part, to our family name. The Monroe name carried a lot of clout, and many were only too eager to have the Monroes owe them a favor. Despite the power of our family name, I still can’t deny that Daphni is incredibly talented. Though she records the most ridiculous, overproduced pop tracks, if you strip down her music, you realize that her voice is melodic, layered, and hauntingly beautiful. It’s the same voice that lulled me to sleep each night, and performed sold-out performances for our Beanie Baby audience. Her voice feels like home to me.

It also obviously helps that Daphni has always been the more outgoing and sociable of us. That, and the fact that she is absolutely gorgeous. With her beautiful blonde hair (that she always dyes these intense, bright colors—I believe she is currently rocking Barney purple), stunning, clear, pale skin with an adorable sprinkle of freckles that she always insists on covering, and a gorgeous figure carved by years of dancing, she’s easily landed on every top-ten-sexiest list for the past six years. The only feature that hints at our shared DNA is our emerald-green eyes. Lawrence has them, too; they’re one of the few things we all have that tie us together.

Even with all her millions of albums sold and worldwide popularity, Daphni is in a tough spot. Lately, her luck has not been so great. All of us know that this is more than just a tour for Daphni. This is her last chance to salvage her reputation after a slew of nasty online rumors and embarrassing paparazzi pictures led her to having a very humiliating drunken meltdown outside of a Los Angeles club one night. Even now, as I remember it, I can’t help but cringe. The pictures had been terrible: Daphni stumbling out of the club and vomiting on a photographer’s shoes before grabbing a golf club and shattering a glass table, then passing out in a nearby bush.

After that incident, Daphni’s PR team had gone into overdrive. They had shipped her off to a private villa in Bora Bora with a recording team, giving her three months to record her new album while they worked on repairing her image stateside. The tour is the launch of a carefully constructed rebrand of Daphni as the iconic American pop princess. The last thing anyone wants is for her to go completely postal and irreparably tarnish both the Monroe name and her entire brand.

I had worked very hard to make sure I avoided any of the fallout. I kept my head down at school, making sure to avoid social media and keep myself out of trouble. I also always made a point to befriend the international exchange students, knowing that those friendships always had an expiration date and they were far less likely to recognize me. Truthfully, it often led to lonely nights and weekend binges of Lifetime movies, but it was a small sacrifice to make to protect my privacy. I saw how that lifestyle had destroyed my mother, then my sister. I wanted a different life for myself. Which is why I need to play the role of the dutiful daughter, keep Daphni out of trouble, and collect my tuition check for law school so I can finally start working and no longer have to depend on my family.

I shoot a quick glance over at the clock on my nightstand. It’s only eight in the morning and I am already feeling restless. There is no way I can loiter around here for another two hours without going mental. Reaching for my laptop, I look up the Amtrak times for trains heading into New York. I make a quick decision to take an earlier train that will have me in the city by one o’clock. Once I get into the city, I can check into the hotel, dump my things, and try and catch Daphni at her sound check. Though I’m not planning on breaking the news to her right before the first concert of her tour, I know I need to tell her at some point tonight. I am racing against the 24-hour paparazzi news cycle, and I know time is not exactly on my side here.

I also want to try and arrive early so I can get a better idea of where my sister is, emotionally. Unlike Lawrence and myself, Daphni didn’t inherit the family gene of tactfully locking away painful emotions and hiding behind carefully plastered smiles. As she would always say, she was an “artist” and as such, prone to dramatics and meltdowns.

With a few quick clicks, I reserve a new ticket then toss my laptop into my shoulder bag before grabbing my suitcase and walking to the front door. As I stand in the doorway, I can’t help but take one final look at the microscopic studio apartment that had been my home these past four years. I’d hidden myself away in the self-imposed bubble of these four walls. And though I hated to play the “poor, little rich girl” card, the burden of my family had forced me to retreat into a small shell of a world. My family’s wealth and access undeniably opened so many doors for me, but it also forced me to forge barricades around my life that made it incredibly lonely.

And even though I am caught in a long moment of melancholy, I can’t help but chuckle at the irony of me lamenting my four years of self-imposed exile when I am going to be spending the next three months on tour with arguably the biggest celebrity on the planet, with nonstop cameras, trailing assistants, and hordes of groupies. From hermit to glorified groupie in five minutes flat.