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Chapter One


I guess the best place to start this story is two days after Christmas, when Nick and I were sitting in the Orlando airport waiting for the other three fellas to get on a flight to Canada. We were at our gate already, having exhausted all the stores that the airport had to offer on the departing side of security check points, and we'd decided to exchange Christmas gifts before Kevin, AJ, and Howie got there, which was Nick's idea. I had the sinking suspiscion I was the only one of the four of us that was getting a present from him this year.

Or maybe it was just because when it came to presesnts, Nick was like a wild monkey.

Nick eagerly unwrapped the gift I'd given him, his fingers flying over the paper like there was no tomorrow and he had to see the present today. His eyes lit up, eager, and the vent of the airport air conditioner made his hair flutter just a little, giving him a slightly psychotic look as he tossed the paper remnents every which way.

"AweSOME!" he shouted as he unearthed the first part of his gift from the box. It was a pair of these glove-like things that go on your hand and you attach silly string to them and they spew webs like you're Spiderman or something... exactly the sort of thing that Nick would use and cherish for months to come. At least until Kevin took them away. "Eat your heart out, Peter Parker," Nick cried, tugging the gloves onto his hands.

"There's extra silly string in there, too," I said.

Nick practically took a swan dive into the box to find the two extra cans of sting I'd stashed in the box.

"And if Kevin asks," I added quickly, "You did not get that from me."

Nick looked up, a mischevious glimmer in his eyes, "Dude of course not. You gave me a boring old Bible for Christmas. Again. I have no idea where these Hell toys came from." He dove back into the box and surfaced a moment later, cans of silly string held aloft over his head like he'd just won the Stanley Cup. "RED! Yes! and blue! DOUBLE YES!" Nick tested his new-found abilities by spraying string into his backpack. "I am so spider-wrapping AJ's ass the first chance I get." He grinned.

I laughed, "Just don't spray Kevin if you wanna keep those things."

Nick snorted, "Of course not, dude it's not even legal to try to spidey-wrap Kevin. He's.... too.... slow... of... a... tar...get..." Nick demonstrated Kevin's obnoxious way of speaking too articulately. "It's an unfair fight."

I laughed, unable to argue Nick's point.

Nick reached into his backpack, which was approximately nine million years old, and rooted around amongst the video games and movies that he'd stashed in there. Finally, he resurfaced with a brown paper bag, which he shoved in my direction. "Sorry it's not wrapped," he said, "My mom wouldn't let me buy the paper." In the process of handing it to me, he accidentally deployed some of his silly string, which landed in a pile on top of the paper bag. He laughed, "At least it has a bow now."

I opened the bag and found a comic book, wrapped in a protective plastic sleeve. I turned it over and realized on closer inspection that I knew this comic book - I knew it well, in fact.

When I was a young, I loved reading comic books. My favorite was Batman. I remember going through issues of Batman like nobody's business. He was my favorite because he was possible. He was once just an every day kid who had a tragic backstory, and then he went and learned how to control his fear and basically kick ass. He got the coolest car in the known world and the best butler you could ask for and he simply fought crime. Batman's only real power was excellent karate skills.

But my favorite-favorite part about Batman was the fear thing.

Shortly after I was born, the doctors figured out that I was broken. I had a hole in my heart and it meant that I wasn't able to be a normal kid. I grew up not being able to play sports because my mom was scared I'd hurt myself, and I got tired easy and it made me not like going to school because it was stressful learning the times tables and the more stressed I got the more tired I got and -- it was just a vicious circle. Plus the doctors spent an abnormal amount of time monitoring it and making sure my heart was, you know, beating and stuff. They dragged me off to St. Joseph's Children's Hospitals for weeks at a time throughout my childhood.

My stupid heart caused a lot of trouble for me. It made my brother resent me because I got more attention, and it made other kids make fun of me because I couldn't play half the games they did without getting dizzy and tired. It kept me back a year in school, too, so before you know it I was the kid that nobody wanted to talk to because I was too old. I made friends, but it was challenging because everyone was a year younger than me. Plus, it scared me.

Sometimes, when it was really quiet in the room at night and I was laying in bed and I'd been thinking too much, I could hear it, beating irregularly in my chest, like it was getting bigger and bigger, like it was taking over my body. And it was those times when my heart literally scared me. And also, it was really scary to be laying in a hospital bed and see that sad look in the doctor's eyes when he called my parents into the hall to talk to them in private, and hear my mother cry.

I was laying in bed one day, when I was five years old, reading the latest Batman comic, and my dad was sitting on one side of me watching Jeopardy, while my mother sat on the other side of me, starting at the TV but not really watching it, when I realized that there was nothing stopping me from being like Bruce Wayne and harnessing my fear. I realized that maybe none of us would be as scared as we were if we were smiling and laughing, and so I cleared my throat as best I could, and said, "Hey ma?"

She broke out of her trance instantly and grabbed my hand. My dad muted the television set. "What is it, Brian?" she asked eagerly, her eyes wide with panic.

"Why did the chicken cross the basket ball court?"

Both my parents looked at me like I was nuts. My father finally said, tentatively, "Why, son?"

"He heard the referee calling fowls," I said. My lips cracked as I grinned.

My mother laughed. It'd been so long since I'd heard her laugh. So I told another joke, and another one. I spent the rest of the afternoon telling joke after joke after joke, making everyone who came in to see me laugh. It felt good to see smiling faces instead of sad, droning ones.

And from that point on, when ever a moment got tense, I cracked a joke, made a face, or talked in a goofy voice by way to break the tension. And the best part was that I found it was easier not to be afraid of things. I felt superhuman. I convinced myself that I was as tough as Bruce Wayne, that I would one day knock this heart trouble and go to Tibet and learn karate and jujitsu and get a cool car and a cool super hero suit and ultimately become the next Dark Knight.

Because of Batman, I had a reputation as the brave kid in Cardio, the one who wasn't scared, the one who was always smiling.

Nick's Christmas gift was a copy of that same comic book I'd been reading that day, the one that had given me all of my strength.

"Wow," I said quietly, unable to say much else when faced with something as cherished as this issue.

"I hope you don't have that one," Nick was saying, "The guy at the store said it's a rarer issue..." he shrugged. "Plus it was either that or the Bat mobile and the Bat mobile didn't fit in the bag."

There was no way Nick would ever understand precisely why this gift was so amazing. I'd never really told him much about my heart troubles growing up, so telling him that Batman had been my main source of comfort during those times had just never come up. So rather than try to explain this to him, I just nodded. "This is way cooler than the Bat mobile anyways," I said.

"Yeah the Bat mobile was probably a stick-shift," Nick agreed. He looked at his Spidey-web-slingers. "It was really tough finding something cool that was Batman, you know," he said accusingly. Nick was less than enchanted by the legend that was Bruce Wayne. He was a Spiderman guy all the way. "I thought at first that it was gonna be really easy when we said super heroes was the Christmas present theme this year, but it was so not."

"You did good," I answered. "I literally couldn't have dreamed a better gift," I added.

Nick shrugged. He sprayed a little Spidey-web at his sneaker. "It was hard, too, finding something semi-grown up in the super hereo theme..." he said this with a wandering mind, and I could tell that neither the theme nor the comic itself was the topic of conversation any longer. I braced myself for the comment that was about to come next. "Sooo... is Boob-Job Barbie coming on this tour, too?" he asked.

And there it was.

I scowled. He was referring to my girlfriend, Leighanne Wallace, who I'd met in June at a video shoot for our song As Long As You Love Me. Nick didn't like her. I didn't know why. He'd taken to calling her Boob-Job Barbie - like having a big breasted girlfriend was a bad thing.

He was only seventeen, sure, but the kid had a lot to learn.

"No," I said, "Leighanne will not be joining us on this leg of the tour. Maybe on the next leg of it, though." I slid the comic back into the brown bag and -after wiping away the silly string bow- put the whole kit'n caboodle into my duffle bag where it'd be safe.

"Figures she shows up for the European leg of the tour," Nick muttered.

"I want her to come along to the European leg of the tour," I replied hotly.

Nick frowned. "She's got you in a ball and chain." He said this in a way like he was experienced. In reality, Nick had been with like three girls ever for longer than a one night stand, and none of them were really girlfriends. The closest to a ball-and-chain experience Nick had ever had was from listening to Janis Joplin. "Well, if she's not coming on this leg, that means we can finally catch up on our hoops, right?" his face was eager.

"I plan on it," I answered.

"You never wanna play when she's around," Nick complained, like he hadn't just gotten his way.

"Someday you'll meet a woman and you'll understand," I replied with a shrug.

Nick shook his head. "I seriously doubt that." After a pause, he clarified, "Not the part about me meeting a girl, but the part about me understanding."

"And why's that?" I asked.

"Because, dude," he replied, "It's the code - Bros before hos, man." He shrugged. "I'm alwways gonna put my friends first and my girlfriends second."

"You say that now because you don't know what it's like," I replied.

Nick scowled. He really couldn't argue that point.

"Besides," I added, "AJ plays with you all the time."

Nick was now pouty, "Yeah but it's not the same 'cos, A, I never can win against him, and two, he cheats."

"So do you," I said.

"That's 'cos I gotta win sometimes," he said.

I shrugged, "I let you win."

"Do not."

"Do too," I answered.

Nick decided to focus on his spidey hands instead of answering me... since he knew I was right and all.

It was during this contemplative silence from Nick that I spotted Kevin walking towards us, his duffle bag slung around his shoulder, plane ticket clutched in his teeth as he stared down into his partly unzipped bag, rooting around for something. I waved my hand, "Kev!" I shouted to get his attention. When he looked up and around for me, I added, "Over here." Spotting us, Kevin closed his duffle bag, took the plane ticket out of his mouth, and started towards us. Nick turned in his seat to watch Kevin approach. I kind of wished he'd put the Spidey gloves away, but he didn't.

"How was your Christmas, Nick?" Kevin asked as he came up beside us. He knew how my Christmas had been. We'd only said good-bye the morning before in this very airport after flying back from Kentucky. Our parents had insisted we all spent the holidays together like a giant Littrell-Richardson clan. It'd been noisy and stressful the way most family holiday situations are, and I'd kind of wished that I'd gotten a break from seeing Kevin, rather than having him pestering me during the whole weekend we'd spent in Kentucky about whether I thought a Backstreet Boys Christmas album was something we should work on for the following season or not. Kevin dropped into a seat facing ours and dropped his duffle bag into the chair next to him.

"Oh you know," Nick shrugged, "The usual, I guess. Aaron and Angel got like a billion presents and the rest of us watched them open them 'cos we're too old for Santa Claus and my mom spoils the shit out of them."

"Don't say shit," Kevin scolded.

"I'm seventeen, I can say shit if I wanna," Nick argued.

Kevin rolled his eyes. "How you feelin' today, cuz?"

I'd thrown up like twelve times on the plane. "Better now that I'm on the ground, though I'm feeling an impending barf-o-rama coming on due to today's planned activities," I answered.

And just like that, we were exhausted of conversation topics, so we sat there in silence. Nick was cross-legged on his chair, his hands in his lap. He started picking at his fingernails, and I watched for AJ and Howie. Kevin unzipped his duffle bag and started rooting around in it again. Suddenly Nick let out a yelp and I turned to see he'd somehow managed to spray himself in the face with his Spidey-web while biting his fingers.

"What in the hell is that?" Kevin asked, attention drawn to the Spidey-web slingers.

"It's so cool," Nick explained, "You can shoot Spiderman webs, look." He demonstrated for Kevin, spraying the web at his sneaker again. "Cool, huh?"

Kevin looked less than impressed. "You better not shoot that thing at anyone."

"I won't," Nick said. But I could tell by his voice that he was crossing his fingers. At least mentally. Kevin actually looked for the physical manifestation of it, but Nick was smart enough to have put his hands back into his lap, where Kev couldn't see it if he did actually cross his fingers.

Kevin gave Nick the Dirty Brow - as we'd all taken to calling Kevin's Look, given his ridiculously pronounced eyebrows. I have no idea if those things are genetic or not, but if they are, they definitely came from the side of his family that I did not get my eyebrows from, and this was a fact that I was damn thankful for.

Nick got lucky, because just as Kevin was about to start chewing him out, I spotted AJ and Howie walking towards us. AJ had sunglasses on and Howie was pushing a trolly with both their carry on bags on it. "Hi AJ!" Nick jumped up, holding his arms behind his back to conceal the Spidey webs. I prayed silently that he had the intelligence to at least wait until later to spray AJ, considering Kevin was already eyeballing him from behind. I had a feeling the web slingers weren't gonna last very long and I kind of felt bad for getting him something that was ultimately gonna get him in trouble. But oh well, what're friends for, right?

"Not so loud," AJ mumbled, "Jesus, could the lights be any brighter in this airport? I swear to Christ." He lowered himself carefully into the seat next to Nick.

"AJ's a little hung over," Howie explained pushing the cart out of the way and sitting down next to Kevin.

Kevin frowned disapprovingly at AJ. Nick grinned because, just like that, he was off the hot seat, replaced by AJ and the underage drinking habit that Kevin most vehmenently did not approve of.

"I had a fight with my woman," AJ said. He'd been seeing the same mystery woman for quite some time. He spoke of her frequently, but none of us were really sure who she was exactly. Nick had subscribed to the belief that she was either fictional or inflatable, but had no grounds for either accusation, and Howie had decided she must've been a real troll for him not to brag with photos and stuff. Kevin had joked once that it was his mother because AJ was a momma's boy in every sense of the word. I wasn't sure what I thought about AJ and his mystery woman other than to think that maybe she was just a normal girl and AJ didn't want us fellas to trash talk her the way Nick did Leighanne, which was something that I had to respect. In many ways, I wished I'd kept Leighanne a secret from the group, but then she'd never be able to go on tour with me and I'd miss her desperately considering I was never home, and therefore would never see her.

Kevin rolled his eyes at AJ's excuse for having been drinking, but he didn't say anything, so we all sat there in silence waiting for management and other various members of our entourage to arrive. Somewhere overhead, the radio was playing one of our singles, but by this time we'd heard ourselves on the radio so many times that none of us bothered to point it out.

The first time we'd never heard ourselves on the radio, Nick and I were in a K-Mart, buying new sheets for my bed at the apartment Kevin, Howie, and I shared in Orlando. The sheets I'd picked had Star Wars characters on them from the children's department and Nick was jealous that I was going to have Star Wars sheets. We were in the process of arguing who was cooler - C3PO or Chewie - when the first couple notes of We've Got it Going On doned through the speakers overhead.

Nick's head had snapped up to look at the ceiling-mounted speakers, his eyes wide, and then he looked back at me. "Holy crap," he'd gasped. He pointed up to the speakers, looking like someone who'd just spied a UFO in the sky, "It's us," he said. And we'd stood there for about 10 seconds in stunned silence as our voices carried through the department store. And then we'd started hooting and hollering, jumping up and down, hugging each other, and generally acting like a couple of wild banshees. So much so that an employee appeared out of what seemed like thin air to see what was the matter.

I glanced around our group now, and saw AJ was holding his forehead and unscrewing the cap on a bottle of Tylenol, Kevin was still looking through his backpack, Howie had found a magazine on the table beside him, Nick was reading the back of a can of silly string, and I was just sitting there, absent-mindedly rubbing my chest. It was kind of sad, I thought, my eyes passing over each member of our clan. We'd become so jaded that in just a few short years we'd moved from that point of jumping and screaming in a K-Mart home department to a point that we didn't even look up when our music played on the radio.