The Last Tour {COMPLETED}

Chapter Six: Not Eating

Chapter Six

Not Eating

"You like this?" Jessie asked, lifted a tiny sealed plastic bag with a little sixteen gauge silver clicker hoop in it.

Jade, sitting on a tall stool by the full-length mirror of the dressing room glanced up at the item she held. "It's...just a ring..." he said softly. His pretty eyes lowered and his fingers returned to quietly picking at his amethyst nail polish.

"It's for your conch piercing," Jessie said. She tore open the little bag, then dropped the ring into a clear liquid solution.

"Oh," Jade whispered. His fingers slipped, and as if he had given up on the nail polish and needed a new victim to poke at, he began playing with the little black pointed pendants on one of the bracelets he was wearing.

"What did you eat today?" Jessie asked, pulling on a latex glove and brushing Jade's hair back away from his ear. A moment later, she was carefully loosening the flat-backed labret in Jade's conch piercing.

"Um..." Jade said softly, still fingering his bracelet. "I...don't remember." his voice faded to the point that it was nearly inaudible.

Jessie removed the labret, then lifted the little ring, popped it open, and carefully inserted it into Jade's piercing. "Did you eat anything?" she asked.

"Sure...yeah..." Jade replied quietly. His lower lip slipped between his teeth and his eyes lowered again.

"You should eat something now," Jessie decided. She pulled off her glove and dropped it into a nearby waste basket.

"I can't," Jade replied, raising his head slightly and glancing at her. "It'll...mess up my voice..." His eyes dropped again.

"Jade, you—you're sick or something," Jessie sighed. She raised a bare hand and touched it to Jade's forehead. "You're hot all the time, you've been losing weight like crazy, and I never see you eating."

"People who...starve to death they're...cold..." Jade whispered. "So...I'm not starving."

"You look faint," Jessie observed. "Do you feel faint?"

"I'm just tired."

"Why do your hands keep shaking like that?"

"It's just the caffeine. It won't affect my voice."

"You think I give a damn about your voice? I care about you."

"Then...you would care about my voice...because my voice...is...it...it's important right now...while...we're on tour..."

Jessie sighed disgustedly. "You need to take care of yourself, Jade!"

The teenager said nothing.

For a long moment, Jessie just stared at him. Then, sighing, she walked over to a corner of the room and lifted a pair of tall lace-up boots off the floor. She carried them over to where Jade was sitting lifelessly, then dropped them on the floor beside him. "Put those on," she instructed. "Curtain drops in thirteen."

Then it was Jade Leeman, back on the stage, the band he claimed to love surrounding him.

It started like every other concert. Jade sang like he was singing his heart out—if that useless thing hadn't bled out of his body the moment he realized what his father was doing to him. He hit the notes, made the cues, did it all right. Put passion into the words from a heart that knew very personally the lyrics were about, acted like he was the perfect celebrity everyone thought he was, ignored the trembling of his hands and the faintness of the body.

"Sitting across from you and sweltering in the heat of our abrasion. But I still feel cold, how does that fit into this equation? I keep on killing you, but in my wounds, you find resuscitation."

The lights, the music, the crowd...

"Blinded by the changing tides, wonderin' what you have in side. If anything. Oh, it's blue. No, it's green. Now it's brown. No, it's gray. I can't count the shades. You're hatred and your pain. Curious, but I don't want to know. How deep the injuries go. Leave you, leave me alone."

Lights, music, crowd...

A draining heat suddenly descended over Jade as he finished the first refrain, and suddenly gasping for air, he nearly dropped his microphone, simultaneously missing three seconds of lyrics. Sucking in a weak breath, Jade lifted the microphone to his lips and launched into the verse, skipping to first two words so as to stay on time. But for the first time since the beginning of the tour, his voice gave out. Inwardly somehow hoping to feign a technology failure, Jade lowered the microphone again. His eyes strayed to the left, and a few seconds later, he became subconsciously aware that his vision was funneling in on him. Looking for something to use as support in fear that he might faint, Jade stepped over to the microphone stand and gripped it with one hand. He raised the microphone to his lips again, catching the first line of the second refrain: "Blinded by the changing tides, wonderin' what you have inside..." And then suddenly he had forgotten what came next. His mind reeling from the shock of having actually forgotten the words, Jade released the microphone stand and took a step back, again lowering the microphone. He felt hot. Waves of heat were gusting up his back and over his neck, he was sweating. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't see. Everything was blurry, hazy, moving unnaturally.

And then Jade Leeman passed out.