According to the calendar that hung on the bulletin board in the lobby of the hotel the Hanson family was staying at, it was a Sunday. Everyone was off at church, except for Isaac, Taylor, and Zac, who were packing their instruments so that they could take them to the arena they were playing the next day. I sat on the bed in Zac’s room (they had rented the presidential suite), and watched him and Isaac taking the drumset apart. They were obviously extremely frustrated with the project, arguing as they pulled it apart, and scowling when someone took a piece off and let it crash to the ground. Taylor, on the other hand, stood in the main room, packing his beloved keyboard away carefully. He seemed to be completely engulfed in his own thoughts, ignoring his brothers’ bickering. I guess that, maybe, that was what I liked so much about Taylor. He was so peaceful.
“Dammit, Zac, I told you not to unscrew that. Are you deaf? Listen to at least one fricking direction! Jeez!” Taylor and I both took that as our cue to make ourselves a part of this situation, the way we were so used to doing with siblings. I put one hand on Zac’s shoulder to calm him down, and another on the drum, holding it still. Taylor knelt down beside Isaac, looking me my eyes, thanking me silently for my gesture. “It’s okay, guys. Isaac, you should go practice your guitar or something, all right? We’ve got this under control.” Ike, as we called him sometimes, immediately began to protest. “I can’t just leave you guys to do that—it’s a lot of work, and takes a lot of patience…” Zac’s smirk cut him off. “Okay, okay. Good luck to you, then.” He left the room, walked into that of his own, and shut the door. Zac and I both smiled at his middle brother, who was very pleased with himself. “Ike has a real problem with that patience he was talking about. He’s not normally like this…just on tours and stuff. Life isn’t exactly a piece of cake on tour. You usually can’t just go off and do whatever—you have to work, and if you want success, you’ll work like a dog.”
Zac snorted quietly. “Work like a dog? Why do they use that expression? Not all dogs work, you know—like Abby’s dog, Abby’s dog doesn’t work. Does he, Abby?” Taylor looked up at me with a grin on his face, then at Zac, and shook his head. “Zac, you’re so literal. Lighten up a bit, dude. Take it easy.” Zac put the screwdriver back into a screw I couldn’t see from where I was sitting. “Dogs take it easy. Dogs don’t work. I will work like a dog. You just watch me.” As he was about to flop down on the floor, we each grabbed one of his arms. “Like I said before, guys are natural dogs.” Taylor laughed, while Zac jokingly rolled his eyes. “What guys have you been hanging out with? They’re giving you the wrong ideas about us. You women…you’re so complicated. Don’t hang out with guys that are jerks and you won’t think like that.” Taylor had something to say about everything. It amazed me how he and Isaac always seemed to be so right.
Zac sat in a gleeful daze. “Abby said I wasn’t a dog before, Tay,” He teased his brother, and proudly, at that. I noticed something different about them, something I hadn’t noticed before. They were jealous of each other. All of them. They thought it was only playfully jealous, but it wasn’t. They all wanted what the others had, whatever that was. Taylor growled. “Oh, so you’re saying I am?” He was looking right at me. I hadn’t realized the question was aimed at me. For some reason, I felt afraid of Taylor at that moment. He had never acted coldly towards me before; how could he act that way now?
“No, Taylor, I never said that.” Zac, acting as my guard dog, in a way, jumped in to save me. “Tay, God, chill the frick out. She didn’t say anything about you.” I put my hand on his shoulder and pulled him back down. “Down, boy, down. It’s okay, Zac. It didn’t bother me. Let’s just get back to this.” I hadn’t realized that I was shaking when I touched him. He felt my hand, on his body, quivering, and suddenly backed down completely. Taylor apparently noticed. “I’m sorry, Abby—I’m a little aggravated today, that’s all. I told you, we’re all really stressed out.” Zac nodded and put his arm around me. I pushed him off. “Zac…” He stopped. I rose to my feet, uncomfortable. “I think I should go. Have fun. I’ll see you later.” I was about to ask him if I could bring Cloe and Amber, who I hadn’t spoken to in days, with me to the arena, but I thought better of it and hurried out the door.
I spent the remainder of the day sitting under a tree on the beach, writing depressed poetry, the way I loved to. Hanson had made it to the arena hours ago, I assumed, and I had completely missed seeing them. I still felt too embarrassed by my miscommunication with Taylor, the way I had run out on Zac, and how I had witnessed a Hanson getting hurt by his brother and didn’t stand up for him. Taylor had to do everything in that group sometimes. Zac and Isaac just didn’t get along, often. It scared me to know that I was in the middle of this…I loved the Hansons. They were my family, the kind I had longed for all my life. And I felt so divided between them.
Alive. There have been feelings like this before, flying unbridled beneath pure skin. How can there be so much rage in a child? And here I thought I was original.
I planned this. I don’t know how, but I did. Maybe it was my vivid fear of rivers and monsters. Could’ve been my insecurities, locked in stable cages too long, learning to corrode me. She says it was Him and the way he used to stare at me. I have to deny that to keep myself alive. Somehow, I know I’m a little obsessed.
I love to watch timid dancing from a distance. Seems like magic, like us, when I’m alone in an empty bedroom. Why do I keep wishing He could see me, when I’m so ugly and so hollow? Guess I’m still waiting for the lust to fade. You know what? He makes me this alive.
The poem that I clutched in my hand was yet another distorted creation from my tortured mind, one that I didn’t mean, nor did I understand. I often couldn’t believe that my writing came from me. I used to think I had Multiple Personality Disorder, and that someone else came out of me and wrote that for me. It was still easier than believing that I had depression.
“Excuse me, miss, is this sand taken?” I looked up, putting my hand over my eyes. I saw Zac’s shadow standing above me. I panicked. “Zac!” Jumping to my feet, I dropped the open notebook and greeted him. “I, I—I guess I didn’t expect to see you here.” He sat down. “I expected to see you here.” I shrugged and settled back down beside him. “Yeah, well, I pretty much live here. Or I’d like to, anyway. Everybody knows I’m always here. They call it my beach.” Zac wasn’t listening to a word I was saying. Instead, he stared down at the notebook at my feet.
“Abby, what the hell is that?” I was caught. I tried to find an answer in my head, but I couldn’t. Nothing could save me now. “Well, it’s, um…oh, Zac, it’s nothing. Really.” I tried to take it from him, but he wouldn’t let go. “Give it to me,” I growled through my teeth. He still wouldn’t release his grasp on it. “Did you write this?” I felt my throat closing up. I was running out of air. “No!” I began to relax as a thought entered my mind. I was reminded of The Lyrics yet again, and how they always controlled me. If you love enough, you lie a lot. I loved Zac, and I couldn’t hurt him. They were about him; I couldn’t risk losing him. Did I have a choice but to lie?
“No, no. My friend, Cloe, wanted me to look her poems over for her. She wants to be a poet, too. She told me not to show them to anybody. I didn’t write them. I think we’d both appreciate it if you didn’t invade her privacy.” I closed the book and rose to my feet again, starting off. “I’ll see you later, Zac. Probably tomorrow. Goodbye.” I didn’t hear him behind me. But he was there. He grasped my arm, and hard. I gasped. “Stop, Abby. Why do you lie so much to me? You can tell me anything, the truth, I don’t really care if it hurts. I know you wrote that. I saw you scribbling it down as I was coming over here.” I turned to him, and saw the pain in his eyes. “It isn’t about you, Zac. It isn’t…I just thought about what it would feel like to be depressed and obsessed. I didn’t write it about you. That would be the last thing I mean in the world, what that poem describes.” He sighed.
“What’s going on with you? Even if that wasn’t about me…that’s a damn good poem about depression coming from a happy person, Abby. You still aren’t okay, are you?” I didn’t know what to say. I tore away from him. “You stay the hell away from me! You don’t know me anymore! For two years, you haven’t thought about me at all. You’ve been too obsessed with living your self-centered, superstar life to give a damn about the nobody-of-a-friend you abandoned. And now, all of a sudden, you care. You can’t pull this stupid publicity stunt forever! Get away!” He stood, staring, shocked.
“I can’t believe what you’re saying! You think this is a game? That I’m here with you now, using you as some way to get publicity? You don’t know anything!” I shook my head. “Zachary Hanson, shut the hell up. What kind of a fool do you think you can take me for? I’m not one of your teenyboppers. I won’t buy into any of your ‘feel sorry for me, I’m a poor, innocent, happy superstar begging for your love’ crap. I’m not just one of your fans. I’m not under the ‘Hanson Trance’, and I don’t have to be held down in chains by my love for your music and believe whatever you say. I don’t belong to you. I spent years wishing that I did. Years of my life, of my childhood. And here you are again, killing me with words that you don’t even mean. You are so not worth it. Do you have any idea what it’s like to pray for God to let you die in your sleep? Do you understand misery?”
I had broken him. I could tell right then, from the way he was frozen. From the way his eyes welled, when he never cried. The way the artist was speechless. He stared at me, the pain in his eyes corroding me. “Why do the things I love hurt me so much?” I whispered, into his eyes. The cool breeze carried my voice away. In a moment, he was gone. I could feel it then; he had left me, my heart, pulled back, out of fear. I turned helplessly, my heart not even beating, my head throbbing, and my entire body shaking uncontrollably. I was so lost. I had never felt so lost—even when Zac had left originally. It was that moment that I could clearly see, through my watery eyes, how close I was to the Death I had put off for years.
Chapter 8-The Voice
