After our fun in the park, Zac took me out to eat. I wouldn’t let him blow his money on food that I probably wouldn’t finish at some snooty restaurant, so we went to Steak N Shake.
We sat in the corner of the bright, happy restaurant, me facing the window.
"I don’t think I should get a shake," Zac said, looking over the menu.
"Why not?"
"I’m bound to make a complete ass out of myself and I know how much you hate to be embarrassed in a public place," he told me, slightly grinning.
"Get one! We’re being silly today, you might as well get one and be stupid while I’m here being stupid. Come on, Zac, I know it’s not hard for you."
"Hey!"
"I’m getting one," I said, like I hadn’t even heard his interjection.
"Then I’ll just be stupid with yours."
"As long as you don’t stick the straws up your nose." His face lit up. "No! Don’t even think about embarrassing me like that!"
"So I’m an embarrassment? Are you ashamed to be in public with me?" he joked.
"Uh, no…not at all."
"Then I can do it anyway," he said, then looked around. "Where is that damn waitress?"
"You’re not going to embarrass me, are you?"
"Of course I am." He gestured to the door. "Look! Volleyball players!" I glanced over at the door. It looked like a team of (of course) teenage girls, all in uniform, one carrying a ball.
"Why would they bring a volleyball in here?"
"They know I want to embarrass you, and that’s a perfect opportunity." He got up and ran over to the group of girls. He got a few looks, a few smiles, and walked back with the volleyball in his hands. I put my head down on the table, groaning. "I’m back. Did you miss me?"
"Oh dear God."
"What? I haven’t done anything! Not yet, at least."
"What the hell are you going to do?"
"Nothing." He put the volleyball on the seat next to him.
"Why do you have that?"
"Why are you asking so many questions? I’m not going to do anything. I just wanted a souvenir from Kentucky."
"I’m sure you don’t need a volleyball."
"Yes I do." The waitress walked over, a little notepad in her hands.
"Hi. I’m your waitress, Amy. Can I start you two off?"
“Sure just a sec,” Zac said. He picked up the volleyball and looked in the direction of the players. “SERVICE!”
“Oh my God…”
Suddenly the ball flew through the air and over to the table where the volleyball players were sitting. Zac then turned to the surprised waitress. “Okay, we’ll both the cheese fries. She’ll have a chocolate shake, and I’ll have a Dr. Pepper.”
The waitress walked away. Zac turned back to me. “Don’t forget some extra straws!” he yelled at the waitress. He gave me a smile.
“You’re just going to make this trip a living hell, aren’t you?” I asked. He nodded. His pager went off then, and he groaned before looking at it.
“Maybe I won’t.” He dialed the number from the pager onto the cell phone. “I hate my brothers.”
I waited while he talked on the phone, a disturbed look on his face. He obviously had not wanted to be bothered. The fact that it was his brothers calling didn’t help him any. “Oh shit,” he muttered, then hung up the phone. “We have to go. I have a magazine interview in ten minutes.”
“You do?”
“I completely forgot. We’re doing it in the hotel, so we have to leave no.” As the waitress came back over to give Zac his drink, we got up and left, confusing her even more. We got into the car and drove back to the hotel. As we walked up to the room, he turned to me. “Please stay with me. Don’t leave me alone with my brothers. Please don’t leave…I don’t think I can handle being alone with them. They won’t act much different with the interviewer there.”
“Alright. Won’t the interviewer ask questions, though?”
“I suppose. That’s her job.” I gave him a look. “I don’t care if she asks questions about you. They’ll just rip me apart in there without you to help ward them off.”
“Okay. I’ll stay with you.”
“I can’t thank you enough for this.” He turned to the door and went inside. The atmosphere was very different than I thought (Zac had mentioned to me that the drawers were probably stuffed with drugs) and the other two boys plus the interviewer were already in there, waiting for Zac to come inside.
“What’s she doing here?” Taylor asked, trying his best to cover his rudeness. The interviewer wasn’t paying attention, cause me to get two looks to kill.
“She’s here because I wanted her to be here. She’s a bit of moral support.”
“Can we start now? Is everyone here?” the interviewer asked. She was in her early twenties, but she was clearly bored already. She had no true interest in being there, but this was her job and she had to do it.
“Yes, we can start now.” Zac and I sat at the table, while the boys and the interviewer sat on the edge of the bed.
“How do you feel that your music has evolved since your last album a year and a half ago?” she asked.
Taylor droned on about how he felt the original pop music had taken a slight heavy rock vibe. I personally didn’t care about the interview at all, and obviously Zac didn’t are either. He had his head down on the table, and it didn’t look like he was going to move.
“Zac? Any comment from you?” the interviewer asked. Zac looked at her and opened his mouth to speak, but Taylor cut him off.
“I think—”
“Taylor!” Zac yelled, surprising everyone in the room. “She asked me! She said Zac, not Taylor. Stop answering for me. I have a brain, you know.”
“I hadn’t finished my thought,” Taylor grumbled.
“Well it’s too bad. She asked me a question. Directed to me. What you do is shut your million-dollar mouth and sit there. Trust me, people like you better when you don’t open your mouth.”
“Okay. Talk.”
“Our music is our music. As the years change, so do we. We’re constantly changing. And since we actually write our own music, we write how we feel at the time. I don’t know about them, but I write as a way to get my emotions out. If the song is about passion, it means we’re feeling very passionate about what we’re thinking of. Like “Bridges of Stone,” it’s about a woman leaving her husband because he doesn’t pay attention to her. At that time I was going through a nasty break up. It wasn’t necessarily my relationship going bad, but I can’t make it too personal, you know.”
“Alright.”
“Okay. I’m done now.” I looked over at Zac. He was talking about Amber. I knew it by the way he wouldn’t stop looking at Taylor.
“Is that true?” the interviewer asked Taylor and Isaac.
“Pretty much.”
“Do you have to be in love to write a love song?”
“No, not at all. It’s a thing that comes and goes. I get the urge to write all the time. It’s a thought process. You’re sitting there, picking your nose and all of a sudden you’ve got a melody in your mind. All you can do is just write it on paper and let it go how it goes in your head. There’s not pondering, there’s no assigned time, all you can do is wait for it to come,” Zac continued.
“You can’t force yourself to write. You can’t sit in front of paper and tell yourself ‘okay, I’m going to write the best song anyone’s ever heard, right now,’ ” Isaac added. “Either you have the idea or you don’t. There’s no in between.”
“If it’s alright with you guys, I’d like to have an individual interview with each of you. Only if it’s alright.”
“No, it’s fine!” Zac said. He knew his brothers were against it. Individual interviewers were usually kept secret until the magazine came out. Then, all hell would usually break loose. I was exposed to all of this, in due time of course.
“Great. Why don’t I start with you first, Zac?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, why don’t the rest of you get something else to do, and I’ll send Zac out to get you when I’m all done.” The interviewer said. Taylor and Isaac got up and left, but Zac looked at me and shook his head. “And you?” the woman asked, turning to me.
“She stays here,” Zac said. “I’m sure it’s not a problem.”
“Well…”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Well I guess she can stay here.”
“Yes she can. So, you want to get started here?” Zac asked, sounding rude, but not trying to be.
“Why don’t we start off with her? Who are you?”
“I’m sure you didn’t come to ask a question about her. And if you ask any more, we’ll leave. I told you she’s here for moral support.”
“Why would you need that?”
“I won’t discuss that.”
“Alright, I’ll just get into the questions. You and your brothers have been on the road for quite some time now, do you guys ever fight?” Zac sighed.
“Do you want the answer I was told to tell you, the one the readers want to hear, or do you want the truth?”
“Whatever you choose to give me. I’ll only write down what you want me to.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Neither would I,” she said. “But I’ll do what you want. If you don’t want anyone to know what really happens then tell me a lie. If you don’t mind, then go ahead and tell me the truth. Either way, I’ll write what I'm told.”
“I’ll just tell you the truth. I hate lying and I’m not good at it anyway. We do fight. Everyone fights. There’s no way to be together for so long and not fight.”
“Do you fight often?”
“No, we don’t put up with each other long enough to fight. We can’t stand each other’s presence long enough to fight. We avoid each other like plagues. The only time we’re together is practice, shows, and promotions. When we don’t have to be together, we’re as far apart from each other as humanly possible. We have been fighting a lot lately, only because I’m sick of running away.”
“How can you avoid each other? With what I’ve heard, you’re constantly together. I’ve been told you three share hotel rooms.”
“Who tells you that bullshit?” Zac asked. “I’d rather shoot myself than to have to share a room with them on tour. It’s bad enough I have to share a bus with them. I’ve tried everything to get to ride with the other bus but our manager is a dipshit and says we all have to ride together. The only reason we haven’t fired him is because he’s our father.”
“Where is he?”
“At home. We told him to stay there so we could travel by ourselves. It was mostly so we could stay away from each other all the time.”
“You three are brothers. How could you hate them so much?”
“Now I never said I hate them,” Zac told her, leaning back in his chair. “Don’t put words in my mouth. Hate is a strong word. I can’t hate them because they’re my brothers. The same blood runs through the three of us. I just can’t stand them.”
“Why?”
“Can we get off the subject, please? I don’t like talking about them. Plus, I’ve said enough to have me killed already.”
“You use the term ‘kill’ very loosely, I suppose.”
“They’ll do it. Well, they won’t actually kill me; I’m too important, but they would try. They’ve gone as far as checking out assassins already.”
“How do you know that?”
“I said I didn’t want to talk about them! Now you already got another statement I don’t want to give.”
“Then we’ll scratch that from the record.”
“You know what? Scratch this entire segment from the record. No, we never fight. We love each other very much. We’re best friends. Okay, next question.”
“You’re not going to like the rest of my questions.”
“Just ask the damn questions!”
“How is life on the road affected you personally?”
“You’re right. I don’t like them.” He grabbed her clipboard and looked over the questions. I looked at them also.
“Ike would kick your ass if you answered that one truthfully,” I said, pointing to question number 7. Have you ever thought about using drugs or alcohol? Have you even been exposed to it? Zac laughed.
“Yeah, he would.” He gave the clipboard back to the interviewer. “I don’t like any of them. Interview over, I’ll send in Taylor.” He grabbed my hand and led me out of the room. We stopped in Taylor’s room, opening the door. “Your turn.”
“Do I look okay?”
“Fuck you and your looks, alright? I don’t care. There’s not even a camera in there.”
“But, do I look okay?”
“No! You look like shit!” Taylor’s eyes widened.
“I’m not going back in there!” He shoved us out of the room and closed the door. “Zac, that was mean,” I said, but couldn’t help laughing. That Taylor…good God that Taylor needed some kind of help, and quick. He was worse than any girl I’ve seen.
“Oops,” Zac said, smiling. “I’ve always wanted to do that to him. He’s so conceited.”
“Well, yeah, I noticed that.”
“And he’s a flake too. Watch.” Zac opened the door, and Taylor was desperately trying to make himself look better. “Oh, uh, Taylor? I think your shoes are untied. I don’t want you to trip and make an ass out of yourself in front of the interviewer.”
“Really?” he asked, looking down at his feet. He didn’t have shoes on. “Wait a minute, I don’t have any shoes on!” he said, then looked back at Zac.
“I could have sworn you had shoes on when I was in here before. They must have disappeared!”
“Oh my God where did they go?!” he yelled. Zac smiled and left the room, leaving Taylor frantic.
“I thought he was smarter than that.”
“He is smart. He’s just a flake.” Zac walked back to his room, finding Isaac in there. “What the hell are you doing in my room?”
“Sitting.”
“Well it’s our turn. Get out of here.”
“You don’t tell her anything real, did you?”
“No,” Zac lied, giving him a look. “Now get out of here.” Zac got up and left, leaving his lit joint on the ashtray. “I really need this right now,” Zac said, picking up the joint. He looked over at me. “But you’re going to help me, right? You’re not going to let me go back to this, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, briefly. I watched as he extinguished the drug in the ashtray, then sat down.
“Never start this crap. You have no idea how horrible I feel.” He ran his hands over his face, upset. “I can’t believe he smoked that in here. It’s all I can smell and it’s so inviting.”
“I think we should leave and let the room air out.”
“Yeah. I think so too.” He walked over to the door of the balcony. “Why is there no window? I don’t want to leave the door open, but I need to air out this room.” He opened the sliding glass door, leaving it half open. “Okay, let’s go.” As we left, we saw Amber coming down the hall.
“Oh God,” I muttered.
“Do you guys have any heroin?”
“All out?” Zac asked. “Didn’t you just beg Taylor for some yesterday?”
“I left it on the bus.”
“Then go get it. The bus is downstairs, you know.” He saw the grim look on her face as she absently rubbed a protruding vein on her left arm. “You did it all yesterday, didn’t you?” he asked, looking at her. She squirmed.
“Do you have any or not?”
“No, I don’t,” Zac said. “If you see Ike, tell him not to go in my room with any drugs whatsoever.”
“Do you think he has any?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”
“Alright.” She turned to leave.
“Not now! There’s an interviewer in there now.”
“But I need it now!” she said, then sniffed. Great, she’d been doing crack too.
“Oh my God! You’re addicted!” She laughed.
“No I’m not. You’re just being silly. I’m not addicted.”
“Yes you are!”
“If I’m addicted, so are you. You use it as often and as much as I do, Zac.”
“I haven’t used heroin since we broke up!” Zac glanced back at me. “Anyway, I don’t have anything. Don’t ask me.” We walked down the hall to the elevator. I looked over at Zac, and he was fidgeting.
“Zac, I know you did a lot before. I don’t really care. I don’t really care if you do it now, just as long as you don’t do it around me.”
“But, Nic, I don’t want to do it now. I want to quit because I know you don’t do it, and you don’t approve of it.”
“Zac, you don’t have to quit for me.”
“But I want to. I’m sixteen; I shouldn’t be doing it anyway. I don’t want to spend millions of dollars on drugs. I don’t want to blow it all. I know what happens. I’ve seen what happens. I don’t want to be that.”
“You know the stuff you don’t use your brothers will.”
“I know.”
“Either way…”
“Let’s not talk about it, alright?”
“Alright.” I looked down and kept walking.
“You’re different from the rest of them. That’s why I like you. Because you really don’t care what everyone else is doing here. You don’t blend in with the crowd.”
“I don’t mean to do it. I figured that eventually I would, I mean I have…”
“Don’t.”
“I don’t like being different, Zac. The girls really don’t like me.”
“I like you. Don’t care what they think. All of the girls together don’t add up to just one of you.”
“You really think that?”
“Of course I do! Why else would I bother? You’re changing me for the better, Nic. You’re making me want to stop running away from my problems or escaping by using drugs. I used drugs to escape, but I don’t need to use them with you around.”
“Cause I’m your drug of choice, right?”
“Damn straight.” I smiled.
“Okay, that’s enough serious stuff here. You have to do something stupid, quick. I’m feeling a sap moment coming on and I don’t like it. I’ll start crying soon, you’re too sweet.”
“You want to go trick Taylor again?”
“Alright.” We ran back to Taylor’s room.