Chapter Twenty

Parker

All I’ll say about it is that if I had my way...if the world were perfect, every household would have a dreamer’s dictionary handy for whenever someone in the house had a strange recurring dream. This way, if interpretation was needed, they would have at least some indication of what their dream meant no matter how inaccurate. Then they wouldn’t have to knock their heads against a wall trying to remember who the woman was and trying to figure out what all the elusive symbols of the dream meant. For instance, what, exactly, does it mean when you see a person put their fist through a mirror and then blow out the candle? It seemed like an awfully bad sign to me. But I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the heck it was supposed to mean and at first that worried me.

Now it was just annoying me.

I had been on a fruitless search for a dreamer’s dictionary in the Hanson’s extensive library for quite a while. Why I kept looking even after I had accepted that I wasn’t going to find anything was beyond me. I had been searching for almost the whole morning. Or the portion of the morning still left after waking up late and then spending nearly an hour in the kitchen with the Hanson family, minus my twin brother. After that everyone had sort of gone into themselves. The girls had invited me to play a game with them, so I played a few short rounds of Candy Land (losing every time, I might add) before asking the direction of the book collection. They had shown me the way and were currently sitting on the couch near the bookshelves playing a video game as I looked. And looked. And looked.

So really it was something to occupy my mind. Or to feed what was already occupying my mind. Dreams. My own and Taylor’s.

I hadn’t dared ask any questions about the latter of those two.

I was carefully examining the titles of the books in the third shelf for what must have been the tenth time when someone said from behind me,

“What’re you looking for?”

I must have jumped a mile, straightening up immediately as though I had just been caught committing some horrible crime. I had put my initial hesitance to go through someone else’s book collection in the back of my mind at the beginning of my search but I had still wondered if the Hansons would mind me doing it.

Taylor grinned at my surprise. The girls giggled from where they sat. I stuck my tongue out at them playfully before turning my attention back to Taylor, making the littler one (I can never keep them straight!) giggle even more.

“Sorry,” he said, though he didn’t look it.

“I suppose I can forgive you,” I replied, brushing the imaginary dirt off my clothes. “I was just looking over your family’s rather extensive library of books. I kept losing at Candy Land. My ego was getting bruised. I needed something else to do.”

“How do you manage to lose at Candy Land?”

“I’ve never played before,” I said, shrugging.

“You’ve never played Candy Land before?”

I shrugged again. “I was an only child.”

“And you never played board games?”

“Well, that’s not entirely true,” I said. “I had imaginary friends but they couldn’t move their gamepieces themselves, so I would always move them for them. They always got mad at me because I cheated.”

“What?” he nearly guffawed, beginning to laugh.

I smiled. “In other words, I played board games by myself. I never learned how to play the right way so when it comes to playing board games the right way, I don’t do very well.”

“I see,” he said, laughing.

“Oh don’t tell me you’ve never played a board game by yourself before,” I said.

“I can’t even imagine.”

“Liar.”

“I can’t! Look how many brothers and sisters I have. Someone always wanted to play if I did,” he said. “Personally, I can’t imagine being an only child. What did you do with your time when you were little?”

I shrugged. “I think it’s called the psychology of television.”

“You figured it out?”

“I have my theories, but mostly I just watched it. Where do you think my imaginary friends came from?” I said.

“You poory lonely soul,” he said.

“I survived,” I said.

“We’ll be sure to give you a medal before you leave,” he said.

“Uh, I’d rather this information not get out to anyone else,” I said. “I have a reputation to keep up you know.”

“I’m sure you do,” he said back. “So do you approve?”

“Of what? Candy Land?”

“No, our library.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, personally I’d be ashamed to own some of the titles you have here but I can’t say I’m displeased. Although you are slightly lacking.”

“Lacking? There’s gotta be at least three hundred books on that bookshelf alone. How are we lacking?” he asked.

“Not one dreamer’s dictionary in sight,” I said.

“Not one what?”

“Dreamer’s dictionary,” I repeated.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“You don’t know what a dreamer’s dictionary is?”

“Not exactly,” he replied.

I sighed. “I may be a poor lonely soul, but I think you’re a poor sheltered one. Anyway, a dreamer’s dictionary is basically a book where you look up things you see in dreams and they tell you what it means.”

“Sounds hokey to me,” he said.

“It kind of is,” I said. “But I’ve been having this strange dream lately and it’s beginning to bother me a little bit. I wanted to see if I couldn’t find out what it meant.”

“I see,” he said. “Well, I don’t think we have any dreamer’s dictionaries. Sorry.”

“It’s all right, I suppose,” I said. “I can probably ask Gina about it later. She has a couple good ones.”

“Into dream interpretation?”

“Majorly,” I said. “She says that’s how she knew she was making the right choice when she took me from my mother. She had a dream about it. She’s strange like that.”

“I guess so,” he said. “But it’s not really all that different from stars and horoscopes and things like that if you think about it. I know a lot of people who are into that kind of stuff.”

I nodded in acknowledgement.

“Anyway, we were just going out to the garage to practice. Thought we’d invite you to join us,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of the garage.

It took me a minute to figure out what he meant. The issue of the band hadn’t really been brought up too much since I had been there and I wasn’t really sure if it was something they discussed too much at home. Like if it was something they just chose to forget while at home. Be normal people and not three brothers in a band.

So I was rather surprised by the invitation.

“Really?” I said.

He laughed a little at my hesitation.

“Well we can’t have you snooping around our house by yourself all day can we? You might get information the tabloids would offer you good money for,” he said.

I grinned.

“Okay, yeah, sure,” I said, gesturing for him to lead the way.

“Cool,” he said. “Maybe you can even join in at some point.”

“Uh, no,” I said. “I don’t think so.

He led me into the garage where Isaac and Zac were already waiting. Zac sat at his drums, twirling his drumsticks and randomly hitting the drums every now and then. Isaac was absently tuning his guitar, a far away look on his face. Taylor gave him a funny look before walking over to a music stand in the corner. He retrieved a small black rectangular object which he promptly stuck on Isaac’s guitar. He pressed a button and a red light started flashing on the guitar tuner’s A.

“You might want to use that,” he said good-naturedly before walking over to his keyboards.

Isaac shook his head quickly and seemed to be coming back to earth. He looked down at the tuner and began truly tuning his guitar. I found a stray chair near the wall opposite the band and sat down in it.

“Hi, Parker!” Zac called from his drums like he had just noticed me there for the first time.

“Hi Zac,” I called back.

“Got any requests?” he wanted to know.

“Not ‘MMMBop’?” I suggested.

“Fine by us,” Taylor said, scratching one of his arms. The one with the scar on it. I looked away quickly, over to Isaac, who seemed to be blatantly staring at it.

Isaac finally got his guitar tuned and they began practicing. As they played, stopped, played it over, stopped again, changed something, played it that way, stopped again, played it the first way, I began to wonder at the situation. I was watching a band I had, only a few weeks before, practically despised. I remembered making gagging noises on the bus with my friend Julian every time they came on the radio. I rememberd flipping the channel every time they came on MTV. And now here I was watching them practice, in complete awe. I had never thought I’d be in a situation like that and enjoying it to some extent, even feeling some amount of pride. It was a strange feeling.

Especially knowing that the keyboard player was my brother.

It was the first time in what felt like a long time that I acknowledged the fact that the idea that my twin brother was in a famous band hadn’t completely processed.

It was probably nearly two hours into the practice session, a point at which the band was at a pause trying to figure something out, that a knock came on the door to the garage.

I looked up to see the woman named Annie from the day before standing there. I got up and opened the door for her. She smiled at me as I stepped aside to let her in.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” Taylor said from his keyboards, waving to her.

Zac waved silently from his drums.

Isaac didn’t even acknowledge her.

“Hi,” I said finally.

“What’s up?” Taylor asked.

“Not much,” she said. “I was just wondering if you guys would like to join me for lunch? My treat.”

“Lunch?” Zac said, glancing at his watch. “Oh.”

I glanced at my own watch. It was nearly two in the afternoon.

“I mean, I know it’s late,” she quickly rushed on. “So if you’ve all already eaten, that’s fine...”

“Actually, we haven’t,” Taylor told her. “And I imagine everyone else has already eaten.”

“Oh good,” she said. “I was worried that I got here too late. It was kind of an afterthought.”

“Well, I’m game. I don’t know about anybody else,” Taylor said, turning off his instrument.

“Oh are we all invited?” Zac asked, seeming surprised.

“Of course,” she said.

“Well, in that case, I can’t pass up free food. Where’re we going?”

“What’re you in the mood for?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“Then we’ll figure it out on the way,” she said. “Unless anybody else has any suggestions.”

“No fast food,” Taylor said. He turned his attention to me as he explained. “You get fast food up the wazoo on tour buses. It’s awful after a while.”

I nodded.

“What about you?” Annie asked me. “Do you want to come?”

“Sure, I guess so,” I said with a shrug.

She smiled.

“Ike? Ike!” Zac said, turning to Isaac, who was replacing his guitar in his case.

“Yes, Zac?” Isaac said, his voice slightly annoyed as he looked at his brother.

“You coming or what?” he said.

Isaac glanced at Annie. There was something cold in that glance, but he quickly lowered his eyes and when they came back up again they were nearly as blank as they had been all day.

“If everyone else is going,” he said.

“All right, then I guess we’re off to see the wizard,” Annie said. “I suppose we should, uh, tell your parents first.”

“No problem,” Taylor said.

To skip boring details, Mrs. Hanson agreed to let us go and it was probably not even ten minutes later that we were all piled into Annie’s car with me somehow ending up in the front seat with Annie and we were on our way.

Okay, I know these things piss some of you off...but how would I know that unless they worked? :)
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty-One