“Hello?” He answered quietly, trying not to wake the little next to him up. He hung up a second later. “Wake up call.”
“Damn... why this early?”
“We have to go check out the school.”
“You have got to be kidding me. None of the kids who go to that school are even up yet.”
Nick laughed at her. “I know... and no one said that I was actually going to get up. Kevin can come get me up when it’s really time to get ready.”
Megan saw where this was heading. “Oh no he will not. If you comes banging on that door and wakes Leigha up, you’re gonna be in deep crap, Mr. Carter.”
“Ok... I’ll get up...” Nick rolled him self out of the double bed that, once again, all three of them were sleeping in.
An hour both he and Megan had taken showers and Megan was getting ready to get Leigha up. “I’ve gotta go... but we’ll meet you at the school around 2. Is that OK?”
Megan nodded and gave him a kiss good bye before turning back to the sleeping girl. “OK, Leigha... we’re going shopping today!”
Leigha tugged on Megan’s pants. They were in the kid’s section of Meier and Frank, picking out some new outfits for Leigha. Megan looked down at the girl. “What is it, Leigh?” The girl pointed at a light blue dress that had caught her eye. “You like that one?” She nodded. Megan pulled it off of the rack in Leigha’s size. Megan looked over her shoulder. Frankie was leaning against one of the pillars. They hadn’t managed to get rid of him like they had when visiting Nancy.
Together they went over to the dressing rooms, taking all the outfits that Leigha had picked out. Ten minutes later they came out with the dress, two pairs of shorts, a pair of overalls, and bunch of T-shirts. They grabbed a few pairs of socks, some underwear and decided that they were going to go to Afterthoughts to get some hair things.
They put everything on the counter. Ten minutes later they were walking out of the store, Frankie carrying three bags full of clothes. They then made their way to the Afterthoughts and picked out a few things. Soon it was time for them to go meet the Boys at Megan’s old high school. They hopped on the bus again and made their way to Woodrow Wilson High School.
“Hey, have you seen Meg and Leigha?” Nick asked Brian, as they were lead to the auditorium.
“Not yet. But they should be here any minute.” That didn’t seem to help at all so her tried again. “Nick, they went out shopping. Megs knows this place better then she does Ruskin, and they have Frankie with them.”
“I know, it’s just that... I don’t know... it’s like we’re being watched all the time. It’s creepy. I just don’t want anything to happen to her.”
“I know you don’t, but you aren’t always going to be right there for her.”
‘That’s the thing... I promised her that I would be.’ Nick thought to himself. “Well, I guess they have to be here soon.”
“And who knows, she might be here already. She does have a lot of friends that still go to school here. She is only a Junior.”
Just as the words were out of Brian’s mouth there was a commotion down the hall. A group of girls had formed and was walking up the stairs. Once they were on the main floor a small girl broke through the crowd holding onto another girl’s hand and a rather large black man was right behind them. They were there. Leigha caught sight of Nick and Brian just as they were about to walk into the auditorium and started in a dead run towards the two guys. Megan laughed at her and started tried to talk to her friends, who had been hanging outside of the school while waiting for friends who had last period classes.
“Meg, we gotta go. You need to talk to a lady about the guys and a bunch of other stuff. I’m sure that if all of your friends came to the show you’d be able to talk them.” Frankie tried to guide Megan out of the cluster of 16 and 17 year olds while still holding on the bags from the mall, to no avail.
By then Leigha had made it all the way down the hall and was giving both Nick and Brian hugs. A few minutes later, after convincing her friends to go to the show that night, Megan, with Frankie in toe, was doing the same. “So how’d the meeting go?” She asked of the meeting with Johnny and Donna they had been in for the past few hours in preparation for the show they were doing that night.
“It was OK. We’ve pretty much got everything under control. We need to meet with the principle and the choir teacher, but it looks like a few of the choir students are going to be doing the stage set up and stuff like that. All we really need to worry about it the music.” Nick smiled.
Megan kissed him on the cheek and the five of them walked into the auditorium. They walked down the aisle, down to the front row, where AJ, Kevin and Howie were all seated. Frankie dumped the bags in one of the chairs and went to go find something to drink. Megan sat Leigha down in a seat and sat right next to her. Everyone talked amongst themselves until the principle, Mr. Hryciw and the choir director, Ms. Thampson came into the room.
“Hello. I’m Mike Hryciw. This is Becky Thampson.”
The guys looked at each other for a second. “Hi, we’re the Backstreet Boys.”
“I’m Brian.”
“I’m Howie.”
“I’m AJ.”
“I’m Kevin.
“And I’m Nick.”
Mr. Hryciw and Ms. Thampson looked impressed with the group and smiled. “We’d both like to welcome you five gentlemen to Wilson, and welcome Ms. Bradford back. We all heard about your loss and we are all extremely sorry.”
‘Why did he have to bring that up?’ Megan thought to herself. “Thank you, but we are here to talk about these guys and there music. I’m warning you now, you have future superstars on your hands.”
“Will you shut up Megan.... Jeez... you sell a few thousand records in Germany and win a few awards on the MTV Europe Music Awards and suddenly you’re a superstar.” Brian teased.
“Wow... you boys are quite accomplished for such young men.” Ms. Thampson observed.
“Ms. Thampson, these are the guys that I was telling you about last year before I went to Florida. My best friend and my older brothers. Well, not really but close enough. Anyway, their...um... mentor was going to have them do a show at the Crystal Ball Room, and considering that Nick and AJ aren’t old enough to get into that place I thought that it would be better if they did a show where people who would like their music would be able to come easily. And Wilson just happened to be on the top of that list.”
“Well, Megan, we are glad that you chose us. I’ve heard a lot of great things about you guys and I think that this will be good for the school.” Mr. Hryciw smiled. “Anything that you need, we will do our best to get you. Classes get out in a few minutes and then we will have some students that will be able to help you with anything you need help with.”
They all thanked him and went to work. Megan sat Leigha down in the front row so she could watch everything that was going on around her.
The sound team started working to get the equipment up. It wouldn’t be long until the Boys would have to take the stage and do sound check.
Ms. Thampson surprised Megan by coming over and sitting on the other side of her. “So, how are things going in your life?”
“They are pretty good. It’s been a hard few months, but I guess that everything turned out for the best.”
“Yeah, none of us could believe when we heard what had happened. I’m glad that the press didn’t bother you about it though, it must have been very hard thing to go through. Especially both of your parents in the same night.”
“Well, I had my friends there for me. They held me up, even when I didn’t want them to. And I was never really close to my parents. They were always working. It was always my friends and their families who helped me with everything. But it was still hard to realized that I had no one in the world that I was related to by blood.”
Becky Thampson watched the young girl for a few minutes. She had worked with her a few times, and a great majority of her friends were always in the choir room so they knew each other pretty well. What she had gone through no one would wish on their worst enemy, loosing both of her parents at once, in two very different, but equally tragic ways. She watched the girl as she watched all of the activity around her. Her eyes were following someone around the space in front of them. Becky followed the line of Megan’s vision and smiled when her eyes landed on the tall blond boy who had been standing next to her only a few minutes before.
“He someone special?”
“You could say that. Before you know it, his face will be plastered on locker doors in these halls, and you’ll be hearing his name every time you walk down the hall. It may happen tomorrow or it may happen next year, but it will happen. You’ll see.”
Ms. Thampson smiled. “Is he someone special to you?”
“He’s my best friend. That’s the most special thing there is about him. He always has been.”
“Well, don’t let him go, he’s definitely a keeper.” With that Becky Thampson checked her watch, got up, gave Megan a pat on the shoulder, and left the auditorium.
The room was abuzz with conversation. There were people packed into the relatively small space, wanting to get a glimpse of what everyone had been talking about that day.
Megan looked at her watch. It was 5:30, time to start the show. Mr. Hryciw grabbed one of the microphones off of the sound center and walked onto the stage. “OK, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to calm down for a few minutes. I’m not going to be introducing our visitors tonight. I would like to introduce to you someone you all know, and someone who knows this group a lot better then I do. Megan Bradford.”
All of Megan’s friends started yelling and Megan couldn’t help but smile as she took the microphone from the principal. “Thank you. Trace, Suz, Anna... you can all shut up now... thank you. OK, I am here to introduce some very good friends of mine, but before I do that I would just like to say a huge thank you to all of my friends here. You have all been terrific in light of what happened with my parents a few months ago. It means a lot to me that you all still think of me and I just wanted to say thanks. I could feel all of your love 3000 miles away from here.
“But... now on with the real reason that you are all here. These five guys are pretty popular in Europe already, and believe it or not they were suppose to be playing the Crystal Ball Room tonight, but I decided that this was a much better place for them. Friends, I give you the Backstreet Boys.”
She got off the stage as quickly as possible and sat in her seat on the side of the stage. A second later the curtain went up and the boys were singing. It took a total of about 10 seconds for half of the audience to get out of their seats. The show went very well and by the end everyone was getting into the music.
It was down to the last two songs of the show. Nick stepped forward with a microphone in hand. “Hey everyone, I’m Nick Carter. I’d like to dedicate this next song to my best friend in the whole world, Meg. She has been through a lot in the past year, and well, Meg I just want you to know that I’ll never break your heart, ever.” The rest of the guys are took their cue and soon they were singing one of her favorite songs. The last song they sang was ‘Quit Playin’ Games’ and amazingly every person in the room sang along with them.
It was over almost before it started, but they were on stage for an hour and a half, just singing random songs from their first albums. It was 7:00 when the show was over.
“Oh my god! That was incredible!” Suzie Pinkerton exclaimed running up to her longtime friend. “I can’t believe that you were hiding them all that time!”
Megan laughed at her. “I wasn’t hiding them. They were doing stuff in Europe. Can’t you believe that they were suppose to play the Ball Room? Two of them aren’t even legally old enough to get into that place. How dumb is that?”
“Pretty dumb.” Megan talked to a bunch of her friends from the school while the guys got ready to go. It wasn’t long before Nick and the rest of the guys walked over to her and started talking to the girls as well. They had to wait for everything to be taken down. An hour later most of the people has left and Nancy, made her way over to the group of young people.
“You boys did a great job!” She complimented them.
“Thank you.” They all replied in unison. They were getting almost to good at that.
“Well, Nancy, what do you think about tomorrow for dinner?” Megan asked.
“That sounds good to me.”
“OK... and I was wondering if I could drop Leigha over at your house for the day tomorrow. I need to go up to the house and take a look around, and I think that it’s something that I need to do by myself.”
When he heard this, Nick shot her an ’I don’t think you are going anywhere near that house by yourself!’ look, but didn’t say anything. “That sounds fine to me. We’ll have lots of fun.” Nancy smiled at the little girl. They all talked for a few more minutes before everything was finally ready for them to leave. “Well, I enjoyed the show a lot and I will be seeing you all very soon.” Nancy said goodbye to everyone and went out to find her car.
Megan and the Boys said goodbye to her remaining friends and headed out to the vans that were waiting to take them back the hotel.
Forty-five minutes later Leigha was in bed and Megan was getting ready to watch some TV. Nick walked out of the bathroom from taking a shower and grabbed the remote before she could pick it up from the bedstand. “Meg, we need to talk.”
She didn’t like the sound of this. “Ok... what do we need to talk about?”
He fumbled with the seam of his sweats for a minute before looking her in eye. “I don’t want you to go back to your dad’s house by yourself.”
“Nick, this is something that I need to do. I really don’t want to have someone looking over my shoulder while I go through all of my memories”
“Please, Meg. I’m not saying that you need to have Frankie tail you all day. I’m saying that I want to go with you. We don’t even need to bring security with us, I know that this is extremely private for you, but please. I would feel a lot better if I was with you.”
Megan looked at him. ‘Damn those eyes.’ She thought to herself as she tried to ignore the pleading look on his face and stand her ground. “Nick... “ There was no point in arguing with him. He always won, all he had to do was give her that look... “OK... you can come with me, but no security. I don’t want Frankie going through all of the stuff in the house because he’s bored.”
Nick smiled. He wanted to be there for her in case she got upset, but he also wanted to spend some time with her alone. They hadn’t done that in a while and he missed it. “Thank you.” He leaned over the sleeping girl and kissed Megan on the forehead. They both got into bed and watched TV for a while before deciding that they should probably go to sleep.
It looked like they were in for a long day....
“Thanks for watching her. I just don’t think that bringing her with me would be a very good idea.”
“I understand compeletly. Now go.” Nancy took hold of Leigha’s hand and lightly shoved Megan out the door.
“See you later!” Megan called, before running out to the car, where Nick was waiting for her. She hopped into the passangers seat and let out all of her breath.
“You ready to do this?”
“About as ready as I’ll ever be.” She looked at him.
“OK, lets go.” Nick put the car into motion and ten minutes later they were parked in front of her house. It was her house. Her father had left everything he owned to her. Both her parents had. She left out another deep breath and went to open her door when Nick grabbed her hand. “Meg...” She turned to face him. “Meg... whatever happens today...I’m here for you, OK? You don’t have to hide anything from me. That’s why I wanted to come with you today, I want to help you through all of this.”
“I know.” She smiled at him. “Now, lets get in there before I chicken out.” Nick smiled at her, let go of her hand and they both got out of the car that he had rented for the day. They walked up to the front door of the white house, and Megan fished the keys out of her pockets.
She unlocked the door and pushed it open. She was home.
“Hello?” Brian picked up his cell phone. They had the day off and he had been spending it wisely. He wasn’t doing a damn thing.
“Hey Bri-“
“KAYTEE!!!” He all but yelled with joy at hearing her voice. He had talked to her everyday since they had left, but he still missed her.
She laughed at him. “Hey Brian. It’s good to hear from you too.”
“Well, you know... So how are you doing?”
“I’m pretty good. School is a hard, but it’s a lot of fun. I’ve got some great classes, and I can’t wait to start my design class. How about you?”
“I’m OK. We have the day off. We did our show last night and we were a hit. I think it helps that a lot of the people at the show were Megan’s friends and she knew that they would like us. But it was a lot of fun.”
“That’s good. You played at Wilson, right?”
“Yeah. We were suppose to play at the Crystal Ball Room, but Megan thought that was stupid.”
“It was stupid. Two out of five of you aren’t even old enough to get into that place. Whose bright idea was that?’
“Lou’s, I guess. It was either him or the radio stations. I don’t know.”
“Well, I guess what counts is the fact that you guys were well received and you had fun.” They talked a little more about school and the trip so far and what the guys had been up to. Then Kaytee asked the question that Brian kew was coming. “Is Meg around?”
“Nope. She and Nick took Leigha to go see your mom and they were going to head up to Meg’s house to look around.”
“Uh oh... I hope she’s OK. That’s going to be really hard for her.”
“That’s why Nick went with her. She was going to go by herself and but Nick wouldn’t let her.”
“It’s a good thing. Damn... I wish I could be there with her while she did this.”
“Kay, it’s something, I think, that she and Nick need to do together. He’ll make sure that she’s OK.”
“I know... It’s just that I witnessed her relationship with her dad. They weren’t close, but he loved her more then anything else in the world, and wasn’t happy with their relationship at all. It’s just that... well... I don’t know. I wish I could be there.”
“Don’t worry about her, she’ll be just fine, I promise. With Leigha running around here she’ll have pleanty to think about, so whatever happens today, she wont have too much to dwell on it.”
“I hope your right....”
“So... where do we start?” Nick asked once they were inside and had dumped their stuff in the kitchen.
“Um... lets look in his office.” Megan suggested, truly not knowing where to begin to sort out her father’s belongings.
They walked down the hall and into the study were her father had conducted much of his work after he came home from the office. It was a medium sized room lined with books that he had read, both for work and for pleasure. In the center of the long wall on the left was a large fireplace with two inviting leather chairs in from of it. In the corner next to the window was his desk, made of dark wood, and a large leather chair.
“Wow... this is incredible...” Nick looked around him. It was like a library... floor to ceiling books. Megan looked around for a minute before moving over to the desk. It was covered in papers, where he had left them before his trip. She began thumbing through them... memos, notes, phone numbers, deals, everything he had needed to run his business was there.
She sifted through the papers and found a stack of papers that weren’t like the other ones. She picked them up and looked at the one on the top. ‘Dear Nancy...” She looked through the rest of them... ‘Dear Jane...’ ‘Dear Nick...’ ‘Dear Shayne...’ ‘Dear Brian...’ ‘Dear Susan...’. Her eyes watered when she saw her mother’s name. “What the hell are these?” Nick moved over next to her and took a look at what she had in her hand.
“Letters it looks like.”
“Thanks Nick... but they are letters to everyone I know... all of my friends... well, all of my good friends.” She flipped through them again. “They are all only a page long.”
“Why don’t you read one?”
She thought for a minute. “I’m not sure I want to know what they say. There is one for you, and each of the guys... one for your mom... one for my mom, one for Kaytee’s mom, one for Shayne.... I don’t get it.”
“Well, how about this... since I’m not sure I want to know what it says either, at least not right now, I think that you should just put them all in envelopes and give them to the people they were suppose to get to.”
“OK....” Megan looked up at him for a second before sitting down in the leather chair behind the desk and digging through the papers to find the envelopes. She found them and set to work getting all of them letters in the right one, finishing a task that her father had started months before.
Meanwhile Nick started looking at the books that lined the walls. At his eye level there were books that were used for what Megan’s father had built him business on. So he bent over a little bit and found books that kids would read. The lower he went down the younger the age for reading the books became until he got to the bottom shelf. There he found all the fairy tales ever written, at least it seemed like it.
He followed the bottom shelf around, looking at all the titles of the books. ‘Cinderella’, Beauty and the Beast, Peter Pan, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty, and Pinocchio were just a few. He had made it from the door around the desk and to the fireplace. The last book on the shelf before the fireplace had a worn leather cover and no title. “What’s this?” He carefully took the loved book off of the shelf. Megan looked up from the last envelope to see what he had found.
“Oh my...” She got up from where she was sitting and walked over to him She carefully lifted the book out of his hands and ran her own hand over the cover. She couldn’t believe her eyes. She turned the book and noticed that there was a lack of dust on the top of the pages.
“Meg, what is it?”
Megan looked over her shoulder at him before sitting down on one of the chairs in front of the fireplace. She opened the book and smiled. “A Little Princess” She smiled and started turning through the pages.
Nick sat on the arm of the chair and looked over her shoulder. “Care to elaborate?”
“It’s my favorite book. When I was really little I would come in here a half an hour before I had to go to sleep and Daddy and I would curl up in this chair and he would read to me. He read me all of the books that you saw while you were following around the room, but this was always my favorite. It was always in the same spot, right next to the fireplace.”
“What makes it your favorite?”
“I loved the stories that Sara came up with to tell the other girls... I don’t know... it all seemed so magical.” She flipped through the pages some more. “I didn’t think that it was still here. He got rid of a lot of books a few years ago and I thought that this would be one of the first to go.”
“What’s that?” Megan looked back down at the book. She had unknowingly flipped the book to her favorite chapter, when Sara tells the girls of the school about the Prince and Prince of India. There was a piece of paper folded and placed into the book. It had her name, in her father’s handwriting, scrawled across the front of it.
“I don’t know....” She placed the book in her lap and picked up the paper. “It looks like a letter.”
“Are you going to read it?”
She looked back up at him. “I don’t think I want to. I don’t think I’m ready to find out what his feelings are about what our relationship has been over the past few years.”
Nick looked into her eyes and saw that she really wasn’t ready to know what her father thought about their lack of a relationship in the last years of his life. “OK... put it in an envelope and take it with you, then when you feel that you are ready to read it, we’ll read our letters together. How does that sound?”
“OK...” Megan set the book down, turned around and hugged Nick, taking him by surprised and caused him to fall on top her. “GET OFF!” With that Nick began to tickle her, and the heavy atmosphere that had weighed on them lifted.
