Unrequited

by Emma Grey

  Kat’s hunched over, looking like she’s struggling to breathe. Her friend has her arms around her. She’s crying and gasping for air.

  Cassidy’s belting out the song — all in the wrong style. She’s looking at him expectantly. So is the rest of the band. Except Reuben, who appears equally as shocked.

  Be professional, Angus. Do the right thing here. Don’t let the guys down. Don’t let the fans down. Don’t let the Unrequited name down. Here comes his first line. The line he wrote. The line he sang with Kat over and over again this morning. The line about her.

  He looks from Kat, to Reuben, Xavier, Zach and Alex, to the audience and back at Kat. And, even though the music’s blaring, he imagines he can hear her cry over the sound of his voice. Singing.

  I’ve got the major role in a stick figure theatre . . .

  Kat

  She can’t stand it. She has to get out of here. She doesn’t know where she’s going. She just runs. Down corridors, through doors. She doesn’t stop until she’s outside gasping mouthfuls of crisp night air, sobbing uncontrollably.

  Lucy isn’t far behind, and doesn’t know what’s going on. Kat manages to blurt out, ‘It’s my song!’

  ‘I’ll get a cab,’ Lucy says, dragging Kat towards the taxi rank up the road. They stumble across the path. Kat can hardly walk straight, she’s in so much agony. She collapses on the ground halfway there — inconsolable. Lucy doesn’t know what to do to help her. She’s never seen her this upset. She crouches on the ground and holds her.

  ‘It’s not just the song,’ Kat cries. ‘It’s Angus. How could he do this to me? Seriously! This is the most horrible thing he ever could have done! What kind of person is he? And to invite me along to watch him sing it with her? That’s sadistic! After he’d kissed me? I don’t even understand how a person could do that!’

  Lucy doesn’t get it, either. She’s never heard of anyone breaking someone’s trust so completely. It’s just the worst possible thing.

  ‘Lucy. My song! She doesn’t know how long I worked on that! How hard it was to get it right. How much of myself I poured into it. It’s part of me!’

  Angus

  He only gets a couple of lines through before his voice chokes. He can’t do this. He won’t. He stops and turns to his bandmates, mouthing, ‘I’m sorry.’

  Zach looks confused and glances at Reuben. The audience is uncharacteristically hushed. Cassidy’s hands are still on the piano, the music dying away abruptly. Out of the corner of his eye, Angus sees Reuben frantically making the cut sign across his throat to the stage manager. Cassidy goes to talk but her mic is cut off mid-word.

  Facing the audience, Angus takes his microphone and takes a deep breath.

  ‘I can’t do this, guys,’ he explains. ‘I know the show must go on and all that, but we’re normal people, too. Sometimes there are more important things . . .’ He chokes.

  It’s as if the audience understands how sincere he is. They’re not yelling at him to keep playing. They’re listening. They’re really listening. He hears a scuffle behind him and half-turns. He sees Zach putting his arms around a wildly furious Cassidy. He’s almost carrying her backstage. Angus can’t worry about her now. He turns back to face the crowd.

  ‘This song isn’t mine. Or Cassidy’s,’ his voice echoes around the packed auditorium. ‘It belongs to a friend of mine. Kat Hartland. She’s from Sydney. She wrote it. She should be here on stage singing it, but she’s not, because she just saw what happened, and she ran out of here . . .’

  The audience is staring at him. He’s never felt so exposed. Or so scared.

  ‘And Kat,’ his voice cracks. ‘She’s . . . Kat is the girl from seat L26 . . .’

  The sound of ninety thousand girls receiving this news at once breaks like a wave and rushes over Angus’s head. He feels like he’s drowning.

  ‘I think I’ve lost her,’ he whispers. He can say no more because he’s seriously worried he’ll lose it. The crowd starts screaming. Management is mobilising, off to the side. They’re probably scripting the PR salvage attempt to drag the band out of this mess.

  And then something remarkable happens.

  It starts softly, with just a few people. Then more and more join in until they’re all yelling the same thing in unison. Over and over again.

  ‘GO! GO! GO! GO! GO!’

  Angus and the guys stand there, not sure what to do. There are fans, and then there are Unrequited fans. These girls have been dreaming of this concert for months. Not only has it been gatecrashed by the hated Cassidy Moore, but Angus has gone through a personal, onstage crisis involving a girl, yet they still encourage him to run after her, as though she is one of their own. He’s just floored.

  ‘You guys are the BEST!’ he yells, before tossing the microphone at Reuben and leaping off the second stage, into the crowd, to mass rapture. On any other day, the fans would tear his clothes off in a frenzy. Tonight, they open up, form a path and let him through, cheering louder than ever.

  He runs up the stairs and out the closest exit. The security guards scramble into action, fearing a mob of obsessed teens and an OH&S debacle.

  By the time he gets outside, the fans have started chanting a different word.

  Kat

  A cab pulls up. Lucy opens the door then turns back towards the stadium.

  ‘Kat. Listen!’

  Chanting. Coming from inside the stadium. Nearly a hundred thousand voices yelling one thing.

  ‘Kat! Kat! Kat! Kat! Kat! Kat!’

  ‘They’re trying to stop you from leaving,’ Lucy says. She shuts the cab door.

  It all happens so quickly. The fans are shouting her name. Angus comes bolting out of one of the glass exit doors, looks across the pavement and sees them standing there about to climb into the cab.

  ‘Kat, just hear him out,’ Lucy urges. ‘They do not run out of their own concerts! This is a big deal.’

  Angus is standing alone on the floodlit steps of the stadium. He looks distraught. He’s waiting for her to make the decision to walk towards him — or leave.

  Her body wants to run to him. Her head is telling her to leave. To never look back. They said he was a bad boy. He’s been acting like one. She can’t trust him. She has this moment only to salvage some self-respect.

  She opens the cab door. Lucy stares at her, slack-jawed. She’s really doing this? Leaving?

  Chapter 50

  The cab pulls away, and from the backseat Kat watches as Angus bends double on the stadium steps, hands over his head in agony. The driver pulls out into the traffic and Kat’s phone rings. She declines the call.

  It rings again. She declines it.

  ‘Kat . . .’

  ‘Don’t, Lucy.’

  Minutes later, her phone beeps with a text. She ignores it.

  ‘Come on,’ Lucy implores. ‘Give him a chance. At least read it.’

  Kat flings the phone between them on the backseat of the cab, crosses her arms and stares out the window. Lucy scoops up the phone.

  ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am,’ she reads aloud. ‘I don’t know how Cassidy got hold of that song. I don’t want you to leave.’

  Kat’s silent. What can she say? It’s done.

  Another text: ‘Come back, Kat. Please. Sit with me for a minute and talk? I’m begging you.’

  She can’t stop the tears that fall freely as Lucy acts as Angus’s interpreter. ‘He said I could trust him! He promised!’ Kat says, between sobs.

  ‘Maybe you can. I’m replying . . .’

  ‘Luce, wait!’

  ‘Just let me help, Kat! This is important!’ She types a text on Kat’s phone: ‘Angus, it’s Lucy.’

  The phone rings within seconds and Lucy answers and puts it on speaker. ‘Kat, you have to believe me!’ Angus says. ‘I had no idea that was happening! I have no idea how Cassidy got a copy of your song. I would never have given it to her. Maybe Zach . . . I don’t know! I don’t even like her. This is your song. I want to sing it with you .
. .’

  Could he be telling the truth? He sounds pained enough to be genuinely upset. He might be a pop star but he seems pretty vulnerable right now, calling her from the stadium steps like a schoolboy, begging her forgiveness.

  Kat takes a ragged breath. ‘But if it wasn’t . . .’ She swallows a sob and tries again. ‘If it wasn’t you, then how did it happen?’

  ‘I don’t know! Cassidy’s a . . . Well, she must have arranged it somehow. She thinks it will make me go for her. As if I would! Not if she was the last girl on earth! I don’t think Reuben knew, either. He would have said something. I told him about you.’

  ‘I told Lucy about you.’

  ‘Does she hate me?’

  Hardly! Kat glances at her best friend. ‘You’re on speaker. She thinks I should listen to you because you’ve run out on your own concert. What about the fans?’

  Lucy pushes the phone towards Kat, who takes it off speaker and holds it up to her ear, while wiping her tear-streaked face.

  ‘I only care about one fan,’ Angus says, softly. ‘Although that’s not exactly the right word for you. Is it . . .’

  She almost smiles. ‘You don’t need another fan.’

  ‘I don’t want to disappoint you, Kat. Ever again. I mean it. Can’t you hear how much agony I’m in right now? Tell me how to fix this. What do I have to do to make it right?’

  She takes a deep breath. She knows what she has to do, and it’s the scariest thing. Ever.

  She doesn’t need Angus to make it right for her. She needs to rescue herself here. If she’d been braver in the first place . . . if she’d agreed to sing tonight, this would never have happened. She ends the call, abruptly, and tosses the phone at a puzzled Lucy.

  ‘Stop the cab!’ Kat says, urgently.

  ‘What?’ Lucy and the driver speak in unison.

  ‘Stop the cab! Turn around! Hurry!’

  The driver jams on the brakes and spins the car back towards the stadium, but by now the road is clogged with parents in cars, queueing to collect their daughters from the concert. The driver tries to get around them but can’t.

  ‘Stop here!’ she yells, and as he pulls into the kerb she doesn’t even wait for the car to come to a proper stop before she flings the door open and leaps out, leaving Lucy to deal with the payment.

  She starts to run, but her feet hurt in these sandals. She pulls the shoes off and tosses them on the footpath.

  When she gets to the end of the street and around the corner, she stops when she sees Angus sitting alone on the stadium steps, security team nearby. Everything about his body language is defeated. In that moment, she knows . . . He didn’t give Cassidy the song. He wouldn’t hurt her.

  She runs across the pavement towards him and he looks up and scrambles to his feet. ‘Kat!’

  ‘No time!’ she says, as Lucy catches up, breathlessly — passing her the sandals, which she slips on, leaning with one hand on Angus’s shoulder. Then she holds out her hand to him. ‘Coming?’

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asks. She puts a finger to his lips and tells him to shush. Then she walks up the stairs and drags him with her, but he pulls her back. ‘Are you doing what I think you’re doing, Kat? Are you sure?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I’m far from sure. I’m more terrified right now than I’ve ever been in my life. Which probably means this is exactly the right thing for me to do.’

  He’s looking up at her from a lower step, green eyes full of respect. She could prolong this moment forever — stay here on the steps with him. But there’s no time for that now. It will have to wait.

  Because they have a song to sing.

  ‘Can I at least fix your makeup?’ Lucy pleads as they race back in.

  ‘Probably not a bad plan,’ Angus says with a smile, wincing in case Kat flies at him.

  The girls sneak into a staff bathroom and the mirror confirms that this was a good move. But that’s not really why Lucy made the suggestion.

  ‘Are you sure this is what you want to do, Kat?’ she asks, grasping her friend’s hands.

  ‘No! But I’m doing it anyway.’

  ‘I have a confession to make.’

  ‘You posted those tweets?’ Kat replies quickly.

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘I suspected.’

  ‘Are you cranky? I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought you’d be perfect for each other.’

  ‘I’m not mad. But Lucy, what do you think of Angus? Really?’

  It’s like she’s asking her best friend’s opinion on the new boy at school, and Lucy laughs. ‘Are we having this conversation? Now? Come on, Kat. It doesn’t matter what I think. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.’

  She’s right, of course. Kat takes a look at herself in the mirror. And a deep, steadying breath. ‘I can do this.’

  They walk out and find Angus flanked by security personnel. The staff immediately engulf Kat and Lucy, and lead them past the merchandise stalls, past the glowsticks, past the fast-food outlets and through the door into the stadium, which is lit up with intermission lights. Not a single soul has left their seats — they’re instead gossiping, tweeting and Instagramming tonight’s developments at such a frenetic pace, they might just break the internet.

  Then some girls in the back rows spot them. And the cheering and clapping begins. Before long, everyone turns around to see what’s going on and more and more people notice Angus and Kat, weaving in and out through the throng of fans with Lucy.

  They can’t believe this is happening to a local girl. They can’t believe that local girl isn’t them, but they still don’t want this fairy tale to end.

  Thousands of phones and iPads are stuck in the air as they pass, and Kat is almost blinded by flashes. She’s so glad Lucy had insisted on wiping the mascara from her cheeks!

  Angus walks past the second stage heading for the front one. His bandmates are there, waiting for him, grinning like maniacs, riffing on what’s likely to become their biggest hit so far, ‘Flirt With Me’.

  Halfway there, Kat stops dead. Angus turns back and looks at her closely. ‘Kat. It’s okay. You don’t have to do this . . .’

  ‘This way,’ she yells, and before he can argue, she pushes past the security barricades and runs up the spiral staircase around the outside of the second stage, and onto the mobile platform sitting square in its centre. If she’s going to conquer one fear in the next few minutes, she might as well knock off another, even though there’s a very big part of her that knows this could all go horribly wrong.

  Everyone is looking at her. Every single face is turned towards her. Hundreds, maybe thousands of screens are being held up in the air, flashing like mirrors.

  There’s no piano on the second stage. There’s only one way to get to the main one from here, and that’s via a vertigo-inducing, dangling platform.

  Don’t overthink this.

  She can do it. What’s the worst that could happen? Actually, no. Don’t go there! Just do it!

  Angus looks concerned and impressed all at once. He follows her up the stairs while the audience cranks up to fever pitch. He leans in and yells, ‘This thing is high, Kat! Are you sure you want . . .’

  ‘YES!’ she yells. ‘For once, I’m sure!’

  One of the stage safety crew, disguised in his black coverall, shows Kat how to clip herself into the safety harness. While he’s doing that, Angus appears to be staring at the point where her legs meet the hem of her very short dress. What, he’s doing this now?

  ‘We don’t want a wardrobe malfunction,’ he says. ‘Shall we sit?’

  Oh, right. Good plan.

  Then he looks back and sees Lucy, white with excitement and jumping up and down hysterically. He signals one of the crew and indicates that he should take her to the VIP seating up the front.

  Kat wonders if there’s anyone else he wants to take care of while he’s up here, despite everything else that’s going on. Maybe he’s Mr Darcy after all . . .

  Angu
s communicates something to someone via the microphone and earpiece he’s now wearing and the backing band kicks off into the acoustic introduction of his new song, ‘Vertigo’.

  As the platform begins to move, Kat and Angus dangle their feet over the edge. She tries to look as comfortable as possible, doing one of the craziest things EVER.

  Angus is looking at her the way he looked at her on the piano stool in his hotel suite. Like he’s going to kiss her. Surely he’s not going to —

  Someone tosses him a microphone just as the platform lifts up into the air, and he catches it in one hand.

  Is this real?

  Kat becomes increasingly anxious as they float higher and higher. She makes the mistake of looking down for a second and it terrifies her. So she looks straight at Angus instead. He takes her hand, as he puts the microphone to his mouth.

  From up here

  I start to see the view

  And I think

  I could make it through.

  She smiles.

  If I had wings to unfold

  If I didn’t need to hold on

  I could know

  This plunging slow

  Vertigo.

  He winks, distracting her from the increasing height. He’s singing it like he means it. And like she’s the only one in the stadium. Like he’s concerned she mightn’t be enjoying herself. Um, he needn’t worry. Sitting beside him on the platform with a sea of Unrequited fans below while he sings the song he wrote from their conversation is just about the most breathtaking thing that has ever happened to Kat. In. Her. LIFE.

  Nothing can top this. How ever did she get here?

  When they finally arrive on the main stage, there’s still a verse to go. Angus jumps down first and takes her hand to help her off the platform at exactly the right moment. It’s harder than it looks, particularly in a short dress and heels, but Kat makes the transition like a pro. Then she takes a deep breath and turns around. She faces the audience for the first time and there’s no sight like it. She’s right at centre stage, listening to Unrequited finish the song around her.