Chapter 4
Noelle was lying on her bed when the phone rang.
"Hello?" she said in to the receiver.
"Hey, Noelle?" the voice on the other line said.
"Yeah?"
"It's Geri." Great, Noelle thought.
"May I help you?" she said with false sweetness.
"Yeah." There was a slight pause. "This isn't about Becky, so if that's where you think it's going, don't."
"Ok, sure. Get on with it. I'm kind of busy…" Noelle knew perfectly well that she had nothing to do, but she didn't want to talk, especially not to Becky Johnson's cousin.
"I sent the pictures that we took to the ad agency, so they could put them in magazines," she said. "And, as hard to believe as this may be, they loved the ones that you took."
Noelle was ecstatic.
"Are they going to print them?" she asked. "If so, what magazines? What issues? Tell me!"
"No, they can't print them." Noelle's hopes fell.
"Why not?"
"Because you're only thirteen."
"That's ridiculous! If they like them, they should print them!"
"They can't. It's kind of the law, thank you."
"Oh my God…" Noelle was fuming. She could be famous, she could get everything she wanted from doing the thing she most wanted on the face of the planet. She was determined not to let her age get in the way.
"Geri, I'll call you back later, ok?" she half asked, half demanded.
"Alright. Bye."
"Bye." Noelle hung up the phone and ran out of the room.
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"Man, music means a lot to me, but this is just way too much," Isaac Hanson speculated as he looked over the insane girls in the audience, who were screaming at the top of their lungs.
"Tell me about it," his younger brother Zac replied. They were in England performing a course of ten promo concerts before their two weeks there were over.
"I wanna go home!" Taylor whined. Though the second oldest brother of the whole Hanson family, most of the time, Tay acted like a baby.
"Don't you want to perform?" Ike asked anxiously.
"Not if there are all these maniacs out there!" Isaac was over-come by his younger sibling's obliviousness.
"Tell me," he said calmly, though yelling over all the noise, "why did we get in to this whole music business if we couldn't handle a measly crowd of obnoxious, screaming fans?"
"I didn't know it was going to be this bad!"
"Hey, Tay, we're teen idols! You didn't think it was going to be like this? I knew you were stupid, but not this stupid," Zac commented.
"That was hilarious, man." Tay looked at the screaming crowd again from behind the curtain. A few girls saw him, pointed, and started screaming louder. His eyes grew wider and he backed away from the curtain, as if it was going to kill him. He sank back into a little space between a guitar case and a wall, sitting down and keeping a sharp eye on the curtain.
Ike and Zac looked at each other in a way that said "He's pathetic".
"What should we do about him?" Zac asked Ike in a voice that was a little above normal talking level, but not quite screaming, so that his fourteen-year-old brother couldn't hear him.
"Let's just leave him be. We can do the chow without him, right?" Ike replied at the same voice level.
"Right. Let's just let him stay there so he can think that the curtain is a deadly python. I mean, look at him!" Zac pointed to Tay, who was shivering with fright and homesickness.
Ike and Zac laughed and walked over to their instruments to warm up.
"Five minutes!" the stage manager barked. Tay jumped and looked around to see where the voice had come from. He put his right hand on his chest and closed his eyes, breathing in the rush of relief. Reluctantly, he forced himself to get up out from his spot and walk over to the keyboard.
"Oh, look who finally came out of paralysis!" Ike said sarcastically. Tay gave him an evil stare, then changed to over-cheery laughter. Both his brothers looked at him quizzically.
"Why are you laughing?" Zac asked.
Calming down, Taylor said, "Oh, dear, sweet, small-minded Zac. This is how I relieve my stress. I tell myself, 'Be happy, be happy', and then I feel better. I'm ready to perform." He smiled.
"What an airhead," Isaac muttered.
"One minute! One minute!" the stage manager yelled. Ike tuned his guitar again. Zac twirled his drumsticks while sitting on his throne. Taylor kept turning the keyboard on and off, on and off.
"I'm going to die of boredom," Taylor said after a few seconds in a light, breathy voice.
"Good," Ike and Zac mumbled in unknowing unison.
"How is everyone today?" the MC said into the microphone. The audience yelled in response.
"Here we go," Isaac said loudly. Zac shifted on his throne and Taylor kept fiddling with his keyboard.
"Are you ready for Hanson?" More screams, almost unbearable.
"Great, get the audience all excited for us, why don't ya," Zac sarcased angrily. Ike plucked some cords on his guitar. Tay clicked the on and off buttons over and over and over.
"Well, then, I think they need no further introduction."
"Of course not. Everyone knows who we are," Taylor said proudly to himself. Zac threw his drumsticks up in the air. Isaac pounded lightly on his guitar.
"Here's…Hanson!" The MC ran off the stage, motioning behind him as the curtain opened.
When the crowd saw the band, they started to scream their heads off. Ike, Tay, and Zac smiled, doing their best not to lose their cool and just run out of there.
Taylor took the microphone in his hands and was prepared to talk. He waited until the crowd became relatively quiet.
"Hey, guys! Sorry there was no opening act, but we wanted the privilege of seeing you the whole show," he said. The audience started to scream in delight. Ike and Zac rolled their eyes, thinking that that was extremely corny. But, if it made the people happy, they figured it was worth it.
Suddenly, Isaac had a thought. He walked over to Zac inconspicuously. The attention was on Tay, so it wasn't too hard.
"Hey," he said, getting his brother's attention. "Wasn't that the opening of the little speech thing he was going to say at the beginning of the show?"
Zac nodded. "Then he ends it by saying something really conceited. Oh, well. He's just trying to make us look bad. Like that'll work." Ike gave Zac a warning look.
"You're not turning into Taylor, now, are you? That last sentence was kind of Tayish."
Zac shrugged. "The last thing I want is to be like him." He pointed to his older brother, who had the audience in the palm of his hand. Isaac returned to his proper spot.
"And finally," Taylor said, preparing to close his "special" speech. "I'd like to say that none of this would have happened without the help of me." He put his hands lightly on his chest and gave a pearly smile to the crowd. Isaac sighed, and Zac felt a little anger nerve inside of him flare.
"Alright, wasn't that just great," Ike said into his microphone. Some of the audience responded with a "yes", while others just screamed. He'd meant for it to be sarcastic, but nobody seemed to have gotten it, except for his brothers. "Zac, start us off."
"Thanks, Ike!" Zac pounded his sticks together. "One…two…one, two, three, four…" They zoomed right in to an all-out rendition of "Thinking of You".
Man, he is so gonna get it after this thing is over, Zac thought as he played his trap set.
About halfway through the song, Taylor realized that his keyboard was turned off. No one seemed to notice.
It's my adorable looks, he thought. They don't care about my music, they care about my face. Though it would have made his brothers fume, Taylor was proud of himself. He kept on playing his silent keyboard to the end of the song.
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