When she opened her eyes the next morning her ears were still ringing with a high pitched buzzing that had been created from the screams the night before. Rolling over on her side Mel glanced over at her alarm clock to check the time.
“You’re in Sheffield and its 2.00 pm” an amused voice sounded from behind her.
“What?” Mel groaned back at Steph.
“You just looked a bit confused when you woke up.”
“Concert hangover,” Mel explained, rubbing her eyes.
“You feeling a bit crap sweetie?” Karen called from the other side of the room.
Mel groaned again, sitting up in the bed and looking around her. Her eyes fell on the banner she had taken into the show last night – it was still propped up against the wall where she had left it.
He had noticed it immediately, and after reading it his entire face had lit up and he had stuck his thumb up at her and smiled. She had replayed the whole thing in her mind most of the night – meaning that she hadn’t exactly got an awful lot of sleep. But despite that, thinking about it still made her break out into a huge smile.
“Mel?”
“Sorry Karen, yeah I feel fine,” Mel replied, finally finding a sudden spurt of energy and leaping out of bed to put some clothes on.
“What’s the rush?” Steph asked.
“Am going to go down to reception.”
“Why?”
Mel headed towards the door, pulling on her boots as she went.
“Fresh air,” she called back over her shoulder as she quickly left the room.
She leapt down the stairs two at a time, her head high from the thought of Christian reading her banner last night, it had got to the point where she had thought about him so much she just had to go downstairs on the off chance that he might be there – she needed to see him again.
Bursting into reception she looked around before heading towards the lounge area.
“Mel!” a deep voice called to her.
She turned round, “Oh it’s you!” she grunted, noticing Mark sat on one of the chairs.
“Sorry, who did you want to see?”
“Need to see Chris,” Mel replied, looking behind Mark in the hope that Christian was standing behind him.
“Sorry he isn’t down here, think he’s gone out shopping with Paul.”
“Great.”
“Fantastic banner last night by the way,” Mark said grinning, “of course it could be improved.”
Mel furrowed her brows at Mark – had Christian not liked her banner and mentioned it to Mark?
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Well first of all, I’m thinking it was a bit boring.”
“Eh?”
“Well, it was only aimed at one member, it would be far better to write one about us all.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” Mark continued, excitably in full flow, “it should say A1 you make us horny.”
“Great,” Mel replied, completely uninterested, sometimes Mark could be so boring when he started going on about rubbish.
“And you should do it on black card with the letters in red and white like the logo,” he continued, flapping his arms around in the air.
Mel looked at Mark in confusion – was he still talking? And more importantly what on earth was he talking about. He was hopping around on one foot now, looking at her like he was expecting an answer. Mel paused for a second, pondering what the most appropriate answer to a question she didn’t know was.
“Yeah,” she replied after a few seconds thought.
He seemed to be happy with this answer.
“Great, I’ll see you later then.”
He bounded off back up to the lifts and Mel breathed a sigh of relief, as much as she liked Mark sometimes he could be a bit too much especially when your mind was elsewhere.
Later that evening the girls were once more back in Karen’s car trying to find their way into the Sheffield Arena.
“This arena has to be the biggest nightmare,” Karen muttered as she craned her neck to try and find a road sign.
“Why?” Steph asked from the back seat.
“It’s just so badly sign posted, its impossible to find your way in.”
“Yeah but we only came last night.”
“I know!” Karen said in exasperation, “but I have no idea how I got in, I think I fluked it.”
The ford fiesta sped its way round the roundabout for the second time.
“Beginning to feel sick,” Mel called out, holding tightly on to the seat in front of her.
“Well, you could all look out for a sign to the Arena so we could get off this bloody roundabout,” Karen yelled back, she was beginning to get a bit ratty, they had been trying to find the car parks for the past 10 minutes and so far had only succeeded in setting the car back in the direction of Sheffield city centre.
“Fine!” Mel replied, winding down her window and sticking her head right out of the window. Spying a sign she called back into the car, “first exit”
Karen exited the roundabout and they finally found themselves in one of the large Arena car park. Leaving the car they all wrapped up tightly in their coats, apart from Mel who had only a little cardigan wrapped around her scantily clad body.
“What are you wearing?” Steph gasped, eyeing her tiny boob tube and short leather skirt.
Mel blushed slightly and began to button up the cardigan.
“You expecting to go out on a hot date tonight Mel?” Karen smirked, she was dressed in a completely different outfit of jeans and a red gypsy top.
Mel continued to ignore them, racing her way across the car park until she reached the high footbridge that went over the railway line and led towards the arena.
“Hate this footbridge,” Steph said nervously as she looked up. The bridge was pretty high and was shadowed in darkness making it quite impossible to see where you were going.
“Is pretty high, could think of quite a few people I’d like to push off it,” Karen agreed.
“Yeah, Ella for starters,” Mel laughed loudly at the image of Ella hurtling over the dark bridge and onto the railway track below. She stopped laughing as she realised that the air around her was silent and her friends had stopped moving and were watching her closely.
“Yeah funny Mel,” Karen said sarcastically, making her way up the stairs and onto the bridge.
Mel blushed again, realising that she had pushed it too far and if she wasn’t careful her friends would begin to realise exactly how deep she had dug herself in. Running to catch them up she made a mental note to herself to try and be as normal as possible – they were never going to understand the bond that she and Christian had and until they were together it was probably best that she didn’t mention it.
“We’re going to miss the supports,” she commented as she caught up with them.
“Never mind, its not like we normally see them anyway,”
The girls finally approached the huge arena building and made their way inside. As it was over an hour since the doors opened it was quiet and they got straight in. As usual they had timed it perfectly and would only have to wait a few moments until a1 came on.
Ignoring all the helpful arena staff the girls marched to the door that would lead them into the arena and to the front seating block – they didn’t need anyone showing them to their seats, they knew exactly where they were going. Walking down the aisle they smugly walked past all the girls in the back block before making their way down to their seats right at the front. There was always something special about walking past everyone else knowing that your seats were better than theirs – you could feel thousands of pairs of jealous eyes looking at you.
Pulling down the hard plastic seat Mel plonked herself down, positioning her bag on her lap and routing for her lip-gloss.
Karen looked at her in mild amusement, “on the pull?”
“Oh, where’s your banner tonight Mel?” Steph chipped in.
“Didn’t need it tonight,” Mel replied, carefully applying the light pink gloss to her lips.
“You could always go for one of those sad little teeny head bopper things instead,” Karen suggested.
“Or a whistle” Steph smirked.
“You could become a proper little crave.”
“I’m not a crave,” Mel answered back sharply.
Steph was about to open her mouth to retaliate when the screens to the side of them burst into life and Blink TV came booming over the speakers.
“Great!” Steph said, as the girls around them began to scream at the image of Leo that had just appeared in front of them.
Karen wedged her fingers tight into her ears to block out the piercing noise, “why do they insist on doing that?” she asked.
“Dunno, do you think that they scream at their TV sets at home?”
Mel let the conversation continue around her, she hadn’t even noticed the annoying young girls, she was too busy gazing at the screen. A particularly sexy picture of Christian had just filled it and for some reason her heart had started pumping twice as fast as usual. Maybe to her friends this was being a crazy craven, but to her this feeling was very very real, no one had ever done this to her insides before, she only had to look at him and she felt sick – this was love – it had to be.
Suddenly the lights went off and the curtains went down to reveal the band on stage playing a fast rocky tune.
The audience jumped to their feet and Mel moved a few feet forward so she could lean against the metal barrier at the front of the stage. Having already seen the show she knew exactly where to fix her gaze – any moment now the boys would appear from a tunnel at the back of the stage and she would be connected with her man once again.
As the last few strains of the intro to “Be The First to Believe” sounded there was a loud bang and a1 appeared in a flash of light from the tunnel. The sound around them erupted as every teenage girl in the arena made their love for the boys heard.
Mel gazed up at Christian, he was walking towards her, shuffling to the music further and further towards the front of the stage, in a moment he would be standing right in front of her. Finally there he was.
“Elevate our love into the sky yeah”
He looked straight at her as he sang, his lips forming into a smile, a smile much bigger than he had ever given her before.
She grinned back, almost shyly at the amount of attention he was showing her, he was coming even closer now – still smiling and winking. He then lent over and held his hand out, she reached out to grab it, but someone else got there first.
There right in front of her in the pit stood Gabriella, and she now had a firm hold of Christian’s hand and he was beaming down at her.
Mel closed her mouth quickly, trying to prevent all the air from leaving her body and sat down quickly on her seat. How could she not have realised that Christian wasn’t smiling at her? This was the first time ever that he hadn’t noticed her in the first song – he only had eyes for the bimbo in front of him.
This was the last straw – the bitch was going to regret the day she ever set eyes on Christian. There was no way that Mel was letting him go without a fight.