Lie Until You Laugh

45- Finales: Part 2

The stage is completely black but I can hear people cheering in the audience in front of us. When they are finally quiet enough, our dance starts. Early on in the choreography process, however, we decided to not just make this a dance, but a whole show. A three minute long show, but a show.

In the blackness, just one spotlight pops up to the left side of the stage, where Mason is standing, and into the microphone that’s hooked on her ear, she says her line.

“This is not just guns and bombs. This is happening everywhere, in everyone.”

Her spotlight disappears just as mine appears. I’m standing center stage and I look up mechanically like I’m supposed to. Luckily, the spotlight drowns out all of the people in the audience because I think that if I could see the audience, I’d start to freak out even more. The blinding white blur is way better than that.

“This is bullying. Online or in person. This is fighting with family or friends or boyfriends or girlfriends.”

Just as quickly as it appeared, the spotlight disappears and then Stella’s spotlight pops up with that dramatic thump of a spotlight and she looks up into the crowd even though I doubt that she can see any of them either.

“This is crying over a lost love. This is every pain that you have ever felt. This is hatred. Lying. Hurt. Crying. This is everything. This is everywhere.”

After she finishes her line, all three of our spotlights go on. We are all wearing the same outfit: A black tank top that’s mostly hidden by black lace that looks like a biker jacket only the lace makes it look more girly and it’s matched with black short shorts that are easy to move around in and custom made black boots that kind of look like my boots that I always wear only they’re made specifically for dancing. Mason on the far left of the stage, me in the center, and Stella to the far right, we are pretty spread out as we say the last line together.

“This. Is. War!”

As the music starts up, we grab our tiny microphones and throw them off of the stage where there are people waiting to pick them up and then we get into our first position. Now, the whole stage is lit up and everyone can see us but we still can’t see them because of all of the lights that are blinding us.

A warning to the people,
The good and the evil,
This is war.

To the soldier, the civilian,
The martyr, the victim,
This is war.

My heart is thumping loudly in my chest as we start our performance in front of the Arena full of people. At the front, there is a panel of judges- there’s five of them. Two of them were previous winners of this competition and the other three are super famous dancers or choreographers. We did our research before today but I don’t remember their names. Behind the judges, there’s an area where the press are watching and then behind that is where the audience is watching.

I can’t see anybody past the judges table because of the blaring spotlights as the song starts and I move through the moves like I have so many times before.

The past twenty minutes have been hectic for me because after I realized that my mom was actually talking to my dad this morning and he’s probably on his way here right now, I started to panic. I made sure that Uncle Chase realized what was happening before he went away to make some phone calls and then I almost started to hyperventilate. Stella and Mason just thought I was freaking out because of the performance so I didn’t have to tell them the real reason. I really do hate hiding that from them I just feel like if I’m going to tell them about my father, twenty minutes before the most important show of the summer is probably the worst time to do it.

However, although the upset over my father possibly coming back is pretty distracting, I have these dance moves burned into my skull and I’m trying to push everything else into the back of my mind to give the best performance that I can. I focus on the dance moves and the moves that come next. The moves aren’t very provocative at all- the dance is actually pretty masculine but not in a bad way. As we dance to This Is War, there’s strobe lighting and dancing spotlights around us to go with the dance which took a lot of prior planning to make the dance not just a dance, but a show. There’s a spotlight that follows me as I flip across the stage and when that happens, there’s a lot of cheering from the crowd and it kind of makes me want to smile but I know that if I let myself get distracted, I could possibly mess up.