CHAPTER SIX

LIES

28th of September

X Factor house

Dear God

I may not think much of you, whatever and wherever you are, but I have to say, sometimes you really can prove your worth. Some examples are Chris, Robyn, Lorane, Thomas, Robbie, Triple K, Dylan, China, Frieda…but most of all perhaps, Michael. Because he is a truly amazing human being. Don't suppose you put a bit of God into him, did you?

…So don't forget your seatbelt

Don't you think of picking up the phone

Better say your prayers 'cause you're never gonna make it home…

That night, I'm glad to say, was dreamless, so I awoke of my own accord, fully refreshed and ready for action before either of my fellow Girls.

I'd gotten used to having the house to myself in the small hours at home, pottering around with my music sheets and headphones for a few hours before my Mum could heave herself out of bed. On Sundays I would make her breakfast in bed around ten and crawl in with her. We'd eat warm slices of buttered toast, smearing raspberry jam on each other's faces like lipstick and blusher, and Mum would tell me what I was like when I was younger and I'd talk to her about a particular piece I'd been working on recently. I could do more than sing. In fact, writing music had been my passion long before I discovered my voice. I was determined that, should I ever release an album, I would at least co-write all my songs. And I'd love to feature one song I'd written when I was younger: 'Parallel Universe'.

I checked the watch I always wore around my wrist, despite (or perhaps because of) my Dad's horror stories when I was younger, of gangrene and loss of circulation. It was 7:30. So if yesterday was anything to go on, lessons would be starting in half an hour.

I sprung out of bed happily enough and pulled on my cosy old dungarees over a white T-shirt, topping this off with the black hoodie. I looked into the mirror – and nearly burst out laughing. God, I looked a totalemo.

Robyn stirred at my snort. 'DJ? What's up?'

'Just getting dressed,' I informed her. 'I'd rather be decent when Michael hustles us down to the camera room.'

At my words she threw the covers aside and selected an outfit from her wardrobe hurriedly. I delicately turned away as she pulled it on: I had never really believed in the phrase 'all girls together'. We're all different and therefore should respect each other's privacy.

There was a shy knock at the door and when Robyn called out 'Come in!' Michael stuck his head around the door. 'You ladies decent?'

'Well I am,' said Lorane, pulling the duvet away from her face, 'can't speak for these two.'

Michael nodded approvingly. 'Dreamgirls! Nice touch.'

'Thanks.'

Michael swept his gaze over us – and halted at me. 'Er…you look very… distinctive.'

I shrugged cheerfully. 'That's why I'm here!'

Lorane shrugged off her sheets and shook her hair out confidently as she exited the bed. 'But you're nothingcompared to me.'

'Ah, come on!' grinned Robyn. 'We all know who Jasmine's rooting for!'

'Yeah, me!' I cut in.

'OK, break it up girls.' Michael rapped his knuckles hard on the doorframe. 'You're needed downstairs in five.'

I started to panic. 'Oh God, are reporters here?'

'No, no,' he hastened to reassure me, 'just an expression. Take your time.'

And he left the room.

Lorane tutted approvingly, fixing her hair on top of her head with a silver clip without even a fleeting look at the mirror. 'Such a polite young man.'

I hit her with a pillow, recognising who she was imitating. 'Shut up; I didn't ask them to set me up with Chris!'

Robyn frowned. 'But you're so awesome together.'

'Yeah,' interrupted Lorane. 'Pity, as she's got a boyfriend.'

'Oh.'

'Lorane!'

'It's OK, I won't tell anyone,' Robyn told me calmly. 'Though the last time I said that my entire school knew in less than a week,' she added as an afterthought.

'Great, I feel much better.'

'Stop being sarky Di; you're not in school anymore.'

'Well then can I be sarky once we're in the camera room?'

Lorane thought for a moment. 'Yes.'

Soon enough we were all sitting comfortably (well, sitting at least) in the camera room, waiting eagerly for our temporary teacher.

He made his entrance a lot more subtle than usual, simply trudging through the French door with a few papers clutched to his chest. In fact, we barely noticed him until he did the microphone-board trick again that left us all shivering in our seats, half-deafened.

'You know,' Robbie mentioned quietly. 'You could just call us to order like a normal teacher.'

Michael smiled dangerously at him. 'But I'm not a normal teacher.'

And with that, he flicked a switch beside his desk and clicked a button on the projector he had wheeled in.

The room went dark at the same moment as the wall above said projector lit up – showing a mass of photos, all of celebrities humiliating themselves. And each one of us reacted to a different scene. There was Chris, staring at a picture of Zac Efron with his face stretched out of shape by a high note and clamping his lips firmly together. Dylan was gazing in earnest at Steve Martin with his stomach showing and pulling his shirt down as far as it would go. And Triple K were gawping in disgust at a scene of two Take That members with a red circle around their linked hands and an inked question mark; Kenneth and Kevin instinctively edging away from Kris as far as their adjacent desks would allow.

It was then that I noticed a photo of a girl. She was petite and long-haired, and her dress sense seemed quirky, judging by her…dungarees and white T-shirt. And she was standing near a boy. A boy with messy hair and puppy-dog eyes. It didn't take a genius to figure out the accusation that was sure to go with this snapshot. It wasn't going to be about how cute it was that a boy and a girl could finally be 'just friends'. It would be something a lot more cliché than that.

I looked across at Chris, whose eyes were wide in horror. However, seeing me staring, he smiled at me. 'I'm sure it's not all that bad. There're only about…um…ten photos.'

There were at least fifty. 'I guess.'

He put his hands up defensively. 'Fine, you caught me. I can't count.'

I couldn't help laughing. Then I softened. 'Thanks.'

He reached for my hand under the table. And, even with the snapshot still fresh in my mind, I couldn't find the heart to pull away.

'OK,' declared Michael after sufficient time had passed for us to be permanently traumatized. 'Now that you've seen what fame has to offer…' He switched the lights back on. 'What do you think of when I say the word 'press'?'

Chris's hand shot up beside me and I admired his integrity. At least until Michael picked him and he promptly put forward 'Orange juice.'

Michael shook his head tolerantly, choosing Robyn's eager fingers instead. 'Books,' was her suggestion.

Michael was beginning to look a bit frazzled before finally Kendall gave him what he was looking for: 'Reporters and cameras and all that shit.'

Michael nodded. 'Exactly. And, as a matter of fact, I'm glad one of youboys said that, because…'

He removed the sheet of photographs from the projectors surface and slipped a newspaper displaying a large picture of the boys in the centre underneath it instead before turning the lights off once more.

Certain phrases leapt out at us straight away: drug dealers…'too rough for the X Factor'…chavs…emos…

Kris's jaw clenched. 'What the fuck is that?'

Michael obligingly picked it up and began to read. 'OK, so we were pushing it a few years ago with KLZ, but surely this is ridiculous? These boys have nothing to offer the X Factor but a total retraction of every comment of discrimination ever made about the controversial reality show. Well, unless we are indeed going to chalk this up to one of Daniel Cowell's publicity stunts. There is certainly no other way that these aggressive, emotionally-devoid thugs could ever have made it past bootcamp – not least after Jasmine's comment…'

'Stop,' whispered Kevin.

Michael carried on, ignoring him.

'We said stop!'roared Kenneth.

Michael coolly raised an eyebrow. 'Sorry. Didn't hear you.'

He folded the newspaper calmly and passed it to them. Kris, the eldest, instantly snatched it and tore it into ten pieces which he then shoved towards the rest of his group, who each grabbed a few pieces and chucked them to the floor.

There was a respectful silence.

'Well, there you go,' stated Michael quietly. 'That's just what happens if they don't like the look of you.'

'Bastards,'spat Kendall. 'We got in because the judges have brains.'

'Don't take it personally,' warned Michael. 'It could have been anyone; think of it as a lottery which you don't want to win.'

'Why us?' asked Kenneth rhetorically. 'What did we do wrong?'

'You're working-class and have short tempers,' Michael informed them. 'What more do you want?'

The boys looked like they were going into 'major sulk' mode by the time Michael moved on. 'Now. Can anyone tell me what some of the basic rules of today's society are?'

That was an easy question; everyone's hands were up when Michael alighted upon Dylan. 'Yes sir?'

'Don't kill anyone,' he recommended.

'Right.' Michael chalked it up. Then he put something else beside it so that that section of the board looked like this:

. Don't kill anyone. Unless there's nothing else for the news

Naturally, this left us very perplexed. But if Michael noticed this, he paid no heed, going on to the next hand he spotted. Lorane's.

She took the nail she had been chewing out of her mouth. 'Don't discriminate.'

'Perfect.' He repeated his former action, resulting in this:

. Don't discriminate. More than you can get away with

He looked around expectantly. 'One more should be enough. Robbie?'

'Don't have underage sex.'

Short, sweet and to the point. Very Robbie.

This is what Michael wrote:

. Don't have underage sex. Just frame other people doing it

He put the chalk down. 'That's all we need. Can anyone tell me what I'm trying to convey?'

Silence.

'Thought so. Well the basic message is that the press can get away with just about anything. Has anyone ever wondered what really happened to Corbin Bleu and David Schwimmer?'

'Please tell me this is a joke,' croaked China. She like, me, was probably remembering the different newspapers, different times, same basic story: they had been found bleeding in the gutter with nothing to go on but a couple of scribbled notes saying such things as 'Until we meet again' and 'So you know what's coming to you'.

He bowed his head. 'Sorry.'

Thomas had gone the colour of a melting candle sprinkled with soot, and Camilla looked like she was going to be sick.

'Again, nothing personal,' Michael reminded us. 'It's just business.'

I'm afraid I can't tell you exactly what I was feeling right then. There were too many conflicting emotions: confusion, horror, revulsion, nausea, distress…wait 'til you feel all those thing at once then you might understand; depends on the context. I have to admit, the only thing that prevented me from leaping up and running far, far away was the feel of Chris's warm, solid body alongside mine. There was a certain aura about Chris, like Lorane, that radiated comfort and safety.

'Kinda puts our homework into perspective,' I hissed to him.

'You're telling me,' was his shaken response.

'Look,' burst out Michael. 'I'm sorry that you have to live with this. But you signed up for it and you're lucky anyway: most celebrities don't get this kind of briefing.

'Yeah. Lucky,' grunted Kevin. 'That'sthe word I'd use.'

'Guys.' Michael put a hand on his forehead. 'You need to calm down.'

Normally I'd agree. For the last ten minutes you couldn't have sliced the tension-thick air with a bread knife, and the rebellious mutters had been mounting so high that I was starting to get a headache. But in light of the revelation that had just been forced on us, I didn't think he could very fairly tell us off for freaking out quite a bit.

'How can we put up with this?' yelled Thomas. 'Living in fear of your life, never able to get off the hook – why the Hell should we stand for it?'

'Because we're celebrities,' Michael said simply. As if that was all that mattered. 'And the public wants gossip,' he added. 'Besides, the less we complain, the more copies they sell and, depending on the content of the articles, the more money we make. It's been this way for centuries and I doubt that it's going to change anytime soon. We just have to grin and bear it. Here, I'm about to hand you out a sheet of tips to get by. These will help you in the long run. I promise.'

It was as he was giving out the handouts that I realized I was crying. And once again, I had no idea why.

Michael stopped nearby me. 'Honey? You alright?'

I sniffed, feeling Chris's arm around my shoulders; his head against mine. 'I'm fine.'

Hey. Another lie couldn't hurt, could it?

Michael appeared to think for a bit before announcing 'Diana, can I see you after class?'

He dismissed the others as soon as all the papers were distributed, and then pulled up what had originally been Chris's chair. 'Let me start by saying this,' he launched in immediately. 'You, in my opinion, are far too young and fragile to be doing this. You're naïve and sweet and innocent, and you shouldn't even be reading the newspapers at seventeen, let alone living what makes the headlines. I'm just thankful that you've got Chris.'

'He is lovely,' I agreed vaguely.

'Yes he is. And he is going to be your saving grace in this game, Diana. Just don't get…tooclose to him, alright? I'd hate to see happen to you what happened to –'

He stopped.

'What?'

He shook his head, checking himself, and then carried on as if that last sentence hadn't just been uttered. 'I want you to remember this in the years to come, Diana: you are worth two hundred of every reporter you will ever meet. People are going to try to exploit your inexperience and controversy, and they are going to make you feel like shit. But however bad it gets, always keep in mind that none of it is true; they're just scum who want the money. Choose your friends carefully, Diana. 'Cause it gets tough when you're famous enough to take advantage of.'

I nodded, a little bedazzled – and very flattered. 'Thank you.'

He gazed into my eyes, his very wide and honest. 'You understand?'

I smiled at him. 'Yeah.'

He sat back. 'Good. You can go.'

As I stood and made to walk out, I paused and kissed him on the cheek. 'You're a wonderful person, Michael,' I notified him. 'You should get a lot more credit for the shows than you do.'

His whole face lit up gratifyingly. 'That may be the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. I'll see you tomorrow Diana.'