"Tini! Come on, we're leaving!" My mother shouted up the stairs. It was the next day, and I was riding with the Hansons to the airport where we would be flying to LA. She's weird, she has this thing that whenever we go to the airport she has to drive alone. Whatever.
I walked down the stairs with a single suitcase, my Adidas sandals, black shorts and a black tank top. My mom took a look at me and called me a devil worshiper. Then we left.
It was a two minute ride to the Hansons' house, they only lived down the street. I said I could walk but she said I couldn't.
After yesterday she had become really strict with me, it seems like she became a whole other person. I don't know. She told me to get out of the car so I did.
Zac had just walked out of the house, and noticed me getting out of the car. He let out a low whistle. "Dang," he said under his breath. Of course he had to see me in the shortest pair of shorts I owned, and the skimpiest shirt I owned too.
My waist length hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, just to get it out of the way. I normally liked it down and loose but today it just got annoying.
I walked up to Zac. "Hello," I told him. He looked at me and a smile came across his face.
"You look good. What's the occasion?"
"I get to go to LA and not worry about having loads of homework when I get back," I told him, gently smiling.
"You look pale," he said.
"I normally do."
"Oh really?" he asked. "You weren't that pale yesterday."
"Bad lighting." He laughed. "Well there was. I was actually more pale yesterday than I am today."
Just then we were interrupted by Isaac walking by. He stopped and came back. "Who are you?" he asked me.
"Tini Moore. My mom's your math tutor. I'm going to LA with you." He nodded and then walked off. He was alright. I didn't really get a good look at him, but I noticed his shoes were tied right, but his hair was sort of sloppy so he was just alright.
"How is he?" Zac asked. I gave Zac a strange look. "Well you think I'm a slob, and you think Taylor is proper, what is Isaac?"
"Alright." This time Zac gave me a strange look. "He's not a slob like you and he's far from being as proper as Taylor, he's just alright."
"You mean to tell me there's three! And I'm the lowest? Well I am just not going to talk to you anymore," he said, folding his arms across his chest and looking away.
"Be grateful, Zac. You're unique. I don't know many slobs." He shook his head.
"I can't respond, I'm not talking to you," he said, still looking away with his arms still folded.
"But you just responded."
"Damn." He dropped his arms to his sides and looked back to me. "So why am I slob?"
"Your shoes aren't tied right, your pants are wrinkled and have a hole in them, your shirt is half in and half out, your hair isn't parted right, your watch flap is hanging out and you need braces."
"Well I didn't need the whole dish, Tini. And I guess you're proper?" he asked.
"Today I'm just alright. I had to leave quickly so my shorts have a wrinkle in them, my toes don't match my nails and my hair is not brushed very well."
"I swear, Tini, you're insane."
"No I'm not, it's a compulsive disorder." He looked like he didn't believe me. "Ask my doctor, it's a compulsive disorder."
"Well then I guess I should be sorry for you," he muttered, shaking his head. I smiled, and turned my cheek for him to kiss it. He rolled his eyes and gently kissed my cheek.
"Oh would you please stop it?" Taylor asked, walking out of the house. I gave him a look. "The last two times I've seen you two together you were showing some kind of lip affection." I'd never heard it called that before.
He walked by and threw something into the back of the van. "Stop blocking the doorway, people want to get through," Taylor said, inching by us and back into the house.
"Well then I guess we should move," Zac said. I nodded, and we moved onto the sidewalk. I sat down on the ground, and Zac didn't even notice. He finally noticed and sat down.
"Why do you two insist on taking up the whole sidewalk?" Diana asked, walking by with what looked like a really heavy suitcase.
"That's too heavy for her, help her Zac," I told him.
"Who died and made you king?"
"Some real important guy. She shouldn't have to carry that. She's struggling, help her out." He gave me a look but got up and took the suitcase from his mom and put it in the car. Diana looked really surprised at him, and when he came back her way she asked him if there was something wrong with him.
Zac came back, shaking his head. I took his left foot and starting tying his shoelaces in square knots. "Look what you did, you got her thinking that I'm sick or something. What the hell are you doing to my shoes?" he asked.
"Square knots, Zac. I don't mind as much if your laces are like this, it's better than a vertical bow." He shook his head, and watched as I tortured his lovely laces.
"How did you learn to do that?" he asked.
"My friend from school was in the boy scouts, and he taught me how. I just started doing it to people's shoes because they got annoying. Pretty much everyone I know has their shoes like this now."
He watched as I tied his shoes. "Why are you doing this?"
"I think I told you. I don't like the way your shoes are tied and this is a way I accept so I'm doing this. Be grateful I don't bite your head off." He shrugged.
Taylor walked out again, and groaned. He shook his head as he walked by. I looked up to him. He seemed to change. Everyone's changing. I didn't notice the slob in Zac as much anymore, Taylor had an attitude, and my mother seemed more strict. Maybe because we were going somewhere.
"K everyone, get in the car!" Diana yelled. People stopped hanging around and started piling into cars. "Tini and Zac, get in the car!"
"I'm not done yet!" I yelled to her, speeding up my pace. I wasn't even done with one shoe. Finally I finished. "I'll do the other one in the car," I said.
We got up and went into the van. Ike was driving, Tay had shotgun, there was three other little kids in the back that I didn't know but figured they were the little brother and sisters.
Me and Zac got in the middle, and I had Zac put his other foot in my lap so I could finish.
By the time I finished his other shoe we were at the airport. I glanced out the window and shook my head. Surprising how many people were out there. Girls with cameras and signs.
"I never got the purpose of signs. They put pictures of you on them, and it's like you see yourself every day and who would waste perfectly good markers to attract some attention in which that's all you're going to get."
"I don't know. I think it's odd," Zac said.
"Zac, to you everything is odd," Isaac said from up front, trying to get through the mob of a crowd. This was an airport, they were leaving. I found it insane.
"You know people are going to get really pissed when they find out about me," I told Zac.
"What about you?"
"Well I'm a girl traveling with you between the age of 12 and 19, so apparently if all the fans find about me they'll think I'm going out with one of you and they'll get pissed."
"But that's our personal lives," Taylor said.
"Tay, how long have you been doing this?" I asked. "You're a celebrity. You don't have a personal life."
"I don't?" I held back my laugh.
"No Taylor, some things I know about you, it's insane. I don't know how, but I know many things�I'm not sure if any of them are true, but these people pry into your life to get a single bit of information."
"Jeez, I never really realized that." I shook my head. This boy was clueless. The blondeness was sinking through.
Isaac parked the car, and we piled out. Girls started screaming, and I rolled my eyes. As we went inside, girls gave me death looks, but I just gave them the same look right back.
One girl got really offended by my look back, and I could tell she wanted to jump over the barricade and kill me. I stopped by her. "Your shoes are tied wrong," I told her, and then started bragging with my walk. Zac ran out and pushed me inside, not letting me have any fun.
"Tini, don't do that."
"That girl was about to kill me, I had to do something to her!"
"What did you do to her?" Zac asked, and stopped pushing me. We were inside, and the doors were closed. He gave me a pointed look.
"I just told her that her shoes were tied wrong." He huffed, clearly disappointed in me. But what could I do? That girl was being rude!
"O.K., Tini. Come on." He took me over to the plane that was waiting for us. He almost had to push me on. I forgot how much I hated planes until I was in the terminal, three steps from the plane. The stewardess was giving me strange looks.
"Ignore her," Zac said, trying to push me on the plane but I wouldn't budge. My nerves went sky high, and I reached in my pocket for my pills but they weren't there.
"Oh shit," I muttered, closing my eyes. Zac finally got me on the plane, and we found our seats. I sat down, breathing heavy, my face getting even more pale than normal. I put my head in my hands, them shaking.
Zac didn't know what to do, he thought I was just afraid but this was clearly a panic attack. He look around for my mother, but didn't find her. My mother was late getting to the airport, so she was late getting to the plane.
When she looked for her seat, she saw me with my head in my hands, breathing heavy, shaking. "Oh God, Tini!" she said. I looked up to her, my eyes red, my face pure white. "Are you O.K.?" I shook my head. "Where are your pills?"
I shook my head, shrugging. I couldn't talk. "Damn, you probably left them at home. You don't like flying, do you?" I shook my head again. It felt like that was all I could do, I couldn't even calm myself down. "Do you want to go home?" I nodded.
Zac just watched as I wearily got up, my legs shaking so hard, I could barely even get up. I tried walking over Zac to get to her, but I fell in his lap.
He helped me get up, and my mother helped me get off the plane. As we passed Diana, she looked concerned. "She won't make it through this flight, I'm taking her home. I'll get the next flight into LA, don't expect her to come with me," my mother said, and took me off the plane.
I didn't mean to draw attention to myself, but I got a lot of it. We left the plane, and my mom sat me down on the ledge of a big window as the plane prepared to leave.
"Honey, calm down, just calm down. Take a deep breath and try to relax," my mother said. I took a few deep breaths, but it didn't work. I just shook even more. I was so scared, this was one of the worst ones I ever had.
I was shaking so hard, I was sobbing. My mom did her best to calm me down before we got into the car and went home, because I always got really bad in the car.
My mom got me up and took me to the car, then drove me home. She got me inside and laid me down on the couch. She ran to the kitchen and got my extra set of pills, just in case I didn't have them with me.
I was shaking so bad, she had to put the pill in my mouth and put the cup with the water to my mouth and tip it in. She was used to it, she had done it for years now, whenever I got really bad.
She tried her best to calm me down, but I fell asleep shaking.
I didn't know what they did in LA, but they were there a week. When they came back Zac came over, checking out how I was. Of course I would be fine, it was a week later.
"What happened?" he asked.
"I had a panic attack. I wasn't really expecting it to happen, but it was really bad. It lasted for a few hours, even after my mom left. I was calming down, but I was still really nervous. I would of been able to go if I had my pills, but I didn't have them."
"It wasn't that much fun anyway," Zac said, trying to make it sound like it was boring.
"No, it was. I can tell by the way you're acting that it was. It doesn't matter, the next time you guys leave I'll go with you." He smiled.
"We went on Jay Leno and he was making fun of my shoes," Zac said. I laughed. "He made me feel like a dork, Tini!"
"Well you are a dork."
"Thanks!" he said. I laughed again. "You're not very nice to me, you know."
"I like being mean. You know, my birthday's in two days," I said. He looked up to me, considering I was sitting on the couch and he was kneeling on the floor.
"Oh really? Do I have to get you a present?"
"It would be nice, but you don't have to."
"You're expecting one, I can tell. I don't know what to get you, I don't know you that well."
"A kiss will be fine for now."
"Yeah, meaning you want a kiss right now." I smiled, but he relented. He gave me a kiss.
When he pulled away he said he had to leave, so he did. And as I sat there I realized I had been living a lie, but only for a little while. Zac probably thought I was his age, but really I'm five years older than him. I wondered how long it was going to be before he found out.
I hoped that it would last a long time, long enough so he could turn 18 and this whole thing wouldn't be so illegal anymore, but when he turns 18, he's going to think I'm 18.
Damn, it all just didn't seem to work out, sooner or later someone's going to find out. My mother walked in the room and sat down on the sofa next to me.
"We're going to be celebrating your birthday at the Hansons'. Big 18 years old!" My mom said. I rolled my eyes, and then it hit me.
"Have you told anyone I'm turning 18?" I asked.
"Yeah, I told Diana, why?"
"Zac thinks I'm turning 14, mom. That's why he can see me without worrying about getting into trouble. If he finds out, he's going to be really mad," I said.
"Well I guess he's going to be really mad, Tini. We're going to be celebrating your eighteenth birthday, not your fourteenth, no matter what you said to Zac."
"But mom�I want to be fourteen again!"
"And I want to be young again. It's not going to happen. You are not going to just take the four years of your life you just lived and forget about it all."
"But this is what I want. Mom, it's not like I'm doing this for myself, I'm doing this for Zac. I want him to be able to like me for the fourteen year old me. And besides, when I was fourteen I didn't have a disease." I hugged my knees to my chest and put my head on my knees.
"Honey, when you were fourteen you didn't have the disease, I know, but if you just say you're fourteen again, the disease isn't going to listen and just leave."
"I can hope, can't I?" I asked, talking mostly into my knees, and it took a good ear to hear me. "All I've wanted for two years, almost three birthdays I've wished for me to get better, I wasted my wish the only wish I get in 365 days and it never came true�"
"Well in two days honey you wish like you mean it, and you never know what'll happen. Come on, get up, we'll go straighten this out with Diana."
"Straighten what out?" I asked, pulling my head up. I had gotten nervous from what had happened, and my face was even more pale than usual.
"You're turning fourteen honey, now calm down before you go over there, they already saw you at your worst, they don't need to see you go through it all again."
I made sure I had my pills in my pocket, and took a few deep breaths to calm myself down, and we left. I insisted on walking, and considering at that time my mom had softened, she let me.
Zac was in the front lawn, laying down on the grass, clearly not noticing us walking up. I gave a smile and a 'shh' to my mom, then ran up to Zac, slowing down and then walking over him, taking a step on his stomach.
"Oh God!" he said, cringing. I smiled, and turned around to him, flopping on the ground next to him. He looked to me and smiled. "So you think I'm part of the grass now? You can just walk right on me?"
"Well, yeah!" I told him. My mom shook her head and walked inside. "How you doing since ten minutes ago?" I asked.
"Fine. You?"
"Alright."
"Just alright?" he asked. "Not fine, not super, not wonderful, just alright?"
"Well I almost had another attack like right before we headed over here. I really hate those, you know when I was four�I mean when I was ten, I didn't have to worry about them. I wasn't even showing symptoms until I was eleven, and then the attacks just started coming and coming."
"My poor baby," he said. I took his hand, squeezing it.
"And they won't go away." Zac sat up, leaving me laying on the ground, still holding his hand.
"Is this serious?" I looked to him and nodded, sitting up myself. "Geez, you seem so happy about, though." I shrugged.
"I have to be. It's something new in the whole medical field. They have seventeen doctors working full time looking for a cure, and that was two years ago. I don't know about now. They haven't found a cure yet, they consider it like cancer, there is a way to treat it, but no way to cure it."
"Have you had it treated?" I shook my head. "Why?"
"Because I would have been confined to a hospital for the rest of my life. I would be paralyzed from the neck down, I wouldn't be able to breathe on my own, I wouldn't be able to do anything on my own. I would have about sixty machines hooked up to me, and I would die within an month."
"I see�why would that be?"
"Because if they would cut the tumor out, it would affect half my brain. Now that it's there, my brain is dependent on it. Eventually I would just die with the treatment done, so I decided to live with it and prolong my life." I stopped and looked at him, smiling. "And I'm glad I did."
"I feel special," Zac said, with a goofy smile that I basically loved him for. It was the first time I'd seen him in person with that smile, and it seemed a million times better than on any picture.
"You are Zac. Ask anybody who comes to a concert, or comes to see you off like at the airport. They think you're really special."
"The only one who matters to me is you." I almost blushed, for the first time in my life, I almost blushed. I'd never even come close before. No guy had ever really cared enough about me to say something like that. It felt great.
My cheeks finally got a little red, and Zac noticed. "My, my. Little Miss Stone is blushing!"
"No I'm not," I said.
"Yes, I do believe you are. Trust me, Taylor blushes if a girl he doesn't even know says hi to him. I know what a blush looks like, and you are so doing it."
"No�"
"It's not nice to lie."
"It's not nice to make me feel embarrassed, Zac."
"Well I only do it because I really like you," he said. It only made me turn redder, and I put my face in my hands.
"Stop!" I said, loudly.
"No."
"Zac! I can't handle this much happiness!" I yelled, the red in my cheeks gone now. It was replace by white. "Please, just stop it before I start hyperventilating."
"O.K." He decided it would be best to drop the subject. So we sat there, the only sound was the wind, and my deep breathing, calming myself down. That was my second almost attack that day.
We sat there I don't know how long, my breathing going from a deep panting to almost normal when Diana came out of the house. "Tini, why didn't you say something about your birthday?" she asked. I looked up to her. "You only turn fourteen once."
I gave her a "thank you so much" look, and she gave me a knowing smile. It told me that she knew our plan, and she had accepted it. But from how long we were out there, and how long my mother had been in there, it wasn't easy.
"Why don't you two come on inside, it's getting cold out here," she said. Zac stood, and help me up, and we went on inside. He had no idea.
Mental note�tell Diana a big thank you and give her a hug, I told myself.
It was strange how Zac couldn't know this, and Diana acted like she didn't know it. I just felt weird inside, I was a kid again. I couldn't drive, I couldn't do much of anything that I could do if I was turning eighteen, not fourteen.
It seemed strange that Diana would let me.