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.
I got into it when it started, four years ago, back when The Ark were just
posting covers on YouTube. I was there when they got their record deal
after one of their videos went viral. I was there when they first performed
on Radio 1 and when their first single went to number one in the UK.
I was there through the media shitstorm that occurred when Jimmy, aged
sixteen, revealed that he’s transgender – he was assigned female at birth. I
was there through all the think pieces. The good ones:
Jimmy Kaga-Ricci: A New Trans Icon.
And the many bad ones:
Has ‘Diversity’ Finally Gone Too Far?
The Ark: A Black Guy, a White Guy and a Mixed-Race Trans Guy.
Is The Ark’s Newfound Fame a Response to Millennials’ Obsession with
Diversity?
Is Political Correctness Destroying the Music Industry?
Most of it was a load of middle-aged whining, but there were a few
sensible people that could see the good in the fact that a trans guy was
becoming one of the most famous and well-loved musicians in the history
of the world.
I was there through the GQ magazine cover and their first festival gig at
Glastonbury. I was there when the Jowan shipping began – people wanting
Jimmy and Rowan to be in a relationship – and I was there when the Lister
is bisexual rumours began. I was there through the Jimmy-and-Rowan-
friendship-origin discussions and the second-album-bonus-track theory and,
of course, the ‘Joan of Arc’ video discourse.
Maybe not always physically. But spiritually, mentally and emotionally, I
was there.
There’s a new picture of Jimmy on @ArkUpdates, posted on Twitter by
one of The Ark’s stylists. Jimmy’s smiling, looking off to the side. He’s
wearing all black, as we thought, but he’s in a denim jacket, which is new. It
looks good against his skin. His hair, silky and brown, is buzzed at the sides
now, making his face look even more elfin, but older, somehow. Hard to
believe we’re almost the same age sometimes. Other times, I feel like we’ve
grown up together.
He’s my favourite. Jimmy Kaga-Ricci.
I wouldn’t say I was attracted to him, to any of them, really. That’s not
what this is about. But God, if anyone’s the angel around here, it’s him.
