The guys tried to swing higher than one another. Katie also tried, but because her swing was so bulky, she couldn't. Rebekah was doing a trick her friend Jenny had taught her. She swung and then jumped off the swing backward instead of forwards. She ducked her head letting the swing slide over her back and head. She landed about seven feet behind the swing set. Katie saw her and decided that she'd rather show off than just sit there on the "granny swing" as her family called it. Taylor watched her go, maybe wondering what he had done wrong. Katie joined Rebekah and also performed the easy trick.
"Cool," said Zac, "how do you do that?" Rebekah sighed, not wanting to explain it. Katie told Rebekah to describe it since Rebekah had taught her. Rebekah tried to explain it, but it was about as hopeless as teaching the girls how to jump onto a curb on rollerblades backwards. Even though Rebekah was a bad teacher, the guys learned how to do it. They must be fast learners, or they figured it out by watching Rebekah and Katie.
"You know, maybe we should go," Ike said, "it's almost one o'clock." Before the group left, they stopped at the bubbler (water fountain) and the bathrooms. Then they hopped on their bikes and road home. The ride home was uneventful and boring.
As Ike, Taylor, Zac, and Rebekah pulled into Rebekah's driveway, Taylor asked, "Are those your chickens?"
Rebekah looked over to the five chickens eating under a bush. "Yup," she said with a smile. After putting their bikes away, they walked over to the chickens. Rebekah and Katie chased the chickens around the yard. Rebekah caught one and handed it to Zac.
After everybody was holding a chicken, they sat down in the driveway and Katie decided to explain the whole story, "OK. Zac, the white chicken you're holding is Rebekah's. Its name is Zac as you found out in her letter. The brown one is mine. Its name is Cappuccino. The orange one that Taylor is holding is named Taylor. She is my sister, Kristen's. Kristen used to love you, Taylor. She even wanted your braid at one time. The one Ike has is Bandit because of the black around it's eyes. It's my other sister, Sarah's. Rebekah's holding Emma. Emma is her brother's. He is named after a Spice girl."
Isaac looked a little offended. "There's no chicken named after me?"
"Well," Rebekah said," Cappuccino's full name is Cappuccino Clarke Isaac Hanson Hadler."
"Yeah," Katie joined in," Zac's real name is Zachary Walker Hanson Castro. Taylor's name is Taylor Jordan. Kristen didn't want to rename it after she found out your real name was Jordan, so she just named it Taylor Jordan."
Zac pet the cute white chick in his hand, looking up at Katie. Suddenly, he felt something warm and wet on his hand. He looked down in dismay to find a brownish-orange pool of liquid under the tiny animal. "He pooped on me!" he shouted, dropping Zac, the chick. The others looked at him and laughed. Reaching behind him, he rubbed his hand in the grass.
Cappuccino was getting restless, so Katie let her go. She also knew that Zac, the chicken, would squawk after it realized it was alone. After awhile, everybody let their chickens free also.
Since the chickens weren't coming back, Hanson and the girls quickly became bored. "Now what should we do?" Taylor asked.
"We could just go watch TV," Rebekah suggested casually.
"Sure," Taylor said as they all stood up. They all walked into Rebekah's house through the garage. She turned on the preview channel and walked into the kitchen to get some pretzels and sodas. When she came back they were all standing by the garage door leading into the family room.
"Take a seat," Rebekah gestured towards the couch. Zac dove for the leather recliner. The other four sat down on the couch. Ike sat down on the side closest to the window. Taylor immediately followed. Isaac watched Rebekah balance the five sodas in her arms. The tower of sodas teetered precariously. Looking around to see if anyone would help her, he realized that everyone was watching the TV. Suddenly, one of the sodas fell to the carpeted floor with a thud. Finally, jumping up to help her, Isaac picked the can off the ground and took two more from her arms. "Thanks," Rebekah mumbled. Rebekah and Ike passed the sodas around and sat down on the ends of the couch. Rebekah offered everyone pretzels and grabbed the remote. "Anyone see anything good yet?"
Katie answered, "'Make Me Laugh' will be on in twenty minutes."
"I think I might have seen that show before," Zac said, sliding up in his chair.
Rebekah found a cooking show and turned it on. Rebekah saw Isaac's reaction to her decision and said, "What? Cooking show's are Da Bomb!" The chef was trying to make jokes while he cooked some French toast chicken thing.
"Yummy," Isaac said sarcastically. They watched in silence for a few minutes.
Zac kept sliding up in his chair. He seemed to be getting irritated. Finally, he couldn't help but complain. "This chair keeps sticking to me!" Everyone started laughing. "It's not funny!" he complained, "You try sitting in this chair."
"Fine I will," Rebekah gave in. She switched with Zac. She was jealous of Katie who was now in between Zac and Taylor.
After a few more minutes of boredom, Zac couldn't take it any longer. He grabbed the remote from Rebekah and asked, "What is the comedy channel?"
Rebekah refused to tell him. "We still have ten minutes. This 'dish' is starting to look interesting."
"Yeah and very unedible," Ike added.
"Oh come on. It doesn't look that bad," Katie said. She had spoken too soon. The chef was about to add maple syrup and raisins to his "dish." "It's 44! It's 44! Turn this off quick!" she exclaimed. Zac quickly turned to channel 44 where the show "Soap" was just ending. They waited patiently and silently for "Make Me Laugh" to begin. Comedians tried to get the contestants to laugh. The sooner they laugh, the less money they won. Today, the jokes were pretty lame and not many people laughed.
After the show, Rebekah suddenly said, "I have to get something out of my room." She wanted to get her camera and surprise them when she came back into the room. The five of them watching TV together was too good to miss. Passing the pretzels down the couch to Taylor, she stood up and headed out of the room.
"Why don't you show them your room?" Katie asked. Everybody nodded in approval. Rebekah had no choice. She led the group up to her room. It wasn't until she got upstairs that she remembered she had twenty-two posters of Hanson hanging in her room, including one above her bed. Because she thought the guys would think she obsessed if they saw her room, she dreaded their reaction when she opened the door. "Oh krumble," she said, "Katie. Think for a minute. What does my room look like?" Katie looked at her, puzzled. Then she remembered and covered her mouth.
"I'm sorry. I didn't think of that."
"What?" Taylor asked.
"Oh you'll find out," Katie answered. Rebekah opened her door. The yellow, sponge-painted wall made the room brighten up. There was a yellow four postered bed under one of her two windows. She had two dressers and a mirror on the wall. Finally, Hanson knew what Rebekah and Katie were so worried about.
"Wow," Zac said," how many posters do you got of us anyway?"
"Twenty-two," Katie said, "I counted."
"Yeah," Rebekah said, blushing, "Katie and I are kind of obsessed."
"Does your room look like this too?" Taylor asked Katie.
"Not exactly," Katie answered, "I have...sixteen posters of you in my room. They're all on my closet too. And you're not completely covering my bulletin board."
"OK. This is where it stops. Katie is still working on getting all these posters," Rebekah commented, defending herself. They all started looking around the room. Rebekah parked on her bed, a little ashamed of her room. She watched the others' reactions warily.
"Ooh, a walk in closet!" Zac yelled, stepping in. While he was looking at her bookshelf, Rebekah turned on the radio. "Who Will Save Your Soul" by Jewel replaced the silence. "What's this?" Zac asked, pulling out a maroonish hard cover book.
"Um.... that's my photo album."
"Oh no," Katie groaned, knowing right away there would be embarrassing pictures of her in there.
Zac opened the book and started laughing. Rebekah and Katie both groaned. Isaac and Taylor ran over to see what Zac was laughing at. They all sat down on the yellow, flowered bedspread to look at the photos. Katie was actually on the first picture. Isaac, Taylor, and Zac were all smiling. "I didn't know you had glasses?" Ike said.
"Yeah," Katie said, "I actually have contacts now." Then they turned to a few pictures of Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
"Um, OK guys, that was a long time ago," Rebekah explained, turning red again.
"OK just keep going," Katie begged, "I want to get this over with. I just wish I knew what pictures of me were in here." They paged through the book, stopping every once in awhile to comment on a picture. Towards the end of the book, they turned the page to find the dance recital that Katie and Rebekah were in. The picture was of Rebekah, Katie, and their friend Sarah, in their costumes. The theme for the recital was food, so the girls' song was "Lemon Tree." The costumes were orange bell-bottoms, but the bottom was a lemon, lime, and orange fabric. That same fabric made a little tying jacket to go over their black leotards. The jackets also had yellow poofed out sleeves on them. The girls thought their costumes were hideous that year. Rebekah and Katie started squealing when they saw that picture. "I didn't know that picture was in here," Katie complained.
"Next page," Rebekah pleaded, turning the page for them. All three of the Hansons couldn't stop smiling. On the next page was a group of girls, one they could identify as Rebekah, standing in front of a black limo. "That's my thirteenth birthday party. My mom surprised us with a limo ride to celebrate my becoming a teenager," Rebekah explained proudly. "That's me," she said, pointing to the tallest girl. Pointing to the girl in overalls, also the shortest one, she added, "And that's Katie."
"The limo driver was a child molester," Katie put in quietly.
The guys stared at Katie with startled expressions. "No," Rebekah said, bringing the attention to herself, "he just seemed like one. He refused to close the window between him and us. He looked like one, too."
Zac flipped to the next page to find another picture of the girls, but this time he could see the driver, too. "He kind of does," he agreed.
"You guys are crazy," laughed Taylor and flipped the page for Zac.
"This my class trip to Chicago," Rebekah explained, "Katie's not in my class, but she went to Chicago for her school trip too."
" Yeah," Katie said, "You guys go to Europe, we go to Chicago." They smiled, but stayed silent.
Zac continued turning pages. The rest was pretty boring. "So now what?" Zac closed the book and put it back where he found it.
"Hey Rebekah," he said mischievously, "Got any diaries?"
"Don't even go there," Rebekah replied, "Wait. I'll make a deal with you. You can read my diary, if I can read yours. Especially Taylor's personal diary."
Zac and Isaac looked at Taylor. He didn't even consider it. " I don't think so," he said.
Rebekah was thinking, "When I'd really like to read it would be tomorrow morning." she imagined what it would say. "Today I met this really fine girl named Katie and her really, really, really cool friend, Rebekah." Katie broke her concentration, "What are you smiling at?"
"Oh nothing," Rebekah said, still smiling. Zac started inspecting the room again. He found Rebekah's wooden duck she made in shop class. It had wheels as feet so it could walk when you pushed it across the floor with the long pole coming out of its back. Zac started pushing it across the floor, making duck noises. "That's my duck, Manny," Rebekah said, "I made him in shop class."
Zac looked up from the duck, "You have shop class at your school?"
"Yeah," Rebekah said, "that's one of the plus sides to not being home schooled." Her face changed, "Or is it?" She was deciding if she liked shop class or not.
"What is it like being home schooled anyway?" Katie asked.
"What is it like not being home schooled?" Taylor answered. Rebekah rolled her eyes. She noticed how Taylor rarely gave straight answers at interviews.
"Well first of all," Katie started, "Since I'm going to a different school next year-high school-I don't know exactly what it's like, but I'll try to explain. You have to wake up really early and get ready. This is not good if you're not a morning person, which I'm not. It's kind of like what you see on TV I guess. You go to your homeroom and switch from class to class. You know this is really hard. So now, what exactly is home schooling like?"
"Um," Isaac attempted to explain home schooling, "The teacher brings all of our work. Then we go over everything we have to do for that day. We take tests when we've reached the end of a unit. Then our mom gives us assignments for like four classes and tells us to have them done by next time. She also helps us if we have trouble understanding anything. It is exactly like public schools except we do it wherever we are, and we have only a couple teachers. I hope that helped."
"Oh, it did," Rebekah remarked sarcastically.
Katie laughed and looked at everybody in the room. Zac was still playing with Rebekah's duck. He had stopped the duck noises, though. Taylor was looking at one of the posters of himself. Rebekah was deep in thought. "Probably thinking about Ike," she thought. Isaac was watching Zac put the duck away. Isaac and Katie's eyes met, and they both started laughing. Rebekah and Taylor looked at them like they had gone insane. After the laughter had stopped, Katie walked over to Rebekah's bulletin board and started looking at the Hanson pictures that covered it.
Zac walked over and also started looking at the pictures, also. "Hey Tay," he announced, "Rebekah has a picture of the Spice Girls up here." Taylor looked over and blushed.
Rebekah stared at the two standing at the bulletin board and started laughing. "You guys look so cute." Confused, Katie turned, expecting an explanation. "You look so cute how you're looking at the bulletin board and you're both the same size." Zac and Katie looked at each other with their eyebrows up. They faced the bulletin board. Rebekah started laughing again. "Sorry, I laugh at the dumbest things," Rebekah explained, calming herself down. While Katie was telling Zac how mad Taylor looked in a certain picture, Rebekah was fishing through her many varieties of nail polish. Everyone seemed pretty bored. "Do you guys wanna do something else?" They all shrugged, which didn't help Rebekah at all. "Come on, you guys look totally bored."
Katie turned from the bulletin board, "Maybe we should do something else."
"What will we do now?" They thought for awhile, then Rebekah suggested,
"Why don't we go for a walk?" As soon as Rebekah turned off the radio, they all left the house and went down the driveway.
"Oh, shoot!" Katie said, "I forgot to tell my mom where I am going!"
"Katie," Rebekah scolded, "this is not the day to get grounded."
"Whatever," Katie sighed at walked past her house.
Taylor glanced at Katie, "We don't want you to be grounded," he told her shyly. Katie didn't even return Taylor gaze. Instead, she made a U-turn and stomped up her driveway.
"We'll wait here," Zac shouted.
