A New Life

Chapter 7-Scared

I reluctantly took it and put it in my new wallet which was in my new purse and headed into the store.  I bought about 14 underwear, 7 bras, a really cute bathing suit, and some slippers. When I went outside Kendall was patiently waiting on a bench with all of the bags and I gave him back his change. As we were walking into Vans Kendall said, “You know, if nothing else you got your amazing taste in shoes from me.”

I just smiled and said, “I think we have the same color eyes too.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “just like mom.” That made me kind of sad and I could sense the sadness in his voice. I didn’t really know what to say but he seemed to have already started to think about other things since he was admiring the shoes. We each walked out with a pair of shoes and I got some socks. We had so many bags that we could barely carry it all.

It was already around one o clock and we met everyone in the food court. “Whoa!” Logan remarked as he saw us approaching, “Looks like you guys bought the whole mall!”

“Haha very funny,” I replied sarcastically.

“I think we did buy the whole mall, or at least everything in Hollister.” Kendall said while laughing slightly. I nudged him with my shoulder and he said, “I’m just teasing.”

“I know.” I replied.

After a moment of silence he said, “Well what do you want to eat?”

“Um I’m not really hungry.”

“I don’t care, remember you promised to eat.”

“Ugh I know, I guess I’ll eat subway.”

He smiled victoriously and we left the bags at the table and headed over to subway. We halved a footlong and I have to admit it tasted pretty good. When we were done the boys and Ranel helped carry the bags back to the car so I didn’t have to carry anything. They were so nice and caring.

We all loaded into the SUV and headed back to the venue where the tour busses were waiting. The guys helped me load all of the stuff into the bus before they had to go to sound check. Kendall told me that there would probably be a lot of people and that I didn’t have to go if I didn’t want to but I really wanted to see them do their jobs, what they love to do, so I said that I wanted to go. He looked a little concerned, probably because the amount of people that would be there, but he just said okay if that was what I really wanted to do.

I assured him it was and we exited the busses and entered the backstage of the arena. They did their soundcheck and the meet and greet, and afterwards, we were hung around backstage for a little while. He talked to Ranel for a few minutes, something about a pass, before we headed towards their dressing room. We only passed a few people in the hall and I stayed as close to Kendall as possible. Once we entered the dressing room, I was glad that it was just Carlos and Logan in there. They were doing some vocal warm ups and stuff. I sat down on the couch near Carlos and listened to Kendall join in on the warm ups. After about five minutes, James entered and warmed up too. After a few more minutes, they had to change so I closed my eyes until they were finished and they kind of just laughed at me. When they were finished, someone knocked on the door and told them that they had to be on stage in 5. They started jumping up and down and getting ready while walking out towards the stage. We saw Ranel back stage and he gave Kendall a pass thingy on a lanyard and Kendall put it around my neck and told me not to take it off.

Then he told me to stay with Ranel and that he would take me out to a spot to watch the concert. I agreed since Ranel had been nothing but nice to me and I wasn’t too afraid of him. It was only a couple minutes til the boys went on, I had already wished them luck and they were sitting on the platform waiting for their cue. I was with Ranel who was walking me toward the crowd. We were just about to exit backstage when Ranel got a message on his walkie talkie that was urgent. He had some security problem that he really needed to fix. He faced me quickly and told me to wait right where I was and that he was going to send someone to walk me out. I was afraid for who that would be since I was so uncomfortable with new people, but I knew he had a problem to solve so I agreed. A minute later, another guy with a security lanyard approached me. He introduced himself as Mark quickly in a gruff and scary voice. He was extremely large and quite scary. I tried not to show my fear, but he reminded me a lot of my dad and that terrified me. I was already afraid of everyone, even those who reminded me nothing of my father, well adoptive dad I guess, but this guy just scared me to no end. Even worse, he grabbed my hand and led me out into the crowd. By the time we stopped in the gated off area where apparently I was to watch the show, I was in tears. He didn’t notice because it was extremely dark and he stood directly behind me once we reached the area. I was having a breakdown just knowing that he was that close and practically watching my every move, even if that was his job.

By around the third song, when Ranel came out to check on me since apparently he got the problem squared away, I was having a full blown breakdown. I couldn’t stop crying, but the speakers and the screaming girls prevented Mark from noticing. I couldn’t control my crying and I was just so scared although he had done nothing to me. Ranel dismissed Mark to do something else and then he came next to me to ask how I was enjoying the concert. It was then that he discovered my uncontrolled crying and complete breakdown. He tried asking what was wrong but I couldn’t answer. So instead, he just motioned me to follow him and he led me backstage towards their dressing room where it was quiet. The only problem was that as we were walking, the boys were flying off the stage to do a quick change and Kendall caught a glimpse of me crying. He stopped in his tracks and headed toward me. Ranel began saying no and that he had to hurry to change, but he didn’t care, he just kept coming. I took off towards him and was soon in his arms, still crying. He hugged me tight and tried to get me to calm down, then demandingly asked Ranel what had happened. Ranel replied with the truth, he didn’t know. Suddenly stagehands were yelling at Kendall to get changed.

He released me from his embrace and grabbed my hand running pulling me towards the little tent that had his change of clothes in it. He began to rapidly change and Logan who shared the tent with him was already almost finished. As he was changing, he was talking. “I’m so sorry, Jessie, I don’t know what happened but after the show, I promise we can talk about it or do whatever you want. Okay?” My interruption only cost him a few seconds, but they were precious seconds and the other guys were already on stage trying to stall by the time he was halfway done changing. When he was completely finished he pulled me into another hug since I still had tears rolling down my cheeks. He said something quickly to Ranel who was standing outside the tent, and ran onto stage. Once he left, Ranel entered. He apologized even though it wasn’t his fault and he informed me that a couple of stage hands were going to have to come in and set out the next set of clothes for when they change next. He also told me that if I wasn’t comfortable that we could go somewhere else while they set out the clothes. I said that I wanted to stay as long as he would be there too. He promised to stay while they were there. I curled up in a ball on the couch and tried desperately to calm down and stop freaking out.

I awoke suddenly feeling like I was moving. I stiffened and opened my eyes to discover it was Kendall carrying me back to the bus. He noticed I was awake and he whispered, “It’s just me Jessie, you’re fine.” I closed my eyes and nodded leaning into his chest letting him carry me the rest of the way to the bus. Once we got on the bus he carried me to my bunk but before putting me in he asked if I wanted to shower. I told him I did so he put me down and I sleepily grabbed my underwear and one of Kendall’s large shirts and took a quick shower and brushed my teeth getting ready for bed. When I got out he was sitting in the back lounge and he commented, “I bought you all that clothes today and you still wear my shirt?” I managed a slight smile, feeling much better than I did earlier that night and sat down next to him. He had showered in the venue so he was already nice and clean and not sweaty like before. I leaned on him and closed my eyes as he wrapped his arms around me. After a few seconds he whispered, “So do you want to talk about tonight or do you just want to go to sleep?”

“Can I just go to sleep?” I asked with my eyes still closed.

“Of course,” He said releasing his arms from around me. I got up and hugged him before climbing into my bunk and almost immediately falling asleep.