Page 18 of Pierce Me

three

“What’s wrong? What can I do?”

I frantically shout questions into the microphone –much good that will do.

I motion to my guards to rush inside the pit and I have to resist the urge to scream for help. The girl has fallen and she isn’t getting up, and a dark coil of fear is gripping my stomach, but I have to keep the crowd calm–that’s why I stopped singing.

It’s not the first time someone has gone down during one of my concerts. My team and I used to joke that it’s pretty usual for fans to swoon at the mere sight of me, and it’s definitely happened more times than I can count. But then, as the years went by, we had our share of terrible things happening at concerts: people getting sudden heart attacks, receiving horrible news over the phone, holding up signs that said ‘my brother just died’ and so on. So I have learned to pay attention. To put people’s welfare above the music.

“What’s wrong?” I repeat. “Do you need help?”

My band keeps playing, and I turn to them.

“Kill the music. Stop.” I turn back to search for the girl. “Are you ok down there?”

The concert comes to a crashing halt. In my mind, I can already see all the reporters rushing to get out the news ‘Issy Woo pauses concert over concern about fan’ and the media circus that will follow me around probably for the rest of my career, at every interview, at every turn. I couldn’t care less.

“Someone get over there!” I yell into my mic.

I gesture to more guards to walk over to her. It’s been minutes now, and the girl is still not up. Her friends are on the ground next to her, and there’s a hole in the crowd where her group of people were standing. More and more of my fans are bending down to help.

This is so not good. I turn around and look at Jude, who kills the music, waiting to see if the girl is ok. She is not. My personal guard, Ren, rushes over suddenly, and there’s a commotion as he lifts the girl in his arms and carries her out, draped like a tiny, lifeless doll over his huge arms. She is wearing orange boots with black edges on the soles, her feet dangling over Ren’s massive biceps.

And that’s the last I see of her.

…

I singBeethovenafter the girl with the orange boots is pulled away in the ambulance, just to calm everyone down. Fans have dubbed this song the ‘tranquilizer’ because it instantly calms you down, supposedly.

Right now, it has the exact opposite effect. Jude starts playing the first three chords on his bass and the crowd goes wild, eager to shake off the shared bad experience. Meanwhile, the memories have pulled me under completely.

My body is here in New York, but I am back in that park in Massachusetts where I used to meet Eden. Inside my mind, she's talking and we’re both laughing as we run between the trees, the golden afternoon sun painting our cheeks pink.

'Who has Beethoven as their song?'

In my memory, Eden asks the question and turns around to face me, still running. Her long black hair whips her in the chin and she gets a mouthful of it. She spits it out, laughing harder. I close my eyes to savor the sound. She never used to laugh, but she laughed that day. How could it not have been seared into my memory? Impossible.

‘We do,’I reply to her in my memory.

Our song was Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. Yeah, we were weird, but we were us. I’ve never been myself as fully as I was with her. Completely, utterly accepted.

In real life, the song begins screaming on my guitar and I do my famous drop to my knees, except that this time it wasn’t on purpose. I yell the lyrics and the tears are real.

But the crowd cheers me on, thinking it’s all part of the show.

Thinking there is no way this is actually real.

They watch my heart break all over them and they lap it up. After all, they paid for it.

…

The minute we’re backstage, the vultures descend.

By vultures, I mean the photographers, publicists, assistants, the make-up crew (well, these last ones are not vultures, I actually love those guys), a horde of stylists and a small sample of reporters. I follow Ren, who, as the head of my security always finds a secondary safe location, in case this exact thing happens. He’s supposed to lead us out of sight, away from the paparazzi and the fans who try to crowd around Jude, me and the rest of our musicians, but even though we are really fast, running for our lives, I am immediately surrounded by cameras blinding me, voices screaming my name. It feels like the entire word is crushing me from all sides.

Not all of these people are as rabid as the fans, and even they, in their intrusive callousness, do not necessarily want to hurt me. They are thoughtless and heartless, pursuing me relentlessly, willingly blind to the sheen of sweat all over my forehead, my paleness, my exhausted, stumbling steps. But all they want is a piece of me, the same thing that I was willingly giving them a few minutes ago on the stage. All they want is a piece of my soul.

But I’m done.

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