Ghosts {L.P.}

9:20

Ｇｈｏｓｔｓ Ｗｅｒｅ Ｔｈｅ Ｒｅａｓｏｎ Ｆｏｒ Ｐｅｒｆｏｒｍｉｎｇ

▶︎ •၊၊||၊|။||||။၊|• 3:46

Riya had resorted to the very thing she had sworn to destroy, she was pacing the room.

A whole crew of makeup artists and hair stylists had been dispatched to the Orpheum for Julie and Riya's convenience, which proved especially useful since apparently Julie had thrown up on the car ride there.

All the girls had to worry about was dressing themselves and then going on stage, which sounded much simpler than done.

The dressing part wasn't hard, though Riya did have to awkwardly hop to Julie's changing station to ask for some help zipping up her faux yellow leather skirt due to the odd angle it was positioned at, even the slits on the side of the skirt didn't help with the mobility of the stubborn zipper in Riya's shaking hands. However, slipping on her cropped white spaghetti top and the sheer cropped shirt with embroidered sunflowers across it took nothing more than a minute.

For Riya's taste; hair and makeup had a little too much fun over her final look. Starting with heavily lining her eyes with kohl just to then cover her entire lids in a sticky sparkly solution which ended up blending nicely against her skin. However, they seemed to enjoy the solution far too much as the shiny lip gloss they dabbed on to Riya's lips nearly stuck them together, leaving thin trails of gloss every time she tried opening her mouth.

She ended up wiping it off and replacing the shiny colour with some borrowed gloss from Julie, she couldn't have her lips getting glued together while singing.

As far as hair went, they straightened every last stray strand of black hair pin perfectly against Riya's skull before tugging half of it into two French braids connecting at the back of her head, which from Julie's nods seemed to look good. They did, however, leave a few perfectly placed strands across her face to add the sort of messiness expected after playing three songs under the gruesome heat of a spotlight, or just to not seem perfectly perfect from the start.

Riya had waited as soon as both stylist teams had left before jumping off her seat, heeled white boots clicking with each step she took across the room while fiddling with her fingers, head spacing out so far in she had no knowledge of the passing of time or where she was any longer.

All Riya could hear in her nervous state was her rapid heartbeat pumping blood into her body, feel her own fingers fiddle with one another with the soft thump of each step rattling against her legs, her sight so blurred Riya could've walked into a wall any second if she weren't pacing in such a small complex.

A knock came from the door, Riya being startled so much she nearly toppled over the couch pressed by her side, Julie looking up from her own corner of the room filled with nerves, at least she hadn't reached the pacing stage yet as Riya had.

"Hey, Julie, Riya, I've got your roadie." Rob, their stage manager, yelled from the other side of the door.

He was nice enough from what Riya could tell, but like every other person in the establishment he was more worried with everything going smoothly to get an ever smoother paycheck than to worry properly about the nervous teenagers playing a professional show for the very first time in their lives.

"Come in." Julie called out, twisting the cap back on her lip gloss before checking in on Riya through the mirror who tried to give her a reassuring smile, still holding on to her sweaty hands.

One of the first signs of heart attacks was a rapid heartbeat, and Riya could swear it had never been that fast. Not when Luke kissed her, not when she first played on stage, not when she presented in front of class, there was only a constant pounding which Riya couldn't even tell if there were to be pauses in between each beat. Was she going to have a heart attack?