Tomorrow I Go

I didn’t feel really motivated about performing today. It almost seemed like reading hate mail the night before and crying yourself to sleep wasn’t good for your mental health.

That being said, there was nothing I could do. Today was the first dress rehearsal for the Semifinal. That may not seem like a big deal, but it also served as the first Jury performance. Our Jury scores were decided based on our performance today.

Every Solstice Contest runs on the same days of the week. The Semifinals are held on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Wednesday and Friday mornings if you are watching from Australia, with the final taking place on a Saturday evening or Sunday morning. The day before each of these finals was the jury performance.

We were in the first Semifinal, which was scheduled for tomorrow, so tonight, we had to perform for the semifinal jury vote.

“Alright, today’s the big day. How’re you feeling?” Stephanie asked.

“Yeah, fine,” I lied.

“I hope so. You need to make a good impression out there today. We normally don’t do as well with the public vote, so today is very important.”

“No pressure then,” Noah chimed in.

“Not if you perform as well as you have been.” She smiled.

I felt uncomfortable about how cheery she was. She seemed to be actually kind of nice today. After all the hell she gave me. She was being nice. It’s too bad I wasn’t really in the mood today.

“Alright Darcy, I’ll leave them to you. I’ll be watching on from the green room.”

Darcy began running about frantically. In hindsight, we should have requested another stylist to help her, but we wanted to cut back as much as possible.

She set me down first because I had the most complex styling. I guess that’s the pro or con of being the frontman. Once I was done, she moved on to Jet. Again, as our guitarist, he also garnered a lot of attention from the fans, so it was important to make him look fabulous as well.

I didn’t have anything to do, so I continued to doomscroll the hate messages. Yep, the most dumb thing I could do was exactly what I did. Darcy finished up with Jet and began with Luca.

Perhaps noticing my melancholy, Jet pulled me aside.

“You okay buddy?” He asked.

“Yeah.” I lied.

“You look like horse shit.”

“Cheers.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Just asking because you don’t look okay.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you look like horse shit.”

The conversation began to loop, so I decided to walk away.

The night rolled around, and we got up and performed. It was not our best performance—to be honest, it was our worst—and it was all because of me. My doubts surrounding everything with Marco meant I had performance issues.

As I exited the stage, I knew I fucked up. The rest of the band didn’t say anything. They already knew I knew. I just hope it was good enough for us to go through tomorrow.

As we sat in the Greenroom, I was accosted by a very unhappy Stephanie.

“Blake, what the fuck was that?”

“I think it spoke for itself,” I responded, knowing quite well it was terrible.

“I swear to God, if you don’t get yourself together, I’m walking.”

First, the fans hated us. Second I screwed up the performance. Third, Stephanie was now pissed. Everything sucked. And that was even before the whole not seeing Marco bit. Why was it so difficult for Marco and I to be together?

“I’m sorry I knew I fucked up.”

I didn’t have an excuse.

“What the hell happened out there?” she continued, though her voice had more concern than anger in it.

“I just had a lot on my mind.”

“Like what?”

I hesitated for a moment, not sure if I should tell her or not. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to be honest with her.

“I spent the night reading the Geddit and Nutube comments.”

“Oh God, I feared something like this might happen.”

She began to rub her forehead.

“Blake, that was kind of dumb,” Noah commented. Of all the people, I didn’t want to hear it from someone who periodically checked the odds.

“Sorry,” I apologised to all of them.

“Why the hell would you look at the posts?” Luca asked.

“I was shown some, and it made me curious about what everyone was saying. I’m sorry for causing issues.”

“I’m glad you are sorry, but who showed you?” Stephanie asked.

I bit my tongue, unsure whether to share with them or not. I didn’t want to drag Marco into it, either. After some thought, I caved. I owed it to everyone.

“Valentina showed me the posts.”

Stephanie sighed.

“That scheming bitch, I’m going to need to have a talk with her,” she turned to me. “You don’t have to worry about her. She’s my problem.”

“I’m sorry I caused a problem.”

“Well it wasn’t a disaster.”

“Great!” I replied sarcastically.

“Like, it felt lacklustre, but you were in tune, and there was emotion in the lyrics. Not quite the ones we were after, but emotions nonetheless.” She smiled, trying to reassure me that I hadn’t thrown away all my chances at Solstice before the first Semifinal even began.

“You can just say I fucked up. I already know that’s what everyone’s thinking.”

“Okay, yes, you messed up today. But you may still be somewhere in the top ten. I think we can make the finals as long as you don’t mess up tomorrow,” she looked me dead in the eyes. “So I want you to sort your shit out.”

How am I supposed to do that?

She sighed.

“I’ll help you. So Blake, come with me.”

“What after the rehearsal?”

It was quite late. I had no idea what she could do at this time, so I thought perhaps the best thing would be to get some sleep.

“No, next year.” Her sarcasm was very evident.

“Okay, but should I get changed first.”

“Yes, if you damage your outfit, I will kill you more than I want to today.”

.─── ༻ ☼ ༺ ───.

End of Chapter 30