Chapter 5:
"Well?" I asked, wanting Catherine to go on.
She answered: "Our theory, which so far seems right, is that you become the angel of the person who's voice was the last one you heard."
My eyes became wide. "All of you died while listening to the Backstreet Boys?" I asked unbelievingly. That thought seemed too queer. I mean, I had never seen someone die, but I never imagined it to happen with music. Well, at least not when it was a natural death or an accident. I turned to Deandra: "How can Howie be the last one you heard, before you died? Was it when you blacked out at home?"
She shook her head. "No, he was at the hospital I lay in. His sister Caroline was there, too. I don't know if he's ever been in my hospital room , or if I heard him from the floor or however, but before my brain and everything stopped working Howie was obviously the one I heard talking."
"Actually Dee is the reason why we started this theory. She had no idea why she was here, why Howie, but when we compared the way we died, we found out that that could be the reason", Connor told me.
Suddenly curious, I had to know, I had to find out how the others had died. "So who was the first of you to become a Backstreet angel?" I asked.
"Out of all of us it was Dee", Renae spoke up. "Then came Connor, followed by Cat and later me, and finally you arrived."
"Were all of you fans, or what?!" I asked confused. I still couldn't believe that they had died while listening to a Backstreet Boy. Just then Connor and Renae snorted, before laughing with each other.
"Sure not", Connor grinned, "but by now I found out that they are pretty nice guys, so I guess it's ok that I ended up with Nick." I couldn't help but smile and roll my eyes. The way he talked about it sounded like he "ended up with Nick" to do a school paper with him or something, and not to spend his after-life saving him from harm.
"How did it happen?" I wanted to know.
"Phew", Connor started, throwing his hands up, " at first I was just as lost as Dee. I had no clue why I became Nick's guard. Later on, when Cat started the voice-theory, at one concert I seemed to recognize the song 'Let's Have A Party'. Ironically enough that's where I died - at a party. Me and some friends from school were hanging at someone's party. We hardly knew the people there. Sometime during the night I grabbed a drink that stood around and gulped it down." Connor made a frown. "Big mistake. I think there were some drugs or so in it. All I remember is that I had an allergic reaction. My heart was slamming so hard against my chest that I was sure I would die any second. I broke down were I stood and..." His eyes seemed lost and far away as he continued: "People were standing around, looking down at me, all of them too damn drunk, too damn stoned to do anything. I guess they had no idea what was going on. Not even I had. I remember that my vision got blurred and the music seemed so loud, but so dull. It was like a nightmare. I closed my eyes, still hearing the beat of the song and the beat of my heart - and then everything stopped." Connor turned back to me and smiled: "And then, tada, I stood next to Nick Carter."
An almost silent "Whoa" escaped my lips. My heart went out to Connor. Just like Deandra, he too was ripped out of his life, out of the world he knew, while he was still so full of power and the will and desire to live. When I got to hear the stories of the others, I realized it was the same every time. All of us were young, strong, in our bloom. Except for me maybe, everyone had thought there was still so much to come in life, but there wasn't. Death and a new kind of life had been waiting just around the corner.
Renae was the next to share her story. Right from the first moment she began talking, I could see the flashes of anger in her beautiful eyes. "I didn't die a, I guess you could call it 'natural death', either." She was looking at the table, as she continued, probably picturing her death: "My boyfriend killed me. Out of jealousy." She snorted. "The worst is that the day he killed me was the day that his jealousy was least justified. He always got mad when he saw me flirting with other guys and soon started beating me up when we came home from clubs. But I was always faithful, always. Even though he was such an ass sometimes. Well, that day, when I died, he came home and found me watching TV." She suddenly looked straight up at me and asked: "Can you believe it? I was just watching TV, and that's why I died."
I was too stunned by the pain on her face to say anything, but she already continued: "I never had a thing for the Backstreet Boys, but they showed a concert and Kevin was singing 'Nobody But You'. I didn't watch because of the music, he was just..." Her eyes looked up and over to the table where Kevin was sitting. "He's a good-looking guy, you can't deny that. So my boyfriend came home and totally freaked when he saw me watching the concert, with Kevin half-naked on stage. He threw a fit and soon I felt his fist in my face again. I got so mad that I freaked, too, and we had a huge fight going on. At one point he shoved me and..." Renae took a deep breath (do we even really breathe, I wondered?!), before she ended. "You could say I died like in the movies. I hit my head on the edge of the table and that was it. Hasta lavista, baby." Renae looked up at Deandra with sad eyes, and more and more I got the feeling that Deandra was like a mother figure to all of them. Maybe because she was the first one to be with the Boys, maybe because she was the oldest (she died when she was 26, I found out), but most likely because she was just the type to be a mother figure. She was always calm and had wise words of advice in every situation. I couldn't imagine her to ever blow up at someone because she always had a smile on her face. She seemed to handle the situation she found herself in so bravely and so well. I really felt sorry and thought it was unfair that she had to die, but at the same time I was grateful that we had someone like her with us, to help us, to almost guide us.
"Is it my turn?" Catherine smiled, trying to lighten the mood a little. She and Renae shared a smile, and so Catherine continued: "My story is quickly told. I was driving home from prom night in school, listening to 'That's What She Said', when I was hit by another car. I don't know if he was drunk, but something must've been wrong with him - he was driving on the wrong side of the highway, when he hit us. My friend Jamie was in the car with me." Catherine smiled brightly: "She survived. I had the chance to find that out a while ago and that made everything a little better."
"You know what, Cat?!" I said. "You're amazing!"
"What?" she laughed.
"From the very first moment we met, you were laughing and...don't you have any problem with being a guardian angel? I mean, all of this seems so much fun to you, like it's the most natural thing. You're so...happy!"
Catherine let that sink in a moment, before she replied: "I guess there's one thing that stands out from all the things Brian and me have in common: we believe. In God, in higher and good spirits and that we are guided. Everything happens for a reason and I'm thankful for the days I spent living with my family and friends. I had a good life, I can't complain. If God thought it was time for me to go, then I guess it was time for me to go. I was needed here."
"Do you know why? Why you were needed and what for?"
"We don't know for sure why, but we do know that there is a reason for us to be here", Renae told me.
"How can you be so sure? I mean, no one ever came to us, at least not to me, and told me what I'm supposed to do. In movies about guardian angels you always see them meeting some angels in white, who tell them that they can't go to heaven yet because of whatever, or that some heavenly judge has decided they have to be a guardian angel. But that's not how it works, is it? Has anyone of you ever..." I threw my hands up in desperation. "Have you ever met God, or, I don't know, higher angels?! Who told you anything about how this life works and what's lying ahead of us. I might stay with AJ 'til he's 80 and dies and then what? What happens to me?"
"Calm down, ok?!" Renae said in that blunt way that she had. But she also let her quite harsh sentence be followed by a small apologetic smile.
"No, we never met anyone who told us how things are supposed to work", Catherine replied, "but you won't stay with AJ for the rest of his life. You will move on, eventually, but no one can say when that will be."
The others figured that I wanted to know how she knew that, so Connor took over: "We weren't the first ones here. I mean, we're not the Boys' first guards. When I arrived here, Deandra was already here, with Brian's former guard Peter. He was cool!" Connor laughed a little.
"Really?" I asked Deandra.
She nodded. "Only a month or so before Connor became Nick's angel, AJ's previous guardian angel...well, moved on, we say. We don't know where he went, but he had saved AJ from major shit and after that he moved on. It's like you're here until you accomplished something certain. The same thing happened with Peter. Then it was only Connor and me for a while, before Catherine joined us."
"And we don't know what it is we have to do?" I asked.
"So far none of us has figured it out." Connor shrugged. "So just do your job! Do everything you have to do and help him and sooner or later you'll do what you came here to do."
My head turned and I looked behind me at AJ, who was laughing happily. I wondered what was going to happen to him. But even more I wondered if I would be able to help him, if I would be the right person to save his life. I was afraid that it wasn't so. I never had had much faith in myself and the fact that I had killed myself didn't lift my spirits either. Basically I had always felt like a big loser and I felt sorry for AJ that his safety had been given to my hands.
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