Collision

“Y’know, I think I know why Mikey doesn’t like you,” Alicia said the next day. We were in Leicester, or at least I was 85% sure we were. I looked over at the other girl. She’d decided that, despite the cold, it was the perfect time to lay outside on one of the empty side-stages, and had found herself a nice spot in the corner where she wasn’t in the way of any of the people actually doing work. She was throwing an orange she’d bought at some point up and down and trying to catch it. For the most part she was failing and I’d lost count of the number of times she hit herself in the face with it.

“Why’s that?” I asked curiously from my position nearby, perched on a couple of boxes nobody seemed to know what to do with.

“Brotherly love. He’s jealous. I mean, you’re pretty much wormed your way into everyone’s lives now — not in a bad way, mind you!” she added hastily, noticing my less than impressed expression. “Gerard’s pretty fond of you, and you’ve passed most of my secret friendship tests, so in my eyes, you’re cool.”

“Thanks?” I laughed. “And God, no. That can’t be the reason. He’s not jealous of Liza or Davey, is he? Honestly, I think it’s just him being protective. That’s pretty much what he said to me, anyway — ‘I look out for the people close to me’. But it’s okay, I’m not gonna be liked by everyone, am I?”

“Yeah, well... it’s not like Mikey, at all,” she said with a small shrug — that must be an odd thing to do whilst lying down. “So I have no clue why you.”

“Maybe he doesn’t like English people,” I suggested with a giggle.

Alicia shot me a look, somehow making it show just how much she thought I was a complete idiot. “Liza’s English, you fuckwit.”

“Oh yeah. I kind of forgot that. Well, she lives in New Jersey, so it doesn’t count.” I tried not to show my embarrassment on my face and settled for grinning at the dark-haired girl instead.

“She’s still English. I mean, her accent’s strong enough.” Alicia smirked, adopting a ridiculously bad English accent and saying, “Would you like a cuppa, madam?”

“Fuck off. We don’t say shit like that!”

She burst into giggles, bubbly, high-pitched ones which made me feel like I was definitely being made fun of, or at least my nationality was being made fun of. “Totally do. It’s amazing. You all sound so posh.”

“You haven’t ever met a chav, have you? They definitely do not sound posh.”

“Alright, well... you talk posh, for certain. I feel so lower class compared to you.”

“For god’s sake, I don’t sound posh either!”

She made no move to say anything in return, just raised her eyebrows in a way which showed how little she believed me. “Heads up,” she said after a pause, tossing the orange in my direction. I flailed my hands about haphazardly and, by some miracle of god, managed to just about catch the orange before it smashed into my face. She laughed and clapped in a sarcastic manner, which I completely ignored in favour of being very pleased with myself.

“C’mon, let’s go find some people to bug,” she said, clambering to her feet.

“What should I do with this?” I asked, holding my newly acquired orange up for her to see.

“I dunno. Eat it, give it to a person in need, throw it at Frank — hell, you could trade it for sexual favours. Do what you want, honey.” She rolled her eyes. “Now come on!”

I started ripping the skin off the orange as I hopped off the boxes and followed her, digging my fingernails into the fruit to get to the edible part. I was pretty involved in this and I didn’t notice what caught Alicia’s attention a few moments later until she was already darting off. Even after I realised she was running away it took me a few moments to see why; Gerard, Mikey, Frank and Ray, all looking very awkward, being questioned by two guys — one holding a camera — a couple of meters away. The camera was one of the proper ones too, the sort TV people used.

“Interview!” Alicia declared happily when I caught up to her. “I like watching these, they’re normally pretty entertaining.”

She got up on tip-toes — for no reason at all, as far as I could tell, considering she was taller than me and I could see perfectly well — then started waving her hands to get Mikey’s attention. It worked, and the bass guitarist turned around to look at his wife, who beamed and blew him a kiss. ‘Having fun?’ she mouthed silently.

‘No, it’s boring,’ he mouthed back. I laughed at the way he pulled a face as he spoke, glancing around surreptitiously to check whether or not the camera could actually see what he was doing. It was one of the few playful moments I’d witnessed from Mikey, as much as Alicia tried to insist he was really fun to be around most of the time. I supposed he was, but it didn’t normally show when I was nearby.

I popped a couple of pieces of the orange in my mouth as I assessed what exactly was going on with the interview. It seemed to be some sort of light-hearted quiz of their general knowledge and, as far as I could tell, they were all doing rather badly. They’d got both questions wrong since I’d started watching. Admittedly, the questions were a bit weird (I didn’t know the answer to ‘What language did Jesus speak?’ myself, although apparently it was ‘Aramaic’) but it was hard not to laugh at the slightly bewildered looks on all of their faces.

“Okay guys, fourth question! What country is Geneva in?” the interview asked cheerfully.

Everyone in the group exchanged glances as the silence fell, the interviewer waiting patiently with a big, cheesy grin on his face. Gerard, who seemed to take the lead confidently in every other interview, was unusually quiet, a small frown in place on his face. He looked like he just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible, which was weird because — well, he was normally very outspoken, to put it politely. I’d noticed Mikey and Ray and Bob got about five seconds for themselves in interviews, and often when the attention was turned to them Gerard still managed to cut in with his own opinion.

“Aw, shit, I know this,” Ray said finally, breaking the silence. The look on concentration on his face was almost comically over the top. “Geneva? Isn’t that— ” he broke off. “Wait, no... Geneva’s not in Sweden, is it?” He turned to his band-mates for their opinion.

Frank shook his head. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s not, although... hold on, didn’t we play there recently?”

I watched them converse amongst themselves with a small smile on my face, secretly pleased that I knew the answer myself. In all honesty I was fighting the urge to yell it at them childishly, but I didn’t want to ruin the fun. Alicia was just giggling softly beside me; apparently she found it funny to see her husband intellectually tortured. I knew there was a reason I liked her.

A few more agonising seconds passed when suddenly Frank’s eyes landed on both of us. He looked like he hadn’t registered our presence up until then, and grinned before mouthing ‘Help!’ with slightly desperate look in his eyes. I wavered for a moment, deliberating on how unfair it would be to give the answer away, but then I thought ‘Ah, fuck it’, and mouthed ‘Switzerland!’ in return. His face clouded with confusion for just a second before he beamed and turned back to the interviewer.

“It’s Switzerland!” he declared confidently. “The land of Swiss Cheese!”

“Yes, that's correct,” the guy said. Frank looked delighted with himself, which was cute.

“C’mon, this is just painful to watch,” I said, trying to draw Alicia away from making googly-eyes at her husband and towards somewhere indoors. I was freezing my butt off and I really just wanted to get inside, perhaps get something warm to drink and sit down on my lazy behind and not move for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, Alicia wasn’t having any of it, and when she dug her heels in she wasn’t easily persuaded. Not really in the mood of a fight — of either the physical or verbal kind — I shrugged, stuffing my hands in my jacket’s pockets and huddling inside the swathes of fabric. I didn’t want to wander off on my own so obviously I’d have to wait this out.

After the interview-slash-quiz thing was over, Mikey stole Alicia away from me. They walked off hand-in-hand and I watched them go, slightly sourly, wondering what the hell I was meant to do now he’d taken the one person keeping me entertained. Frank came over and pulled me into a hug, for apparently no reason except he hadn’t seen me for a whole entire day, grinning and gushing over the fact he’d managed to get three of the questions right in a row.

“Well done,” I said, nodding slightly, to show I was sort of half-listening to him. “What was that all about, anyway? And if you’re all here, where’s Bob?”

“Hiding,” Frank answered promptly. “He saw the camera and vanished. And that was for this music site, something or another. See how smart your favourite rock stars are, blah blah blah. I don’t know. Hey, want to get some coffee?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” I said, glancing over at Ray and Gerard. “You guys wanna come?”

Ray glanced at Gerard — who still looked like he’d rather be somewhere else — and then they both shook their heads. “Nah, we’re good,” Ray answered for both them. “We’re probably gonna go try and steal Davey’s xbox for a couple of hours or something. Have fun.”

Frank didn’t seem put out by the fact his best friends weren’t coming along, latching onto my arm to lead me to wherever he was planning on going. Our destination turned out to be the catering tent. It was empty, which wasn’t surprisingly considering the time of day; it just after lunch, which was the time most people were working. The only reason I wasn’t was because Alicia and I had been particularly productive in the morning and got all of our work done quicker than expected.

I grabbed a table for us and he went off to get his hands on some coffee. When he returned he set the cups down on the table, giving me a small smile. “So, Cam, how’s your day been?” he asked, with such sincere sounding interest it actually made me do a double take.

“Boring,” I answered truthfully. “I mean, it’s cool but... boring. The only exciting thing that has happened was my mother calling to yell at me this morning because I haven’t called her lately. You’d think I was a kid, not twenty-six.” I twisted the cup on the coffee to pop it off and blew on the hot liquid before taking my first gulp. It didn’t taste too bad, considering it was crappy instant stuff.

“Did you get grounded?” he teased with a raised eyebrow.

I gave him a dark look and said, “Oh my god, that was so funny I forgot to laugh.”

“Well, that was such a lame comeback I forgot to give a shit,” he said, still smiling slightly. “But I can actually sympathise with you. When we first started out there was this time, right, when everybody in the band got the flu. And fucking hell did my mom tear me a new one when she found out I hadn’t told her. It was actually kind of funny. You know what, though? Donna — Gee and Mikey’s mom — is really scary when she’s angry, so I felt worse for them. I could actually hear her screaming down the phone from the other side of the room.”

“I bet she’d have to be scary to raise those two,” I replied, laughing slightly. I found the image of the guys being yelled at by their respective parents as funny as hell, and I could actually easily imagine Frank staring at the ground like a misbehaving child being told off whilst his mother berated him.

“Yeah, yeah, she’s awesome though, so it evens out. Not many mothers wear black nail-polish, do they?”

“I’m a little jealous,” I said, trying not to sound distracted. I was thinking about the interview, but mostly on what the hell was up with Gerard. I was so used to the insanely happy side of him, it was weird to see him so down. Then, realising this was my chance to find out — who better to ask than one of his band mates, after all? — I stopped stirring my coffee and looked up at Frank. “Hey, Frank, can I ask you a question? Since you’re like, best friends and... well, do you know what’s up with Gerard?”

“Yeah...” He glanced about the room as if checking to see if anyone he knew was about, and then leaned forward. “Uh, you know Vanessa?” I’m pretty sure he knew I did but he seemed to be waiting for an answer so I nodded. “She’s probably the best person to ask, honestly. But Gerard and her, they’re like — like a cycle. Happy one day, pissed at each-other the next. They had a fight yesterday, I think.”

“That doesn’t sound very healthy,” I said, trying not to show just how much this new information interested me and then trying not to feel guilty that it did.

“It’s probably not,” he admitted. “But they have periods of being the most sickly sweet couple ever. They even outdo me and Jamia!”

“Hey now, I can’t believe that,” I replied jokingly. I’d see him and Jamia. They were brutally honest with each other, but two of the cutest people ever, especially together. He laughed and I beamed. “So, okay then, tell me, how’s the whole prank war thing going?”

His eyes lit up with the childish gleam I’d come to associate with nearly all the guys in MCR. “I’m winning! Sort of. Like you know, Gerard’s in a mood so he hasn’t got me back for setting his alarm for the middle of the night, and that’s pretty much winning, right? I’m thinking maybe doing the ole’ switch-a-roo with the salt and sugar next. Y’know, salty coffee isn’t great I hear.”

“Not very original,” I said. “But I must admit, those do work pretty well. Do you really wanna fuck with his coffee, though? I think he’d go ape.”

“Probably,” he mused. “All the more reason to do it, if you ask me. Fucking with people is fun.”

I glanced down at my own coffee, suddenly apprehensive about drinking the rest. “Remind me not to drink anything else you give me,” I said finally. “Or eat anything. I don’t trust you.”

“That’s probably a wise thing,” he said, nodding, as he crumpled up his cup and got to his feet. “I gotta run, I promised Jamia I’d find her after the interview. You gonna be okay without my amazing, entertaining presence?”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I just gotta find something to do.”

“Try and find Liza, I heard she’s in a good mood. She’ll entertain you.” He laughed with a grin on his face which made me think he knew something I didn’t, and then turned and disappeared out of the tent, throwing his cup in bin as he passed. I took a little longer before getting to my feet, dumping my half-drank coffee in the bin and heading outside, in the direction of Hello, Irony’s bus.

Liza was just coming out when I walked up, holding what looked like a particularly energetic ball of cream fur in her arms. When she saw me she bounded over, grinning. “Cameron! I’d like you to meet Jagger York!” She held up the ball of fur — which I now recognised as a kitten — in front of my face. “Say ‘hi’ to her!”

“Erm, hi — hold on, her?” I raised an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure Mick Jagger’s a dude, Liza.”

“Yeah, well, we didn’t know she wasn’t when we named her after him.” Liza giggled. “Now, give her a cuddle, she loves cuddles.” She carefully placed the small kitten into my hands and nodded. “Careful, though, she likes to bite. Something she gets from her momma.”

I gingerly stroked the little kitten’s head with my finger, and she peered up at me with sleepy brown eyes. “God dammit you’re cute,” I said to the kitten, laughing lightly. “I’m not even a cat person and I just wanna kidnap you and keep you in my handbag.”

“No! No kidnapping!” Liza said. She frowned at me until I handed Jagger back. She clutched the kitten to her chest protectively, and whilst it protested at first with several mews it quickly snuggled up against the warmth of the orange-haired girl, taking a mouthful of her hair and chewing on it. “She’s mine!”

“Alright Liza!” I threw my hands up defensively. “Where’d she come from, anyway? I thought all your pets were in New Jersey or whereever it is you live.”

“My sister came to visit,” Liza informed me, making little cooing noises under her breath and patting the kitten softly. “And she brought Jagger and Cobain with her. She and her boyfriend usually look after ‘em but I missed ‘em like crazy so she brought both with her. Isn’t she fucking amazing?”

“Yeah, I am actually pretty amazing,” a new voice said, and I looked over Liza’s shoulder to see a woman who looked like she was in her early twenties standing in the doorway of the bus. She only stayed leaning against the bus for all of two seconds before she straightened up and came over, and I realised she had another kitten in her arms, a bigger black one — I gathered that one was Cobain. “Hey, I’m Gwen, Liza’s sister,” she said, smiling brightly.

“Oh, I’m Cam. Nice to meet you Gwen,” I replied, smiling back. Now she was closer I could see her resemblance to Liza, with her really pretty green eyes and pale, smooth skin, and, at the same time, the differences. She had straight, dark brown hair and no piercings on her face, unlike Liza with her lip rings. “You here to stay?”

“Cam! Oh, Liza told me about you, you’re Alex’s sister, aren’t you? And yeah, I’m here to stay, only for a day or two though. I have business over here, so I thought I’d drop in and see my older sis.” She giggled and threw her free arm around Liza’s shoulders and squeezed her tightly. Liza, looking very unimpressed, muttering something unintelligible under her breath. “I wanted to see if I could get some proper sister time in with her when she’s not gallivanting around being a famous rockstar and having secret affairs with drummers, you know?”

“Just because your life is boring Gwen,” she said, wriggling out of her sister’s grip and still clutching Jagger to her chest. “You’re a complete corporate droid. Yawwwn. I’m a super-fabulous rockstar! With super-fabulous friends!”

“It’s true,” Gwen said with a dramatic sigh. “But I have a little mouth to feed!”

Liza laughed and her eyes lit up. “Oh yes! How is my little nephew? Is he showing his claws yet? I’m pretty sure he’s half-devil, what with his father’s genes and all...”

Gwen glared at her playfully. Cobain, who seemed bored of all this fuss, was trying to claw his way up her chest. “Phil wasn’t that bad, Liz! Stop hating on my ex-husband!”

“I’m not hating, I’m telling the truth! That dude was the spawn of Satan himself!”

“Wow, um, I’m just gonna... uh, edge out of here,” I said, taking a step backwards. Unfortunately, Liza swung around and grabbed my sleeve before I could get any further.

“You should stay and watch a movie with us,” she said, sounding excited. I wasn’t as excited about that prospect, considering it seemed it would mean being stuck with two bickering sisters for a few hours.

Luckily, Finley saved my ass; he came bounding out of the bus next door at that exact moment and ran up and threw his arms around my shoulders. He said something, way too fast for me to understand, and I just stood there dumbly whilst he clung to me tight enough to probably bruise all my internal organs.

“Fin, let go of me,” I said finally, gently prying him off. “What has got into you, for heaven’s sake?”

He just giggled girlishly, bouncing on the heels of his feet and beaming in his full-on teeth-and-stretched-cheeks way before grabbing my hand. “Come with me! I got great news!”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?” I had to admit, my interest was piqued, and I let him drag me back into his bus, waving frantically at Liza and Gwen over my shoulder. I wasn’t sure what exactly could have got him so worked up and I wanted to find out.

Once he was inside, he shoved a drink into my hands. He was still beaming, even as he said, “We broke thirty thousand!”

“Thirty thousand what, exactly?” I asked, cracking the drink open. “Complaints about the noise? Adopted puppy dogs? Thongs received in fan mail?”

“Thongs,” Finley answered, nodding and then rolling his eyes in a half-assed way, so they only went about halfway before he was already bounding off again, further into the bus, yelling, “Wait here, I’ll show you!” over his shoulder. He came back a few seconds later and shoved some paper in my hands, and I looked down to see a print-out of the email from Mallory. I scanned it quickly and I couldn’t help a grin stretching across my face.

“Oh awesome, thirty thousand sales? Nice one!” I held up my hand and he obligingly high-fived me. “That’s pretty good, right?”

“It’s more than good, it’s excellent.” He waved his hands around a bit wildly to emphasis his point, and I had to dodge away quickly from a palm that came way too close to whacking me in the nose. “It’s like, super excellent. Astounding!”

“Be careful,” I heard my sister’s voice say tiredly, and I spun around to see Alex sitting on the seats, huddled in a hoodie and looking like somebody who’d been killed, reanimated a zombie and then killed all over again. Her mouth was in a tight line and her hair was tangled with the overgrown bangs shoved out of her face, revealing her eyes were smudged with flaky eyeliner like she hadn’t removed it before she fell asleep last night. It wasn’t a very good look, but I could tell from the general lack of enthusiasm in her voice and posture that she really didn’t give a rat’s ass.

“What happened to you?” I asked, raising an eyebrow slightly. “You look like utter shit.”

“You’re not looking much better yourself, Cam,” she replied sharply. “I’m fine, by the way. Thanks for asking.”

“Alex got trashed last night with Vaudeville,” Finley said in a sing-song voice, loud enough that Alex — apparently suffering from a hangover and its nasty consequences like a headache — flipped him off in response.

It was probably my job to harrumph and huff at that point, so I shot her a glare and sighed in a deep way which sort of conveyed how disappointed I was in her. She just stuck her tongue out and accused me of acting like our mum, which wasn’t entirely untrue. I really couldn’t say anything about her drinking, either, considering I had been a hell of a lot wilder when I was eighteen, nineteen... even twenty, when Alex was between the tender ages of nine and eleven and had been woken up many nights with me stumbling in the early hours of the morning, drunk beyond belief.

I winced at this memory and set about distracting myself with the coke Finley had given me and thinking about plans for the rest of the day so I wasn’t gonna be stuck floating around aimlessly like right now. “Hey, are you guys on tonight?” I asked.

Finley shook his head. “No, thank god. Alex couldn’t do it, could she? Idiot.”

“Fuck you, Fin,” she replied as politely as ever, huddling further into her hoodie and closing her eyes. It looked like she was about to go to sleep.

“Wouldn’t you just like that,” he said again in the loud sing-song voice. I cringed.

“Please guys! Keep it PG! I’ve been scarred enough on this tour, I don’t need anything else haunting my dreams at night.”

“Oh you don’t want to dream about me?” Finley looked shocked. “Or are you too busy dreaming about your crush?”

“Finley Dominic Evans. I will come in here in the night and slit your throat.”