by Alice Oseman
Totally normal.
I check what I’m wearing. I always feel better if I’m wearing something good. Thankfully, I’m wearing some skinny jeans and a baggy shirt over a long-sleeved top. I look cool. Clothes distract people from how uncool you are on the inside.
Google Maps takes me closer and closer to the HMV shop in which Bliss is trapped, but I don’t really need to look at it, because there is a group of men huddled outside the building holding various large cameras. They actually seem fairly chilled out at the moment – sitting on benches and bins, leaning against walls, chatting happily to each other.
Waiting. Waiting like a group of balding vultures.
I slip past them and head inside HMV. If it weren’t for the group of men, everything would be perfectly normal – there are shoppers wandering around the aisles of DVDs and CDs, shop workers roaming in their HMV T-shirts.
Bliss, however, is nowhere to be seen.
Okay.
Right.
You can do this.
I take out my phone and message her.
angel @jimmysangels
i’m here! look for a confused hijabi standing next to the new releases DVD chart
Bliss Lai @blisslai
On my way
She replies almost instantaneously. My palms are kind of sweating. Please don’t freak out. Please don’t freak out. Please, just, please, please be chill. Just for this.
A door in the far corner of the shop opens, and there she is.
Bliss Lai.
This is fine.
She sees me and shoots me a weak smile, winding through the aisles towards me. She looks almost exactly the same as yesterday – the only real difference is the purple HMV shirt she’s wearing – but she’s lost all the mystique she had last night. She’s frowning. She’s gripping her bag. She just looks scared.
‘Hey,’ she says once she reaches me.
‘Hey,’ I say, and smile at her. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m shitting myself,’ she says.
I nod at her. ‘I mean, fair enough.’
She genuinely does look a bit like she’s gonna shit herself. She keeps glancing around, checking no one’s spotted us yet.
‘I haven’t even got any fucking make-up on,’ she whispers.
‘Don’t worry,’ I say, but I would be extremely worried if professional photographers were going to run at me with cameras when I had zero eyeliner on. Reassuring her that she looks perfectly fine probably isn’t the most helpful thing to say, either. ‘It doesn’t matter what you look like.’
She laughs. It’s more of a panicked cackle. ‘You’re right. I could look like a gecko and they’d still run the same story.’
I snort. ‘A gecko?’
‘A small lizard.’
‘Well, you don’t look like a small lizard.’
‘That’s because I’m wearing my human skin right now.’
We both laugh.
‘What’s our plan?’ I ask. ‘Shall we just leg it?’
She takes a deep breath and then nods.
‘Have you got any sunglasses?’ she asks.
‘Oh, yeah!’ I give her my aviators. She puts them on. She looks a bit like a baby wearing their parent’s sunglasses. ‘Sorry, they’re much too big for your head. I have a massive head.’
‘The more of my head they conceal, the better.’
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Tube? Just down the road?’
‘Sounds like a plan.’
She takes another deep breath. ‘I’m just gonna run. Can you, like, I don’t know …’
‘I will try to remain in between you and the group of scary men at all times. Most of them are shorter than me. And I’m wearing heavy boots. If they get near us, I’ll just kick. Like a giraffe.’
She claps her hands together in faux prayer. ‘You are a saint.’
‘Don’t you mean … an angel.’
We both say, ‘Aaaaaay,’ at the same time, and I think that means we’re friends.
We approach the front of the shop. Bliss remains hidden, since she’s short enough to hide behind the aisles of DVDs and CDs, and the paps don’t seem to be paying attention to me or anything else anyway.
Bliss looks me directly in the eye, the corner of her mouth twitching into a nervous smile.
‘On the count of three,’ she says.
I nod. My stomach churns. I can’t remember the last time I full-on sprinted. Might have been Year 11 PE.
‘One,’ she says.
I bounce up and down on the balls of my feet. Really hope I don’t trip over. Could do without that being photographed by professional paparazzi.
‘Two.’
What are they going to do? Are they actually going to chase after us? Are they going to not notice us at all? How do real-life celebrities deal with this?
‘Three.’
Bliss just legs it. She vanishes from in front of me in a flash of purple. And then I’m running too. Running around the aisle out of the shop and down the road, my boots slapping against the pavement, rain stinging against my cheeks, my eyes, praying I put enough pins in my scarf this morning
They’re behind us. I can hear them running. Shouting. Shouting for her. Up ahead, Bliss dares a quick glance back, and there’s panic in her eyes, and so I look back too and nearly fall over in the process, because the paps are only a few metres behind me, running with their cameras, trying to take pictures and shout and run all at the same time. I shriek out a laugh and try to run faster but I’m already getting out of breath and I nearly fall over again after narrowly dodging a lamp-post.
People on the street are staring at us as we run past. I catch eyes with an older woman who reminds me strongly of my Year 9 maths teacher, and I almost think she’s going to shout at us for running, but then she gives me a nod, and after Bliss and I run past, she sticks out her leg, sending at least three of the paps crashing to the ground, and bringing the rest of them to a halt behind the pile of men and cameras.
I scream ‘THANK YOU!’ at the woman, wishing I could stop and talk to her properly, but we can’t, we keep going, laughing, laughing so hard it hurts, and we run the rest of the way down the street until we’re safely inside the tube station, through the ticket barriers, and stopped just before the escalator, panting, my throat feeling like it’s on fire.
‘I am not … fit enough for this,’ I say.
Bliss is leaning her whole body weight against a wall, chest heaving up and down. ‘I really hope … I don’t have to do that every time.’
‘Did you see that woman who tripped them up?’
‘Hell, yeah! What a fucking legend!’
We both start to laugh, and then I need to sit down, because my thighs are shaking.
Bliss smooths her hair, tucking it behind her ears and sorting out her parting. She glances down at me, then sits, joining me on the tube-station floor.
I’m busy checking my scarf in my phone front camera. If I’d known extreme athletics was on today’s agenda, I most definitely would have chosen a more practical hijab style this morning.
‘You’re losing a pin,’ says Bliss, reaching up and adjusting one of my pins.
I can see myself in her sunglasses. ‘Oh, thanks!’
I put my phone away, and then we sit still for a moment.
‘Now what?’ says Bliss.
Now what.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Me neither.’
We sit there.
‘Don’t you want to go home?’ I say.
Bliss rubs her face, wiping away the rain. ‘My mum said don’t come home. They’ve found out where I live.’
‘God, already?’
‘I fucking hate the internet.’
We continue to sit there.
‘What about Rowan? Do you want to go and find him, or …?’
Bliss chuckles. ‘No. He wants me to go to his, but I shouldn’t be seen with him. That’s exactly what the paparazzi want. And the fans will get angry
at me.’
‘Why would the fans get angry?’
She raises an eyebrow. ‘Haven’t you been on Twitter? Most of the fans hate me.’
Oh. That makes sense. The fans want Rowan to be with them, or to be with Jimmy. Anyone else must die.
‘Can’t Rowan help you somehow? Can’t you go meet up with him somewhere safe?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says, then puts her head in her hands. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
Without warning, she lets out a heavy groan, punches the floor, then puts her head in her hands.
It hits me then how serious the situation is for Bliss Lai.
Her life will never be the same ever again.
‘Do you … do you want to come back to mine for a little bit?’ I say.
Bliss’s head snaps up to look at me.
‘I mean, I’m staying with a friend right now, but I’m sure she won’t mind … She really likes The Ark as well, but … I mean … if you don’t mind a bit of fangirling every now and then … I’m sure she’ll understand—’
‘Why would you want to help me?!’ she says abruptly. She shakes her head and laughs. ‘Genuinely. Like, you know you’re not going to get to meet them, right? You’re not gonna get to meet The Ark because of this.’
‘I’m just a wonderful human being, to be honest,’ I say, but the sarcasm is too obvious.
‘Seriously, though,’ she says. ‘Why?’
Why would I want to help her?
Part of me knows it’s what God wants. It’s the good thing, and the right thing, to help someone in a horrible situation.
But another part of me knows that this is because of The Ark.
Because I fucking live to serve them too.
‘I just want to do something good,’ I say.
‘Living up to your name,’ says Bliss, smiling.
‘Not yet,’ I say. ‘Hopefully one day.’
‘I think you’re doing well so far.’
I want to say that she’s the only one who believes that, but I don’t, and instead, I take out my phone, find Juliet’s number, and call her.
‘Hey, Angel, you okay?’
‘Juliet,’ I say, ‘okay. You might wanna sit down for this, my guy.’
‘Hey, Jimmy, you okay?’
Lister is standing in my bedroom doorway. I am lying in bed, trying to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine on my TV, but I can’t concentrate on it, and I have no idea what’s going on. I just keep laughing at random things Holt says without really understanding the joke.
‘Yeah,’ I say.
Lister frowns. He’s still only wearing boxers and a hoodie. He has a cigarette in one hand.
‘Don’t smoke,’ I say. ‘You’ll die.’
Lister looks at the cigarette, as if unaware that it’d been in his hand.
‘Yeah,’ he says, looking back at me.
He wanders over and falls onto the bed next to me, mousy hair spilling over the pillow. He puts out his cigarette on a coaster on my bedside table.
‘What’ve you been up to?’ I ask.
‘Not much. Just called my mum and … you know … sent her some money …’ His voice trails off.
We lie in silence for a few moments, before he takes my injured hand and lifts it into the air, studying the bandage and the few spots of blood that have seeped through.
‘You’re an idiot,’ he says.
‘Yeah.’
He places my hand gently back on the bed.
We lie there and watch the TV for at least ten minutes before anything more is said. As much as Lister gets on my nerves sometimes, having him here is comforting, in a weird way. It’s the same with Rowan. Though Rowan and I have always been closer, the three of us are family. We’re the only ones who know what it’s like to be in The Ark.
The sound of Rowan playing the piano in the living room drifts through my open bedroom door.
‘I can’t believe you fancy Magnet,’ says Lister.
I roll my head towards him, immediately annoyed. ‘I don’t.’
‘Yeah, you do. Or did. Whatever.’
I look away.
‘He’s a pretentious fame whore,’ Lister continues. ‘He’ll have three singles and then he’ll disappear from the Earth. In ten years he’ll be working for an estate agency.’
That I can actually agree with.
‘It was a mistake,’ I say. ‘I thought he was like us.’
Lister is silent for a moment.
‘No one’s like us, Jimmy,’ he says. ‘I think we’re your only dating options.’
‘Rowan’s straight.’
‘Oh. Just me, then.’
I whack him on the arm and we both laugh.
We return to comfortable silence for a few minutes before I speak again.
‘How d’you get away with it?’ I ask him.
‘With what?’
‘Getting with so many people.’
He’s silent for a moment.
‘You don’t really know anything about me, do you?’ he says.
‘What?’
‘You think I just fuck everyone, don’t you?’
I look at him. His forehead is creased, his eyes unblinking.
‘Well, don’t you?’ I say.
He sighs. Then he chuckles. Then he rolls away and laughs hard.
‘No, Jimmy,’ he says, and then sighs exaggeratedly again, grinning. ‘No!’
‘Well, a lot of people, then.’
‘No, Jimmy!’
He bops me suddenly on the nose, making me flinch. He’s still smiling.
‘Why do you all think that?’ he asks.
‘Well …’ I begin, but don’t really know where to go from there. ‘I mean – you always disappear at parties and … you’re always flirting with people.’
‘But you’ve never actually seen me having sex with all these people you think that I’ve had sex with.’
I snort. ‘No, I’ve never actually seen you having sex with anyone.’
Lister smirks up at the ceiling, tucking his hands behind his head. ‘Shame. It’s quite a sight.’
‘Shut up, you dick.’
I don’t really know what to say after that, so we just lie there for a bit again. What’s Lister trying to say? That he doesn’t have sex with quite as many people as we all think he does? So what? That doesn’t change anything.
‘Five people,’ he says suddenly.
‘What?’
‘That’s how many people I’ve had sex with.’
‘At once?’
‘No! Jesus fucking Christ.’ He blinks. ‘I mean, that sounds highly appealing, but no.’
I shove him, nearly making him roll off the bed. He laughs, then readjusts himself, and we fall back into silence again.
Only five people?
I mean, that’s higher than average for most nineteen-year-olds. But it’s a lot less than Rowan and I thought. We thought he was having sex with someone, or several someones, at every party we went to. And we’ve been to a lot of parties.
‘I know you all think I’m a druggie bisexual slut,’ he says. ‘The classic bisexual stereotype. Just because I like more than one gender, that opens up my dating options, and consequently I sleep with everyone on sight. That’s what you think.’
‘We … we don’t …’ But we do. We did. And I can’t lie to him about it.
‘Well, newsflash, not all bisexuals are having sex every five minutes.’ Lister snorts.
I decide to turn the TV off.
I can’t remember the last time Lister and I talked like this. There’s always been a sort of barrier between us. Between him and Rowan too. Maybe because he’s that little bit older. Or maybe because Rowan and I have been friends for longer, have always been closer.
‘And also,’ he continues, ‘most of those were a couple of years ago.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m not like that any more,’ he says with more seriousness than I’m used to. He stares into my eyes. ‘I just want you to know. I don’t do that s
ort of thing any more.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’
‘Yeah.’
He suddenly can’t meet my eyes. He rolls his head away, back to staring at the ceiling.
‘It just got boring,’ he says, but it sounds like a cover-up for something. I decide not to press him for more.
We don’t ever talk about deep stuff, me and Lister Bird.
‘So who’ve you slept with that I know?’ I ask, trying to lighten the mood.
Lister’s face immediately breaks out into a more familiar boyish grin.
‘You wanna know?’
‘Hell, yeah. Give me the gossip.’
‘D’you remember the lighting director from our second UK tour?’
‘Kevin?’
‘Yeah. Him.’
‘Bloody hell.’ I strain to remember Kevin’s face. He must have been about twenty-five, at least. ‘Okay.’
‘I wish I hadn’t, actually,’ he continues. ‘It wasn’t very fun.’ In a smaller voice he says, ‘He was the first guy and I think he thought I was more experienced than I was.’
‘Oh.’ I think that’s what we all thought. I wonder if I should ask him to talk about it more but he quickly moves on to the next name, which is a member of an extremely famous girl band.
‘You’re joking,’ I say, moderately scandalised.
‘No. We’d been chatting a lot on Twitter before that.’ Lister chuckles. ‘She invited me back to her hotel after the BRITs party this year. She’s the most recent person I’ve been with, actually.’
I say nothing because I’m still so surprised. I’ve had a few conversations with that girl before. She’s always in the news. Wouldn’t have suspected a thing.
I don’t even remember Lister disappearing after the BRITs party. Maybe because I was talking to Magnet in a corner.
‘It was just a hook-up, though,’ he says, glancing at me, almost nervous for some reason. ‘Didn’t mean anything, really.’
I roll over so I’m facing him fully now. It’s easy to see why so many people want Lister Bird. He’s got all the classic features of a male model – the sharp jawline, slanted brows, straight nose, piercing eyes, and he’s naturally slim too, without having to exercise like Rowan does. And he’s white, so he’s got the edge with the racists of the world. He was voted number one in this year’s Glamour’s 100 Sexiest & Hottest Men, MTV’s 50 Sexiest Men Alive, and HerInterest’s 100 Hottest Men in the World, all of which it was finally acceptable for him to qualify for, since he’s over eighteen now. He’s commonly cited as a ‘celebrity crush’, even by straight men, and he rejects modelling opportunities weekly.