Left Behind

0.18 The Winner Takes It All, ABBA

"River?" Luke and Brodie said from either side of me. Carrie, pulled me through the group of our friends away from the two boys.

"She's overwhelmed, give her a minute to breathe." I followed her wordlessly, still in shock over my performance. We made our way to the music room with Alex and Alec hot on our tails.

"Is she okay? She hasn't said a word." Alex said sounding concerned, shutting the door behind us. I couldn't hold back any longer, and burst into laughter. A few nervous giggles broke free from Carrie who looked at the two boys, confusion written on her face.

"This is ridiculous. I just did the biggest performance of my life and instead of celebrating, I'm hiding in a bloody music room." I was clutching my stomach as I couldn't catch my breath through the hysterical giggles. As the others started to understand what I found so funny, my laughter became contagious, and we all found ourselves in stitches. Every time the laughter died down it was never long until it started up again. This carried on for what felt like hours until we were interrupted by the door bursting open and a random member of the stage crew ran into the room.

"There you all are. We have had people looking for you, everyone on stage now!" He yelled breathlessly.

--

The four of us ran as quickly as we could back onto the stage, completely interrupting the speech Miss Harrison was giving, causing a few members of the audience to chuckle.

"Now that everyone is present," She pretended to glare at us, making us smile sheepishly. "I will continue with what I was saying. Despite the enormous amounts of talent in this room, there is only 1 winner. Me and 3 other judges have been ranking each performance in order to have a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. However, I do not want anyone who performed tonight to think that they weren't good as this was an exceptionally hard decision."

As she carried on her speech, I found myself zoning out. I felt Carrie nudge me which made me focus once again, though I realised I had been staring directly at Luke. A look of amusement had took over his face and I felt my own heating up out of embarrassment.

Finally, Miss Harrison's speech was getting to the good bit and I tuned back in to her announcing the winners of the talent show.

"And in 3rd place.... Alec Balli!" My heart leapt with joy for his as he walked to the front of the stage, looking extremely dazed. The crowd was cheering for him, but one person was cheering louder than everyone else. At the back of the room , clad in a football uniform, was a young boy who looked extremely out of breath. That didn't stop him from proudly whooping for Alec as he received his 3rd place trophy.

"That's Connor. Alec's boyfriend." Carrie explained to me. I watched as Alec bowed in front of the audience one last time, before rushing off the stage and into the arms of his boyfriend.

"I am so jealous of that boy. Why are relationships so difficult?" I muttered to Carrie quietly as the crowd started to quiet down. She giggled and shrugged her shoulder. We were getting quite a few disapproving glances from people around us as Miss Harrison had started her speech back up again, and we were clearly not playing attention.

"Now for second place. There was actually a tie for this place so boys and girls, drum roll please." Everyone on the stage stamped their feet to create the illusion of the noise. "Second place goes too... Dirty Candy and Julie and the Phantoms!!" The crowd started cheering. The girls beside me jumped on top of each other and shrieked out of excitement. I was insanely proud of my friends. I looked over to where the Phantoms were celebrating and was surprised to see Luke already looking at me.

"Well done." I mouthed to him. He winked in reply before walking to the front of the stage along with the other winners. The obvious gap between the two groups was quite amusing to me, making the atmosphere extremely tense as they bowed in unison before going back to their original positions on the stage. When Carrie stood back next to me I gave her a big hug.