My Secret Rockstar Boyfriend (18 page)

‘That girl has got some serious issues,’ she says. ‘She went bonkers about that night at Moshi Munchers because you and I walked home together, and I told her that she should
talk to you about it but she refused. Then basically she dumped me for no good reason, refused to talk to me or tell me why. She’s been ignoring my texts and we haven’t spoken since.
Communication problem, do you reckon?’

‘Poor Nish,’ I find myself saying. ‘She’d hate me saying it, but I think she’s more messed up than she even realizes. She really loves you; I know she does. This is
like self-sabotage or something. It’s practically self-harm.’

‘I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, Chew. That’s exactly what it is. She’s broken my heart, but I actually feel sorry for her. I’m even more worried after
what you’ve said. The worst bit is that there’s nothing we can do. I think it’s the stress of exams; she puts herself under so much pressure. But there’s no point trying to
tell her that – it would just make things worse. There’s literally no way we can help her until she wants to be helped. If she ever does.’

We both know she’s right. We sit in silence for a minute and munch thoughtfully on our chips.

‘So, what’s up with you and Seymour?’

‘Well, it’s kind of a long story. And I haven’t told anyone else. Not even Nishi – I know she’d disapprove. And there’s a lot going on that I definitely
can’t talk to Seymour about.’

Anna gets all alert, like a little rabbit; I swear her ears actually prick up. ‘OK, I’m all ears and my lips are sealed. I don’t have to get home for ages yet. Hit
me.’

‘Well, you remember those comments on my blog that really were from Jackson Griffith . . . ?’

By the time I make it to the end of the story, Anna’s mouth is literally hanging open. Most of her chips remain cold in the bowl in front of her, untouched and forgotten. I hate wasting
food; I can’t stop looking at them.

‘So that brings me around to what I want to ask you,’ I finish up eventually. ‘What are you doing next weekend?’

‘Um, pretty much nothing. Why?’

‘Because Jackson has asked me to go to Glastonbury with him. He’s playing a secret set there on the Saturday afternoon. I asked him if I could bring a friend with me, and he said
that would be cool – he can sort us out with tickets, backstage passes; we can stay with him in the artists’ VIP section. We just have to get ourselves there on the Thursday or Friday,
as he’s already playing a gig in Bridport the night before. What do you say?’

She’s too speechless to reply but her eyes are shining with excitement and a smile is beginning to play on her lips. Our expressions are matching, mirror images of each other. I can feel
my own excitement building as I suspect that she might say yes.

‘I . . . I really, really want to. I so mega want to! But . . . how are you going to swing it? You’re in the middle of your bloody A levels!’

‘I know. It’s ridiculous. I can’t believe this has come up now, of all times. But the exams will be practically over by then. I’ll only have one left to go, and all the
others have gone really well so far. And . . . I don’t know why – I just feel like this is something I have to do.’

‘I don’t blame you. I want to do it too. If we can come up with a plan so that we can do this without getting busted – and it has to be a watertight, foolproof, awesome plan to
end all plans – then I’m in.’

We shake hands across the table, unable to suppress our cheesy grins. It’s funny, I’m getting this really bizarre feeling that everything is lining up just right – not to sound
like a total hippie, but like this is almost meant to be.

‘Have you ever been to Glastonbury before?’ she asks me.

‘No, but I’ve been to Reading a couple of times, and to quite a few big one-day events, so it’s not like I’ve never been to a festival before. How about you?’

‘Never. I’ve always wanted to, but none of my friends have been into that sort of thing and I couldn’t exactly go on my own. Until I met you and Nishi. I mean, it’s not
like I have a lot in common with most of the girls at my school. Before I met you guys, to be honest I didn’t really have any proper friends. Anyway, I’ve always wanted to go to a
festival. Nish and I had talked about going to some over the summer, but I guess that’s out now . . .’

Her eyes fill up with tears. I know I’m being treacherous by meeting up with Anna, but now I know a bit more I have a feeling that the situation is far from hopeless and maybe I can even
help. Either way, I really want to stay in touch with Anna and I think that it’s the right thing to do.

I’d speak to Nishi and explain this if I could. In fact, I’d genuinely love to. But it’s become apparent that she was deadly serious when she said that she can’t be
around me at the moment. She hasn’t replied to my calls or texts, and she has managed to avoid me at college.

With Seymour it’s the opposite: I’ve been kind of been avoiding him. We haven’t seen each other in the flesh since the night of his gig and have only exchanged perfunctory
texts. I have been citing exam pressure and excessive revision. I know it’s childish that I’m hoping this whole situation will somehow magically go away; I just can’t handle
dealing with him at the moment.

Although it was great at the time when the four of us were a gang and everything was hunky-dory, it’s a relief to hang out with Anna and escape from the double stress of Nishi and Seymour.
Anna and I stay out longer than we expected to, just because it’s so nice to see each other – we share an ice-cream sundae and chat for ages, hatching plans and going off on festival
flights of fancy.

‘Stay in touch, OK?’ she says as we’re leaving, hugging me outside the cafe before we part ways. ‘I honestly think we can do this.’

I agree. I go home with the feeling that this really could happen. I don’t know if that’s actually a good thing, but right now I don’t care.

The Revisionist

So, I am deep in the very depths of my A levels. I really shouldn’t be blogging. However, my brain is about to explode and I thought a little
distraction might be a good way of staying sane.

Here I am, up to my ears in set texts, marking up books with a neon rainbow of highlighters and trying to stick to all those overambitous revision tables I made weeks
ago.

However, I am still a human being who loves music and ridiculousness, and this got me to thinking . . . Maybe it would actually be helpful if I could give my English lit
characters their own theme tunes!

King Lear would be into Neil Young (his favourite song is ‘A Man Needs a Maid’ – look it up if you’re not a sad old granddad in an
eighteen-year-old girl’s body, like me!), but Goneril and Regan are always like, ‘Dad, turn this crap off!!’ and they make him listen to Radio 1 when they’re all in the car
together. They like to do sexy dances to Rihanna and think that ‘Blurred Lines’ isn’t really sexist cos they’re, like, so empowered. Cordelia, on the other hand, loves
Mumford & Sons and is all smug and wholesome about it.

The Bennett sisters in
Pride and Prejudice
like to listen to retro Spice Girls and argue over which one they are. Lydia (my favourite) can’t decide if she
wants to be cute like Baby Spice or naughty like Ginger. When all the sisters are at home together, they like nothing more than to drag the Lucky Voice karaoke machine out. Mr Bennett stays out of
the way with mortification, but they can’t get their mum off the mic once she starts up with her renditions of Katy Perry . . .

Lady Macbeth is obsessed with Bruce Springsteen. She’s got a massive crush on him (who hasn’t?) and listens to
Darkness on the Edge of Town
all the
time. She likes his work ethic and his muscles. Her husband doesn’t dare to argue.

Procrastinate, me? Wish me luck . . .

Comments

Hope you’re not going barmy locked away up there – researching the ‘madwoman in the atc’ theory in action . . . I’ll bring
you a cup of tea!

Carrie_Cougar

Yes, please! And a biscuit if we’ve got any. I need the sugar!

Tuesday-yes-that-is-my-real-name-Cooper

‘How are you getting on?’

I am propped up in bed with my laptop, surrounded by books and papers. My phone and a bumper pack of highlighter pens are next to me on the bedside table. My crazy revision timetable –
made up of four A4 sheets taped together and colour-coded so it looks like the London tube map redrawn by a serial killer – is pinned up on the wall next to me.

My mum finds a space to sit down by my feet and she deposits a cup of tea and a Penguin on the bedside table.

‘Thanks, Mum. It’s going OK. I think. I don’t really know by this point. I’m losing all perspective.’

‘It’s great that you’re working so hard, but don’t be too tough on yourself. You can only do what you can do.’

‘I know. It’s just really important to me that I can at least feel like I did my best.’

It’s true. I’m not just laying it on thick to hide the fact that I have so many other things on my mind. I was starting to feel pretty relaxed – after all, I’m on the
home straight now – but the idea of missing my entire last weekend’s revision before the final exam is enough to scare me into overdrive. I have to compensate for it somehow, and not
mess everything up by falling at the final hurdle. I could never forgive myself if I let that happen.

I’ve got a lot going on at the moment, but I am still determined to do well in these exams and get my place at university. I’m not thinking too far into the future, just sticking
with Plan A. I just have to do a lot more juggling than I anticipated.

The A levels were already a big deal, even when I had a cosy, easy-going gang with my boyfriend and my best friends, and Jackson Griffith was still just a name in my record collection.

Now I just have to make sure I can deal with it all – it’s too important to mess up. So many things at the moment feel like a chance I have to grab right now, before I lose the
opportunity forever.

For four days when my revision and preparation should be at their absolute maximum, I will be hanging out in a field, miles away in the West Country, watching some of my favourite bands and
hanging out with Jackson Griffith. This is really happening. This is my life.

‘I’m proud of you, Chew,’ my mum says, standing up. ‘I’ll leave you to get on with it, but don’t push yourself too hard. I know you’ve done your best
all year, so you’ll do well. And whatever happens, you’ve worked your hardest – I’m proud of you no matter what.’

A massive lump comes to my throat as my mum ruffles my hair and walks out of the room with a last backwards smile over her shoulder, closing the door behind her. Particularly when, before the
door is even halfway closed, my phone beeps.

I put down my copy of
King Lear
, careful to keep the page, and read the text from Anna. She’s booked our train tickets for Thursday. We’ve turned out to be a pretty good
team – I have the ideas and she is way more organized than I could ever dream of being. We’re both excited to an epic level now, probably intensified by the fact that we can’t
express this to anyone except each other.

I haven’t even been in touch with Jackson much, as his latest run of secret gigs is coinciding with him staying with an old friend and his family out in the countryside, as he works his
way closer to Glastonbury. I had to try to be cool when I found out that said ‘old friend’, one of Jackson’s musical mentors, and his wife and children are a famous family –
rockstar and fashion designer, their eldest daughter a top model – who I have read about in magazines.

Even Jackson has started to feel a little less real to me, now that he is edging back into the public eye. It seems like the music world is welcoming him back with open arms – his new solo
material has been really well received and he’s had some lovely reviews for the secret gigs in unlikely locations. Anticipation is building for his hotly rumoured Glastonbury appearance, and
it is being touted as either the greatest comeback or the must-see disaster of the weekend. Reading about this in the
Guardian
online, with a photo of him that I can tell is at least a
couple of years old and that makes him look like a proper rockstar, I can scarcely believe that this is the same boy who sends me emails, writes me songs and has been known to sprawl on hotel-room
sofas watching daytime telly. I can’t wait to see him again.

Anyway, Anna and I basically have a plan. On Thursday morning my mum goes to Bruges. On Thursday afternoon Anna and I will take the train, the tube, and a three and a half hour coach journey to
the festival, which is not even in the actual town of Glastonbury and appears to be in precisely the middle of nowhere.

Jackson has sorted out our tickets. When we arrive I just have to call his manager, Sadie Steinbeck – Jackson has given me her UK ‘cellphone’ number – and she will come
to the gates and meet us with our passes. Not just that, but they will be the coveted ‘AAA’ – access all areas – so that we can go backstage with Jackson and stay in the
artists’ section, rather than camping out with the masses. It’ll be nice to go to a festival and not have to lug a tent with me, I must admit.

Still, I can’t think too much about all that now. I’ve worked so bloody hard for the last two years – and before that – that the idea of messing up my very last exam is
something that I just can’t let happen.

I turn determinedly back to
King Lear
, orange highlighter in hand. I don’t even look up from the book as I feel for my cup of tea and the Penguin next to me. I consume both of
them without even noticing, engrossed in the text and trying to decipher my own scribbled notes in the margins. I curse my past self, as is so often the case – why I scrawled ‘POETIC
FALLACY???’ across an entire page is now beyond me. Why the three question marks, Chew – what was your point???