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Lister pats me a little too hard on the back.
‘You’re at least a bit excited about it, right?’ he asks, grinning.
It’s hard not to grin back. ‘Yeah, I’m a bit excited.’
‘Good. Now, back to the important topic at hand: what are the chances of me running into Beyoncé and what are the chances of her knowing who I am?’
I squint out of the car window. It’s tinted, and Hollywood looks darker than it should, but the too-fast beating of my heart is an indiscernible mix of anxiety and excitement and I get a sudden wave of I can’t believe I’m here. It happens less and less nowadays, but sometimes I remember how weird my life is.
How good it is. How lucky I am.
I glance back at Rowan. He’s looking at me, a faint smile on his lips.
‘You’re smiling,’ he says.
‘Shut up,’ I say, but he’s right.
‘You boys should all just try to enjoy yourselves,’ says Cecily. She crosses her legs and doesn’t look up from her phone as she talks. ‘After this week, things are gonna get five hundred per cent more hectic for you guys.’
Cecily, who is sitting opposite Lister, is the only one of us who looks anything like a normal person – she’s wearing a blue dress, tight black curls swished to one side, and she’s got a lanyard round her neck. The only seemingly expensive thing about her is the massive iPhone in her hand.
Cecily Wills is our band manager. She’s only about ten years older than us, but she comes everywhere with us and tells us what to do, where we’re going, where to stand, who to talk to. If we didn’t have her, we’d have literally no idea what we were doing, at all, ever.
Rowan rolls his eyes. ‘So dramatic.’
‘Just keeping it real, babe. The new contract is very different to your current one. And you’ll be adjusting to post-tour life.’
The new contract. We’re all signing a new contract with our record label, Fort Records, once we return home from our European tour later this week.
It’ll mean longer tours. More interviews. Bigger sponsors, flashier merch, and, above all, it’ll mean finally breaking the US. We’ve recently had a top-ten single in America, but the plan is to get us a real audience here, a US tour, and maybe even worldwide fame.
Which is what we want, obviously. Our music spread across the world and our name in the history books. But I can’t say the thought of more interviews, more guest appearances, more tours, more everything, is making me feel particularly thrilled about my future.
‘Do we have to talk about that right now?’ I mutter.
Cecily keeps tapping away at her phone. ‘No, babe. Let’s get back to poo and anxiety.’
‘Good.’
Rowan sighs. ‘Now look what you’ve done. You’ve made Jimmy grumpy.’
‘I’m not grumpy—’
Lister drops his mouth open in faux shock. ‘How is this my fault?’
‘It’s both of you,’ says Rowan, gesturing to Lister and Cecily.
‘It’s none of you,’ I say. ‘I’m just in a weird mood.’
‘But you’re excited, yeah?’ asks Lister again.
‘Yes! I promise I am.’ And I mean it. I am excited.
I’m just nervous and scared and anxious as well.
The three of them are all looking at me.
‘Like, we’re performing at the Dolby!’ I say, and find myself grinning again.
Rowan raises his eyebrows a little, arms folded, but nods. Lister makes a whooping noise, then starts to unwind the window before Cecily smacks his hand and winds it back up again.
The screams coming from outside are piercing now and the car comes to a halt. I feel a bit sick. I don’t really know why all this is bothering me so much more today. I’m normally fine. Wary, always wary, but fine. The screams don’t sound like a tide any more. To me, they sound like the metallic screech of heavy machinery.
I’m sure I’ll enjoy myself once we get in there.
I rub my fingers over my collarbones, feeling for my tiny cross necklace. I ask God to calm me down. Hope He’s listening.
I’m wearing all black, as usual. Cigarette trousers, Chelsea boots that are giving me blisters, a big denim jacket, and a shirt that I have to keep pulling on because I feel like it’s choking me. And the little transgender flag pin I always wear to events.
Rowan undoes his seatbelt, pats me gently on the cheek, pinches Lister’s nose and says, ‘Let’s walk, lads.’
The girls aren’t anything new. They’re always there, somewhere, waiting for us. I don’t mind, really. I can’t say I understand it, but I love them back in a way, I guess. The same way I love Instagram videos of puppies tripping over.
We get out of the car and some woman touches up our hair and make-up and some other woman brushes down my jacket with a lint roller. I sort of love how they always seem to appear out of thin air. Men holding massive cameras, wearing jeans. Bald bodyguards wearing black. Everyone’s got a bloody lanyard on.
Rowan puts on his Serious Face. It’s hilarious. Kind of a pout, kind of a smoulder. He’s not so smiley in front of the cameras.
Lister, on the other hand, is flashing his smile all over the place. He never looks miserable in photos. He’s got the opposite of a resting bitch face.
The screams are deafening. Most of them are just screaming ‘Lister’. Lister turns round and holds up a hand, and I dare to take a glance too.
The girls. Our girls. Clawing at a chain-link fence, waving phones, crushing each other and screaming because they are so happy.
I hold up a hand and salute them, and they scream back at me. That’s how we communicate.
We get ushered on by the adults that escort us everywhere. Bodyguards and make-up artists and women holding walkie-talkies. Rowan walks in the middle, Lister walks slightly ahead and I linger at the back, finding myself more excited than I usually am at these awards ceremonies. They’ve got a bit samey in the UK, but this is our first one in America, and that makes it something special. This is our first step into the American music industry, worldwide success and a musical legacy.
We’ve made it from a rundown garage in rural Kent to a red carpet in Hollywood.
I glance up at the California sunshine and find myself smiling again.
Photos are very important, apparently. As if there aren’t already enough high-quality photos of us in the world. Cecily tried to explain it to me once. They need up-to-date HQ photos, she said. They need HQ photos of my hair now that I got the sides buzzed. They need HQ photos of Rowan’s suit, since it’s something special that fashion magazines will talk about. They need HQ photos of Lister. Because they sell.
The three of us reconvene at press photos. I still feel like it’s just us three here, sometimes, even though we’re surrounded by other people constantly – adults swarming round us, putting their hands on our backs and pointing where to stand, before jogging out of the way so the fireworks show of camera flashes can begin. I catch eyes with Lister and he mouths the words ‘shitting myself’ at me, before turning away and sending a blinding smile to the cameras.
I stand in the middle, always, holding my hands together in front of me. Rowan, the tallest, is to my left with a hand on my shoulder. Lister is to my right, his hands in his pockets. We never really discussed this. It’s just what we do now.
The photographers, like the girls, all scream mainly at Lister.
Lister hates this.
Rowan thinks it’s hilarious.
I think it’s hilarious.
But nobody except us three knows that.
‘This way!’ ‘To the right!’ ‘Guys!’ ‘Lister!’ ‘Over here!’ ‘To the left, now!’
It goes on. We can’t really do anything but stare into the flashing lights and wait.
Eventually a man gestures for us to move on. The photographers continue to scream at us. They’re worse than the girls because they’re doing it for money, not love.
I automatically walk close to Rowan and he turns to me and says, ‘Lively bunch tonight, aren’t they?’
‘California, baby,’ I say.
‘It’s a funny old world.’ He stretches out his arms to adjust his sleeves. ‘And I’m sweating one out right now.’
‘I’m the one wearing all black!’
The camera flashes reflect in his glasses. ‘At least you’re wearing socks. I think I can smell my feet already.’ He waves a foot at me. ‘Leather shoes with no socks is a fucking disaster. I’ve got a sweat swamp growing down there.’
I laugh and we walk on.
This is where most of the girls are. A long line of red carpet stretches out before us with the girls on either side, leaning over the fence, waving phones. I used to wish there was time to talk to every single one of them.
Lister dives straight in, walking along the left side of the carpet, stopping every so often to lean in to a girl’s selfie. They grab at his arms, his jacket, his hands. He smiles and moves on. A bodyguard hovers a few steps behind him.
Rowan hates the girls, hates the way they scream and grab him and cry in front of him and beg for a follow-back on Twitter. But he doesn’t want them to hate him. So he goes to take some selfies too.
I don’t any more. I don’t go anywhere near them any more. I don’t mind waving and smiling, and I’m grateful, definitely grateful that they’re here and supporting us and loving us, but … they scare me.
They could just reach out and hurt me at any moment. Someone could have a gun. No one would know. One evil person shows up and I’m dead. And I’m a big target. Being a member of one of the most successful and well-known boy bands in Europe makes you a big target.
Typical me. Paranoia, dread and too much overthinking all crammed into one tiny brain.
Instead, I walk slowly and wave. They wave back at me, smiling, crying, so happy. This is a good thing. They are having the best time.
Near the end of the carpet, we all walk together again, the three of us in a slightly spaced-out line. Sometimes I wish we really could hold hands. You couldn’t give me a billion quid to be a solo artist and do all of this by myself.
It’s stressful. It’s scary. That never goes away. The girls scream and they claw at you. A lot of them only like us because we have nice faces. But as long as we are here, the three of us, and we get to make music, and we get to live this life – playing our music in a new city every week, bringing smiles to millions of faces, leaving our mark upon the world – then everything is good, and fine, and okay.
Rowan glances my way and nods. He pats Lister on the back. At least I’m not alone.
Since Juliet announced that I am not the only internet friend who is coming to stay, things have got seventy times more awkward, because she feels bad about it, and I feel uncomfortable about it, and nobody is fully happy about anything any more.
Fortunately for us, I’m excellent at faking being okay with things, even when inside my brain there is a tiny screaming gnome who is definitely not okay.
I keep the conversation flowing as we walk to the tube station, where we’re meeting Mac, whose surname and entire personality I do not know. I’m good at that – talking, even when there’s nothing to talk about.
Juliet seems happy to go along with it. Especially when I bring up Rowan’s Instagram.
We turn a corner and I spot the red and blue underground sign at the end of the road.
‘So,’ I continue, ‘what’s Mac like?’
Juliet stuffs her hands into her pockets. ‘Well … He’s in The Ark fandom, he’s the same age as us, eighteen, he’s …’ She falters. ‘He’s really into music?’
‘Hmm!’ I nod along. ‘How long have you known him?’
‘Only, like, a few months, but we pretty much talk every day on Tumblr, so I feel like I’ve known him for years, you know? I mean, hopefully he doesn’t turn out to be a forty-year-old fedora-wearing stalker.’
She mimes tipping a fedora, which makes me snort out a laugh. ‘Yeah, hopefully not!’
I wonder whether Juliet feels like she’s known me for years. Even though we have known each other for two years.
‘There he is!’ Juliet points into the crowd pouring out of the tube barriers. I have no idea who she’s pointing at. I spot various guys of our age, and Mac could be literally any of them. Due to Juliet’s very bland description of him, my expectations are low.
And then a guy waves in our direction.
My expectations, as it turns out, are fairly accurate.
He is the definition of an average British white boy.
He sees us – well, he sees Juliet – and waves in our direction. He smiles. I think he’s attractive. Sort of averagely spaced out facial features. That haircut that all the lads are wearing nowadays. Bit like he was designed in a lab. I don’t know, really. He looks like the sort of person I should think is attractive.
Juliet walks slightly forward as he approaches, leaving me standing behind her.
‘Hey!’ she says. She sounds nervous.
‘Hey!’ he says as he reaches her. He sounds nervous too.
They both grin at each other, and then he holds out his arms for a hug, and she stands on her tiptoes and hugs him.
Ah. Think I might have an idea of what’s actually going on here.
‘How was your journey?’ asks Juliet after they separate.
‘Not too bad!’ says Mac. ‘You know. Trains.’
She laughs in agreement.
You know. Trains.
They small-talk for an exasperating two minutes before I’m introduced.
‘Oh! Yeah!’ says Juliet, spinning round in absolute amazement to find that I am, in fact, still there. ‘So this is my friend Angel.’
I feel another flash of weirdness at being introduced as Angel, not Fereshteh. Then again, that’s who I am with these people. The internet people. Angel.
Mac drags his eyes away from Juliet and properly focuses on me.
‘Hey, you all right?’ he asks, but his eyes say, Why the fuck are you here?
‘Hi!’ I say, trying to sound cheerful. I hate it when people say ‘You all right’ instead of ‘hello’.
He looks a bit like an older version of the boys who bullied me on the school bus.
After a long pause, I clap my hands, stop looking at them, and say, ‘Well! Painful introduction aside, let’s get back, because I want to put pizza in my mouth.’
I half expect Juliet to make some sarcastic comment, or to at least agree with me, as she would do if we were talking online, but she doesn’t. She just laughs politely with Mac.
‘Oh, Radiohead are so good,’ Mac is saying on the walk back to Juliet’s nan’s house. I am walking slightly behind Mac and Juliet. Can’t fit three people in a row on the pavement. ‘I know they’re kind of old now, but they’re still relevant. I think you’d really like them.’
Juliet chuckles. ‘Well, you know me, I’ll listen to anything that’s mildly miserable.’
‘I’ll have to send you a link to “Everything In Its Right Place” so we can talk about it,’ he continues, and runs a hand through his hair. ‘It’s so creepy.’
His accent isn’t far off Juliet’s – posh, like the people on Made in Chelsea, but it sounds so much worse coming out of his mouth. Juliet sounds like the kids from the Narnia films but Mac sounds like a movie villain.
‘Yeah, do,’ says Juliet, nodding enthusiastically.
I wouldn’t have thought Juliet would be at all interested in Radiohead. Obviously her number one is always going to be The Ark, but overall she’s more of a fan of pop rock and upbeat stuff. Not miserable old Radiohead.
‘I just really like that sort of classic nineties indie stuff,’ Mac continues. ‘I mean, I guess it’s unusual to be into that sort of music, but, you know, it’s better than being too obvious.’
‘Oh yeah, definitely,’ says Juliet, smiling at him.
‘Anyway, I’m glad I have you to talk about music with,’ Mac continues, grinning. ‘No one at my school is really into the stuff I like.’
‘Like The Ark?’ asks Juliet.
‘Yeah, exactly.’
Mac launches into a monologue about the similarities between The Ark and Radiohead and how he’s sure that they must have been inspired by Radiohead in some of their less upbeat songs but I switch off from the conversation. This guy talks nearly as much as me but has ten times more opinions. I’m sure Juliet sees him as a quirky music nerd, and I’m sure I’m only being negative because I thought I was getting Juliet all to myself this week, but I can’t stop myself imagining him getting some sort of emergency phone call, having to rush back to the train station, get on a train, never to see either of us again.
Not even the presence of Juliet’s nan prevents me from feeling like a third wheel. There’s no avoiding it. Mac and Juliet are Ferris Bueller and Sloane, and I’m Cameron. Except they’re lame and I don’t have a fancy car.
I’m extremely relieved when I retreat upstairs to perform my evening prayers, just because I get to stop listening to Mac’s voice for ten minutes. I ask God to give me strength to be kind and not judge him too hard when I’ve known him for, like, an hour, but a girl can only listen to so many monologues about obscure old bands before she snaps.
Eleven p.m. rolls around and Dorothy has long gone to bed. We’ve had food, and now we’re sitting in the living room, Mac and Juliet on one sofa and me on an armchair, TV playing something on Netflix I’ve never seen before, waiting to watch The Ark walk the red carpet on a livestream at 2 a.m. I’m used to having to lead conversations with most people, but Mac and Juliet seem to be doing perfectly fine now that they’re together.
At five past midnight, the worst happens.
Juliet goes to pee, leaving me and Mac alone in the living room together.
‘So,’ he says, once Juliet has left the living room. He smooths his hair back with one hand and looks at me. So? What am I supposed to do with ‘so’?
‘So,’ I say.
Mac looks at me, smiling. He’s got an awkward sort of smile. Clearly fake, but at least he’s trying to be nice, I guess. And I can see why Juliet’s got a thing for him. His hair’s swishy, his awkward smile is kind of cute, I suppose. He’s almost got some Ark vibes about him, if you put him in some ripped black jeans.
‘Tell me about yourself, Mac.’
He laughs, as if what I’ve said is really weird. ‘Wow, a big question!’ He leans forward, putting his elbows on his knees. ‘Well, I’m eighteen, I just finished sixth form, I’m off to Exeter Uni in a few weeks’ time to do History.’
I nod as if I am super interested in these facts.
‘And, er … well, I guess I’m just a big music fan!’
He laughs and scratches his head, like this is a really embarrassing thing to admit.
‘That’s so interesting,’ I say. I’ve learnt absolutely nothing about him at all. ‘So you and Juliet started chatting on Tumblr?’
He grins sheepishly. ‘Oh, yeah, well, I messaged her a few months back, just to start up a conversation, you know? And we got talking. I think we’re quite similar.’
‘Mmm, yeah, totally!’ I try not to say this in a sarcastic way. Juliet and Mac couldn’t be more dissimilar. Juliet likes memes and dissecting fandom theories. Mac looks like he posts #like4like selfies on Instagram.
‘How about you?’ he asks. ‘Tell me about yourself.’
‘Okay then,’ I say, eyebrows raised, as if I have accepted a challenge to duel. ‘I’m also eighteen, I’ve also just finished school, and I’m going to uni to study psychology in October.’
‘Psychology? That’s pretty cool. Do you want to be a psychologist? Or, like, a therapist or something?’
I hold up my hands and shrug. ‘Who the heck knows, man!’
He laughs, but he looks a little panicked, not knowing whether he should laugh or not. Easier than telling him the full truth, anyway, which is that I chose psychology because it’s the only subject I’m even slightly good at or interested in at school – I’m below average at everything else – and I have no idea what I want to do with my life.
Which is a bit shit, to be honest, especially when your older brother is in his third year of a medicine degree at Imperial College London, and your mum and dad are both teachers, and really you should have ended up with better genes than this.
But I don’t need to think about any of that right now. This week is for The Ark. This is what I’ve been waiting for. I can deal with the rest of my life after.
‘Honestly,’ says Mac, ‘I barely know what I want to be after uni. I mean, I chose history because I find it interesting, but, like, it’s not the sort of subject that leads you into a straightforward career path, unlike what Juliet’s doing, which is so brave obviously, not going down the lawyer route like her parents and going for backstage theatre stuff instead …’
He rambles on for a couple of minutes without leaving pauses for me to speak, and I find myself switching off again. I can actually see why he and Juliet get along. She’s more of a listener.
‘Hey,’ he says suddenly, ‘we should follow each other on Tumblr!’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Yeah, cool, sure.’
We both get our phones out of our pockets.
‘What’s your URL?’ he asks.
‘jimmysangels.’
He laughs. ‘Like Charlie’s Angels? That’s cool. What a classic.’
I’ve actually never seen Charlie’s Angels. ‘Well, my name’s Angel, and you know, I love Jimmy, so, there you go.’
‘Is your name actually Angel? Because that’s really cool.’
I pause, but I end up saying with a smile, ‘Yep!’
Not technically a lie.
‘Mac’s short for Cormac, which is so stupid, because Cormac’s an Irish name and I’m not even slightly Irish–’
‘What’s your URL?’
‘Oh, yeah, it’s mac-anderson.’ I assume that’s his full name. Cormac Anderson. His Tumblr mobile description reads ‘mac, 18, uk. i live for good music and cool shoes’. This makes me have a look across the room to see what shoes he was wearing earlier, and I’m disappointed to find that they’re Yeezys. Why does everyone have Yeezys? Aren’t they like £800?
‘There,’ he says.
‘Cool,’ I say.
We sit in silence for a moment, nodding at each other.
The door opens, and Juliet comes back to us. Thank actual God. Mac looks up at her with immense relief.
She freezes in the doorway and grins, moving her head from me to Mac.
‘You two look like you’ve had … a conversation,’ she says.
‘That is accurate,’ I say.
‘Yeah, we’re BFFs now,’ says Mac, smiling. ‘We don’t need you any more, Jules.’
Jules? I want to die. First ‘You know, trains’ and now ‘Jules’? Jules?
She walks into the room and sits back down on the sofa next to Mac. ‘That’s too bad because it’s only a couple of hours until we see The Ark and you will literally have to kick me out if you think I’m gonna miss that.’
He nudges her and murmurs something I can’t hear from my armchair. She laughs. I get a weird thought that they’re laughing at me, but obviously they wouldn’t do that right in front of my face. Would they? No. They continue their flirty banter and I open up Twitter for the hundredth time in an attempt to escape from the romantic comedy I seem to have ended up in as the comic-relief ethnically diverse side character.
I miss the Juliet from earlier already.
By 1 a.m. I’m constantly refreshing @ArkUpdates for any sign that The Ark are on their way. The red-carpet livestream doesn’t start for another hour, but you never know when someone might get a quick shot of them in their car, or leaving their hotel, or whatever, wherever.
You can never really guess what’s going to happen next in The Ark fandom.
The fandom is one of the biggest on the internet and I’ve been here since the beginning. It’s everywhere – Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube and pretty much every other major social media website – and it’s spreading by the day. Fans range from ten-year-olds who just tweet the boys with ‘FOLLOW ME BACK!!!’ to fans in their late twenties writing fanfiction longer than five novels put together and fans my age, constantly discussing and theorising and loving and hating and always, always thinking about our boys.