The Artist / Billie Eilish

Chapter 1

"London Heathrow arriving LAX International."

The robotic voice jolted me awake from my awkward, accidental nap against the shoulder of a stranger.

Rubbing my eyes, I quickly sat up straight and readjusted my beanie - trying to bring myself back to life in time to make a good impression towards the people I'm meeting at the airport.

The palm trees and pastel skies were a big contrast to the grey, soggy atmosphere back in England. This was definitely something I could get used to...

L.A. is my temporary home for the next few months. I'm an artist, and my design work got recently picked up by a record label.

... Billie Eilish's record label.

They wanted me to move out to L.A. for this next tour, the When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? tour, and create new poster/merch designs whilst on the road with them, so I can use the atmosphere and events as inspiration.

I'm meeting a guy called Mike at the airport, and he said possibly a couple other people, and they'll take me back to wherever they're staying I assume.

•••

I stumbled through the crowd packed in the small corridor, desperate to finally have some air that wasn't infected with other people's breath and bio. Once the sliding doors were in my sight, I sped up and burst through them; more or less into the arms of a humungous man. Holding a sign... with my name on it.

I flashed him an awkward smile.

Laughing, the man who I assumed was Mike put his hand on my shoulder and took my bag with his other one.

"Rose!" His voice was strikingly American, and strong, like he should be doing voiceovers for action movies or something. "Welcome to the US! Hope your flight was as good as it could be. You ready to go or is there anything you gotta do?"

I battled through the slight sensory overload of this man's booming voice being the first voice I've heard in 13 hours, I raised the courage to speak.

"Yes! Of course, thank you so much. I can take my bag, it's okay, thank you. Thank you so much for meeting me!..."
My face flushed red at the amount of times I just thanked Mike, but he just laughed and shook his head.

"Come on," he chirped. "We'll go find Finneas and get the hell outta here. LAX is a nightmare."