Trophy Child (On Hold)

Chapter 5

According to Murphy's law, everything that can go wrong, will.

I think we proved it that night.

I remember learning about chain reactions in physics. We'd set up our own with textbooks, rulers, and anything else we could find around the classroom. One thing would fall over, set the next object in motion, and so on.

What happened at the talent show was kind of like that.

"She's not coming."

"What?" Benny asked, confusion lacing his voice.

The looks Phil and Eric gave me told me that they knew exactly what I meant, but we didn't have time to talk about it. 

"Hey, are you guys all set?" one of the announcers asked as she walked through the curtain. 

"Yeah," I said, numbly," we're ready."

She smiled and ducked back out.

"Just breathe, you guys will be fine," Benny assured us, before he retreated offstage and the announcers called our names.

The curtain pulled back, and I squinted against the harshness of the stage lights. The place was still packed, but it suddenly felt a lot emptier.

Because now I knew that nobody was there for me.

Phil stepped up to the mic with his bass, and said something to me, but I couldn't make it out over the thoughts rushing through my head and the cold hollow spreading through my chest.

If I hadn't checked that text message, if I hadn't known that she wasn't coming, I wouldn't have been staring into the audience. I wouldn't have been distracted by the jealousy that hit when I thought about Eric's family in the front row, watching their son with pride and anticipation. Or Phil's mom and sister, who'd wished us all luck before the show, video camera and tripod in hand.

I wouldn't have missed my cue and started late.

It made us sound terrible. Amateurish.  Of course, we might have still been able to recover f
and play the rest of our performance just fine, but then Eric, who was singing backup for Phil in the song we'd chosen, added to the mess.

My fumble had freaked him out and, when Eric freaked out, he'd make mistakes. Mistakes that he wasn't good at recovering from because they freaked him out even more.

So when he sang the wrong line, he faltered, and stopped altogether for a few seconds.

It wasn't like in the movies. Time didn't stop or slow down or any of that. In fact, it felt like everything was happening much faster than usual. Too fast for any of us to stop it. 

I locked eyes with Benny, who was watching helplessly while chewing on his lower lip, and I felt jealous all over again. Jealous and frustrated with myself. We were tanking, when I know we could have done better. And Benny just got to stand there. He wasn't being watched and judged.

And then things got worse.

Phil spun around, a bit too suddenly, to see what was wrong with Eric. When he did, he knocked the neck of his bass into the mic stand. The microphone clattered to the ground, hard. 

He picked it back up and tried to continue, but his voice was shaking.

And people were laughing. 

Other students, parents, and even a couple of the teachers that had come to watch. And I guess maybe I would have laughed too, if it had been someone else. But it wasn't.