Denise came over to me and asked me why I wasn’t sitting on the bench. I could’ve answered honestly, but sometimes small white lies slip out when you least expect it. Instead of telling her that the bench hurt my ass and I didn’t want to be able to see myself in that horrible mirror anymore, I said that I felt like sitting on the ground. That was so lame and the worst part was how guilty I felt about lying to her like that. It got so bad that I felt like breaking the goddamn mirror and using the longest and sharpest piece to stab it in my black heart.
“Denise, I lied to you,” I said instead, biting my lip and tugging viciously at my ear. I do that when I’m nervous sometimes.
“About what hun?” she looked at me like she was afraid that it was bad. At the time it was – for me.
“About sitting on the goddamn bench.”
She came over and sat right down in front of me just like Angie did and took my head in her hands. I think she had instincts about me, just from knowing me for so long. She knew that I usually never swear, especially about the small things. Howie’s dumbass hand is an exception.
“Don’t feel guilty about that,” she said, stroking my cheek with her hand, “if you don’t feel like telling me something, I won’t mind. I understand you better than you think and I know when something’s not right.”
“Look who’s coming on to my mother!” I heard from behind me.
“AJ!” Denise yelled at him and got up to tug on his ear and pull him across the room. “Don’t talk about your mother that way!”
“I’m sorry mama!”
Denise made her way back to me. “We’ll finish this later. You’ll do fine here. Just ignore AJ.”
After she left, AJ made his way back to me. “First Dania, now my mother! What are you thinking in that pea brain of yours? Home schooling sure didn’t help you much, did it?”
I buried my head into my knees and just listened. Nineteen years old and I was on the verge of going crazy. AJ sauntered away after he didn’t get a response from me. Again, I should have said something, but I missed the opportunity to defend my behalf.
The rest of the guys walked in, but they didn’t have a chance to say anything to me because Fatima walked in behind them.
“Nick, honey, what’s wrong? Why are you sitting there all by yourself? Come ‘ere and let me look at you!” She frowned when the guys broke out in fits of laughter.
Now it was my turn to saunter over. I was so afraid of what the guys would say to me that I didn’t even move enough to pull up the strap of my undershirt.
“Did you guys get into a fight?” Fatima asked, trying to look me in the eye. I’d developed the habit of looking down at the ground when trouble struck.
“Why don’t you ask Nicky?” Brian drawled, half-laughing, “Look at all of his battle scars! What’s the matter? Does Mandy bite?” The guys exchanged high fives and howled with laughter.
“Oh, no, no I’ve got a good one,” AJ said, grinning evilly and I knew that this would be only part of his revenge, “look at his strap, he’s trying act sexy! He’s pulling a Britney Spears on us! Look out world, here comes the drag queen!” The started singing “Here comes the drag queen” to the tune of “Here comes the bride.” I felt like I was being driven over by a parked car. How’s that possible? Well, I basically felt like someone had driven me over unnoticed and parked their car on top of me.
Fatima tried to make the guys shut up and apologize to me. While she was doing that, I made a nest for myself behind the bench so that I couldn’t look into the mirror. I used my jacket for a blanket and fell asleep instantly.
When I woke up, I still felt tired, but more refreshed. I woke up to the sound of “Larger Than Life”, and I knew that they started without me. With my hair standing on end like it always does after I take a nap, I sat on the bench and watched them. I tried not to look into the mirror as I was doing this. As I watched, I became lonelier, because they all had decided not to be my friends.
“Nick!” Fatima yelled, “get your sorry ass back over here! You’re not going to improve if you just sit over there and make your ass a wad of fat!” I had never, ever, heard her use such language in my life and it shocked me. I think while I was sleeping the guys had won her over and now she was against me too. It was middle school all over again.
I jogged over with my hair still a big mess and my clothes all wrinkly. Fatima gave me an earful about falling asleep on the job and I just kept falling deeper and deeper. It was like I was sleeping as I was falling off this huge cliff and there was no one around to wake me up so that I could save myself before I hit the jagged rocks below. This feeling inspired a lot of the songs I burned.
When we started dancing, I could hardly keep up because I was so tired. I’d slept three times today and it still didn’t help. It didn’t help that the guys and Fatima kept yelling at me when I messed up.
After the second song I could hardly even breathe. My breaths shortened dramatically and all that I could do was grab frantically at my throat, hoping that somehow it would increase my airflow.
When the third song started, I couldn’t get off of the floor. I was still trying desperately to catch my breath. Since I was sitting on the middle of the dance floor, the guys kept tripping over me and swearing at me. Fatima noticed that I hadn’t moved and stopped the music.
“Nick, what the hell do you think you’re doing? I’m not done with you yet, so get up and work!” I felt so suicidal then, that if I could have gotten off the floor, I would have run into that mirror and felt all the shards of glass break into my skin. Instead, I bawled my eyes out. It worked in Mandy’s case, but that’s not the reason why I did it. They had succeeded in making me feel like crying, so that’s what I was doing.
They all sighed and left the room. Someone threw their towel at my head and I used it to wipe off my tears. The tears just kept on flowing though, like what happened to me at Mandy’s. I could hear them talking outside and I assumed that it was about me. I also assumed that it was not good.
It took me a while to recover and I only left because the guys had finally gone and I could go through the door unnoticed. I’d become tired and weepy at the same time and I didn’t want to sleep in the rehearsal room because I knew that they would come back.
I found a deserted room and made a small bed for myself again. The show must go on, and I wanted to be prepared and well for it. I hoped that the guys would set our differences aside and just accept me when we performed tonight. We feel pretty strongly against disappointing our fans.
I must have slept a good three hours and I would have slept longer, but I made an appointment with a doctor to get an inhaler. Asthma, that’s what I thought I had. It was kind of strange because I didn’t feel like this at all when I was exercising at my house. Maybe it was gradually getting worse or something. My knowledge about asthma was quite slim.
Instead of hailing a cab, I walked all the way to the hospital. It took me a good three hours to do too. Again, people stared, but it didn’t bother me anymore because I knew what they were looking at. The only thing that seemed to bug me now was being ignored and whispering. Don’t ever whisper around me unless you’re whispering in my ear or you’ll see a side of me that you never see.
Perhaps I should have taken a cab to the hospital, because I while I walked, I thought. Generally what I thought about was the guys and the thought of what they were doing to me was starting to take its toll. I felt like jumping in front of moving cars and I would’ve, but there was a traffic jam and they were relatively still.
When I finally got to the hospital, I began to chicken out. I stood like an idiot outside of the hospital pretending to wait for someone. This time I actually wanted people to ignore me. But of course they DIDN’T. They stared and stared while I stood there. My appointment was in five minutes and I thought about calling from a pay phone and canceling the appointment. Then I thought about what I stood for and all of the fans that I would disappoint if I put on a crappy performance.
I saw the cutest little girl practically skip into the goddamn hospital. She might have had emphysema, I still don’t know, but she was so brave to me. I think that I liked her a lot more than the rest because she didn’t stare at me when she walked in, but she inspired me to go on with my appointment.
The hospital was so busy; there were people everywhere. In the elevator, I could hardly breathe because it was filled to maximum capacity. When I got to the fourth floor, I tried my best to stay dignified and not run out of the elevator.
The waiting room was just as bad, there were people in all of the chairs. I had to sit on the floor, but I didn’t mind. I saw this as a good opportunity to take a nap and told all of the people in the room that if they called my name and I was still sleeping that someone else could take my turn. They laughed, but I meant that. It didn’t matter because I’d used a different identity: Samuel Higgins. I just made it up out of the blue while I was on the phone.
When I woke up, which was about two hours later, the room was more cleared out than before. New people had come in; all of the old ones had gone, so I figured that my turn would be next.
People in the room were staring at me and I was afraid that they were talking about me as I was sleeping. One woman just couldn’t keep her eyes off of me.
“What?” I asked her, flattening my hair down with one hand.
“Are you Nick Carter?” she asked me, but I didn’t have to answer because the doctor’s assistant called my name and I retreated quickly. She was probably wondering if I had used a phony name, which I did. I was beginning to enjoy going out in public without too many people coming up to me or chasing me. Came the next photo-shoot and I would lose this.
The first thing the doctor asked me when I walked into the door was if I was experiencing chronic fatigue.
“No,” I lied, because I wanted to get out of that place as soon as possible. “I didn’t sleep at all last night, my job keeps me awake nights and I was just catching up on some lost sleep.”
“All right. Well Mr. Higgins, what seems to be your trouble.” I could tell by this guy’s expression that he was completely on to my phony identity, but I just pretended that I didn’t know.
“I think I have asthma or something. I’ve been short of breath lately during my exercises.”
“What kind of exercises do you do?” The doctor peered at me from under his thick glasses. All this staring was starting to make me feel uncomfortable, even if he was a doctor and that’s his job: to stare you down. To me, that was a crappy way to make a diagnosis.
“I, uh, dance in clubs, go for walks, and lift weights.” I didn’t really lie; I do dance, just not in clubs.
“That’s good. Those are very good cardiovascular workouts. Now lift up the back of your shirt. I’m going to check your breathing.”
I must have looked at him strangely because he said, “Don’t worry, I don’t bite!”
He placed the cold stethoscope in the middle of my back and told me to inhale deeply. I did and he moved the stethoscope to another part of my back. I did the same thing again for three more times before he stopped.
“This is very unprofessional of me, but I saw your tattoos! You are Nick Carter! My son is such a big fan of you guys! Will you sign my copy of “Millennium”? I have it right here in the office! I can send it to my son, he’s in university studying the arts!”
“Okay,” I said, trying to calm him down, “I’ll sign it if you promise to get my inhaler.” He nodded enthusiastically, so I signed it and he left the room. I thought that he left to get my inhaler, but from the office I heard him yell to the people in the waiting room, “Nick Carter is here! He signed my copy of Millennium! Isn’t this incredible?” Boy, did I feel like a used rag. If I can’t trust a doctor, then who can I trust?
Chapter 6
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