Frontwards

Monday, 22nd January, 2006.

After insisting to the guys that yes, I would be fine to be left alone for the day, they went back down to the basement to carry on with their writing. Although they didn’t quite believe me, apparently, because less than five minutes after their descent, Alice rocked up.

I’ll admit that initially the knock at the door terrified me, just in case those awful people had tracked us down, but after a quick look through the spy-hole I relaxed.

“Hey, Alice,” I greeted her, glancing nervously around in case there were people outside waiting to throw stuff at me. “Come in.”

She nodded and stepped inside. I closed the door quickly, just in case they were hiding in the foliage. “So I heard about all the drama yesterday,” she said. Don’t beat around the bush there, Alice. You crack straight on. “And I thought you could use some company from somebody who’s already been there.”

I smiled faintly. “Mikey told you to come babysit me, didn’t he?”

She laughed. “Well, yeah. But I would have done it anyway. So get dressed, we’re going for lunch.”

She may as well have just said, ‘Get dressed, we’re going to massacre an entire suburban family for no valid reason.’ I looked at her as if she’d gone thoroughly insane. Because the last thing I wanted to do was go out in public right now. I wanted to hide away forever. I didn’t feel safe anymore.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said firmly. “You can’t stay in this house forever, Daisy. You have to carry on with your life. Act like they don’t bother you.”

“But they do,” I said. “They do bother me.”

She nodded. “Of course they do. They’re just plain nasty. But they’re not going to do anything. They’re just going to hate you from afar. You can’t help that. They’ve made their minds up. You just have to act like you don’t care. Believe me, it irritates the hell out of them. They want to break you down so that the pressure gets too much that you leave. But if you do that, they’ve won. They want to see that what they’re doing is working.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “So don’t give them what they want. Get upstairs, get dressed in something fabulous, and meet me down here in ten minutes because I’m starving.”

She made a lot of sense. So reluctantly I obeyed her. And when I came downstairs with my new clothes and make-up on, I felt a little better.

“You look ravishing,” she grinned. “Now let’s go show those whores they don’t bother us, yeah?”

I wasn’t quite as confident as Alice, but I pretended like I was and it did cheer me up a little. Although as we walked through the city, I found myself feeling like everybody was looking at me. And then we went past Hot Topic and a couple of people really were looking at me. And pointing. And whispering. A couple of them even started to follow us. They were your typical emo kids. Black hair, tight jeans and so on.

The first thing I thought was, oh great, now this is happening. They’re going to cut me up. But Alice was completely unfazed. She just kept smiling and walking like she didn’t even notice. So I copied her. And by the time we got to Thai Palace, they’d all given up and disappeared again.

“I told you,” she said as we were being shown to a table. “They just want to get a rise out of you.”

I waited for the waiter to leave before I spoke. “So what did they say about you?” I asked her.

She looked at me over the top of her menu and sighed. “Lots of things, really. They said that I was an ugly bitch, a gold-digger, a fake. You name it, I’ve been called it.” She gazed off into the distance. “The thing is that it doesn’t even matter if what they say is true or not. It still hurts, you know. But you have to laugh it off and pretend like it doesn’t. And eventually, you’ll get over it. You’ll learn not to bother Googling yourself and to stay away from fansites. It just becomes normal.” She looked back to me. “I mean obviously they’re not all the same. My Chem have some of the best fans in the world. The ones who get hung up on you and me, they’re a very small minority. They just don’t seem to understand that we’re all people. They blur the line between reality and fantasy, is all.”

I nodded. Once again, her logic was faultless. “It just feels so bizarre,” I said. “I mean, I’m just an accountant from England and all of a sudden I’m catapulted into this universe where complete strangers are setting up websites dedicated to hating me.”

She gave a small chuckle. “Welcome to America, kid. Land of the free.”

I laughed and shook my head. “It’s crazy,” I said. And then I wasn’t quite sure how to say the next bit so I waited for a moment. “But the thing is, I don’t even...” I sighed. Alice furrowed her brows and leaned closer. “I don’t even know what me and Frank are. I mean, we haven’t really spoken about it. Is that weird?”

She smiled. “Not at all,” she reassured me. “It’s fairly normal, I think. You just need to talk to him about it.” She paused. “What do you want to be?”

“I don’t even know,” I shrugged. “I mean, we sleep in the same bed but we hardly ever even kiss each other. And the other day he said he was falling in love with me but we haven’t even talked about it since then, and now all this has happened and I feel like I need something more stable than whatever we have now, you know?”

Alice was still smiling. “He really does love you, Daisy,” she said softly. “Anyone can see that.”

I frowned. “You really think so?”

“Of course!” she laughed. “You can tell just from the way he looks at you sometimes. And Mikey says he talks about you all the time. You guys may not have known each other that long but I think in some ways, that’s what makes it exceptional. You’re closer to Frank now than Saskia ever was.”

I cocked my head to the side. “Really?”

“Definitely,” she nodded. “I mean, I never really got on with her anyway. None of us did. I don’t think Frank even liked her a whole lot. He just never got the balls to tell her it was over.” She paused. “You’re very special to him, Daisy,” she told me, closing her menu and placing it beside her. “I’ve known Frank for 5 years and I’ve never seen him so happy. So just ask him to be your boyfriend already, okay? The sexual tension is killing us.”

I laughed but really I was trying not to cry. I can’t remember the last time I went 24 hours without something or another making me cry. Goddamnit.