by Alice Oseman
While doing this, his hand loosens from the dagger. Once he gets down to two breaths for every one of mine, he manages to say something else.
‘Why are you helping me?’ He sounds more like himself in this question than he has done throughout this whole terrifying meeting. His voice is so familiar to me. I hear it every day, I think about it all the time, sometimes I dream it. Sometimes I dream him, bright and shining, reaching out to me with one hand. Wouldn’t surprise me if this was a dream.
‘I love you,’ I tell him.
His expression drops. He looks down at the floor.
‘You don’t love me. You don’t know me,’ he says. ‘Do you even know what love is?’
Not the response I expected. Then again, I hadn’t intended to tell him ‘I love you’ like I was reciting a romantic confession, or something pathetic like that. Because it’s not a romantic confession. It’s so much deeper than that.
Love sometimes doesn’t feel like the right word. The feelings I have for The Ark are what keep me going every day. They get me out of bed, even when everything is shit and I’m feeling worthless. And it always is and I always am. If you think about it, it’s really no wonder someone like Jimmy can’t understand. When you have a life like that, why would you need to cling onto something like a band? A celebrity? When you have a life where you have everything, where every day brings joy and passion, travelling around the world with your best friends, why would you need to spend your time thinking about anything apart from yourself?
He’ll never know what that’s like.
Needing, desperately, to think about anything apart from yourself.
‘Do you?’ I ask him.
But he has no time to answer. The door’s lock is smashed in, the door swings open, and a huge bodyguard just picks Jimmy off the floor like he’s a misbehaving toddler and carries him out of the room. I scramble off the floor and watch him leave, several other bodyguards shoving fans out of the way to get Jimmy across the room.
And then I just start to cry.
I don’t exactly black out but I just stop registering what’s happening around me. It’s not really happening to me. It’s all just happening to this body that people call Jimmy Kaga-Ricci. The body that people call Jimmy Kaga-Ricci isn’t really me, anyway. Never has been. People look at Jimmy and they don’t see me. They see Jimmy Kaga-Ricci. Smiley, dreamy musician, Jimmy Kaga-Ricci. Not the actual Jimmy.
Sorry. I’m not making sense. No point in explaining it. Some things are impossible to explain.
Before I know it, I’m back in our dressing room and everybody is shouting. Cecily is shouting at O2 staff, O2 staff are shouting back, the rest of the tour management team are shouting at our bodyguards, and Rowan is shouting at me, angry, asking me why I disappeared, where did I go, it’s dangerous, and Lister is shouting at Rowan, telling him to calm down, stop shouting, it’s not Jimmy’s fault, he’s clearly shaken up, leave him alone.
Leave me alone.
Rowan has a gauze on the side of his forehead. You can kind of see the blood starting to seep through, just like the cut on my hand from yesterday.
‘Is it okay?’ I say, not answering any of his questions. I point at his head.
‘Fucking hell, yes, I’m fine, but –’ He starts to repeat his questions, but I just walk over to the sofa and sit down next to Lister, who is downing a bottle of water.
He looks at me as I sit next to him.
‘You okay?’ he asks.
I just laugh at him.
‘What happened?’ he asks.
‘Someone called Angel helped me.’
‘An angel helped you?’ Lister raises his eyebrows. ‘Wow. Maybe I should become religious after all.’
‘We’re doing the show,’ says Rowan. Everyone – me and Lister and Bliss, Cecily and the tour management, the O2 staff and our bodyguards – is silent.
Then Cecily says, ‘Rowan, babe, I really think you should get to A & E—’
‘It’s literally just a cut. It doesn’t even hurt any more.’
I can tell he’s lying. His voice goes all high-pitched when he’s lying.
‘It’s not safe,’ says Cecily, sounding desperate. ‘This is a serious breach of security. Who knows what else they could let through the bag checks!’
This is actually a good point and makes me immediately paranoid.
But it only seems to increase Rowan’s rage.
‘Look,’ he says, his eyes wild. ‘The fans? They have taken everything from me. They have taken my privacy. They have taken my girlfriend. They’ve taken the fucking world from me. Do you understand that? I can’t even fucking go outside any more.’
Cecily and the tour management just stare at him.
‘The last thing I have is this band,’ Rowan continues. ‘The music. They’re not having that as well.’
Cecily lets out a heavy sigh, and then turns to the rest of the crew.
‘We’re doing the show,’ she says.
‘Who was this girl who helped you?’ asks Lister. We’re still sitting on the sofa, though someone is doing Lister’s make-up while we’re talking.
‘Angel,’ I say.
‘Yeah. The angel.’
‘She wasn’t a real angel.’
‘Yeah, okay, I got that.’
We both laugh. It feels weird. I must not have laughed for a while.
‘She was just some fan who came to the meet-up. She just wanted to help me calm down, but I was … I was acting weird.’
I don’t really feel like going into detail. Like how I got Grandad’s knife out (which Lister still doesn’t know I carry around) and she helped me calm down while I was having a panic attack.
I shouldn’t carry the knife around. I should just leave it at home. It’s stupid. I’m stupid.
Lister frowns. ‘She didn’t just … ask for a selfie, or whatever?’
‘No, she didn’t ask for anything. She seemed like she genuinely wanted to help.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yeah.’
It’s rare. The fans always want something from us.
‘Lots of them were trying to help, actually,’ I admit.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Like, I mean, there were some who just wanted to touch me, but, like, lots of them were trying to kind of … protect me.’
Lister snorts. ‘Protect you? Why?’
‘I don’t know. But they were trying to push away the people who were trying to get near me. Saying stuff like “Jimmy, don’t worry, we’ll help you.”’
‘Wow.’
‘Yeah. Has … has anything like that happened to you before?’
‘No. They usually just want a selfie and to touch my hand or something.’
‘Yeah. Same.’
We both stay silent for a moment. Rowan is having a heated conversation with Cecily in the corner of the dressing room; they’re both making big hand gestures. I’m not sure what they’re arguing about.
‘I don’t think Rowan would believe you if you told him,’ says Lister.
‘I don’t think so either,’ I say.
The make-up person finishes and leaves, and then me and Lister are alone again.
‘By the way,’ Lister begins, but it takes him a moment to say anything else. I turn to him. He looks down, and then up at me. ‘Sorry about earlier. I … don’t want you to think … erm … I expect anything from you …’
I’m taken aback. I’d mostly thought that we were both going to pretend that it never happened.
‘It’s fine.’
‘No, hang on, just listen,’ he says, turning his whole body towards me. ‘I don’t want to make our relationship weird.’
‘It’s not weird.’
‘Jimmy—’
‘No one can do anything to surprise me any more,’ I say, and start to laugh at him. It’s funny because it’s true. ‘No one can do anything to surprise me any more.’
He frowns. ‘What-what d’you mean?’
‘I’m not in he
re any more,’ I say, pointing at my chest. ‘This is all happening to someone else.’
‘Are you … okay?’
I laugh at him again.
Alex is redoing my hair. He’s not trying to talk to me, which I appreciate. I’m now wearing a different black hoodie – a plain one, without any pictures or text on it.
I keep thinking about the girl who helped me.
Angel.
Don’t remember her last name.
But her name was Angel.
Makes me feel like she was some sort of sign from God.
That’s silly, though.
I mean, it’s too obvious.
Is she going to tell anyone about what happened? Probably, if she’s a fan. It’s probably going round Twitter already.
Who cares?
What more can they do to me?
At least when this is all over I will be able to buy a house in the Lake District, far away from anybody else, and stay there, and nobody will know where I am, nobody will talk to me, nobody will touch me. I can sit on my doorstep and play the guitar and there will be nothing but the sound of the music and the birds. Maybe I’ll meet a farmer my age, or maybe someone working on nature preservation, and he’ll have no idea who I am because he doesn’t own a television and there’s no internet in the forest, and I’ll serenade him with some songs I wrote especially for him and then we’ll fall in love and live in a tiny stone cottage with the deer and the rabbits and the birds until we’re old men.
‘You’d better go and get your microphone set up, Jimmy,’ says Alex. He pats me on the shoulder and gives it a little squeeze. I realise I’ve just been sitting in the chair for a good few minutes, lost in thought.
I stand up and say, ‘Yeah.’
‘You gonna be all right, tonight? You had another panic attack, didn’t you?’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I say.
‘You’ve been having a lot of those lately.’
‘I know.’
‘What’s going on with you boys? You seem a bit –’ Alex makes a gesture with his hands – ‘disjointed.’
I just shrug and say, ‘Yeah.’
The show is still on. Or at least, I assume so. There’ve been no announcements saying it’s cancelled. Nothing has been said about the incident at the meet-and-greet. But everyone knows of course. It’s being passed from fan to fan and it’s trending on Twitter. Photos and videos of the crush are plastered all over the internet. A photo of Rowan, blood-stained and terrified, is posted again and again and again. I see someone being carried out of the O2 on a stretcher. There are whispers of broken ribs. Everyone’s saying they saw Jimmy cry.
But the show is still on.
I feel sick and empty.
I don’t feel excited any more.
I walk around the O2 for several minutes before realising that I could just call Juliet. Once I’ve made it to the arena entrance, I sit down on the floor and fish my phone out of my pocket, and call her.
She doesn’t answer on the first ring, but she does on the second.
‘Hello?’
‘Hey, it’s Angel,’ I say. ‘Are you okay? Where are you?’
There’s a pause.
‘I’m fine. I’m good.’
I can hear the murmur of voices. People around her? Or is she talking to someone?
‘Where are you?’ I ask again. She must not have heard me.
There’s another pause.
‘I think I’m gonna go home,’ she says.
Home? What?
‘What?’ I say. ‘Why?’
‘I … that was all a bit … insane … I’m just not feeling it. I just want to go home—’
‘But it’s still on! They haven’t cancelled it!’
‘No, I know, but—’
‘Why do you want to go home?’
‘I just do.’
We both stop talking. She wants to go home? And miss The Ark?
We’ve been waiting for this for a year.
This was the entire point of me coming to stay with her.
‘Look, Mac’s going too,’ she says.
‘Well, we both know Mac doesn’t want to see The Ark, don’t we?’ I snap without thinking. And who cares what he wants? He’s the one who lied just to get to meet Juliet in real life. That’s not something a friend does. Or a boyfriend. Or whatever their relationship is. I don’t give a shit.
‘Yeah, I know. I get it. I’m sorry, all right?’
I suddenly feel kind of bad. ‘Don’t be sorry—’
‘Well, you clearly think this is my fault. You’ve had a problem with him for the whole week.’ There’s a pause. ‘And me, as well.’
‘What?’
‘From the moment you met me in real life and I didn’t live up to your expectations. Well, I’m sorry I don’t want to talk about The Ark all the time. I’m sorry I actually wanted us to get to know each other as people, not just Ark fans.’
‘I at least thought you’d be excited to see The Ark but I guess you’re not.’
‘There are more important things going on than a boy band.’
‘Like what?’ I shout, and several people close to me turn round to look.
‘Er, I don’t know, like friendships and relationships and actually making real human connections!?’
‘If you want that so badly, then why don’t you just go hook up with Mac, then?’ I say, but want to take it back immediately.
She says nothing for a moment.
‘Is that what you think I want to do?’ she asks.
I splutter as I talk. ‘I-I don’t know! You leave me to go off to other bars with him, spend a whole night with him when we were supposed to be hanging out at the meet-up together, you invite him in the first place without telling me! And –’ I feel my eyes welling up. Fuck. I don’t want to cry. Not now. Not today. ‘And he’s your special internet friend that you’ve been talking to your nan about all this time.’
‘You were the special internet friend.’
I don’t say anything.
‘But I could have been anyone because you don’t care about my life or anything about me,’ she continues. ‘You don’t care about anything or anyone apart from The Ark.’
I stand up.
‘How are you going to go through your life loving nothing as much as you love a boy band?’ she says.
And she hangs up.
I lost my meet-and-greet ticket but my concert ticket is thankfully still in my bag. I go inside without stopping at the merch table. Even if I could afford it, I don’t think I’d want to get anything. Just not in the mood to queue up and talk to people.
I’m in the standing area but since I haven’t been queuing for eight hours, I’m not very close to the front. I weave through as much as I can (one advantage of being alone). The gaps between bodies get smaller and smaller the closer I get. At the front, despite it being still an hour and a half before the supporting act comes on, younger fans are stumbling from side to side, being moved by the pull and flow of the crowd. I think I should be able to see them okay, which is what matters.
This is the point where I thought I’d be jumping up and down, shaking Juliet by the shoulder, both of us grinning with excitement. But there’s no one next to me and I don’t feel anything.
My phone is on twelve per cent battery so I shouldn’t use it to check Twitter any more. I don’t have a charger with me. I turn my phone off and zip it into my bag.
It’s dark in here. There are a few spotlights zooming around, and occasionally they flash over me, but then they’re gone, and I’m plunged into darkness again. I try not to look at anyone around me. The last thing I want is anyone talking to me. They’re all chatting and laughing. They’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. Just like I have.
I stand for the next hour and a half until the support act arrives, trying to absorb the excitement of the people around me, but the more I hear it, the faker it sounds.
I try not to think about anything but I end up thinking about eve
rything. Juliet, angry on the phone. I’m going to have to leave tomorrow and go home. Jimmy, broken and crying on the floor, Rowan covered in blood. The fans tearing at them, reaching out for them, rising from the flood.
I’m sure that when The Ark arrive, I’ll feel happy.
I know that when The Ark arrive, I will feel happy.
I’m sure that when we start playing, I’ll feel happy. I always do. Even if I’m nervous, no matter what – I always, always enjoy playing our music.
I’m watching the supporting act from backstage. He’s a YouTube musician. Trans guy too. My suggestion. I started chatting to him on Twitter a while back after he tweeted me, asking for advice about trans guy voice changes. I get a lot of messages from trans guys about that sort of thing. It’s one of the few things I like about being on the internet.
I start checking Twitter while we’re waiting and Rowan is going through the set list with Lister for the fourth time. My notifications are spammed with what happened earlier. Most people are telling me they hope I’m okay.
I hate that they all saw me like that.
But it feels freeing too.
I don’t want to have to smile all the time.
I wonder whether Angel is going to post about what happened.
‘You all set, Jimmy?’ asks Cecily, standing near me with her arms folded. She glances pointedly at my phone.
‘Yeah,’ I say, and put my phone in my back pocket.
And that’s when I realise.
My knife is not there.
It’s gone.
Cecily sees the immediate change on my face. ‘What? What’ve you forgotten?’
‘N-nothing,’ I force out.
No.
No.
It must have fallen out in the dressing room.
When I was sitting down, or –
But it didn’t, did it?
I never picked it up when I was escorted out of that bathroom.
I need to go and get it.
It’ll still be there, right?
I have to go, now.
They can’t start without me.
