The girls woke up the next day very tired. They snickered and joked about what was done last night.
There was a scream and the door to JC’s room swung open. He stood there in sweat pants, a wife beater, and bucket hat. Face red with anger and clenched fists at his side.
“LIZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” The girls couldn’t even look up to meet his gaze, just began to laugh.
“A word please, in my room, NOW!”
Liz slowly got up and went towards JC’s room. She barely was in the door when JC slammed it shut.
“YOU!”
“That’s right. I AM me.”
“I don’t need any of your sarcasm right now.” JC snapped back at Liz
“What do you mean right now? Did something happen?” She was playing off the sweet innocent one.
“Yes something happened!” He took off the hat exposing his newly dyed platinum blonde hair.
“It’s.... Beautiful.... JC.” Liz desperately tried not to laugh. But it wasn’t working.
“You did this!”
“I did not!”
“Oh please, you can’t expect me to believe that Erika did this.”
“Well....”
“C’MON! This has your name ALL OVER IT!”
“Ok, ok, it was my idea, but I didnt actually DO it.”
“You didn’t?”
“Nope”, JC let out a frustrated sigh; “I just held the camera.”
“WHAT!?”
“I.... I...”
“You fucking taped it!”
“At least we didn’t interrupt your beauty sleep.”
“Just tell me who the hell did this.”
“Erika and Rachel.”
“Both of them?”
“Yeah, do you know hard it is to get the back of your head when you’re sleeping?”
“I thought I was flipped over. Anyway, Erika did this?”
“Uh huh.” Liz was proud, she had taught her friend well.
“Her little ghetto Spanish ass is SO mine!”
JC forcefully opened the door and Erika fell forward. She went into a fit if nervous giggles. JC could only stare at her for a moment before a grin slowly spread across his face.
“So you eavesdrop too, huh?”
Her giggles immediately stopped. She stood up and ran as fast she could go. JC hot on her trail. The two ran frantically around in the confined space of the bus until Erika ran towards the front of the bus and out towards the venue they were now at. The rest of the group ran behind them to catch a little bit of the comedy show.
They ran in and out of dressing rooms, across the stage, and through passageways one might not even know existed.
Erika then fell to the ground.
“My ankle! Oh my God it hurts so much!”
“Shit, are you ok?” JC asked in a concerned tone as he ran up to her.
JC along with everyone else knew that Erika was a walking disaster. She was the group gimp because she was always getting hurt. She even had her own room in the hospital and the nurses knew her by name without having to look at her chart. Almost everything about her was screwed up, her ankles, her knees, her back, her...well, you get the point.
Tears began to well up in her eyes and poured down her cheeks.
“Where does it hurt?” JC asked while rubbing her ankle.
“It hurts right here.” Erika pushed JC down, got up and ran. “Moron!”
Later That Night
The second opening act had already finished, and Nsync and the girls were getting ready to take the stage. Every one was in their positions. Erika was standing in between Lance and Chris.
“Lance, do you ever get one of those feeling where you know something is gonna happen?” Erika asked while rolling her neck around in circles.
“Yea, I guess. Why?”
“I’m having one of those feelings right now.”
“Really?”
“Uh huh.” Never making eye contact and continuing rolling her neck.
“Good or bad feeling?” Lance had a smile on his face, not completely believing, but humoring any way.
“I’m not sure.”
The stagehands began pulling at them, motioning they had to go.
No Strings Attached went smoothly. So did Tearin’ Up My Heart for the most part. JC had fallen and hit his head as he was flipping, but continued. Erika made it half way through the show when she began to get light headed.
While performing Space Cowboy her vision started getting blurry as she stumbled every now and then. She heard a loud popping sound and so did Rachel five feet away.
Erika heard it before she felt it. The pain felt like a thousand knives poking and jabbing at her knee. It was so intense and severe; she couldn’t even step or put any pressure on it.
But she did.
Hopping around, running back and forth, and jumping wasn’t a smart thing either. As the pain intensified, she could feel her knee swelling up and stiffening. She had a fake smile plastered on her face. Erika thought she was going to collapse right then and there on stage. Ironically they had moved on from Space Cowboy to Makes Me Ill.
The pain got worse as the concert went on.
There was a dance move where the girls’ partner lifts them up and throws them up, letting them coming down by themselves. Joey, Erika’s partner at the time came up to her to do the move. He saw the smile, but saw right through it. He saw a scared little girl with a mask on. He could see the shades of blue, black and purple her knee had become and the tears streaming down her face. Joey didn’t want to throw her, but he had to.
She went into the air and back down. She came down onto the stage like a rag doll. Her leg could no longer support her; it just gave in and crumbled beneath her. Erika let out a small scream and scrambled to her feet at quickly as she could.
I am going to make it through this damn concert. Suck it up, did gymnastics teach you nothing? Keep smiling; don’t let them see the pain. You’re not gonna ruin this for them. This is their time, not yours. Don’t get the attention on yourself.
Erika made it through the rest of the concert. When the last note of “Bye Bye Bye” echoed through out the stadium, she ran off stage followed by the rest of the group on their way to the bus. She couldn’t handle the pain any more. Erika collapsed back stage in the middle of everyone’s hustle and bustle.
“Oh my God!”
“She’s collapsed!”
“Somebody call an ambulance.”
Shouts and screams were being thrown from every direction.
The group followed the ambulance the hospital in the bus. They were all trying to make sense of what was happening.
“Did any body think she was acting strange?” Justin jumped into big brother/best friend mode.
Lance raised his hand, “Right before we went on stage she said she had a weird feeling about something happening.”
“And during Makes Me Ill, in the move where we have to throw the girls in the air, she was in pain.” Joey began to explain as everyone stared.
“She had this smile on her face that was so fake. When she walked over to me, she was limping. I looked down to see what was the problem and her knee was huge.”
“Her knee?”
“Yea, it was swollen and purple. I didn’t want to do the move. Really, I didn’t, but I kinda had to, ya know? When she landed she fell and screamed, I don’t know if y’all heard it or not, but she screamed.”
Lance was thinking of the whole situation. “I saw her fall but I thought she just screwed up or something.”
“Fuck.” Liz slipped out in the silence.
“What was that for?”
“You said it was her knee right?”
“Yea, and her ankle looked funny too, but I’m no doctor.” Joey remembered.
“Damn you Erika.” Rachel said to herself.
“WHAT?” All the guys yelled in unison.
“Well, you guys know she’s always hurt. We joke about it all the time. She was out for a week when we were in Poms because she sprained he ankle. She also has a high tolerance for pain. For example, in junior high, when she was still in gymnastics, she sprained her ankle in April.”
“So?”
“It was actually broken, and we didn’t know until August.”
“No way!”
“Yes way. And I bet you anything that she hurt herself a long time ago and didn’t know it. Either that, or she just didn’t say anything about it.”
“She’s a smart girl, why would she do something dumb like that?” Chris pondered(once in a blue moon).
“You see, Erika is book smart but she is an absolute idiot. She spent 10 minutes trying to open a locker that wasn’t even hers. She doesn’t tell any one she’s hurt because she’ll get restricted.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s had a knee problem for a long time now, and in our freshman year she tried out for our diving team. She was hurting and we could all tell but when we asked her if she was ok she said yes. When she finally admitted that she was hurt, yet again, she didn’t want to go to the doctor because she knew he would say she couldn’t do diving any more. Quitting gymnastics was hard enough for her.”
“So what do we do now?” Justin felt horrible for his best friend.
“We just wait and see what another doctor has to say. And hope I don’t kill her first for being such a moron.”
chapter index
story index
this story blows! take me home!
CHAPTER NINE