It was a horrid day, really, and I didn’t want anyone to know how much I actually liked it.
As long as the rain fell at a rapid pace, stinging my eyes and making them water themselves, I was happy. As long as the lightning lit up the sky in a thousand colors, making the night seem as bright as day, I was happy. As long as thunder roared above, blocking out the loud noises of New York City, I was happy.
I had come here with my two best friends, Amanda Garcia and Kristina Echevarria. Kristina was visiting family she had only met when she was six months old, and thought that bringing her two best friends would be a good idea.
I needed to get away from them.
Luckily, I had been able to slip away from the hotel room that the three of us shared, and ran down the streets in the pouring rain and really enjoying myself. I would go back in a little while.
Then it happened.
"Excuse me," I yelled with attitude, "Would you mind watching where you’re going for once!" I had just been knocked off my feet by someone, and I was afraid I broke my back on the hard cement.
He bent down and helped me up, much against my will. "Sorry, I know I should have been paying attention but I couldn’t help it, I just had to bump into you." I gave him a look.
"Why?"
"Cause you’re really pretty and I wanted to talk to you," he slyly said. I knew my mascara was running and I was just totally soaked.
"Well that’s probably the worst way to get a girl to talk to you but…" I smiled. "It worked." I looked him over, from his sunglasses and his hat, to his soaked clothes with were now clinging to his body.
"What’s with the shades, boy? The sun went down three hours ago!" I tried to take them off, but he slapped my hand away. "Someone’s being an ass today." He looked to me.
"You could at least tell my your name before you start calling me an ass," he said. I shrugged, and wiped at my eyes, trying to get rid of some of the dripping mascara.
"Ginger. How bout you?" He smiled, and didn’t say anything. The smile looked somewhat familiar to me, a broad grin with gap teeth. I could tell he was staring at my chest, the little pervert. But before I could say anything else, another boy about two inches taller than him ran up and pulled him away. They left without a bye.
"I’ll never see him again, most likely." I turned around and walked for about twenty minutes before I stood in front of the huge hotel where I was staying. It stood twenty stories high, and was very luxurious.
Sighing, I sat down out of the rain, and reached into the inside pocket to my drenched leather jacket, pulled out a pack of dry Marlboro Lights, and lit one up.
"Ginger!" I heard someone call from behind me. I turned around and there was Amanda. "Where the hell did you get those?" she asked.
"I stole them from your mom." She smiled, and I lit one up for her. Not five minutes later, Kristina came out, and I lit one up for her. I guess we’ve all been smoking way too long.
But we’re only 13.
Suddenly a gush of cold November air hit us all and we shivered. Then we decided it would be a good time to go inside. Once we got inside, a bellhop came up to us.
"Excuse me misses, but you’re not allowed to smoke in this building. You need to go outside." I looked up to him, my teeth chattering, my body shaking, and to top it all off, I was totally wet. "Nevermind."
He walked away, and we snickered. "You know, rain is good in many different ways," I said. They both nodded.
"Where were you?" Amanda asked. "Me and Kristie were just about to go looking for you."
"I just started walking around, really. I met this boy…" I couldn’t finish my sentence because Amanda nearly exploded in front of me. I said the dreaded B-word. Boy.
"A boy? Was he cute? Did you get his number? Does he live here, or is he just visiting? How’d you meet him?" I rolled my eyes as she kept on spitting about questions.
"Amanda shut up already!! I didn’t know his name. I couldn’t see if he was cute or not cause he had on shades and a hat. I don’t know why either. I couldn’t get any info on him, not even his name, cause another dude pulled him away. And I couldn’t tell if the other dude was cute either."
"Oh," Amanda said, and took another drag from her cigarette. "We still have to get ready for the concert," she added, puffing out smoke with her words. My eyes grew wide.
"Crap! I totally forgot about that! Damn, the thing starts in an hour!" We all put out our cigarettes in an ash tray that was sitting in the lobby to a building where you couldn’t smoke…oh well, and ran into the elevator. (Jumping when it went up, of course.)
The elevator stopped on the seventh floor, and the door opened. Since our room was on the top floor, someone else got in. A lady, in her early forties, most likely walked in, holding a baby.
She gave us a warm smile and pushed the ground floor button. Considering we totally reeked of cigarette smoke, and we were all soaked, me the most, it was hard not to wonder why.
I looked at her, and to the baby in her arms, and smiled back.
The elevator stopped again, and we were back at the ground floor. She got off, and we started going back up. "That baby was so adorable!!" I cooed.
"I know!" Amanda said, and put her hand up to Kristina who was just about to make a comment. "Kristina, we know you want lots of babies, you don’t have to tell us every single time we see one."
"Oh shut up, alright?" Kristina muttered, and the doors opened again. Quickly we got off the elevator, and ran over to the only door on the floor that did say stairs, and Amanda unlocked it. She opened the door, and there was the only room on the whole floor, the penthouse. And we had access to the roof too.
Since we were staying a while, we basically had the place trashed, and we could. There was Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync stuff everywhere, Hanson stuff for me too. (So we have weaknesses.)
I feel into a chair, not caring if I got it soaked. "Ah, back to the world of cute guys," I muttered, looking around to the posters and pictures. We even had the CD going in the background.
"Who for strawberry daiquiris?" Amanda asked from inside the kitchen.
"I’ll take one. And stick extra rum in it," I yelled to her. "I really need it tonight." The blender from the kitchen blared and then soon turned off. Amanda came out of the kitchen with three glasses of daiquiris. She gave one to Kris, one to me with extra rum, and kept one for herself.
"So, what did you and this boy talk about?" she asked.
"Nothing. He bumped into me, I told him my name, he left. No biggie. But his smile looked so familiar it’s like not even funny," I said. "For some reason it felt like I had met him before or something."
"As much as we all love to hear about this guy you met, we really should be getting ready for the concert. We have to be there in an hour, Ginger. It doesn’t start in an hour."
"Whatever," I said, and took a long drink.
"Ginger, you’re gonna get drunk, and then go to a concert, and we’re gonna be at a Hanson concert too…" Kris started.
"Too late."
"You can’t get drunk off one drink," Amanda filled in. "But you can off a couple!" she added with a smile, and put more drinks on the table next to me. "And I suggest you take a shower first so you don’t fall down in the stall."
"O.K." I headed off to the bathroom.
We handed our tickets to the guy in front of NBC studios where the concert was being held. It was a small concert, only about ten or fifteen people were going. Now with just fifteen people there, and Hanson right next to us, I would definitely get wild.
Why?
Because I am SO drunk.
Kristina and Amanda try very hard to kept me calm, and shut me up, to make me pass as a normal person, and not this drunken girl trying to get in and stuff. It was bad enough that I was drunk, but they were a little bit tipsy themselves.
We were led to a room, with a small stage in the middle, and chairs around it. A few were occupied already by people who had come before us. We took a seat, and Kris leaned over to me.
"Ginger, I suggest you try to shut up for a little while, so you can at least hear the music. We’re gonna get kicked out if you keep giggling," she whispered. I nodded, and started giggling again.
"Shut up alright?" Amanda scolded. I shut up, trying my hardest to keep my giggles inside. Watch me end up bursting out laughing when they perform a sentimental song.
Above us was a little balcony, where there stood Isaac, Taylor, and Zac. Zac was scanning everybody, scanning around the room when he came to me. He recognized me.
The flaming red hair, slim body but big chest, and violet eyes. He gasped, and turned to Taylor. "Tay, remember like an hour ago when I was talking to some girl and you pulled me away saying we had to come here?" he whispered. Tay looked at his little brother.
"Yeah, why?"
"There she is, right there," he said, pointing to the girl who just burst out laughing for no apparent reason. Taylor looked to me, and almost laughed.
"That was the girl you bumped into on purpose? She looks drunk," he said. Zac shrugged.
"Maybe she is." Taylor shook his head. "Well when I met her she had alcohol on her breath," he said.
"Well then maybe she is," he said, and looked back to me. "Are you gonna talk to her?" Tay asked.
"No! I don’t want her to know who I am! It’s bad enough she might recognize me here, I don’t wanna take my chances."
"Zac! She’s as drunk as she can be. She could carry on a conversation with a dead cow and not realize it. Those two girls she’s with are trying to keep her sane."
"I think she’s younger than you, Tay." Tay gave him a look. "Seriously, she doesn’t look 15."
"She doesn’t look 13 either." Zac shrugged, and noticed that all the seats had been taken up. "We gotta go soon, don’t stare at her, alright?" Tay asked. Zac nodded, and headed off in the opposite direction. "Shit, he has got to be the weirdest kid I know."
In about ten minutes, the lights dimmed a little, and Isaac, Taylor, and Zac walked onto the little stage. Everything got set up, Ike got his guitar, Tay had his tambourine, and Zac had his little maraca thingys.
"Hello everybody, small crowd tonight, huh?" Ike asked.
"Lame joke!" Taylor said. "It’s supposed to be a small crowd, Ike." Ike rolled his eyes. Zac snickered. They had to put me so I would be looking right at her.
"Zac, are you with us tonight?" Tay asked. "Sorry, he must be drooling over that dog again."
"Shut up, Tay! It’s supposed to be a secret!"
"And I have to go through this every single day, people," Ike said. "So, off the subject of my two idiot brothers, what song are we gonna do first?" he asked. Zac stroked his chin like he was in deep thought.
"How about we do All My Life?" he suggested.
"We don’t sing that song, Zac," Tay said. Zac huffed, and went back to his deep thought pose. "How bout we do Madeline? A song we actually wrote?" Tay asked, giving a pointed stare to Zac.
He shrugged, and they launched into Madeline.
After they finished that song, they talked a little more. "So, how long is this show gonna be?" Zac asked. "I’m already exhausted."
"We did one song, Zac. You didn’t even have a big part in the song, you need to take your sugar pill." Zac nodded, and pretended to put something in his mouth.
"O.K., I’m better now. What song should we do now?" he asked. Ike and Tay both shrugged. "Audience request," he said. "Who wants to hear what song? And make it a song we play."
Kristina felt the Wild Turkey she drank earlier kick in, so she requested Weird. "O.K., we can do that. What’s your name?" Tay asked, turning to her.
"Kristina," she said. She only requested Weird because that’s the only song she remembers off the album.
"So we’re playing Weird, for the lovely Kristina over there," Tay said with a smile he thought was sexy. Only he thought it was sexy, of course. Everyone else thought it was funky. Kris had to keep herself from laughing.
Damn, now we’re all drunk.
Amanda had been controlling herself for a while now, I had learned to control myself throughout the whole show, and now Kris was getting hyper. We shouldn’t have gone.
They played four more songs before they left, and the second they disappeared, we were asked to leave. Not anyone else, just me, Kristina, and Amanda.
Oh well.
The person who told us to leave drove us home, seeing we were in no condition to walk, in New York City, at three o’clock in the morning. Cause if we would have gotten mugged, the way we acted would have gotten us shot.
The large, bald guy, took us up to our room, and made sure we were O.K. before he left. I had fallen asleep in the car on the way over, so he had to carry me the entire way. I wasn’t about to wake up, I was zonked.
Kristina and Amanda basically fell into their beds and were out the second their head hit the pillow. I just couldn’t wait for the hangover.
When I woke up, there was a rose and a note laying on my pillow. I didn’t feel good, so I kinda forgot about it. Actually, I felt like shit, so I ran over to the bathroom and threw up a few times.
When I felt better…better as in I knew what was going on, I could see stuff, and I could hold food down, I went back into my bedroom. Then I noticed the rose and the note.
I smelled the rose, I could actually smell, so that was a good sign, and looked at the note.
The security guards noticed the three of you being drunk, so they had to take you home, afraid that you would like do something or whatever. Maybe if we meet again I can get to know you better.
Zac Hanson
I put the note down, not really knowing what he meant, but then again, I could barely read the note. The room was spinning, so I ran back into the bathroom.