The Last Tour {COMPLETED}

Chapter Nine: The Middle Finger

Chapter Nine

The Middle Finger

"They'll probably think it was just a joke! I mean—those who even saw it. Jade didn't even look mad—There's really no reason to blow this all out of proportion," Amber gave her opinion.

"It was an accident," Jade whispered.

"Bull-shit," Rudurhans replied icily. He had a look on his face like he was too angry to speak.

This was crazy, Jade realized dimly. Why did he keep telling himself he needed to stop messing things up, yet somehow, during these past two days, he could not stop himself from driving Rudurhans off the edge. And if anyone knew driving Rudurhans off the edge was a bad idea, it was Jade.

"I don't have time to deal with your teenage antics!" Rudurhans exclaimed, his voice little above a whisper. But Jade could hear it perfectly clearly from where he sat across the green room, his hands quietly trembling against the fabric of the sofa.

Jade's eyes lowered to the surface of a glass table in the middle of the room. In it, he saw the reflections of the other two band members. Jude Durrace looked thoroughly uncomfortable. Fentra Scale appeared to be mildly amused.

There was a tense silence in the room for several long moments. "It won't happen again," Jade whispered finally.

"Oh, hell it had better not happen again!" Rudurhans exclaimed. "And you know what else had better not happen again? Everything you've been doing this entire tour. All your antics. You start acting like an adult now or shit's going to happen to you." Still looking too angry to fully express himself, Rudurhans turned away.

But the silence that followed was not any more at ease. Jade found himself silently clenching the edge of the sofa, wishing the earth would swallow him up right in front of everyone, so as to provide him with a sufficient excuse not to get back on stage when the break was over.

Time crawled by at the pace of a snail. Twenty minutes later, Jade hadn't raised his eyes from the glass table. Jessie came in and fixed his hair, then left again.

Shortly after, five minutes till stage was called, Amber walked over and sat down beside Jade. "Pull yourself together," she said softly. "Dad is just on edge because this last week is supposed to be the finale of the concert and it's not going exactly as he wanted it to go. But he'll settle down eventually and realize he's been blowing this whole thing out of proportion."

Jade did his best to shrug, but said nothing.

Then Eclipse was walking back out on stage, met by vivacious reception from the audience. There was one hour left of the concert, and Jade was uncertain he would be able to last the duration of it. The audience were all such idiots, Jade decided. How stupid did you have to be to fall for this façade? How could they not see what was really going on?

Blind. They were all blind.

The first after-break song began and ended, going by without Jade so much as realizing what words he was singing. He could not focus on the performance. The audience was terribly distracting, for some reason. No, it was everything. Everything was distracting. Every movement Amber made, the way Rudurhans was directly facing away from Jade, the expressions Jude was making as he worked out the beat of the song on his drum set...Why was Jade the only one tired of this show? Why was he the only one who wanted it to be over and done with? He was standing forefront on the stage, this show was about him, why was he so tired of it already?

Jade glanced down at himself, and with the movement, his voice wavered. A faint thread of panic ran through him, and forcing himself not to glance fearfully in Rudurhans' direction, he lifted the microphone and put it back on the stand. He had to keep his head up, he had to stop paying attention to things. He had to just numb himself to it all and—