𝐆𝐋𝐔𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 || #𝟏

Chapter 22

"I'm just saying, I don't trust kids these days to make responsible decisions. But follow your heart, okay?"

"Okay."

So I walked away from that very awkward conversation, thinking over my options.

-- ------ --

"SAY CHEESE!" Alice beams, holding her camera high as Jolene, Emily, Abigail, Aubrey and I pose. It's opening night, and Alice was making it the biggest deal of the century. Alice even bought a huge bouquet of flowers for each of us, and won't stop taking pictures of everything.

Claudia sneaks around to the back of the stage with her fancy law book, and decides that she wanted to clarify some things with me before I went onstage. In front of all of my friends.

"Now sis," Claudia cleared her throat, opening her law book. "Dot Mcstuffins was innocent even though she admitted to murdering someone in open court."

Jolene hung her head. "Isn't it Doc Mcstuffins? Not Dot?"

"You're just jealous," Claudia spat, taking her book and stomping away.

"She's just..."

"Wow..."

"Is that seriously your sister?"

"Does she seriously not know it's Doc Mcsutffins, not Dot?"

I sigh. "She forces me to call it Dot Mcstuffins because she always wants to be right. I just got used to calling it that."

"Oh..."

"She's a very big handful. Anyways, how are you all?"

"I'm very nervous," Emily piped in. "I think that I might barf from my nerves."

Emily has a bit of a... nerve-barfing problem. The last time she vomited was when we were doing a school presentation together and she vomited all over onto the floor. Green spewed out from her stomach and chunks of the cafeteria meat loaf from lunch stunk up the room, and Mrs Smith ran out - crying while the class were left screaming. Of course, she remembered to bring her signature blue nail polish and accidentally spill it on the floor.

"Jasmine, are you excited for this?" Aubrey gushed.

"I'm a bit more nervous than excited, Aubrey."

"Aren't we all?" Lilliana grinned, making her way to us.

"Hey Lilliana," I waved. "Excited for tonight?"

"Obviously," she said, "but not as excited as uh... My mum..."

Lilliana's mum is very... enthusiastic... She constantly rants on and on about Lilliana (she's the favourite child) and smiles an unnatural amount of times.

"5 minutes!" Mrs G calls out, running around backstage, dressed as Effie Trinket from the hunger games. She nailed the pink hair wig, and the extravagant makeup. Not so much the accent though, we can barely understand what she's been saying all night.

Lilianna grabs my hand, leading me away from my friends.

"What's up?" I ask as she tugs on my hands.

"I need to show you this really cool thing in my dressing room. It's kinda weird, but it's cool." She says.

She leads me into her dressing room, and opens the door.

"I don't see anything weird or cool about this dressing room," I say, slowly looking around. "It's pretty standard, looks almost identical to mine."

"That's because there was nothing cool about this dressing room," Lilliana slowly says. "Look, I'm really sorry about doing this, but you kind of deserve it."

"Deserve what..?"

Lilliana presses her lips into a thin line, opens the door out of the room and slams it in. Seconds later, I hear a key being jabbed in, turned around and the door clicks.

No, this can't be happening.

I run to the door, I press down on the handle, and it doesn't move. I bang my hands on the door, and I kick it as hard as I can.

"Help!" I scream, "I'm locked in!"

It's useless, no one hears me. Everyone's probably already getting ready to go on stage.

"Help!" I try again, desperately kicking on the green door. I'm livid, punching, slapping and banging as hard as I can. I couldn't believe Lilliana had betrayed me. And for what? To continue being friends with Alexis?

"HELP!" I call for the final time. I give up, slumping on the floor and pressing my back against the door. I give up.

"Jasmine?"

The door clicks open, and Luke swings it open. I stare at him for a bit, and he stares back.

"Why are you in here?"

"Where'd you get the key?"

"It was outside the door on that chair," he points. "We're all looking for you, why were you in there?"

"Lilliana locked me inside," I explain, "I'm so glad you saved me. I thought I'd be stuck in there forever."

He shrugs, then holds out his hand. "Cmon, let's go. We've got a show to put on."