My phone vibrates. I pull it out and read the screen. It’s Nick: Still alive.
Stay that way, I text back while the foreign-exchange students sing “Silent Night” in all their primary languages. The three of them look pretty in their white dresses. I wish they’d gone back home. It would have been safer for them. Instead, they have mace and knives, swords hiding backstage.
“This is so wrong,” I whisper to Betty.
“The skinny one is off-key, but it’s not that bad,” she retorts.
I elbow her. “You know what I mean.”
“We can’t call it off now.”
“I know. I know.”
We sit through a sexified version of “Winter Wonderland,” Adam Sandler’s “The Chanukah Song,” and a modern dance version of Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi,” which involves a lot of reaching over the head and flopping on the floor. Normally I’d be enjoying this, but not tonight.
My phone buzzes with another text.
We shall overcome this.
It’s from Astley. Nobody else would use the word “shall.” I think about what he texted: We shall overcome this. What? Me being human? The potential apocalypse? The talent show? All of the above?
I text back: I believe in us.
Betty totally snoops over my shoulder and raises an eyebrow. I roll my eyes at her. It was a good response. People applaud the ending of the modern dance. Issie taps the program. Nick and Astley are up next.
Astley’s got a guitar strapped over his shoulder, which until recently I never knew he played. Taped to the back of it is a long, thin, saber-type weapon. Nick is weaponless and without an instrument. They take the stage and Astley smiles almost shyly, nods his head to the crowd. Nick fixes us with a much more confident gaze.
“He’s always a showboat,” Issie says. “The apocalypse obviously doesn’t tone down Mr. Charisma.”
“It’s cute,” I offer.
She nods but her hands twist together, nervous, on her lap. “It is.”
“He doesn’t suck, does he?” I ask.
“Oh, you’ll see.” She gives me a knowing smile. I love Issie, but I hate knowing smiles unless I’m the one doing the knowing.
Nick adjusts the microphone as Astley perches on a stool. Another microphone is in front of him. He doesn’t move it. He scans the crowd and looks at me. His mouth twitches a bit and then he gives me a thumbs-up sign as Nick starts talking.
“So, hey? You all ready to rock the house down?”
Oh my gosh. It’s so corny, but he’s so charismatic that people actually yell, “Yeah!” and stomp on the floor.
“I said, ‘Are you ready to rock the house down?’” he asks again, and this time Betty howls and even Issie whistles. The noise is deafening.
“Good!” He lets go of the microphone. “Good! Let’s do this.”
The curtain lifts and behind them are Austin on a bass guitar and Jay on drums. There are a lot of weapons hidden in the drums, and Jay’s face itself looks like a weapon—it’s sharp and steely, full of hate.
They are covering a 30 Seconds to Mars song that starts off with this mellow vocal before it goes all crazy-rock loud. Nick’s voice is perfect and resonates throughout the auditorium.
“Holy—” Issie almost swears. “This song?”
“It’s ‘This Is War,’” I whisper back just as Nick segues into the more yelling, growling part. This song is a call to war. It’s about fighting to death, going to the boundaries of the earth. And then about it being a “brave, new world.”
“Ballsy,” Betty yells over the song. “And loud.”
Ballsy and loud and brilliant because Nick and Astley are calling us to them, rallying us to battle without Frank even knowing. The song slows, the lights change to blue spotlights flashing on Nick and Astley as Astley back-kicks the stool and Nick tells us all to raise our hands to the sun, to warm them there, to get ready for a new world.
They are so good at this. I honestly can’t believe how good they are. I’m scared of what’s about to happen, but at the same time I’m just so ridiculously proud of them for working together, for their talent and their courage. They are the best of us. The spotlight stops throbbing and then the rest of the show choir shuffles onto the stage, singing backup into a crescendo, and Nick tells us that the war has been won. The war has been won … I wish.
And then, just as the music slows down but before we have a chance to applaud, Frank appears, like we knew he would. He is the type who loves an entrance. And Astley is at his most vulnerable now, right up on the open stage, bodyguards far away. Same goes for me, but I’m next to Betty.
He flies to the center of the stage between Nick and Astley, arms outstretched. His hands fling out and he grabs each of them by the throat. The music comes to a screeching halt.
Pretty much instantaneously, Betty turns tiger next to me, but I don’t watch. Instead, I’m up on my feet, knife snatched from beneath the seat in front of me, and I’ve jumped onto the edge of the stage. Behind them, Jay’s pulled out a crossbow from where it’s been hiding in the drum set.
“Let them go,” I order.
Frank laughs. “One move, I snap their necks.”
“You didn’t even let them finish their set,” I mock complain. “You know what they were going to play next?”
“‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’?” he taunts.
“ ‘Valhalla,’” I spit back at him. It has no effect on his cockiness.
“I sent him there once. I guess it’s time for him to go back.”
“You can’t go back, idiot. It’s a one-shot deal.”
Astley shoots me a warning glance. We’ve talked too much. I let my anger get the best of me, but I also bought us some time. A perfectly changed Betty pounces onto the stage next to me and hisses, ears back.
She gets a reaction from both the prewarned audience members and Frank. His lip actually curls in, and I can’t say I blame him. Betty is an intimidating tiger.
“Call off the cat, or I snap their necks right now,” he orders, and adjusts his grip.
I think for a second. “If you wanted them dead, you would already have killed them.”
He laughs. “True, true. But I prefer that you all watch the end.”
“The end?” Now it’s my turn to laugh. “You’re surrounded. It is over, Frank. Let them go.”