Don't Stop The Music

- nineteen part one -

CHAPTER XIX (1)

- the performance -

CC had never been this scared in his entire life.

He'd gathered everyone who was working on organising the festival: the acts and the musical theatre people and the backstage crew, so he could give them his pep-talk as customary. He didn't like pep-talks, they felt like just saying what everybody knew already, and besides, the concept of pep itself was one that he still found greatly confusing. But Anthea insisted, and he couldn't argue with her.

But there'd been some problem with the sound equipment earlier, so they hadn't had time to do a proper run through like CC had planned, and now they barely had time for a decent sound check. And then there'd been a rumour going round – he'd heard it at least four of five times by now – that Ally and Jen and Diana were coming, because they were leaving this year and thought it'd be cute or something, and that had freaked him out, because they were at the top of the social paradigm and had never had any reason to come before. To him, it was highly suspicious. Why were they coming this year? To heckle? CC had never been heckled before, but he didn't like the sound of it at all.

He'd asked Anthea and she'd told him she hadn't heard anything about it. After a second she'd added that even if they were coming it wouldn't make a difference, with that pointed look of hers that made him think she knew more than she was telling him. He'd been half tempted to ask Eli for the list of people who'd bought tickets, but what if the rumours were true? Would that make him feel better, or worse? And then someone had come up to him, about half an hour ago, to tell him Eli was missing –

He'd gone backstage to check progress and there'd been no sign of her, and even after getting half the coordinators to look for her, nobody had seen her. It was getting dangerously close to the start time, and if there was nobody to do backstage...

"Well..." he coughed a little, took his glasses off his head and polished the lenses. "Today's the day, I guess. I mean...well. Tonight, that's the day. Night. Um...you all know what you're doing, so just...do it again, I suppose. And don't mess up, because, you know...cool people are coming..."

He trailed off. He was never good at being eloquent on the best of days, but he was a mess today. He saw people exchange bemused glances in the audience, and decided that if this pep-talk was having any effect it was certainly a detrimental one.

There was a movement in the crowd and he nearly died with relief when he saw Anthea making her way up to him. She gave his shoulder a little squeeze.

"Thank you, Clarence," she said, gently, and then turned to face the rest of the crowd. "What he's trying to say is that we've been with you guys for this whole time, and we've seen you work. We know there's been setbacks, problems. We've seen some of you learn an entire script's worth of music in less than a week; turn up to every rehearsal, other commitments be damned; and stay working behind the scenes almost every night. We know you know all your lines by heart, all your songs to the note. You've worked hard. Harder than we could have ever asked you to. And tonight is the only chance you'll get to prove it. So if, after all that, you still need an incentive to do your best tonight, do it not because we told you to, or because certain people are coming, but do it because after all the effort and time you've poured into this, it wouldn't be fair on you not to."

Typical Anthea: calm when he couldn't be, inexplicably strong while he fell apart. The people gathered in front of him nodded, looking relieved and uplifted. Someone started to clap from somewhere at the back, and the applause spread forwards in a wave, gathering in intensity. CC said something, a few words of thanks, hopefully, and then let them get back to work.