I Was on The Voice: A NBC's "The Voice" Fanfiction [COMPLETE]

Chapter Seven

Over the course of a week, we did two service projects, each six hours long, on consecutive days. We bonded with the other members in the competition by watching movies together, playing games, and of course, singing. People would pull out their guitars and other various instruments and we would try to find songs that everyone knew. We stayed up late, only to be extremely tired in the morning. But when everyone was tired, not just you, it felt more funny than upsetting. The workers on set would give confused looks as they saw everyone nearly falling asleep in the mornings.

I spent a fair chunk of time with Peter, as he was actually proving to be quite the interesting character. It turns out that his mother had cancer, and that was why she couldn’t come to the Battles. Seeing that my own mother had died from the same horrendous disease a few years back, it was hard not to feel bad for him. But I could tell he didn’t want sympathy.

As for his father, he had divorced his wife a while back and was now living in Virginia, so he was too far away to come to the competition. Wow, Peter’s life sucked even more than mine did.

But we had common ground other than the fact that our lives sucked, of course. We both liked music (obviously) and books. We both enjoyed being outside, so we walked around L.A. quite a bit. It was fun, and I hate to say it, but I was starting to like Peter. And by like, I mean LIKE like him. Which was a problem.

I mean, he wasn’t showing any particular signs of disliking me, but I was pretty sure he only liked me as a friend. Ugh, I hated it when I liked boys. It always ended up being complicated, and ending in heartbreak. Like one time there was this boy named Michael... I’m just not going there.

By the end of the week, Peter and I had grown a lot closer. However, I was pretty sure we would start drifting apart when the competition started back up. After all, we were competing against each other and were both capable of putting our all into this. And I was 100% sure that Usher was going to push Peter harder than Adam would.

All of that being said, I walked into my first practice with Adam feeling very nervous. Just the thought of being alone with Adam Levine while he criticized my singing was terrifying. Also, I wasn’t sure what he would think of my song choice. I had chosen Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t normally that into country, but Carrie Underwood was okay, and I didn’t want people to think I was just going to stick to one genre. And plus, if I pulled off the song okay, I could manage to get to the Lives. Which I wanted badly.

“Hey Beka,” Adam greeted me when I came in. He seemed pretty happy. That was good.

“So, how was your week?” he asked.

I highly doubted Adam cared to hear about the boring normal stuff I did this week, so I just said, “It was pretty good.”

“Well I’m glad. So, getting right to it, what song did you choose to sing for the Knockouts?” My eyes narrowed slightly. Was he glad that I had a good week? It didn’t seem like someone famous like him would care whether or not boring Rebekah Leigh’s week was good or not. I had to remind myself that just because he was famous, didn’t mean that he didn’t do normal stuff sometimes, and since I was on his team, maybe he cared a bit. I also had to remind myself that he had just asked a question.

“Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood.”

He paused for a moment. “...Interesting song choice....”

“What?” Oh great, now would probably come all the reasons why singing that was a bad idea.

He could probably tell I looked annoyed. “The song’s fine,” he said a bit hurriedly. “You just didn’t seem like the country type.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “Well...I’m normally not, but...” I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere being this nervous. “I thought I should do something different. Not stick to just one genre.”

“Smart move.” Was it? The corners of his mouth twitched up a bit in a bit of a grin. Maybe he did like the idea of me branching out a bit. I hoped the other judges would, too.

We started practicing, and I was a bit worried I would run out of breath, but I somehow managed to survive through the whole song. I waited for Adam’s criticism.

“Well,” he began. “The main thing I need to see more of if we’re going to pull this off is some attitude.”

I silently cursed myself. I had forgotten that part.

I nodded and waited for him to continue. “Other than that, just practice to make sure you have enough breath to hit those notes when you get up there to perform.”

We went through the song a few more times and it went better; I put a little more attitude into it. By the end of the practice, though, I could tell that Adam still wanted more.

I headed back to my room determined to pull this off. See, what I heard most of the time I hear that you need to try to relate it to yourself, but I’m afraid I’ll just drift off into thought and forget that I’m performing, or I’ll get too mad that I won’t enjoy getting to sing. But that was my only option if I wanted to get angry enough.

Christine wasn’t in the room when I got there, so I had the place to myself temporarily. I sat down and tried to think of some crappy relationship I had that I could relate this song to. It took a while, because I really didn’t like thinking about it, but I finally got myself thinking about it enough to where I was getting seriously pissed.

I silently prayed that I would pull this off, but not let my emotions get the best of me.

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Ugh, makeup. It was the night of the Knockouts, and the makeup artists were putting some makeup on me for this performance. Apparently they were going for “sexy country,” which in my opinion were two words that didn’t belong together, and most certainly not two words that applied to me. They seemed pretty excited about it, though.

They had me wearing red lipstick with shiny lipgloss over it, and I couldn’t help but imagine how dumb I was going to look. I was wearing brown eyeshadow, and had already had my hair curled into loose waves.

The outfit was worse, though. Like I said, they were trying to make me look sexy and country at the same time, which just wasn’t happening. I was forced into blue skinny jeans, and a plaid, button-up shirt that was rolled up to the elbows. It wasn’t the slightest bit loose, either, which I guess was what they were going for, but I was so used to wearing loose tee shirts that I was uncomfortable. They were also making me wear a cowgirl hat, which was ridiculous and would probably fall off. They said it was that or having my hair braided cowgirl style, though, and I did NOT want to look like a little kid dressed up for country day at school. The worst part was the shoes they were attempting to have me wear. See, Adam and I had agreed that we were going to make the song a little more rock than it was originally, so it would be a cross between rock and country. Also, since they were trying to make me look sexy, they wouldn’t let me wear cowgirl boots and instead were forcing me into heels.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like cowgirl boots, but they’re better than heels. Heels. I was going to fall over, for Pete’s sake! They were making me practice walking around in them, and I was very wobbly. Well, there was still an hour and a half before I performed, and they were determined to get me used to them by then. Just lovely. As if I wasn’t already nervous enough about the singing itself, now I was at risk of falling over in front of all of America.

I was going against Ivy Rivers, the creepy girl from our team. I had no clue what she was singing, but I hoped that either she sucked, or I did really good so that I could move on. It would suck to get kicked off now.

An hour and a half later, I felt better about the shoes, but was beginning to get more nervous about the song. I should’ve chosen something easier.

Well, it’s too late now, I thought as my name was called to go onstage.

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Sorry this chapter sucked! I was considering putting the Knockouts in this chapter, but I decided to just leave it hanging there instead. Guess whoever's reading this gets to wait for one more chapter!