The Tour

Chapter 4

The third stop of the tour is today and Lacey has actually started warming up to the idea of speaking in front of crowds. Arden and James have been helping her prepare her speeches and getting her mind off of the nerves so she'll be calm when she goes on stage. Lacey still finds it weird that while making the list of who goes and when she was chosen to go first. It boggles her mind that they chose the only speaker with social anxiety to speak first.

"Lacey you have a half hour to prepare yourself this time if you want to go practice." Arden told Lacey as she walked to her practice room. The schedule was mixed up a little today meaning Arden was going after Lacey and James followed meaning they would all be preparing too. She went into her little preparing room and started pacing like she normally does when she knows she's about to be put in social situations.

Time had passed by faster than Lacey had thought it would and she was already being pushed onto the stage. She froze for a second staring at the crowd in front of her. Off to the side of the crowd she could make out the face of Haley, and she would be lying to herself if she said it gets easier.

"Speak." Arden said off to the side, trying to encourage her.

"Social-Social anxiety-I'm sorry I can't do this" She ran off of the stage as fast as she could, and when she made it back to the room she had practiced in and made no mistake, locking the door as soon as she had entered. Of course the door didn't lock right away as she had to fidget with the lock her tears blurring her vision. She put her back against the secure door and slowly slid down. Like river rapids the tears flowed from her eyes. The door was vibrating indicating someone was banging on it in order to get her attention.

"Lacey, please open up the door. We just want to know your okay." The voice was unfamiliar to Lacey so it couldn't possibly be Jallicynn, Adren, or James.

"Go away!" she screamed at the person on the other side of the door. Her voice coming out shaky due to the fact she was having a panic attack. "Just go away! Leave me alone!"

"It's me Marcus come on open up." The banging on the door stopped for a second and a silence fell. The only noise being heard was Lacey slowly getting up. She hadn't actually talked to marcus but he seemed like a sweet guy she could trust and with her need to open up for Haley and overcome her social anxiety she really didn't see any other choice for herself. Besides he overcame alcohol addiction so why wouldn't he be able to help nurture her back to health.

Once Lacey was fully standing she reached her hand out and unlocked the door. Her tears slowing down as she knew she had to trust someone and starting with opening up to Marcus didn't seem like a bad start.

Marcus opened the door and pulled Lacey's small body into a hug. Without hesitation Lacey let her body fall limp, trusting that Marcus would keep her safe from her fears.

"Do you wanna talk about it? About why today was harder for you, and why you ran off stage." His larger hands rubbed her tiny back comforting the younger girl.

Lacey rubbed her eyes before saying "I saw her. I saw Haley to the side of the crowd. I'm sorry I just couldn't take it. Her being gone has taken such a tole on me and I couldn't handle it. I miss her everyday and to think all I did to stop her was yell. Like my body was paralyzed watching my best friend throw herself over the edge. Like I wanted her to do it for the both of us because one of us had to escape. One of us had to be happy, and I let her go. I let her be happy even though I knew deep down without her I wouldn't be."

Marcus let her ramble on with the occasional pause to take a breath. He didn't interrupt her once because he knew she needed this, and he was right; boy was he right. Lacey hadn't talked to anyone about the death of the people around her once. Not her mother and not her best friend. She bottled it up not wanting to spoil anyone else's happiness with her tears. But the thing about bottles is they can only hold so much before it's too much and it begins to overfill.

A comfortable silence fell between the two before she shed her last tear.

"Thanks Marcus. I really needed someone to listen so that meant a lot to me." Lacey hugged Marcus before letting go and wiping her face.

When the event was almost over Lacey took that as her chance to redeem herself and go on at the end. She may have social anxiety but she certainly doesn't quit no matter what it is.

"So I'm sorry I kind of ran off stage at the beginning. You know social anxiety kicking in a little there. Don't you just hate when that happens?" She laughed at herself. Being in front of a crowd once a day is bad enough but she just had to talk herself into talking going up again.

"Anyway I'm up here to try once again to talk to you about how to get over it. You can obviously tell that I still am trying but I'm talking in front of all of you aren't I? Granted I haven't look directly at any of you but that's beside the point."

The speech went on and you could tell that off to the side Arden, James and Marcus are very happy that she decided to go back on stage and try again. Arden and James were shocked that she even brought it up because of the little amount of Lacey's ramble that they were informed of.

As Lacey's speech of encouragement came to an end the crowd erupted with cheers and clapping. She exited the stage with an accomplished smile snug on her face.

"Jeez Lacey you must really want that scholarship to Harvard. Even after a full blown fucking panic attack you took the stage." Vesta said to her. Lacey cringed at the curse word. She tends to not like or use them because of the harsh things said to her in her past.

"Wait what scholarship? I thought we were just touring to be motivational speakers." Lacey said as what Vesta said had settled in. She doesn't remember anything about a scholarship to Harvard being mentioned. Then again why would she she never did go over the contract when she signed it and didn't go too far when she tried to research the National Ten Teen Association. All she really looked at was the one article on who was going and how they hadn't chosen a tenth teen to go on.

"The scholarship. We all have a chance to be given a scholarship at the end of the tour. Have you not seen the online poll or anything going on online? Everyone who's not us gets to vote online for one of us each night we have an event. At the end the person with the most votes gets the scholarship. Wanna check it out. I bet what happened with you today is already all over twitter." Vesta pulled out her phone tapped away on the screen before handing it to her.

Her phone was open to a page with what seemed to be the results of the voting so far. "It looks like Marcus is winning so far. Why are you so excited?"

"Reload the page I bet the votes will change." Vesta stated. Not thinking much off it Lacey reloaded the page and she was shocked at the result. Her votes were going up at a fast rate. When she came back on stage she really showed the crowd that she was trying her best at overcoming her fear to get her message out and help others. "You deserve the votes for tonight. You faced your fear even after it tore you down. The amount of bravery you had tonight was inspiring and I could see that in the crowds eyes."

Arden, Vesta, James, and Marcus all group hugged Lacey and for the first time in a while she wasn't afraid of being crowded. She was happy at how welcoming everyone was and now the thought of leaving at the end of summer was going to break her heart. But she wasn't thinking of that, her mind couldn't be corrupted with negative thoughts when she was finally in such a happy place.