What He Wouldn't Give (Unedited Version)

Chapter Seventeen: They're The Spider, He's Just A Fly

Chapter 17...They're The Spider, He's Just a Fly

The stickiness of the sweat rolling down his back, his legs, face made him extremely hot as they were on stage playing in almost ninety-degree weather in Miami. The rest of the drive went by pretty fast and with Chester's help Eli managed to find his way to the right place. After sitting in the sun for about an hour they were called to backstage to get ready for their performance.

Now standing on the stage for less than four minutes the sun seemed unbearable. He could feel the sweat drip down his legs with each passing second and could not wait to get of the sun and into his air conditioned truck. His fingers moved up and down the neck of the guitar and the other hand was moving perpendicular motion to the opposite hand, but was near the pickups. Chester was on the drums and singing along to the song. The crowd seemed really into it and since most of the people knew the band and that both groups were from Ocala they liked his choice of song. They were the last performance so when the song ended the couple that ran the contest, Danny and Jobell, came out on the stage to tell everyone who made it through the two weeks with partners and who's career on the contest was over.

Out of the five partner pairs either one pair would be eliminated or a single person from two pairs. That would leave only eight people to be in the game still and each week two people would be cut off. So by the final round in about a month there would only be two people remaining. Danny was reading off the names of the remaining eight people and to begin a single person was eliminated from a pair so it didn't look good because anyone could be facing their end tonight.

"Jessika, Eric, Ryan, Jaxon, Laney, Chester, Blair, and..."

Danny's pause made Eli worry as he hadn't heard his name yet, and he began to doubt himself telling him he should have never joined this stupid contest and he began to walk towards his truck when JoBell stole the microphone from her husband.

"He likes to build up the anticipation, the eighth person is Eli."

He stopped in his tracks looking over his shoulder and caught eye contact with her. She motioned for him to join her and the others on the front of the stage. He felt weird, but he pushed it aside and he walked out on the stage and people cheered for him.

"Congrats to the eight contestants who remain on the stage today and good luck to everyone else who has been sent home. Now I want each contestant to tell us something about their life that has impacted their decisions and allowed them to be on the stage with us right now. We will go in order of the announcements. So Jessika will start us off."

"Thank you JoBell. Hi. I am Jessika and nothing extreme is going on in my life. I am enrolled in college, so I am a college freshman at my local community college. Everyone there has been supportive of me and if I make it to the end I hope to use the money to help pay for college as I want to become a doctor, but my family couldn't afford anything better than community college from undergraduate schooling. Thank you for listening and here's Eric."

"Thanks Jess. I am Eric, hopefully you know that by now."

He paused and people laughed, "My dad is serving in the military and I took a year off before heading to college so without my mother here to support us, I hope to use the grand prize to as Jessica said paid for college. I'm not that special, but I'm here for a purpose. Now to Ryan."

"Thanks Eric, everyone should know my name by now so I'll spare you guys the introduction and dive into the story. I have a couple of siblings and I am taking care of them since my parents died, I am one of the oldest in this competition at twenty-two years old almost twenty-three. I graduated from college with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and I hope to use the grand prize for my younger siblings so that when they graduate high school they will have an opportunity to go to college like I was able to. I'll let Jaxon tell his story now."