Glint of Heaven- index

Prologue	Section 1	Section 2	Section 3	Section 4
Section 5	Section 6	Section 7	Section 8	Section 9
Section 10	Section 11	Section 12	Section 13	Section 14
Section 15	Section 16	Section 17	Section 18	Section 19

I contemplated life as I stood on the front porch of the house in which I grew up, watching the sun slide gracefully behind ominous clouds on the horizon. My world is a totally different place than it had been on all those sunny afternoons I had spent on this very driveway, perfecting my roller blading techniques and dreaming of the day when I would have my chance at life. Well, my chance has long since come.

I haven't been back home for almost three years, since the birth of my third child, Clarke. I missed it, I realized as I surveyed the familiar landmarks around me; no matter where I went, this little green house in Tusla, Oklahoma would always be my home. I smiled at this thought and turned to enter the front hallway. The sound of my older sister and her new husband, Jack, unpacking in what had once been my mother's precious front parlor brought back so a deluge of memories so sharp, so immediate, that I could almost imagine myself fourteen again.

My parents haven't lived here for years, and the house is starting to show some wear and tear. Its deed had been a gift from my mother and father to my older sister on her wedding day, and ever since life has seemed to begin returning to its rooms. Soon with any luck I'll have a little niece or nephew to teach how to swim in the very backyard pool where I had spent much of my adolescence.

"Marissa! Come in here! Look what I found in your old room!" Rachel screamed so loudly in an attempt to get my attention that I was sure neighbors two streets away could hear her.

"What's that?" I asked, standing at the foot of the stairs and watching Jack juggle two huge boxes of kitchen utensils.

"This." As Rachel descended she held her hand out, and I saw she was carrying a tarnished old necklace. "You must remember..."

"Of course...." How had I left it here? That necklace had been the world to me when I was a teenager. I literally hadn't taken it off for years, and had pinned all of my hopes and dreams on the charm and what it represented.

"It was in your closet. With all of that other junk you never moved out." Rachel said pointedly, handing me the charm.

"Hush!" I yelled back, attempting to hide the fact that I was indeed sniffling a little.

"I can't believe how young we were," Rachel grinned nostalgically before nudging me towards the kitchen. "I think there's somebody in there who would like to see this."

"It's not like he hasn't seen it before." When I was young everything had seemed so important, and I had struggled so hard to be happy, always been afraid that if I couldn't be happy in high school, the place that everyone claimed was the time of their lives, there wasn't a chance for my future. Everything had seemed so important, so final. I had found out differently long ago. I don't think that I had begun to be capable of imagining how happy I could be as a wife, mother, poet, and sister.

"What are you talking about?" My husband, running a single hand through his short, graying blond hair, stepped out of the kitchen where he has been working on his specialty lasagna in celebration of Jack and Rachel's first night in their new house.

"Marissa, you just need to deal with it. Jeff was a total creep anyway. He forgot your birthday two years in a row. There's just no way around that kind of behavior. It shouts 'insensitive jerk'." My older sister Rachel is sitting on the diving board of the small inground pool in our backyard, with her long, tan legs stretched in front of her.

"Don't you have something better to do with your time, Rachel? I don't need your advice, or moral support, or, believe it or not, fashion tips." The only thought running through my mind as I heave myself off the beach towel I've been lying on for the past ten minutes and walk to the edge of the pool is how miserable I should be.

Not, mind you, how miserable I am. At the moment, I feel rather elated. Two days ago Jeff, who I've known since second grade and been dating since eighth, had told me he wanted to break up. Kind of. What he actually said was that he had other plans for the Spring Fling, the formal dance my high school holds every June just before classes end. I had later found out that these plans involved Katie Eldridge, one of the corner stones of what one would call Jefferson High School's 'in crowd.' That was, proverbially, the end. One of the factors that had always united Jeff and I was our mutual distaste for Katie and most of her friends. As a rule they think a little and talk a lot - a combination I've always found a little alarming.

"I'm just trying to cheer you up," Rachel presses on with her attempts at conversation. I hate to admit that she actually was sounding a little bit hurt from my dismissal. "I remember what it was like to break with Michael, and we had only been together for two months. I can't imagine wasting two years of my life on some guy and then having him ditch me just in time for the most important social event of my year."

"Ugh… thanks for the recap, Rachel. It was just what I wanted to hear." The crystal blue water of the pool was shockingly cold, and by the time I was half submerged I could feel goose bumps running up and down the length of my bare arms.

"And anyway, who says I can't go to the Spring Fling without Jeff? I know a lot of people who don't have dates and are going," predicting Rachel's response to this isn't hard. I suspect that she was the Katie Eldridge of her class when she was still in high school.

"Really. You wouldn't have any fun without a date. You'd just end up sitting on the bleachers with the rest of the dateless geeks. I recommend making it a Blockbuster night." Rachel replied as if explaining to a six-year-old the social order of the sandbox.

"It's not like Jeff and I were married. He was just… convenient to have around. I'm not as distraught about the whole thing as you seem to think." Any response Rachel made was blocked from my hearing by the rushing of water as I bravely dove into the deep section of the pool, pulling hard against the water with my arms until I was hovering in space a few inches above the roughly textured pool bottom. I stayed there, savoring the stroking caress of the water, until my chest ached with the need to breathe and my eyes burned from the heavily chlorinated water.

Rachel and I are so different. In a way, it's not incredibly surprising; we aren't, after all, really sisters. We're more like cousins; her birth mother was my mother's sister. Both of Rachel's parents died soon after she was born, though and my newly wedded parents had adopted her. By the time I had come along five years later they were settled in a comfortable familial routine, and Rachel has always treated them like her real parents.

So much for the nature versus nurture question, I thought as I began to surface. Rachel looks like the pictures of her birth parents that hang throughout our house; she has black hair and olive skin set off by impressive blue eyes. Her personality must be like theirs too, or so I've always assumed. My parents are much more like me, quiet and bookish personalities set off by looks most easily described as, well, quiet and bookish. Not that I'm rectangular or anything, but my indecisive blondish hair blends with my pale skin and hazel eyes to present the world with a singularly forgettable facade.

When I finally came up for air Rachel had removed herself from the diving board and was busily painting her toenails while seated on my towel. I leaned back, taking deep breaths and holding them as long as I could. I floated high in the water until I let the air flow from my lungs in gasping breaths. Then I sank down until the unnaturally blue liquid threatened to cover my eyes, only to breathe in again and float, buoyant and peaceful, on the surface tension of the water. Rachel had turned the radio on, and the rhythmic thump of bass that she tends to be fond of filled the air, becoming physically palpable beneath the water.

"Did you hear about these guys?" She called over the too-loud music. "I saw them in the city last weekend at some bar. They're pretty good, but the weird thing is that they're, like, your age. They couldn't even get into the place to play, so they ended up on the patio. It was bizarre." Rachel conversationally continued, probably trying to take my mind off what she sees as my current depression. Ever since she started college last year she's been alarmingly nice to me whenever she's home; it makes me kind of nervous. Before she started spending eight months out of the year three thousand miles away at school in Vermont we had actually come to blows over me borrowing one of her CDs. While I may like the current mask Rachel is wearing a lot better than the Rachel I had grown up with, I'm still not sure if life is going to continue to be filled with Hallmark moments like this one for the rest of her summer vacation.

"Are they local or something?" I asked, trying to be polite without breaking my peaceful pool induced reverie.

"Probably. They were selling tapes and I grabbed one. I don't think they're good enough to get radio air time, but I think it's kind of cool anyway."

Fluffy white clouds floated above me in the pale blue late spring sky, and I imagined what it would be like to be slicing through them in a graceful metal bird, bound for a new life in some exciting new place. When I finally graduate, in what seems like two lifetimes but is only three years distant, I think I might follow Rachel's lead in going away to college. Not necessarily to Vermont, just somewhere far away where I can start all over with my life.

The dance looms in my future, blocking out any joy I might have normally gotten out of spending a Sunday afternoon at the mall with my best friend, Sarah. "What do you think?" Sarah cheerily inquired, spinning in front of the huge mirrored back wall of the dressing room in the Express.

"It's nice," I answered, not really looking. Sarah always looks great even if she doesn't believe it. Her current outfit is a deep moss green velvet affair cut amazingly high on the legs and ridiculously low on the chest. Not many freshmen at Jefferson could even dream of filling out a number like that anytime soon, but on Sarah it looked amazing.

Her lack of self-esteem, I've always theorized, draws from the early days of our friendship, back in sixth grade. Even back then Sarah had measured in at an ambitious 5'8", which left her towering not only over the girls in our class, but also the boys, along with, to everyone's mortification, the teacher. She has always been pretty, but it was hard for her to ignore the evil little trolls in room 6a who liked to call her the Jolly Green Giantess.

"You're totally not psyched about the dance, are you?" Sarah perceptively asked, eyeing the short stack of dresses I had long since given up trying on. "Jeff is such a twerp. I don't believe he's going with Katie." She punctuated the last bit of her sentence by making a rather scary face that made her look like she had just swallowed about a gallon of unsweetened lemonade.

"Didn't your mother tell you your face will freeze like that someday?" I giggled. Sarah just has this way of talking that never fails to make me laugh; it must be something about her perpetually shocked tone of voice or her weak attempts at a British accent that do it. "You know, I thought at first that I was in shock -- biding my time for a nervous break down, or something like that. But I guess now it's safe to say the whole Jeff thing doesn't really bother me. I'm still not too psyched about the dance, though. I've never really been to one without him," I admitted.

"You'll have a great time. Jason has to work until nine, so we can hang out, at least in the beginning." I'm kind of sketchy with Sarah's boyfriend, Jason, so it's just an added plus that he won't be around most of the night. He's a one of the biggest football playing seniors at Jefferson, and on top of this he always looks like he just skipped out of a gap photo-shoot. Basically, he's exactly the kind of guy I love to hate, but nature had a couple of tricks in store in that arena. First of all, he's dating my best friend. Secondly, he's really, really nice; so I can't follow my instincts and despise him as I expected I would the first time we met.

Sarah grabbed two handfuls of her long, curly, red hair and piled them on top of her head. "I really think I like this dress. It's not too expensive, either. So all we have to do is find you one, and we're set." Sarah dropped her hair and again spun around to check my discard pile. "It shouldn't be hard, you're so thin anything will look great on you." As she said this she visibly stiffened, and the last few words seemed to cost her a lot of effort.

I turned to see what had shut ever-talkative Sarah up so fast, and found myself face to face with two of my least favorite people in the world - Katie Eldridge and Lizbeth Evans. "Hello girls," Katie addressed us in a tone most closely resembling a queen speaking to her uneducated peasant subjects. She and her veritable shadow, Lizbeth, walked across the dressing room and deposited their armloads of tee shirts in cubicles before returning. "So you're still looking for Fling dresses?" Katie laughed, feigning innocence. "I got mine last month at Lucille's."

Great, I thought to myself; she bought a dress at the most expensive store in the city even before she got around to stealing my boyfriend. Just lovely. "Oh, well, Marissa's sister is a manager here, and we knew they'd be getting new dresses so we put off buying. Neither of us wanted anything outdated." Times like these make me thankful Sarah's my friend and not fighting for the dark side like Katie and Lizbeth.

"Our dresses won't be out of style. Just wait until you see mine. It's gorgeous," Katie paused, critically looking Sarah up and down. "You know, I tried on a dress a lot like that, but I decided it made me look like I was in a green bean costume or something." Lizbeth smiled wickedly at this, and the two returned smugly to their individual dressing rooms.

The face Sarah made at their retreating backs was a hundred times worse than her last one. We must have set a world speed record at getting out of the store just so we could avoid seeing the evil Olsen twin wanna-bees again.

"She is such a beast. I have not once in the nine years we've been going to school together heard that girl say a nice thing to anyone," I ranted as Sarah and I waited in the food court for her mom to come pick us up. "Why is it that she's part of what everyone calls the popular crowd and yet she never talks to anyone but the same three cookie cutter girls?"

"I couldn't tell you, that's always stumped me too. Shouldn't the popular crowd be made up of people who like everyone and talk to lots of different people? They're just good at making everyone jealous of them, so we call them popular," Sarah muttered, chewing on the last of the ice in the Mountain Dew from Orange Julius that we had just shared.

"Why do boys even like her? She's short. And whiny," I continued, thinking of Jeff. Less than an hour ago I had decided that I had never really liked him much, but now all I yearned to do was anything that would win him back from Katie's evil clutches.

"You look like such a hottie, Marissa. I'm glad Sarah talked you into this dress," Rachel gushed, putting the finishing touches on the make-up she had demanded I let her apply. "You may go to the dance alone, but something tells me you won't spend much time that way." This is another example of the kinder, gentler Rachel. In the past she would have been so busy talking about how huge my pores are to say anything nice.

"Okay, stand up. You're going to need to bring some lipstick if you keep messing with what's on your lips," she added, stepping back from where I was sitting on the edge of the tub in the bathroom we share. "Take a look in the mirror." Rachel closed the door to her room to reveal the full-length mirror hanging there.

I took a good look, expecting my ever present inner critic to start complaining about how flat I looked. The dress worked so many miracles that it was hard, even for me, to find something to worry about. It was a rich burgundy; the cut was pretty simple, it hung almost to my ankles, hugging curves I hadn't even been aware that I possessed. The chest was the big selling point, it was gathered and hid a built in push up bra that gave me something I had never once in my wildest dreams hoped to have - cleavage. The back was cool too, cut so low that I had to get a special pair of underwear that wouldn't be visible above it. The inch wide straps wove themselves into a neat looking pattern in the center of my shoulder blades, leaving me mostly bare, and made the dress feel more like a racing back bathing suit than the torture chamber I had expected.

"Wow, Rache, you did a really good job with the make-up," I remarked, leaning in close to the mirror. Rachel should be something of an expert on the subject of make-up, considering the fact that she had been wearing it herself since fifth grade. The colors she had used made my normally un-remarkable features seem extraordinary, and my skin smooth without a hint of shine or blemish.

"You don't need to give me too much credit. You've grown up a lot these last few years, and really are pretty. The make-up is just highlighting what you already are, not changing it. You're not an ugly duckling changing into a swan, you've always been the later of the two, but you just didn't know it." While appreciating this ego-boosting diatribe, I suspected that Rachel had taken a few too many women's studies classes at school and was about to go all Earth-mother on me. "I thought I'd never say this, but helping you get ready for the dance is making me nostalgic for high school."

"Nostalgic for horrific classes six hours straight five days a week? Nostalgic for having to convince mom to drive you everywhere? Nostalgic for eleven-thirty curfews?" I asked, straightening the dress and taking a final peek at myself in the mirror before heading downstairs to show my parents my transformation.

"Okay, now that I think about it, maybe not," Rachel laughed, pushing her way into the hall behind me.

Sitting in Sarah's mother's darkened car twenty minutes later all of my newfound self-confidence was gone. I was in the back seat with my other dateless friend, Caroline, messing with the wrist corsage my father had given me only moments before. As he cautiously pinned onto my dress he said, "no beautiful girl should go to a dance without beautiful flowers." I swear his eyes had been shimmering with tears.

Caroline and Sarah were chatting excitedly, comparing horror stories about the underclothes they were wearing to flatten their stomachs. Another big topic of the evening for my alarmingly cheerful friends seemed to be which boys they wanted to dance with. "Harley is the hottest boy in the ninth grade. By miles," Caroline, with impressive conviction, informed us.

"Oh, I don't know. I think that Mark Denry is, at least, a VERY close second," Sarah's unbelievably cool mom broke in smiling. Unlike my parents, who only know my closest friends that hang out at my house a lot, Sarah's mom, Patty, works at the guidance office and knows almost everybody at school. Being what she calls, "a reasonable facsimile of an adult," doesn't stop her from having fun, and she never hesitates to share her opinions when a boy's worthiness comes into question.

"He went out with Katie Eldridge. Yuck. Contamination…" Caroline replied. The car quickly fell silent and I could feel Patty's eyes on me in the rear view mirror.

"You're awfully quiet back there, Marissa. Who do you want to dance with?" She asked. Patty doubtlessly knew of my recent Katie nightmare, but still wanted to get me to join in the conversation. "In that dress they'll probably be forming queues to dance with you. You'll probably have to beat them back with a whip… on second thought, being teenage boys they would probably get too much of a thrill if you tried that…"She laughed, filling the empty air of the car with warm tones of mirth.

"Well, my lab partner for Physical Science already asked me to dance with him, and so did Justin, the guy who's locker is next to mine," I answered happily. Everyone was tip toeing around what they thought to be my hurt feelings about Jeff, but the only thing that bugged me was the prospect of going to the dance without a date. Any date, no necessarily just Jeff.

"Justin Micheals already asked you to dance?" Caroline cooed. "He would definitely have to get the third place ribbon behind Harley and Mark!" All of the boys that I'm friends with through my post as assistant to the assistant editor of the school paper would probably dance with me too, even if just out of something resembling pity. They all, however, had their own dates, and the prospect of joining the less popular girls on the bleachers, as Rachel had predicted, was less than appealing at best.

The Spring Fling is given every year by the freshmen out of the money the class has in its treasury. In earlier years some classes had worked incredibly hard at things like car washes, bake sales, and computer hospitals to earn enough money to put on an amazing Fling, but my class was decidedly less than that motivated. So lazy have we been, in fact, that the only way we could have a Fling at all was to collect dues from all of the freshmen. This stunning lack of preparation had left us only one option as to where to hold the dance itself -- the Gym. Rachel had laughed at this, saying it would be just like going to school at night. Her class, she had added, had given their fling at one of the big conference rooms at the Tulsa Radison.

I realized that Rachel had been wrong about having the dance in the gym as soon as I had handed my ticket to one of the teachers at the door; the vault like room had been transformed with balloons, crepe paper, and the help of what appeared to be a strategic lack of lighting. The theme of the dance, The Time of Our Lives, was incredibly cheesy, not to mention played up everywhere. On the walls were blown up class pictures of the Freshman at all stages of development: from the huge, toothless grins of first grade all the way up to shots of the gussied up eighth grade grad dance. Along with these reminders of childhood were several huge paper machee clocks garnished with different color flowers and different possible class schedules from different years.

"It looks amazing!" Caroline whispered to Sarah and I as we set out tiny, formal purses on a table provided for them.

"We worked SO hard on those clocks," Sarah, who had been on the Fling committee, admitted.

"And to think this is the room where we spent all those nightmarish hours playing volleyball for four months." Every freshman at Jefferson is required to take Phys. Ed every day in order to fill the state's requirements, and due to lack of imagination on the part of the girls' gym teacher we had seriously ended up playing volleyball for several torturous semesters.

"I seriously hate volley ball. I think I've got Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome from that time Cory Lang spiked me in the face." I could see Caroline's lightly tanned skin pale at the memory.

"We got a band too," Sarah confided. "I heard they're really good - called Hanson or something. They're from Tulsa, and the oldest guy in it would even go here if they weren't home schooled. Jason knows their mom and said she thinks they're going to get a recording contract for sure."

"I think Rachel told me about them. They're all really young and she has one of their tapes. She's going to take it back to school to show everyone how talented people from Oklahoma can be. I guess they pick on her in Vermont about that cheesy musical called Oklahoma," I said, glancing around and admiring how nice everyone looked. Our eighth grade grad dance had also been formal, and it had started out just like this, with everyone all dressed up and on their best behavior. By the end of the evening, however, most people had been barefoot, sweaty, and exhausted from their aerobic attempts at dancing.

"I bet that's them," Sarah said, nudging me and pointing to the makeshift stage that had been set up by the Fling committee.

The most beautiful boy in the known world stood on the rickety looking stage, plugging in an electric keyboard. He looked up, and my heart absolutely stopped. Even from halfway across the darkened gym I could FEEL his amazing clear blue eyes bore into me.

I caught my breath and tore my eyes away, almost afraid this boy, who, to me, more than anything else resembled a Greek statue from a museum, would disappear while I wasn't looking.

After a second I looked back in his direction, and was tempted to believe that he was actually staring right at me. The only thing I could see in the whole world, it seemed, were his electric blue eyes, which were a thousand times more powerful than Rachel's could ever aspire to be.

With the approximately .05 percent of my brain that was working I managed to wonder how I was surviving this never-ending glance, what with my heart being frozen and not breathing and all. A smile lifted the corners of my young Adonis' mouth and he didn't break eye contact with me, even though I suspected that hours must have passed since my first glimpse of him. It was a nervous smile, but one that made me shiver, almost as if I was diving back into the freezing waters of my pool, aware of every inch of my flesh burning with a fierce inner heat that was slowly being leached away by the blue vortex into which I had thrown myself.

"People in Vermont pick on Oklahoma? I went there once and it was a frozen wasteland dotted with the occasional sickly looking Holstein cow." I jumped at the sound of Caroline's voice and my frame of reference was jerked back from the young god to encompass once again the rest of the gym.

I looked blankly at Caroline through the faint lighting that reflected off her impossibly smooth black hair. "Marissa? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I think I'm in love, but other than that, it's all good," I replied somewhat shakily. In all the time I had dated Jeff, which adds up to an astronomically large chunk of the time I've spent on this planet, never once had I looked at him and received an electric shock that ran from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes like the one that was coursing through me now.

"What's that?" Sarah, who had zoned out for most of my glance at beautiful boy, turned her full attention to our conversation at the word, "love."

"That boy in the band. The one with the keyboard. He's exquisite." I elaborated, lamely wishing I had kept my mouth shut in the first place.

"Which one has stolen your heart?" Sarah cynically inquired while leaning in closer in an attempt not to miss any hot gossip.

"The one with the keyboard, as if you couldn't guess by just looking," I muttered, desperately searching for a change of topic and trying to avoid looking in the direction of the stage.

"Okay, Marissa. I've been looking at him for about five seconds now," Caroline whispered in a conspirational tone, "and he has looked at the keyboard and back at you with a stunned expression on his face about fifteen times!"

"Woah, I saw it too, that time. Maybe this whole love at first sight thing is really conceivable," Sarah added sounding slightly unimpressed. "My verdict is that you have to dance with this boy, stat."

"It's not like I can just go ask him - he's busy." I interrupted, reaching for excuses. "He's probably wondering what planet I'm from. Maybe I have toilet paper on my shoe." I gave myself a cursory once over before slyly scanning the direction of the stage. Once again the blue eyes caught me like a searchlight beam on an attempted escapee from prison.

"Not now, maybe, but I bet they won't leave right after they finish playing. If you won't ask, believe you me, I will do it for you." One thing to be said for Sarah is that she has always been one to take matters into her own hands; it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for her to run right up to this boy and propose to him on my behalf.

"Down girl!" was my uncertain reply. "I'll take it as a sign if they don't leave right after they finish playing fate has stepped in and I will go ask him to dance." I couldn't believe what I was saying.

Realistically, though, asking was the only thing to do. The worst case scenario would involve him laughing in my face and leaving. Who would he tell? Anyway, I would only have to deal with my classmates for a few more days before summer vacation started and then they would have months to forget my humiliation. The best case scenario far outweighed the worst, not to mention filled my head with dreams of raising perfect little genetic copies of beautiful boy and retiring with him to the south of France.

The dance progressed in what I assumed to be a normal sort of fashion. A DJ was set up on the stage behind the band, and music blared through the large gym, bouncing from wall to wall even before the band had finished setting up. Most of the songs were fast paced, and dancing with a bunch of my female friends was totally acceptable.

The slow ones were a tad bit awkward, however. After scrounging a partner for the first two or three, I learned to retreat to the refreshments table and look enraptured before the first few notes of a mushy song had been played.

I kept an eye out for beautiful boy from the band, all the while trying with all my might to avoid Katie and Jeff. The pair wasn't really that hard to stay away from; they remained locked in the same slow dance kind of moving hug in a corner of the shiny gym floor for almost all of the songs. They were making quite the spectacle of themselves; everyone in the gym cast a wondering glance in their direction as they tenderly waltzed to the soft tones of "YMCA" by the Village people.

When the band finally took the stage and announced themselves as "Hanson," everyone pushed close for a better look. Along with beautiful boy were two other guys, one of them taller than the rest with a definite sophomore air about him. The littlest one was amazing, just brimming with shockingly cuddly looking youth.

They played three songs, two of which I recognized as really good, but didn't really like that much. As a general rule I'm a fan of moody music - like Bush and Sarah McLaughlin or the Cure. The synthesized upbeat pop of Hanson was a long way from these old favorites. The songs pulsed through the gym, and despite attempts to do otherwise I found myself jumping around like the other three hundred people at the dance.

The third and final song they played was what really got to me. It was slow, with an almost gospel feel to it. Like the other songs beautiful boy did most of the vocals, and I decided that his voice was just as amazing as his blond good looks. He sounded plaintive and filled with emotion, yet still smooth. As he sang "I'll be with you in your dreams" I slowly melted to a puddle of love-lorn grease on the floor. It was like I was in the midst of a private concert - even though there were literally hundreds of other people in the room, we were all alone and he sang specifically to me.

"If I'm gone when you wake up, please don't cry," his clear, forlorn sounding voice rang through the amassed crowd, and I had the feeling that my heart wasn't the only one tearing itself to pieces with a hundred different sorrows. Tomorrow morning I would wake up, I realized, and this boy, who seemed to be returning my intent stare, would be gone. No matter what happened tonight he would be gone, and I would have to go on living like I always have. But I would be sad, because on this stage I had seen and heard utter beauty and complete perfection, and would now be forever relegated to a life without it.

I dragged myself into the real world as the gentle notes of the song faded away with more pledges to, "remember me, because I'll be with you in your dreams…" It seemed to be advice from someone who was dying to their family that would live on, but shook me on another level. Devotion and love had positively exuded from the words, and beautiful boy's voice had only added to that effect.

"Wow, Marissa," Caroline said, coming to my side. "Sounds like you picked quite the talented boy to crush on. That last song was amazing. I wonder who wrote it? I haven't heard it before but it must be a cover…"

I hadn't noticed before, but Katie had worked her way towards us until she stood next to me with a devilish grin on her overly made up face. Her dress was, as she had claimed, gorgeous. Katie was probably the only freshman at Jefferson, other than Sarah, who could have come anywhere near filling out the slinky gold sequined sheath she wore.

"How cute. Marissa has a crush on one of the little boys in the band. Did you hear that?" Katie tugged on the arm of the person standing next to her, who turned to face us. It was Jeff, dressed in a black rented tuxedo with a colorful cummerbund which had doubtlessly been approved of by Katie before he had signed the rental slip.

"Hey," at least Jeff had the decency to sound sheepish, but he certainly didn't step away from Katie's side where he was hovering like some sort of scavenger fish. This imagery appealed to me - Katie as a huge, hulking shark up from the briny depths to devour swimmers, and Jeff just darting between her sharp teeth to feast on the leftovers.

"They're really good," Jeff attempted in vain to fill the empty silence that had awkwardly sunk to cover the four of us.

"They were okay," Katie corrected. "That last song was from Jewel's new CD, you know. I got it last week and already have all the words memorized. They didn't do much for it, thought," she criticized nodding towards the stage. I followed her gaze and saw that the equipment that the band had played was already gone, carted out of the gym while I wasn't paying attention.

"Too bad they didn't hang around, you could have asked him if he would dance with you…" Katie said this sentence, which could have been perfectly normal and friendly, in a tone of voice that implied I would have been turned down.

"Oh Caroline, look. There's Sarah and Jason. Why don't we go say hi?" I asked, fighting to keep my voice level. My only comfort at this moment was imagining myself returning to Jefferson in twenty years, a rich and successful poet, to find Katie in a hair net and wielding an ice-cream scoop full of fake mashed potatoes. This fantasy, judging from rumors of Katie's performance in her classes, was probably the most reasonable daydream I'd had all evening. Certainly a lot more likely than my imagined soul connection with the boy in the band.

"One more reason why I hate Katie," Caroline muttered as we walked away, "is because she always has to have the last word on everything. Sara told me all of the songs the band was going to play were original." I found myself vaguely wondering when a Hanson related conversation had taken place without my noticing, but I eventually concluded that my endless gaze with beautiful boy had been more than enough time to recite the Oddessy and get some talk of the band in there too.

We hung out with Jason and Sarah for while, but both of us felt kind of guilty interrupting Sarah's Q.T. with her cutie. Jason, who would be starting college in the fall, worked almost every night after school and most weekends in an attempt to save money to pay part of his tuition. Because of this, the two of them haven't really gotten to spend that much time together.

After a while some upper-classman I didn't know asked Caroline to dance, and I once again wandered off in the direction of the punch bowl to drown my sorrows in some mystery-muck. As I stood there sipping the red concoction that I fervently hoped wasn't spiked, I watched the dance floor. Sarah and Jason clung close to each other as Counting Crows "'Round Here" was played by the DJ. Caroline and her random boy pretty much followed suit. As I had predicted earlier, at this late hour most of the girls had shed their unaccustomed high heels, and the perfect coifs of seven o'clock were no longer evident on any head, no matter how much hairspray had been employed.

My reverie was interrupted by the sound of someone softly clearing his or her throat next to me. I turned, hoping for a potential dance partner, and my bodily functions stopped mid-breath as I realized who was trying to get my attention.

"Hi there," Beautiful boy said in my general direction. I prayed he had addressed me, despite the intensity with which he was examining his worn Adidas sneakers.

"Um…hi," I sounded stupid. I should have come up with some brilliant line, but Um was the best that I was capable of producing under the circumstances. Inside I cringed.

"I'm Taylor," Beautiful Boy finally tore his attention away from his feet to shoot a glance my way before focusing on the dance floor filled with couples. His speaking voice was just as remarkable as his singing one, it was kind of deep for a boy my age with an attractive break in it that made his uncertain tone of voice sound terribly sweet.

"Marissa. Nice to meet you, Taylor," great. This last round of exchanges made me sound like Sarah's mom during office hours.

"I was wondering if you wanted to maybe dance, I'm not that good at it but…" he punctuated this with a shrug, and once again turned his unspeakably perfect blue eyes my way.

"Sure," was the only choked reply I could come up with. The band had disappeared almost a half-hour ago, and I had been watching the dancers closely enough to be sure that Beautiful boy, whose beautiful name was Taylor, hadn't been one of them. It was me, I was the only girl he asked to dance! I surreptitiously looked around, and found that I hadn't been the only person girl stranded without a partner by the refreshment table. In fact, six pairs of eyes watched us right now from their positions gathered around the big crystal punch bowl loaned to the freshman class for the occasion by Katie's parents. They were quietly talking in the manner of teenaged girls with a really juicy bit of gossip; exaggerated expressions of surprise graced all of their faces. I recognized one of them from my AP English class, and shot her what I hoped was a nonchalant grin.

As we migrated out towards the dancing crowd the microphone set up for the DJ crackled to life. "Okay, kiddies," thanks to my ambitious class we hadn't even been able to afford a decent DJ, and boy did that show, "this is the final song of the night, and I got a request from a pretty little girl named Katie Eldridge." I groaned to myself. "It's an oldie but goodie - Groovy Kind of Love by Phil Collins."

The DJ's high-pitched voice stilled, and the gentle refrain of the song washed over the room like layers of the finest silk. Maybe Katie hadn't made such a bad request after all, I thought to myself.

We stepped close and Taylor's arms went around me to rest on my bare lower back. Without a conscious command from me my arms snaked around his neck to clasp beneath a satiny layer of his shoulder length hair.

Now, over the years I have read more than my fair share of tacky romance novels. In fact, the grown up kind with sassy Irish lasses sitting on the laps of barechested Irish boys has long been the rage with my group of friends. But even in those racy adult books nothing anywhere close to what I was feeling had ever been described. I couldn't help wondering if I was the only person in the world ever too truly be in love. My blood boiled, my heart raced, and I felt like I could run a marathon in about five seconds without even breaking a sweat. I was acutely aware of Taylor's soft hands on my back, the sweet half-smile on his lips, and the clean, soapy odor that faintly scented the air around him.

I worked to commit the moment to memory so I could look back on its perfection for the rest of my life, feeling like an architect looking at the faded blue prints of his dream house - a building which was destined to have life nowhere but in his mind.

We didn't really talk, just looked at each other and kind of gently swayed to the rhythm of the song. "When you're close to me I can feel your heartbeat, I can feel you breathing in my ear," Phil Collins crooned in the background. I would really have to thank Katie for choosing this song; it put exactly what I was thinking into words. "When I'm in your arms nothing seems to matter, my whole world could shatter. I wouldn't care," the song continued.

Despite his earlier claim, Taylor was a really good dancer. With Jeff dancing had been a potentially dangerous affair; common occurrences included: toes being stepped on and hair being puled. There was also my personal favorite, running into large, stationary objects such as walls. Taylor moved gracefully, and we glided around the polished gym floor like the figure skaters I'd seen on television during the Olympics.

At one point I saw that Sarah and Jason had worked their way towards us, and they had stepped back from the moving-hug they called slow dancing to watch us with silly grins on their faces. Katie and Jeff were quite aways away from us, but I could see them jerkily moving against the rhythm of the song. Something told me that Katie wasn't too happy with her stolen goods anymore.

Really though, I didn't care. My mind registered everything outside of Taylor's arms with a bland curiosity; I was too focused on how good it felt to be this close to a living, breathing work of art. Taylor, who was several inches taller than Jeff, was the perfect height for me to dance comfortably with. As the song progressed I found myself leaning ever further forward towards him, and by the end my cheek was resting against his shoulder, with his warm breath whispering faintly against my neck.

When the music finally died down, and everyone around us was separating to go in search of discarded shoes and purses, I still didn't want to let go of Taylor. Apparently he felt the same, because a tap on the shoulder as the lights gradually brightened around us was what it took to get him to release me from the circle of his arms.

"Tay, we really have to go," the tallest boy from the band stood apologetically beside us. "Zac's already fallen asleep in the van."

"Oh, hey Ike." Taylor answered, running a hand through his hair and sounding about as disorientated as I felt. "Marissa, this is my brother Isaac. Isaac, this is Marissa." Taylor sweetly introduced us. Most boys I know would have just said good-bye and wandered off with a total disregard for politeness. Not Taylor though, it was easy to believe that not only might he be beautiful and talented, but also a sincerely nice person.

"Well, I guess I'll see you around or something…" I said, smiling dreamily at Taylor. Now he would leave, I steeled myself. He's going to walk out of my life just like he walked in, with a glint of heaven reflected in those huge blue eyes.

"Actually, um, could I have your number? Maybe I could call you tomorrow and we could hang out or something…" Taylor smiled. "If we could just find something to write with…" A pen and piece of paper were promptly presented to me with a flourish from Isaac.

"I thought you guys would probably want this," he smiled wisely, "Remember, Taylor, we've got to go," he added as he walked hurriedly towards the crowd at the exit of the gym.

"I'll probably be home most of the day tomorrow," I told Taylor as I scribbled my full name and phone number on the blank scrap of paper.

"Pleased to meet you, Marissa Northfield," he said when I handed him the paper. "Very pleased to meet you," with this whispered in my ear, he was gone, and I was left with what felt like half a soul.

Four days later was the last day of school. "I'm psyched to no longer be a freshman," Sarah sighed as we walked home from school together one last time as ninth graders.

I sullenly reminded her: "just wait, in three more years we'll have to start all over again in college." The day was unusually cool, and a strong wind whipped my hair into my face as we walked down a deserted residential road a few blocks from my house.

"You're just a beam of sunshine today, aren't you? So I take it he didn't call again?" Sarah asked in a rare show of sympathy towards my newly broken heart.

"Nope. He said he'd call Saturday and today is Tuesday. I'm dying," I answered, jumping down the sidewalk, cautious to plant my feet within the faded chalk outlines of hopscotch presumably left behind by younger kids.

"Really Marissa. It's not the end of the world. He may be hot, but it was one dance. I suspect you'll be able to keep on breathing without him," Sarah appeared to be rapidly growing impatient with my mooning over beautiful boy, AKA Taylor. In a lot of ways Sarah is more grown up than me, and this situation is just one more example of the painful fact of our differences. Even before she met Jason she never got hopeless crushes on boys the way I tend to. Sarah was way too practical for that kind of stuff. She either had a boyfriend, or didn't, and she was always perfectly happy either way.

Our personalities differ a lot in the arena of male-female relationships. I'm what my mom calls "a true romantic," whatever that means. A night like the dance on Friday would be more than sufficient to keep me obsessively worrying or day dreaming all summer. Sarah, however, had already moved on and was currently stressing about finding a summer job.

"You just can't imagine. It was so amazing," I lamented as we rounded the corner on which I live.

"Listen, everyone has felt exactly like you did on Friday. It's not a 'can't imagine' situation. You wanted to throw up; your knees were weak, blah blah, whatever. Don't blow this way out of proportion."

"Well, I've got to go. I'll call you later," I barked, pretty annoyed with Sarah. Way to belittle my emotions. What had happened was special, not anything like her little hurling scenario, but magical.

"Girls!" The absolute last voice I wanted to hear ever again echoed down the barren street. "Wait up!" Katie came jogging down the road, her hair still perfectly placed despite the stiff wind. "I was just on my way to see Jeff. So how're you two doing?" She inquired, shifting her chock-full backpack on her shoulders.

"Marissa, I don't suppose you remember that boy from the band that you danced with?" Katie phrased this as a question, but didn't stop talking long enough for me to answer. "Well, my mom knows his parents, and she said he's only in eighth grade! Can you imagine? An eighth grader at a high school dance? It's highly inappropriate. I'm surprised they were allowed to stay after their set. They sure shouldn't have been. But anyway - gotta run!" Katie finished this diatribe in about thirty seconds without pausing for a single breath. True to her word, after doing what seemed to be her best humiliate me, she scampered down the road in the direction of Jeff's house.

"Someday she's going to make an amazing auctioneer. 250 words a minute, I'd wager." Sarah's exasperation at both Katie and me was easy to hear in her voice.

"Do you suppose she hates me, personally? Am I being overly paranoid when I entertain the possibility that she is a heat-seeking missile sent from Heaven to destroy me life?"

"The only thing I would wonder about in that statement if I was you would be the Heaven thing. Something tells me Katie's from another locale, if you get my drift…." Sarah said as we watched Katie's rapidly progressing shape fade from the horizon.

When I finally got home I found my mother waiting for me on the front porch, the structure already shaded in deep green and blue from the afternoon sun by rapidly growing green things that climbed trellises along its boarders.

"So, how was the last day?" she asked from her position in her big wicker rocking chair, feet propped up on the porch railing.

"Not bad, I'm glad it's over though. Everyone at school has been getting on my nerves like crazy. Hopefully getting away for the summer will allow me to avoid going postal on anyone in the near future." Getting away from one particular person for three months seems incredibly wonderful. Maybe I'll get lucky and Katie will end up being abducted by aliens or something, and then I'll really never have to see her annoying little face again.

"Oh, my. Sit down, why don't you? I've been wanting to talk to you about something for a while, but it seems like you're not around much these days." Oh great, I muttered to myself, fearing that I was in for one of those heartfelt speeches about how hard it is to break up with a boyfriend. Rachel has a theory that as a child my mother watched too much Leave it to Beaver or something. The woman literally thinks that a few pithy, well thought out words of wisdom can solve any dilemma. As if.

"I've been busy lately," was the only apologetic sounding thing I could think of to defend myself with. Ever since Rachel left for college I think that my parents have realized that loosing us isn't a distant fear, it's an immediate inevitability. Instead of treating us really nicely, so we'll be sure to come back to visit, they decided the best course of action is to force us to all participate in weekly family nights. This adds up to sitting around in the dining room playing Scrabble with them, which isn't so bad, but I can rarely fit into my schedule.

"Oh, I know. I can remember what high school was like, sports and friends and boys and homework…" her contemplative tone of voice was my cue to ignore her. After a few moments of reminiscences about her senior prom, which she had attended with my father, she got down to business. "Rachel has recommended that we try to find some way to keep you occupied, so you won't sit around and mope all summer," at this she raised a well-manicured eyebrow in my direction.

"What do you think about finding some sort of summer job? I have some possible ideas lined up, not scary mall jobs or anything. If you think you might be interested…" my mom petered off looking hopefully at me. It wasn't like I had huge things mapped out for my reprieve from the penitentiary that is high school, I considered. Sarah would be gone for most of the summer, and Caroline and most of my other friends live all the way across town so I wouldn't be able to hang out with them very often. Both my parents work in Tulsa and would never be around to drive me anywhere. Not even Rachel would be around; she planned on putting in killer hours at the Express to save some cash for school. My summer was actually looking rather bleak. A job would also introduce a delightful new concept into my sheltered existence - money.

"Well, I guess that would be okay," I tried not to sound too sold on the idea. I've always thought, after all, that the only way to deal with parents is to keep them guessing.

"Aunt Beth knows someone from church who is looking for a part time baby-sitter. Mostly afternoons, she said. Beth thought of you right away, and I'm sure they haven't found anyone else yet. It's three kids for around four days a week. With your baby-sitting experiences with those Ramsey terrors I bet this would be nothing." The Ramseys had lived right next door a few years ago, and the mother of the brood had coaxed me into baby-sitting for her children over spring break. By the second day I had both a nervous twitch and a pledge set in stone never to have children. How could I curse the world with more little monsters like hers?

"I don't know. I think I'd need to get some psychological testing done on them before I'd agree to anything. Any answers to those ink blot things involving 'the baby-sitter dousing a fire,' or 'the baby-sitter picking gum out of her hair for the next four months' would tip me off to cut my losses." Drooling infants hadn't even my scene before the Ramseys had made me despise all humans under the age of ten.

"Your father is also looking for someone to help out the secretary in his office, filing and things like that. You could be assistant secretary," my mom said in an aw- shucks-wouldn't-that-be-sweet tone. I've been to my dad's office in the past, and a summer of annoying musak and repetitive filing-related injuries didn't sound attractive in the least. Hanging out with my dad for eight hours a day would be another bummer. He always wants to talk about the future, which is a subject I like to avoid whenever possible.

Baby-sitting was sounding better and better every minute. At least it tends to be exciting, even if life and limb are frequently at stake.

"Maybe baby-sitting wouldn't be so bad, at least I'd have three days off a week…"

"Good, honey. I'm glad we had this little talk. I'll call Aunt Beth and get the number for the family right now." For some reason I suspected that most of the arrangements had been made long before hand. My mother may be kind of without a clue, but she's by no means dumb - filing and telephones versus naps and MTV… tough decision.

The family must have been really desperate for a sitter; I found myself being dropped off in their driveway a scant three days later, without even talking to either parent before hand.

A tall, pretty woman with long blonde hair I would die for answered the door on my second knock. She was frantically trying to get an earring untangled from her hair, and looked about ready to pass out from exhaustion. In the distance I could hear what sounded like a small war being waged. "I'm so glad you're here…" the lady gushed, ushering me into a foyer crowded with shoes and sports paraphernalia. "Diana Hanson, and you must be Marissa. I've heard great things about you from Beth…" she finally succeeded at extracting the small pearl earring and plopped it on a table next to the wall.

"I guess I should introduce you to the children, they can be a handful. Don't let them get to you. On second thought, that's not the best way to describe them. They're angels, really." The day I meet a mother who doesn't claim this of her children, regardless of their likely psycho-hood, I'll probably drop dead of shock.

"My husband, Walker, isn't going to be around very much in the next couple of weeks. He's in the middle of a big project at work, which is why I need a baby-sitter. I don't work, and normally take care of the little ones myself. My oldest three sons have a lot of appointments that I need to take them to this summer, and I don't think I could keep an eye on all of them at once." Diana explained, leading the way through a pristinely clean living room and into a messy sunroom that looked onto their backyard.

The cacophony of sounds that had so alarmed me when I first came in had its epicenter in this room with a small blond child who sat in the corner near the door. He was completely surrounded by a wide array of pots and pans and armed with a wooden kitchen spoon. This "angel" was currently pounding away at his makeshift drum set with all of the passion to be found in his small, two-year-old body.

"This is Mackenzie, but until he grows into it he's just Mackie for short…" she bent over and hefted the child to her hip. "He's two, and mommy's little man," a string of babytalk ensued. Over the years I've realized that any adult, be they a Ph.D. Physicist or a professional wrestler, exposed to a child under four abandons English as we know it and descends into a sort of pidgin, in which words like "poo-poo" are totally acceptable. I, thankfully enough, am immune to this.

When presented with Mackie I simply said, "Hi big guy," and let it go at that. The infant immediately screamed and retreated into his mother's arms, warily regarding me.

"He takes a while to warm up to people, but when he does he'll be your best friend…won't you, Mackie poo?" Exhibit A.

A splash of water hit one of the big picture windows that took up most of the wall space in the cheerily light room, immediately followed by a series of roars that echoed through the room. Diana smiled indulgently, "that would be the older set, you won't have to worry about them, but I'll introduce you in a minute."

The other two children who were to be my charges were upstairs in a bedroom crowded with Beanie babies and a rather impressive collection of Barbie dolls. "These two are Jessica, who is eight and believes herself to old for a sitter, and Avery, who just had her sixth birthday last week." The children looked like something out of an euphorically bad television movie, all shaggy blond hair and big puppy dog brown eyes.

"Wow… I always wanted a Barbie dream house when I was your age," I said, bending to check out the huge plastic dollhouse that sat in front of Jessica on the floor. I would have been willing to swear that Rachel's dorm room at school wasn't half as big as this little number.

"I got it last Christmas," Jessica informed me as she adjusted the pink dress her world-weary looking Barbie wore. Avery, from her position on the floor next to her big sister, looked up at me with huge chocolatey brown eyes.

"You have your ears pierced…" she told me, casting a mournful look at her mother.

"Avie, don't get started on that…you can't get your ears pierced until you prove to mommy and daddy you'll take good care of them. They can get infected." I had a feeling this was old, well argued territory in the house. Diana was interrupted from further explaining to Avie the evils of ear piercing by the shrill noise of a phone ringing downstairs.

"That must be Walker…. Why don't you girls go introduce Marissa to your older brothers? They're in the yard."

Jessica and Avery led me down the hall to another set of stairs that led to the backyard by way of a kitchen. Their yard was a lot bigger than mine, the wide green expanse of well cared for grass stretched back from the house to meet a solid wall of tall trees.

At this point I was beginning to understand why Diana looked so tired. To date I had met only three of kids, and these on their own seemed to have serious potential as troublemakers. Judging from the noise that was floating out from a treehouse perched in one of the gigantic trees in the back of the yard, the older children were just as bad, if not worse.

"Hey you guys!" Jessica called, remaining at a safe distance away from the tree. "Mom said to introduce you to the new baby-sitter." Her final word was tinged with distaste. Thinking myself wise I stood behind Jessica and peered toward the tree, prepared for anything.

The next several seconds were a flurry of activity; from the corner of my eye I saw a dark shape scurry from the side of the house and take shelter behind a nearby tree. Suddenly, water was flying at me from every direction -- not just any old Oklahoma rain, but something more of a biblical scale. By the time the deluge subsided I was soaked, not to mention very annoyed.

"Ohhh boooy." Was the only thing I had the presence of mind to say as I attempted to wring some of the ice cold water out of my sodden tee-shirt.

"Sorry," a sincere sounding male voice came from the treehouse amid a rustle of activity. "I guess my aim was a bit off. I was honestly trying to soak the twerps in the treehouse," whoever said this had stealthy crept up behind me and I jumped considerably at the sudden noise in my ear, expecting more hose-ing.

"Not a problem, I'll dry off sometime in the near future… I hope," I answered. My mouth may have been saying reasonably friendly things, but I was silently occupied by mental prayers that I would never have to be anywhere near the older siblings.

The face I encountered as I spun around to examine the person behind me was alarmingly familiar. "Oh hey," I tentatively muttered, feeling my stomach turn cartwheels as it dawned on me why I recognized this tall, blond haired boy with soulful brown eyes.

"Marissa, right?" It was the oldest brother in the band that had played the Spring Fling. His hair hung in soggy ringlets, which he ran a hand through as he shrugged at my shock. "I'm Isaac…"

"Um, I remember you - Jefferson High's Spring Fling, right?" I wanted to kick myself for not making the connection sooner. My new employer, who had 40 cute little blond children, had introduced herself as Diana Hanson. The band that played the dance was called Hanson. It was just too obvious, like a plot twist in the kind of ridiculous teen romance novel I have long shunned.

"Hey," two other figures had trotted to our side, I soon realized that they were beautiful boy and the youngest band member.

"I had no idea you were that Marissa!" The smallest Hanson positively radiated pent up energy. I couldn't help but notice the evil glint in his eye as he said this and nudged beautiful boy, or as the rest of the world knew him, Taylor. A furtive kick was the only response that his comment gained.

"Hi," Taylor said sheepishly in my direction. In the light of day his hotness didn't seem quite so blinding, and instead of being some romantic stranger holding my close in a darkened room he now simply resembled a halcyon version of any fourteen year old boy.

"How're you doing?" was my guarded reply. A week of listening to nay-sayers like Rachel and Sarah had basically sapped me of whatever hopes I had possessed when it came to beautiful boy.

"Good, although I must apologize for my psycho older brother's lack of aim…" Taylor ignored the huge, brightly colored super soaker clutched in his own hands and smiled innocently.

Jessica and Avery giggled from their positions next to me. "You guys, you're not supposed to try and scare off the baby-sitter until after Mom leaves!" Upon this pronouncement Jessica took Avery's pudgy little hand in hers and they headed toward the recently abandoned tree house.

"Will they be okay up there alone?" I asked, nervously eyeing the elevated wooden platform that balanced precariously in the tree some fifteen feet above the ground.

"We'll watch until it's time for us to go," the youngest brother volunteered. "I'm Zac, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Zac. I've got to tell you how impressed I was by you on those drums. I spent, oh, ten days trying to learn to play for marching band in seventh grade before the music teacher told me to give it up before I sent her to an early grave," I joked, half serious. "She was not an ambitious woman and said God himself couldn't teach me to keep in rhythm.

"I bet I could teach you the drums. They're really easy," he boasted. The other two boys made faces in what I imagined where attempts to warn me not to believe a word from Zac's mouth.

"If you're the one who taught Mackie in there I'd say you could turn even me into a drummer."

"Taught him everything he knows," Zac answered with a grin, turning to the tree into whose foliage his sisters had disappeared.

"Why don't you go find Marissa a dry shirt?" Isaac suggested, "I'll stay here with the munchkins."

As Taylor and I headed back into the house, with me dripping all the way, I decided the other night had been a fluke. Not that Taylor wasn't every inch a beautiful boy, but the cosmic perfection I had seen in him before had been dulled by time and the introduction of his bright yellow water gun.

"Your little brother and sisters are cute…" I said in an attempt to make small talk as we climbed the same set of stairs that Jessica and Avery had led me down only moments earlier. "I can't imagine how your parents keep up with you all. I have one older sister and my parents only narrowly averted nervous break downs when she lived at home."

"We all get along okay," Taylor chuckled as he lead me down a narrow hallway near Jessica and Avery's room. "My parents have probably come pretty close to cracking up a couple of times. When Ike was learning to drive my dad would take him out in the car and come back with a few more gray hairs every time."

We had reached a closed door at the end of the hall which was decorated with various cartoon-like drawings. "Get this, when my dad was teaching Rachel, my sister, how to drive he literally had a heart attack. They were on the interstate and she had to drive him to the hospital." To this day, four years after she got her license, my father won't be caught any where within ten miles of Rachel behind the wheel.

"When we go back outside make sure you tell Ike that story. It will make him feel better about how Dad acted, not to mention what a good driver he must really be. After all, he hasn't had to deliver any passengers to the emergency room. Not yet, anyways," Taylor ushered me into a room not much bigger than mine at home, but stuffed with a set of bunk beds.

"Wow, you share a room?" I was amazed. If that had been the case in my house neither Rachel nor I would have survived long enough to hit puberty. We would have killed each other long before that.

"Yeah, all three of us. Zac's bed sort of slides under mine. Ugh, sorry about the mess," Taylor answered, making a sweeping gesture. Never in my life have I seen a room quite so thoroughly messy as the one shared by the three eldest Hanson brothers. As I looked around I noticed Taylor surreptitiously trying to hide the piles of dirty clothes that lay strewn all over the floor. Like the entryway downstairs, their room looked rather like a sporting goods store after a riot: a basketball sat half deflated on the dresser, and hockey sticks rested precariously against a door that I assumed led to a closet. The first thing I did upon entering the room, predictably enough, was trip over a pair of rollerblades that sat by the door.

"Sorry," Taylor smiled apologetically, "take a seat and I'll see if I can dig up a dry shirt for you. Before we leave mom will throw yours in the dryer." He sifted through a stack of clothes that sat neatly folded by the basketball, leaving them in a crumpled heap.

"I'm kind of dripping…" I stood in the center of the blue carpeted room, trying not to get anything that looked important wet.

"Here's something," he said, passing me a red Adidas shirt with racing stripes up and down the arms and around the collar. "I'll get you a towel." Taylor disappeared for a moment, only to return with a big beach towel and a brush. "Thought you might want this too," he smiled.

"Not bad… just soggy." This line was delivered while Taylor was intently studying the same worn sneakers he had been wearing on the night of the dance. We just stood there for a second, awkwardly looking at everything but each other.

"I'll leave, and stand guard at the door. Privacy isn't an easy thing to come by when you share a room with two occasionally obnoxious brothers."

"I can imagine." Once alone in the room I slipped out of my soaked tee-shirt and toweled off. At least I wasn't wearing white; that would have been pretty entertaining for all involved, except for the girl in the red Mickey Mouse bra. The shirt he had given me was still warm, as if it had only been removed from the dryer a moment ago. I inhaled deeply as I slid it over my head, and was pleased to realize that it bore the same clean, soapy scent that I had noticed when dancing with Taylor.

I stood near the window that looked out into the back yard and wondered if maybe my temporary disillusionment about him had been a good thing. As I brushed my already knotting damp hair I thought that at least I was now capable of speaking in complete sentences while in the presence of beautiful boy. I suspected that this was a feat I probably couldn't have accomplished even if we had had more time to talk on Friday night. A knock sounded on the door, followed by a nervous, "all set?" from Taylor.

"Listen. I wanted to talk to you about Friday," he started as he sat on the lower bunk bed, motioning for me to join him. I obeyed, sitting cross-legged next to him and trying to stare at him without being indecently obvious.

"I haven't called because I got…" the answer that would have presumably set my mind at ease was interrupted by Diana entering the room. Taylor jumped up off the bed and stood looking at her slightly guiltily.

"Come on Tay, we have to get going if we want to get there on time," his mother rattled on, giving our positions and my change of clothes no notice. "I'm sorry we didn't get to give you a full tour, Marissa. If you have any questions I'm sure Jessica can help. Keep in mind, however, that if she's probably elaborating a bit on the truth if she tells you we let her call Tokyo or anything along those lines." Mrs. Hanson continued informing me of last minute facts as I followed her to the front door with Taylor.

Isaac and Zac were already waiting in the green Jeep Cherokee that sat in the Hansons paved driveway. I could hear them singing loudly and slightly off key to a Cheryl Crowe song.

"I think you forgot your other earring," I noted, pointing a Diana's naked right ear lobe. She jerked a hand free from the purse, in which she had been fumbling in what appeared to be a feeble attempt to locate her keys, and verified my observation.

"Thank you, Marissa," she said, sounding overly grateful. "You'll do just fine here… We'll be back by five and I'll take you home."

"I'll talk to you later," Taylor whispered pointedly in my direction as he walked past me on the way to the car. From this close perspective his clear deep ocean blue eyes still possessed their former power to make my heart skip several consecutive beats.

The rest of the day was torture. No matter what I did, the only thing on my mind was Taylor. I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and pondered his brilliant azure eyes. I read aloud to Jessica from her favorite book, Little House on the Prairie, and replayed Taylor's half of our brief conversation in my mind. I desperately picked Avery's bright green bubble gum off the tan carpeting in the entryway and wistfully thought back to our dance, and the amazing feel of his arms warm around me.

I was fully aware how pathetic my preoccupation was. He was a nice boy, and that was that. After the dance he had obviously never wanted to see me again, which is why he hadn't made use of his ample opportunities to call. In fact, he had probably just gotten my number as a dare or something, which would explain why Isaac had been prepared with writing utensils in the middle of a high school dance. I still couldn't help myself from thinking about him though, my mind recognized the facts and asserted that I was making a big deal out of nothing, but the rest of me tingled every time one of Taylor's little siblings so much as said his name.

By 4:30 the kids had tired of playing what I have long since realized is every youngster's favorite game - let's annoy the baby-sitter. The three of them, Mackie, Avery, and Jessica had all gathered in what they called the family room, and were behaving calmly for the first time all afternoon. The two older children were occupying themselves with a video game, and Mackie was productively crayola-ing in a Barney coloring book. As I lay stretched on the dark green couch, where I could keep an eye on them all, I heard a soft meowing.

"Do you guys have a cat?" I asked, looking around for the source of the plaintive noise.

"Yeah," Jessica replied. "She's not very friendly, though. Her name is MaMa. She usually just hides when there's a stranger around."

"Well, I think she must be wanting some affection," I found the cat sitting on the floor in front of the couch, placidly watching me. It meowed again, softly, and hopped onto my stomach where she proceeded to get comfortable.

"Hi there, MaMa," I crooned, scratching behind the big calico's ears. It was quite a specimen; fur had thinned to such a point that big patches of skin were visible, and half of an ear was missing, leaving behind a jagged stub. All in all, MaMa looked pretty good, considering that from her age one would probably be safe in guessing that her original owners might have had a hand in building the pyramids.

"My parents got her when Taylor was born. He's the only one she likes." Avery said, turning to look at me. "Well, maybe he was the only one she liked. MaMa won't even get near me and I've known her for six years. She looks stuck on you."

"Yeah, well, I don't mind - other than the fact that she weighs a ton!" I exclaimed, shifting positions as best I could without disturbing the cat. Well, I thought to myself, leisurely stroking what remained of mama's fur, even if Taylor doesn't like me at least his cat does.

Mrs. Hanson returned at five as promised, but alone. As she drove me home I wanted desperately to ask where the boys where, but I thought that I would sound sketchy if I did. According to Sarah, Hanson, the band, was really starting to take off, and I suspected that if I asked Diana what had became of her three oldest children I would be displaying what could be considered random fan behavior. Not only would I appear silly, but I could even endanger my brand new summer job. Who would want someone watching their children that would be too busy fawning over the fact that they were actually sitting on the exact couch cushion where Zac had, only hours ago, spilled grape juice?

I had actually seen some proof of Hanson's local popularity that afternoon; I had answered the phone four different times with an optimistic "Hanson residence," to hear only giggling and squealing in response. Jessica had told me that this was a common occurrence.

Even though I wanted to, I could hardly look down on those girls. After all, I had been like a moth to the light of the Hanson mystique at the dance, just as these phantom phone girls were now being dragged in by the tractor beam of charming good looks and genuine talent.

I wanted to think that I was different from these adoring masses, that I was somehow special. But maybe I wasn't. It wasn't like Taylor and I had had many deep, philosophical conversations or anything; I didn't know him. All I knew was the way his eyes could make my heart throb so powerfully that I would swear it was about to explode. I was just another hopelessly devoted female fan; Taylor and I didn't share anything special. He knew it. I knew it. So why was the only thing I could think about the way his shirt felt against my skin?

That night I explained to my mother the soaking incident and how I had accidentally forgotten to retrieve my own shirt. I went to bed at 9:30, even though I didn't have to get up early the next morning.

It was low, really low. I could never explain my actions even to Sarah, but I stood before the mirror above my dresser for the longest time, simply staring at my reflection. I felt so beautiful in Taylor's shirt, as if some of his essence had rubbed off during its many wearings, and was influencing the appearance of my double looking back at me in the mirror.

Sometimes when I look at myself I am shocked. How, I have thought, could I face the world in this misshapen body? My pores were gargantuan, my nose mammoth, and my chest flat. If aliens suddenly came to Earth and took a sample of its inhabitants which included Cindy Crawford and me, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that they wouldn't even classify us as the same species. In short, sometimes I want nothing more to hide under my bed until plastic surgery has made sufficient progress to allow me to once again enter the world. I call them Quasimodo days. My mom, Sarah, and Rachel have all admitted to having them too, so I have imagined them to be worldwide.

I knew I would never have a Quasimodo day in Taylor's shirt. Why, was the question? Red is a flattering color on me, but flattering enough to make my eyes sparkle? Flattering enough to make me look vibrantly alive and softly glowing? It wasn't the fabric or the cut, I soon realized. My transformation was due to the feelings I was experiencing: intense joy, deep longing, and vast amounts of nervous energy. They combined to lift the normally sallow tone of my skin, and add glints to my green eyes, and make a tiny dimple appear in my cheek that I had apparently never smiled widely enough to expose in the past.

I had finally lived up to the realization that I wasn't in love, and couldn't help contemplating what actual love would do to my appearance if a hard-core crush could make me feel this gorgeous. Maybe Cindy Crawford was the woman with the answer to that last question!

I lay in my bed, savoring the feel of Taylor's shirt on my flesh, for hours after I finally turned out my light.

He didn't call the next day, and not even the day after that. Sarah had sworn me off as a total basket case and so I sat at home watching a lot of daytime TV with Rachel. We would watch Sally Jesse, both of us laughing at the sad parts and getting misty at the happy ones. I have always been something of an emotional roller coaster, and the prospect of being rejected by the boy whom I had worked up to soul mate status in my mind wasn't helping matters.

"Marissa, I really feel bad for you," Rachel bitterly chortled, lying on the couch with a pint of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia in her lap and a spoon on its way to her mouth. "It's one thing to get dumped and be miserable, but you didn't even go down that road. Most girls, we get dumped, we eat ice cream, we cry. You go to a formal dance by yourself only to fall for a random hottie. It's like fate is out to get you or something. The first dump wasn't enough to get you down so God decided you needed a one-two punch to thoroughly destroy your life."

"You know," I answered cautiously, "every time I'm bummed about something terrible happening to me you wander in and sum up the situation - making it sound ten times as bad - and depress me even more."

"That does seem to be my lot in life this summer, doesn't it." Rachel took another heaping bite of Ben and Jerry's before continuing, "I guess my life is so miserable that I assume everyone else is wallowing in a pit of depression along with me."

It's hard for me to think of Rachel's problems; she has so much going for her. Sometimes, however, she comes out with bizarrely reflective comments like this one that make me wonder if she's been reading to much Neitzche at her hippie liberal arts college.

I began to comment when I was interrupted by the shrill ring of the phone sitting on the coffee table in front of me. I just stared at the gray handset for several moments, not wanting to answer and yet afraid not to.

I grabbed the cordless phone and muttered as cheery a "hello" as I could manage.

"Marissa? Hey there, Diana here. How are you doing?" Mrs. Hanson sounded even more harried than she had in the past, and I could hear a loud, rhythmic thumping in the background that I assumed was Zac on his drums. We quickly dispensed with small talk and Diana got to the point: "We've been called away at the last moment and really need you to sit for us tonight… I'm sorry we couldn't have given you more warning."

The combination of the desperation in Diana's voice and the belief that depression with money had to better than without, got me to agree in short order. "I'm so thankful Marissa, we really appreciate it." After promising to pick me up at seven and have me home by eleven she said good-bye and I turned my attention back to Maurry Pauvich, who was grilling a twelve year old about the students at her school picking on her.

"You're telling me," I replied, something entirely separate from bad tabloid TV on my mind.

Seven o'clock rolled around with surprising speed, and I dreaded it like dental surgery. The prospect of seeing Taylor again was both thrilling and horrifying. I had no idea how to behave around him, and had already proven over and over that I couldn't harden myself against his broad grin.

Diana didn't even get out of her car when she arrived; her persistent honking was what drew my attention. After grabbing Taylor's tee-shirt I ran to the passenger side of the Hanson Cherokee. "I'm so sorry about the honking thing, but Mackie is in here and if I left him alone even for the amount of time it took to knock the ensuing chaos would probably get us on CNN or something equally dire." No matter how tough things seemed to get for Mrs. Hanson, between her small army of children and her own life, she never lost her temper or cheer. I couldn't help thinking that I could do a lot worse than be like her when I grew up, but hopefully not quite so fertile.

"Here's the lowdown: Jessie and Avie have already had their baths and were getting ready for bed when I left. Before we have to get going I should also have time to put Mackie down, so tonight should be a breeze." Mackenzie made a chuckling noise for the backseat and leaned forward to plant a clammy hand on my arm.

"Oh right. I forgot to tell you - Zac has a little cold and will be home tonight. I hate to leave you in his hands, but there's nothing I can do about it. Other than to get the hellion in bed by ten you don't need to bother with him. Just keep an eye out; the emergency numbers are posted on the fridge in case anything happens."

Yikes. The little kids would be out of my way, but I certainly knew enough to read between the lines of Diana's little diatribe and realize Zac would be a handful; the one time I had met him was more than enough to confirm my worries: my only impression had been that he seemed to be on something resembling the grand-daddy of all sugar highs.

By the time Mrs. Hanson pulled into the wide, paved driveway beside their house I had decided on a policy of strict non-intervention with my oldest charge.

"I am Henry the eighth I am I am… you know I can keep this up indefinitely… I got married to the widow next door…" Zac's voice, which I could only describe as devilish, seemed to follow me from room to room. Either the sugar high from the last time I saw him had yet to wear off or he was alarmingly hyper all the time.

"Yes, I have kissed several boys before!" I exasperatedly answered the question that he had posed soon after his mother had left and I had been avoiding ever since. "You know, Zac, you're kind of too old for a baby-sitter. Let's make a bargain - if you behave and promise not to tell your parents - you can stay up until they get home."

This prospect seemed to wind him down a precious little bit. "It's a deal. But we have to make popcorn. And you have to help me braid my hair."

"Nah," I said, grabbing a chunk of his blond hair. "I think we should cut it off right about here…" I ran my hand to his scalp. "Yep. You'd look great with a buzz cut…"

"Haha. I'm not ever going to cut my hair," Zac informed me as he grabbed my hand, dragging me off the thick carpeting in the sunroom and towards the kitchen.

"Why not? If you don't do something soon you're going to start looking a lot like Kirsten Dunst." The kitchen was huge, and vaguely reminded me of the mess halls at the sleepaway camps where I had spent my childhood summers. Everything was in huge sizes - from gallons of dishwashing liquid to pounds of spaghetti. I couldn't even imagine what meal times had to be like around here with eight people to feed, three of them being adolescent boys. If any one of the older Hanson brothers ate anything like Jeff they would need to cook enough food to feed a small regiment of soldiers.

"I'm not allowed to use the oven. It's gas," Zac said in a surprisingly accepting tone of voice. He climbed onto a chair and pulled a monstrous tub of unpopped popcorn out of a high cabinet, along with a huge pasta pot.

"I'm surprised you 'fessed up to the stove thing. I would have thought you the type to be thrilled by potential explosions!" Thank god we had a gas oven at home and I was familiar with how to use it. Something told me that without placation in the form of popcorn the natives around here would get hostile really quickly.

"It took my eyebrows a long time to grow back," he calmly explained as I prepared the stove and added oil to the pot.

I had thought that my last baby-sitting charges were a challenge. Compared to Zac they were like taking a harmless walk in a safe park. Trying to keep this little man in control, out of pain, and away from his peacefully sleeping siblings was more like taking a brisk walk through Central Park at midnight. In other words, asking for trouble.

When the popcorn had finally settled down I carefully turned off the burner and hustled Zac, brimming bowl in hand, to the television. Distract and conquer, that was the ticket, I decided taking a seat on the couch.

"Mmm. Baywatch… heehee" Zac held the remote away from me and laughed after discovering the show on Fox. "Wholesome family entertainment, my favorite!"

"Yuck, don't tell me you actually like that show?!" I asked, indignantly staring out the dark window behind the TV.

"Let me think, because the entire point of whatever pathetic script they happen to be working from revolves solely around getting those Barbie dolls running around in bathing suits smaller than your typical Kleenex?" My disgust at Baywatch is thick. "And no women in this world actually look like that," I moaned, gesturing towards Pamela Anderson's bottled blonde hair and breasts filled with manmade materials with a half life higher than that of Uranium.

"No boys look like anybody on this show either," Zac seemed proud of his reasoning. "They're all fake so it's okay. Like a portal into a perfect parallel dimension. Now braid." He had at some point gathered a hairbrush and a box of tiny rubber bands like Caroline used to have to use on her teeth.

"Who has braces?" Zac sat on the floor in front of me, cross-legged between the couch and the coffee table. He enthusiastically patted MaMa, who had shocked both of us by once again appearing in my presence.

"Ike," he replied as I ran the red and black vent brush through his tangled hair. Once all of the snarls were out I could see that it was every bit as nice as Taylor's better cared for locks.

"My arms are going to gall off." Even after I had only completed one thin braid, as per Zac's specifications, my arms were already aching. He seemed to have calmed down significantly since we had made our deal. He actually sat still and silent for long enough for me to finish braiding nearly half of his hair before he spoke again.

"You really like Taylor, don't you?" At first I didn't hear his soft question over the obnoxiously loud splashing noises emanating from the TV. When what he was saying finally registered I shrugged, even though Zac couldn't see me from his position on the floor.

"He really likes you too, you know. He talks about you a lot, says you're funny and pretty and stuff." Zac looked shyly at me over his shoulder.

"Yeah, well how come he never called me then?" These words sounded incredibly bitter even to me. Before I knew it I would be forty and on Rikki Lake telling her about how my first love had snubbed me.

"He's afraid. Not, like, of you, you certainly seem harmless enough." The evil tone in his voice showed itself for an instant, only to be replaced by more sober words. "It's weird. We're not really famous, not yet, but girls already know us. They follow us around and giggle or scream or whatever. Even if Ike or Tay were to talk to a girl he was interested in these days she would be to busy freaking out to really listen."

"I'm not like that. And really, you can blame some of the screaming on how well you're known around here, but giggling is a staple of inter-gender communications at this age. Everybody gets some of it." I couldn't really see what I had in common with the squealers. In fact, the more I got to know not only the three older boys, but also the little ones, the more I came to love the Hansons as a family.

"I know. It's just that Taylor's afraid he's going to let himself like you, and then you're going to end up just being one of those silly, silly girls." Zac sounded mournful, and I suspected he was talking about something in which he had a lot of experience.

Why couldn't it be this easy to talk to Taylor? I wondered. Why did all the electricity have to get in the way? Was that how he was feeling too? Like we had something between us that we couldn't understand, and it's seriousness was interfering in our actions toward each other.

"You're awfully smart." I combed my hands through the remainder of hair to be braided and sighed.

"You should talk to him about it. Let him know it's him you like, not our success or whatever." Zac turned off the TV. "You know, maybe you're right about Baywatch."

"I'm sure those beach bunnies feel just like you - they want to be respected for their talent, not drooled over because they have one percent body fat and look good in a bathing suit." The Hansons really did have a lot to deal with thanks to their moderate local fame. How could they ever really be sure why people liked them?

"The issue being," Zac said, slipping back into his normal maximum overdrive personality, "that not a soul on Baywatch has can act or has any talent whatsoever."

Half a head of minuscule braids and two hands of Zac's favorite potentially fatal card game later we heard a car crunching in the driveway. "Uh-uh," Zac raced up the stairs, probably diving into bed and attempting to create the impression that he had been peacefully asleep for an hour.

I had hoped to finally meet the much spoken of and little seen father of the Hanson clan, but Isaac and Taylor entered the room alone. They both looked slightly tired, but incredibly psyched; I could practically feel the excitement radiating off them from my position halfway across the room.

"Our parents are still at the party thing we had to go to," Isaac informed me. "Zac still awake?" Aha. So the deal wasn't a new arrangement. The youngest member of the band Hanson had probably irritated most of his previous baby-sitters into the same truce. "I'll drive you home right after I talk to him…" Isaac bounded out of the room with Zac-like energy.

"Hey." Taylor said after Ike had gone, taking a seat near me on the couch. "You must be an amazingly good baby-sitter. Most of the time when my parents leave Zac alone the police or the emergency room get involved."

It was hard to think straight with Taylor sitting two inches away from me, but I did my best because I wanted to talk to him about what Zac had told me. "I really like you, you know," these words flew from my mouth before I even thought. If my brain was the body part in control right now I would have eased gently into the subject, but it seemed that was out of the question.

Taylor blanched, "I really like you too." He continued guiltily, "I'm sorry I didn't call you."

"It's not a big deal. I could have called you just as easily, but I was kind of afraid you'd think I was one of your groupies or something." At least I had managed to employ a little bit of finesse this time around.

"You're different." Taylor's voice took on what I thought was a tone of quiet exasperation. "No matter how pretty or nice they may be, the instant that kind of girl gets around me they lose it. Giggling, squealing, acting weird. In a way I like it, I mean, who wouldn't? But in the end I always wish I could get to know them as people, but somehow it's like they don't care who I really am. They just want me to be a Hanson. A pretty face and a bunch of exact statistics about favorite colors and stuff. They don't care what Taylor's really like, just that I'm talented or whatever." I had a feeling this wasn't something he talked to a lot of people about.

"Well, ego boy, I assure you that I like you for you, or will if you give me a chance. Forget about the music. As far as I'm concerned you're just the random older brother of some kids I baby-sit for." I laughed, bumping his arm with mine.

"Ego boy? Give me some credit - I'm ego man," Taylor straightened his posture and made a self important, 'I am Fabio' kind of face.

"Um… no, ego boy. You're not allowed to be ego man until you've been on MTV. Then you can be ego llama for all I care."

The next day was, to use a tacky clich�, the first day of the rest of my life. Taylor called my house at an inhumanely early hour and proposed that I come over and hang out. I did, and a trend was set. Every day for the next three weeks I spent nearly all of my waking hours at the Hansons, baby-sitting or not. Taylor and I must have started to resemble Siamese twins: we played street hockey together, roller bladed to the park, played cards, and went swimming in my pool. I even got him addicted to my favorite soap opera, General Hospital, which we watched every day at one o'clock.

Life was perfect. I had found a new best friend in Taylor and we had transcended whatever wall had been keeping us apart when we first met. It now became even easier to talk to him than it had been to Zac; I soon discovered we shared practically all the same opinions and dreams. On top of this, the amazing thrill of seeing him smiling at me still retained its ability to stop my world in its rotation.

Trying to explain this on the phone with Sarah wasn't easy. It was like she was happy for me, but mad at the same time. "That's great that you like him so much, Marissa. Really great. But just remember, you've got to be your own person too."

"I am still my own person, I just love to spend time around Taylor. He's my sunshine…" I laughed. In truth, I could see where Sarah was coming from. You don't live for almost fifteen years without seeing a lot of people lose themselves - letting sports, or school, or a boy - just take over and become their reason for living. I used to think that they almost always got burned in the end, shutting off one part of your life to exist solely in another only caused problems - they got cut from the team, they graduated, they got dumped. We were different. I would never loose Taylor; he would never lose me.

"I know, it's just that you take things so seriously. Just don't forget that there's life beyond Taylor." Sometimes I wonder if Sarah enjoys being the voice of doom.

"So how's work going?" I asked, rolling over on the unmade bed where I had spent most of my morning. Taylor had a meeting with the man who was Hanson's agent, so I had decided to waste the day constructively - by bumming around. A dull beep sounded on the line, drowning out the first part of Sarah's reply. "Hold on a sec, I've got call waiting…" I clicked to the other call without waiting for her acknowledgment. "Hello?"

"Hey, what's up?" Taylor must have gotten back from his meeting early, judging from his tone of voice in amazingly good mood.

"Not much, I've just been hanging out…" I answered, turning down the volume on my TV set.

"Cool, listen. I've got some good news and my parents are going to drive us to Six Flags this afternoon. You want to come?"

"That sounds like fun, what time?" At first I hadn't thought that Taylor's parents would like me spending so much time with their son. Recently I had gotten the feeling that they were warming up to the idea a lot, though. Avery had told me that she had heard her mom say that I "was the best thing to happen to Taylor in a long time."

"Half an hour?" Over the past three weeks we've been friends Taylor and I have racked up impossible amounts of phone time. It's just a good thing he's local, I thought, or we'd both be spending the next ten years of our lives trying to pay off the impending phone bill.

We've gotten to the point where formalities have been dispensed with. I've always noticed that when two people who don't really know each other talk on the phone they seem to feel obligated to make small talk rather than get to the point. With Taylor this hasn't been necessary for a long time - we know each other's voices so well that we don't even need to identify ourselves.

"Nice," I answered, mentally calculating how long it would take me to shower and get ready.

"See you then." I could almost hear Taylor's huge grin over the line. What, I pondered, was this good news that had him so worked up?

I cradled the phone and grabbed my brush from where I had left it on the floor last night. If I took a fast shower I would have time to blow dry… the loud shrilling of my portable phone interrupted my revere.

"Hello?" I picked up the handset and went to my dresser, hoping my favorite shorts were clean.

"Hey." I cringed as I realized I had forgotten all about Sarah still being on the line. "You forgot me." She did not sound amused. "Taylor, I assume."

"Listen, Marissa. I'm going to hang up now. Don't call me back until you've grown up enough to deal with a relationship and still have a life."

Even though it had been rather insensitive to forget about her, who could blame me? I chalked it up to an overreaction on Sarah's part, but couldn't help feeling a little like a slimeball.

Six flags is an amazing place, a child's Mecca. Huge rollercoasters soar high into the sky with hundreds of other rides clustered around their supports, and there are approximately a million ways to entertain oneself.

When we arrived at one o'clock the place was already absolutely packed; there were huge lines for almost every ride. Taylor, Isaac, Zac, and I kind of all hung out together and rode almost all of the non-baby rides. My favorites were the ones that involved practically sitting on Taylor's lap and being flung around at ridiculous speeds, like the Scrambler. Whenever I was that close to him I was basically dizzy anyway, so I barely noticed the ride.

In the center of the park, surrounded by a towering ring of rides, was a maze of booths that contained games and food. Isaac, Zac and I all elected to hit a fried dough vendor, and after getting the goods we sat in at a sunny wooden picnic table to eat.

"This stuff is so good," Zac sighed as he took a bit from his rather misshapen dough. "Oh look, Ike, there goes that girl again…" he chortled wickedly.

"Girl?" I asked, raising my eyebrows at Isaac. He is so cute. In all the time I've spent around him that is the best description I can come up with. Cute, sweet, nice, and incredibly funny to boot.

"Ugh. Like, that chic," Isaac did his best Butthead impression. I followed his stare and almost choked. It was Katie, sitting with a group of her obnoxious clones, all of whom were surreptitiously monitoring our table. "She's been kind of following us all day," Ike admitted.

"Yeah, if you like the psycho-stalker type," he answered, sounding vaguely annoyed.

"Good grief," I muttered, directing all of my attention to evenly distributing powdered sugar in a snow like mist on my fried dough. "Katie Eldridge." I added, as if this would clarify matters to Isaac and Zac, both of whom were inquisitively eyeing me. I glanced in Katie's direction and saw her look across the cluster of picnic tables between us. She whispered something to Lizbeth and the salt and pepper-esque pair of them giggled. Katie then shot me a vicious smile, aware of my eyes on her.

"So, what's the deal?" asked Zac in a voice several decibels louder than appropriate. "You look like you want to scratch her eyes out. Maybe even humiliate her in Jell-O wrestling, which, might I add, is a sight I'd like to see…"

"All of the above," I gave them a brief run down of my recent Katie related issues. At this point I had it about worked up into a TV movie, staring Christina Ricci as me and Tori Spelling as Katie.

The three of us somehow managed to get on with a conversation, although I was always painfully aware of Katie's calculating glances in my direction. When their group finally got up to leave, ignoring the empty cups that littered their table, Katie went out of her way to walk behind me. The crafty shove she delivered was barely effective, though it was apparently meant to pitch me onto the ground. I had planned ahead, and with nonchalance that surprised even me, managed to dump a good half of my soda on her too-tight white tank top.

"I know, Marissa. I guess some of us have to be blithering idiots, it's not your fault," her voice was almost as icy as the look she gave me before catching up with her snickering friends.

"You're too good. I really think that you need to get a pin or something. Maybe become an honorary Hanson brother," Zac's respect was easily won, but Isaac shrugged in a manner suggestive of the overused phrase "children will be children".

We lingered long after Katie's crowd had moved on, leisurely eating and waiting for Taylor who had disappeared when the subject of taking a break from the rides had first come up. "He's been gone for a half hour," I complained about the missing Hanson.

"He may never come back," guffawed Isaac. "His plan may take all day." Zac dissolved in a fit of giggles.

"Why don't you go find him?" Zac said, "he probably needs an ego boost by now. He was over by the big prize games when we bailed…" So Taylor had a plan? Maybe it had something to do with his good news.

"I'll do that," I answered, finally tossing the remainder of my Doctor Pepper in a nearby trash can.

"Hey, with that arm you could probably give him a hand," Isaac had moved up the scale of mirth from a guffaw to a cackle. "He made us promise not to tell, but he's off trying to win you one of those huge stuffed animals." I think I blushed, even though I concentrated every fiber of my being on not doing so.

"Ha Ha." I rose and headed towards the game booths. After a few moments of wandering aimlessly around I spotted Taylor in his ever-present red Adidas shirt at a building painted with the words 'ring toss'.

"Oh TayTay, that's so funny…" I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Katie, looking rather slutty in her soggy tee shirt, was absolutely hanging all over Taylor. Lizbeth and the other Katie cookie cutter girls stood in a tight circle nearby, watching intently. Katie reached out a hand and stroked the long, thin strand of hair that hung in a braid halfway down his back. "You look so cute with this."

I was about to march right over there and do something I would probably have ended up in prison for when Taylor turned to face her. I ducked behind edge of the booth where I could listen and observe without being noticed.

"Listen. It was really nice to meet you, but I'm trying to concentrate here." There were the rudest words I'd ever heard Taylor say, but they were nothing compared to what I would have came up with.

"I'll be your good luck charm." Katie was so annoying. She must have seen Taylor and me together earlier and figured that two seconds of happiness was too much for her to allow me. Apparently she had decided to step in and rectify the situation, and was now hitting on Taylor, hard-core.

"Everybody needs a good luck charm," She couldn't even flirt like a normal person. Katie automatically seemed to get all vapid and doe eyed the instant a boy got near her. "Or, even better, maybe we could ditch this place and hang out somewhere else?" Katie's voice positively dripped with what she must have thought was seductiveness. In feigned innocence she played with the border on Taylor's shirt, smiling slyly up at him.

"Sorry, I'm busy trying to win this for my girlfriend. She's waiting and I'd better hurry. See you around." The brush off was firm, if not brutal. Upon delivery of this line Taylor promptly turned back to the game and proceeded to ignore Katie.

It took her several seconds to wipe the shocked look off her face and come up with a suitable reply, "Oh really." It seemed that Rejection was a new concept to Katie. I felt highly fortunate to have been able to see her introduction to it.

I remained where I stood, out of Taylor's view, for several minutes. We had known each other for awhile now, and I had given up hope that we would ever be anything more than friends. We spent all of our time together, and discussed relationships in a general soap opera manner, but had never really defined what we were to each other. Unless I was mistaken, Taylor had just told what could be considered an attractive girl to buzz off because he had a girlfriend. We had never even kissed, and he hadn't shown any desire to alter this fact. Despite this, it was all I could do to hold back and not run up and grab him for the biggest, sloppiest, kind of kiss I could imagine.

I hung back, contemplating the situation. It was possible, after all, that he hadn't meant anything by saying he had a girlfriend. It could have just been a ploy to get Katie off his back.

By the time I had mulled this through I realized that Taylor had left the games booth. I stepped out into the crowds of people that were milling about on the midway, waiting for his bright blond hair to give his location away.

Suddenly I felt something warm and fuzzy on my bare right shoulder, and judging from the good-natured laughter that followed my reaction, I must have jumped about five feet. I turned and found myself face to face with a gargantuan, orange hued, stuffed orangutan. "That look was so worth the lifetime I spent trying to win this bugger," Taylor gasped with mirth. "Priceless."

"You know, I see a resemblance between the two of you: big hair and brow ridges. The only problem is that your knuckles don't quite reach the ground!"

"Here." Taylor handed the creature to me and I sagged under its unexpected weight.

"Your little buddy here needs to go to Jenny Craig!" I held the stuffed animal on my hip and looked into its big, beady black eyes.

"Actually, it's your little buddy. I won him for you." Taylor draped one of the long orange furred arm around my neck. "He's having an identity crisis, what with the change of ownership and all. You better give him a name."

"Hmm…" I pondered the question at hand, a name for our love child (well, kind of!) If I were to ever have an actual baby I would have huge issues trying to name it. What would probably end up happening would be that I couldn't make up my mind and the kid would be able to choose its own name at six or seven years old, or maybe I would even end up throwing myself on the mercy of the nurses in the room at the time and let them pick something. "Jordan," I blurted, not even sure where the name came from. I've never actually met anyone called Jordan, and have been ambivalent towards both Michael Jordan and the country, but the name seemed to fit the fluffy yet aristocratic face of my new simian.

Taylor looked at me in what appeared to be shock for a moment before demanding: "What made you pick that name?"

"I don't know, I just like it. If you're anti-Jordan we could change it. Perhaps Cyrill?"

"No, I like Jordan. It's just bizarre that you picked it. Um, Taylor is actually my middle name, and, bizarrely enough, Jordan is my first," beautiful boy, formerly known as Taylor but actually Jordan, confessed.

"Are you in the witness protection program or something?" I don't even like nicknames. My parents had scarred me for life by calling me Mar, as in stain or imperfection, until I was ten.

"No, I just thought it was kind of dorky and liked Taylor better. Now I like them both, but at this point I couldn't switch back even if I wanted to."

"Well, I guess this orangutan with just have to be Jordan II, in that case." I jostled the compact body and decided that Jordan was indeed the perfect name for the beasite.

Taylor grabbed my free hand and steered me purposefully back towards the spot where I had been watching him before, and out of the flow of traffic. "I have something to tell you. We got signed yesterday." It took me a moment to assimilate the meaning behind this phrase.

"Signed-as in to a record label?" I was blown away. In all the time I've known Taylor/Jordan I had only heard the band Hanson play once. I had always been aware that they practiced just about everyday, and that whenever I was baby-sitting the little ones their parents were out trying to drum up support for the band in the music industry. I had never, however, suspected this.

"Congratulations! That's so awesome!" I could just picture the CD cover, all artsy and decorated with pictures of Taylor and his brothers that would probably have been enough to convince most teenies to buy it before even hearing the music.

"You can't even imagine how excited I am. I've always sang, but I never even thought…" Taylor seemed about ready to bounce off the walls and he smiled so widely that I noticed a little dimple on his left cheek.

We stood there, inches apart, out of the crowd in the dark shadow of what had once been a cotton candy stand, and smiled at each other for the longest time. And then I knew what was about to happen, and my heart, which was already racing, skipped a beat.

When I was very young my mother had had two little plastic dolls sitting on top of her fancy wooden jewelry box. They were the cheapest, ugliest things imaginable - a boy and a girl dressed in dowdy seventies clothes, each standing on its own round plastic base. The thing that had made my mother love those dolls so much was that their necks were somehow jointed so as to be able to swivel around 360 degrees, ala the Exorcist. Behind those vacant blue eyes, I realized when I was old enough to question their behavior, were magnets. Whenever the dolls were held even inches apart their faces would turn towards each other; when held closer the magnets would cause their tiny lips to lock.

My first kiss with Taylor Hanson made me feel like one of those bizarre dolls. I didn't have to think, all that was necessary was proximity to my pre-ordained partner and nature took over. As our faces drew slowly together I could see brown flecks in the eyes I had thought so purely blue - flecks that matched the rich, melted chocolate shades of his siblings.

As I had told Zac on that night that now seemed years ago, I have kissed several boys. At least I thought I had, anyway. Those things I had called kisses were nothing compared to the sensation of Taylor's lips on mine. It was magical, I thought, the tingle of the first time our eyes met multiplied a thousand times coursed up and down my spine, making me feel more alive than I was aware I could be.

The kiss, as these things go, was brief. But more than worth the wait, I decided as Taylor and I walked, hand in hand, to where I had last seen his brothers.

A few days later Rachel volunteered to drop me off at the Hanson house after dinner on her way to work. "You know, Marissa, you're practically glowing. Now, judging from the fact that the nearest nuclear power plant is hundreds of miles away that possible reason is ruled out. I would have to theorize that you're in love…" she said as she backed my parents blue Volvo out of our driveway.

I could feel the warm tingling of a blush working its way up my cheeks as I shrugged, "maybe."

Rachel turned to look at me for a moment before she shifted into drive and headed slowly down our road. Most parents, I am told, freak out because their children drive to fast. Not mine. In fact, every time Rachel even gets near a car in my parents' presence my dad feels the need to make some crack about a Grandma being behind the wheel. I don't know whose Grandma they're referring to in that situation; I've driven with both of mine and compared to Rachel they're ready for the Daytona five hundred. This is going to be a long ride, I thought, turning on the radio and hitting the seek button in hopes of finding something loud enough to drown out Rachel's attempts at conversation.

"I don't think I've ever been in love." Rachel's voice was tinged with sadness. "Do you realize that when they were my age mom and dad were married? I haven't even been out on a second date in months." I can't imagine Rachel married. She seems so young, and so like me. The five years between us may be important ones - producing driver's licenses, voting privileges and the comfortable escape that is college - but mental maturity apparently doesn't magically start on one's eighteenth birthday. Our situations in life aren't so different, either. She still has to ask to borrow the car, still has a curfew when she's home, and is still financially dependent on my parents. The time when she'll be paying a mortgage, having babies, and attending Tupperware parties seems impossibly distant.

My parents, however, would have already been dealing with most of these things when they were Rachel's age. They were the stereotypical high school sweethearts, and Rachel and I must have had to sit through the story of my dad's proposal a thousand times. They had been at Rachel's parents' house during Christmas break of their freshman year in college, and found themselves alone in a backyard treehouse left behind by its last occupants. My dad had rigged up some random device with Christmas lights that spelled out, "marry me Pay." It hadn't gone off without a hitch, ( it was supposed to say Bay, short for my mom's name, Bayley) but apparently dad had gotten the point across.

Whenever I try to imagine them as they must have been on that night - young, wildly in love, and willing to risk both of their parents disapproval by not waiting for after graduation - I fail. The only thing I see is a slightly thinner version of my mom and a slightly less bald version of my dad complaining about how unsafe treehouses are, and then going inside to watch the news or something.

"What's it like?" Rachel suddenly asked. We had traveled almost halfway to Taylor's house while I sat looking out the window in contemplation.

"I don't know." I meant to leave it at that, but soon found words spilling from my lips so fast that I could barely understand them myself. "It's different. Like when we met at first all I could think about was how beautiful he was, and I just wanted to look at him forever. I thought maybe that was love, I'd felt it before tons of times, but I think maybe it was just pure physical attraction. But the next time I saw him it was like he was a different person, still beautiful, but now more real. We talked and talked and now it's like he's my absolute best friend. I've told him things I haven't told anybody, and all of a sudden I care so much about every thought he's ever had in his life. Every little thing he does fascinates me, like how he kind of throws his head to flip his hair out of his eyes and how he's always tapping a rhythm out on something. It's like when we're together nobody else matters, they're just ghosts in the background. Now I don't want to look at him forever-I want to be with him forever…" I wound down, realizing what I had said. Did I want to be with Taylor forever?

"Wow," Rachel whispered. A lot of the time when we talk I feel like she's looking down on me, thinking that because I'm younger nothing in my life is as important as hers. But now I know she's looking at me as an equal - an equal who's going through something she's only dreamed of.

"Marissa, please be careful." This time her quiet voice had a note of pleading in it.

"Why does everyone say that? We're not going to elope or anything, just be together every minute we can." I was frustrated. Maybe I did love Taylor, but why did this automatically make people want to warn me of something?

"I know, you don't want to hear about the danger in you situation. You just want to be happy. Don't forget yourself, because everything ends. Especially a love affair carried on by two fourteen year olds."

I turned away from Rachel and didn't look back until we arrived at the Hanson house.

I found Taylor in the backyard, playing with Mackie and his extensive collection of Micro Machines.

"Nah," Taylor stepped in, "it's time for you to go in anyway. Mom was going to give you a bath before bed time."

Taylor stood and grabbed one of the toddler's pudgy hands, "Come on." As Tay dragged his unwieldy brother towards the house he called over his shoulder, "stay right there, I'll be back in a minute."

I sat on the grass, savoring the last warm rays of sunlight and the rich smell that exuded from the nearby forest. I was about to stretch out and examine some of the tiny cars that Mackie was so obsessed with when something brightly colored laying on the ground near the patio caught my eye.

When Taylor returned, sans child, several moments later I was ready. I stood in the center of the yard, water gun in hand, poised to strike.

Taylor didn't even know what hit him as I pelted him with a steady stream of icy cold hose water. Tay dove to the side, and I followed, still spraying despite my depleted water reserves.

Soon after I realized my mistake. I had not taken into account the fact that Taylor was now between me and the hose. The devilish look in his eye alerted me as he feinted to the left and went right to seize the neatly coiled green plastic beast. He turned it on with one deft and apparently practiced movement.

"Eeek." I squealed, running for cover as Taylor turned the powerful spray on me.

"Face it, girl. I'm so far out of your league when it comes to water fights you shouldn't have even tried!" He was still boasting, even though he was nearly as wet as I was.

"Pshah! You're on home turf…" I called, darting towards the tree line and out of hose range. After fifteen minutes of water gun warfare in the back yard we both collapsed in a giggling lump in one of the few remaining dry patches of grass.

"You geek. Now I'm all wet again," I laughed, rather dramatically sitting up and intentionally spraying him with my soggy hair.

"Don't tell me that you didn't totally ask for that. Again, even." He did the same to me with his long-for-a-boy sunshine colored hair. We continued to sit side by side, gasping for breath and giving our aching ribs time to recover, for several moments.

"I have a kind of surprise in the tree house. It's now big deal, and I don't even know if you deserve it anymore." Taylor feigned sullen-hood.

"Baubles in the tree house? Let us commence, fair squire…" I did my absolute best highbrow British accent. Not that my absolute best is always discernible as English. Sarah always accuses me of sounding like a Cuban on speed.

"Not bauble, you rotten old hag," Taylor retorted in an artfully rendered cockney accent.

"Topped yet again," I threw my hands in the air and followed him to the base of the giant tree that supported the treehouse the Hanson children shared. The irony of my hanging out in the tree house with my honey wasn't lost - if only I was my mom and four years older, Taylor would be proposing.

"Come on," Taylor coaxed as he noticed me nervously eyeing the pieces of board that had been nailed to the tree to serve as a ladder. "If my six year old sister can get up here you bloody well can too."