Parker
“I don’t even have a discman,” I told her, throwing a few random shirts onto my desk where I was putting everything I was planning on packing. “Do you think it gets cold in Oklahoma in summer like it does here sometimes?”
“No,” she said, rolling over onto her stomach and watching me intently as I discarded most of my long-sleeved shirts, keeping a few in there just to be safe. “You don’t have a discman?”
“Nope,” I answered, sighing as I examined the shirt with my name on it, wondering if it would be wise to bring this or if the Hansons would just think I was being sarcastic.
“Wanna borrow mine?” she asked.
“Do you want me to borrow yours?” I asked back.
“I don’t care,” she said. “It depends on you. I mean, it depends on what you like to do on a plane trip.”
I sighed.
“Theresa, I haven’t been in a plane since I was two and Gina brought me to New York for the first time,” I told her.
“You haven’t?” she said, an amused smile on her face at my apprehensiveness.
“No,” I said.
“Well, what do you like to do on long car trips? I know you went to Toronto last summer with Gina and that’s at least a four hour car trip,” she said.
I stopped in my tracks. “How do you know we went to Toronto?”
“I’m writing a book,” she said back sarcastically.
I narrowed my eyes.
“Actually, I only know that because my mother was whining about how we never go anywhere or do anything fun and how it wasn’t fair that you two got to go away for a whole week and blah blah blah,” she said, waving it off.
“Oh yeah, a whole week in a rather large city,” I said. “Absolutely no elbow room and an overloard of stimuli is so much fun that by the third day, I was begging to go home.”
“Well, thank God you’re a country boy,” she said, faking a southern accent. “You’re not much of a traveler, are you?” she observed, using her normal voice.
“Keen observation of the obvious,” I said back.
“Back to the original subject, what CDs are you going to bring?”
“Does it matter?” I asked, examining a t-shirt and then throwing it into the pile where the rest of the clothes I was bringing were.
“Yes,” she said. “Here, I’ll help you decide.”
She got off the bed and stood in front of my CD collection.
“Ew. You’ve got really bad taste in music, you know that?” she said as she surveyed the various artists I had in my collection.
“You’re only saying that because now I can’t snap back with some comment about how dumb Hanson is,” I said.
She smiled. “That too. But really, you need to get better music. I mean, Tonic and Joan Osborne?”
“Yeah. ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys?” I said back.
She snorted. “I don’t like the Backstreet Boys,” she said. “Hey, when did you get Tori Amos? I thought you said you didn’t like her.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been hanging around Beth too long,” I said, referring to Theresa’s green-haired friend who had gone with us to both Hanson concerts. She also happened to be a major Tori Amos freak. We’re talking scrapbooks and imported singles here.
“Beth has such an odd contrast in taste in music. I mean, Hanson and Tori Amos together? Does this make sense?”
“More sense than knowing that Taylor Hanson is my twin brother,” I said.
“So you wanna bring Tori?” she said, holding up the three CDs of Tori Amos’s that I owned.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, waving her away.
“Little Earthquakes, Under the Pink, or from the choirgirl hotel?” she asked. “Why don’t you have Boys for Pele?”
“Think about it. Look at the title,” I said. “And keep in mind that Pele is a volcano goddess.”
“Oh,” she said. “I see. So which one?”
“Little Earthquakes,” I said.
“Wuss,” she said, putting it in the backpack she had deemed my “carry on bag” earlier. “Now... What else? How about the Beatles?”
“Fine. Rubber Soul and Help though. Those ones are the only ones worth traveling to,” I said from inside my closet.
“I don’t know, I kind of like Revolver,” she said.
“Eh,” I said back.
“Tom Petty?” she said, pulling out one of my CDs with a little bit of laughter in her voice. “You listen to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers?”
“Yeah,” I said, seeing nothing wrong with it. “Why? What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I just thought it was kind of funny for some reason. Which one?”
“Full Moon Fever,” I said.
“What? No Damn the Torpedoes?” Gina said from the doorway.
Both Theresa and I jumped. We hadn’t noticed her standing there.
“I don’t have that one,” I said, going back to packing as if I hadn’t just been scared nearly out of my skin. “Besides, I’ve heard it and Full Moon Fever is much better.”
“Whatever,” she said. “Why are you bringing CDs? You don’t even have a discman,” she pointed out.
“I’m letting him borrow mine. I know I can never go on a long plane ride without it,” Theresa said, then turned back to the CD rack. “Matchbox 20?”
“Yeah,” I said, waving my hand carelessly, my voice beginning to let the tension I felt show.
“Parker,” Gina said, now right behind me. She put her hands on my shoulders and began rubbing them as if she were the coach and I were her star athlete. “Relax. You have a week.”
“Gee, Gina, you’re the one who keeps telling me to not wait until the last minute to pack,” I said, trying to break away from her grasp.
“Yeah, I know. But you have a week. Don’t act like someone has come to our door and told you you have five minutes to pack any belongings that you want to bring with you before they take you away forever.”
“Oh,” I said, putting down one of my shirts.
I couldn’t possibly tell Gina that that was exactly what it felt like. Partly because she would press for reasons and I just couldn’t really give any.
I guess it could be because the possibility that I wouldn’t be coming back was very real. Whether it was for a stupid reason such as the plane crashed and we all died or if it was for a more realistic reason like I wanted to stay with my brother, there was always that possibility. The one that we had avoided talking about since the countdown of how many days it was before I left had begun. How quickly thirty-five days can turn into seven...
“You should really alphabetize these, you know,” Theresa said.
Gina laughed. “Parker doesn’t alphabetize, he categorizes.”
“In what categories?” Theresa said, scrunching up her nose at one of the CDs she was holding in her hand.
“Really Cool, Okay, Kinda Bad, Really Bad, and Completely sucks,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “What category are October Project in?”
“The self-titled one is in Really Cool and the other one is in Okay,” I said. “Put the first one in there.”
“All righty,” she said, dropping it in.
“Aren’t those mine?” Gina said.
“No, I bought my own copies, remember?” I said.
“No, but I’ll trust you on that one,” she said. “Think you’re packing enough CDs? The plane ride isn’t that long,” she added
“Yeah, but I figure I don’t want to listen to the exact same CDs on the way back home as I did on the way down,” I said.
“Oh. Okay,” she said.
“How may CDs is that, anyway?” I asked Theresa.
She paused for a moment while she counted.
“Enough, probably,” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
“All right,” she replied, turning away from my CD rack. “I’ll come over and give you my discman next week.”
“Whatever,” I said, too busy examining the remaining contents of my closet and wondering if I should just say to hell with it and bring everything. But was I wasn’t that far gone. Not yet.
Next week, I repeated in my mind. Why did it have to be so close?
Everybody who thinks Parker's taste in music is too girly, please raise their hand and I'll explain. :D
Chapter Two
Chapter Four