AllFreeNovel
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For the night and for the next four months.
This is the end of the North American leg of my tour, a tour that has taken me little more than a year to complete. It’s time to rest, if I can find out how to do that.
Case in point, right now I’m so exhausted I can barely walk. Every show takes so much out of me, it’s like a mini death.
“Ren?” Jude’s voice calls behind me, and I feel his body warmth as he leans in to slide an arm nonchalantly around my shoulders, but what he’s actually doing is supporting my weight. “We need help over here.” Jude’s arms are trembling too–coming down for the performance’s adrenaline high is the worst. “Guys?”
My manager, Skye, flanks me on the left. He is the one person, apart from Jude, I can always depend on. He grabs my other arm, yelling sharp orders to the guards.
Ren and two of my bodyguards close in around me like a protective fist.
“It will be over in a second, son,” Ren tells me under his breath.
Meanwhile, I’m still shaking. And it’s not all because of the exhaustion.
There’s another reason too.
…
The new, more remote backstage rooms are busy and not as clean as one would have expected. But that’s what being on tour is like. Every single corner is buzzing with talk about the girl with the orange boots and what happened to her, people running their mouths while they are working like a well-oiled machine, getting us all wrapped up to go home, hopefully in time for Christmas lunch. It’s already four in the morning. But no one is talking about Christmas or the excitement of seeing their families after weeks on the road–I’m not the only one shaken by the accident tonight, although I bet nobody else was stupid enough to mistake her for his ex-girlfriend.
“Did you hear that this girl nearly died?” Skye is asking the stylist who is trying to tame his mane of yellow hair. “She almost went into cardiac arrest, man. Isaiah stopped singing and everything. I saw the whole thing from backstage, it was so scary.”
“Yeah,” another musician adds. “They thought she was having a panic attack at first, or that she’d just fainted, but in the end, the paramedics had to be called. I heard that her heart stopped once.”
My breath catches.
“Is it true?” the musician asks Ren.
Ren shakes his head. Oh, thank God.
“Not once,” Ren says. “Twice.”
What?
I purse my lips. Fans dying in concerts is far more common than people think. Suddenly, the room is too small, my shirt is too tight, my makeup is too heavy, my hair is too messy, my skin is too small to contain my body. I hate this. I hate my life. Hate it.
“Is she alive?” Jude asks Ren from somewhere behind me.
“Yeah,” Ren says and his calm baritone grounds me, “she’s ok. I gave her CPR in the arena and then the second time, she was revived immediately by the paramedics. After that, she was pretty much ok. She was able to stand up, talk, and her vitals all looked normal. She is fine. I’d tell you if it wasn’t so, Isaiah,” he turns to me and I nod once, stiffly. “But they insisted on taking her to hospital. Apparently, it was nothing but a very severe panic attack that almost turned into something worse.”
Oh wow. Can panic attacks do that?
Of course they can.
I breathe out a sigh of relief so huge it leaves me weak. I lean my head back. My hair is dripping with sweat and stupid purple dye, and my skin feels cold and clammy. I glanced in a mirror as I walked in, and I saw a white ghost with huge, terrified eyes staring back at me. I’ve refused to look at it since. That thing is not me. Several assistants keep pushing food towards me, but the mere idea of eating nauseates me.
I sip water slowly.
“Someone talk to me about the European tour,” I murmur, my eyes still closed. “Distract me.”
“We’re going to Paris, baby!” Jude whoops at once. He’s so freaking excited for Paris, I don’t know why. “You know what they say about Paris, right?”
Oh, here it comes.
Jude has the foulest mouth this side of the Atlantic.
“Please don’t tell us,” I whisper, but I also half laugh at the same time, I can’t help it.
