Chapter Twenty-Four
"So they just found you in the park?" Brian asked, "No clues to who you were, nothing? Just you in a park?" His eyebrows were furrowed. I'd spent the last hour telling the Boys every cotton-pickin' thing I remembered about myself, and they'd sat in rapt attention as I spoke. Now we were to the Q&A portion.
I shook my head, "Not a thing. I had no identification on me."
"Which works with the wallet being stolen," Nick pointed out, apparently now on board for the Kevin-Theory.
"Is it weird?" AJ asked, "Not remembering who you are?"
"Very," I answered.
Howie drew a deep breath, "Okay, let's look at this diplomatically. Nick, get a paper, write this stuff down." Nick scrambled for a notebook and pen. Once he had the pen poised over the paper, Howie said, "Kevin decided after the NKOTBSB tour ended that he was gonna think about rejoining the band... Anyone remember when it was he called us about it?"
"We were in the studio down in Orlando the first time he called," Brian pointed out.
"Okay, so our first day in the studio in Orlando was..." Howie's eyes were rolled back as he thought about it. "Let's see, we were in LA for my birthday because Leigh, James, and I went to Disney..." he paused, "It must've been September before we were in Orlando."
"And after he called," AJ said, "He sent those audition tapes, remember?"
"I thought he was already in the band?" I asked.
"He was," Nick answered, "But Kev's weird like that. He wanted to audition so it was like official and shit."
"Makes sense."
"Not really," Nick said.
"Ok, so we get the audition tapes, we'll say that puts us at mid-to-late September. Then October he was waiting and putting off telling Kristin..." Howie said slowly.
"That took forever," AJ scoffed.
"He finally tells her say mid-October?"
Brian injected, "I'd even say late October."
"It was Halloween," Nick corrected, "Because he joked that he was gonna tell her by going to some party as Kevin from the Backstreet Boys as his costume."
"Okay, so he tells Kristin on or very near Halloween, that puts us in November... They were in Los Angeles for Halloween because they went to that party that Leigh and I went to..." Howie looked at me. "You say you were found in November, in a park in Atlanta, by a cop without any identification of any kind on your person, and were in a coma until March... Meanwhile, in January, they found the body with Kevin's wallet in New York."
"Travel is involved either way... They found the body in New York and Ben was found in Atlanta," AJ pointed out.
"But it makes sense for Kevin to be in New York," Nick pointed out, "He had an apartment in New York."
"But he has a cousin in Atlanta," Brian argued.
Howie grabbed the notebook from Nick's hand and stared at it. He looked up at me, "Shouldn't this stuff be like jogging your memory or something?"
"That's what I was thinking," I said, shrugging. "But the doctor at the Center did say that the portion of my brain that's damaged could easily be pernamently damaged. I may never remember any of my past..." I sighed, "God this is so frustrating. It makes sense, what you guys are saying, it really does. And I want to remember so much. I hate that my head won't let me remember."
"And you said they reconstructed your jawbone and nose?" Howie asked.
"Yeah, both were shattered."
Nick stared at his feet. "This is fucking crazy. How can you be a person and not have any idea you were that person?" he blew air out of his cheeks, which he'd puffed out like a squirrel's.
"It would explain why none of us recognized him," Howie conceeded.
"Except in the eyes," AJ answered, "Look at his eyes. They're just like Kevin's.
"But not the eyebrows," Nick pointed out.
"Well my scar runs through one of my eyebrows," I pointed out.
They stared at me for a long moment. I felt like a piece in a museum. "Even Kristin thought his eyes were like Kevin's," AJ pointed out.
"Did anyone run this by her?" Howie asked.
"I didn't wanna mention it to her until we'd figured it out a little," AJ answered, "I didn't wanna freak her out or get her excited or something and have it be like no, no he's just Ben."
Howie nodded. He stared at the notebook some more. "It fits perfectly," he muttered, "And yet it doesn't."
"You don't remember anything?" Brian pleaded with me.
I rubbed my forehead, "Not really. What little bits and pieces I feel like I've remembered have been dreams and these weird flashes, like lightening or something..." I sighed and massaged my temples. "This is the most freaking frustrating thing ever."
"We need to make him remember being Kevin," Nick said in a decisive tone.
"What?" Brian sounded skeptical.
"Well I mean, if it makes sense for him to be Kevin, then maybe he is Kevin. But he doesn't remember being Kevin, so we hafta like remind him. Right now he's on this tour like he's a roadie, he's being treated like a roadie and we're treating him like a complete stranger... so, like, that's not gonna help him remember being Kevin, right?" He paused, formulating thoughts in his head. "We gotta make him do Kevin-y things."
"Kevin-y things?" Brian repeated.
"Yeah," Nick nodded, "Kevin-y things. Things that will make him remember his Kevinhood."
"Kevinhood?" Brian repeated again.
"What do you got echolalia or something?" Nick asked.
"Where in the frick did you learn the word echolalia?" AJ demanded.
"Wikipedia," Nick replied flatly.
Howie was nodding, "That makes sense."
"Yeah I know, Wikipedia knows like everything," Nick responded.
"Not that you dumbass," Howie answered, rolling his eyes, "I mean that we need to do stuff to try to jog his memory of being Kevin." Apparently we were all on board the concept that I was Kevin now. It was official. We'd decided my identity.
"Can we leave out the parts of Kevin that we didn't particularly like?" Nick asked.
"Hey now, no saying you don't like me, I'm sitting right here," I joked.
Nick laughed.
"Okay, so it's decided," Brian nodded, "We work on Operation Memory and see where that leads us and go from there."
"Operation Memory? That's lame," Nick argued. "Let's call it something cooler than that."
"Cooler?" Howie raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah... Let's call it Operation Return of the Kevi." He said it so Kevi rhymed with Jedi.
"Do we have to call it anything?" Howie asked.
But it was too late, Operation Return of the Kevi was already in Nick's head and even I knew there was no way to get shit out of his head once it'd gotten in there. That'd be like removing the super out of super glue.
After Self by Pengi
