Celtic Thunder and the Background Girl

Tour Begins

Luckily for me, I hadn't had a throwing up incident, since the Subway one.  Thank God for that!

Things had gone successfully in the past few weeks...my mom put up a fight, but then finally went home, I built my friendship with Emmet and the lads, and I learned that I didn't dislike Celtic Thunder as much as I thought I did. That is until tonight happened...

We were in Australia, preparing to go on stage for the very first show. It was thirty minutes until the curtain went up, and Sound check, and meet and greets had happened hours earlier. Right now,  Damian was in his boxers, Emmett was just getting back from Starbucks, Ryan and Neil were being smothered by a crowd of old women in the parking lot, Keith was snogging his fiance, Emmet was asleep, the girls were doing yoga, and I was the only one in costume, practicing my singing. Where were all of the responsible adults? Why, they were dealing with a broken drum set, illegal buskers outside, two grandmothers trying to sneak backstage, and last, but surely not least, a missing drummer, and a missing guitar player. 

If no one was going to step up, and get people ready to go on, it head to be me, right? WRONG.

Here's how it went:

"Guys, you are supposed to go on in a half-hour, and none of you are ready. Keith stop kissing, get changed, and save Ryan and Neil from the old ladies, and then have them get changed. Emmett, put the coffee down, and get dressed. Damian, get dressed, wake Emmet up, and tell him to get dressed. Ladies, take off the yoga pants, and put on your dresses. Okay? So Sharon and all of the adults are kinda booked-up right now, so we need to be able to do this on our own. The drummer, and the guitarist are missing. Can anyone play the drums and guit-"

"You mean Declan, and Dave?" Keith butts-in.

"Uh, yeah, whatever their names are. Uh, anyway, Keith you can play guitar right? And one of you has to play the drums. Emmett?

"Sure, Keith can play guitar, and I can play drums, but it'll mess up the choreography to Heartland, the opening number. And if we end up having to play the whole show with instruments, it would mess up so many numbers." Emmett tells me, as he swallows a huge gulp of coffee.

"Right now that doesn't matter. Just be prepared, in case you have to. Okay now go, and follow the instructions. I'm gonna talk to Sharon." I say, stepping up.

Let's say it wan't hard finding Sharon.

"Are the fellas ready?" She practically shouts at me, while frantically security taping around the bus.

"Ah, well, honestly, they're kinda-"

"What are you doing wasting precious time talking to me, if they're not ready. Go little girl, go!" Sharon yells at me.

When I get back, everyone is there and dressed, thank god!  However, they are not ready to go on in the sense of:

They are playing a game called swordball. They explain to me, that the rules are you gather up, and everyone gets precisely one styrofoam sword. Then, you kick the soccer ball back and forth until someone messes up. And then the "Messer-upper" as Ryan put it, gets brutally hit with everyone's swords.

"The rules are.." Keith says loudly.

"You mess up, you get hit." Damian finishes. "Go."

And they begin playing. Emmett passes to Emmet, who clumsily kicks the ball to Damian, who kicks the ball so hard to Neil, that it hits him in the gut. Neil tries to kick it to Ryan, but instead, he falls over the ball. The guys are right on top of him, whacking him, and laughing so hard. And you know what else? They're sweating. And sweating before you go on stage is bad. Very bad.

"Guys, we should, um get ready to go on. Sharon is still dealing with stuff in the parking lot, so we should take it upon ourselves to be prepared. Declan and David Bakey still aren't here, so Emmet and Keith will play those instrum-" There was no point in finishing. They had already started another game. "Listen if you'll just stop playing the stupid game for one sec-"

"Swordball is a gift from the Gods! Don't mack on it, okay lass?" Keith says, as he kicks the ball to Ryan. 

"Yeah!" All of the guys add.

"Sorry lassie, we're being impolite. Guys, we're on in ten minutes. Be ready. Okay, now one more game!" Emmet says loudly.

I have to give it to them; Ten minutes later, Dec and Dave had showed up, the girls were dressed and ready with their instruments, and most importantly, the guys were 100% ready to go on. Only when they were ready, it only makes sense that I wasn't. Because that was just my luck. This whole thing seemed like something that came out of a movie. 

One minute before everyone went on, I got a phone call from home.

" Miss Ailey O'Malley?"

"Um, who is calling?"

"This is Emma R. Polansky. I'm calling form Julliard. You were taking a semester off to pursue something with a singing group?"

"Yeah...?"

"I'm sorry to inform you that your mother didn't file the paperwork in time. You'll have to re-apply next year.  I apologize for any inconveniences this may bring. Have a good evening."

My heart dropped. I managed to get into my dream school, and now I'm out? To be what, a background girl for a singing group I didn't care about, to please a mother who couldn't even have the decency to do the one favor I asked from her in three years? It was all I asked. Just mail it to Julliard. Just mail it. That's all.