I Was Born for This(43)

‘Jimmy! Jimmy Kaga-Ricci!’

I glance to one side and – there they are. Across the street. The girls. Our girls.

They run up to me. ‘Jimmy! Oh my God, oh my God.’ It’s hard to register who is talking. There’s four of them. All talking at once. One of them has started shaking very visibly. Another is just making squealing noises.

‘Hi,’ I say, though it’s not much more than a croak.

‘I honestly love you so much,’ says one of them. ‘You’ve kept me going, like, throughout all of secondary school.’

They don’t love me. They don’t know me.

‘Can I get a selfie?’ says another girl.

‘Would it …’ I start to ask if it would be okay if we didn’t, but she’s already turned round and taken a picture of herself next to me on her phone.

‘Oh my God, what did you do to your hand?’ one asks.

‘I broke a mug and cut it by accident,’ I say.

‘Awww,’ one says.

‘Okay, I’ve got to go now,’ I say in a tone I hope isn’t as rude as it probably is. The panic is rising in my chest, my breath shortening.

‘Wait, wait,’ says a girl. ‘I just want you to know, like, how much you’ve changed my life. I really, really love you, and you’ve helped me through so much personal stuff over the past few years. So, thank you.’

I blink at her. I am so tired.

‘How can you love me when you don’t know me?’ I ask.

And suddenly they all stop talking at once.

‘We-we do know you,’ says one, and another says, ‘We do love you.’

‘Not real love, though,’ I say.

‘It is real!’

‘How can you love someone you’ve never even met in real life?’

‘This is real life,’ one says.

‘I meant before that. All until now. When I was just a photo on the computer.’

None of them knows what to say.

‘I’m glad I helped you,’ I say, and then I walk away before they can stop me, before they start grabbing me, before they call their friends and they all get together and mob me, because they ‘love’ me.

‘We do know you, Jimmy! And we love you!’ they call after me, but even though they meant it in a nice way, it still terrifies me; it terrifies me that they all believe that what they feel for me is love. God, what have I done? What have I done to them? By the time I get back to our apartment, sit down on the floor with my back against the front door, I’m actually having a panic attack. I can’t breathe, shaking, probably going to die, something’s going to kill me, someone’s going to kill me, how am I going to save myself? How am I going to save myself? How am I going to save myself?

‘Jimmy.’

Maybe it would be better if some fan stalker just killed me while I was asleep, made all this stop— ‘Jimmy, look at me.’

God, please, please help me, please let me be happy— ‘You’re having a panic attack. Look at me.’

Yeah, no shit. I focus. Rowan is sitting in front of me.

‘Breathe with me,’ he says, and then breathes in deeply. ‘Breathe in –’

I try to take a deep breath in but it just turns into three very quick, shallow breaths, like I’m drowning. I think I’m gonna throw up.

‘Breathe out.’

Another three quick breaths. I can’t do it. Everything is wrong. Bad. Everything is bad.

‘Breathe in.’

I try again, but it’s still too quick, too shaky, too shallow.

‘Breathe out.’

Rowan repeats it more times than I can count. I don’t know how long it’s been when I can finally breathe properly again, and Rowan manages to persuade me to stand up and walk over to the sofas. He brings me a towel, because I’m drenched in both rain and sweat, and a glass of water. It splashes around when I hold it. My hands are still shaking.

‘We don’t live in the real world any more,’ I say.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ says Rowan.

‘No,’ I say.

But God, I do. I always do.





‘i am not afraid; i was born to do this.’



– Joan of Arc





Today I am going to meet The Ark.

I was in my thirteenth year when I first heard an Ark song. I was tucked up in bed one evening near December and I was on another routine spiral through the endless abyss of YouTube. And I found their first YouTube video.

It only had a couple of thousand views back then.

They were all around my age. Thirteen and fourteen. Jimmy’s hair was a messy brown mop back then. Rowan still had dorky rimless glasses. Lister’s jeans were always too short.

A musical explosion in a family garage.

They played a cover of Eiffel 65’s ‘Blue’. In their own style of course, more rock-ish but with Jimmy playing all sorts of synth sounds on two different keyboards.

It went viral a few weeks after that.

I like knowing that I’ve been there since the beginning. I’m part of something. I’ve been part of this for five years. When I open Twitter and see photos of them performing in Manila, Jakarta, Tokyo, Sydney – I am part of that. I am one of the few that has seen them through this and been there every step of the way.