The Voice (Camren)

15. The Warm-up

"And the lucky ones that get to perform with me at the VMAs are..." Lauren dramatically paused, taking a moment to observe all the attentive gazes focused on her, hands twirled and stretched to the limit, muscles tensed reflecting the unbearable expectancy everyone was under, ears ready to hear the, hopefully, good news.

"Ariana, Hailee and Camila" Lauren stated without any kind of hesitation.

The response was immediate. Three faces instantly lightened up while the five left were covered by the shadow of disappointment. Camila couldn't believe it. She had barely rehearsed in comparison to her mates. Kehlani was better at dancing than her and Sawyer's voice was more suitable for the song than hers. And regarding personal matters, Camila hadn't behaved properly either. She had been ignoring Lauren all week and she hadn't done much better the day before in the dressing room. Still Lauren had picked her. She wondered what Lauren was thinking. Camila never had a clue when trying to figure out the older woman. She was drawn away from her thoughts when the absolute silence that  filled the room since the announcement, was disrupted by Taylor.

"I don't get it" the blonde spoke up, a defiant glare on her eyes.

"What exactly don't you get, Ms. Swift?" Lauren replied calmly.

"I don't get why Camila is performing when she has skipped rehearsals half this week. What about all that bullshit you said about 'hard work and practice'?"

"Ms. Cabello's performing because even though she's rehearsed less, she's still better that you, Swift. Do you get it now?" Lauren said sharply. Taylor's jaw clenched in anger but she didn't dare to respond to the coach. "And from now on,  if any of you chooses to question one of my decisions, know that you'll be out of my team before you're even done questioning."

With that, the green-eyed girl walked towards the door and exited the room, leaving Normani in charge of the group.

"Ok guys. The ones who won't be performing can go home. The rest of you, stay"

Normani patiently waited until everybody except the three chosen girls left. Then she proceeded to give them the final explanations and pieces of advice regarding the performance and, lastly, she explained to them how were they being picked up to go to the VMAs. Once she was done, she wished them the best of luck and recommended they went straight home to get as much rest as possible.

***

The day had finally arrived! Camila felt like she was about to have an anxiety attack every five seconds. Well, that was exaggerating a bit, but she was quite excited indeed. Camila had woken up early that morning and had cooked breakfast for her family to let out her boundless excitement. She had taken Sofi to school, run some errands and then she had decided to clean up her room (because it was high time and she preferred to invest that newly gained energy into something actually useful). Then, she had been pacing non stop around her home until the van that'd carry her to the VMAs had parked in the house's lane.

***

Ariana, Hailee, Camila and the back up dancers were all together in a medium sized dressing room located somewhere inside the huge VMAs venue in L.A. They were waiting for Lauren, who had a dressing room of her own, while the make-up artists finished dolling them up. All of them wore tight, black overalls that emphasized the girls' curves. The costumes had yellow fluorescent, intricate lineal patterns distributed around the torso, arms and legs simulating veins which met at a shining, bright heart sewn on the left side of their chest. The costumes had been designed by Lauren herself. The idea behind the fluorescent color was to give the impression that dancers had radioactive, toxic blood. Their make-up resembled that look, with fluor lipstick and eyeshadow. Also, the yellow veins could only be seen in the dark, so when the lights were on the costumes seemed to be plain black. In short, the originality of the performance mostly lay on playing with light.

Lauren entered the room followed by Normani, the main responsible of choreography. They both seemed to be in distress, as though something wasn't quite right. As Lauren got closer to the group, Camila quickly checked her out. She basically wore the same garment as the dancers, but hers was a bit more elaborated, hugging her in all the right places. The fluor make-up brought up her green eyes which were more piercing than ever and the heels on her feet made her a couple of inches taller, reinforcing Lauren's natural confident and dominant aura. The rest of the girls looked as out of breath as Camila since nobody had spoken a word after the moment their coach had crossed the door frame.

"We have a problem, girls" Lauren started off, worried. "Remember Christine and Rebecca were the ones supposed to kiss me on stage?" she asked. Oh yes. Camila remembered it extremely well. She remembered Lauren explaining to them in rehearsal how, by reenacting it, they were going to pay tribute to one of the most epic moments of the VMAs of all time: the Britney-Christina-Madonna kiss. She remembered how Lauren had randomly picked two of her dancers to do the part. She remembered how tense she would get seeing them kiss in every single rehearsal. She remembered it all to well.

"As you can see, Rebecca couldn't make it. I got a call from the hospital yesterday. She got an ankle sprain. So one of you have to replace her. There's no time to rehearse whatsoever." Lauren explained. "Normani, tell me, who is the closest person in the formation to Rebecca at that moment?" Lauren addressed the choreographer.

"Let me think. That would be Camila" she answered.

All heads turned to the Cuban-Mexican, who was absolutely overwhelmed. Kissing Lauren Jauregui in national television was not something she had expected to do when auditioning for The Voice.

"What do you say, Ms. Cabello? Would you have a problem with that?" Lauren ambivalently asked.

A/N: What's up, people? Long time, no see. For those of you who haven't seen it yet, I really recommend watching Madonna's performance at the VMAs in 2003. It is worth it. Xxx