Wasted Opportunities

Chapter 2

Emily's POV

We finished the Maths prep quickly, and with ten minutes left until we were allowed to go, we found ourselves with nothing to do. I was content with doodling on some spare paper, but Maddy pulled out her phone again and went back on Instagram. I looked at her disapprovingly, since we were supposed to be setting an example, but she didn't notice. Suddenly, Maddy started breathing really fast and rocking back and forwards on her chair. A few of the younger students looked at her curiously, but I knew that she would probably be fangirling over a picture, and ignored it. She started tapping my shoulder furiously, so I turned to look at her.

“What?!” I whispered.

“Omg, omg, look look look!” she said, as quietly as she could in her excitable state. She pointed at the list of people who had liked the video of me singing.

“What?”

“Look who liked it!” I peered closer, and amongst the list of my friends' names, I saw the words '@5sos liked your video'. I scanned it again about ten times to make sure that I hadn't misread it, and it wasn't an account which had a name very similar to 5sos to scare people. At last I was convinced, and I couldn't contain my excitement. I had completely forgotten that 5sos followed Maddy on Instagram – she had tagged them in so many photos that they had noticed her account, and we had been really excited at the time, but they had never liked any of her stuff before, so the excitement had died down after a while.

“Oh my gosh no, this is not real!” I squealed under my breath. “Do you think they actually watched it? Ugh no, they saw me singing!”

“Well they liked it!” she replied.

“Is everything alright in here?" asked the teacher on duty, but then the bell went, and we were able to make as much noise as we wanted among the rush of everyone heading for the locker room.

“I can't believe this! They know who I am... kind of! Wow, this is so exciting!”

“They actually liked one of my videos!”

“I have to go, I'll talk to you later!” I said goodbye to Maddy, and walked out of school to get in the car.

I was excited throughout the whole evening, but by the time I went to bed I realised that there wasn't really anything to be excited about; they liked the video, but that was going to be all. Obviously I liked to dream up fantasies of crazy things that might happen, but in real life, they would never give it another thought, and what seemed life-changing to me was something they probably did without even thinking about it, and would forget by tomorrow. I went to bed feeling kind of sad, because I knew that I was just one fan in thousands, and that everybody dreamed the same fantasies, but they never came true.

I woke up the next morning, looked over at my clock to see that it was 7:15, and immediately panicked. I was supposed to wake up at 7. I normally put my iPod in its dock so that I could be woken up by 5sos music, but I glanced over to see that I had forgotten to plug it in. I groaned and rushed to get ready.

We left home 10 minutes late, and I only just had time to grab my iPod as we rushed out of the door, so I hadn't checked any social media, which was unusual for me! When I turned it on, I saw that I had a few messages from Maddy, which appeared to be pictures of Marvel films, and an Instagram direct message from -

“Wait.”

My mum and my two brothers, who were in the car with me, turned to look at me, puzzled.

“What? No, no, this can't be real.”

“What's happened?” asked my mum.

“I have a message from 5sos,” I whispered.

I had no way of seeing the message until I got to school, because there was obviously no WiFi in the car, so I urged my mum to drive faster so that I could get to school and look at it. My heart was racing the whole way, and I couldn't stop smiling. When we finally arrived, I rushed to the locker room as quickly as possible and begged my iPod to connect to the WiFi faster. The picture they had sent was a screenshot of the video of me that Maddy had posted, but it was the message underneath that interested me more. It said 'This is going to sound crazy, but we saw this video of you on your friend's account, and you're really good – we're looking for a pianist and backing singer to come with us on tour, and you look perfect for the job! Obviously we'll need to meet up and discuss, and hear you playing some more, but it would be great to know if you're interested! Thanks, 5sos x' I leant against my locker and breathed heavily, unable to believe what I had just read.

A/N

Thanks again for reading, it means a lot and I hope you liked it!