Four days later, Mom and I were in the airport. I was stoked to say the least. I had my headphones on and was listening to Green Day. I usually don’t like planes, but I was so excited that I didn’t care. The plane ride was long, but I listened to my headphones and watched the in-flight movie.
It was one of the best moments of my life when I stepped off the plane into Newark airport. I breathed in deep. “Now this is what I call air,” I said.
Mom laughed. We went to a little place in the airport to eat some bagels. “These are bagels,” Mom said, biting into the warmness.
“Yea,” I sighed in delight.
We left the airport with my aunt, who we met in the parking lot. She drove us to her house where we ate lunch. Then, mom and I went into the city in my uncle’s car to enjoy the familiar sights and sounds. She drove me to Daddy’s house. I pressed the button of the intercom that led to his apartment.
“Yea?” he called.
“Hi, this is the meter man,” I laughed.
“Tayler!” he laughed, “I’ll be right down.” Mom gave me my suitcases and told me she’d be back in the morning to take me to meet the Hansons.
Daddy came down and hugged me. “Hey, Tayler, how’ve you been?” He asked.
“Okies,” I smiled.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
“Um, well, I want to go to Rockefeller Center, Radio City, um... the Park, and Karava’s for dinner.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he said.
“Can we take my friends somewhere tomorrow?” I asked.
“Janelle?”
“No, um, do you remember those three friends of mine when we used to live in Oklahoma, you went to high school with their parents?”
“Yea, Walker and Diana,” he replied.
“Yea well, their sons and I are friends. You know, they’re famous and stuff, and so we’re gonna hang out tomorrow and other days during the week,” I explained.
“I don’t know if it’s that good of an idea to go out someplace, Tay,” he said, “because you know, if they’re ‘famous’ then there could be all that legal crap, and you know...”
“Screaming girls?”
“Yea.”
“I’ve already had an encounter with them, it’s scary,” I laughed, remembering.
“I have to go to work tomorrow, and so you can have them over here for a while if you’d like,” he suggested.
“Okay, I guess,” I shrugged. I was thinking to myself, “Maybe I can hijack one of their body guards and we can go to Central Park...”
So Daddy and I went to see the tree in Rockefeller Center, we took the subway to the Village. We went into Pacific Sunwear and the PostWar shop, which is an awesome little shop that sells old clothes. We went to Karava’s, a Greek restaurant and got mozzerella sticks and chicken souvlaki. Then we went to Hagen Daas, and finally we went home and watched some movies on HBO. I slept on the fold-out bed in the living room.
The next morning my dad woke me up when he went to work. I made myself a bowl of Lucky Charms and I watched some talk shows. Mom came to pick me up at around nine. We got to the airport and hung around the gate for a while.
“I was thinking, Tay,” Mom said as we sat there.
“Whoa, I hope you didn’t hurt youself,” I laughed.
She rolled her eyes, “Maybe, if you would like to earn some baby-sitting money...”
“What, Mom,” I asked. What exactly was she going to make me do?
“Well, I thought it would be nice for Walker, Diana, and I to go out for a drink one night this week,” she paused, “And you could baby-sit their kids.”
“But why can’t Ike do it?” I wondered.
“Oh, I mean with Ike, Tay, and Zac,” she said.
“But I’ve done that before,” I said.
“Yea, but I mean for the whole night, like, maybe in their hotel. You could sleep in with Jessie and Avie.”
“Sure, whatever,” but then I added, “And I’d get paid?”
“Just like, ten bucks.”
“Whatever.”
We talked a little more. In not too long, the whole clan of kids emerged from the gate. Mom stood up and went to help Diana juggle Zoe in her baby seat while Walker chased Mack.
“Hi guys,” I said, getting up from my seat.
“Hey, Robinson,” they said in unison.
“Guess what!” Zac screamed.
“Chicken butt?” I laughed.
“Nope. We have a concert tomorrow night, and you can come!” he said in a great flourish.
Ike smacked him in the back of the head with a backpack he had dangling from his arm. “I thought we were going to surprise her, you idiot.”
“It’s okay,” I smiled. “It’ll be cool.”
“So, can you do stuff today?” Tay asked, putting a coloring book in Avie’s bookbag for her and zipping it up.
“Yea, my dad’s at work and he said we can hang out in his apartment. He said it wouldn’t be too smart to go out because of...”
“The Scream Squad,” Zac interrupted.
“Yea them,” I said.
“No, I mean, I think they’re coming,” Zac pointed to a group of waving girls that you could see through the doors. They looked to be moving in our general direction.
“Dad,” Ike called.
“Van’ll be here in a minute,” he said, unabashedly.
“Okay, it better,” Diana said, trying to hush the wailing Zoe.
A really large van pulled up in front of the airport and the whole family piled into it, including me and my mom. The girls were banging on the windows and waving and screaming and stuff. The driver pulled away.
“What about my car?” Mom asked as we were about to go onto the higway.
“Take a taxi back,” I said.
“We can turn around,” Diana said from the front seat.
“Yea, we’ll do that, it’ll help to lose the fans, because I think some are following us,” Ike waved out the back window.
“Mom, can you just take us to Daddy’s?” I asked.
“Yea, Di, do you want me to take the boys to her father’s house, where they were planning to go anyway?” Mom asked.
“All right,” but call us guys so you can get back to the hotel.
“My dad can bring them, or something,” I said.
After we’d doing nothing for a litle bit, I finally asked, “In how much trouble would you get if we went someplace?”
“Do you consider getting eaten alive by a teeny bopper trouble?” Tay asked.
“Let’s ride the elevator!” Zac leapt off the couch where he’d been sitting.
“Okay, but we can’t stop at the ground or the tenth floors,” I said, “Because they have little elevator guards and they’ve yelled at me more than once.”
So, we all piled into the elevator. Zac pressed all the buttons at once. “Great, you genius, now we’re going to stop at every floor,” I whined.
“Yay!” he laughed.
After he’d done that about four more times, everyone but him was sitting on the floor. “Wow, this is great fun,” Ike said, yawning.
“What hotel are you guys staying at?” I asked.
“Hilton,” was Tay’s reply.
“That hotel has a great elevator, but it also has a bellboy that works the buttons,” I explained.
“I’m so BORED!” I wailed.
“We can always go back to the hotel and bother room service,” Tay smirked in Zac’s direction.
“Yea!” Zac laughed, remembering some prank, I’m sure, “Do Hiltons have tampons?”
“I’m not even going anywhere with that one,” I raised my eyebrow.
“Yea, let’s go back to the hotel,” Ike stood up and brushed himself off.
I pressed the button that led us back to Daddy’s floor so that I could get my shoes and a jacket (it’s considerably more cold in NYC than Oklahoma).
“Well, should we take a cab, the train, a bus, or what?” I asked, zipping my coat. “The train is the cheapest, a cab is the most direct, and the bus is the cleanest.”
“Let’s take a cab,” Ike suggested.
“Boring,” I muttered.
“Yea, but I’d rather be bored than dead,” Tay said.
“I don’t have any money,” I complained, getting the key to the front door from the basket where Daddy kept the extra set.
“I do,” Ike said, whipping out a wad of cash.
“I’m hungry,” Zac whined.
“Here,” I threw an apple at him, but he missed it and it rolled into the living room. “Real slick, Zacky,” I said as I chased after it.
“When aren’t you hungry?” Tay rolled his eyes.
“Never,” Zac shrugged.
“Let’s go,” I put the apple in my pocket.
We went outside. While I looked around for a cab, Zac tried to weasel hot dog money out of Ike.
“Come on guys,” I called as a cab pulled up to the curb. Ike placed his money back in his pocket. Zac walked to the car with a highly unsatisfied look about him. We told the cabbie where to go. Fifteen minutes and twenty bucks later, we stood in front of the Hilton.
“I think he ripped us off,” Ike said in disgust as the cab drove away.
“Rookie,” I murmured and shrugged.
We entered the lobby of the hotel. “What room are we in, Ike?” Tay asked.
Ike took a card-key out of his wallet and began to examine it. “Umm...”
“Well?” Zac asked, attempting to look over Ike’s shoulder.
“I can’t find it,” he turned the card over and examined the other side.
“Why don’t we just go from room to room and try it?” I asked sarcastically, taking the key from Ike and pointing to the spot where “213” was written in plain letters.
“I was just testing you,” Ike grabbed the card back fom me.
We stepped into the elevator. “What floor is room 213 on?” Ike asked the bellboy.
“Third,” the bellboy replied.
We all stood in the corner, just looking at the walls. Zac, who was standing next to me, nudged me. He nodded slightly toward the bellboy, who was... kind of... well, staring at me. I smiled at him.
“So, Zac,” I turned toward him, “Are you still hungry?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Here,” I removed the apple from my pocket. I glanced over at the bellboy.
“Didn’t this fall on the floor?” he asked.
“Yea,” I smiled at the bellboy.
“And you expect me to eat it?”
The elevator stopped. I was the last one off. I took one last glimps off the bellboy and nodded my head at him as the doors closed.
“Did you see that?” Tay said as soon as the doors closed.
“What?” Ike asked.
“That guy was totally checking Robinson out,” Tay motioned toward the elevator.
“Yea, he was,” Zac laughed as we began to walk down the hallway toward room 213.
“I didn’t notice,” I said innocently.
“Yea, right,” Tay exclaimed sardonically.
“You weren’t the least bit obvious, Robinson,” Zac said sarcastically as Ike unlocked the door.
“I don’t know what you guys are talking about,” I said as I sprawled out on one of the beds.
“You know you kept him going,” Tay chided.
Ike opened the door that connected the room next to us. It belonged to their parents, “Dad, we’re home,” he said. Their dad rolled over in the bed he was sleeping on.
“So, what do you want to do?” I asked, rolling over onto my stomach and spread my whole body over the bed.
“Eat!” Zac picked up the phone and pressed the button that called room serivce.
“Can I have, um, a cheeseburger, fries...” he paused to look aroung the room.
“Me too,” Tay whispered.
“Yea, make that two cheeseburgers and two fries...” he looked at me and Ike.
“Cheeseburger and onion rings,” Ike muttered.
“Make that three cheeseburgers, two fries, and onion rings...” Zac looked in my direction.
“Chicken Caesar salad,” I mumbled, turning my face into the pillow.
“And a chicken Caesar salad, and four pieces of the triple fudge ice cream cake,” Zac finally finished. “Room 213.” He hung up.
“And after we eat, what will we do?” Ike asked.
“Let’s go swimming,” I suggested.
“You don’t have a bathing suit,” Ike (the voice of reason) pointed out.
“I can borrow one from your family,” I shrugged.
“There’s a spa downstairs, too,” Tay recommended.
“That’s cool, we can get pampered,” I chuckled lightly.
“Yea, mudbaths, great,” Zac said, quite unenthusiastically.
“I’ve never had one, it looks fun,” I smiled.
“Yea, sure,” he sad skeptically.
I tried to persuade him for a little while longer, using convincing words like “revitalizing” and “rejuvenating” and “moisturizing,” but he just complained that I sounded like an infomercial. Then there was a knock on the door and the food came. We ate hungrily. My salad was pretty good, except for some pieces of dried out lettuce. The cake Zac had ordered was really good, too.
“Now, let’s go swimming!” Zac yelled, hyper already from the chocolate.
“I need a bathing suit,” I said, sipping some water.
Ike led me into the other room, “Mom, do you have a bathing suit that Robinson could borrow?”
She looked at me intently for a second and then shook her head, “Well, something of mine will be much too large, but I think you just might fit into some of Jessie’s stuff. A lot of her stuff is baggy.” She sifted through a suitcase and withdrew a black tank top with little spaghetti-type straps and a pair of blue and white drawstring board shorts.
I was hesitant because it looked too small, but when I tried it on, it actually looked really cool. The tank top came above my belly button and the shorts were really, really short. I looked like one of those chic bathing suits with boy shorts.
When I emerged from the bathroom, Mrs. Hanson said, “Do you feel comfortable? It looks all right.”
“Yea, it’s okay, it’ll have to do I guess,” I shrugged. Suddenly, I became very aware of the way I looked. I mean, I liked the way it looked but it was a little bit... little. I knocked on the door to enter back into Ike, Tay, and Zac’s room.
“Come in,” someone said.
I opened the door. “Ta da!” I sad, throwing my arms out to my sides. I knew that the less I acted like I wasn’t wearing their sister’s skin tight clothes, the less of a reaction I was going to get. “How does it look?” I asked.
“You bring it out more than Jessie does,” Tay said.
I raised my eyebrow at him.
“Wait...” he said, realizing what he said, “I meant... um...”
“Just do yourself a favor and shut up, Tay,” I said, shaking my head.
“Okay.” He shut his mouth and blushed.
