Mastermind

The Netherlands, August 29th 2022

Waking up for the early plane ride was not difficult for me, the hard part was expelling the memory of last night from my thoughts. Lando was nursing the gnarliest hangover I had ever seen him with, so Daniel had to mess with him the whole way to the air strip. May had launched a barrage of messages that I decided to, probably for the worst, ignore until we touched down. There was a black Mercedes waiting when we stepped off the plane, my brother and George hopped out.

"Hey superstar!" Lando's hand went quickly to his ears,

"Bloody hell, can we keep it down, yeah?" Suddenly, George was at my side and he whispered,

"Your agent called mine and told me that there might be paparazzi at the hotel. She also said that we might have to up the appearances. Something about momentum and not stopping a train? I didn't fully comprehend the metaphor." I met his gaze and a wide grin spread across my face. The thought of these appearances had made my skin crawl a few days ago. But, George was a genuine guy and he was slowly becoming a friend so I didn't mind spending that time with him. Giving a quick hug to both Lando and Daniel, they held up their phones, indicating that they wanted me to check the reactions to my song. I climbed into the car and began our drive to the hotel. A nervous tension filled the air in the car as Lewis and George waited for me to pull out my phone. I was surprised to find that "#EvangelineHamilton" was number five trending. Scrolling through to find the majority of comments to be supportive and even some about how they appreciated the vulnerability, my heart swelled. Some said they had never heard my voice over the instruments I used, but the one that made me smile the most said I was making a name for myself and stepping out from behind my brother. Scattered throughout were also some comments about my friendship with George and how it seemed like maybe we were something more. I tried to avoid the negative ones which touched on the song "not sounding like me" or that I was "performative" with my emotions. Lewis snatched my phone,

"Hey, they're all pretty good! You can't expect perfect reviews, but I could only find like twenty bad ones." He leaned back in the seat and tossed my phone back at me. His optimism was something I had always appreciated but envied. Somehow he could face a hostile crowd full of people booing and thank them for attending. The car filled with chatter about practice and qualifying on Saturday. They had a few interviews that were going to take place over the week, so we would be seeing less of each other until the weekend kicked off. I felt my phone buzz and found a text in all capital letters. I could almost hear May's voice screaming at me. Quickly hitting the answer button, I waited to get chewed out.

"Why the hell haven't you been responding! I have something huge." The excitement in her voice took the edge off my nerves.

"I've been on the plane! I literally just landed," I shot a look at the boys when they started chuckling. "What's up?"

"Well...I had a certain music group's manager call me this morning. They want you to re-record a song with them! I already emailed the lyrics to you so you can print them-"

"Woah May slow down! What are you talking about?"

"They want you to be featured on a song!" Unable to contain my excitement, a scream escaped my lips causing Lewis and George to jump.

"Me? They want me?"

"That's what I said isn't it?" She screamed for me as well, and I had to pull the phone from my ear. "They listened to your song and then the ones from your EP and decided that your voice would be perfect. We already have a booth booked for you tomorrow in Haarlem which is really close to the track. And there's one more thing, but we can't get too excited." Lewis and George eyed my nervous posture. "If the recording goes well, they want you to come and do a surprise performance at their concert in Amsterdam on Thursday!"