I Know How You Feel

“Change of plans for tonight!” Mr. Harson yelled over the loud crowd of students in the lobby. He called us to the lobby saying he had very important news. We all were mumbling about what it could be. As he spoke again everyone got quiet.

“Sadly we will not be singing at the Lincoln Memorial today,” he started. The lobby filled with “awws” and “boos” but they soon ended after Ms. Sander, the band instructor, held her hand up.

“Instead, we will be playing at the White House!” Mr. Harson yelled like a TV game show host.

A huge cheer broke out among the crowd and I gasped in disbelief. I was going to sing a solo at the White House! I jumped up and down and hugged the nearest person. After realizing there was no way he was going to get the crowd under control, Mr. Harson began to talk louder.

“We were asked by the Vice President to perform for the White House workers tonight at dinner. So, I want all of you to wear your formal wear and be at the bus at 4 o’clock sharp. I would hate for anybody to miss this opportunity of a lifetime, but we have a schedule we need to keep,” he explained.

He stepped down from the chair he was standing on and walked away. The talking in the lobby got louder and louder until the receptionist shooed everyone back into their rooms. I walked up to my room and found Sam already getting ready.

“Oh my God. Oh my God! The White House. I’m so excited!” “What if we’re on T.V.? I have to look amazing! I can’t wait! What if I get to meet the Vice President? Oh, I have to bring my camera!”

I walked in and sat down on my bed. My palms were cold and sweaty and I couldn’t breathe. My nerves were worse than ever. All I could think about was if I messed up it would be terrible. I couldn’t mess up. The pressure was on.

Sam was putting on lip gloss when she saw me sitting there.

“What are you doing Olivia? You’ve got to get ready! You’re going to be front and center for a whole song. We have to make you look gorgeous!” She said pulling me off of the bed and towards the mirror.

I went to protest but nothing would come out. My throat felt like it was swollen shut.

Sam began straightening my hair and I kept trying to talk. Nothing. What was I going to do? If I couldn’t talk then I most definitely couldn’t sing. And if I didn’t sing there wouldn’t be a solo. Without the solo there wouldn’t be a song. I had to talk; I just had to. I sat still for thirty minutes as Sam tamed my hair. She finished and started to get her makeup out.

“Sam,” I whispered trying to fight the lump in my throat.

“Yeah?”

“I’m so nervous,” I said laughing.

“Why? You are amazing!” she said digging in her bag.

“What if I mess up?”

“So? Messing up isn’t that bad…no one expects you to be perfect,” she said pulling out a few things. She grabbed her eyelash curler and put it up to my face.

“Yes, but I really want to perform well for the White House. You heard; there might be cameras there from news stations. We might be on T.V. I don’t want to be under the headline: ‘Jersey Girl Passes Out While Singing Solo at White House’ thank you very much,” I grumbled.

“You won’t pass out! Olivia, you need to quit worrying about what people think so much,” she said.

“Oh, wait…”

“Nice one, Sam,” I grumbled.

Sam stopped and put her hands on my shoulders

“Hey, listen. You’ll do fine,” she said.

I took a deep breath and nodded my head. Sam’s thoughts were solely focused on fixing me up but I could see that she was being sincere.

“Okay, great now let me get the tweezers and fix those eyebrows,” she said turning around to find them.

“Oh, joy,” I grumbled.

I closed my eyes and let the pain be a distraction.

After thirty minutes of what she called ‘pampering’, she was done and let me go get my dress. I pulled it out of my suitcase and dropped it again.

It was the dress she made for me for the spring dance. I glared at it and somehow, it didn’t burst into flames. I looked at the time and grumbled to myself. It was getting closer to meeting time. I had no other options. I slid the dress on and slowly began walking out the door.

“Hey, where are you going?” Sam asked, “I still have to put lipstick on you.”

Her words slowed as she walked up to me. Her face turned to stone but I could feel the hurt stabbing her like knives.

“Best not to use red this time around,” she deadpanned.

“Sam, I’m-”

“I said I forgave you, Olivia. And I meant it,” she said a razor-sharp edge to her voice. Sam turned on the hair dryer and began to blow dry her hair.

“Right,” I mumbled. She tossed me some lipstick and I caught it.

“Nice catch,” she said over the noise.

“Thanks.”

I put some on and got an evil grin on my face. I let the lipgloss hover over my hand and pushed it towards Sam. I caught it before it got close enough hit her and dropped it on the counter.

Sam heard it fall. She looked at it, then at me with my proud grin, and grumbled.

There was a knock at the door and a stream of Oh-my-gods left Sam’s mouth. I knew it was just Mr. Harson making his rounds for ten minutes but Sam was freaking out.

“Oh, God, they saw her!”

“Sam?”

“Yeah?” she answered, her voice surprisingly normal.

“That was Mr. Harson saying it was ten minutes until we have to go,” I explained.

“We should go,” she suggested.

I grabbed my bag and walked out the door.

When the White House came into view I started shaking like a leaf. Thankfully, Romeo held my hand so I couldn’t fidget too much. He wrapped his arm around me and held me close to him. My nerves began to settle as we got off the bus.

“Ok, Show Choir, follow Mr. Anderson. Mr. Anderson, can you raise your hand?”

I looked over the crowd to see a man with aviators and a black suit raising his hand. As we followed him I couldn’t help but giggle a little bit. The guy was a bodyguard and when you see them in the movies you expect them to be stony, heartless men but this man instead was thinking about whether his new son liked him or not and why he had been placed to babysit teenagers.

His thoughts were so normal that I chuckled to myself. I looked around and the people in the choir were glowing a vibrant purple and yellow. There was no denying the excitement in the air.

We were led into the tall white building itself and security checked us in. We all wore visitor passes as we went through the building to a huge room that looked like the dinner area in our hotel.

We filed into the room and waited. Most of the kids had no idea why we were here but I knew.

Everyone lined up into their formation just to find something to do. The doors opened and men and women in business attire flooded the room. This was a private concert more or less. Everyone sat down and the rest of the choir soon figured this out. One question filled all of their minds: “How were we supposed to do it without Mr. Harson?”

I felt my nerves starting to act up again especially when the—

“Is that the Vice President?” A few of our members whispered.

Everyone got extremely nervous. The wave of anxiety hitting me wasn’t helping me considering I was already freaking out.

“They’d be so lost without me.” I heard Wyatt grumble in his thoughts.

He stepped around a few people and made his way to the front.

“Okay, obviously, Mr. Harson’s not showing up,” he said in a low voice.

“Of course he’d just abandon us,” he grumbled.

“So let’s make him proud and do this ourselves, a cappella. You know how to do it,” his speech trying to get everyone together.

“Yeah, let’s do it!” I chimed in.

The Seniors cheered and Wyatt went back to his place.

“You guys ready?” Mr. Anderson asked us. “You get to sing two songs and then, Mr. Vice President has to go attend another meting.”

“Only two?” We all looked around in confusion.

Then I heard a thought that soon became words.

“Let’s do our last two,” A senior suggested, “Somebody to Love and Empty Sky.”

“Perfect,” Mr. Anderson said.

I swallowed hard and stepped forward. Mr. Anderson motioned for silence and went back to all of the other bodyguards who were mocking him in their thoughts.

I shook my head and made myself focus. One of the seniors whispered the counts and we all started to sing. The faces of the people in the crowd lit up as they began to recognize the song. I smiled and began to sing my solo.

We finished our first song and I took my place back in the formation. That’s when I noticed one of the guards was looking at me funny. I felt their stares on me during my solo but thought nothing of it.

Then I saw Sam and I on a T.V. in the security guard’s head. As I dug deeper it turned out he wasn’t a security guards at all but an FBI agent in disguise looking for us.

The mysterious girls who dropped of an envelope of impossible information.

My voice caught in my throat and the senior started counting again. I closed my eyes and let my mind wander. I sang anyway because the words came natural to me. It was the first time I sang without putting emotion into my words. I felt like, if I did, I’d sound scared or look scared.

We finished the song and the guard slowly put together the pieces. Everyone applauded and we all went to shake the Vice President’s hand. I turned around and tried to find my way out of the building claiming I needed to find a restroom.

I made a few wrong turns but I found my way back to where everyone was waiting. I saw Sam and went to walk towards her. I felt a headache coming on and stopped. She spotted me but I was already feeling that stabbing pain in my head like last time.

“Good luck!” Sam said before walking on the stage next to me. The band was all set up and ready. We waited for Mr. Harson’s signal but a security guard was talking to him. Everybody started whispering as a long line of guards made their way through the aisle and up to the stage.

Mr. Anderson stepped out of the line and up to me. “Are you Olivia Knoes?”

“Yes,” I squeaked.

I looked over to see a similar situation happening with Sam. I felt cold metal come down on my wrists and my head snapped back up to Mr. Anderson.

“Hey, what’s going on here?” Mr. Harson asked.

Mr. Anderson yanked my arm and I found myself shaking horribly. I stumbled and nearly fell but he kept me up.

“None of that. Just come quietly,” he growled.

“Hey! You have no right to take my students!” Mr. Harson shouted as I was being pulled away. Mr. Anderson pulled something out of him breast pocket and I flinched. A badge was held in his face. “FBI? What’s the charge for arresting fifteen and fourteen year old girls?”

My eyes went wide.

“That’s classified,” Another agent sniffed. I opened my mouth to scream-

“Olivia!” Sam yelled shaking me. I jerked up and realized I was panting. The pain in my head cleared up and I looked up at Sam.

“We have to go. Now,” I whispered.

I grabbed her arm and looked around for the nearest place to escape unseen. The visitor’s entrance was not too far away. I began to walk slowly towards it, hoping not to catch attention.

“What do you mean?” she snapped pulling her arm away, “We need to get ready for the concert.”

I stopped.

“Unless you want to get arrested, I’m pretty sure we should leave now,” I hissed.

“Arrested? What?”

“The FBI is after us. They recognized me from the security video. We can’t go to the concert; we’ll get arrested. I—,” I paused taking a deep breath, “I saw it.”

“How did she see—“

“Think about it Sam,” I said in her head.

She inhaled sharply and her mind clicked. “Wait, you mean like in the cafeteria?”

“Yeah,” I rubbed my head and began walking again.

“Wait, why are they after us?” she asked catching up with me.

“No idea, but I’d prefer not to be handcuffed,” I said sneaking past the gate with a group of people leaving.

“Me neither,” she said.

We walked to the end of the street and I hailed a taxi. After we got in one and started driving, I felt my whole body relax.

“Where to?” the cab driver asked.

I looked at Sam and she looked at me. The question repeated in both of our heads.

“How much money do you have?” I asked.

“About twenty dollars, you?”

“My purse is in the room that our choir sang in,” I said my voice flat.

“Crap, Umm sir? Can you take us to the Lincoln Memorial?” she asked.

“Sure thing,” he took a turn and I found Sam grabbing my hand.

It wasn’t until then did I realize she was as scared as me. Her head was full of questions and worries that I’d never heard from her.

“What’s happening? Why are we going to get arrested? Why is the FBI after us? What did we do? What happens now? What do we do when we get there? Hide behind Lincoln? How can we escape the FBI? Don’t they handle terrorists? They could easily find two teenage girls. Oh God, Oh God--I can’t get arrested my mom will kill me! Oh, God--“

“Sam,” I whispered squeezing her hand. “We’re going to be okay.”

She nodded her head and let go of my hand. I wasn’t sure what to say to her. I wasn’t even sure what to say to myself.