"Dude Looks Like a Lady"

Chapter 15 Finals (Crystal POV)

Chapter 15

Finals

~ Crystal

The days we had for practising whizzed by apart from those odd moments I’d pass Jake in the corridor, things seemed to slow down into an uncomfortable atmosphere. Then once he was gone, it’d speed up again. Strings told me he overheard our conversation and that there was nothing to worry about, we weren’t breaking any rules. I wanted to tell Jake there was no point in trying to blackmail me anymore but Strings wanted to see what he did.

Now it was December 15th, the day of the finals.

The songs were looking good, but were they good enough to win us the competition? I was nervous, and I tried not to let anybody see it, but Sailor saw right through me.

‘Doubts are cracks in the foundation, y’know.’ He said to me as I came out the toilet cubical. He had his back turned to me; he was using a urinal.

‘Can’t you put your thing away?’

‘When nature calls you gotta go.’ He laughed, ‘I’m not forcing you to look.’

‘I guess.’ I began to wash my hands.

‘If you start to doubt whether we can win this, we’re not gonna win.’ I heard him zip up before he came over and washed his hands in the sink beside me, ‘I know Bullet isn’t that good, but Ray and Alien is, not to mention our other two plus our cover.’

‘I’m just worried I’ll screw up.’

‘People make mistakes in everything as long as you don’t stop you’ll do fine.’

‘But we’re on in two hours- I just- It’s scary!’

He laughed and pulled a small bottle with a rubber lid then handed it to me, ‘It’s emergency essence oil. Take a few drops before we go on stage, it’ll calm your nerves.’

I took it and read the ingredients. If Bethlehem Star wasn’t the name of a drug I don’t know what is. ‘Sailor this is really thoughtful of you but…’ I grinned nervously.

‘It’s not illegal.’ He said bluntly reading my mind, ‘It’s herbal stuff, not weed.’

‘Oh… thanks.’

He laughed, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s good that your cautious and not naïve like Red, got him to eat a hash brownie once, he went on about how he wasn’t really red but an orange.’

‘I wish I could have seen that…’ I smiled, imagining Red giggling like crazy.

It was a bit weird, we had our outfits picked by some organiser and had our hair done "professionally" and I have to say they did a nice job. Strings wore dark denim designer jeans, which were covered in useless zips, but it looked cool. He wore a long sleeveless red, blue and black tartan shirt with only one button in half way down his chest over a black T-shirt with the right sleeve ripped off and the left with a rip in it. Sailor wore dark grey wide neck jumper with three panels of fire on the torso with black jeans.

Drummer was wearing a black and grey tartan shirt open over a fire top with sleeves that came down to his elbows. Red seem really different to me with what he was wearing, he always wore tartan shirts or a leather jacket over baggy tops but what the woman gave him was completely different for him. It was a wide neck red top with elbow sleeves like drummer’s, but this one was tight and had black strokes going in every direction with a pair of black skinny jeans. I didn’t like the fact that this woman obviously wanted his clothing to be tight but I had to say… He did look good. She wanted to do the same with me, which made me instantly panicky, but Strings simply explained to her that I used to get picked on and was very self-conscious about my body. So, she put me in a dark grey ruffled shirt with a black vest to put over it along with my big baggy black jeans. I was happy baggy.