Money, beauty, fame, power? Not interested. I just want to get people laughing. To be able to say something, just words, that shoot into someone else’s brain making them feel nothing but happiness for just a moment…never mind the Amazing Henry—that’s true magic. And suddenly I find that someone else here shares my same love of the funny, and it’s only Leo-ruddy-Jackson!
“I didn’t know Leo did comedy,” Kas whispers.
“Shh—shut up, I want to hear!” I whisper-shout back, not taking my eyes off him.
“Oooh, I think Pig’s in luuurve,” says Chloe.
“Give up now, Pig—he’s mega popular. He’d never even speak to us,” says Kas.
“I know that! Now shut up!”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as Leo clears his throat and grasps the microphone. It’s a situation I’ve imagined myself in so many times, and yet even in my imagination I can barely hold the microphone I’m so nervous.
I feel what he must be feeling as some of the butterflies from his stomach make their way through to mine. It must take nerves of steel to stand up in front of a room of people, with no music, no props, no one else to fall back on if you forget your lines, just you, a microphone, and an audience you hope to God will find you funny. If you’re a bad singer, or magician for that matter, people will still clap at the end, but if you tell jokes and people don’t laugh, no amount of clapping can make up for that.
To be a stand-up comedian you’re basically volunteering yourself for possible total public humiliation and shame. Which is why I’m sure I’ll never have the nerve to do it.
But Leo does. And, as I watch him bravely grab the microphone, it feels like someone just scooped out my insides and replaced them with warm, energetic kittens, which is horribly unnerving yet oddly pleasing.
I’ve never met anyone else who loves comedy as much as I do. I’ve never met anyone else bonkers enough to want to put themselves through this, just to make people laugh.
It’s ridiculous, I know, but I feel in this moment that I get him, probably more than anyone else ever could, and that, if he knew me, he’d definitely get me too.
And I realize that if he’s good, if he makes me laugh, I may well fall in love with Leo Jackson right here and now.
Which, what with him being the most popular guy in school and me being, well, me, probably isn’t the best idea in the world.
Oh, please don’t be good, Leo. Please don’t be good.
CHAPTER THREE
But of course Leo is good.
More than good. Amazing.
He must be nervous, but you can hardly tell. With one hand in his pocket, he casually takes the microphone out of its stand and holds it underneath his big warm grin. It’s a smile that starts at one side and then there’s this adorable beat before the other side rises up to join it. It’s a smile accompanied by his expressive upturned eyebrows that turn it from arrogant to vulnerable and mischievous. It’s not a smile that makes you think he’s full of himself, it’s a smile that makes you think he’s full of you. It’s a smile that makes everyone in the room think it’s especially for them and them alone. It’s a smile that makes you think everything’s going to be OK. And it immediately gets the audience on his side. Of course everyone’s already on his side anyway. It is Leo after all.
He takes a deep breath and unnecessarily says, “Hi, I’m Leo.”
His friends at the back of the hall break in on cue with whoops and cheers.
He begins talking slow and low, not rushing it, not tripping up over any words and not afraid to use his arms in massive gestures to emphasize certain phrases or leave big pauses at the end of jokes which the room happily fills with laughter and cheers. I knew Leo was popular, but I just thought it was because of his looks. Where the hell did he get this comedic confidence from? And if he has any to spare can I have some?
He starts with a few one-liners, funny ones, but it’s when he gets into the anecdotal stuff that he really hits his stride.
“OK, so recently I turned sixteen…”
His friends whoop. He nods, encouraging them.
“Yeah, thanks, but I dunno, I’m not so sure it’s such a great thing. I mean, I’m not an adult yet—that’s eighteen years old, right? So instead I’m in this weird Twilight Zone between childhood and adulthood.
“I’m like a half-man, half-kid mutant. Like, I still play video games, but I’ve started to tidy up the consoles afterwards.
“I still eat Coco-Pops sandwiches, but now I’m a little bit disgusted with myself when I do.”
Oh God, he’s deliciously pathetic and self-deprecating too. If only he’d been totally up himself, then I could have shrugged it off as a lame crush, but this… Now I just wanna crawl into his school sweater with him and be his permanent hug.
The laughter’s coming thick and fast now from all around the hall.
“Wow—he’s really good!” whispers Chloe.
“Yeah, stop drooling, Pig—it’s never gonna happen!” says Kas, nudging me.
“Shut up!” I hiss, not wanting to miss a word from Leo. And also maybe wiping some drool from my chin.
“And I have some ‘rights’ now,” he continues. “Like, legally. Yeah, I was checking this stuff out online. I have a list and everything.”
He delves into his pocket and produces a scrap of paper.
“It’s exciting stuff. I mean what fifteen-year-old doesn’t desperately look forward to their next birthday when they can finally join a trade union, choose their own GP, and buy premium bonds. Rock and roll, right?”
He throws a hand in the air, then paces along the front of the stage as if it’s his natural habitat, like talking to a room full of people and trying to make them laugh is the easiest thing in the world.
“OK, so they’re mostly a bit dull, but there’s a few that are interesting, like this one—I can’t drive a car yet but legally I can pilot a glider. That’s right, I can fly an aircraft in the actual sky above people’s heads. I mean, whoever wrote that law had clearly never met a sixteen-year-old boy. ’Cause I’m guessing that to be a successful pilot—and by ‘successful’ I mean one that doesn’t crash, killing everyone in a huge fireball—I’m thinking you need to be quick-thinking, alert, and intelligent.
“Hello! Sixteen-year-old boys are the opposite of this! We’re uncoordinated, grunting, hyperactive apes! We take stupid risks—we think we know everything, but we don’t actually know anything!
“I mean, seriously, does this sound like someone who should be piloting an aircraft? PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE!”
I glance around the room as everyone explodes into more laughter. And even though I don’t know him and have had nothing to do with this I kind of feel weirdly proud of him.
“But another pretty cool, though completely mental ‘right’ I’ve got now is that when you’re sixteen you’re legally allowed to change your name—to anything, pretty much. I mean, I can just fill out a form and—boom—change my name to Handsome McSexy or Lord Massivepants or Wolverine Lovebeast. Or, just to piss off my dad, I’ve been thinking of changing my name to like the whitest name I can come up with. My dad’s a very proud black man, and I’d just love to see the look on his face when I tell him I’ve changed my name to Horace Ponsonby-Smythe.”