by Beth Garrod
Had anyone ever crumpled from nerves before?
A man in a Glastonbury ’99 T-shirt plucked the mic out of the stand.
“Please welcome…” Whoa, his voice was loud. He looked at me, so I could remind him of my name. “Bella,” I whispered, my voice cracking. He smiled reassuringly. “Belly” – oh well – “who’s going to be talking about…”
He pushed the mic into my hands. This was it. All I wanted to do was bail, but instead I looked at Rach and Tegan.
“I’m going to be talking about why it’s so important we…” Deep breath. “Stop The Session.”
I waited for silence. Worse, for the boos.
But all I got was a cheer. And despite being a bag of nerves, and smelling more than any person should do of toilets, I began.
I started slowly at first, my voice wobbling. But with every word I said about The Session, about how it was not OK to exploit their fans, that girls weren’t objects, that they should be using their position for change, not to make things worse, I got more and more fired up. And so did the crowd – I even got spontaneous whoops.
All day we’d been surrounded by Session fans, but right now there were real people on our side. And not just my friends.
The only time I lost my words totally was when I realized one of the whoops was from … Ross?!
People really cared. Even him?!
And every time I looked to the side of the stage, Rach and Teeg were grinning, arms round each other.
Was I making them proud? A bit of me wished Jo was here to witness it. Mum would never believe that I was up here, doing this. I mean, I couldn’t, and I was me.
But I had to do what I came here for: get as many people to turn up on Sunday as possible. With a reassuring thumbs up from Tegan and Rach, I launched into the end section that we’d practised as I was waiting to go up. It was borrowed from a talk we’d seen earlier about “not expecting to see change unless we make the change for it to happen”. When I said it, it got the biggest cheer yet. But I was running out of time. I had to be clear, be quick, and NAIL IT.
“So who’s with me?”
A big swelling “Wooyyyeaaaahhh” rose up.
“WHO CAN I COUNT ON TO COME AND HELP STOP THE SESSION?” Another massive roar. “OK. So listen up. Here’s the stuff you need to know…” The cheering dropped. They really were paying attention. “Anyone who wants to make banners and flags – and they really will make a BIG difference ’cos we need to be a visible as possible – meet midday Sunday at the D’Oh Nut Stand over by –” I pointed “– the bottom of the helter-skelter.” I paused. “Full disclosure, best ever doughnut balls I’ve eaten. Brenda is a GODDESS.” Blank faces stared at me. “If you’re coming on Sunday, hit us up on @StopTheSession, so we can make sure we’ve got enough for everyone.”
A hand shot up. Ross. “I’ll bring high-vis vests! Make us really stand out!”
He was smiling at me?! This was weird. I was smiling about wearing one of his skanky yellow vests. This was weirder.
“Awesome … if anyone else has, er, ideas, bring them along.” I sounded dead authoritative! “We’re all in this together!” Or not. I gulped, pretending I hadn’t just turned to vintage High School Musical at a time of political importance.
“I’ve got an idea!” shouted a girl. I saw her hair before I saw her face. It was Marge, with Britney T and Lols alongside her. Had they seen it on our social and come to support? “How about we save ourselves the effort? It’s not going to work.”
People actually gasped. One of those people was me. Mikey full-on booed.
“Well, erm, I guess that’s your opinion,” I started. Why hadn’t she said something earlier, rather than wait till I was up here?
“Not just mine – it’s what most people think.” Marge rolled her eyes at the people next to her who were giving her serious evils (although they were nowhere near as bad as the one Tegan was doing from the side of the stage). “And you can stop giving me those looks. I’m all about –” she pointed at her T-shirt, and read it out “– Girls Supporting Girls” (she was hiding it well) “which is why I think we should put our efforts into something that could really work…”
“Like?” Tegan heckled back, unable to stop herself.
Marge shrugged. What was she trying to achieve?! ’Cos if it was putting me off, she was doing a great job.
“ONE MINUTE, BELLY!” the man who introduced me yelled.
Great.
I had to get Marge out of my head. I had to focus on what I was here to do.
“Well if you look around, I think we have a really good chance of making this work?!” I sounded quite convincing. “The main thing is we ALL HAVE TO TURN UP if we are going to show The Session that we mean business.” Finally I got a big cheer. The crowd were back on side. “To show them they can’t get away with what they’re doing.” Even bigger cheer! “That we’re standing up for what we believe in. That we’re being true to ourselves, even when it feels scary!”
They were loving it!
“But we have ALL of us here, so even if it’s hard, we have to give it a go!” More applause. I was connecting with them! “I mean, long story short, earlier on I was being stretchered across the festival after getting kidnapped by a Portaloo, and it can’t be worse than that?” This time I only got confused applause and sympathetic smiles. I should probably stick to the important details – when and where the protest was going to be.
But that’s when I saw another face I wasn’t expecting to see.
And this one made my mouth dry up.
Adam. Adam, who I hadn’t told about the protest yet.
And my last few seconds were ticking away.
I glanced at Rach, and Tegan next to her, who was almost jumping with excitement.
I HAD to say what I needed to.
I HAD to finish.
But how could I when it meant telling Adam I was going to miss his gig?
In front of hundreds of people.
“So meet me…” My voice wobbled. I pointed at Rach and Tegan. “And these two masterminds, by the sound stage… Together … we’ll take on The Session.”
Hands went up in the air. Shouts of “YESSS”. Adam yelled, “Go, Bells!”
“Be there.” I knew I had to say it. Deliver the killer blow. I couldn’t look Adam in the eye. “7.45 p.m., Sunday.”
I had to hold my voice together for one final sentence.
“Protest starts at 8, when I’ll wave my sign by the tree at the main stage.”
The crowd cheered but I felt hollow. I looked to see Adam’s reaction.
But he was gone.
Waving bye, I jumped off stage, gestured to Rach and Tegan to wait for me where they were, and ran as fast as I could to find him.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
I yelled Adam’s name but he didn’t stop. I’d never seen him walk so fast.
“AARD!!”
Could he hear me over the noise, or was he avoiding me at all costs?
I felt sick. If I thought stepping up on that stage was terrifying, it was nothing compared to how I felt now. Had I ruined everything?
It was getting dark, but it was still light enough for me to push my way through the crowd towards him. I managed to catch him up.
“Hey! Adam.” He stopped. We were standing next to each other but I felt far away from him. “I…” I searched for any clue to how he was feeling. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
He dropped his eye-contact. People were swarming around us, laughing, chatting, and in the middle of it, I might be about to be dumped.
“I’m an idiot. A complete idiot.”
“Bells…” He looked up; his normally happy face serious. Worse than serious. Sad. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” He smiled in that empty way that means there’s zero joy in it. “To be true to ourselves, even when it feels scary – that’s what you said, right?”
“I…” but I didn’t have an excuse. “I just didn’t want to let you d
own. To let anyone down.”
“Letting me down? Is that what you think this is?” He looked me dead in the eye. I should really explain why I smelt of loo and air freshener, but now probably wasn’t the time. He was about to say something big. And I could guess what.
We were metres away from the rubbish dump. And I was going to get dumped. It was almost poetic – if it wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened in my life.
My right eye prickled.
No, eye! Not now! Don’t cry!
THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS.
Mumbles’ face when she eats spaghetti! Rach doing interpretative dance in her giraffe onesie! Percy Pigs!
“You don’t get it, do you?”
He pushed his fingers across his forehead.
“Get what?”
This was the moment. I braced myself.
And Adam … laughed. How could he laugh? “Bells. It may come as a shock to you, but despite your terrible approach to telling me what on earth goes on in your head sometimes, I’m … well…” He looked a bit nervous. “I’m dead proud of you.”
So he wasn’t dumping me?
He was being nice to me?! Was I having a post-Portaloo fume hallucination?
“So … so you weren’t storming off?”
He eyes widened, realizing what I’d thought. “No! I’m just massively late to meet Marcus. I stopped when I saw you on stage and told him I’d catch him up.”
All I could do was stare.
And blink.
And maybe breathe. My emotions were so all over the place I couldn’t be 100% sure there was even any oxygen left in my body.
AND THEN HE HUGGED ME.
I was so shocked I couldn’t even contribute to it, so just looked a bit like a human lollipop – rigid, confused, slightly melting.
“So you don’t hate me?”
He stepped back. “Hate you? Of course I don’t.” My entire body flooded with relief, like the feeling your head gets when you take out a ponytail that’s been too tight. I didn’t realize how tense every muscle had been. “Not after all those Tommy K pics you sent – not to mention you’re doing the coolest thing at the festival! Taking on The Session! And yes…” He grinned. “I follow @StopTheSession so I figured it out earlier.” Whoa. I hadn’t thought about that. Lying really wasn’t my forte. His smile dropped a bit, and his voice slowed. “I just wish I could be there too…” So did I. “And of course I wish you could come see our set.”
I jumped in before I could stop myself.
“SAME?! Like a million times the same.”
He would never know how much I wanted to see him play. And see him so happy. And watch his sexy drumming arms in action. And face. And knees. And feet.
“But whatever happens, Bells…” Oh yes. Real life. I snapped back into looking at his actual sexy arms. And face. And knees. “Whatever happens, please, please, can we just be honest from now on? No matter what?”
“No secrets.” I smiled, feeling like happiness was coming out of my very core, even though I already knew it was a lie.
Because there was one thing I was still too scared to say.
How hard can telling someone you love them be?
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Tegan was buzzing when I got back to Speakers’ Circular Corner.
“Bells. Guess what?”
“Zayn and Gigi are back together?” She shook her head. She knew their break-up had hit me hard.
“Nope. Better.” She started to wait for another guess, but was too excited and blurted it out. “We’ve had twenty new sign-ups for the protest!” I’d only been gone ten minutes; this was incredible! “And eight of them are going to join us on Sunday at midday to make some flags!”
This was awesome news!
Rach held her hand out for a high five. “You are officially A QUEEN!”
High on the good news, we headed off to enjoy the evening. I already knew it, but Rach, Tegan and I were a perfect team. Tegan made us put on the extra socks she’d secretly brought (how could two small pieces of clothing do such a good job against hypothermia?!), Rach splodged glow-in-the-dark glitter on our faces and I handed out the Chupa Chups I’d brought for energy. Bear Grylls, eat your heart out (although he probably would in a survival situation).
But lollies weren’t enough and our first stop was food. After a tip-off from Mikey, we ate a burger so delicious we had to lie on the ground, staring silently into the stars to contemplate what had just happened. Some people spend their lives working towards a career, or happy loving relationships, but all I wanted from my future was to experience another gherkin like that one.
Once we’d managed to drag ourselves out of our food comas, we met up with Adam and Marcus, and together with Mikey and Jay, ended up dancing along with a mobile silent disco.
And once we’d started to dance we didn’t stop. As soon as one thing finished, we’d hear the roar of the crowd from another part of the festival and ran to join in. Who knew we were going to be part of a fifty-person conga to a kazoo rendition of “New Rules”? Or take part in field-wide power ballad singalong yoga? The whole evening was a blur of laughing, hugging, running, shouting and knowing I had the best friends in the world. As the final light of the day disappeared, I’d started to forget what a world with parental nagging and revision and stress felt like.
We even managed to get right to the front of the crowd for the main stage headliners. It may have helped that a giant lemur with a broken arm in the air led the way through the endless groups of people. The massive screens at the side of the stage showed just how huge the crowd was behind us. This was the stage The Session were going to be playing on Sunday and the size of this crowd brought home how big our challenge was to make sure anyone would take any notice of us. But I could worry about that tomorrow. Molly and the Bens had come on stage and it was like they’d switched an on button for everyone here. Bouncing along, I got hit in the head by trainers as people crowd-surfed, my ribs got squashed as a mosh-pit formed beside us, and dubious liquid splatted all down my head as the people behind us threw cups (please please please let it be warm beer and not any other yellow liquid). And I loved every second.
When it had finished, we headed off to explore what secret things were happening around the site, which is why at midnight I found myself in my first ever public karaoke situation. Karaoke was something I normally limited to three places – in my room, in my sister’s car, in the shower. My singing was that bad. In junior school I actually got asked to mime in the school nativity. But here I was, getting up on a tiny stage, in a packed tent, alongside Rach and Teeg, a lemur and lobster as our backing dancers, Adam and Marcus beatboxing (which they couldn’t do, so it was just them going, “Boom da da boom”) with hundreds of people cheering us on.
As the first note of “Man’s Not Hot” boomed out, Rach threw her hands in the air, the crowd did the same, and we launched into a word-perfect rendition. I have never seen a lobster and a lemur dance with so much enthusiasm in my life.
Rach mainly added random “never hot”s, but as Adam, Marcus and I finished the last chorus, Tegan got a funny look in her eye, and without any warning, flung herself into a one-handed handstand, in a sort of gymnastic break-dance hybrid. She spun and leapt about, arms and legs flying – and the crowd went wild. We were cheered off like heroes. Mikey and Jay then stayed on to do a full rendition of “Bang Bang” by Ariana Grande, Jessie J and Nicki Minaj, and I laughed so hard I cried tear trails that cut through my glitter. Ariana may have the vocal range of a goddess, but I’m pretty sure she’s never attempted to do the caterpillar whilst dressed as a Madagascan primate.
Then we headed to the dance tent, where the DJ was playing massive tunes mixed in with retro pop. The whole group of us shuffled right into the middle.
“Beefy! Finally!” Adam grabbed my hands and we attempted a sort of couple dance. Which we stopped quickly, as were both so terrible it mainly involved treading on each other. “I feel like I’ve ha
rdly seen you properly since I got here.”
I smiled. “Well, here I am,” I said, and gave him a quick kiss, before stepping back and joining in with his latest dance move – interpretive dancing of dealing cards.
I loved how I felt around him.
I loved how he always wanted to make life fun.
I loved the way he was a worse dancer than me (actually quite remarkable).
So why was I too scared to tell him how I felt? Was it because if he didn’t feel the same, a tiny part of me might break, and never get put back together?
“So –” Adam put his hands around my waist “– you were going to tell me about what happened earlier?”
I shuddered, picturing Ska’s face all over again. I leant in to tell him the whole story. But he mistook my leaning in for something else. And suddenly we were that gross couple snogging in the middle of the dance floor. And quite frankly this seemed way more fun than telling him about my toilet trauma.
“ENOUGH.” Lols was right up in our faces. “Just get back to your tent already?!”
What was she doing here? Why was she so obsessed with our tent life?
Adam gave her a half-smile and turned his back on her throwing himself back into our dancing. For solidarity I pulled out the “ordering a burrito” scenario, which was a multi-person routine, involving both a customer and at least two people making the imaginary burrito, meaning I could rope in Tegan for support.
I tried to get Rach in on the act too, but Marge had nabbed her and was shouting into her ear. When I tried to shimmy over to give her an escape, Rach just smiled and carried on talking.
I didn’t understand those girls. They acted like they hated us – well, Tegan and me anyway – but always seemed to turn up like they thought we were friends.
At least I knew one thing about them. After today’s performance at the campsite, followed by Marge’s heckling at my speech, I no longer cared about impressing them. I was more bothered about avoiding them.
I tuned back to fake-dance-eat-nachos with Adam and Marcus, but Adam was standing still, staring at the girls who’d jumped up on stage, to dance in their rainbow catsuits and matching wigs. They were like something off a bad music video. Maybe even an exercise video. Were they doing spotty dogs as an actual move?! I gave Adam what I hoped was an appropriate “whoa, they’re really going for it” look. But Adam shook his head and pointed. A lot.
