"Oh, this is the part! This is the part! Turn it up!" Zachary Hanson yelled, pointing towards the television. Beside him his sister Jessica grumbled at her older brother and turned up the volume to the movie they'd seen a thousand times since Zac insisted they had to buy it on tape even though they were getting a DVD player in a couple of weeks. He couldn't wait that long. He had to buy it on tape so he could watch it right away. "Ohhhh yeah."
"Shut up, Zac!" Jessie yelled and turned the volume up more to block out his obnoxiously loud brother. The girl on the screen turned around, her just past shoulder-length brown curly hair flipping with her. The camera zoomed in on her curt expression and her bright brown eyes. Both her eyes and her hair weren't natural.
"What did you say?" she said, her voice as sharp as a knife. "Did you just put a label on me? You know, I could fucking care less what you think of me, Anthony, you can think I'm the worst person in the world or God's gift to you, but never put a label on me. Don't stereotype me, all right? I haven't worked for seventeen years to be my own person to have someone as ignorant as you put a label on me."
"I love you, Aya," Anthony said, played by a young actor of the same name nobody had heard of before this movie came out. The girl who played Aya was also new, but she'd become a household name quite quickly with the debut of the movie she wrote and starred in called Bittersweet. She was eighteen-year-old Ginger Stevens, known for her flaming red straight hair and violet eyes that she'd had to cover to play the role as Aya Maria Thomas-Hollowell in her own movie. The boy she'd cast as Anthony was a friend of hers from high school and was, actually, the person she'd based the character on. The story was like a Romeo and Juliet type story, only with a happy ending and a hell of a lot more violence and swearing. It had a couple of twists that made it its own, but it was a classic plot line.
Zac watched, enthralled, as Ginger and Anthony started making out on the screen and quickly drew into a sex scene. Zac felt a bit uncomfortable seeing it with his fifteen-year-old sister there, but he remembered what he knew when he was fifteen and he'd seen a hell of a lot worse than this. And the girl who made this was only eighteen, so it couldn't be too bad�
"Damn, they're really going at it," Jess said. Zac nodded, not taking his eyes away from the screen. "Geez, Zac, I know she's pretty but you don't have to stare." Unlike Zac, Jess had never seen the movie before. Zac saw it a record ten times in the theatres and rented it until he finally got to buy the movie. He'd seen it a good ten more times since he'd owned it, and this was the first time Jess was home long enough to see it with him. He knew every word.
"Shut up, Jess," he spat at his little sister. "I'm going to marry that girl one of these days."
"Oh, okay, Zac. You keep dreaming."
"Hey! It could happen! I read in her unofficial biography on the internet that her favorite band happens to be Hanson."
"Yes, Zac, and I once read on an unofficial biography on the internet that you're married with three kids�triplets�with a girl named Alicia." Zac gave her a look. "I'm just saying. You never know. Her favorite band may be Nirvana and she might barf at the sound of anything Hanson."
"You're really doing nothing for my spirits here, Jess."
"I also heard her and that Anthony character are dating." His look remained. "Fine! Give yourself lost hope."
"Thank you. I think I will." Jess shut up as she turned her attention back to the movie. The sex scene was over and now Ginger and Anthony were going into school for the first time, announcing to all of their friends that they were together. Zac smiled as Jess was pulled further and further into the story as the movie went on. He mouthed along the words (he was actually saying them before but Jess yelled at him to shut up) and ogled every time he saw Ginger on the screen. Was Jess right? Was she really dating Anthony? They had awesome chemistry on the screen, but that didn't mean anything�everyone has chemistry on screen if they're good at acting. Chemistry means nothing.
When the movie was over Zac turned expectantly to Jess to immediately hear what she thought of his new obsession and what was now dubbed his "favorite" movie. She looked over at him and smiled.
"I liked it! Did she really write that?" He nodded. "Oh my God! Wow! How come you're not making movies?"
"I haven't been writing books since I was twelve like she has."
"True, but you've been writing songs since you were, like, five! That's a seven year edge!" Zac rolled his eyes.
"Jess, writing a movie script and writing a song are two completely different things. One's a hell of a lot longer, that's for sure." Jess waved him off. "Whatever. If you want to write the next All-American movie script, go right ahead. I'll be upstairs hanging up my new poster."
"Poster?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah! I got a poster of Ginger from the video store!" Jess rolled her eyes as an excited Zac ran up the stairs. He went into his room and grabbed the cardboard tube that the video store guy had given him upon the millionth time he'd been there to re-check out Ginger's movie (It was a new release so he only had it for a day, so every day he had to run down to the video store and check it out again). He hadn't had the time to look at it but now he had the time and he was thrilled to put it up in his room. He even cleared a space on his wall in perfect view from all angles of the room to hang it.
He took the poster out of the tube and unrolled it, looking at it. His mouth gaped open and he immediately began to drool. It was a photo of Ginger, red hair, violet eyes and all, looking back at the camera with a profile of her body. She had on a violet bikini to match her eyes, and the strings to her top were loose and she was tugging on them to keep her top on. Her gaze was a seductive glance and she smiled slightly, showing only a few of her pearly white teeth. Her name was signed on the bottom left corner, but it was one of those manufactured signatures, nothing genuine.
"Holy shit," he managed to blurt out as his eyes took in the poster. And he was supposed to hang this on the wall and look at it every day? He could barely look at it for thirty seconds without drooling buckets. "I am fucking marrying this girl." Looking around, he picked the poster tape up off his desk and aligned the poster on the wall. He was about to tape it when he looked at it. "I'm framing this."
He ran into the next room, Taylor's room, and rummaged through the closet. He pulled out the large frame with a poster of Jennifer Aniston in it that Taylor had gotten way back when. "He won't mind," Zac said and ran back into his room. He shut the door and carefully opened up the frame and took the Jennifer Aniston poster out. He rolled it up and put it in the cardboard tube his Ginger poster came in and put the top back on. He rolled out the Ginger poster onto the frame and put the backing back on. He turned it around and looked at it and smiled.
"Shit, she's hot, who is that?" a voice came from the doorway. Zac looked behind him and Taylor was standing at the open door.
"Who said you could come in my room?" Zac asked.
"Who said you could steal my frame? I may have wanted to put that poster back up someday." Zac made a face and handed Taylor the tube with his old poster in it. "You know what, I bought that frame, I should take it back with her and all!"
"No! You're not stealing my Ginger poster!"
"Ginger?" Taylor said, laughing. "Her name is Ginger? What, is she friends with the Skipper and Gilligan too?" Zac gave him a look. "Ooh, if looks could kill! I'm just kidding, Zac, I don't want your poster. You can keep the frame and everything. I know how many nights you'll be whacking off to it�"
"Taylor!"
"You yell because it's true." Zac looked at the poster and it seemed like she was staring straight into his eyes, like she'd just winked at him and they had a secret only the two of them shared. Zac smiled. Taylor was damn right.
"Zachary Hanson what is that thing hanging in your room?" Diana Hanson yelled at her son later that day. He was in the kitchen shoving cereal in his mouth when she came up behind him and screeched nearly in his ear. He jumped and looked back at her, wiping the milk from his mouth.
"What are you talking about?" he asked.
"That poster!"
"That's just a girl from a movie, Ma. The guy at the video store gave it to me," he said innocently. His mother hadn't seen the movie and she probably wouldn't remember if he said her name, even if he talked about it every second he got a word in. It seemed the subject was always vying towards this movie and Ginger and away from everything else.
"I'm going to have to have a talk with that guy at the video store," she said. "I don't think I want my seventeen-year-old son staring at a poster like that all day. It's not right." Zac rolled his eyes. "And if I may remind you, we have a nine-year-old running around this house as well. The least you could do is shut your door when you leave."
"Whatever, Mom."
"I'm serious! That's not healthy for you!"
"It's just a poster, Mom."
"Of a half-naked girl just seconds away from taking off her top!" Zac shoved another spoonful of cereal in his mouth.
"You act as though I've never seen a naked girl before," he muttered, his speech half-garbled with Cheerios. His mother stopped and glared at him. He looked up and realized what he'd said.
"What?" she asked, giving him that motherly "you did not just say that" look.
"I have to go," he said, running out of the room, leaving half of his Cheerios in the bowl on the table. Taylor, who had been innocently watching the conversation from across the table, immediately turned back to his book and ignored any demanding looks from his mother. She didn't let up and it was a good while before she got to him.
"Well, Mom, you can't expect him to be a virgin forever," he said.
"Oh my God I thought he was just looking at girlie magazines!" Diana said, putting her hands over her eyes. Taylor's eyes grew and he ran out of the room just like his little brother had just a few moments beforehand. He ran into another room where Zac had settled.
"You better leave. Now."
"Why?"
"Because I said so," Taylor said, being careful to hide his mishap in the kitchen just moments before. "You better do it before Mom comes in."
"What'd you do?"
"I accidentally told her you weren't a virgin anymore. Your keys are on the table." Taylor turned to leave but Zac grabbed his arm.
"What?!"
"You better go. She looks pretty mad." Although he was ready to pound his brother's face in, he got up and grabbed his keys off the front room table, slipping out the door unnoticed before his mother caught him. The nerve of him! Saying something like that to their dear old mother! Well�she wasn't that old, not even fifty yet, but damn, that kind of thing could kill her. He was still seventeen, she still called him her "baby" and now Taylor had to go and blow it all. It wouldn't have been such a shock if Taylor said he'd lost his virginity. That was understandable. He was twenty. Zac was just seventeen. That sort of thing wasn't even legal yet.
"Where to go�where to go," Zac said, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. He'd peeled out of the driveway and was gone quick but he had no idea where he was headed. He'd had his whole day planned out at home, he was happy to finally be home instead of somewhere else, even if it were a few days before the left to Los Angeles again, but now he had to get shoved out of his house quickly so he could avoid his mother. Avoiding his mother yet again�seemed he did this every day. He avoided her when he was dating the girl he'd lost his virginity to, avoided her even more when she had that pregnancy scare, and avoided her for weeks when she went on the pill and they copulated like bunnies.
Then they'd broken up. It was a little while ago. He was still a freely new man, they'd broken up about a week before he came home, and he'd been home for two weeks. Three weeks? Had it really been that long already? She said something along the lines like she never saw him anymore and she couldn't deal with it any longer. He knew exactly why they'd broken up, though. He was gone for three months without seeing her and she'd found somebody new that she liked better than she liked him, and he was there all the time. She was a user and he knew it when he was dating her, but he used her as well so it didn't bother him in the least when they broke up. She was�if he dared say it�a slut. All she wanted was sex and he was happy with that, well, at least for a little while.
But this Ginger girl appeared in the movie theatres and the second Zac saw the previews for it (actually, he'd seen it for the first time in the movie theatre when he was on a date with that other girl) he knew he had to see this movie. He saw it without her, again and again, and knew from the magic on the screen and the countless interviews he taped and watched over and over again that this girl was something different. It wasn't like all those other movie stars he saw on interviews�she was new and fresh and genuinely happy to get a chance to make her movie and star in it. She always looked so grateful and excited�and when he first saw how she really looked he nearly flipped out she was so beautiful. She had been so good-looking in the movie and there she was, red hair and violet eyes and damn it was something else. He knew he was going to meet her someday, being that he'd met so many people in the business already, but what was different was that he knew in his heart that one of these days�maybe not soon, but one of these days, he'd have her as his own.
He pulled into a McDonald's and ordered some food. He was still hungry and he hadn't been able to finish his bowl of Cheerios. Can't think about your future wife on an empty stomach, now can you?