FABLE

Chapter Twelve

As we pull into the stadium parking lot, I realize that the screaming is coming from a huge crowd of girls hanging around outside.

Zee, Grace, Jamie and everyone else who has a ticket will be inside by now.

These are the fans who didn't get concert tickets in time.

Most of them are standing around waving signs that read "FABLE FOREVER" OR "ENFABLER4LIFE", singing, screaming, showing their support even though they won't get to see the actual show.

When Fable first started getting popular, their fans were mostly teenaged girls. The press were quick to label them as a boy band, even though they play their own instruments, and their sound is closer to rock than pop. As they started winning awards and earning respect, the press changed their tune. They were the band that "brought rock back". The cherry on top was when David Bowie, dressed head-to-toe in his Jareth costume from Labyrinth, joined the boys onstage during a performance of Deja Vu at Central Park. After that, they were the media's darlings. Rolling Stone called them the modern Beatles, and said that the past three years will probably go down in music history as the Fablemania years.

As I watch the mass of crying, wailing girls gathered around outside the stadium, I realise why it is that for every die-hard Fable fan, there's also someone who hates them with a passion. Some of the girls look like they're having a heart attack, or like they're in a religious frenzy. And all the ear-splitting screaming.

A pack of girls near the front of the crowd in matching black dresses seems to be making the most noise of all. They're pointing at something in our direction. One starts sprinting, and a moment later the whole crowd is surging towards the limo.

"They've spotted us," Felix says. "Move away from the window".

"But how do they know -" I begin.

I shift over to the middle of the seat just as a dark-haired girl slams into the glass. Her friends are pushing her from behind, and her whole face is squashed flat against my window, while her eyes dart around excitedly trying to see inside.

Within seconds the limo comes to a standstill, totally surrounded. Girls are crowded around every window, their faces and hands pressed against the glass.

More and more fans crowd around us, until there's nothing to be seen but a solid wall of Fable t-shirts, phones and body parts.

Girls are piling up against the limo. I wonder if the windows will hold under the weight of so many bodies, or if the glass will suddenly burst into a million shards.

For just a moment, the screams and the glass and the chaos all jumble into one, and I remember.

Something dark and ugly surfaces in my mind.

Something I'd managed to keep buried - until now.

My best friend lying at the bottom of the bus with a halo of blood fanning out into the saltwater. A boy splayed out next to Mia with a shard of broken glass through his eye socket, whimpering and crying for his mother. Terrified screaming as we sink deeper and deeper.

I'd somehow blocked out the exact details of the scene for the past two years, and the regained memory blossoms inside my mind like a poisonous flower.

Dead dead dead all dead.

A shiver runs down my spine, and I feel cold all over, like I've been plunged into icy water. My chest tightens. I can feel my heart beating out of control, surely faster than a heart should be able to go. I can't breathe.

Just before I fall over the edge, I realize that I'm going into full-blown panic attack mode.

That's when the crowd suddenly pulls away from the car. Men in black suits, probably security guards from the Rose Plaza, are moving the girls back. The limo starts moving again.