It was the roar of the crowd that gave me heartache to sing

Well, I'm sure some of you have read my last blog.

I asked you to help me make a tough decision. It was unanimous. I'm gonna keep riding this mechanical bull you call life until I get forcibly bucked off.

But that was before what happened. As some of you may know, I'm in a band. We finally chose a name: Wasted Time.

We were having a lot of trouble. Our guitarist quit last minute, we felt like we weren't ready, and this one kid was taking some really huge hits to my self esteem.

Tonight was the Books and Bands event at our school library. We kind of had to play... long story, involving a librarian.

I felt like we weren't ready. And when the other bands went up on the stage and played these awesome covers of awesome songs written by awesome bands (my favorite was American Idiot), I felt even worse. I kept telling Flynn I was nervous, and I couldn't do it, and I wished we could go first so at least there wouldn't be someone good setting the bar.

Well, eventually it was our turn to go on. I was so nervous. THis was, after all, the first time we ever played.

I let a lot of people down tonight.

You know that feeling you get when you first go up on that stage, and there's all these people looking at you, and some people are only there just to see you look stupid?

I let them all down.

That feeling of rejection, of fear, went away as soon as we started playing.

"Hi," I said nervously into the microphone. "We're Wasted Time. We're a little short today, especially Flynn." I pointed to our drummer and laughed. She played a little bit and then I started again. "Our stupid little guitarist quit on us last minute, so we threw this song together randomly at the last minute. THat's his loss, though, because we found a new and better guitarist. Celeste! Stand up! Let's all give it up for Celeste!" People were clapping, and it made me feel a little more... Energetic. Happy. Worthful. Insane. Revamped. Me. "This song is called Insert Name Here!" I called out to the crowd. Flynn yelled something like we're serious, and I said, "Yeah. Seriously. THis song is actually called Insert Name Here. It's kind of a long story, but that's what we named it. So, here's Paige on the keyboard!" Paige wouldn't play her intro piece. I told her to play and she said no, so I told her Bleh. "Here's Flynn on the drums! And then there's me singing. Ane this," I said, holding up my favorite comb, "is my comb. His name is Kom, and Flynn dared me to put him into the intro because we're both insane."

Then, we started playing.

As I was singing, I got weak in the knees, and my voice cracked a bit on one part. But I gained momentum, and I shined. People were giving us funny looks, and I thought to myself that I must suck really bad. Still, I intended to see htis through to the end, and put as much heart into it as I could.

At the end, everyone was clapping. They loved us. We were even asked to do encores! As it turns out, they were looking at us funny because of our strange lyrics and how it was kind of dark but also Santa related.

So now, I feel great. Nothing beats that feeling you get when you're up on stage and people love you. People who missed it begged us to play it again, and so did people who were there! I'm still getting compliments.

And you know what else? Nobody called us Waste of Time after that.

I guess some stories do have happy endings.