A Dying Girl's List

chapter 25

8 months left (December)

“Breath in...breath out. Breath in...breath out.”

These calming-your-nerves exercises, does not help at all.

Breathing is something people naturally do already – well some people do it naturally. How was breathing in-and-out slower than usual going to calm her nerves?

People who say that slower intakes of breaths helps to calm down the nerves, have most probably never been minutes away from starring in a music video.

Is this how singers feel before a live concert? Probably ten times worse.

That's right. Lissa was at an actual studio, waiting to be called upon. She had to wait a whole month, well, half a month, just for this day, and now it finally arrived. She could barely sleep the past week. She was too hyped up on the excitement. She's seen a lot of music videos before, and often wondered what it would be like if she was in one.

And now that time has come. In less than an hour, cameras would be rolling, and she'd be starring in the most anticipated music video of the month.

“Melissa Stewart, please approach the front.” when she heard her name being called, she jumped up from her seat, and wiped her clammy hands on her denim jeans. It was splotched with green and red dots all over the front and back.

Lissa's insides were all jumbled up. Her stomach did flips each time she took a step closer towards the director.

“You got this, all you gotta do, is sit on the platform. That's it,” she said to herself. 

It sounded like an easy thing to do, but sitting still was not Lissa's forté. She was extremely restless. She kept repeating that sentence in her head. It was sort of like a pep-talk for herself.

When she reached the director, her nervousness increased by a tenfold, and it was visible on her face.

There goes her pep-talk.

Her teeth begat to clatter, and she was twirling her thumbs repeatedly.

The director noticed Lissa's nervousness, and she was under strict orders from her son, to take care of Lissa. So that was what she was going to do. The brunette smiled at Lissa,

“First-times are always nerve-wracking. Just breath and you'll be fine,” she placed her hand on Lissa's shoulder, and Lissa smiled, gratefully.

Lissa breathed out, “Thanks, ma'am.”

That made her feel a bit better. She was still nervous, but managed to tone it down a bit. Her teeth weren't clattering as much, and she managed to keep all her organs still inside her body. The urge to barf had slightly reduced as well.

The brunette nodded, then turned back around, filling the studio with the sound of her voice,

“Five minutes till showtime, everybody get ready. You!” she pointed to a dancer making her way to the make-shift workshop,

“Come here.” the dancer walked forward. She was a twenty-something-year-old female, bathed in red and green pieces of material, wearing red heels with green straps. Her caramel skin glowed  under the lights in the studio, and her blue eyes sparkled as she smiled politely at the director.

“I need you to go check on the singers please, they're in their dressing rooms. Hurry!” the dancer quickly nodded and scurried off disappearing behind a door marked Green Room.

The director sauntered over to the center cameraman and had a short, heated discussion with the lean, fit, attractive man. He looked like someone in his late thirties, but he could've been older.