Installment 10

Clio

My day was pretty much shot. Everything was going all wrong at once; were I not so miserable the thoroughness with which my life was being destroyed would have been downright comedic. It was like my world was the most elaborate domino set up imaginable - and all around me the toppling was picking up speed.

The only saving grace was the fact that I would be seeing Isaac in thirty minutes. I put down the copy of Plato's Symposium that I have so desperately been trying to translate from the English of the translator to the kind of English I would understand, somewhere between Toni Morrison and Danielle Steele. I was failing not only miserably, but also with flair. The particular volume my teacher had put in the bookstore for us had both the original Greek on one side of the page and the English on the other, and I had just read a page and a half of Greek without even noticing. My comprehension was, remarkably, only slightly higher when I read the right column. On the bright side, though, I would now be seeing Ike is 28 minutes and 45 seconds.

I was grateful at lest for Natalie's absence, all I needed was her hanging around and bugging me with her constant activity. Yeah. The only issue was my own nerves were so rapidly turning me into an even more obnoxious version of Nat. I couldn't sit still. Maybe I wasn't quite at the alphabetizing CD stage, but I suspected I might have been rapidly approaching it. The shrill ring of the phone was a welcome channel for my nervous energies.

"Hello?" I muttered into the handpeice, scanning through the preset radio stations on Nat's stereo. Celine Dion and Barbara Striesand wailed loudly in a desperate assault for an instant before my reflexes reacted almost without thought and I hit the up button to make the horror go away. "When the night is dark and stormy…." Isaac's voice pleased me and I finally climbed back onto my bed, still waiting for a response from the other end of the line.

"Hey!" This version of Ike's voice pleased me even more, because judging from its grainy tone it was coming from the call box by the door downstairs.

"You're early!" I exclaimed, kicking Plato onto the floor with a thoughtless shove.

"Yup. Couldn't wait." I smiled into the phone, already shoving my feet into my sneakers and grabbing my jacket.

"I'll be down in thirty seconds."

"I'm counting starting…now." Ike laughed, sounding almost as happy as I felt. Three whole days without him. Three days of tenuous room-mate relations and homework. Three times I had gone to sleep with the warmth of his embrace an ever-fading memory.

Keys clutched in one hand, I exited my room, smiling for absolutely no good reason.

Isaac

I had missed Clio so much. It was ridiculous, really. I had spent more than 17 years without her, but now even a few hours seemed a trial. I waited for Clio by the front door to her dorm and pondered the odd desire to see her constantly that had been plaguing me of late. Okay, of the past few months. Okay, ever since I first laid eyes on her sweet smile and listened to her gentle voice.  

I wondered to myself if Taylor had felt like this when we were in LA recording the Middle of Nowhere. The current status of my little brother and his honey was apparently non-existent, but back then Taylor had certainly seemed to exhibit the symptoms which I was barely surviving. It would be torture to be without Clio for six months - I suddenly found a never before imagined sympathy for Tay's constant homesick whine.

Without warning I was struck from behind and a warm pair of arms wrapped around my waist. "Hey!"

As I turned to pull Clio into my embrace I realized one more thing: how amazing it must have been for Taylor when we finally finished the album and came home. Missing Clio had made this moment all the sweeter, and I could barely fathom the sensations that soared through me at this moment multiplied out to fit a six month absence. "Hey," I replied, pressing a soft kiss on Clio's smooth cheek. She looked even more perfect than I had remembered: something in the gold of the dying sunlight as it reflected off her hair, gleaming like fire; or in the wide smile on her lips that climbed effortlessly into her deep green eyes; or maybe even something in the strength of her arms around me; took all the things I thought knew about the world and flipped them upside down.

"I Missed you," I whispered, stepping back. I felt kind of silly admitting to this, but I couldn't stop the words from tumbling out of my mouth. I had missed her, and so many things that I had promised myself I would tell her were running through my mind that I barely knew where to begin.

"Missed you, too." My first indication that something was wrong came to me as we began the considerable trek to where I had parked the Cherokee. Walking along, side by side, I was casting occasional glances in Clio's direction, reassuring myself that she was actually there and not some cruel figment of my imagination, but as she slid one cool hand into mine my glance at her changed to a question. Clio had always been nervous enough touching me when were alone together, and in public even the slightest bumping of our hands as we walked along would have been ground for her to blush slightly and step back. Now without hesitation she had taken my hand, not that I minded, not that I wasn't fairly floating feet above the puddle strewn pavement by the time we got to the car.

I unlocked Clio's door first and waited for her to get in before closing it and heading to the driver's side. "Can we go somewhere?" She asked as I merged into traffic and took the road leading out of the downtown are and towards my house, where we had planned on watching my family's ancient copy of Monty Python's Holy Grail and just hanging out.

"Where?"

"Don't care. Anywhere. Just… somewhere." Clio shrugged, leaning against the passenger side door and playing with her fastened seat belt. Her cheer seemed a little forced, and I once again found myself wondering if something was wrong.

"You don't care?" I asked, getting a little concerned.

"No, just somewhere we can hang out…" was her reply. After thinking for a moment an idea found its way to me, and I knew exactly where to take Clio. It was someplace I treasured but rarely had time to visit, a place I wanted to share with her because I knew that she would feel its specialness just as acutely as I.

"Alrighty." two lefts later we were at the entrance to the interstate, heading to Jenks, the suburb where my Grandparents had lived.  Four years ago when my Grandmother had died Grandpa had sold their house in order to move to Louisiana to be near his last surviving brother, and so visits to their former property had become rare. I still liked to go back though, still loved the feel of memories sliding wraithlike through the air around me.

"Well, where are we going?" Clio's grin was bright, and my sense of apprehension faded a little. Why should a sudden good mood put me at unrest?

"I can't tell. Secret." Her disarming smile made me smile, and her laugh always made me laugh, too. Clio's happiness was an inescapable glow around me, just as her sadness was an inescapable shroud.

"Ah." We both settled back, and I focused on the music that was drifting softly from the Jeep's CD player. I didn't recognize it at first, but after a moment I realized it was one of my mother's cheesy pop discs, something in the arena of Duncan Sheik, and I nearly turned on the radio before the lyrics sunk in. "When I'm without you it's just not the same, don't misunderstand me, I'm feeling alright, but when I'm without you the day turns into night." The soft sounds of guitar and the plaintive vocals gave me pause. Not exactly my kind of music, but the next line sold me on the song: "and then I'm with you, no longer alone, when I'm with you it feels like I'm home."

I shot a look at Clio, to see her contemplatively staring at me. We exchanged a smile as Duncan continued on: "you dream of a future, a possible place, where we lie together face to face. And I'm looking forward, I will not deny, I dream of a future made for you and I." Our glance separated at these words. I felt them with every inch of me, and I longed to tell her that my new, and only, goal in life was to spend every breath at her side. "Call me a child, call me naïve, The world is much brighter than it ever used to be," Duncan Sheik was exactly right.

A sudden fit of daring seized me as the song ended and silence filled the air between us. I looked at Clio's profile, and wanted to touch her. Not in some "hey baby," kind of way, but just to pull her near, to feel the warmth of her against me and to smell that mixture of lilac shampoo and Abercrombie Fitch perfume that has come to represent the heighth of Clio-ness. She was sitting awfully close to begin with, what could I do? Say, "slide on over?" I would feel even dumber than when I made the "I missed you" crack.

It was so hard - whenever she's around whatever natural stupidity alarms that have been built into me shut off, and I'm filled with a feeling of safety. I can say what I think, maybe for the first time in my life, without having to fear someone's opinion. Even at home with my family there's always some - boundary. I love them, and I know that no matter what they'll always do their best to understand me, but I also know that they never really will, at least not in the way that Clio does. After several moments of deliberation I reached out one tentative hand and rested it on her Levi's covered knee. I negotiated a one-handed turn and then looked over to see how my move had faired.

Clio's lips were parted in a faint smile, but as she looked over and met my gaze she reached down and lifted my hand. The faux pas was unthinkable. Clio had always had issues with closeness, so what had I, the supposedly loving boyfriend, done? Grabbed her. I felt a blush singing its way through my veins, and looked disappointedly back at the road. When, after an instant, Clio didn't release my hand I felt a little better, and later when she lifted my arm and scooted across the seat until our legs were touching and ducked her head to slide my arm across her shoulders I felt a hundred times happier. Her movement had taken all of twenty seconds, but Clio's startlingly bright eyes had never left my face. As she leaned against my side I could feel the gentle expansion of her ribs in a sigh, and I realized that I had better pay attention to the road. We were almost there.

This was nothing less than exactly what I had been longing for on those expansive non-Clio days: the reassurance of her touch, the sympathy of her ears, and the peacefulness of not needing to talk because I know that all the words in the world can't convey what my eyes are able to in a fraction of a second. I guessed that all that practice driving with one hand while eating ice cream was finally paying off as I rubbed the back of my hand against her neck beneath her sleek hair, laughing to myself and indescribably glad that I had chanced a first move.

"Surprise. Here we are, madam, I hope it's to your liking." I finally said as we pulled into the empty parking lot that had been our destination.

"I'm sure it shall be," Clio mimicked my practiced Monty Python accent with surprising success. "We're at a church?" She asked, surveying the dark windows of the brick building that sat across the wide expanse of young green grass that surrounded the black concrete car park.

"Yup. Well, it's a church now, but it used to be my Grandparents' house when I was little." I informed her, grabbing a hand and setting off towards the building.

"That's neat." The sun was nearing its setting point, and soon the March air would take on an uncomfortable chill. But now it was perfect.

"Yeah, but kind of weird to come back and see the same house but know it's totally different inside." I explained, leading Clio onto a gravel path that led around the "Holy Redeemer" sign that now graced the former front lawn of my Grandparent's house. We headed into a stand of tall pines behind the building, still holding hands.

"Where are your grandparents?" She asked, quickening her pace to keep up with me.

"My Grandmother died when I was 13, and my Grandfather moved to the town where he grew up right afterwards." I explained, continuing our foray into the apparent wilderness. "He always jokes about their house having seen so much happiness that the only thing that could have done it justice was to become a church. Which it did."

"That's so sweet," whispered Clio, squeezing my hand. "I'm sorry about your Grandmother."

"I missed her a lot at first, they used to spend a lot of time at our house and even babysat for us when we were younger. I kind of don't think about her that much anymore," this was sad, but true. The first few days after her funeral I had been unspeakably sad, and worried about what had happened to her. Even having grown up going to church every Sunday, and living in a religious home, it was still hard for me to imagine Heaven. The thing that had made me feel better, though, was kind of bizarre. My Grandmother had loved to garden, and she was amazing at it. But one plant, I think it was a Christmas Cactus or something, had never bloomed for her. After she died, though, my mom had taken it home so my Grandfather wouldn't have to worry about it, it had immediately sent forth tons of little red flowers. I didn't know what it meant, and I still don't, but I think that maybe that plant's sudden flourishing had her way of telling us that everything was going to be okay. "I still love to come here, though."

"I can see why," Clio interrupted as we came away from the darkness of the trees and into the rapidly darkening clearing where I had spent so many summer days as a child.

Clio

The rhythm of Isaac's warm hand stroking my neck had made me so happy, as did the feel of his body pressed against mine, that when we finally got where we were going I was almost reluctant to get out of the car, despite his tempting surprise. It had been more than worth the sacrifice, I decided when he led me into a clearing in a forested area behind what had once been his Grandparent's house. When he told me what his Grandfather said I had wanted to cry, it was so sweet and sad all at once that my emotions were barely containable.

In the center of the clearing was a small pond, still partially covered with a thin skin of ice. It was almost as though we had walked into a painting by Monet -- the sun, slipping by slow degrees beneath the horizon, set the world awash in waves of delicate hue: lavender, pink, dusky blue, and red, all meeting and mingling to become a beautiful haze hovering in the distance. The world was a study in an instant of light, reflected in the water and dancing along the green treetops. "This place is amazing," I breathed, cautiously taking a seat next to Isaac on an upraised rock near where we stood.

"Wait until you see it during the summer," Ike responded, looking around us for an instant before halting his swiveling gaze on our feet. I wondered if he had meant what he said. "Wait until you see it during the summer," I repeated to myself. The summer was many moths away, and I would be home, far, far away from this blissful boy and his beautiful world. "Nobody else really knew about it back then because it was kind of remote; we used to swim here all the time. My Grandmother taught Zac to swim here one summer. He used to be so afraid of water that he wouldn't even take baths."

All this reminiscing made me miss home even more than I had before, if that was possible. "How'd she get him in the water?"

"She got in with him, and just stood there until he got so bored that he went deeper. It was odd, but I guess just what he needed." Isaac's voice was faint, and I could almost see the image of a kindly old version of Diana standing in the small lake before us, shivering and bored Zac by the hand.

"How do you do it?" I asked thoughtfully, acutely aware of his leg brushing against mine as we balanced semi-precariously on the rock out-cropping. "Staying away from here, I mean… being away from everything you know?"

"It's not hard for me. Whenever we travel I have everything I really care about with me, my family and stuff." Ike paused for a second, darting a glance at me. "Or I used to," he amended tenderly.

"I guess that's the secret then. Family." I was talking more of my own situation than his, although my words applied to both. Maybe the reason why I hated ORU so much was because I was away from my family. All of a sudden schools nearer home began to look enticingly attractive. I flashed momentarily back on some long-forgotten high school lecture on the Bronte sisters, and remembered my teacher's exact words. "Charlotte and Anne went off to college on the continent, but Anne was so homesick that after less than a semester she went back. She never left the moors again, and never married. But some say she was happy."

Would I ever get over this hatred for my surroundings? Was going home the answer? Or was staying here and getting used to it, like Zac in the lake, the way to go. I guess it's to late for me now anyways. How could I be happy anywhere without Isaac? But he would be leaving soon, when their record was done, and going off to a life I could never be a part of, and barely even imagine.

***

"So we finished the second song last week…" Isaac and I had sat on the rock in what had been his grandparent's backyard until the sun disappeared and the air became uncomfortably cold. I didn't care, though, because all I knew was Isaac's soft voice, and the feel of his callused hand in my soft one.

"You're shivering!" Ike interrupted his story of the music business and its travails, sounding surprised.

"It's kind of cold," I replied, not wanting to have to move, but knowing that we couldn't stay out here all night. I slid a little bit closer to him on our perch, glad for such a good excuse.

"We should go anyways. My parents are probably freaking out. I told them we were going to hang out there tonight." With these words Ike arose, pulling me with him. "Can you still come over?" He asked as we headed back down the path to the parking lot, stepping carefully in the inky black of the encroaching night.

"Sure." It was funny, deciding for myself like this. I've become used to it over the past few months of freedom, but every once in a while the fact that I'm utterly free to do whatever I want catches up to me. There's nobody to tell me when I have to be home, or to when I should do my homework, or how to spend my time. So I will do what I want, and right now the only thing I long to do is be with Isaac for as long as I possibly can.

When we arrived at the Hanson house twenty minutes later all of the windows visable from the road where dark, and the only illumination to guide us to the front door was the faint glow of the stars above in the sky. "Everyone must already be in bed," Isaac remarked, unlocking the door and holding it open for me. "Why don't you wait down here and I'll go grab the Holy Grail. I left it up in my room."

"Okay," I hung up my coat in the hall closet and wandered towards the sun room. One of the many things Isaac and I have in common, we discovered quite some time ago, is an obsession with Monty Python. Personally, I think it's an obsession with British accents. Some of the stuff they do is just ridiculously stupid, but somehow phrases that would just sound silly in an American accent, like "We are the knight who say nee," is hilarious when delivered by someone who sounds like they just stepped out of London. I smiled as Ike's amazing rendition of the infamous swallow speech invaded my mind.

I headed into the sun room, hearing strains of a faintly familiar tune emanating from this area. I had decided that Taylor must have been up, but as soon as I entered the nearly totally dark room I realized I had been wrong.

Diana stood in the center of the pleasantly decorated room, wrapped in a flannel robe, her youngest daughter in her arms. Long braids hanging well past her waist, Diana was silhouetted in the illumination that crept into the house from a streetlamp outside, the only brightness in the room. "You're a part of me," she sang softly, not noticing me in the doorway. I finally placed the words as being part of my favorite Billy Holiday song, Everything I Have is Yours. "I would gladly give the sun to you, if the sun were only mine," she continued, apparently trying to calm little Zoë into slumber. She swayed gently with the scratchy song, tenderly rocking the infant. "I would gladly give this Earth to you, and the stars that shine."

The sweetness of Diana's voice and the warm comfort of the scene before me compounded all of my sadnesses of the past few weeks. Homesickness washed over me in waves, and I leaned against the door jamb, fighting off tears, a battle I've become entirely too used to of late. I acutely missed my mother, and the comfort of a structured world, a world in which I understood everything and everyone. The familiar universe of my childhood seemed so distant that I could barely dredge up its memory, and I longed to be like Zoë -- to have my entire life ahead of me, but not to have to care. The only things that mattered to a four month old were feedings and naps, and perhaps the warmth of protective arms. "Everything that I posses, I offer you. Let my dreams of happiness come true… I'd be happy just to spend my life waiting at your beck and call," Diana's voice was much higher than the scratchy tones of Billie Holliday, but she sang the words with such emotion that it more than made up for the difference. I wondered what it would be like to be her, to be married, to be certain of the future, to have a house full of people who loved and depended on you, and to know that you have made your decisions in life, and to know that you had made them well.

"Clio!" Mrs. Hanson finally noticed me after the song slid to a halt and she had placed a sleepy Zoë, blue footed pajamas and all, in a playpen in the corner of the room. "I didn't hear you guys come in." Diana flicked on a lamp next to the couch and took a seat, patting the cushion next to her.

"She's such a little darling," I said, sitting on the gingham printed couch, watching Zoe's tiny back rise and fall with her breaths through the bars of the white and blue play pen.

Diana placed an extended finger before her lips, a warning for me to be quiet. "I've been trying to get her to sleep forever. She's just like Zac used to be; the world is far to interesting a place and she doesn't seem to want to miss one moment of the activity around here."

"Hopefully she'll calm down before adolescence…" I laughed, imagining two Zacs running around. The world decidedly needs only one of that rambunctious boy. In fact, the world has barely survived one of that rambunctious boy.

"That's what we all said about Zac, too. But he keeps me young." Diana laughed, a smile twisting the corners of her mouth.

"I hear you're listening to Billie."

"After you mentioned her I dug up this record. It was my Mom's, but I had forgotten all about it." She picked up a version of the flat cardboard containers they used to keep vinyl albums in and handed it to me. It was definitely old, maybe even an original copy from the forties. I read down the list of familiar songs, sighing softly; they reminded me of my introduction to the Blues as a child at home with my mother. I had been just starting school when my mom, then a worker at an office in Arnette, had been on strike. Every day I would come home from first grade, full of exciting news of loose teeth or how mummies were made, and she would be sitting at home listening to an album not so different than this. It had been newer, indeed, released many years after Billie Holiday had died, but the songs had been the same. My mother would sing these words under her breath as she listened my tales or helped me with my penmanship, and I, much to my shock, found myself longing to hear her painfully off-key rendition of any one of these songs.

"I haven't seen you much lately, with the boys recording all the time. How are you doing?" Diana tucked her legs underneath her and pulled her long nightgown over them, leaving it nearly brushing the blue carpeted floor.

"I'm fine," I answered softly, once again knowing that I was anything but.

Isaac

I came downstairs, clutching a battered rental case, only to discover that I had been mistaken when I said that no one was up. I found my mom and Clio sitting side by side in the sunroom, talking quietly to avoid waking Zoë who was nestled down in the worn playpen that had housed each Hanson child in turn.

"I don't know… I'm just sad." Clio was saying in a tone of voice I barely recognized. "I got a terrible grade in one of my classes, and then my parents told me they couldn't come up to visit this weekend." I hung in the shadowed doorway, unnoticed by the two people I watched.

"That's too bad," I could practically hear the sympathy in my mother's voice as she comfortingly rubbed Clio's back, just as she would have to quiet Mackie woken up from a nightmare. "Why don't you just go home to see them?"

"The bus is really expensive, and it takes almost a whole day to get there. Spring break's in a couple of weeks; I'm just going to have to wait until then." Why hadn't I heard any of this? I wondered as they continued talking in hushed tones. Clio and I had just spent an entire afternoon talking, yet she hadn't mentioned something that mattered so much to her that she was either very near tears in my living room, or actually crying.

My Clio-induced good mood began to slip away, but my mother's next words caused me to jump. "Why don't you spend the weekend here?" her serene voice floated out to me, "You can get off campus for two whole days, and away from that roommate of yours. You'll feel so much better when you go back." Super mom strikes again, I thought to myself, watching the master in action.

"I shouldn't. Thank you so much, though." Clio stammered, uncertain. Knowing her as I do -- or I guess after what I've seen in the past few minutes, knowing her like I think I do --  I could tell she wanted to say yes, but was afraid of overstaying her welcome. This was one thing she would never do here; everyone loves her, even Taylor's ornery cat actually seeks her out for her long and thorough back scratches. My mother is practically as big a fan of Clio as the cat, and I know that she's being genuine.

"Oh come on, you'll have a great time. The kids will love having you around, and Isaac will be delighted at the news!" My mother coaxed Clio, still rubbing her back even though the tears have apparently stopped flowing. Careful to cough in order to warn them of my presence, I entered the room. "Ike! You're just in time to help me convince Clio to stay here this weekend." She momentarily shifted her attention to Clio, "the couch folds out, and you'll be able to watch MTV all night."

"You know, Clio, when my mom makes up her mind about something like this there's no stopping her. You should just give in now." I sat down as close to her as I dared with my mom in the room, but it still somehow felt miles too far away. Clio's eyes were rimmed with red, and I did my best not to look directly at her.

"Well, now that you bring up MTV," she replied, sniffling faintly.

"Maybe you can even get Taylor to do his math homework." Mom suggested, and we all laughed at the improbability of anyone completing that feat.

Installment 11

Taylor

I sat in the darkened recording booth, keyboard before me. We've been here for eight hours already, just laying down track after track of vocals and music, and, frankly, it's starting to get really old. About two more takes and I'm going to have to start bringing up child labor laws.

It's my own fault, I guess. Judging from the annoyed expressions and rolling eyes of not only my brothers but also Mark Hudson, the man who's producing the song we're working on right now, they think so, too. It's just so hard to concentrate sometimes - especially on days like this. The first thing I had heard when I woke up twenty minutes late for our session had been the musical clanging of my mother's favorite windchimes out on the back porch. I had just lay there beneath a cool sheet, and listened for far longer than I had had any right to. Ever since Masrissa's family had given those long, tubular chimes to my parents as an anniversary gift last year I've loved their gentle, twinkling refrain. This last thought was enough to get me up and moving, if for no reason other than in hopes of erasing it.  Despite my attempts to banish all Marissa-associated mental activity, I can not escape the random pattern of its delicate notes. They cling stubbornly, just beneath my thoughts.

Not the best way to start a day when I knew we'd be recording one of the songs for our new album that had been a solely Hanson created piece. In truth, it had been mostly a Taylor piece. Ike had worked out a problem with the melody and Zac had helped with the chorus, but it  had mostly come from my own tortured psyche when we were stuck in New York doing the David Letterman show last December. "Always you," I had entitled the song on a cold and lonely winter night in Central Park, longing for Rissa. Every one who's heard us practice it claims it to be Hanson's best song yet, but that doesn't make it any easier for me to wipe away its associations.

I wonder if maybe this could be my way to win Marissa back. We had once read something online called a fanfiction story, which had been, much to my chagrin, written about me. It had been funny - making me out to be some ethereal god or something, and putting big flowery words not seen in the western world since the death of Charlotte Bronte in my mouth. The ending, though, kept running through my mind. I, or, to be truthful, the Perfect Taylor the author had created, had sang I Will Come to You to the heroine to tell her he/I liked her. After presenting the main character with a rose, Tay-Tay (the girl always called me/him by my least favorite nick name. When Ike had brought it up during an early interview I had nearly killed him) had sang it to her in a crowded arena, dedicating it to his "true love."

This scenario poses many problems, however, not the least of which is the fact that the girl would have been torn to shreds by our well-meaning, if occasionally overprotective, fans. But maybe just singing would do it.

"Taylor!" Mark's voice rang out though the intercom, sounding frustrated. "What the he… what are you playing?" I stopped the instinctual motion of my hands across the keys to stare blankly at him through the large window between the production board and me.

"What?" I asked, totally befuddled. I had been playing along, letting my mind wander, and couldn't think of anything that might have been amiss.

"You're playing some other song. Can we please just do this like in practice?" Zac got up and left the booth where he had been sitting with Mark, and even without hearing it through the soundproofed walls I knew he had slammed the door behind him.

"I'm sorry," I could almost feel his thoughts. Taylor, the professional one, the perfectionist, the peace keeper, couldn't even manage to play a song he wrote himself without flaking out.

"It's okay, Taylor. Let's just try it one more time; then you can get out of here. I know it's been a long day for you guys." He didn't know the half of it, or at least I don't think he does. I told my family that Marissa and I had broken up, but seeing as how we're not supposed to talk about girls in public it's not like I had to write up a press release on the subject or anything.

Launching into the opening notes I hummed along, determined to focus. About half way through Always You I realized what other song I had been playing, and missed a note in the time it took me to cringe. It had been Phil Collins. Of course. When Marissa and I had first gotten together we had become addicted to Phil, and in the process bought pretty much every CD he had anything whatsoever to do with. It had been an awesome excuse to buy the Miami Vice Soundtrack, something I've wanted for years. This song was from the Genesis days, and its words, which my evil mind had apparently stored away for a sensitive moment such as this, literally burned.

"Is there nothing I can say to make you change your mind? I watch the world go round and round and saw you turn mine upside down... throwing it all away." I did my absolute best to shut it off, to just forget it all and play the notes of my own song, but it didn't work. I didn't feel "always you" anymore, it was consructed of emotions too distant, too painful, to recall. My love, my certainty that Rissa and I would always be together, had built that song; when she left, and said those awful things to me, it had been destroyed.

"Taylor," Mark sounded defeated. "Tay. Just stop. We'll pick up again tomorrow. There's no reason to be working this hard. We've got weeks before Mercury is expecting this." I didn't stop. To prove it to myself that I could do this I kept going, moving my fingers in the prescribed pattern over the keys, hearing the music I had created, but, for the first time, not feeling it.

Isaac and Zac didn't talk to me for the entire ride home; they just exchanged semi-worried glances over my head and sat silently, listening to the radio.

"Well, guys, how'd it go?" My mom asked, finally breaking the noiseless cocoon which we had wrapped around ourselves.

No one answered. "Fine," I said, unable to stand the quiet reception to her question. "Who will light up the darkness and who will hold your hand? Who will find the answers when you don't understand? Why should I have to be the one who has to convince you...I don't want to go." The words of the Phil Collins song assaulted me. I don't want to go. I didn't want my relationship with Marrisa to be over; but I suppose I don't really have any say in the matter - judging from the many times I've called her house, or written her a note, or tried bumping into her in places I knew she hung out. She doesn't even answer the phone any more, I think maybe because she's afraid it will be me. This is one of the moments when I wish I could throw away the music. It always fills me; I can never escape songs, other people's, or mine, and usually I don't even want to. But now I long to be normal -- to not feel the music in my veins, to not hear it resonating in my mind.

As soon as we pulled into the driveway I hopped out of the van and went immediately to the basement. What I thought that I would find there I have no idea, and staring at my own beat up keyboard didn't make me feel any better. The walls crowded around me, full of drawings that I had devoted half my life to creating - little spaceships, mountains, trees, and all the things of the world that my imagination could stretch to encompass waiting out there in the huge, unexplored world. Now it looked so stupid and childish; the bright colors were empty, and cold. I didn't want to look at them. I didn't want to see them every again.

My footsteps thundered up the stairs, and I burst into the kitchen to find my dad occupied peeling potatoes for dinner. "Dad!" He jumped at the enthusiasm in my voice and turned to look at me. I imagine I must have presented quite the picture: my hair still messed up from a long day wearing earphones, my too baggy cords almost falling off, and my eyes glittering with inspiration. "Do we have any paint?"

"I think so. Probably in the tool shed from when we painted the porch. What do you want it for?" My father's suspicion was immediately aroused. He has, after all, spent the last 15 years with me, and has come to recognize the bizarre mood shifts I can barely control.

"I just want to clear some space on the wall downstairs. I've got a new idea," I replied, already half out the door in search of my second favorite artistic medium: paint.

"If you want to wait until after dinner I'll give you a hand."

"No thanks, dad. I have to do this by myself."

Marissa

"Marissa?" the sound of my name being bellowed in a highly annoying tone shocked me from a pleasant daydream. Some of my happiest times of late have been spent immersed in my imagination, the real world having become far too sterile and mundane to hold my attention for any length of time

"Huh?" was my graceless reply. The warm sunshine that leaked into the semi-darkness of the classroom in which I have Latin every afternoon, creating an interesting pattern on the shimmering bald expanse that is the cranium of my teacher, Mr. Higgins.

"Conjugate I love, please." How ironic, I thought, the stabbing world making a harsh cameo in my blissful oblivion.

"Amo, amas, amat," I began, grateful that I actually knew the word. Latin, in my opinion, is a dumb, dumb subject. In the entire school year I've learned one thing: if I lived in ancient Rome I would have spoken something in the neighborhood of roughly a sentence a decade. The rest of my time, I've decided, I would have spent conjugating. My pride soon faded, however, as I came to a screetching halt at the end of my knowledge. The word for "to love" had certainly been deemed worthy of studying by my obsessed-with-love mind, but now I was having issues. I gazed hopelessly at Sarah, who was sitting at the next desk over looking apprehensive. She knows I don't know the answer.

"Amamus." The teacher supplied, in curious monotone.

Sarah was mouthing the words, and I was being to regret not practicing the fine art of lip-reading more often. "Amant, amatis." I lamely finished, only after Sarah had been forced to scribble the answer on her notebook and nudge it in my direction.

"Thank you very much for your time, Marissa. And you too, Sarah. Nice to see you helping your hapless friend." I was boiling at these words. I'm one of the good guys, despite Mr. Higgins' opinion. I come to class every day, and almost always prepared. For some reason all he cares about, though, is the Hanson bookcover I had papered my thin Jenny's Latin tome with. It had been a gag gift from Caroline and Sarah on my birthday, and I've just never taken it off. I used to like to be able to sit in class, sweetening my time with the sight of Tay's sublime face. Why it's on now, however, is another question. It should have gone with the purging of my room, but I had just put it off, preferring to torture myself, I guess. "You may now go back to whatever teen idol induced day dream you were indulging in." Mr. Higgins turned back the dusty chalkboard, and began writing out the words I had just supplied him with.

It was a good thing that the bell rang at that exact moment, for had it not he would have found himself dodging one hurled Latin text. Having played softball for the past two years of high school I'm relatively sure I would have hit him, too. I stood hastily, grabbing my jacket and backpack. But before throwing my Latin book into my bag I tore the offending orange hued cover off with a pleasing ripping noise, stuffing it into the trash can by the door. Mr. Higgins watched me walk out of the room with what I imagine was a smug grin warping his features, a single bushy eyebrow arched in my direction.

"Rissa, don't even listen to him. He's a creep." Sarah comforted me as we headed out of the building and towards her mother's car, both grateful for the endless school day finally reaching its close.

"I know, but it was stupid to leave that on, anyways." Sarah, being a little old for a Sophomore, had gotten her license last week, and this is to be our first solo excursion in the Gold Nugget, her parent's oddly colored Saab. "Really stupid." I sighed, waiting for her to get into the car and unlock the passenger side door.

"Forget about it. Today's the day, baby!" Her exuberance at finally being liberated from the mommy-taxi prison is evident in not only her words, but the wide grin that she can't seem to wipe off her face.

"Where're we going?" I asked, trying to play along. Taylor had contaminated every inch of my life. I couldn't get away from people who knew him, or knew about him, or things that made the memory of him sing in my mind.

"I think the mall, right now. Later… who knows." Being Sarah, she cautiously backed out of the parking space that she had secured this morning, and put the car into gear.

"Off we go." I added, catching a bit of her hyper mood.

We finally arrived at the mall with a squeal of ties after doing everything imaginable to avoid the left hand turn off the throughway. "I wonder if Jack's at work?" Sarah inquired as we entered the hugely impersonal mall, gawking at the bright colors and the constant motion.

"This is rather a high traffic moment," I warned her, hoping to avoid potential embarrassment. Not that hanging out in DZ isn't the best calming agent in the world, but I'm not sure I even want to be calm right now. Misery fits me so well that it's hard to even want to escape it.

"Let's go here," I dragged Sarah into the nearest music store and headed to the new releases.

"These all suck," she said, flipping through a rack of low-priced CDs that Record Town is apparently approaching paying to get rid of. "Well, here's some Phil Collins…" she thoughtfully added, holding a black CD towards me.

"I don't like Phil Collins, thanks." I quickly walked away, leaving Sarah to stare puzzled in my wake. I didn't even want to think about Phil Collins, because he is one of a multitude of Taylor-related things. I'll never so much as look a jelly-belly in the eye again, let alone listen to our old favorite songs.

I wandered to the listening station and hastily pulled a set of earphones on, hoping to avoid explanation for my erratic behavior. A song was already playing softly; it's silken notes blending with a dark voice to send chills up and down my spine. "Everything that I have is broken in two, everything that I am revolves around you, you just don't know what a girl goes through." I turned back towards the front of the store, trying to get Sarah's attention to point out the song to her. She would love it, what with her weird chick singer leanings. My eyes stopped long before I identified Sarah, though. I was drawn to a form standing just outside, a form I knew better than my own. A form I have seen nowhere but in my dreams for over a month. "As the moon rides away from the sun, she takes on his light and reflects it. I relate them to us just for fun," The song slid on as I stood, mouth agape, and watched Taylor Hanson through the plate glass window of the store. "There's a parallel that's unexpected, every star in the sky reminds me of you, twinkling in my eyes the way that you do, and I don't know why I get so blue…no matter where you go...living in a world of strangers… so we go for what we know."

I was torn between hiding behind the rack of CD's before me, and doing exactly what the song dictated -- going for what I knew. He was right there, so close I could see the long, thin tail of hair that he refuses to cut hanging almost halfway down his back, but I couldn't touch him. He was standing in the center of a crowd of squealing girls, apparently trying to back away. My own doubts weren't the only thing holding me back, shy of joining the crowd there was no way I could go to him. Even though I wanted to so badly my eyes teared up at the force that was required to hold me still; he looked so good, so beautiful, so perfect.

"Marissa." Sarah had come up beside me, and she watched the scene unfolding in the hallway with half apprehension and half pleasure. "Are you going to go out? He's right there…" Her quiet words turned whatever was left human in me into something else. Something I didn't want to imagine.

"No." I replied, returning the bulky black headphones to their hook and walking silently out the other exit to the store.

Installment 12

Clio

"Ike, come on! I have to work, seriously." I warned Isaac over the phone. I can feel him smile, and hear his thoughts.

"I'll be good… I'll just do my math homework. Come on," he coaxed. "I haven't seen your room yet." Ever since our three day separation of two weeks ago Isaac and I have been spending even more time together, although I was beginning to put my foot down when it came to school work it was hard to say no to him.

"Well," I looked around. It looked as though a small tornado had whistled its way through the room, miraculously sparing my half yet ransacking Natalie's. She wouldn't be home tonight, thanks to her yo-yo boyfriend. One day she wants him, the next she hates him, but today was apparently a want, judging from the message on the erasable whiteboard on our door. "Clio," it had read in her barely legible writing, "gone to bf's… be back tomorrow." I certainly hadn't minded, it just meant more time for me to work undisturbed by her random follies. "You have to promise you'll be quiet." I warned, examining the fern that Nat has been trying to grow of late.

"I'll be there in ten." With a click the phone died, and I giggled to myself. Depression is a hard thing to hold onto around a boy like Isaac, even when faced with a pathetically dying houseplant.

Before he arrived I intended on getting the place cleaned up to some extent, at least shoving Nat's junk under her bed and throwing her covers up over her wadded sheets.  I was busily working away towards this goal when I felt hands on my face covering my eyes.

"Guess who?" A pretty good Elvis impersonator said from somewhere behind me.

"Elvis? Is that you?" I asked, feigning hysteria.

"You know it."

Isaac

Clio's room was amazing, I realized as I looked around after our little Elvis exchange. From the second I entered I could tell which side was hers. From the brightly painted papyrus sheets hanging in perfect symmetry on her walls to the deep green comforter and the stuffed llama it all screamed, "Clio."

"So? Is it all that you hoped and dreamed?" She joked, turning off the radio and coming to stand beside me.

"And ever so much more." I replied, looking down at her and marveling over the clarity of her skin and the way she seemed to glimmer in the sunlight that streamed in her open window. What is it about her, I asked myself, that made me want to hold her so badly? Was it the rarity of her smiles? Or the way she holds herself stiff and upright against the world? Or was it even the soft side that she so rarely shows, the Clio who cried over a bad grade?

"Want the grand tour?" She asked, gesturing around the room that could be no more than ten feet by ten feet.

"How much are the tickets? I don't know if it's worth it." Despite my words, my mind kept wandering back to last night: how red her eyes had been and how quiet she had been for the entire movie.

"Well, they're pretty expensive." Clio answered, standing on tiptoe to kiss my check. "See? I told you."

"Well, you know. Maybe I should give you a tip or something. I bet this is going to be an amazing tour."

"If you must." No slight peck was this, but a full on the lips kiss that left me yearning heatedly for more. Clio shyly smiled down at the floor and pushed her hair behind her ears as we pulled apart, and the only thought in my mind was how much I loved her. That little smile can push back the pain of seventeen years of life, and make me feel like Mackie, eternally happy and careless. I could feel the words in my mouth, and hear them in my head, but orchestrating the two was more than I could handle. So I simply stood quietly as Clio pointed out the highlights of her room.

"Bed. Dresser. Rug. Nice, eh?"

"What are those?" I asked, pointing at the wall hangings.

"They're hieroglyphics." Clio answered, matter-of-factly, apparently thinking I should have known this. "They're bits from some random love poem that one of my teachers got me when she went to Cairo a few years ago."

"You going to translate for me?" I asked, leaning over and examining the tiny drawings that comprised the language of the Ancient Egyptians.

"Ike, I so have to work. I'll translate later. Promise."

"Okay."

Clio grabbed her book and stretched out on the carpet, holding the thin volume above her. I got my books out of my bag, but couldn't really do anything other than watch her read. The musical notes whose invasions I have become so familiar with in Clio's presence once again crept into my mind, and I eventually tossed my calculator aside and began hastily jotting them down. She has such power over me, a power I don't think she understands. A power I know I don't understand; something in her words strikes long hidden cords within me, and I am filled with certaintity that I'm not alone. It's weird to feel like this, and scary how much Clio has come to matter to me.

Clio

"What are you reading with such a serious look on your face?" Isaac inquired, sliding from his perch on my bed to kneel above me, one knee on either side of my waist.

"Plato," I replied, sticking out my tongue. "I already read most of it, but we've got a test on it on Monday."

"You don't like it?" Isaac's eyebrows raised devilishly to punctuate his question, and I couldn't help but smile up at him and set my book aside long enough t brush my fingers gently across his faintly prickly check. I had so much left to read, but I couldn't manage to care with Ike sitting so close, and his eyes burning deeply into mine.

"Oh, I don't know. It's got its points." And I love you, I yearned to add. I've never said those words to him before, even though I've been feeling them ever since that first day I met him.

"Like what?" He leaned over me to brush his lips against my collarbone, leaving a trail of skin so hot I could almost imagine it glowing.

"Well, there's one part when this playwright, Aristophanes, tells a story about love. He says that mankind once angered the gods," I didn't know why I was continuing. The seeking mission of Isaac's lips had extended to my brow, my ears, my chin, and I was sure he wasn't listening, but on I pressed. "So the gods decided to punish them, and cut each in half. One half was male, one half female," my words faded as Ike's hands worked their way up under my shirt and his lips pressed against mine with an electric fervor I've never before experienced.

"Don't stop." He whispered hotly in my ear. "I want to know everything you know…" I wrapped my arms around him as he fumbled with the tedious buttons that ran up the front of my shirt, "I want to understand you even more." Words and touch, I long ago realized, were two separate things. I have, over my life, been touched by a thousand hands. But in that same amount of time only a precious few words have truly invaded my mind, and filled me with their mere presence. These words that Isaac blessed me with were such inovations, tender and loving, and completing in an utter way.

"For all of time, the gods said, people would be only half of what they once were, always empty and alone by definition." I swallowed, pulling Ike's sweater over his head and kissing his newly bared skin between each rapidly spoken, breathless word. "They might not be able to explain it, but some part of them would always be missing." I sighed softly, lost in the symphony of his caress, as he reached beneath me to unhook my bra and remove it. "They would spend all their lives looking for the rest of them, the person to fill the void in their souls, and they would only be completely happy after they had found them."

His hands were at the waistband of my jeans, opening the button and deftly sliding the zipper down. His touch was so intoxicating that all my world was focused on keeping him near me. "I'm only 17," his words were gentle, yet nearly as palpable on my skin as his hands. "But I already found my other half. Guess I'm just lucky."

"I love you so much, Isaac." These were the only words I could tear free, the only words that I ever wanted to say again, the only truth.

Isaac

Clio was going to cry. I could see tears building up, beginning to slide onto her eyelashes and making her eyes shine even more brilliantly green than they always did. "I love you, too." I answered, kissing her eyes. Every instinct I had swore to the truth of my words. That Plato character had been right; all my life I had been looking for one thing, this perfect girl who lay beneath me, blushing pink from my touch. "I love you," I repeated as she pulled me down onto her, my bare chest against hers, her lips linked inexorably to mine. "I love you," I whispered once again. Saying it felt so good all I wanted to do was keep saying it, screaming it, letting everyone in the world know that I loved Clio Chambers to an incomprehensible depth.

She cared about me. I knew it. I could feel it racing along her skin, and taste it in the depths of her hungry kisses. Then why didn't she talk to me? Why had she told my mother those things, cried in my mother's arms, when she could have cried in my arms? Words were a bond between us, as were glances, and touches, and thoughts. But she had had a problem and not come to me with it. The reality of this last thought stung, and to keep it at bay I concentrated on touching her in all the right places, kissing her and licking her on all the spots I knew would feel the best to her.

"Let's…Let's…" her eyes were closed as her hands ventured down to the buttonfly of my jeans. "Let's get up on my bed." The words were a statement of intent, I knew. I had succeeded in making her want me physically; the way she moved against me and sighed as I explored her most secret places told me this. I would have Clio; I would love her totally and without reservation, just as I loved her ever since I laid eyes on her. It didn't matter that she didn't care about me enough to share her pain, to share the sad things that made her cry, along with the happy. I could love her enough for both of us.

"Okay," her breath was warm on my skin as we climbed to our feet, still kissing. I was just enough taller than her to rest my chin on her head, and I held her like that for a second, waiting for my breath to slow. "Do you want to do this?" I slid my hands from her back to run them through her hair, smoothing its ruffled mass.

"So much it hurts," she didn't stop working on my jeans, proving her point. Could I do this? I asked myself. I cared about her so much already, and this further intimacy could only draw me further into the depths of her green eyes, perhaps never to return again. My next thought was simple and automatic - the voice of the most basic zones of my body and my mind - could I not do this?

"I don't have anything," I amended both vocally and mentally. Without a condom nothing could happen. I'm not stupid, and to protect both of us I realize we'll have to stop… unfulfilled. Disappointment surged through me. Why had I never thought to buy a condom? I was a grown up, I could go into any drug store in the world and grab a box of 40, but why had I never done it?

"Nat does. I know where she keeps them." The second Clio took to grab a small, shining foil package from her roommate's dresser was cold, and painful. I pulled off my jeans and lay on her comforter, watching the muscles of her back move smoothly under her pale skin as she shut the drawer.

"I have to say it one more time," she laughed, trying to surreptitiously cover herself as she joined me one the bed with a squeak of the bedsprings. Her tone became serious, though, and she met my gaze for a lifetime before saying the three simple words I most longed to hear: "I love you."

I pushed her tenderly onto the bed, and began the procedure that I've dreamed of for my whole life. I began to give my virginity to the only woman I've ever loved, the only woman I could ever love.

My world, encompassed a thousand times over in her embrace, shattered and redrew itself first in brilliant shades of passion and fever, and then finally in the gentle shadows of contentment. When it was over, I wanted to die. It had been to good, to perfect, to sweet to allow me to return to earth. Her arms, her body, contracting around me, had been heaven.

Before our gasping breaths had stilled I had to go; we both knew that I couldn't spend the night. My parents would be waiting anxiously by the door, even if the electronic summons of my beeper had been dulled by its position beneath our abandoned clothes on the floor. Every inch of me was touching her; the pale white of her skin and the scent of lilacs were slowly driving me insane.

"I… have…go…," my phrase was broken up by long intervals of kissing, but she, of course, understood.

"I wish you could stay," we snuggled closer, bare skin against bare skin.

"Me too, but I'll see you tomorrow. And this weekend." I reasoned with my own stubborn mind, which was demanding that I do just what she said. Demanding I stay all night, and do what we had just done a thousand times, or a million, or however many occasions would fit into the next fifty years of my life. "I love you." I chanted the words like a mantra, pulling her closer for an instant before raising from the warmth of Clio's bed to find my clothes.

She watched me as I dressed, a subtle smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "I love you to," she answered. Clio stood cautiously, covering herself with her sheet, and came to my side for a final kiss.

"You're beautiful." I pushed back the white flannel sheet, and she left it dangling precariously around her shoulders as we stood, inches part, just drinking each other in.

"You're amazing." She said at length, sounding near tears once again. Her next kiss was forceful and tender all at once, and so I left, having entered her room half a person an hour ago, I left it a complete man, with the honey of her lips still a warm memory on my flesh.

Clio

I've waited my whole life to feel full, to feel some indescribable completeness that I could never quite grasp, no matter how hard I've tried. I've sought it in more places than I care to remember, and, truthfully, in more places than I can count. As I lay on my bed, Isaac's parting words still dancing through my mind, I wondered if perhaps I have finally found it.

"You're beautiful," he had said. Maybe he was right. Maybe he had always been right, and I had just never seen it. The thought that I could be beautiful, even if only to one boy, lifted the corners of my mouth. I tried desperately to remember every word his caress had evoked within me, but even as memory stretched towards them, the thoughts slid past me like cars on a train. I could see them, I could feel the air they displaced with their might, but I couldn't touch the distant ghosts of them. At length I gave up and simply let it all wash over me in sensuously delicate waves of satisfaction.

It amazes me that I have had this body for nearly 17 years, yet I never knew - never even imagined - the sensations it could be wracked with. The pleasant fullness, the feeling of Isaac all around me, totally dominating my senses, had changed me forever. I can't help but have this weird feeling I now know why every one is always saying to wait for marriage. What I had just experienced with Ike was so special, so personal, that I couldn't dream of sharing it with someone I cared less about. It had not only been his body, I'm sure, that had sent me spiraling into a perfect, free world of physicality and emotion, but also it had been his mind. He had said to me the most perfect words in the world: "I love you," so many times that I could barely separate the instances. The afternoon had been a long haze of 'I love you's: from him, from me, from every inch of our bodies to the most remote regions of our souls. Under the covers I was cold without him, cold and empty. I rolled over to face the light yellow cinderblock of the wall, and stared at its pitted patterns until sleep finally overtook me.

Taylor

Every day I spend more and more time in the basement. It's hard for me to pull myself away even to record, but my brothers are always around to do it for me. I'm relatively sure they think I'm crazy. I am, in fact, relatively sure that they're right. Why else do I still long to talk to Marissa? Why else do I stay down here as the most beautiful days of spring meander past, beautiful days that once would have brightened my mood? Now they did nothing but point out the multiple shortcomings in my life.

Recording was awful. It was like neither Ike or I could fully concentrate, and thanks to this fact we've fallen behind our contractual obligations to Mercury. My family treats me like some fragile child's toy that is always one jolt away from shattering. I haven't seen any of my friends since Marissa and I broke up, at first because I was too busy doing everything I could to try and get her back, and now because I'm to busy moping. I work on this mural that no one will ever see, and I drown in an ever deepening pool of self pity, lacking even the ambition to save myself.

"Taylor, please try and keep those clothes clean." My mother's voice invaded my thoughts as I stood contemplatively before the whirlwind contrasts of my newest artistic endeavor.

I looked down at my jeans, cautiously brushing away a bead of paint that has already sullied them, even though we've only been home from the studio for twenty minutes. "Gothca," I replied, blotting a small brush on a paper towel to get rid of some of the excess paint that was dribbling from the bristles.

"I only wish you could have gotten me sooner." She sighed, holding up a pair of my cords from her position in front of the washing machine across the cement cavern of the basement. It's easy to see a large stain stretching form mid-thigh to knee.

"Oops." The answering sigh was nothing short of gushing.

"Mom!" I could hear my little sister, Jessie, upstairs, shouting. This sound was immediately followed by a tinkling crash. "Avery broke your vase!"

"Did not! MaMa did it!" Avery's high pitched wail assaulted my ears as mom raced up the stairs with that special mommy warp speed only women with young children can attain. I phased out the ensuing ruckus and began laying shades of blue on the wall. It's almost done, I guess. I haven't really had a plan as to where it was going - I just applied the paint where and how my mood dictated. While not being ready for the Louvre just yet I suppose it's pretty good, considering. I blandly wonder what I will do when it's finished. If it's ever finished.

"Tay?" A new voice, a quiet one, breaks my concentration.

"Yeah?" I turn around to see Mackie sitting on the bottom step of the wooden stairs leading down from the kitchen, the lower half of his face stained red by the popsicle which he is enthusiastically devouring.

"What are you doing?"

"Painting." I informed the inquisitive four year old, continuing with my methodical work.

"How come?"

"Because I feel like it."

"But what about the old stuff? You covered over my favorite space ship." I can't help but smile at Mackie's genuine alarm at the loss of his favorite drawing.

"I'll make you another one."

"I don't really want another one." He answered mournfully, carefully performing a sideways bite as the popsicle dwindled. "Why doesn't Rissa come over anymore?"

My charitable mood towards my littlest brother faded as his line of questioning wandered towards a subject I'd rather have avoided. "She doesn't want to, buddy"

"Are you going to get another girlfriend now?" I almost dropped my brush as this question hit me. A new girl friend?  As much as I would like to, I can't deny that the thought had crossed my mind.  It was lonely without Marissa. But that itself was the problem.. I wasn't simply lonely.  It was all about missing her, and I'm begining to be afraid that that gaping void in my life can't be filled by anything but her. Marissa is perfect. She says what I think before I think it; she's my best friend. And I miss her. Still.

"No Mackie."

"Why not?"

"I don't want another one." Why did I suddenly feel like crying? I'm Hanson man. Hanson men don't cry.

"Like my spaceship."

"Like your spaceship." I whispered, turning back to the shadowy mural I have created.  

Isaac

I didn't stop thinking about Clio the next day. Everything I saw reminded me of her, from the flowers that were just beginning to push their heads tentatively above the dark soil in my mother's garden, to the sight of a sweater she had forgotten at my house the last time she came over to do her math tutor thing.

Thursday seemed especially long without her, but between our hectic schedules we had no time to see each other. I was to be holed away in the studio all day with my brothers, putting the finishing touches on Taylor's newest song, and Clio had to write another installment in her seemingly never-ending stream of papers. By the time the rest of my family was in bed I couldn't take it anymore, though. The darkness of my bedroom was broken only by the occasional flash of headlights peeping beneath the lowered shade of our window, and the quiet, rhythmic breaths of my already sleeping brothers were the only noises. Still I couldn't loose myself in sleep; I couldn't submerge myself in dreams which I knew would be sweet, and scented with lilacs.

Finally, too frustrated to just lie still, I hastily shoved my covers to the foot of my bed and cautiously lowered myself to the floor. I took care to make no noise, stepping over the scattered legos that always seem to grace the thick blue throw rug on our hardwood floor, and avoiding the boards that 17 years of experience told me would squeak in protest under the slightest weight.

After wandering through the house in search of something to divert my too alert mind I wound up in the kitchen. Everything looks different at night, I thought to myself after tripping over Zac's neglected roller blades. Objects that in daytime were supremely familiar, like the worn apron that always hangs on the back of the door to the kitchen, took on a new life. They were odd, unfamiliar, chock full of both possibility and danger. I sat unmoving in the dark for what seemed like forever, staring at my hands. I still couldn't really believe what had happened in Clio's dorm room; I couldn't, in this cold night, think of anything other than the perfection of feeling her all around me. I wanted to talk to her, and explain what I felt. Tell her that for some reason she haunts me, and that the only goal I can imagine mattering in my life is to be with her always. I've never felt like that before about anyone, and it's scary and exhilarating all at once. I've found someone who makes me happy with her every motion, her every word. All Clio needs to do is say my name and I slide away from reason to loose myself in the sound of it, a willing victim to an unkowning siren.

The phone, a dark hulking mass hanging from the dark green dividing wall between the sunroom and the kitchen, beckoned to me. I could talk to Clio in seconds, if I only dialed 7 numbers which I had long ago committed to memory. But it was late, protested the square, glowing green numbers of the digital clock on the stove. At length I finally decided that I didn't really care what time it was; I had to hear her speak or die.

"Hello?" The voice that answered the phone after the first ring wasn't scratchy with sleep as I expected it to be.

"Hey," I whispered, not wanting to snap the peaceful mood that had come over me at the smooth tones of her voice.

"Isaac…" Clio answered, pleased. "I was just thinking about you."

"I've been thinking about you all day." The words escaped before I could censor them, but I didn't even mind, other than to feel a little sheepish. Sometimes I wonder if she's alarmed by my persistence. I call; I write her email messages; I invite myself over almost constantly.

"Same here…" she whispers now too, and I can hear her moving around in the background.

"Are you in bed?"

"I am now…" The rustling I had heard stopped, and for several instants all I could hear was the faint sound of the cars rumbling along in the interstate in the distance.

"I just wanted to say goodnight." Clio's sigh was soft, and I could almost see her, lying under her thick comforter, beneath a false glow in the dark cosmos, eyes closed and chest rising and falling ever so slightly with each breath.

"I love you."

The intimacy of her words rang through me, and I smiled before replying in kind. "I love you, too."

Clio

I woke up on Friday morning smiling. What a ridiculous thing to do: wake up smiling. But I suppose I had good enough reason; I think about Isaac Hanson almost all the time now. It can't be healthy, and it would be absolutely scary if he didn't prove to me in little ways, like 3 am phone calls, that he was feeling the same way. The mood followed me through my morning routine: a shower with the lilac body gel I know Ike likes, a raisin bagel, and the ceremony of watering Nat's forgotten fern.

Natalie and I always walked to our first class together on Fridays, they were in the same building, but a floor apart. "Hold on… I have to check my mail," Nat muttered, pulling her arms through the straps of her red North Face bag as we walked past the wall of mailboxes. The tiny window of mine displayed a white envelope, for a change, so I speedily twisted the combination lock, hoping for some goodies from my parents or a note from my Grandmother.

What I pulled out was more of a shock, however. It was a thick, business-sized envelope with a Chicago address. A Chicago address belonging to the admissions office of a particular University with one of the best Egyptology programs in the country. I went through my day in a daze, walking zombie-like from class to class, not able to bear opening the envolope, despite the painful knowledge that it rested in my backpack.  The original responses to my transfer applications had come so long ago, and I had never even opened them. Always they were in the back of my mind, though, a dark hovering specter. I didn't want to get in. If I got accepted to even one of the four schools I had applied to that would mean a decision, and a big one. Go or stay. But I didn't have the self-esteem to survive if all of the letters were rejections.

I finally gave in at about three o'clock, just before the ending of my last class of the day. Diana would be picking me up in front of the English building in less than five minutes, and I would be going to spend the weekend at their house. The weekend with Isaac. I quietly tore open the firm package, and, keeping one eye on the professor in the front of the large lecture hall, pulled out its contents. Who would have thought that three pieces of paper, two thin, one thick, could matter so much to me?

"Clio," The first page began in handwritten script. "Congratulations on your acceptance into the school of Egyptology at the University of Chicago," I let out a breath that I suspect I may have been holding ever since I had filled out the creamy white pages of the application a lifetime ago. "We at the history department have reviewed your record, and have decided to award you with the Presidential grant, which is given to one transfer student every semester. Tuition is fully covered by this free gift from the University…" The words got better and better as I read on. Free tuition. Guaranteed admittance into all of the classes I wanted. A new life.

My only worry was if it was a new a life I even wanted.

Installment 13

Isaac

"I want to see pictures of you as a baby." Clio informed me when she came over after her classes let out on Friday afternoon. I was still rather in shock that my mother had suggested she spend the weekend at my house, even with my full awareness of Mrs. Diana Hanson's supermom instant.  It was just out of hand. Not that I minded or anything.

"Uh, I don't know about that," I answered in a deadly serious tone. "I was not an attractive child." It was true. I had spent my entire life being second to Taylor in looks. Even as little kids it had always been, "Taylor the cute one," and, "Ike the funny one." Isaac whose blue eyes wouldn't pave his way in life. Isaac who decided one day to write music to be special, just as it had always been Isaac who had waited as long as he had drawn breath for the person who stood beside him in the hallway of his parents house.

In the past these thoughts might have annoyed me. No matter what I tell people, I know that I am a little bit jealous of Tay. It seems like life is guaranteed to be easy for him just because he got good genes, but over the past few months with Clio this envy has faded. I could remember thinking as a little boy that if only I had looked like Taylor life would be so much more simple. Maybe it would have been, but if I was some swimsuit model of a man I couldn't be the person I am right now, and I couldn't be experiencing what I was pretty sure was the most powerful emotion in the world as I watched Clio struggle out of her heavy backpack. So, I supposed, all of my sufferings and shyness of childhood had been more than worth it after all.

"Oh please! How could you have been an unattractive child and be so fine now?" Clio had by this point removed her sneakers and thrown them, along with her fleece coat, into the hall closet. She punctuated her ego-boosting comment with the briefest of pecks on my cheek, which she had to stand on tiptoe to deliver.

"Well, when you put it that way..." I laughed, wrapping my arms around her waist and returning her kiss ten-fold. With one of her frigid hands in clutched in one of my warm ones, I led Clio to the sunroom where my mom keeps all of the photo albums. This room was another testament to my mother's preternatural maternal instinct; several bookshelves were filled to the point of bursting with albums packed with memorabilia of all of her children. The goodies included things as varied as the trophy Avery had won for being the first kid in her pre-school class to be able to tie her shoes, to pictures of every Hanson performance, to Tay's soccer blue ribbons from his seventh grade league.

I pulled out one of the early volumes, a thick green book stuffed with carefully mounted pictures, and lay on my stomach on the hardwood floor. Clio stretched herself out beside me and nudged my shoulder with hers. "Well, let's see the goods!" It was so easy, to be here with her like this. I would have thought there would be some sort of awkwardness between us now, considering what we had shared, but instead I felt more closely connected to her than I ever have before. It was like she was my best friend, and I had known her forever. Words were no longer obstacles; they simply flowed comfortably from our lips without any nervousness, and in their absense there wasn't a problem wasn't a problem. The silence was a snugly comfortalbe quilt wrapped companionably around us, a sweet luxury.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," was my stern reply. The first few pages went by fast, me in diapers, me in the bathtub (mental note: destroy that one, preferably along with the negatives....) When we came to a page with only one picture on it, me, Tay, and Zac in the pre-Hanson days, wearing matching jean shirts, sitting on the deep green front lawn laughing, Clio made me stop.

"Look at you," she smiled faintly, engrossed in the snapshot. "You were so happy." I looked at me, all right, and saw my crooked teeth, my bad clothes, and my too short for comfort hair. I shook these reflections easily from my mind, and shut the album, grinning wildly at Clio.

"Not as happy as I am right now..." I couldn't help but reply with a kiss, eager to be pull her close and try and show her what I hadn't been able to tell her on the phone last night.

Clio

Ever since opening the letter from The University of Chicago my mind had been racing. What could I do? The opportunity to go to school without paying tuition was an amazing one; as things stood right now I was going to be in debt well into my thirties with college bills. Leaving ORU after only one semester and attending a school that was willing to pay my way would solve a lot of problems, and on top of these financial concerns was the snappish voice in the back of my mind that kept saying how much better a degree in ancient history from the oriental institute would look than one from Oral Roberts.

"Random question," I said, rolling over onto my back and watching a twinkling set Christmas lights run their eternal race up and down the dark wooden mantelpiece above the fireplace in the sunroom.

Ike turned to lie on his side next to me, his head propped up on one hand. "Shoot," he said, looking down at me with an expression so sweet on his face that I shivered involuntarily.

"It's March. Those are Christmas lights. What's wrong with this picture?"

"Avery and Jess throw a fit every time anyone makes a move to take them down. I imagine the next time we go away my mom will get the cleaning lady to disappear them in hopes that they won't notice." Ike paused reflectively and watched the sinuously climbing lights for a moment before returning his gaze to my face.

"What's wrong?" His gentle voice sent tremors of sadness through me.

The flashing Christmas lights and the pale mid-afternoon sunshine that slipped through the half open blinds were the only brightness in the room, and I watched the lights make deliciously perfect crayola colored patterns on Isaac's already beautiful face. "How do you know there's something wrong?" I asked, putting off the inevitable moment of reckoning. I wanted to talk about this with him, but I couldn't imagine what he would say. I felt like I was making too big of a deal out of a basically simple decision and laying far to much weight on our relationship.

I didn't think I could stand it if Isaac casually dismissed my dilemma, though. After all, why should he care? I'm sure that there are a hundred thousand girls out there who would love to be in my place, and he would have no problem finding one of them if I left. He said the words "I love you," I had heard them and felt them, but it was still hard for me to believe it all, despite my own feelings.

"Well, you saw the picture of me with a buzz cut and didn't laugh. That's can only mean two things... a) that you're clinically depressed, or b) you're actually blind and have been hiding the fact really well..." Isaac said in a hushed voice, placing his free hand on my stomach and leaning closer.

"You were cute." He is cute. And somehow I feel like I can still see that little boy from the picture taken on his front lawn staring out from behind the deep brown eyes of a nearly grown man. Those eyes lit his face with something I only wanted to imagine being devotion and love. For me.

"God, you must have something truly horrific to say if that just came out of your mouth and you've still got a straight face. Do you have Ebola or something?" Ike's hand slipped under my shirt, and he began tracing an ever-widening set of concentric rings around my belly button.

"I got a letter from the University of Chicago today." I slowly answered, reveling in the sensation of the rhythmic motion of his hand beneath my shirt.

"Really." He stopped for an instant, and watching me thoughtfully.

"They want me to go there. They even gave me a scholarship. A big one. No tuition to pay…" I could see him flinch, even though he was obviously trying to hide it.

"You're not thinking about going, are you?" Maybe my dreams were coming true. Maybe Isaac Hanson really did feel about me like I did about him. Why else would that mixture of horror and pain thicken his voice?

"I am. Thinking about it, I mean. It's such a good school…"

"ORU is a good school to. And you've already been there a semester, why bother starting over somewhere else?"

"I don't really like it there, Ike." We had never talked about this. I suspect that he knows just how I feel about my school, but I've never brought it up and am hesitant to do so even now. Being with Isaac is perfect - an escape from an unfriendly and hostile world - and I don't want to pollute it with all of the grime and dirt of reality.

"Why not?" Softly, ever so softly, he sinks down onto the carpet beside me, his face a mask of control.

"I just don't. The classes are dumb, the teachers are ridiculous, and the code of rules is out of hand. I don't know why I went there in the first place. Well, I do. Because it was close to home, and easy to get into."

"Don't leave me." I flipped over onto my side to face him, and moved closer. There were only inches between us, and as we lay there I could see a thousand colors playing against the brown of his eyes.

"I don't want to leave you. Just here." It took me a long time to answer, because I was far to mesmerized by the red, green, and blue of the Christmas lights on his pale skin to formulate a sentence. Isaac reached out a tentative hand and ran it up the side of my neck before burying it in my hair.

"You're going to leave me." The little boy from the picture said in a dismayed and certain voice. The sunshine was gone from his eyes, and his face hardened even more.

"It's not you. I love you more than I ever thought I was capable of loving anything that wasn't stuffed and bought at FAO Schwartz. But I hate my life. I hate Oral Roberts. I hate the kids, the professors, and the fact that I can't get any of the classes I want here." This bitter complaining wasn't helping anything, but I couldn't stop the words from pouring, impassioned, from my mouth.

"Drop out then," Ike cajoled. "Stay here." He paused for a long moment, his eyes never leaving mine. "Marry me."

Isaac

"What?" My breath stopped when I realized what I had said, and my heart stopped when I realized that I meant it. I had asked Clio to marry me, to promise that we would always be together, to become even more of a part of me than she already was. I think this may have been building up in my mind all along; first it had been her face, and then it had been the beautiful golden red hair that I was currently twirling leisurely around my fingers as I watched a look of shock cover her delicate features. But it had become so much more, the way she talked and the way she thought, and finally it had all added up. I loved her - every inch, every success, every failure. I don't think I could change this even if I was so inclined.

"You heard me." I replied quietly.

"Be serious." Clio dismissed me, sounding less than certain. Looking into her green eyes, so clouded with confusion, it was all I could do to draw breath.

"I am serious." I slid across the thick carpeting of the sunroom floor, so close that our bodies gently pressed together and I was able to softly kiss the sprinkle of freckles that dot the bridge of her nose.

"I wish I could." She sounded so weak, so defeated at that moment that I hurt for her. "I wish I could just give up. Not care anymore…" Tears were glistening in the corners of her eyes, and she blinked rapidly, flinching in an attempt to hide them. After a struggling instant she sighed a long, silent exhalation of breath that brushed warmly on my neck, sending chills up and down my body. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be; it's okay. Everybody is unhappy sometimes." It was a truth hard lessons had taught me long ago, but I didn't know if that was what Clio needed to hear right now. The urge that made me want to be able to make her life perfect, to give her the heaven she deserved, in any way I could, demanded these words of me.

"I'm sad all the time and it only gets better…"she froze mid-sentence, her eyes cautiously measuring my reaction to her words. After a second of silence as I waited for the next words, for her to tell me how I could make her happy, Clio pulled back and moved several feet away to sit Indian style and lean against the couch. She sat in stony silence, watching the Christmas lights work their way through another of their cycles of endless repetitions.

"Why haven't you ever talked to me about this?" Why don't you tell me when you're sad?" I was pleading, begging, but I couldn't stop. "Am I some kind of toy to you? Something to play with when you feel like but not really care about? Someone to use for sex?" The words were stupid, and offensive, but their meanings had long haunted me. Clio had gone to my mother to cry, when all I wanted in the world was to be here for her in every way possible. How could she really love me if she didn't want to talk to me?

"Please don't think that," Clio finally looked at me, sorrow radiating from her gaze. "It's not true." Tears began weaving sullen pathways down her cheeks, and her voice broke at the last word. "I just want us to be okay. Everything else in my life is so messed up that it's like I don't have anything anymore…just…. Please let us be okay." Thick desperation was thinly veiled by her voice, and as I watched she wiped her eyes and straightened her shoulders. I had never imagined how unhappy Clio must have been, being too wrapped up in my own happiness. How could I not have known? How could she have hidden this from me when I thought of her every minute of every day? Even when I had caught her crying to my mom I had thought that it couldn't have been a big deal, just a momentary sadness. But that couldn't be the case, whatever it was that was making Clio, strong Clio who's never afraid of anything, cry can't be little. "Let us be okay," she softly entreated one final time.

"Shh…" I used the same tone of voice I had seen my mother use on a crying child a thousand times in my life, a good number of them directed towards me. "We're fine. I just don't understand how you can go."

"I think I have to. It's kind of stupid," Clio shrugged apologetically before continuing, devoid of tears. "When I was a little kid, in second or third grade, we learned about the pyramids. How there were hundreds of them, but they'd all been found and explored." As always, talk of Egypt brings out the brightness in her eyes and a faint smile into her tone.

"I was annoyed. Of course. Someone else had beaten me to it. Then we learned about the Valley of the Kings, where all the Pharaohs of the 18th dynasty had been buried. And they told us that every single tomb had been found there, too." Clio was now animated, and a slight flush climbed up the exposed white of her neck. "I argued with my teacher for days. I was so sure they had saved me a pharaoh, and that there must be one waiting for me somewhere, that it made me mad when she didn't believe me. If I stay here, if I become a teacher or whatever my parents want me to be, even if I marry you…" the last phrase was delivered in a gentle tone, and even though she was in the midst of what Taylor might have called a "hissy-fit" it was obvious she was trying not to hurt my feelings, "it'll be just like admitting that she was right all the time. That there wasn't a Pharaoh left for me, and it didn't matter anyway because I wasn't even going to try."

We both sat, still with thought, for several moments. The Christmas lights kept flashing, spinning and racing along their cord, and I just sat, unable to say anything. What was there for me to say, after-all? That Clio should give up her dream? That she should forget about something that could make her sound like that? Her fascination with another place and another time fills her voice with life and returns that peculiar gleam of hers to the green of her eyes, and now all I want to do is tell her it's dumb. I ache to beg her to stay here with me, and not ever leave. "Ike?" Clio breaks through my haze of contemplation, "I think I want to know if you'll hate me if I go."

There are two ways I could answer this question. One is selfish, and desperate, an attempt to hurt her so badly that she won't even have the desire to leave. I could tell her what a stupid idea it was, that she would only be happy with me, or I could tell her that the odds of her becoming some famous archeologist were astronomical. But I couldn't do that. "I don't think I could ever hate you." I choose the other answer, the one that hurt me the most, the one that I knew was right anyway. "I wish you would stay. But I guess I understand. I couldn't give up the band, not even for you. I'd do anything else in the whole world, but not that. Because it makes me special." I maneuvered myself to sit next to her, shoulders just brushing.

"But think how it could be," I continued, grasping one of her hands tightly. "When I asked… when I said I wanted to marry you I wasn't kidding." It was true; I've known all along that I could make Clio happy, if she only gave me a chance. It seemed so weird, I thought as I marveled once again at the gentle strength of her hands, that just a few months ago I had only heard of one Clio - only one goddess. But now there are two, and at least one of them is, in some small way, mine.

Clio

I fought back the sea of tears that threatened to burst forth as Isaac came to sit next to me and hold my hand. "We'd get our own place," he began describing, in soft tones of conjecture what it would be like if we were married. "Every night would be a slumber party, and every morning I could wake up looking at you…" How could he possibly be so sweet? I couldn't imagine how he could love me this much. Imperfect Clio, who says stupid things and can't even remember the combination for her mailbox, has someone who cares about her so much that he wants to marry her. I didn't doubt that Isaac cared about me anymore, the sadness in his voice when he asked what he was to me, if I liked him for only physical things, was enough to reassure even me. It was true that I loved Ike's touch, and the smell of him, and the way he felt lying naked next to me, but that wasn't all that made him so special.

"And we'd spend all of our time with Ike junior," I had to add, smiling for the first time in our short exchange.

"Yeah. Ike Junior. I like the sound of that." Isaac wrapped an arm protectively around my shoulders and I allowed myself to lean against him.

"I love you; not just for this," I punctuated my pledge with the softest of kisses, knowing that there was no way to express how I felt. Even as I reached back into my mind for the words that have been my constant companions in life, I couldn't find appropriate mirrors.

"How come you went to my mom then? How come you told her about your problems and not me?" Isaac pulled away to watch me, waiting for answer, looking a little betrayed.

"I don't know. It's not like I thought ahead or anything. She was just there, and so nice."

"You can always talk to me, you know."

Words finally came to mind, and they were the truth. I didn't know if I was ready to share them, though, because they were still a little too fresh and tender. "I was afraid you wouldn't want me any more," they scraped like sandpaper against my tongue, but I was glad when they had been said. "I thought that if I complained to you I wouldn't be fun, or cool, or whatever."

"Do you remember," Isaac asked at length, raising our clasped hands to examine them, "the first time we kissed?"

"Yeah," I laughed ruefully at the long ago ashamed I had felt at my forwardness. It seemed so silly now, so pointless.

"You read my palm and said that I'm aggressive about getting what I want. I think I must be, because this time I definitely got what I wanted. You."

Installment 14

Taylor

The Friday night that began Clio's tenure as a guest at our house everyone decided to go out. Mom and Dad were going to take the girls to go see some play at our cousin's elementary school, and Ike and Clio wanted to go to the movies. Amidst all the noise and confusion of their arrangements I ended up in the basement, my secret hideaway, painting. Certain bits of the wall had been covered with three or four layers before I was finally satisfied with them, and others had been left bare.

"Taylor!" My Father came thuding down the stairs, sounding more like a fifteen-year-old boy than I usually do.

"You're coming with us to the show, right?" He knew very well that I had no intention of watching a bunch of third graders perform Wind in the Willows, but his tone implied more demand than inquiry.

"No thanks, dad. I'm almost done here…"

"It's not going to go away. I promise. Just come with us, it'll be fun." With this he began gathering the brushes and cans of opened paint that I had left lying on the newspaper with which I had covered the floor.

"I think I'll just stay in tonight, I don't feel too hot." My father was standing over the laundry sink, his black hair blending in the darkness of the room, busily washing brushes.

"It'll do you some good. Come on, go put on some decent clothes. We have to hit the road in," my dad checked the glowing face of the watch my brothers and I had gotten him last year for Christmas before issuing a dismayed, "about negative five minutes. Get a move on."

"Noo…" I whined pathetically to myself, watching my father retreat into the brightly lit kitchen above. I didn't want to go anywhere, let alone to an auditorium packed with 200 simultaneously screaming and giggling kids. There could be a riot or something.

I finally followed him, welcomed to the above ground world by an explosion of sound from from the telephone hanging in the kitchen. "Taylor? Get that for me, would you?" My mother was busily forming little round balls of cookie dough and promptly flattening them the counter, which is currently glaringly white form the massive amounts of flour that it is covered by.

Maybe it's Marissa. The thought skittered through my mind so fast I almost didn't grasp it before it disappeared into the mists of my unconscious. It's not Marissa, I reminded myself. It's never going to be Marissa again. The thoughts saddened me, and seemed to weigh heavy on my shoulders as I picked up the receiver, "hello?"

"Diana?"

"No. She can't come to the phone right now… can I take a message?"

"Yeah, this is Nina's mother. I'm really sorry about this, but she broke her arm this afternoon and isn't quite up to taking care of Zoë tonight. I hate to do this so last minute…" I felt bad, I really did. Nina has been babysitting Zoë forever, well, it seems like forever, and she's cool. But at this moment the only thing I can think of is that this may be my escape route from going to the play. You can't very well bring a three-month-old to something like that - now can you? And there just happens to be one person in the house who doesn't want to go in the first place…

After quickly saying goodbye to Nina's mom I turned almost triumphantly to my mother. "Nina broke her arm! She's not going to be able to baby-sit tonight, but I can watch Zoë if you want." What a selfless son I am, I thought to myself as I attempted to sound humble.

"Tonight is going to be a family night. You go change," My mother waved a flour doused hand in my direction and frowned. "I'll find someone else. Not a problem." She muttered, rinsing her hands in the sink and throwing the now completed tray of cookies in the refridgerator. "Go on!"

"Fine."

Marissa

I didn't understand how the night air could feel so cold on my skin. It's warm out, the trees are budded, birds are signing. It's the perfect spring day, but even as Sarah and I sit on the patio by the currently empty pool in my backyard I just can't enjoy it.

"I like Jason a lot, but not that much. I mean, he's going to school 1,000 miles away. I haven't seen him forever." Sarah and her boyfriend of two years just broke up, and I'm amazed by her calmness. She's sitting on a wooden deck chair next to me, busily flipping through my mom's Glamour and talking in a matter of fact tone about how they "called it quits."

I wish it could be that easy for me. I would just make up my mind and the rest of me would follow, just like it has for Sarah. But whenever I see the sky this particular shade of deep blue it fills me with an indescribable pain, knowing that Taylor and I are sharing this world. No matter what happens, that can't be taken away from me. But I wish I could still be his world, instead of just in it.

The phone rang from its spot beside Sarah, and she grabbed it expectantly. Our friend Caroline was supposed to be calling to finalize our plans to go see Titanic for the 4th time each tonight, but I could immediately tell that it wasn't her by Sarah's facial expression. "Okay. What time…. I'll tell her."

"What's up?" I asked, watching Sarah's face suspiciously. She was resembling a Wily E. Coyote a fraction of a second after he realizes he's going to catch the RoadRunner.

"You have a babysitting job." Sarah answered curtly, standing to tug on the legs of her jean shorts and walk towards the doorway to the kitchen. "At the Hansons'"

Taylor

When I went upstairs in an attempt to hide from my parents for awhile, futilely hoping that they would forget about me if I stayed out of their sight, I found Zac perched on the narrow, white painted windowsill in our room. "What's up?" I asked, hurling myself onto my bed with a satisfying thump.

"Not much." Zac answered, continuing to stare out the window, his face reflecting the soft pink rays of the sun as it began to surrender to night.

"Are they making you go to the play, too? Or am I the only one they feel the need to make suffer tonight?" I rolled onto my stomach and leaned the upper half of my body over the edge of the bed, searching for my secret Jelly Belly stash. Well, not so secret after I dip into it in front of Zac, but this is obviously an artificial flavoring emergency.

"I'm coming too… and I really don't mind." Zac finally regarded me coolly from behind his yellow brown eyes, seemingly waiting for some sort of reaction.

"What's up with you?" I haven't seen my little brother a lot lately, between being miserable in the basement with my painting and being miserable, well, everywhere else, I haven't really kept up with family goings on. It's almost surprising that I share fifty percent of my genetic material with the boy who is standing before me, the boy with whom I also share a bedroom, and yet don't know anything about him, really. His hair is getting longer, I note, and seemingly even more blond. I can see a thousand memories written across his skin, memories of thick summer nights spent catching fireflies, memories of Christmas mornings in Darth Vadar pajamas under the tree, memories of crying together when my Grandmother died. But I don't know him, not anymore. I can't decode the changes in his eyes as he watches me pull the heavy bag of red jelly beans from a remote and dusty corner beneath my bed, and I can't predict what he's about to say.

"We're going to leave soon, you know."

"Yeah. Ten minutes, I heard. Then Frog and Toad crying from stage fright and wetting themselves…" I responded, munching heartily on the rapidly diminishing kidney shaped bits of heaven.

"No, I mean, leaving. Really. The tour and stuff…" When had his voice gotten so deep? And when had the glow of laughter stopped hanging like a halo around him?

"Not for a long time. And you know we may not even do it at all…" I answered, thinking about it myself. This break has been terrible for me. The Marissa thing… it was too much to bear. The recordings we've done over the past few months are good, but Mercury is keeping them under wraps until after we re-release the Boomerang and MMMBop. In truth, I would love to go on tour. To be on the road again, far away from all the familiar, stifling worries that seemed to hover over every inch of my hometown.

"I'm going to miss it here when we leave again. And this time I bet it's going to be for even longer," Zac muttered, snagging his overly long hair in one hand and grabbing an elastic with the other.

"But think of how much fun we'll have, and all the cool new places we'll get to go." A pep talk for Zac was not my first priority right now, and I'm sure he could tell from the weakness of my words and the long breaks between them.

"I guess."

"Do you regret it?" I asked, softly. What if we had never gone to LA to record Middle of Nowhere? I pondered how different my world could be, almost wondering how I would answer that question if it had come from my brother. I think I do. Maybe leaving here for so long was what made Marissa break up with me, maybe she even met some other guy when I was gone. If I had stayed, maybe we would still be together.

"No. Not at all." Zac grabbed the bag of jellybeans from my clutches and threw one high in the air, only to be pegged on the forehead on its downward arc.

"That was feeble."

"I know, but not as bad as you…" Zac was silenced mid-insult by my mother's voice cutting through the midafternoon quiet. A sharp rap on the door was followed by her entry, Zoë on hip.

"Come on guys, down to the car. Marissa's here and we have to get going." She said, jostling Zoë and casting a critical eye around our room. "And when we get back you two can further indulge me by cleaning this place up a little. We have a guest, after all."

"Yeah, mom." Zac and I were too lost in our own thoughts to fight back, so we just filed mechanically out of the room behind her.

"Who'd you get to baby-sit?" Zac asked as we headed down the stairs, flicking off lights along the way.

"Marissa." My mom answered, not missing a beat. "You boys go out to the car and I'll give Zoë to Rissa."

I stopped, one foot hanging uncertainly midair. "Who?"

"Marissa. She just got dropped off, and if we don't get a move on we're going to be late." My mother didn't seem to see the significance in this revelation. Marissa was in my house. Right now. My heart stopped, and a shaky breath slipped its way from my lungs. I was so torn, at that moment. I still missed her so much, but one part of me was mad, and too hurt to just march downstairs and tell her for the billionth time that I love her. That fact apparently doesn't matter, anyway.

Zac shoots a questioning look in my direction before arrowing off towards the garage, several light years to slowly for my taste.

Marissa

He didn't even come find me before they left. I sat in the sunroom, holding Zoe's warm body cradled in my arms, and waited after Diana exited the room. I stayed there, unmoving until I heard the crunch of gravel in the driveway. Sarah had some nerve, saying I would baby-sit here. Every sight is painful, and as I watch Mackie intently acting out some drama with his Power Rangers figures on the floor I wonder if Taylor had once looked like him. The hair is right, maybe a little to blond, but the same texture. The youngest Hanson boy hadn't been gifted with Taylor's shivery blue eyes, however, and as he sat quietly on the carpet I could see a lot of other differences.

"I'm glad you're back, Rissa." Mackie's somewhat shrill little voice shocked me out of my reverie, and I found myself smiling. That's one way he's like his older brother… he really knows how to charm the girls. The sweet look on his face as he stood and walked to join me on the couch would capture a lot of hearts someday.

"I'm glad to be back, too. I missed you." It was true. I had missed Mackie, and this room, and this house, and the smell that always seemed to hover in it, some kind of mixture of fabric softener and potpourri.

Taylor

The play was horrific; it was terrible; it was my worst nightmares brought to life by a demonic troope of third graders. Judging by the indulgent grins on the faces of my entire family, including Zac, the little traitor to puberty and early adolescent rebellion, they were quite enjoying it. As the musical wore on I became increasingly aware of the other people who were packed into the small auditorium reacting to our presence. I think every one in Tulsa knows about us, even if they're not huge fans it's kind of hard to have avoided MMMBop for the past year. The glances they shoot in the direction of our all Hanson row aren't hostile, or unfriendly, or even worshipful as one might expect. They're just curious, like people at freakshow, ogling the wolf boy and the bearded woman.

All I could think of was Marissa. She had never cared that we were famous, had never bought a teen magazine for our picture, had never stared like those strangers. Her stares had been different, softer, like the drifting of ocean water against my skin. How could she be in my house right now when I'm trapped here? My head throbs, and I know that staying here isn't going to work out. I need to go talk to Rissa right now, and try to make her understand one more time why she can't live without me - because I can't live without her.

"Mom," I tugged at the sleeve of my mother's purple shirt, trying to get her attention. I couldn't breathe; the air was closing in around me like cellophane, and the stares seemed to weigh heavy on me. "Mom!" I repeated, loudly enough to earn a few annoyed glances from a middle-aged couple sitting in the row in front of us. "I have to go outside…" I carefully whispered when she leaned my way, followed by a thin cloud of her comforting, mommy-like perfume.

"Don't wander off, honey," was all she said before returning her eyes to the brilliantly lit stage.

I was too busy fleeing up the red-carpeted aisle to answer and was far to freaked out to care. I didn't know what was wrong, but my breathing was coming in quick, nervous gasps, and the room around me seemed to swirl in an uncomfortably rotating pattern. I just wanted to go home. I just wanted to go home to Marissa. So I did.

Marissa

"I want some grape juice, please." Mackie asked from his seat at the kitchen table. This hasn't been as bad as I had thought it might be; the house was curiously devoid of Taylor, even when I walked past the darkly paneled door to the garage, where Hanson does a lot of their practicing, I can't imagine him here.

"Sure." The pooh cup is light yellow, just like the one I used to have when I was a little girl. The cases of Dr. Pepper hidden in the corner beside the fridge didn't even cause me to flinch, and I silently congratulated myself for my fortitude. It was over, I thought, weak with relief. I had done what YM had demanded of me, and I could stand right here, in the same spot that I've seen Tay stand a thousand times, peering into the refrigerator in search of goodies, and not even care. Not even feel tears building up behind my eyes; not even want to just sit down on the cold looking cream colored tiling and cry until I'm drained. No, I promised myself, I don't feel those things at all.

As I cautiously handed Mackenzie the half-full glass of juice I heard Zoë revving up to a crying fit from her playpen in the sunroom. "Be careful with that." I warned, heading in to check on the littlest Hanson.

Zoë was the sweetest baby I've ever seen, shockingly enough. Usually when I end up babysitting for kids they're criminals in training, tearing apart supposedly childproof gates in the blink of an eye and just generally preparing for a future behind actual bars. Even the older Hanson kids fit neatly into this mold; they may be incredibly sweet and well meaning, but they're also an impossibly effective demolition crew.

"Rissa!" The panicked scream I heard from the kitchen was no doubt about to become exhibit 'A' to prove this point, so I quieted Zoë as best I could before sprinting back. Mackie stood in the center of the floor, his little jeans and white tee shirt stained an attractive shade of dark blue. The Pooh cup was upended at his feet in a puddle of doubtlessly already congealing juice.

"Oh Mack…" I lamented, pulling his MC Esher shirt over his head. "We have to get these washed right away or that's never going to come out." Yelling wouldn't help any, despite my desire to do a lot of it.

"I'm sorry…" He pleaded, puppy dog eyes on full power.

"It's okay, not that big a deal. Why don't you go take off those pants and get some new ones? I'll throw this right into the washer and you can bring your jeans down." I remembered when Ike had gotten this shirt for Mackie, and I knew the little boy treasured it. Making him feel worse by complaining was going to solve about as many problems as yelling.

"Kay."

As he hurried off towards the stairs I couldn't help but add, "be careful up there," in true temporary mommy fashion. It's revolting, really, to discover that I have maternal instincts. All I could think about as these words slid unplanned from my mouth was Sarah and I walking into the side entrance of J.C. Penny's at the mall last week and both of us grinding to a halt directly in front of a rack of little frilled dresses. They had been for children, and we had been at the mall to buy her brother a birthday present. There was absolutely no excuse for the ten-minute pit stop we had made there, exclaiming in long, girlie sighs how sweet the miniature dresses were. I can't imagine what it will be like at 30 if right now I can't walk by a baby gap without being filled with an intense longing to go in and examine the tiny jeans, the miniscule socks, and all the random adorable stuff they always stock. It's not enough to make me what to have an actual child, thanks to learning many times over the extraordinarily hard way that kids were a lot more than mannequins.

The washer and dryer, I had long ago discovered, were located in a nook in the basement, the doorway to which was in the kitchen, opposite the huge, stainless steel refrigerator. I fervently wished I hadn't been reading "The Shining" before bed last night as I plunged into dark maw of the wide doorway, reaching anxiously out for the dangling cord for the overhead light. What was revealed when I finally blessed the room with the flat, sterile light of the florescent bulbs was enough to almost cause me to meet an ignoble end on the cold, hard cement at the foot of the stairs.

Taylor

The walk home wasn't so long, only about two miles. It had apparently been raining while we were in the auditorium, and the cool of the spring air felt sharp against my hot skin. Wandering down the rainslicked black streets, all I could hear was the soft hum of crickets and the gentle thud of my Airwalks on the pavement. The completeness of my isolation struck me as I crossed an empty street, waiting for the walk sign to buzz its permission, despite the lack of traffic. I just wanted to go home, to escape the vicious currents of reality that have held me in thrall for my entire life. The bitter realization that I control nothing, not my body nor my mind nor any aspect of the world around me, had come to me long ago. I'm just another person, one soul, burning faint, barely distinguishable in the ever-swelling sea of humanity.

Why can't it be different? I demanded, picking up speed as the silver disc of the moon began to peek from behind a thick, black bank of clouds. I'm different; I have to be. So why can't I tell people how I really feel? Why didn't Marissa believe me when I said that I loved her? Never before, or since, she touched me have I felt so connected, so at peace. Together we were more than a blip, more than just a pale glow in the world. We had burned bright, discernable from the masses. We had been different. Or so I thought.

I eventually began to run, pumping my legs strongly and savoring the sweet smelling wind blowing the hair away from my face and tugging at my baggy clothes. Scenery slid by, a blur of unimportant greens and blues, and I continued running. Ribs aching, chest heaving with rapid breaths, I slowed only when the brown of my house finally came into view. I stood, gasping, on the front lawn for an instant, watching the dark windows reflect the headlights of a passing car. Marissa was in there, and it was now or never. Talk to her or forget about it. Life couldn't wait forever.

After the lightheadedness of my sprint dissipated I went in the front door, careful to make enough noise to alert anyone in the house as to my location. She would come to me. At least there was that. Ultimately I would not be the one who was weak, who had swayed, who was too incomplete to live without another. The entryway was dark, and I could see the faint twinkle of the red and green Christmas lights that still decorated the sunroom reflecting off the shinny hard wood floor of the hall. The kitchen too was quiet, deserted save for a wad of purple stained paper towels on the floor.

As I stood in the center of the room I realized the basement door was open, and the light was on. This made my stomach turn uncomfortably with the thought of Rissa seeing my attempt at art. I wondered if she would remember when I had told her about my subject, and what it meant to me. She would probably laugh, I decided, heading down the squeaky stairs and into my future.

Marissa

I stood in at the foot of the basement stairs for several lifetimes before I heard the crash of the front door slamming and feet advancing above my head. I could tell who it was by the tread on the floorboards, and by the quickness of the step, and soft sigh that echoed through the empty basement as Taylor made his way down the stairs. I walked forward, barely aware of what I was doing, and ran my hand along the thickly layered paint that fascinated me so.

"Sorry's just not going to cut it, is it?" I asked weakly, staring at the wall before me. It had once been covered with hundreds of hours worth of little cartoon people, spaceships, mountains, and trees, but now all that was gone, washed into oblivion by a layer of white. This was not what amazed me, though, that task had been left to what had replaced Taylor's childish endeavors. It was as if he had turned into Picasso overnight, the wall had, under his ministrations, become a writhing tapestry of deep crimson and endless black. At first I had not been sure about the subject of Tay's newest graffiti, but after a moment the familiar curve of a building I had once heard about seemed to struggle its way out of the prism reflected chaos of this new nightmare world. It was the Taj Mahal.

Memories washed over me, silken as salt water and hot as flame. We had been draped on the couch in the Hanson's sun room, the same one I had been sitting on only moments earlier, and Taylor had had his head in my lap. He had watched me so hard… watched me until my skin fairly crawled with the scrutiny of his azure gaze. "What!?!" I had finally demanded, rubbing my hands through his cornsilk-soft hair.

"Aren't I allowed to look at you?" He had playfully asked, smiling an almost blindingly bright smile up at me.

"Uh… maybe. I'm just wondering if I have creamed spinach on my face of something…" One rapid mental inventory later proved I was looking okay today, despite my facial features.

"Nope. You look perfect," gently he reached up and smoothed a finger along my cheekbone, eliciting a sigh from me. His hands were so right on my skin… so perfect.

"What brought this on?" I couldn't help but ask, kissing the tip of his finger.

"Oh, I don't know." My brows had raised in disbelief, I imagine, and he finally continued. "Today my mom told me about this building in India. It's called the Taj Mahal." I had heard of it, in passing, but never really seen it. "This king, Raja I guess they're called, built it for his wife." Taylor's smile died at that instant, and I could see something strange in his eyes. Some new emotion, some new thought, something I couldn't understand. "She died. He built it to remember her."

"That's so sad," I had answered, not really seeing the motivation behind Taylor's words.

"It was sadder because it made me think about you." It didn't make sense that some thousand year old building could make him think about me, and I think my confusion showed through my eyes. "Because I thought about how miserable I'd be without you."

I had almost cried right then, cried at how sweet Taylor could be. I wanted to cry now, standing before Taylor's creation. I had left him, and instead of hating me he had spent who knows how long in this eternally semi-dark basement painting the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I lost my breath at the sight of it.

The gentle throb of his breaths, and the ceaseless drumming sound his fingers make against the stair banister, are the only indications of a life force other than my own in the room. The near silence in the room was so deafening I almost wondered for a second if Taylor had left. "You can't imagine how badly I want to say no," Taylor's voice, filled with self loathing, carried through the chill air of the basement. "I don't even know if I need you to say you're sorry at all."

I knew exactly what Taylor meant by those words, even if he didn't. I'm a part of him, just like he is a part of me; I had been so wrong to deny this, especially for my own protection, and we had both suffered. We had come together in a storm of magic, but our first meeting had been built upon over the year, and it had grown broader, forming a bridge between us. Because he loves me I don't think he needs the words. I could never really leave him and hope to survive, because he was my life support, and my safety.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered, filled with exquisite relief. Finally the tears came, quickly sliding down my chin and beginning to soak my shirt.

The very next sensation I experienced was the familiar warmth of Taylor's hands on my shoulders as he turns me around, gently guiding me into his welcoming arms.

"Do you want to know why?" I asked, knowing that blubbering was just around the corner and burying my face in his shoulder. I breathed him in, trying to share his strength.

"Why?" He holds me so tight I feel as though I'm in the grip of one of the boa constrictors that have so fascinated Mackie ever since the Hansons had visited Jakarta. But no harm would come from this embrace, and the only devouring to follow would be beautiful, the culmination of everything I've learned and imagined in my life.

"Because you're so beautiful. How can I be with you? You're perfect, and I'm just me. I was so afraid…" the tears were thickening my voice, and with each word it grew harder for me to speak, "that you'd leave me that I left you first." I clung to Taylor, arms twined tightly around his neck.

"You are beautiful," his voice was husky and soft, and his breath caressed my skin as if to prove his words. "I've told you that a hundred times, and I'll tell you it a hundred more if that's what you need to believe me. I don't want anyone but you…" He began to back away, but I didn't want to let the moment pass. I was too comfortable, too warmed by his touch to let it slip away again. With him here, in my arms, I knew the truth in his words. It's only when Taylor is absent, and I can no longer feel his heat, or see the crystalline blue of his soul, that I forget. It slides away from me with all the things I've lost in my life, the billion tiny beliefs that once made this world not only bearable, but magical also.

"La catarata…" He sighed, "I'm sorry too. Sorry these past months have happened. And terrified that I did something to make you feel like I didn't care about you," Tay's words died away, and he pulled me to sit beside him on the bottom step, beneath the rectangle of light cast on the dark floor through the open kitchen door.

I had no idea what to say. That I had been stupid? That I was some paranoid maniac that could never be happy because I was always afraid? Both of these were true, but I didn't think I could articulate them. His warmth was comfort, his smell was comfort, and I watched Taylor's gently shaking shoulders, horror filling me. I was the crier. I was the one who couldn't deal with life, the one who had only my tears as a vent in the hard times.

"I don't how you can make me so happy and so miserable all at once. I thought about this happening a lot…" he was crying, softly, weakly, defeated. "It never happened like this, though. " I had to lean closer to make to the faint, halting words. I did this. I made the one person I love hurt like this. Suddenly my own sufferings of the recent past didn't matter. I had done this, caused it. Should I hug him? Wrap a comforting arm around him? "You were going to beg me to come back, and I was going to make you suffer. Say, 'I'll think about it,' or something. But I can't do it." A bitter chortle followed, and I watched as Taylor straightened from his hunched position, his golden hair catching the meager rays of light in the room and reflecting them.

"I'm sorry," I lamely repeated, feeling like a broken record on "lament" mode. I couldn't think… I couldn't see… the only thing that mattered was Taylor. And the pain I had caused. My next move wasn't a matter of thought, or planning, or pride. It was every inch of me moving towards him, sliding down the steps to kneel before him. "I'm sorry." Tay didn't look up, or budge, until I moved up to the stair directly beneath his huddled form and ran a hand through his hair in an attempt to see his face. "Let's just forget it ever happened and go back to the way things used to be. It was so amazing being