The Stalkers' Guide To Roadtrips

Day 28: Sometimes Shitty People Are On The Pages Of Glossy Magazines

The whole damn world is just as obsessed

With who's the best dressed and who's having sex.

 

Start Destination: Brussels, Belgium

End Destination: Paris, France

Via: /

 

09:54AM (GMT) / 10:54AM (Local Time)

 My hands grip the steering wheel tightly as my foot presses down on the accelerator.

From his position in the passenger seat, Levi looks at me with concern, holding on tightly to the small plastic handle above his head.

"Do you have a death wish?" He asks me after a few beats of silence.

I don't reply, although I do ease off the pedal slightly until the car is travelling along at a pace that Levi seems reasonably happy with.

"Okay," he says, apparently unsure of what to say. "What happened yesterday?"

"Nothing."

"You got back late and now you seem pissed," Levi points out, "something must have happened."

Rosie, Elise and I remain silent although we share quick, questioning glances. We seem to be unsure of whether to confide in Levi.

"We met Blakely again," Rosie admits eventually.

The look of confusion on Levi's face deepens and his brow furrows as he thinks the sentence over.

"Isn't that a good thing?" He says questioningly.

"Usually yes," Elise agrees, "but not so much last night."

"What happened?"

The car falls silent again, none of us quite want to own up to what Blakely did. At first I cannot comprehend why and then it dawns on me. The three of us still desperately want Blakely to be the boys from our dreams, the ones that star in the fanfictions we read. The boys who are kind and funny and know when to take things slow, the boys who fall in love with fans and remember their names and recognise their faces. It hurts to know that real-life Blakely does not quite match up to these fictitious boys we've created.

And that, I suppose, is the main problem with being a fangirl. I've come to rely on these four boys so much, they make me smile when I'm down and provide a form of escape. I know their favourite colour, favourite animal and favourite song to listen to on a warm summer night but I don't know them, not really. I'll never know how they act when they're angry, when they're sad. The only Blakely I really know are their happy-go-lucky personas, the boys who live their lives in the spotlight, I can't be sure what lies in the shadows. And it hurts, because I constructed a world that revolved around those four boys, where they were idolised and revered but it's all come crumbling down, because I didn't really know them.

I swallow deeply before turning to reply to Levi.

"We saw them at this club," I begin, "they asked us if we wanted to go back to their hotel with them, said they'd be sure to remember us that way."

"Wait, what?"

"They said that they never remember fans, but they apparently remember good fucks."

"I'm sorry guys," Levi tells us, "they sound liked they were douches."

I return the faint smile he offers me and return my attention to the road. The silence that settles in the car seems to be growing more and more unbearable and so I switch the radio on with the flick of a finger until some terrible eighties music is filling the car.