Two Can Keep a Secret if One of Them is - Season 1

Episode Three - Chapter 14: Brake a leg

Zayn POV:

In the closet of the dressing room lay the breaks from a car but what car? The I saw the note left on the top **Brake a leg - A** I read it out realising this was the proof they were giving to me from when I said they were using the crash to scare us... that they hadn’t caused it. Now I knew for certain that this person meant business and by the look on the boy’s faces they knew it as well. Louis’ shriek still rang in my ears as Niall was the first to find his speaking voice “ahhh, maybe we should... errm  hide this? I mean if someone comes in here questions will be asked and we don’t know the answers to them” this was logical thinking so we took it and hid it in the cabinet in the bathroom. We sighed and suggested it was best to go on stage with a clear mind... this would be discussed afterwards. “Five minutes boys” Paul informed us as we made our way to the stage.

I stood there off stage, nerves rushing at their highest peak through my body and the crowds roar ringing in my ears. All of us were hyped from winning the awards and we had felt untouchable until the moment had struck us in the dressing room... but there was no time to think about that. Liam was on his phone tweeting the fans as usual, the others were jumping around warming up. It felt odd performing without Josh as our drummer and it caused some emptiness within me. I had gone to visit him at least once a week and he always looked better one week but the next he took three steps backward. I felt guilty especially with these text messages. They make me feel targeted... as though Josh was just collateral damage in order to get to me... us.

We had been rehearsing hard for this night and the buzz of the crowd seemed to be driving our determination. This performance was for Josh. We all held our phones in our hands receiving multiple congratulations texts. However as we were all about to leave our phones the last message we received took all of us off guard **Don’t CHOKE – A**. We all looked at one another feeling more exposed than ever. Not a word was said as we made our way to our queue. We heard our name being introduced and we all stepped out onto the stage. The blinding lights blurred me vision and made it hard to see the audience. If the roaring of the crowd wasn’t breaking the decibel metre it would seem as though we were performing to the night sky, flashes of cameras like multiple shooting stars. I looked over to Liam singing the first part of the song and with the shakiness in his voice I know he was thinking about the text we just received.

I started to feel more comfortable and sat within the beat of the song as the performance went on, the girls around the stage screamed with every note we sung. I could tell that we all started to relax mid song, what could A do in front of all these people? As I took a hold of one of the fans hands I looked down to see their face however I was met with a black hoodie becoming all too familiar to me. I dropped their hand and stumbled backwards into Liam who followed my vision.

Liam freaked but smiled to the camera as best he could but the others hadn’t noticed. We all made our way to the platform in which we could be elevated over the audience. We stood behind Liam but something didn’t feel right... The platform we stood on seemed unbalanced as if it would tip us over the edge. We were being raised further to the roof and the others started to notice our dilemma. I hadn’t thought anything like this would happen but then the light bulb went off in my head.

I pulled away from my mic and tried to instruct the boys to stand on each edge balancing out the weight. There were five of us though so I stood in the middle trying to smile through my fear of falling. I could slide right off to the innocent individuals below and crush them. I could see the tabloids now “Falling in One Direction” or “High risers but quick to fall”. The audience had no idea but the stage crew were frantic trying to find the cause. The music came to a stop and we all stayed deadly still in our positions as we were lowered back down to safety.

“What the bloody hell happened?!” I heard the stage manager yell. The crew were shocked to find that the weights had been cut and therefore was the cause of my near death from humiliation... We all headed back to our dressing room assigned to us. “WHAT WAS THAT?!” Harry vocalised taking a hold of the couch as if he were still trying to steady himself. “I saw the hoodie again” Liam looked down and Harry froze “Zayn pointed them out”. Louis piped up “is that what the text was about? What about that brake part from a car? It was from our car wasn’t it? They were answering Zayn’s rant” he thought through his questions and answered them by himself. “I really hope that was what the text is about...” escaped my mouth, I was just on edge from everything that had happened and felt like this was just the start. They all looked at me as if I knew something they didn’t “what do you mean?” Niall stated shoving his face with complimentary food. “How can you eat at a dyer moment like this?” Liam questioned with his Daddy Directioner voice on “I’m hungry and it’s free?” he shrugged going back to the food. I went on “I mean that I don’t think that was this “A’s” best attempt... I think it was a diversion:” I was immediately thrown questions of what, why, what is the main plan? “GUYS, I am not A!” I threw my hands up “how would I know?!” they all went silent.

At that moment the only sound that pierced our ears was our multiple phones going off. Niall took his phone call outside however the rest of us sat on the couch listening intently, the child’s nursery rhyme rang through the phone line giving me goose bumps upon my goose bumps. “Ring-a-Ring-a-Rosey a pocket full of posies, a-tissue-a-tissue we all fall down”. The call ended and I knew the cynical truth beneath the child’s song. We sat in silence as Niall walked back in, tears cascading from his crystal blue eyes surrounded by red. He had gotten a different call...