I Was Born for This(55)

Wait. I think I know what this is.

I think he might be having a panic attack.

I’ve never had a panic attack. I’ve never seen anyone have a panic attack. I don’t even know much about panic attacks other than they are, well, an attack of panic.

He’s still holding the dagger but he’s dropped his arm down to the ground, as if it’s too heavy to hold up. He’s not actually going to stab me.

I crouch down near to the floor again.

‘My name’s Angel Rahimi,’ I say very slowly, introducing myself as Angel before I realise what I’m doing. Maybe that’s who I am now.

He looks at me, then, eyes narrow. ‘What?’

‘My name is Angel Rahimi,’ I say. ‘I’m a fan of The Ark. I came to your meet-and-greet today. I want to help you.’

‘Angel?’ he says. ‘Your name is Angel?’

‘Well …’ I begin, but why make this any weirder and more confusing than it already is? ‘Yeah, yeah, it is.’

He doesn’t do anything but stare.

‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ I say.

‘What?’

‘I’m not going to hurt you. I’m very harmless. I can’t even kill spiders.’

More staring.

Then he says, ‘Okay.’

‘Are you … are you having a panic attack?’ I ask. Maybe he’s tripping on drugs, or something. It’s not like I’d know.

He nods very slowly.

‘S-sorry …’ he stammers through short breaths.

What’s he apologising for? The panic attack?

God, I want to hug him. I want to hold him and let him cry gently into my shoulder.

At least we seem to be communicating now.

‘Maybe try taking a few deep breaths?’ I suggest. I demonstrate by taking a comically deep breath. ‘Breathe in.’ I exhale with a loud whoosh. ‘Breathe out.’

To my amazement (as I hadn’t expected him to do it), he tries to mirror my breathing, his eyes so round and wide and watery and cutting through the air to look at me. He can’t quite manage it, instead taking about three breaths in the same time that I take one. Though I’m still shaking quite a bit, I manage to smile at him and say, ‘Yeah, that’s it! That’s it!’ Like a parent cheering for their kid on sports day.

While doing this, his hand loosens from the dagger. Once he gets down to two breaths for every one of mine, he manages to say something else.

‘Why are you helping me?’ He sounds more like himself in this question than he has done throughout this whole terrifying meeting. His voice is so familiar to me. I hear it every day, I think about it all the time, sometimes I dream it. Sometimes I dream him, bright and shining, reaching out to me with one hand. Wouldn’t surprise me if this was a dream.

‘I love you,’ I tell him.

His expression drops. He looks down at the floor.

‘You don’t love me. You don’t know me,’ he says. ‘Do you even know what love is?’

Not the response I expected. Then again, I hadn’t intended to tell him ‘I love you’ like I was reciting a romantic confession, or something pathetic like that. Because it’s not a romantic confession. It’s so much deeper than that.

Love sometimes doesn’t feel like the right word. The feelings I have for The Ark are what keep me going every day. They get me out of bed, even when everything is shit and I’m feeling worthless. And it always is and I always am. If you think about it, it’s really no wonder someone like Jimmy can’t understand. When you have a life like that, why would you need to cling onto something like a band? A celebrity? When you have a life where you have everything, where every day brings joy and passion, travelling around the world with your best friends, why would you need to spend your time thinking about anything apart from yourself?

He’ll never know what that’s like.

Needing, desperately, to think about anything apart from yourself.

‘Do you?’ I ask him.

But he has no time to answer. The door’s lock is smashed in, the door swings open, and a huge bodyguard just picks Jimmy off the floor like he’s a misbehaving toddler and carries him out of the room. I scramble off the floor and watch him leave, several other bodyguards shoving fans out of the way to get Jimmy across the room.

And then I just start to cry.





I don’t exactly black out but I just stop registering what’s happening around me. It’s not really happening to me. It’s all just happening to this body that people call Jimmy Kaga-Ricci. The body that people call Jimmy Kaga-Ricci isn’t really me, anyway. Never has been. People look at Jimmy and they don’t see me. They see Jimmy Kaga-Ricci. Smiley, dreamy musician, Jimmy Kaga-Ricci. Not the actual Jimmy.

Sorry. I’m not making sense. No point in explaining it. Some things are impossible to explain.

Before I know it, I’m back in our dressing room and everybody is shouting. Cecily is shouting at O2 staff, O2 staff are shouting back, the rest of the tour management team are shouting at our bodyguards, and Rowan is shouting at me, angry, asking me why I disappeared, where did I go, it’s dangerous, and Lister is shouting at Rowan, telling him to calm down, stop shouting, it’s not Jimmy’s fault, he’s clearly shaken up, leave him alone.