The sun was high in the sky when she was badgered awake. Her room sounded busy and crowded too.
"Stacey!"
"Stacey!"
"Stacey!"
"Stacey, you lazy butt, get up. We have rehearsals for the theme song and the musical numbers all the trainees are going to perform during the finals performance."
The troublesome three were back. Vera, Chastity and Zanity almost dragged her out of bed before she had fully woken up. They only remembered that Stacey wasn't like she used to when she flopped on the floor a few times, trying and failing to sit up.
Chastity helped to pull her into sitting while the three apologised profusely for forgetting. Elsa and Anna appeared and then began scolding her again.
"I what?" Stacey rubbed her sore and tired head, wondering why her body felt so much heavier than usual.
"You snuck out to a practice room last night on your own," Anna pouted. "We had to soak parts of your pyjamas off when we found you because you'd scraped yourself somehow and the blood had dried. Look."
Stacey frowned, looking at her knees that both had white dressings on them and shrugged. She was too tired and sore to think. Her assistants and roommates all badgered, pushed and pulled her, to help her get ready. Someone wiped her face with a warm towel, while someone else roughly brushed her teeth. When Stacey took a few steps with them to the door, they all exchanged looks and pressed her into the wheelchair instead.
"What?" Stacey asked at the strange looks her friends were giving her.
"I heard you were almost back to normal," Zanity pressed her lips together. "They said you could walk again and only needed the wheelchair for long distances. How come you can't even take two steps?"
"I don't know," Stacey shrugged, accepting her breakfast thickshake.
Sucking on the straw, she grimaced at the taste. They'd added that weird energy booster medicine to her drink again. The taste of that thing was really bizarre. It was like drinking blended raw oysters mixed with lemon, pepper and mayonnaise in a breakfast juice. The thickshake was so thick that she ditched the straw and used a spoon instead. Sucking thick stuff up the thin straw was way too tiring. She guessed Anna and Elsa thought she might have regressed again.
"I dreamed of practising the piano. Maybe I was sleepwalking?" Stacey said.
"Sorry?" Vera asked. "Say that again?"
Stacey repeated herself. And then again at their confused expressions. The sound that came out was slurred and garbled. It took some time before anyone understood what she was trying to say.
Everyone sighed in relief when the message came across. Stacey grimaced at her breakfast drink and finished the horrible thing before leaning back to close her eyes while the noise and clatter of the almost full dining hall washed over her. She really hadn't gotten enough sleep last night. Whatever had happened.
She was woken up for the massed practice but couldn't participate in much. She and another trainee in a wheelchair were wheeled around or turned in time to the music. Stacey tried to participate in learning at least some of the hand actions but she fell asleep.
The crowds of people and all the noise made her head feel like it was going to explode.
Slipping out of the bed, Stacey stumbled upright, looking around her with a daze.
What she thought had been a bed was not a bed but a recliner chair. Stacey draped the blanket that had been covering her over the armrest. Someone was immediately at her side.
"Stacey, what are you looking for?"
"The piano," Stacey replied, realizing with some confusion that she could speak clearly now. Since when had she not spoken clearly that she had expected it to sound like gibberish?
"The piano's this way."
Stacey allowed herself to be led to another room. She smiled when she saw the piano. It was a handsome looking upright wooden piano with polished wood, inside what looked like a dance studio with a bar on one side and a mirrored wall on the other.
Sitting comfortably on the cushioned piano seat, Stacey paused to adjust the piano seat to the perfect height.
Her hands stroked the piano keys gently and then she ran a few scales. The few scales turned into all the scales. The scales and became arpeggios and chords and then technical pieces. One after the other.
Stacey had never forgotten any of the pieces she had memorized. They'd always been waiting in a corner of her mind, waiting to be let out. Although she had to play more slowly than she would have liked because her right hand couldn't quite keep up with her left, it was not too bad. She would improve with practice. There was no point trying any of the more difficult pieces if she couldn't get her right hand back into a good condition.
Stacey shook out her tired hands one after the other in between pieces. She tried some of the simpler and easy piano pieces that didn't have a high demand for her right hand. She practiced and practiced and practiced until her bottom became numb and her legs fell asleep.
She allowed people to pull her away from the piano to eat with them at a noisy table. There, she realised her food was no longer all mush. Her drink was juice. Normal juice. It hadn't been thickened. She ate and drank with relish.
In a noisy music room, she was sat in her reclining wheelchair to watch and listen to people practice, make music and dance. Stacey tilted her head and beckoned to one group to show her their music, frowning as she did so. They gave her a pen and she circled certain chords or sections.
She stumbled over her words as she spoke but somehow, she was able to convey the musical areas that were lacking. The people around her jumped and discussed the changes in excitement. The dance had to be changed to match the change in the music. While the group was busy, someone came to quietly wheel Stacey away to another room where she was bombarded with questions and requests for help.
Stacey blinked and then fought through the drowsy fog in her mind to make sense of what was going on.
"You stole Stacey. We weren't done yet! Give her back."
My. It looked like people were fighting over her. Why?
A flash and she remembered a pair of pointy and shiny, black high heeled shoes. They had stared at her with undisguised disgust. A sharp voice had ridiculed and kicked her while she lay on the floor.
Where had that come from?
Stacey shook the image from her head, wondering if it had really happened or if it was a dream. It wasn't important. Right now though, she wanted the piano.
Stacey fumbled for a lever and adjusted the tilt of her chair into an upright position. She kicked the footrest aside and stood up.
The noise around her ceased.
"Stacey? What's wrong? Do you need something?"
"I'm confused," she said. "What's going on? What are you preparing for?"
"We told you earlier," a girl sighed, blowing a hair out of her face. "It's the grand finals this weekend. It's our last performance. The winners of all the streams will be announced. All the groups involving music want your help. We need to pick your brain."
"How many groups are there?" Stacey asked, fighting with her memory to find firm ground and stop her mind from feeling like it was floating around like puffs of dandelion seeds in the breeze.
"Two for the individual stream and two for the group stream. The actors and stunt teams got your help the last few days, since they're combining their performances. The dancers hogged you all yesterday. It's our turn today."
"Oh," Stacey rubbed her face and sat back down. "Go on then."
The fight over Stacey resumed and only stopped when she stood up to sit beside the keyboardist and started messing around.
"What does your performance sound like?" Stacey asked, peering at the notes on the music stand. "Oh. Nice. This should be good," she nodded. "You need a six-four chord here though," she pointed, "if you want it to sound more polished. But if you're not going for that feel, maybe you'd like a key change here and then return it to the original key at this word. Listen. Like this."
"Stacey, you have to come back and help us later," the other group left, having seen that Stacey had made her choice.
"Sure. Later," Stacey nodded, while the group she was helping surrounded her and began to discuss what they wanted with her.
An hour later, Stacey was wheeled back into the other room to help the other group. She wondered why she was struggling to recognize all these faces. They all knew her, so why didn't she know them?
"Sorry, but what are all your names again?" she asked.