Spaces (h.s.)

2

March 26th, 2010

"I feel like I'm gonna puke, I swear like it's not even funny anymore."

"Ali, just calm down, you'll be fine. Besides, you're the one that accepted the dare", my older brother points out with an amused grin. He was liking pushing this stage fright way too much.

"Yeah, I did, but it was in a joking way, y'know? A jokingly ballsy moment where we were supposed to laugh it off... I didn't expect for any of us to take it seriously...", I rant to him in response.

From an outsider's perspective, I probably sound like a worried and scared wuss of a girl, but my stage fright was overpowering my self-awareness, right now.

A few months ago on my 16th birthday, back when I still lived in Canada, my friends and I were playing truth or dare. In an act of giving in to peer pressure, I picked dare, and the girl who was giving me my options had told me to go on the X-Factor, having seen a few seasons with her parents and knowing I'd be moving to England soon. I ended up agreeing to it, I couldn't turn it down and make a fool of myself to look like someone who backs down from a challenge. Plus, I already have a past of being a theatre kid in primary school and was a Glee kid in the early years of high school(in which i never completed a whole year in the school club.. whoops). My logic was basically: if I could learn to put my newly developed stage fright and social anxiety aside, I can do this.

And now we're here.

It was too late to back out, though. I was already in line for the auditions in Manchester, surrounded by what looked like hundreds of other contestants, some older and some younger. I doubt anyone else was doing this on a dare, though... or maybe they were, but I doubt that.

"You shouldn't have agreed to it" Jack sing-songs, before he looked down to his phone to answer a text from a friend of his. I didn't even need to turn around to see the smug grin on his face that he was trying to suppress. This mothertrucker is enjoying this.

However my younger and more emotionally in-tuned brother, Matteo, places an encouraging hand on my shoulder and looks over to me,

"You'll do great out there, I know it. You're a great singer. Don't worry"

I glanced back to him, a thankful smile on my face, but the bonding moment was short-lived, broken by the sounds of someone screaming.

"AHHH!!"

What the fuck?

My eyebrows creased in confusion as I looked over to my brother, hearing the scream start again, as if someone was being kidnapped or had been stabbed.

"Is it just me or is someone dying?" He asks, mirroring my expression as he glanced around, turning his head before he stopped, seeming to have caught the one who was making all of this noise.

"No, not just you..." I mumbled, more to myself than to him as i followed his gaze.

"AHHHSJFFSKAA" The boy a few people behind us yelled as i turned around.

He had finally stopped yelling when his voice got cut off by coughs, seeming to have overdone it.

Jack chuckled as he places his phone back in the front pocket of his skinny jeans and shook his head, "Oh my god, he needs serious help."