THE FIRST CHALLENGE

Days flew by, as they often do when the mind is consumed with endless worries. Now it was Friday evening, and Abel was laid back in his bed after school, thinking about how awesome God must have been for creating weekends—or whoever had.

All in all, it hadn't been a bad day. Sure, his mother had said no point-blank when he raised the issue of Hilsa.

According to her, applying to be a foster home would demand far more responsibility than just accommodating someone. She would be forced to be a parent figure for Hilsa, and that kind of adjustment was ill-timed given her current state of affairs.

So no, it seemed Hilsa wouldn't be living with them.

Abel had also noticed something else.

Based on his mom's line of questioning, she was probably assuming that he had a romantic relationship with Hilsa, which felt quite weird to him. He had never thought of Hilsa that way.

The good thing, though, was that Hilsa had started coming to school again, even though she still had to wear an actual arm sling.

She also appeared somehow livelier than he had always perceived her before—maybe because the three of them were now friends and even took their meals together.

There was another even better addition, though, the fact that Homecoming week was in two weeks' time.

The school football team was thoroughly preoccupied with pleasing Mr. Kempt in order to be offered the chance to feature on the team. That meant both Todd and his goons had kept their assaults to a minimum, only taunting him with the new name they had forcefully branded him with.

"Ding!"

Abel reached for the phone as soon as he heard the notification. The moment he saw the Rockstar 360 icon, he was sure he knew what this could be about.

The weekend had after all begun.

[The weekend is here, and so is the weekly challenge: Throughout the week, you have practiced vocals and guitar skills, but you are yet to learn stage presence, which is essential to your role. For that, here is your challenge—Street Performance: You are to choose a location in the city (that choice has been left to you, however, the place must have a good traffic of people and must be an open place that is available to the public). The objective is to use your musical performance to captivate people and create a large audience. This is meant to teach you how to interact with an unfamiliar crowd as well as better your stage performance. if succesful,you will recieve a tip for an oncoming opportunity]

Finishing reading the notification, Abel threw the phone on the bed and began pacing around.

Wasn't this too soon, he thought?

I mean, he had just started, surely it could have been something simpler. like performing for a friend... but an entire crowd?

however, Abel knew he was just stalling.

This was the first time he was performing in front of more than one person if you counted his mother eavesdropping.

Although his mother had somehow accepted the story that he had just been practicing, Abel realized that she still had some doubts. Now he would have to tell Ben exactly what he had been doing since they had killed almost all their time with games and were almost always together. So even if the system had asked him to perform for friends, it would still mean overcoming that hurdle.

Still, he felt it was not time to come clean... he was starting to think such a time would never come. The more he progressed up the ladder, the more he felt the need to keep the app from his friends.

The task, however, wasn't completely a bad thing.

This was a chance for Abel to try and take Hilsa's mind off the recent events. He could invite Ben as well, and if everything in his performance went south, the two of them would cheer him.

Plus, he wasn't going to start completely without a crowd, as he would already have two.

Picking up his phone, he went on to ask his friends about their availability tomorrow without actually mentioning what it was all about.

Ben was the first one to answer... as always, he was all in.

Hilsa took a while, and when she did, she said they would have to pass through the group home to pick her up and that she could only be out until 6 p.m.

The first thought on his mind was that the place was being a little too harsh, but after a while, he realized they were not that far from his own mother... I mean, she too wanted to know where he was, who he was with, and how long he was staying out, which most times felt suffocating but totally understandable. He understood that they were just trying to be a family to her.

*****

He barely had sleep that night as he waited for dawn.

The app had left him to decide both the place where he wanted to perform and the music he performed, as long as he managed to gather an audience.

It sounded liberating. He however knew better than to be fooled that way. Gathering the audience was the most daunting task in that challenge.

The choice for the venue really was down to three.

He could either choose the city park—here he was going to increase the chances of improving his audience as there were already some people who were idling around.

The only downside with this would be that he would have no way of knowing whether they were actually there because of the appeal of the music or because they had nothing better to do with their time.

The second option was the mall, and out of the three places he had in mind, this was certainly the hardest. Just like the park, he had a chance of improving his audience by the already present shoppers, but the thing is, most of the people who visit these places are more interested in shopping and may not have more time to spare on his attempt at being a star.

This left him with only the last option—the subway.

It wasn't that it was perfect either, since the people here were in a rush to catch their train, but then again, there would be others who had just arrived. Those were his targets, as well as the ones who were still waiting. He had seen some YouTube performers in the subways, and mostly, they seemed to work... why would it be different in his case?