3,471 Miles [Undergoing Editing]

One- Dreams.

A single spotlight shone down onto an empty stage, cutting through the darkness like a blade. The nerves in my stomach was dancing strongly, causing my heart to hammer away.

"Nerves mean your human. Nerves are good." I whispered to myself.

I took the few steps I needed for me to be centre stage and stopped when I'd escaped the darkness and stood directly in the beam of the spotlight, my eyes still glued to the floor, nerves making me unable to lift me head even a fraction.

'You can do this. You can do this in your sleep. Pull it together.' I mentally chanted to myself.

I sucked in the biggest lungful of air that my body could take and lifted my head higher as I attempted to make the zoo in my stomach disappear. I glanced around at the audience, feeling like a gold fish surrounded my sharks, as I took everything in.

The rows of chairs neatly filling the arena. The golds, blue's and greens that had been delicately hand panted onto the ceiling to capture the artists version of heaven. The high beams supporting the building. Everything. I took it all in, down to the tiny fleck of dust captured in the path of the spotlight.

The pianist took his seat in front of the most beautiful grand piano I'd ever seem, signalling that he was ready to start, I took a half step forward so that I was directly stood in front of my mic stand. I let go of the lungful of air that I didn't realise I was holding in, sucked in a new one and prepared myself to give this arena everything I had left in me.

Dreams. There funny little things, aren't they?

'A series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep.' But what Google fails to tell you is how dreams come about. What I mean is, dreams are always random, like a thrown together chunk of events that make as much sense as a submarine with screen door. I always wake up in a state of confusion, especially when I have dreams like the one my brain had just fed me.

I hadn't been on stage since I was like, eleven. Yet here my brain was, making me out to be the next Beyoncé. When I was younger, I spent more time on stage doing jazz hands and vocal warm ups than I did at home. I practically lived in the theatre. But, life happened and I put it all behind me. Therefore, I didn't quite get why I just dreamt what I did. Odd was an understatement.

One thing I hated was being woken up by the piercing shrill of my alarm clock. One thing I hated more than that was being woken up by my alarm clock on a monday morning. Even the word made me what to gag a bit.

Monday's meant one thing to me. Goodbye weekend of doing nothing but binge watching all six series of gossip girl on Netflix, hello school, or the legal chamber of torture as I liked to call it. I was in my last year of sixth form and was slowly dancing closer to my last day of boring lessons and teachers who wanted to be anywhere but teaching us children, which was the only thing keeping me from having a mental break down. I could literally taste the finish line.

Don't get me wrong, I understood school was important. Of course I needed to know what A plus B was and how many elements there are in the periodic table, but that was for college. Not for life, which I though was more important. The best way to learn about life was, well, to live, which you can't do with eight hours a day, five days a week plus the seventy four thousand hours of homework you was expected to do. What I'm basically trying to get across is that the ending of my school years was most likely going to be celebrated, not dwelled upon.

I stretched my body as far as it would go, letting sleep drop away from me like a shawl falling to the ground, groaning as my muscles woke up. I sat upright as a swung my legs off the side of my bed, the tip of my toes just about touching the cold oak floor, making me want to dive right back under my duvet. 'Two more weeks,' I told myself as I ran my hand through my sleep induced afro, 'Two more weeks and your Netflix binge sessions will be unlimited'.

With that in mind, I summoned all the energy I had in my tiny frame and dragged myself out of bed. Because I wasn't one of those girls that dressed up like they worked in a brothel, I was ready within the hour, after showering, throwing on a simple outfit suitable for the legal chamber of torture and tackling my hair with a brush.

I shuffled downstairs, feeling a sense of achievement that I had actually made it out of bed, and on time, may I add. As I entered my kitchen, I noticed that I was walking into the middle of one of my dads episode's.

The thing with my dad is that, he is a fabulous father, don't get me wrong. But his organisation skills needed some touching up. My father was living proof that being a single parent whilst running you're own business wasn't the easiest of life's. Meaning, sometimes, like now, he was all over the place.

"Oh, your up. Good morning, love. You haven't seen my keys, have you?" He asked as he frantically searched through the cupboards.

"Kevin, why don't you just pick a place and put there every time you walk through the door. Then we wouldn't have to do this, every, single, morning." I sighed as I picked up a magazine of the coffee bar and hooked his car keys up on my little finger, giving them a jingle.

For as long as I could remember I had addressed my father as Kevin. My mother told me that when I was just a few years old I had said that they didn't call me by 'daughter' or 'child' so it was only fair they both got the same treatment.

His head snapped up and his eyes locked on to the keys I was holding. "Rhiannon, did I ever tell you that you are in fact a star?" He sighed as he checked his wrist watch, "I'm already ten minutes late for this meeting. Dinner, tonight. Okay? I feel like I haven't seen you in ages." He said as he made his way out.

"Yeah, sure. See you tonight." I called out as he shut the door.

That was never going to happen. I can't remember the last time my father made it home before eleven. As I said, his organisation skills was lacking, which meant his time management also lacked and he spent more hours at work than normal.

I was okay with that, though. I liked my independence. I felt like it was preparing me for when I was going to fly the nest and get my own place.

I grabbed a bowl from the top cupboard and filled it with coco pops, sliding down into a seat as I added some milk. Speaking of my dads time management, I was no better. I was leaving school in two weeks, and I still didn't know what I was going to do when I left.

I'm wasn't one of those kids who wants to lie around and do nothing with their life's. I wanted to find my place in the world, I knew it was out there, I just didn't know exactly where to start looking.

I grabbed my laptop and hit the power button as I shoved my face with the chocolate deliciousness. While it started up, I thought about my options. Option one; I could go and work for my dad, in the heart of London for the stock market which he had his heart set on since my mother left. Option two; I could pick a random subject and go to university and try out the living away from home lifestyle whilst gaining a degree or two. And finally, my last option, sell everything I own and either run away with the circus, become a hippie and travel the world in a camper van, or dress head to toe in leather, buy a motorcycle and join a gang.

Three choices. In my opinion, in life you should have more than three choices. Which is the exact reason why I hadn't made my decision yet. I opened the Google search engine and typed in the names of university's I thought could sway me towards option two. After scrolling through a few, I let out a sigh when nothing seemed to make my heart sing.

After noticing that I was closer to being late than on time, I lifted my bowl to my mouth, drank the left over milk in the slobbish manner that I always did, grabbed my keys and jumped into my car.

Here we go, I thought as I pulled out of my driveway and made my way to the legal chamber of torture.