Me and Brian sat in the Westshore Mall, right smack dab in the middle of the food court, just talking. I had eaten my Bourbon Chicken already, and some of Brian�s sandwich. He only gave me a strange look.
"I�m sorry if I�m being a big pig today, but I�m really hungry," I informed him, seeing his strange look. He only shrugged, and I saw four guys walk up to us.
"Hey!" Brian said, as the came over. "Ginger, this is Nick, Howie, AJ, and Kevin," he told me, pointing to each one. I got to shake hands with all of them. "Guys, this is Ginger."
"Hey," I said. Nick grabbed a few of Brian�s fries and stuffed them in his mouth. Luckily he didn�t say hi back until he finished eating them.
"Hi," he said, along with the other three. It was funny how I was actually five years younger than Nick, but according to my ID, I was older than both Nick and AJ.
They didn�t really stay for long, cause they all had their own little things to do, and me and Brian were kinda on a date, so they let us be. "Those guys are my best buds, but they can get annoying sometimes."
"I know what you mean," I said. Well, I used to. Now all my friends basically hate me. I was actually having the only ones I trust over that night, since it was a Friday.
The only ones I trust, that sounded so strange. Well, that includes, Kristina, Laura deSouza, Brittany, Sam, and Mandy. I only hope they don�t squeal anything on me.
"What time did you say you needed to be home?" Brian asked.
"Six," I told him. "There�s this little thing on TV about these five dudes called, maybe you�ve heard of em, N Sync?"
"You�re ditching me for an N Sync thing?" he asked, with a fake surprised expression on his face. I shook my head. "Than what?"
"Well, my five best friends from highschool are back in town and this is the first time I�ve seen them in years so we were gonna have a girl�s night out. You happy?"
"Five best friends, huh? Girl�s night out?" A grin came across his face. "Can I come?"
"Brian!" He put his hands up in defense.
"I�m kidding! Sheesh," he said. "I don�t mind the Girl�s night out thing, you have your own life too. So what�re their names?" he asked.
"Brittany, Samantha, Mandy, Kristina, and Laura," I told him. He nodded. Since we had finished with our food, we got up, threw away the trash and decided to go walk around a little bit.
We didn�t get very far when we saw one of those little photo booths and figured it wouldn�t hurt to get our pictures taken and make ourselves look like fools for a camera. (Brian had done it a hundred times, he knew what he was doing.)
What was funny was that I had done the same exact thing with Jeff, and with Zac.
"Shit Ginger, what is with your room?" Mandy asked, walking into my room. Kristina followed and shook her head. One wall was dedicated to Brian, another to Zac, and half a wall with snapshots of me with Jeff.
As Kristina looked closer, she noticed something strange about the walls for Brian and Zac. "Ginger, how come you�re in all these pictures?" she asked. I shrugged and sat down at my desk in the corner of the room, putting three slim picture frames face down.
"O.K., what�s with those pictures? Can we see them?" Mandy asked. I shook my head. "I thought you invited us over so you can make us all friends with you again, and this isn�t helping."
"Fine." I handed over the three picture frames over to her. She looked at each one, took a deep breath, and set them down.
"Why do you have three photo booth photos with you and Zachary Hanson, Brian Littrell, and Jeff?" she asked.
"Probably because I�m going out with all three of them. Sorta." She gave me a strange look. "I�ll explain it all when everyone gets here." Just then the doorbell rang. I ran downstairs, and there stood the other three people who were supposed to come.
"Mandy will explode if I don�t tell her what�s going on so let�s get upstairs before she does." Getting a strange look from the three of them, they followed me upstairs and into my room.
"O.K.," I said, sitting down back in my chair. "Kris, you know the story behind Zac, so why don�t you tell them?" I asked. She nodded, and everybody found a comfy position, knowing they would be there a while.
"Ginger met up with Zac the first time in New York way back in November. They had ran into each other and she had no idea who he was. They met up again a few other times before she had found out who he was. Then every single time they met up again, they sorta fell in love again but something always happened so they broke apart and haven�t seen each other in a while."
"That�s the Zac story, basically. Now let�s move on to Brian," I said, pushing Zac�s picture face down, letting myself know that we finished with him. "Since no one knows the Brian story except for me and him, I�ll tell it. I still remember the date we met. February 10th. My mom dropped me off to spend the day with my Aunt Monica at the DMV. She left on a lunch break and I stayed behind. I guess she didn�t put the �out to lunch� sign or whatever on the door cause someone came in. Well I was busy making a fake ID for myself, which I have with me now. According to it, my name is Ginger Stevens, I�m 23 and stuff like that. Well I hear someone ring the bell so I run over and there�s the guy and he needs his license renewed. Being the smart person that I am, I did it and found out that his name is Brian Littrell. We get to talking and the next day he takes me out to lunch. We see each other a few more times before he leaves and just recently he called me again. We went out this morning, and I got to meet the rest of the Backstreet Boys."
"You met my boyfriends?" Kristina asked.
"Ha! My boyfriend," I told her. "And that�s the Brian story. I saved the best for last. Here we go with the whole Jeff story. This might take a while. Where should I begin?" I asked�
"Just tell us."
"Well I guess it started back in December. December 15th to be exact. It was right before Math, and I got Mr. King to unlock the bathroom for me. I went inside, letting the door shut behind me. I put my bag in the corner and checked myself out. You know, fixing my hair, fixing my make-up, all that. I look in the mirror and there�s Jeff. I�m like �Jeff go away, why are you in the girls� bathroom?� He pulled out a gun and of course I didn�t think it was real. So I�m still like �go away and bug someone else,� and he shot me."
"Why did anyone hear it?" Laura asked. I cleared my throat before answering.
"He had a silencer on it. So of course then I knew it was real, and I got really scared. And then, well, he sort of raped me," I told them. "I�ll spare all the graphic details cause it was probably the worst sex I�ve ever had�"
"You mean to tell me that wasn�t you first time?" Mandy asked.
"No! I�d done a few other guys before that, but then it wasn�t a really big deal. Then I wanted to and I actually used protection. So then a teacher comes in the bathroom, doesn�t see Jeff gun, just sees us together and we both got expelled. Then I find out they let him back in a month later! Anyways, a few days later Kevin died, and Jeff told me it was him who killed him. I found out yesterday it actually wasn�t him, it was someone else. Jeff killed Jackie Espino, but that�s because she had surprised him. He really didn�t mean to do it. Well later on, like around the time when I first met Brian, I went to the doctor and I found out that I�m pregnant."
"Oh�Oh my God!" Samantha said, her eyes widening, as large as everyone else�s. I nodded.
"When I finally told him he had a new respect for me, he became really nice, and I made him tell Mrs. Goslee the truth, and he has 20 years in jail now. I�ve seen him a couple of times in jail and he�s my best bud right about now."
"How�s your baby?" Britt asked.
"Perfectly fine. I didn�t really wanna know if it was a boy or a girl, but Jeff conned me into it, and my baby�s a boy. A very healthy baby boy that�s gonna be given up for adoption."
"Why?" Kris asked.
"Like hell I can keep a baby! I don�t know the first thing about what to do, I have a hell of a lot of shit to do, and I just can�t do it. I love Jeff with all my heart but I got to do this."
"What did you just say?" Mandy asked.
"I love my baby with all my heart but I got to do this," I told her. She shook her head.
"No you didn�t, you just said you love Jeff with all your heart." My face went blank, as I looked to my five best friends, who all didn�t believe I just said that.
"I didn�t just say that." All of a sudden the phone rang. It was my line, so I had to pick it up. "Hello?" I said. When I heard the voice, my face dropped and signaled for the others to shut up.
"Hi Ginger," Zac�s voice said.
"Um, hi, Zac. What do I owe the pleasure of this call?" I asked.
"Can it, I know you weren�t expecting me to call, so that�s why I called," He told me, confusing me.
"What?"
"Nevermind, you get too confused too easily. Simple minds I guess."
"What?" I asked, this time angry, not confused. I could hear him rolling his eyes. I figured he hated me or something. "Do you hate me or something?"
"No."
"Then why are you being mean to me?" I asked.
"Cause I figured you hated me," he told me. That shocked me. I didn�t hate him.
"I don�t hate you. Why would you think that?"
"Well you were really nasty to me the last time I saw you and you snapped at me a lot."
"I�m sorry, I was having a really bad day. I don�t hate you, I actually love you a lot."
"You do?" he asked, his voice regaining the Zac in him again.
"Yup."
"Well that�s good. How much do you love me? Do you love me more than�chocolate chip cookies?"
"More than chocolate chip cookies."
"Do you love me more than�more then Milky Way bars?" he asked. I laughed, happy we were good together again.
"More than Milky Way bars."
"More than Jeff?" he asked. My face went pale, and I glanced over to my friends, my mouth hanging open. Oh my God, I don�t know, I thought. They had gotten a phone and huddled around it, pressing the mute button so they wouldn�t be heard, and had listened to the entire conversation.
"Ginger do you love me more than Jeff?" he asked, his voice almost desperate. We were going so well�dammit. "Figures." I heard him hang up the phone, and tears came to my eyes.
I absently took the phone and hung it up, keeping my eyes away from my friends. But I knew what they were thinking. Do you? I asked myself. "I don�t know," I said. A tear fell out of my eye and I wiped it away. "I really don�t know."
Mandy came over and hugged me. I didn�t know anything anymore. I didn�t know who I loved more, Jeff, Zac, or Brian. I wasn�t gonna see them very much, but Jeff was the father of my child, I had known and loved Zac longer, but Brian was new and he was so hot!
"I don�t know anything anymore."
The end of the week brought a heartache for me. Brian was leaving, Jeff was being shipped off to another prison (probably because they got sick of me coming over all the time) and my mother brought me the worst news that I had ever experienced in my life.
"Ginger, we�re moving."
"What? What the hell? Why?" I yelled at her. My hormones had been through the roof lately and I had snapped at all my teachers and half of the people in my class.
"Because I got laid off my job and the only other one responding isn�t here. So we�re moving." I screamed, and ran upstairs, slamming my door and sliding down to my ass.
There I cried for as long as I could remember, and then suddenly I started laughing. I don�t know why, I just started laughing so hard that I couldn�t contain myself. I didn�t even know where we were going and I had gotten so pissed at my mom.
Two hours after my mother had told me, I went downstairs and into the kitchen. My mother was making herself a sandwich. I grabbed a bottle of water and took a sip of it.
"Where are we going anyways?" I asked, taking another sip of my water.
"Tulsa, Oklahoma." I spit out my water. I shook my head and told her no way. She nodded. I couldn�t believe it. I nearly fell out of the chair that I had been sitting on. "Honey you�ll love it. There�s only one other house on the street, and it�s owned by some big family. I wrote down the name somewhere," she said looking around.
As she picked up a piece of paper I took another sip of my water. "Oh yeah, the Hansons." I spit out my water again.
"Will you please let me drink something before you go ahead and tell me the worst news ever?" I asked. She waited as I took another sip of my water, and was able to swallow it this time. "O.K., go ahead. We�re moving near the Hansons?"
"Yes, do you know them?" she asked. I almost laughed.
"Remember a while back, maybe two months, when I had a guy come home with me and I asked you if I could go on tour with him?" She thought a while, then nodded. "Well that guy was Zac Hanson. Stress the last name, Hanson."
"Oh! So you do know them what�s so shocking about that?" my mother asked. "I figured you liked him or something."
"We just had a fight like a few days ago. Mom could you have picked the worst time to do this? I mean me and my friends are talking now and all of a sudden I have to move halfway across the country? On the same street as my new enemy?"
"You�re enemies?"
"Close enough! He hates me now. It�s bad enough that Brian�s not coming back for a year or two, and Jeff is being shipped off to somewhere and they won�t tell me where, and now once me and Zac have a fight we decided to move there?"
"I�m sorry but we can�t just stay here and live off nothing when we can go to Tulsa and be millionaires."
"I don�t wanna go to Tulsa and be a�did you say millionaires?" I asked, my head shooting up. She nodded.
"The job pays $10,000 a week," she said, a smile appearing on her face. I jumped up and ran over to her, hugging her.
"Anything�s worth that!" I told her. "Even if it is Zachary Hanson."