Comeback (17 page)

Taylor:

Wish I could say something cool. But just playing Wii @
home.

Lauren:

Aww! I miss that! I kicked ur butt @ Mario Kart EVERY
TIME.

Taylor:

Excuse me? You must be mistaking me 4 someone
else.

Lauren:

LOLOL. Fiiine. Just wait till I c u on break. . .
.

Taylor:

Can't wait. Let me know how 2mrw goes!

Lauren:

I will! TTYL!

Taylor wasn't my boyfriend anymore, but he
was
my friend. It meant a lot to me that he'd
remembered the show and messaged me.

“Want to get out our clothes for tomorrow?” Khloe asked.

“Sure,” I said. Since we'd been back in our room, Khloe
had been amazing. She hadn't said anything yet, but I knew she sensed my nerves.
She'd kept me distracted with gossip, TV, and stories about
Beauty and the Beast
rehearsal this week.

We went to our closets, and I looked through my stack of show
breeches.

“Tan or black?” I asked.

“I'm going with tan,” Khloe said. “Easier to hide
Ever hair.”

“Good point,” I said. “Whisper's hair isn't
exactly easy to keep hidden on black breeches.”

I put my newest pair over my arm. The schooling show's dress code
wasn't strict like regular shows. Mr. Conner had told us we could skip jackets,
ties, pins, and the rest of the usual show attire as long as we wore appropriate
tops.

“I'm thinking
this
,” I said.
Khloe turned to me as I held up a light-blue button-down dress shirt that I'd
normally wear under a show jacket.

“Perfect,” Khloe said. “It'll
go gorgeous with your eyes.”

“Thanks!” I smiled. “And you?”

She rifled through a few shirts in her closet before pulling out a crisp
navy blouse. “This one?”

“Love it. The dark blue will stand out with your light
hair.”

“Win. Thanks, LT.”

We each grabbed zip-up hoodies to cover our show shirts while we got our
horses ready in the morning. Neither of us wanted to run back to Hawthorne for a clean
shirt if Whisper or Ever decided to use one of us as a Kleenex.

We hung up our clothes on the outside of our closets. I took my show
boots—already polished—from their bag in the closet and put them and socks
by the door. Khloe did the same.

“I'm setting the alarm for four,” she said. “That
sound right?”

“Our first classes are at eight . . . add time to get
dressed, groom, tack up, warm up, extra time for anything crazy—yep, four is
perfect.”

Khloe set her alarm clock on her nightstand and I did the same. I even set
my phone alarm. There was no such thing as too many backups on show day.

“I've got to take off my nail
polish,” Khloe said, holding up her hand. Her nails were neon orange.

“Good idea.” My own nails were bare. I'd skipped
painting them this week. I knew it would be a waste of polish—I'd just peel
the polish off whenever I got anxious. “I'm going to see if Ana or Brielle
are around to talk for a few minutes.”

Khloe smiled. “Everything's going to be fine tomorrow, Laur.
Better than fine. I know you're scared, but I'm not worried about you.
Brielle and Ana are going to say the same.”

I picked up my computer and sat on my bed with it in my lap.
“Thanks, Khlo. You may not be worried about me, but I am. This is my first show
with Whisper. I don't want to let her down. Or myself.”

“You won't.” Khloe's tone was firm. She picked up
a bottle of polish remover from her nightstand and grabbed cotton balls from the
bathroom.

I put my hands on top of my computer, trying to take even breaths to keep
my heartbeat from speeding up. “What if I wake up tomorrow and freeze? What if I
don't even make it to the arena? What if I somehow got sick so I couldn't
show? I could have backed out.”

Khloe sat in the center of her bed with her back against the wall so she
was looking directly at me.

“Did you?” she asked.

“No. You know I'm showing tomorrow.”

“Okay, so you didn't ‘somehow' give yourself the
flu and pull out.”

I twisted my necklace. “I'm so afraid that I'll mess up
and use the days I couldn't ride as an excuse.”

Khloe soaked a cotton ball with pink-tinted polish remover. “What do
you mean?”

“If I bomb in every class,” I said, “I'm afraid
I'll tell myself it was because I missed practice during the days I was sick. But
the real truth is probably that I wasn't ready to show in the first place. That
the outcome would have been the same no matter how much practice time I had. ” I
paused, trying to breathe.

“You know you're ready.” Khloe put heavy emphasis on
each word. “You know it in your gut. Laur, you got sick for a lot of reasons. You
were exhausted and run-down. You
were
and are stressed about
tomorrow. Who knows—maybe it was none of those things and you caught a random
bug.” She paused, staring hard at me.

“I—”

She shook her head and kept going. “But not one of those reasons was
because you somewhere in your deepest subconscious wanted to get sick, magically
contracted the
flu, and gave yourself an out to either scratch from
the show or use it later as an excuse if you needed it.”

I stared at Khloe for a minute, digesting everything she'd said.
“Khloe,” I finally said, “I don't know what to say. You said all
the right things. I
am
so nervous about tomorrow, but I want
to do it. I never wanted to get sick—I hated every second of it.”

“I know. I was here. Don't tell me how I almost had to lock
you in our room to keep you from sneaking into the stable with a hundred-and-one-degree
fever.”

We smiled at each other. I giggled. “If I'd gotten past you
and Christina, I'd probably have gotten lost in my fever haze and ended up at the
steps of Blackwell or something crazy.”

Khloe laughed. “Oh, puh-lease. It wouldn't be an accident if
you ended up at
Drew's
dorm.”

Grinning, I rolled my eyes. “Maybe not on a normal day. But sick,
gross Lauren would definitely not have wanted Drew to see her all sweaty and
germy.”

“Point,” Khloe said.

“Thanks, Khlo,” I said softly.

“Go make yourself a cup of tea before you do anything else,”
she said. “That's an order.”

I saluted. “Yes, ma'am. I couldn't have come up with a
better idea myself.”

Khloe went to work on her nails. I picked up my phone
from the end of the bed. Before I went to the common room, I opened BBM and typed a
message to Ana, then copied and pasted it to Brielle.

Lauren:

U around? Meet me on IM to talk in 5? Rlly nervous abt
2mrw.

I pushed aside my computer and left my phone on the bed. Khloe
didn't want anything from the common room. I put on black slippers with
multicolored hearts and walked down the hallway. Lights blazed under doorways and music
streamed softly from some rooms. Others were quiet, with nothing but the glow and faint
sound of a TV. Some had no lights or TV.

I entered the common room, and a few girls from the second floor were
sprawled in front of the TV, watching a horror flick. A zombie staggered across a field,
chasing a limping girl.
Not
my genre at all! I couldn't
even watch silly horror movies that most people giggled over, because the fake blood was
so bad. I smiled at the girls, one with a blanket pulled almost over her eyes, and kept
my own gaze off the TV.

I put just enough water in the teakettle for one cup of tea so it would
boil fast. From the cabinet next to the stove, I took out my white mug with a hot-pink
heart on it. A
packet of Splenda went into the cup, and I grabbed
my tea box. Something ultra-calming was a necessity. While the water heated, I went back
and forth between two Celestial Seasonings teas: Sleepytime and Honey Vanilla Chamomile.
Finally I settled on my first instinct—Sleepytime—because it had a mix of
herbs that would hopefully calm my semi-upset stomach.

“Ahhh!” a girl screamed suddenly.

I jumped at the sound, and my hand swung over the counter, knocking over a
metal napkin holder. The girl who had screamed now had her head completely covered by
the blanket.

“Zara!” Another girl paused the movie and yanked the blanket
off her friend—presumably Zara. “Other people
are
in here! You totally scared that girl in the kitchen.”

Zara, brushing black bangs out of her eyes, looked up at me from her spot
on the floor. She blushed. “Sorry! I'm such a wimp about these movies. I
didn't mean to scare you.”

“It's totally okay,” I said, righting the napkin rack.
“I couldn't even watch the screen when I came in. I'm so scared of
horror movies—I probably would have screamed from here if I'd
looked.”

Zara smiled. “As part of my apology,
we'll keep it paused until you're done.”

“Oh, no way. That's so nice, but keep watching. I don't
want to stop your movie.”

The other girls shook their heads. “We can wait a minute,”
said the brunette holding the remote. “It'll be good for Zara. We really
like her, and it wouldn't be the
best
thing ever if she
had a heart attack.”

I laughed with the rest of the girls. “Okay. But only because we
don't want the common room to be invaded by EMTs.”

The teakettle whistled, and I turned off the burner. Steaming water went
into my cup, and I turned off the light.

“Have fun,” I said to the girls on my way out.

“If you hear ambulance sirens, you know the movie was too much for
Zara,” one of the girls said, laughing. Zara stuck out her tongue.

Giggling, I left the common room and went back into my room. Khloe looked
up at me when I came in. I told her about Zara and the movie, making her face red with
laughter.

My phone blinked. There were BBMs from Ana and Brielle.

Ana:

Online! Here 4 u, LT!

Brielle:

Get logged on!!

I opened my laptop, woke it up, and logged into IM. I snuggled under my
covers while I waited for my log-in to finish.

Brielle and Ana were both there.

Laur
:

Hiiii, guys!!

ItsAna:

LT! Hi, B!

Bri~xo:

Lauren! Hey, Ana!

Laur
:

I'm so glad u were avail 2 chat. I rlly needed 2
hear from my best friends rite now.