Elsa's entire being quite literally stopped working for a couple of seconds as she witnessed the display in front of her. She just stood there and stared, unable to understand what was going on. Everything had been so perfect last night. Everything she'd dreamed of for years had come true, she had been so happy. Now it was all shattered. Every single ounce of happiness had been sucked out of her with a force and speed that could easily be likened to that of vacuum in space. She felt empty, but not entirely. Somewhere deep inside her, a ball of fear, anger, hate and sadness started churning, slowly growing bigger.
This cannot be happening. I refuse to believe it. Last night she made me the happiest girl on Earth, and now she kisses Hans? This must be a nightmare.
She bit hard down on her tongue, trying to wake herself from the horrid dream, but she only managed to hurt herself. As she tasted the coppery taste of blood in her mouth, Olaf came up to her and put a hand on her shoulder, leaning in and whispering "Just act normal for ten more minutes. We'll handle this on the phone."
Elsa nodded and turned to him, giving him a weak smile to show him that she could get through this. Her tongue hurt from the hard bite, and she was happy to have some sort of distraction from the surreality of the situation she was currently stuck in. She might not be able to speak too much for the coming couple of hours if she wanted the wound to heal, but Elsa did not expect to do too much of that anyway.
Marshmallow yelled something about the bus leaving soon and Elsa jogged toward the big man, turning around when she was over there to wave at her dad with a fake smile before getting into the bus.
Elsa felt lucky that she was one of the last people to get on the bus. It allowed her to pick a seat that was nowhere near Anna. She and Hans had gotten into the back of the bus, and Elsa picked a seat near the front, sitting close to the window, placing her backpack on the other seat. She knew there were few spare seats on the bus, and Oaken and Marshmallow probably needed two seats each, but the last thing Elsa wanted right now was to have anyone sit beside her. She fished her iPod out of her pack and plugged it in, scrolling through the songs for a minute before settling on Tesselate by Ellie Goulding. It was a very relaxing track, and Elsa needed that right now. Shutting off the world by turning the music all the way up, she let her neck hit the headrest of her seat hard, staring at the bus' ceiling for a moment before closing her eyes as she felt the vehicle kick into motion. This world was horrible right now, and she wanted nothing more than the sweet escape of sleep.
Elsa's nap was not what she had hoped for. Normally her sleep was dreamless, empty, but this time it was different. Her mind replayed the scene in front of the bus, letting her feel the stab of betrayal over and over, and warping the events. One time was completely normal, the next she could see Anna staring at her with a knowing smile as she kissed Hans, or she could hear how the ginger beauty laughed at Elsa's despair. Then it all turned okay again as she remembered her adventures in the bathroom the night before, and she was filled with glee. But everything turned to despair again as she was once again brought back to the memory of Anna kissing Hans, barely twelve hours after kissing her.
She was ripped from the nightmarish dream as her phone vibrated softly in her pocket. Elsa had never been a heavy sleeper, quite to the contrary. Even the slightest of disturbances were enough to wake her up, if she had not initiated those disturbances herself, hence why the music never woke her up. It took a few seconds before she noticed the buzzing, Lana Del Rey's Summertime Sadness taking most of her attention for those first seconds. Rubbing her left eye with one hand, the other slipped into her pocket to get her phone out. Yawning a bit, she flipped the old Motorola open, glancing at the message from Olaf 'So that was… Unexpected, huh?' his message said. Elsa could clearly imagine his concerned face. She replied with an affirmative message, something that would be closer to a grunt than actual words. A couple of minutes later, Olaf asked another text-based question. 'So what was going on anyway?'
- 'I don't know what was going on, but I know Anna kissed Hans. I've never felt so betrayed.' Elsa replied, wiping a tear from her eye before looking out of the window to avoid other people seeing her cry.
- 'Who is this Hans?' Olaf asked, apparently full of questions today. But then again, that was the way he always reacted when he didn't have all the details on a situation.
- 'He's the male lead on the play. Never talked to him, but I've always had a bad feeling about the guy. I've told you a bit about him before, I think," Elsa replied back, feeling a bit of rage bubbling inside her as she thought about Hans.
- 'Oh, yeah. That guy,' her old friend wrote. She could almost hear the venom dripping from his voice as she read it. 'I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for what she did, Elsa. Only a sociopath would kiss you the way she did and then ruin you the next day in such away.'
- 'Yeah, you're probably right. Thanks Olaf. I'll try to sleep for the rest of the busride. You know how I hate them. Remember to visit my dad once in a while, okay? I don't want him to be all alone,' she texted Olaf before flipping her phone closed again. To be honest she wasn't only worried about her father being alone, but Olaf, too. Olaf had just never taken it well when he thought you were suggesting he couldn't handle himself, so Elsa had learned to avoid doing that. She then went back to sleep. The bus ride was going to take a few more hours, so she wanted to have pass as quickly as possible. This time her dreams luckily weren't plagued by Anna's face, much less her betrayal. This time it was as it always was, empty and devoid of anything. Usually it kind of bothered Elsa that she didn't have dreams, or at least some that she remembered, but today, she welcomed the emptiness, made it her happy place.
The next time Elsa awoke, it was because the giant, white-haired man Marshmallow was stood beside her, shoving her shoulder gently. "We're there," he said with a faint smile and then shuffled off. Marshmallow was a simple man, or maybe not simple, but at least a man of very few words. Elsa liked that a lot in him. He didn't judge, or at the very least not vocally, and he always got straight to the point, and when you needed advice, they were really simple, yet there was so much meaning in them that Elsa could often spend a long time pondering about every meaning in his words.
The first town on the tour was a small one called Del Mar in the Southern California. The tour had been planned to first visit a few local theatres in small towns along the coast in the south and then move to the bigger stages up north. Elsa looked around, trying to get her bearings about her whereabouts. They were parked in front of the local theatre and it was just about midday. "Alright, listen up!" Kaj yelled as he walked down the aisle in the middle of the bus. "Our first show in this town is tonight. That means we have a tight schedule. Actors, you get to leave now and have lunch and dinner. Backstage crew, we need to get the stage set, you have three hours, and then you get to have dinner. Actors, when the stage is set up, you guys need to do one last rehearsal before tonight. We'll go to the hotel after tonight's show, and then stay here for two days, with one performance each night. Got it?" the crew manager continued yelling before he smiled and then turned around as he walked out of the bus. "Let's get to it then!"
The rest of the afternoon, Elsa was busy, and busy meant she didn't have time to think about the events this morning, and she was really happy to get her mind taken off of things for a few hours. Then she, Oaken and Marshmallow went to a cute little Italian place that was situated almost secretly in an alley barely a mile away from the theater, and after they'd eaten, they all went back back to the theatre. The local opening night went smoothly, but Anna seemed a little off her game, and even though Elsa was furious with her, she couldn't help but stare at the redhead.
After a succeeded performance, they all got into the bus, exhausted as hell from such a busy afternoon. On the way over, Kaj informed them that the budget required them to stay in rooms of two, and he had tried his very best to put people in rooms with others he knew they were comfortable with. If nothing went wrong, these would be their roommates for the rest of the tour. The list of roommates would be hung on the front of the bus as soon as they arrived.
Elsa made sure she was one of the last persons to get off the bus this time, enjoying looking out at the traffic going by on the road and smelling the fresh night air streaming into the bus from the door only a few seats in front of her. She could easily hear the audible slap between Oaken and Marshmallow's hands as they read the roster and found out they'd be sharing a room all summer. She seemed to remember them talking about moving in together to save rent, and thought that this would be a good way for them to try it out before actually acting on the thought.
When everyone else had left the bus, Elsa got out, grabbed her stuff from the pile beside the bus and went to look at the roster. For a couple of seconds, she had a hard time trying to find her own name on the list, but soon realized she was probably roommate number two, which meant her name would have been written on the right side of the note. She looked the list over once more and found herself, her name right next to Anna's.