‘Wake up, Jimjam.’ Rowan kicks me in the shin. Rowan and Lister and I
are all in the same car, which makes a pleasant change. Usually we have to
arrive at these award shows separately and I have to endure a car ride with a
bodyguard who keeps glancing at me like I’m a rare Pokémon card.
‘I’m awake,’ I say.
‘No, you’re not,’ he says, and then waggles his fingers above his head.
‘You’re up there.’
Rowan Omondi is sitting opposite me in the back of our Hummer. He
looks hot. Always does. His hair’s been in twists for the last couple of
months and his glasses – new – are aviators. His suit is red with white and
gold flowers on it – fire against his dark brown skin. His shoes are Christian
Louboutin.
He links his fingers together over one knee. His rings make a jangling
sound.
‘It’s nothing new. We’ve done this before. What’s whirring?’ He taps his
temple and looks at me. What’s whirring. I love Rowan. He says words like
he made them up. Probably why he’s our lyricist.
‘Anxiety,’ I say. ‘I’m anxious.’
‘About what?’
I laugh and shake my head. ‘Not how it works. We’ve been through this.’
‘Yeah, but, like, everything has a cause and effect.’
‘Anxiety is the cause and the effect. Double-whammy.’
‘Oh.’
The anxiety thing isn’t new. By this point, it’s pretty much the fourth
member of the band. I’ve been trying to get on top of it in therapy, but I
haven’t had the time for many sessions this year what with the European
tour and the new album, and I still haven’t really warmed up to my new
therapist. I haven’t even told her about the massive panic attack I had at Children in Need last year yet. Still sang anyway. It’s on YouTube. If you
look closely, you can see the tear tracks on my face.
We fall into silence. I can hear the screams in the distance. Sounds a bit
like a tide. We must be nearly there.
My weird bad feelings are probably half anxiety and half genuine nerves
about tonight, plus all the other things I’m sort of constantly dreading. I
tend to constantly dread things, even when the ‘things’ aren’t actually
dreadful. Currently up there on Jimmy’s List of Things He’s Dreading the
Most are signing our new contract and coming home from tour, along with
tonight’s performance at the West Coast Music Awards, aka our first ever
live performance in America. It’ll be no different to our normal concert
performances except that our audience will be the greatest musicians in the
world and people who haven’t really heard of us rather than teenagers who
know all our lyrics off by heart.
Everything’s sort of changing and happening and I feel excited and
scared, and my brain doesn’t know how to deal with it all.
‘I don’t know how you have room to be anxious when we’re finally
performing at the Dolby,’ says Lister, who is literally bouncing up and
down in his seat with a wild grin on his face. ‘I mean, I feel like I’m gonna
shit myself. I think I might, actually. Stay tuned.’
Rowan wrinkles his nose. ‘Can we not talk about poo while I’m wearing
Burberry, please?’
‘If we can talk about anxiety, we can talk about poo. They’re basically
the same thing.’
Allister Bird. Easy for me to tell he hasn’t had a drink or a cigarette since
yesterday – while he does look like he’s about to explode from excitement,
he’s subconsciously gritting his teeth and has bags under his eyes. Cecily,
our manager, enforced a no-alcohol-for-five-hours-before-events rule on
Lister after the Incident at The X Factor that We Do Not Talk About Any
More, and he’s not supposed to smoke on singing days, even though he
usually does.
No one else can tell that, though. To everyone else, he’s beautiful,
perfect, flawless, etc. He’s got the James Dean, Calvin Klein model, I-just-
tumbled-out-of-bed look. Tonight, he’s wearing a Louis Vuitton bomber
jacket and ripped black skinny jeans.
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.
