I found the cell phone lying on my bed. You’re probably wondering why it took me so long to find it; well I haven’t hooked up any regular phones to use since I moved in and I just throw my cell where ever after I use it.
The cell’s batteries were almost dead, so I had to stall until I found some. Something was keeping me from calling AJ, some force from the beyond I think. It was spooky really, when you thought about it for a while.
Anyway, I dialed the number a bit uncertainly at first. AJ picked after about three rings.
“Hello?” he said. He sounded pretty groggy so I guessed that he had just woken up.
“AJ, it’s Nick…” Wham! The phone was slammed down from his end. My ear still rang as I dialed the number again. I wasn’t going to give up that easily.
“What?”
I disguised my voice this time to make me sound like Dania. It wasn’t that hard really; I just had to sound like I was going through puberty.
“AJ, it’s Dania.”
“Uh, Dania what’s wrong with your voice?”
“Nothing, my throat is sore. Listen, I called to tell you that I’m way not into Nick. I just danced with him because he looked like a lonely little boy.”
“Okay, if you’re so into me then prove it. Tell me that Nick is a dick.”
“Nick is a dick!” I giggled into the phone. I should get my own show; I’m too good at this.
“Good, good. Now tell me if he had fun cleaning shit all morning! That’s gotta suck! I know it’s you Nick. You can’t fool me!”
“Come on AJ, here me out please! I don’t want you to be mad at me!”
“I just heard your screechy voice so get off my back!” Then he hung up on me again. I held the phone in my hand in stunned silence; I felt like a kicked dog. AJ is usually a forgiving guy, especially when it comes to his brothers. I wondered what was wrong; I just couldn’t figure that guy out.
I called about ten more times, until he got smart and took out the batteries on his cell phone. You would think that I would give up after all that – no such luck. I tried calling all of the guys, but they were either not home, or ignoring me on purpose. I’d tried to apologize; now they were just being rude.
* * *
* * * *
* *
The rest of my vacation was pretty uneventful. Mandy refused to talk to me along with the rest of the guys, so I just chilled by myself the whole time. That part didn’t really bug me, but I was starting to get lonely at about the second week. See this is because I’m so used to being near people. The only way I kept my sanity was by talking to my dogs. They’d become my best friends, as silly as it sounds. But even they wouldn’t talk to me.
Because I was so bored, I began to write songs that reflected off of the way I was feeling at the time. They were so depressing that after I finished each song; I burned them one by one on a candle. I used tongs from my barbecue to hold them over the fire without getting burned. It was like watching my soul burn or something, even though I hadn’t put much heart into it.
I was so entranced with writing songs and burning them that it started effecting my sleeping and eating habits. After that night at the beach, I’d been sleeping for hours on end; I was constantly tired. I think I was beginning to turn into one of those starving artists that you joke about all of the time. Except I was starving on a full fridge. I had to throw out a lot of fruit because it was all starting to rot. In case you’re wondering, I shop only at night in one of those twenty-four hour stores. The last time I went shopping was on the day I tried to call AJ. I bought very little anyway; just some bread and milk. That’s it. It was still rotting away in that stupid fridge of mine, for two whole weeks! But I didn’t care at that time. I even cut out breakfast and lunch and just ate dinner every day. I grew very fond of apples though, for some strange reason. My dogs were the only things in this house that ate well. Me, on the other hand, I ate as much as exercised during this time, which was very little.
On the third week, I starting worrying about exercise, so I got involved in skipping. I also walked the dogs four times during the day and took them long a long walk at night. After about three days, the dogs didn’t even want to walk with me anymore.
An odd thing happened to me while I was walking that never happened to me before. No one recognized me. I could walk in broad daylight with no gear on; no hats, nothing, and no one noticed me. Well, they sort of stared a lot, but they never said anything. At first it was good, then I started to worry. Was I getting ugly?
It got so bad, that I removed all of the mirrors in the house and stuffed them into the attic where I couldn’t see them. I had to remove the doors downstairs because I saw my reflection in them. The medicine cabinets had to go too. That kept me busy all day.
Then I started to wonder if people didn’t recognize me because of my nose. It was still healing, but I wasn’t sure how bad it was. I was afraid to touch it. That thought made me feel a lot better though.
On rainy days I liked to sit in my living room and watch TV, stroking my pugs. Sometimes they would wriggle around too much, so I just let them go. They’re like a boomerang, they always come back, and that’s another reason why they came to be my best friends.
I had only three weeks off in the first place, so my last week had to be productive. I started lifting weights, and I got very good at it. Every day I used a heavier weight and I didn’t know how much I was lifting. I starting noticing that everything seemed lighter than normal.
On the last day I packed my suitcase once again and called up a sitter for my pugs. It didn’t take me long to find one either, they like me because I give good tips.
I was supposed to take the plane to Florida to meet up with the guys. But I got this aching feeling in my heart that they wouldn’t be there.
I went anyway, bought my ticket in the last minute and then took off. Even though I’d gotten used to flying in planes, today I felt a bit giddy about getting on it. We do have a private jet, if you’re wondering, but it’s a waste of time to be going to every place to pick us up.
When I boarded the plane, I got looked at even more. The stewardess even stared, so I could only wonder about how nasty I must have looked. It was so depressing that I wished that I could jump out of the window in mid–flight.
Not only did the stewardess stare, she kept coming over and bugging me. Do you want this? Do you want that? Maybe she was trying to be nice to me because I was the ugliest person on the whole plane and she just felt sorry for me.
Whatever the reason, it was terribly annoying. She was like a flea or a tick or something. There was an empty seat beside me, so I took advantage of it and had a nap. Napping was one of my favorites of all the new hobbies that I had accumulated. Even better than working on my comic book, which by the way is still in the making! Sorry! How many years is that now?
Anyway after my nap I had a bit of a start. I felt moisture under my nose and thought that it was blood. Thankfully it was nothing at all; it wasn’t even wet.
I had slept with my poor hand squashed between the seats. It was lifeless and even slightly bruised when I removed it. Soon after I woke up, the same stewardess came over to bug me again. I can be quite grouchy when I wake up, so I asked her what was wrong.
“Nothing’s wrong sir…” she stammered.
“Are you sure? Did I forget to wear pants this morning?”
She laughed at that. “No, that’s not it.”
“I’ll keep guessing, I won’t stop if you don’t tell me.”
“Go ahead, the only thing that I can lose is my job anyway.”
After about twenty questions, I gave up. “Please tell me why everyone’s staring at me,” I said seriously.
“Oh, it’s nothing bad,” she assured me, “but I can’t say anything or I’ll lose my job.”
I would have prodded her, but all of a sudden she had to leave. You have no idea how badly I felt with people staring at me for no reason. It just kept on happening too.
When the plane landed, I stood up stiffly and combed my hair back. Sometimes I get sick to death of that part in the middle and I can’t get rid of it unless I use a lot of gel. Of course I didn’t bring a mirror with me, even though I should have. I think then that I would have known sooner what all those people were staring at. That stewardess must have lied to me; people only look at you like this if it’s a bad thing.
The plane ride had left me feeling queasy and I started to fear all over again that the guys wouldn’t be there. When I stepped through the door, I looked around uncomfortably for them. People were staring at me all over again; it was awful. I got tired of looking after about two minutes because I was so sure that they wouldn’t be there. My bags in hand, I went off to hail a cab.
“Nick?” I heard from behind me. I turned around and saw that it was Denise, AJ’s mom. She sometimes came with us, but she came before the break and I didn’t know why she came again.
“Yeah, it’s me.” I was really nervous, because she was starting to look at me funny too. I shifted my bags around and shuffled my feet. I’d turned crimson and I couldn’t meet her eye to eye anymore.
“You look great! Have you been working out?”
She HAD to be kidding me. “Come on now, you can tell me the truth I can take it.” She just looked at me strangely. “Well everyone’s been staring at me and I want to know why.”
Just as I’d said it, some guy walking in front of me gave me a double take. “See, SEE?” I exclaimed.
“Nick, don’t you have any mirrors at your house?”
“No…I took them all out.”
“You’re crazy, kid. Well, I’ll show you when we get to the studio.”
“Is AJ still mad at me?” I just had to ask that when we walked out of the door.
“I don’t know. Did you guys have a fight?”
I explained to her what happened. “I tried to apologize, then I just gave up. I even disguised my voice to sound like Dania, but he figured me out. He made me call myself a dick.”
Dense chuckled. “Well, all I know is that AJ begged me to come pick you up. He said that all the guys were caught up recording a song in the studio.”
“Gee, that was nice of him to actually get someone to pick me up,” I said sarcastically.
When we got to the studio, I really wasn’t looking forward to seeing myself in the mirror. I just got off the plane too, so I probably looked twice as bad than normal.
I made Denise promise not to yell at AJ for lying to her. I wanted to make amends with AJ and it wouldn’t help if he knew I ratted on him. She swore that she wouldn’t and I began to respect her more for being trustworthy.
No one was around in the studio, so I went straight to the rehearsal room. That’s where we learn new dances and practice the old ones. There’s a mirror in there too, a big one, so that we can watch what we’re doing and what Fatima’s doing.
I walked up to it cautiously. When my image appeared, I couldn’t believe how different I looked. My nose was fine after all; there was only a small scar where Mandy slapped me. Other than that, I looked pretty good, but I didn’t really look like me. That’s probably why people were staring at me. They were afraid to mistake me for Nick, because they didn’t know that it was me!
I took my jacket off, because it was baggy and covered a lot. The weight training had done a number on my muscles. They weren’t so thick that the veins bulged, but they were nice. My track pants looked very baggy on me and I could tell that I had lost way too much weight. Even my old tank top was sagging.
I turned and noticed that Denise was watching me from the doorway and I turned a bright red again. Throwing my bags behind a bench, I waited for the guys to come. Instead of sitting on the bench, I sat cross-legged with my back up against the wall.
Chapter 5
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