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~ 10 ~

 

A Face in the Crowd

 

 

“Let me go! I shouted at the man who was holding me in place.

 

“Nicky hold on! Grab his other arm!” There was more than one of them now.

 

“You have to let me go!” I yelled again. I was so close to the ground I could almost touch it. “Don’t you dare hurt my mother!” I threatened since I remembered she was still trapped in the room.

 

“Nick wake the hell up NOW!!!” The shout pierced through me like a bullet and suddenly everything changed again. I wasn’t hanging out of the window at the Bed and Breakfast. I was…

 

Wrapped around the railing on the balcony of my hotel room! One leg was dangling off the side completely and the other was just about to go over the edge. Kevin was grabbing hold of my waist. Brian and Howie were pulling at my arms and AJ was trying to pry my hand off of the rail itself.

 

I almost went over when I woke up but luckily the guys had such a firm grip on me that when I did release, instead of falling off I fell in towards them and on top of Kevin.

 

“What happened?” I finally asked after a few minutes. Kevin was breathing so hard I could feel his heart beating underneath me. Everyone was just frozen in time and not saying a word. I rolled off Kevin and sat on the ground next to him, it was really chilly outside and I found myself shivering slightly. . Looking up at Brian who was white as a ghost I asked again, “What happened?”

 

He finally allowed himself to look at me instead of the railing I was just dangling from, “I don’t…you just…you…” Okay that explained everything.

 

“Are you hurt?” Howie knelt beside me and picked up one of my arms to make sure it was still attached I guess?

 

“No, I don’t think so.”

 

Kevin was still laying there on the ground. “Are you okay Kevin?” AJ wanted to make sure I didn’t accidentally kill him but I knew his heart was beating…I felt it.

 

“Give me a second…” Kevin sounded all out of breath.

 

“What were you thinking?” Okay, seems like Brian managed to string together a nice coherent sentence finally.

 

“I wasn’t…I don’t know what happened. How did I end up out here?” I looked around at all of them, including Kevin who was finally sitting up and rubbing his neck.

 

“You were sleepwalking.” He answered. “We tried to stop you but you wouldn’t listen to us.” 

 

“God Frack, if you didn’t accidentally kick AJ…you would be…Wow…”

 

“Yeah, thanks a lot for that by the way.” AJ rolled his eyes at me and showed me the slight bruise that was forming by his right eye.

 

“You’re telling me I almost slept walked off a balcony?” I was still shivering but this time it wasn’t just because I was cold. I almost became and ex-me.

 

“Uh….yeah, that pretty much sums it up.” AJ said walking towards me and patting my shoulder, “You made us all age about twelve years and some of us can’t afford to be aging that quickly.” He winked over at Kevin who ignored his little jab. AJ always tried to make light of situations like this. Not that accidental balcony diving was usually among one of our situations.

 

I looked down at the ground and realized there was a small coating of snow around my legs. “Guess it’s snowing.” I said nonchalantly.

 

I turned myself around and stood up, using the railing to help. I don’t know why, but I had to look over the side. Yup, it was a much farther fall than in my dream. I would have been smooshed. Why would my mother want me to jump to my death?

 

We made our way back inside and all sat quietly around the room. Howie and Brian were sitting on the chairs by the table. Kevin was sitting on the desk chair and AJ and I were sitting on one of the beds that were still pushed together. “Thanks guys….for…you know…saving my life and all.” I smiled at them as I wrapped another blanket around myself.

 

“Why are you sleepwalking now? I don’t think you’ve ever done that before.” Brian asked with concern in his voice. It looked like the color was coming back into his face. They still didn’t know that I spent the night under the sink and I wasn’t about to tell them that now.

 

“I don’t know. I guess it’s a new thing. Hehe lucky me.”

 

“Nick, you could have died tonight. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen again. What made you do that? Where did you think you were?” Kevin walked over to the balcony door, closed and locked it and then proceeded to place the table in front of it.

 

I told them everything I remembered about the dream right up until the time I walked over to the window and tried to jump. “So, you keep changing ages?”

 

I nodded at Brian. “I was the way I am now at the end of the dream.”

 

“What was your mother doing there?”

 

“I don’t know Howie. It was a dream. She was telling me to jump.”

 

“Were you ever in a fire? Was there ever a fire at the Carter House?”  There’s nothing I enjoy more than being interrogated by my friends.

 

“I don’t think so Kev, at least not that I remember.”

 

“What time is it?” I asked, yawning.

 

Brian glanced over at the small alarm clock next to me. “3:45.”

 

“Guess we won’t be getting much sleep tonight.” AJ said laying the upper half of his body down as his legs dangled off the side of the bed.

 

There was no way I was going back to sleep especially now that I knew I could potentially sleepwalk myself to death. “What time is our show?” I asked Kevin who always seemed to keep track of these things.

 

“10 but we need to be ready to go by 7.”

 

AJ slowly sat up as he said, “We should just stay awake then because I know if I go to sleep now, no one is getting my ass up by 6:30.”

 

“I doubt we’d be able to sleep anyway…I know my adrenaline is pumping like crazy!” Brian stood up and decided to do a cartwheel to demonstrate this. It was weird and out of place but I still managed to laugh. Brian was probably someone’s pet monkey in a previous life.

 

“I think I’m going to need some coffee.” Kevin said, walking over to the closet and putting on his coat.

 

“Where are you going?” Howie asked.

 

“The Dunkin Donuts, you want to come with me?”

 

He stood up and followed, “Might as well. We’ll bring back some donuts.”

 

“No going anywhere while we’re gone!” Kevin warned as if the second they left we would all decide to run amuck in New York City. I was lucky if I could manage to walk to the bathroom without having an anxiety attack.

 

“Okay mom and dad!” AJ joked.

 

After the two of them left I moved over to Kevin’s old seat and sat pretzel style on the chair. “I’m really sorry I woke everyone up.” I tried to shake the memory of my mother out of my head, but her presence in my dream was disturbing me. Not so much that she was there but that she was the one trying to get me to jump. Then of course thoughts shifted from my mother to my father and his whereabouts. Was he safe and sound? Or while I was here in the safety of a nice, warm hotel room was he laying at the bottom of the ocean or in a dumpster somewhere.

 

“Nick…hello…earth to Nick!” I looked over at AJ.

 

“You okay?” He asked. “We lost you for a second there.”

 

“Sorry, I was just thinking about my dad. I hope he’s okay.” I semi smiled as I said it hoping somehow that if I showed any kind of optimism at all it might help him out, wherever he was.

 

Neither of them said anything and to be honest, I was kind of grateful about that. Sometimes there’s just nothing to say. I think Brian learned that when I snapped at him earlier. We sat quietly for a few more minutes until Kevin and Howie showed up with a dozen donuts and a coffee for each one of us, mine had extra sugar. Just the way I like it. You know, I’m the ‘why don’t you have some coffee with your sugar’ type. We sat and ate with the TV on in the background. Some random infomercial on how to improve your financial situation was on but no one was really watching.

 

By 5:30, I was really regretting the decision to not go to sleep as were all the guys except Howie who sat snoring in his chair. The guy could fall asleep anywhere and I was jealous of him.

 

Why our gig was so early in the morning was beyond me. I mean, it was just a stupid mall show, somewhere out in the middle of New Jersey which is why we had to leave so early. It’s amazing to me how much prep time we need for a show that’s going to last all of about thirty minutes if even. But, if we wanted to break into the American market, we had to keep doing crap like this or so we’ve been constantly told. Even though I felt like a walking zombie, the show would also help to take my mind off things. Maybe by the time we made it back here my dad would be found?

 

I made the mistake of closing my eyes and trying to fall asleep on the car ride over. Normally, I would have been smacked in the back of the head but I think the general feeling from everyone in the car was that I needed it. I just laid there with my eyes closed as visions from the last dream I had came back to me. The lady who was clearly dead, the fire happening right outside my room and the explosions all played like a symphony of horror in my mind. Wow, that was poetic. I need to remember that one for later!

 

My mother being there is the only part of the puzzle that didn’t fit. Maybe she was an angel or something. Can’t angels come to visit you in your dreams? But if she was angel, why would she be trying to get me to kill myself? Certain that I was thinking too much into this, I tried to block that and everything else out of my mind. Unfortunately for me though, by the time I did that, we were already at the mall.

 

For it being butt early in the morning on a weekday, it was pretty darned crowded. We followed our management and the mall security guards to the center of the mall right by where Santa was holding crying babies on his lap. His line was longer than the lines of people waiting for us to perform. I’m really hoping that will change someday.

 

“You okay buddy?” Kevin asked, placing a hand on my back and giving it a quick pat.

 

“I’ll live. I just want to get this over with and go back to the hotel.” I answered as he handed me my headpiece.

 

We made our little circle and did our usual prayer before performing. None of us sounded like we had as much energy as we normally would for something like this. That was my fault again.

 

Once we got on stage I started feeling better. Performing was better than any kind of drug I could take. The love you feel coming from the crowd better than any amount of caffeine you can drink. The crowd was less like a crowd and more like a small gathering. If I had to guesstimate, I would say maybe 50 to 75 people were standing around and watching us, plus the people who were hanging on the upper levels and peering down. If this was anywhere in Europe, we would have ten times this amount, but it wasn’t Europe, it was New Jersey. A lot more hair and a lot less screams!

 

Everything seemed to be going well. I hadn’t even made one single mistake until we were halfway through “Get Down.” As we were singing that one, I looked out into the crowd and saw him. It was the same guy from the airport. He was just standing there towards the back of the blocked off area, in front of a few teenaged girls.

 

I was supposed to be bouncing up and down at this point of the song but I was so intent on watching the mystery guy that I hadn’t realized I stopped both bouncing and singing. I just stood there staring at him. He was staring at me too. That’s when I lost it.

 

“Hey!” I yelled into my microphone during the song.

 

At first the guys kind of ignored it, thinking that maybe I was talking to a girl in the audience, until I continued on. “Where’s my father?” I asked.

 

The man stopped staring at that point and then turned to walk away.

 

“Come back!” I shouted. At this point not only was the audience looking around the crowd to see who I was talking to, but the guys had all stopped singing and were staring at me.  “Don’t let him leave!” I yelled to the security guards who were standing along the perimeter of where we were performing. They ignored me though. The guy was now blending himself into the crowd and trying to get away.

 

“Nick, what the hell are you doing?” Kevin whispered…well, more like hissed at me.

 

“It’s him Kevin! He’s here!” I pointed out into the crowd again but I no longer was able to see him. Panicking that he would be lost, I stupidly jumped off the stage and into a crowd of people, forgetting for a second how scared to death I was of being around all of these people to begin with.

 

That is when all hell broke loose. Next thing I know, security is making their way through the huge clump of girls who decided to suddenly become screaming teenies. They were grabbing at me and preventing me from moving past them.

 

“Stop that guy!” I shouted again, but my shouts were diminished by the screaming girls and the feedback from the headpiece I was wearing that flew off my head and onto the ground.

 

The security guards and two people from our management company grabbed me out of the crowd and carried me back behind the stage as the other four guys stood up there dumbfounded and not sure what to do.

 

I was thrown onto a chair, I mean thrown! “You sit there and shut the hell up while I try to fix this mess!” Ken, our soon to be ex manager’s assistant said. He walked up on the stage and announced something to the crowd and then a few minutes later the music started up again. I wasn’t paying attention to that though. I was still trying to look around for the guy.

 

When he came back, Ken got in my face, “You listen to me! You go back on that stage and SAVE this performance or I will make sure this will be the last one you ever have! Do you understand me?” Yeah, he was angry.

 

I nodded at him, “Sorry.”

 

“Go!” He shouted as he forcefully helped me out of the chair and pushed me back onto the stage right as “Let’s Have a Party” started playing.

 

When I rejoined the guys, a lot of our crowd had already dispersed but many of them decided to stay. Maybe they were more anxious to see what the crazy blond kid would do next.

 

I couldn’t focus on the song or the other three that followed. I mean I was singing my parts just fine and dancing along with everyone else but I wasn’t there on that stage. I was a small child scared to death and hiding under my sink and now I’m pretty sure that it was that man who I was hiding from. I think maybe that’s why he looked so familiar. He was the blurry guy from my dreams and now he was coming back into my reality.

Chapter End Notes:

I will be back on Saturday with chapter 11 :O) Thanks for reading!!