Taylor Hanson
The first of which was,
“Where have you been?”
I looked at Isaac blankly as if it were the first time I had ever seen him in my whole life. Like he was a stranger. It almost felt like he was a stranger. It’s the weirdest feeling when you feel like the guy you’ve called your brother for a good twelve years of your life is a stranger and the woman who introduced herself to you as your mother not all that long ago like you had known her all your life.
“I...,” I began but trailed off, thinking about my answer. “I got caught up in some thing,” I finished, waving my hand carelessly which was supposed to look normal and casual but ended up looking rather mechanic as I saw in the mirror behind where Isaac was sitting.
“What thing?” he asked me as I walked over to where our street clothes from before were hanging and took down the shirt I had been wearing and a pair of pants.
I pretended not to hear him, but he persisted.
“What thing?” he said a little more insistently. I could tell from the sound of his voice that I was beginning to freak him out. Now that I think back on it, I would’ve felt just the same way if he had come into the room acting the way I was.
I stared down at the shirt I was holding, realizing suddenly that it was Parker’s. It was one from a local baseball game he had gone to, the Rochester Red Wings versus the Toledo Mud Hens, the shirt advertising the Red Wings, of course. He had let me borrow it in an attempt at making me look more like a local so that it would be harder to figure out who I was. I smiled a bit sadly at the muscled rooster-esque bird holding a bat behind its head, the team’s logo.
“Looks like I forgot to give this back to Parker,” I said, sighing.
“I doubt he’ll miss it all that much. Just give it back to him when he comes down this summer,” Isaac said. I was relieved that I had distracted him momentarily from the subject at hand.
“You’d, um, better get dressed before Dad comes in here and has a cow about how our flight leaves in an hour,” Zac pointed out in a rather subdued voice. Kind of odd for him after a performance.
“Yeah,” I said.
I walked into the little room off of the dressing room that was supposed to be something of a bathroom to get dressed in.
In the room, I somberly stared at myself in the mirror for a moment. I thought, as I stared back at the person staring at me from the glass, about what I was about to do. And how it would affect everyone. I didn’t once think that I was making the wrong decision. I felt, for once, like I knew what I was doing. Like, as the song goes, the rain was gone and I could see clearly for the first time in a long time.
After a few minutes, I began getting dressed, pulling off all of the tight stage clothes and replacing them with the much looser, much more comfortable street clothes. When I was finished, I looked in the mirror again and saw Parker staring back at me. I smiled at myself sarcastically and, seeing it reflected in the mirror, began to freak myself out.
Suddenly, a soft knock came on the door and from a distance behind it, I heard Isaac saying something along the lines of, “Zac, what’re you dong?”
I jumped at the sound, memories flashing through my mind which I quickly banished and hesitantly answered, “Come in.”
Zac quietly opened the door and walked in, closing the door softly as if he thought that if he did anything too loudly, all the things in the room(which consisted of a sink, a mirror, a toilet, and me) would break into a million pieces.
“Tay?” he said in the same subdued voice he had used earlier. “I have to talk to you.”
I raised my eyebrows and leaned against the sink, making a gesture for him to go on, thinking it would only be one of those “Is this normal?” questions that I used to ask Isaac at that age.
“I know,” he said, slowly.
I looked at him with confusion, honestly bewildered.
“You know about what?” I asked.
“I know about your mother,” he said. “And I know that she was in the audience. I saw her when we were bowing. And I know that you invited her backstage.”
My eyes went wide with shock and I nearly fell over from his words.
“How?” I said.
“Isaac told me about how he came into the room when Mom and Dad and your mother, Annie, were fighting and I kind of figured it out. I, um, when we left the stage, I turned around to see where you were and you were still on stage. I saw you talking to her and all that.” It would be a long time before he mentioned that he had actually spoken with her.
I nodded.
“And...?” I said, knowing that there was more to this.
“And I think I know what you’re going to say,” he said. “And I just want to let you know that...”
He didn’t have a chance to finish for, from behind the bathroom door, we heard a loud knock on the door leading to the dressing room. I gave Zac a look and he nodded, gesturing for me to go ahead but obviously disappointed that he didn’t get to say what he was going to say.
I hesitantly left the tiny room in time to see Isaac putting his hand on the doorknob. I ran, practically shoving him out of the way so that I could open the door myself. I put my hand on the knob, opened the door slightly and peeked out to see my parents standing there expectantly with our younger brother and sisters.
“Oh, hey,” I said, opening the door the rest of the way.
“You were expecting maybe Jennifer Aniston?” Isaac said sarcastically.
I glared at him.
“First of all, I do not have a crush on Jennifer Aniston,” I said.
“Anymore,” he added for me.
“Anymore,” I repeated.
“And second of all?” he prodded me.
“And second of all...,” I began but trailed off realizing I didn’t have a second of all.
“Zac are feeling okay?” my father asked as Zac re-entered the room from the bathroom. We all looked to him. His expression was extremely downcast. Not the normal tired downcast like it usually is after shows, but the sad kind of downcast.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. His voice was barely above a whisper.
“Are you sure?” my mother asked, walking over to him.
“What is there some weird bug going around or what?” Isaac said. “I mean, Taylor was acting funny before the show and now Zac’s acting funny...”
I watched as my mother put her hand on Zac’s forehead. My father shut the door behind us so that no prying tabloid-writer eyes could see this and make some stupid story out of it.
“I’m fine,” he said, taking her hand away. “Just tired.”
My father nodded.
“I think we all are. Personally, I can’t wait to get back home and into my own bed,” he said.
We all nodded absently, our attention on Zac.
“How’s your arm, Tay?” Isaac asked out of the blue. “You were kind of slowing down there a little bit.”
I shrugged. “It’s fine,” I said. “It was aching a little bit before but it’s not anymore,” I lied, knowing that that definitely wasn’t the reason I had slowed down during one of the shows.
“I vote that we leave this place before something bad happens to the rest of us,” my father said, gesturing toward the door. “Personally, I’m beginning to think that there’s something in the water here...” he said conspiratorially.
Everyone chuckled.
Our chuckles were interrupted by a soft knock on the door. My heart skipped a beat. When it started to beat again, it accelerated up to a speed that was probably inhuman.
My father opened the door.
“Yesssss...oh,” he said, seeing who it was. “What’re you doing here?” he asked coldly. He was standing in the crack he had opened in the door so that none of the rest of us could see who it was.
“I, um, just came to return this,” Annie’s voice said.
“Oh no,” my mother mumbled.
My father took whatever it was she was holding out and handed it back to me without looking at it. I absently turned the backstage pass around in my hands.
“Thank you,” he said with no emotion. “Good-bye.”
He began closing the door but she stopped him.
“Taylor said that he, um, wanted to talk to me?” she said like it was a question instead of a statement. I could hear in her voice that she was nervous. I didn’t know why she wouldn’t be.
“Did he?” my father asked as if I weren’t standing right there.
“Dad, please...,” I said quietly, putting a hand on his shoulder.
He looked back at me, his eyes narrowed with anger. I thought he was going to close and lock the door but, instead, he opened it the rest of the way to reveal Annie standing there, her Hanson t-shirt long replaced by the one she must have been wearing before. I guessed that Lawrence was somewhere holding it for her since she didn’t seem to have it with her. She was fidgeting nervously.
“Hi,” she said, giving a small wave.
No one spoke or moved. After a long moment, she cleared her throat. I looked down to my feet, not knowing how to say what I wanted to say.
“Should I...”
“Yes, come in,” my father said coldly, pulling her in rather harshly before closing the door. “Taylor, do you mind explaining what all this is about?”
I cleared my throat, still not sure how to put what I wanted to say in words. I looked around the room. Isaac looked completely bewildered, my mother wasn’t looking at me, my younger siblings who were old enough to know what was going on looked up at Annie curiously, Zac looked away when I tried to meet his eyes. Yes, he did seem to know what I wanted to say.
“Well?” my father said impatiently. “Taylor, we have a plane to catch. Get it over with.”
I looked back down at my shoes.
Annie stepped up to me shyly. She layed one of her hands on my shoulder.
“What is it?” she said softly to me.
“I....,” I started, but didn’t finish.
“You....?” my father prodded me.
“This is so hard to say,” I said. I cleared my throat again.
“Wait,” Isaac said. “What’s going on?”
I looked up to see my mother look at him sympathetically.
“I’m Taylor’s mother,” she said.
Isaac’s eyes widened and then went back to their normal size with understanding. It was obvious that he, too, knew what I was going to say.
“I...,” I began again, trying my damndest to get this out. “I want to go home,” I said finally, taking a deep breath before looking back up from my shoes to see what everyone’s reaction to my words were.
Annie dropped her hand from my shoulder. Other than that the reaction was one of confusion and bewilderment.
“We’re....going home, honey,” my mother said slowly.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “You don’t understand. I want to go home.”
