Right Now, I'm Anyone's

“Have a good night,” Dimitri smiled; after I had leaned down to poke my head through the window on the driver’s side of the car to kiss him on the cheek. “Try not to get yourself killed in a strange place, we’ll never find your corpse.”

I rolled my eyes and punched him lightly in the arm. “Thanks for the concern.”

“Not a problem,” he smirked. “I’ll see you tomorrow princess.”

“Okay,” I laughed. “Bye, and tell Gee I said to have a good night.”

Dimitri smiled at me again and nodded his head while I started to walk backwards, up the back street. He waved at me briefly before he turned his attention back to the narrow road as he started backing out of it again. I turned on the spot I stood on and started walking along the narrow street towards the sound of voices. Next to the now smaller amount of vans left outside Flux, there stood a group of people with just about the same numbers right in the middle of the small road. All of the tour buses had disappeared and I couldn’t see VersaEmerge’s destroyed Transit, so I assumed that they had flown back to the States already.

“Leila!” somebody shouted. I looked closer at the congregation in the middle of the road and saw Johnny waving his arm frantically in the air, trying to get my attention. I smiled at him and made my way over to the group, which consisted of Johnny, Tom, Ryan, Zoë, Daniel, Sean Smith, Gavin Butler, Danny Worsnop, Frank Carter and Maddox. I breathed in deeply, but managed to keep my smile on my face when I reached Johnny’s left hand side.

“Hey,” I said, wrapping my arms around his middle as his went around my back. “Is this everybody?”

Johnny shook his head when he pulled away from me. “Nope, we’re just waiting for the others to get outside.”

He raised his wrist up to inspect the time on his watch – I think he was the only person under the age of thirty that wore a watch – and clicked his tongue a bit, before bouncing around on the balls of his feet. I laughed at his impatience and then wedged myself into Tom and Sean’s conversation about tattoos.

“Sean, go and bum a sheep, because that idea is as good as my arse,” Tom grumbled in finality. “Why would you even consider getting that tattooed on yourself, man?”

Sean shrugged and winked cheekily at Tom. “Because everyone loves some cock.”

I laughed and raised my eyebrows. Okay, so I picked the wrong moment to join in on the conversation, but it was still more or less hilarious. Sean punched Tom hard in the stomach and laughed when he doubled over from the impact, before he wandered away to talk to somebody else. Johnny started speaking to me about the few jobs that Asking Alexandria had offered him after their last show.

It was all ‘Danny says’ and ‘Danny told me’. But I smiled and sounded enthusiastic about it anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I was really happy that they asked him to do some work for them, but it just brought the designs I did for Alexisonfire back into the front of my mind, and – with all the drama that had kicked off – I’d managed to stop stressing over that.

“They asked me to tour with them for a couple of dates and sort out their MySpace page for them,” he grinned brightly, not even bothering to try and hide his pride.

“Didn’t know you did graphics,” I smiled.

“Yeah,” he laughed. “I did my photography degree and some extra things in graphic design.”

“Thanks for telling me and everything, pfft,” I said, rolling my eyes in mock annoyance.

He laughed and bumped my shoulder with his, trying to put me off balance as I stood with my feet half way off of the curb. The group around us slowly started to get bigger, until it looked like everybody that had planned on showing up, showed up. I spotted Owen almost straight away, just before he announced that we were heading towards the train station. He, Maddox and Patrick took the lead at the front of the crowd.

“Hey!” Johnny called as he jogged to catch up with me. He settled in to match my pace when he got to me and continued, “Did Dean seem alright last night?”

I nodded my head, feeling my heart stutter and almost stop. “Yeah, why?”

“I don’t know,” Johnny sighed. “When he came back last night, he was really, really angry. Did something happen with you two?”

I shrugged. “Not that I remember.”

“And he kept muttering about your boyfriend, I think.” Johnny linked his arm with mine as we walked, so that I could walk any faster to get away. “He sounded like he wanted to kill him.”

I gulped, managing to swallow around the little lump in my throat. “Maybe he just doesn’t like Levi.”

“Tell me something I don’t know, fool,” Johnny laughed. “I don’t even like him.”

I just shrugged again and kept my eyes cast down on the pavement. I tried to subtly slip my arm out from Johnny’s, but he noticed and tightened his hold on my arm. I could feel him looking at me, analysing me in a way that only Johnny can do. He was trying to figure out why I’d gone from zero to weird in point two seconds.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, eventually.

“Nothing.”

“Come on, it’s not nothing,” he sighed. “I know something’s up, and if you’re not going to tell me I’ll just harass my brother until he does.”

“Oh, Johnny, just don’t,” I muttered darkly. “Nothing’s the matter, I promise. Even if there was, I wouldn’t want to talk about it now; we’re meant to be having fun tonight, as a goodbye, aren’t we?”

“Well, yea-”

“Okay, so just leave it for now, okay?” I asked, giving him my most convincing smile. Johnny rolled his eyes at me and pinched my forearm between his index finger and his thumb, applying enough pressure to make me yelp and jump.

“Fine, but there’s no way you’re keeping secrets from me,” he grinned. I cringed slightly and felt guilty – I already was keeping a secret from him as it were.

I just rolled my eyes and grimaced. “Deal.”

*****

We caught the train we needed to get to Liverpool at around half past four, eventually managing to find seats. Of course, with a few exceptions. Gallows and Architects ended up having to move along a carriage to get some seats, while the rest of us just sat together – some people even stood. Zoë and I – both of us being relatively small and skinny – wormed our way through the crowds to snag two sets of seats with a table between them, which were directly opposite each other. We gave each other proud smiles as people started filtering into other available seats.

“This best be good,” Ryan grumbled as he slumped into the seat opposite me, rubbing his face with his hands.

“Why the long face?” Zoë asked from across the aisle, a cheeky smirk on her face as she poked her head out from behind Danny Worsnop. “Don’t be a killjoy, it’ll be great.”

“Bit of a personal dilemma, Zo,” James muttered briefly as she opened her mouth to speak again. She accepted that and nodded – she didn’t have a lot of choice, since James immediately started arguing with Owen and Dean about who had the best costume. I listened and laughed with everybody else, all the while avoiding even glancing at Dean, even slightly. I knew that if I did, he’d ignore me and, believe me, that’d hurt me more than a dirty look.

I relaxed back into my seat for half of our journey, my iPod plugged firmly into both ears and the volume turned up as high as it would go. I glanced away from the window for a second and saw Ryan. He was sitting, starting unseeingly out of the same window with his chin in his hand. He looked so unhappy.

“Hey,” I said, yanking one of my earphones out and offering it to him. “It helps cheer me up, y’know.”

Ryan took the earphone I was holding out to him and pushed it into his ear carelessly. He listened for a couple of minutes before he cracked a smile and said, “The Rock Show? I haven’t heard that in years. Like, serious years.”

I beamed at him and laughed. “It’s my latest happy song.”

“You have a lot of those?”

“Not too sure,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I suppose it depends on your perception of happiness.”

“That’s true,” he replied. “I’m going to have to steal your iPod at some point before we head back home tomorrow.”

“Sure,” I said, nodding my head in agreement. After our conversation, I noticed that Ryan started taking part in the conversations going on a lot more than he had been before; he seemed to cheer up a lot. I turned my eyes back to the window again and let my iPod play on shuffle. I watched the country as it sped by; unnamed fields and sections of unfamiliar roads and pathways. I turned the volume on my iPod down to listen to the conversations around me, and when someone said my name I pulled my earphones out of my ears and turned my head.

“Sorry, what?”

“I said, we’re told you’re going to have the sexiest costume of the lot,” Zoë said, grinning at me from across the aisle. “Do tell.”

I laughed and shook my head, before inclining it in James’ direction. “He and Lee say I have to keep it secret.”

“Twat,” Zoë grumbled, aiming a paper cup at James’ head. Chris stood up from his seat beside me and slid out from behind the table. Before he could even announce that he had to use the toilet, Tom had already planted himself in his seat, causing Lee to groan in irritation – he was the only one left standing up in the aisle. Tom laughed and stuck his middle finger up at him, before shoving me as far as was possible into the corner of the seat, squashing me into the train wall.

“Tom, ow!”

“Anybody else hear that?”

“Nope,” James said, shaking his head with a grin. Zoë threw something else – most likely another paper cup – at Tom and he eased up on me, letting me breathe a bit more. Eventually, he decided that his personal space was much more comfortable than my own and leaned back to sit in his seat properly. He kept nudging me in the arm every couple of seconds.

“Why are you being so dull?” he asked when I glared at him for nudging me.

“I’m not,” I laughed. “Why are you so hyperactive?”

“I’m excited,” Tom enunciated the word like I’d never even heard of it before. “Normal people tend to get excited before going on a night out, y’know?”

I rolled my eyes and shoved him a bit after I turned my iPod off and put it back into my overnight bag. “I’m apprehensive and excited. Just wondering how it can be that much different from a night out in Leeds.”

“Oh,” he laughed, raising his eyebrows at me. “So naive.”

I arched my left eyebrow and gave him a patented stare, before I tried to pry into other peoples conversations so I’d have something to do. It all just sounded like a jumbled mess in the background, though; like static on a television. Since the jumbled mess wasn’t a great distraction, I ended up glancing anxiously at Dean every ten minutes or so until the end of the train ride.

I was right, though; he completely ignored me every single time. I knew he knew I was looking at him, his shoulders tensed whenever I did it. He kept his eyes trained either on the person speaking or down on the napkin he was twisting and tearing into little pieces.

“You going to room with us tonight?” Lee asked me, breaking my eyes sharply off of Dean’s face. “Zoë mentioned sharing with Frank, I think.”

“Course,” I nodded. “Why not?”

“Because you’ll be sharing with me too,” James suggested. “And if you’re asleep before me and I’m drunk; you’re in trouble.”

“Do anything and I’ll hire a hit man.” James laughed at my threat. “What? You think I’m joking?”

He laughed again nervously, watching me. Eventually, I smiled and he laughed properly again, aiming a kick at me under the table but catching Tom’s ankle in the process. Tom groaned and stood up to lean over the table and punch him in the arm. I didn’t notice Owen had left his seat until he clapped both of his hands together.

“Alright, we’ll be there in a minute,” he announced. “Arses out your seats and we’ll be off.”

Everybody cheered and Zoë had to one-up them. She climbed lithely onto the table she shared with Danny, Dean and Johnny as she cheered, clapping her hands up over her head. I laughed suddenly and spluttered on my own breath upon noticing an elderly couple a few seats away from us giving her looks of disapproval. I caught the eye of the old man and had to turn my head around so he wouldn’t see me laughing.

“You excited then?” Johnny asked as he slung his arm over both of my shoulders when we had stepped down onto the platform from the train. I laughed and nodded my head, trying not to pay attention to the fact that Dean had decided that he was going to walk on the other side of his brother to where I was. Owen, Patrick and their band mates lead us out of Lime Street train station and took us through Liverpool city centre. Eventually, we arrived at a Travelodge.

“Hey, Ryan,” Tom hissed. “Just order two rooms, then we can just squeeze three in each.”

Ryan laughed and rolled his eyes. “We’re definitely getting thrown out this time.”

“Ah well, mate,” James laughed. “We’ve braved these streets at night before, we can do it again.”

Ryan, Tom, Chris and Lee laughed with James, while I stood there a little bit awkwardly – I wasn’t too sure as to whether I should take them seriously or not. Ryan approached the receptionist’s desk after he had finished laughing and ordered two rooms – most likely to cheapest ones he possibly could – for the night. Obviously, everybody staying in a room would chip in for the cost, so I supposed it wouldn’t have been too expensive anyway. The elderly woman that had served Ryan watched beadily as all six of us hauled our bags towards the stairs.

*****

“Leila!” I rolled my eyes. “How long are you going to be? You have to do some make-up on us!”

I giggled and smudged a little bit more of the crimson eye shadow – which I had just remembered I had about ten minutes before I left home – onto my top eyelid, doing the very best I could to avoid the perfect line of eyeliner – as it had taken me about twenty minutes to get it right. I grabbed my little gold tube of red lipstick and smoothed some on, before blotting it which a piece of folded tissue paper.

I decided that I’d save getting dressed for after my make-up was done.

“Just come in,” I laughed, calling from the bathroom mirror. “I still have my clothes on.”

I heard a small scrap coming from the hallway outside the bathroom, before James bolted through the wooden door and slammed it closed behind him. He leaned against it heavily and caught his breath, while I gave him a look – my eyebrow arched in question. He laughed and said, “Lee was getting impatient, but I bagsied first.”

“You two act like you’re about twelve years old,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Now, come here and we’ll sort this face out.”

“My face is perfect as it is!” he said, indignantly sticking his chin up in the air. I laughed and grabbed hold of his chin when he padded across the tiled floor to me, twisting his head around to make him face me – and hard enough to make him yelp in pain. I quickly went to work, adding in false scars and lacerations onto his face and neck. I put dark shadows around his eyes and a couple of smears of dark red lip-stain at random places on his face, arms, neck and legs. Even the torn up vest he was wearing got some of it. It wasn’t too hard guessing that he was some kind of zombie.

“You owe me new make-up,” I laughed, before grabbing his shoulders and turning him to face the mirror. “What do you think?”

He looked at himself in the mirror for a moment and laughed, lifting his left hand to touch a spectacularly real looking scar on his cheekbone. “That’s fucking amazing! Don’t do Lee’s this good.”

I laughed and rolled my eyes. “You’re not both going as zombies are you?”

He just shook his head, now touching the impressive bruise imitation under his left eye. “No, I am. He’s going as that Goth we saw in the shop back in Leeds earlier.”

“Are you being serious?”

“Yes,” he nodded, giving me an innocent look that made me doubt him more. “He said the patchouli smell was what inspired him most.”

I raised my eyebrows and James snickered as he walked out of the bathroom, shouting to Lee that it was his turn to be gayed up – his words, not mine – followed by the small thud of a pillow connecting with James head. Lee walked into the bathroom and closed the door behind him before he turned to me.

“You look great,” he smiled, before he glanced at the bathroom counter covered in cosmetic products – half of which were samples from the Travelodge. I saw him gulp and he gave me a small panicked look before he was able to compose himself properly. I laughed and rolled my eyes.

“Thanks,” I said, before giving him an evil grin. “Your turn.”

“I suppose so,” he grumbled. “And by the way, before you start putting shit on my face, I’m not going as a fat Goth.”

“Then, what are you going as?”

“Inspector Ichabod Crane,” he said, lifting his head proudly as his own idea. “Or Johnny Depp in Sleepy Hollow, whatever’s better.”

“Stick with Johnny Depp, definitely better than Inspector Crane,” I smiled. “So you just need to look pale and thin?”

“Yep.”

“And dye your hair black.”

“Yep.”

“Don’t.”

“I won’t.”

“Good, now shut up and keep still.”

I got to doing Lee’s make-up for him, which was proving to be a lot more difficult – and a bigger drain on my white face powder – than James had been. Lee had a little bit of a natural tan, which made it a bit harder to make him look pale and gaunt. Once he was pale enough – a shocking contrast to his hands, anyway – I smudged black powder lightly under his cheekbones, added a little of the lip-stain to make it more purple than black.

By the time I was done, he looked more like a vampire than anything else. But when we went back into the bedroom, he pulled out a pair of goggles similar to the ones Johnny Depp used in the film; I changed my mind about the vampire thing.

I collapsed down on the bed closest to the door. The Krazyhouse didn’t open under ten, and it was only half past eight at that point. I lay back and closed my eyes for a couple of minutes, while James sat on the chair near the window smoking a cigarette. Lee rummaged around in his bag and lay his costume out on the other bed – black skinny jeans, a white dress shirt, a black waistcoat and a black tuxedo jacket complete with tails. James, Lee and I talked from our areas in the room before it was time for us to finish getting ready; 9:00PM

“You stealing the bathroom again?” Lee called as I walked towards the bathroom with my costume in arms.

“Yep,” I called back happily, letting the door click quietly shut behind me. I locked the door when it closed, before setting my folded clothes on top of the closed toilet seat. I fluffed my hair up in the mirror, before I started getting myself dressed.

The skirt was easy enough to pull on and zip up, but of course I had trouble lacing the back of the corset on my own. I slipped my shoes onto my feet and held the corset tight around my top half before I unlocked the bathroom door and shouted Lee’s name, so that he would come and help me.

He rounded the corner in his black jeans and white shirt, with an untied cravat around his neck; he looked like a guest at a wedding or something. He stood and stared at me for a couple of minutes before he shook his head and came back to his senses. I laughed and turned so that my back was to him.

“Can you tie it for me?” I asked. “Not too tight though.”

“A-Alright,” Lee said. I laughed uncomfortably when his voice caught in his throat a little bit and his fingers fumbled around with the red satin ribbons at the back of my corset. After what felt like half an hour, he’d actually managed to tie it comfortably around my torso.

“Are you almost ready?” I asked, following Lee towards the bedroom. He picked up his black tail coat and put it on, before pulling a huge, black coat onto his shoulders without bothering to put his arms through the sleeves. He pushed his hair away from his face and grabbed his phone and his wallet, before shoving them into the pocket of his pants, shortly followed by the room key.

“Yep,” he said, smiling at me. “James’ just gone down to Owen’s room for a minute, he should be back in a little while.”

I glanced over at the small digital travel clock that came with the room and saw that he was right; it was twenty five minutes to ten. Just about time to be meeting everybody else outside of the hotel. I grabbed my horns from my open bag, which lay on the bed I had called as soon as I stepped over the threshold. James managed to get the second one – after an extensive scuffle with Lee – leaving Lee with just the cardboard like couch against the far wall.

Lee was fiddling with his phone, before he said, “We may as well go down to the lobby; Dean, Johnny, Daniel, Gallows and Asking Alexandria are already there.”

I nodded my head. “Sure.”

Lee put his phone back into the pocket of his jeans and gave me a smile. I turned and picked up my small red clutch bag, making sure I had my bare necessities – foundation, the small pot of crimson eye shadow, my phone and some money safely tucked away into the inner pocket. Lee led the way out of our room and along the hallway to the staircase. I was glad I hadn’t picked heels that big, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been able to walk properly in them and, more than likely, I would’ve toppled right down the stairs.

I saw everybody lounging around on the sofas near the front of the small hotel lobby, getting strange looks from passersby, who also gave them a wide birth. It seemed that Lee had spotted them too – as if you could miss them – and we started walking toward them together. I would’ve given anything to walk just a little bit slower than we already were, just to delay getting nearer. I covered the small exposed piece of my stomach as we got closer.

I took a look at Zoë and felt like I’d gained about ten pounds just from one look. I wasn’t at all fat, even though I ate more than I exercised, but she was just so tiny that she made everybody else look twice their actual weight. She was dressed as a raunchy fairy – maybe an imp would’ve been better – in a black tutu, a cropped black tube top – revealing all of the tattoos on her stomach and her four hip piercings. The outfit was completed with ragged, ripped black fairy wings and fourteen eyelet Doc Martens. She smiled at me from her seat on the arm of Frank’s chair when she caught my eye, before going back to speaking to him.

I noticed that the majority of the men in our group were dressed as zombies, with the exceptions of Johnny, Lee, Dean and Maddox.

I laughed when I saw Maddox. He had a black splodge painted on the tip of his nose, with very unrealistic whiskers drawn onto his cheeks. His hair was messed up more than usual and he wore a headband with cat ears attached to it. I laughed even more when he pulled a face and turned his back on me, revealing the fake black tail stapled to the back of his jeans.

Johnny looked like he hadn’t shaved in months, but it was obvious it was fake. Johnny was a natural blonde, and the hair stuck to his chin and poking out of the neck of his shirt was dark grey. He was wearing an old suit with the stage fur sticking out of the long sleeves. He smiled and revealed plastic fangs, generically used for vampire costumes. He came over and gave me a tight hug, saying, “You look amazing.”

I smiled. “You too.”

“Yeah, I’m a bit homemade,” he chuckled, stepping back and standing to my side as he started talking to Lee, complimenting him on his vampire costume. I heard Lee sigh as he launched into the explanation that he wasn’t a vampire, but I stopped listening and decided to look at Dean.

He was slouched in an armchair, with his foot propped up on the coffee table in front of him. He was wearing a pair of ragged black skinny jeans – tears here and there – and plain black slip-on shoes. He had a dark red and black jumper to complete his costume, along with a brown leather glove with blades for fingers on his right hand and one of those ridiculous brown fedora hats on over his shiny black hair.

Freddy Krueger; very nice choice.

We sat and waited for everybody else to arrive, since nobody knew how to get there and those who had been before had been too drunk to remember the way. I heard the conversations going on around me, but I couldn’t bring myself to join in – again. Since I wasn’t an active participant in the conversations, I noticed that Frank’s costume was slightly different to all the other zombies. Along with the make-up and the torn up clothes, he had a plastic gold crown perched crookedly on his head. I raised my eyebrows and thought it best not to ask.

After ten more excruciating minutes of silence on my part, James, Owen and everybody else came over to where we were sat. Owen went over and had a small conversation with Danny and Dean, before standing up and telling everybody that we were leaving and to follow him or Patrick. We followed in an excited cluster through the streets of Liverpool – Queen Square, Clayton Square and Bold Street – but we weren’t the only group dressed up for the occasion, though we were the biggest.

We could only have been walking for about fifteen minutes, before we stopped outside a large, three storey high yellow building with posters covering the windows advertising something called “Music=Life”. I guessed it was the name of the event we were attending. We joined the small queue and waited.

“Well, this is it,” Tom said, appearing at my side when I was a couple of people from the door. “You ready?”