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Chapter Five


The next morning I was woken up by Nick hacking up a lung in the next bed. It wasn't Herpes, like Nick had worried, obviously, but it was the cold that I'd predicted. We both had it. Kevin said it served us right for sneaking out in the middle of the night.

Kevin had kept us up probably an hour after we'd walked into the hotel room the night before, reminding us all about the dangers of our having snuck out of the hotel alone without security guards and without telling anybody. He threatened to call both our mothers, to which Nick had responded by profusively begging him not to. Kevin had sighed and said he wouldn't - but that next time he caught us doing something like that, he would.

As soon as the door had closed behind Kevin, Nick looked at me. "He'll forget he said that by next time."

We all knew there would be a next time with me and Nick. There always was. I mean, they call us Frick and Frack for a reason, you know?

But the next morning we were suffering for our art. Nick looked over at me as I groaned and rolled onto my back. Everything in my body felt like dead weight. "We probably shouldn't have gone out to play hoops last night," Nick said thickly.

"Probably not," I agreed.

I went and washed my face. I felt too much like crap to bother with a shower and got dressed. While Nick was in the bathroom after me, I went to get Lou to see about us going to a drug store for some cold medication. I knocked on his hotel room door and it took him a few long moments to open it, and when he did, he opened it only a crack, sticking his head into the slim space between the wall and the door. "Yes?" he asked.

"Nick and I are sick," I said.

Lou scowled. He glanced behind him, then slipped out of the door, trying his best to keep it pulled closed as he came into the hallway. I didn't even try to look in, so I'm not sure why he was acting so secretive or what he was acting it about. It kind of hurt my feelings that he didn't know I respected his privacy. Lou leaned against the closed door, keycard in one hand, rubbing his chin with the other, glaring at me. "You're both sick?" he demanded.

The way he said it, it was like he was questioning if I was lying or not. I suddenly felt like a little kid that had held a lamp to my forehead to get out of going to school. "Yes," I said, "We're both sick. But that's really not weird because we share a room and all. Anything either of us caught the other's bound to catch, too," I pointed out.

Lou muttered to himself, then he barked, "And I suppose you can't sing or something because of this?"

"I don't know..." I paused, "We were kinda hoping we could get some cold meds and tea and all that," I explained.

Lou nodded roughly. "Give me a few minutes." And with that, he turned and shuffled his secretive way back into his hotel room.

I walked back to my hotel room considering the encounter I'd just had. Lou was in a bad mood or something, I thought to myself. Normally, he never would've been that callous. He would've made sure Nick and I were okay before asking if we could perform. I tried to think of a previous time that we'd encountered this problem, but none came to mind.

It wasn't until I got back to the hotel room that I realized I'd left the keycard inside and I had to knock to get Nick to open the door. I stood there coughing in the hallway waiting for him to open it. Howie came out of his hotel room down the hall, spotted me, and came over. "That's some cough you're sporting," he commented.

"Nick and I went out last night to shoot some hoops. Walked like twenty blocks and realized it was too cold and had to walk back. I guess we were out in the cold too long, we're both sick," I explained.

"Is that why Kevin was knocking on our door last night at two-thirty asking where you guys were?" he asked, raising an amused eyebrow.

"Kevin's such a worry wart." I slammed the door a couple more times. "NICK!" I called into the room, "Open the door!" I turned back to Howie. "Lou was kinda pissed off, too," I said.

Howie nodded, "I'd expect so. He's under a lot of stress lately, he's been getting irritated easily. I wonder what's going on that's got him so worked up."

"Who knows?" I looked at the door. "Nick's probably playing with himself again," I grumbled.

"Yo Nicky, drop ya pee-pee and get out here," Howie yelled, smacking his hand against the door. "Signourey Weaver's just a figment of your imagination dude." We both cracked up. The door swung open a couple moments later and Nick glowered out at Howie. "Ohhh Signourey," Howie whined out in a nasally, high-pitched voice, imitating Nick when he was like thirteen, "Yesss Signourey... Harder, pull it harder... pull my pork!"

Apparently Kevin had started a new Backstreet Catch Phrase.

"Shut up I was not," Nick whined, "And I don't sound like thaaaaaaaaat!" Ironically as he said it, he sounded more like it than he normally did, which set Howie off laughing again. Nick scowled. "You're such a jackass," he commented.

"Jacking is what you were doing," Howie replied, "Not me." He glanced at me, "No offense but if ya'll are sick I ain't hangin' out with you. I'm gonna go get breakfast." He turned and walked away, Nick glaring at him until the elevator doors closed.

I turned back to Nick. "Lou's gonna take us to get the cold meds in a couple minutes."

"Thank God." Nick went back in the room and I followed him. He threw himself on his bed and lay flat, sprawled, staring up at the ceiling. "I might die."

"Don't be such a Drama Queen," I teased, "It's only a cold." I opened my duffle bag and started digging through it, looking for the aspirin I'd brought along.

Nick was still laying on his back. "I'm not a drama queen. I'm a boy. I'd be a drama king."

I remembered suddenly that I'd used the last of the aspirin the night before and thrown the empty bottle away. I chewed the inside of my lip and rubbed the center of my chest with the heel of my hand, sitting down on the bed, thinking. Had I seriously blown through a bottle of baby aspirin in a week? I'd bought that bottle the day we did the Disney World Christmas appearance, hadn't I? That was on the 22nd and here it was the 28th and I was out. That was actually less than a week. Only six days. Granted, it was a small bottle, but that's a lot of aspirin.

"You okay?" Nick asked.

"Yeah," I replied, "I'm fine. Just thinking."

Nick studied me a moment. "We should find an indoor basket ball court," he suggested.

I looked up at him, "We're both sick," I laughed.

"Yeah but I mean we've played sick before, right?" he asked.

I shrugged. Honestly, I didn't think I could lift a basket ball without getting a hernia at the moment. "Maybe," I answered, only because I didn't wanna get Nick going. I knew the playing of the basket ball meant a lot to him, he hadn't stopped talking about it since we'd met up at the Orlando airport, after all, and I really did owe it to him. It'd been probably a month since the last time we really had some time to shoot some hoops together. "We'll see."

It was another ten minutes before Lou showed up to take us down to the drug store. AJ came along because he wanted to buy some cigarettes and we all piled into a van with a couple bodyguards after signing autographs in the lobby again, and the van carried us down the street to a small drug store on St. Catherine street. We ducked inside and one guard followed AJ off to the counter to buy his cigarettes, while the other followed Nick and I to the cold and flu aisle. Lou said he'd be right back and walked away.

Nick and I stood debating over cold meds until we'd chosen a cherry flavored liquid that claimed to soothe the throat. I grabbed a bottle of Bayer aspirin instead of the little baby tablets, figuring the larger, grown up ones might not go as quickly since they were made for adults. Then we went to get some tea and honey from the food section of the store. "What's that for?" Nick asked, pointing at the Bayer as we walked, our bodyguard following a couple paces away.

"I need it for my heart," I replied.

"Oh," Nick said. He grabbed honey off the shelf and held it up, "What a boring bottle." It was just a regular jar. "The one my mom buys back home is shaped like a bear. They should have the bear shaped honey jars." He frowned.

"It's the same stuff," I said, taking it from him and adding it to the basket of our stuff that I was carrying.

"But honey tastes better coming out of a bear."

"Bears actually don't go after the honey when they eat honey, they're after the bee larvae," I said, shrugging.

Nick looked at me blankly for a moment. "Lava?" he looked confused.

"Larvae," I said, "It's baby bees."

"Why would they eat bees when there's delicious honey right there?" Nick and I started walking to the register. Again, our bodyguard followed us. He was like a shadow, staying just far back enough that we didn't feel like we could include him in our conversation but close enough that it felt like he was hovering whenever we moved.

"For the protein," I answered Nick's question about the bees.

Nick clutched at his throat, "Baby bees probably feel nasty going down. I can't imagine a bee would taste good. They probably sting too. God that's nasty."

"I'm just saying that it's really Winnie the Pooh's fault that honey jars are even shaped like bears, when you think about it."

"I hate Winnie the Pooh," Nick commented. "He's a fat, lying bastard." He grinned, "He's not unlike Lou that way."

I raised an eyebrow. I wasn't sure where that comment was coming from. I mean, we all liked Lou as far as I knew. I started unloading our basket onto the counter for the cashier, who looked a little awestruck at us as she rung our items out and put them into a bag. "Twenty-two," she said. I nudged Nick, "Gimme six, since I got the Bayer, I'll pay more than half."

Nick rummaged in his wallet and handed me the six dollars. Once we'd paid, we joined AJ standing on the sidewalk. He had a cigarette crammed in his mouth and when he took it out, he held it the way a person would hold a joint. I ignored this, but I had a feeling Kevin would notice it. I coughed every time he exhaled smoke, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Gimme the cold meds," Nick said, holding out his hand. I handed the bottle to him and he quickly poured himself a capful of the stuff without reading the directions. Handing the bottle off to me, he knocked back the meds. He made a face like he'd just done a shot of tequila after he'd taken it. I glanced through the directions and warnings on the back, but it seemed pretty straight forward. Blah blah blah, too much of this stuff will kill you, blah blah blah, consult a doctor if you're pregnant, etc. etc. etc. So I poured myself a capful and also downed it, though I refrained from the shot face. It tasted thick and too sweet but it did coat my throat.

AJ flicked the last of his cigarette to the ground and snuffed it with the toe of his shoe.

Lou finally joined us outside a few minutes later and we all piled into the van again. We were brought to the Molson Center, where we were sent to get ready to work on a rehearsal before doing a radio appearance later that evening, which we spent the afternoon doing. We weren't as rusty as we could've been - after all it hadn't really been all that long since we'd done the show - but our choreographer had reworked some of the steps during the break and had to get us back up to speed. It was a lot of work, and Nick and I were practically zombies by the time we were sent to hit the showers.

"Dead," Nick muttered as he pulled his shirt off in the dressing room. "Dying. Dead. Gonna die." He lowered himself to his knees, then to the concrete floor on his bare chest.

"Do you have any clue how many germs are on that floor?" Kevin demanded, nudging Nick with his foot. "Get up."

"Germs do not matter to me," said Nick with his stuffy nose, "as I am already dead."

Kevin looked at me. I shrugged. "Get up, Nick," Kevin said, his voice meaning it a little more than he had a moment before. Nick grudingly struggled up from the floor and flopped down in a director's chair. Kevin sat in his own chair and sighed. "Man that was a work out," he muttered.

"Try doing it with a cold," Nick retorted.

"I have no pity for you," Kevin replied. "Going outside to shoot hoops in the middle of the night in a Canadian winter. You deserve every sniffle you suffer."

My chest was tight again so I pulled out the Bayer I'd bought and took one. Nick watched me open the bottle and take out the cotton ball, an undiscernable look on his face. After I'd down the pill, he looked away and shifted in his seat to reach for some tissues off the table in front of him.

After we'd all been showered and cleaned up and stuck into more presentable outfits it was off to do a quick interview with the local radio station. It was the usual stuff, call ins and questions about new material and concerts and what it was like being thrust into the spotlight as Backstreet Boys. I kept suppressing yawns. We all let Kevin talk a majority of the time - he'd only interrupt us if he had something to say anyways - and it led to a long evening. By the time we got back to the hotel that night, Nick and I were both exhausted.

"No hoops tonight," Nick muttered, crawling onto his bed in his pajamas and landing face-down on the pillow.

"Definitely not," I replied.

We both took more of the cold meds and went to sleep without much more conversation than that.

The next few days went pretty much the same way. We rehearsed and learned new choreography, did interviews and photoshoots and appearances around the city, including an autograph signing at a record store, and came back to the hotel only to take cold medication and crash into the pillows. The highlights of my days was getting a few minutes aside to call Leighanne or shoot her a quick email when I had access to a computer. Leighanne asked me each time how my cold was and I'd tell her how it felt like a band was around my chest and I'd blame the cold for making it hard to breathe during rehearsals.

"It's crazy," I told her on New Years Eve, "I don't remember a cold ever kicking my ass quite this hard before."

"Aw, poor Bri-bear," she said, "I wish I could kiss it better."

"I wish I could just kiss you," I answered, "That would make it better."

That night we were out in the streets with the rest of Canada it seemed as they counted down to the new year. Kevin, Howie, AJ, Nick and I were standing next to each other bundled up in our coats with scarves, hats, gloves, the whole nine yards, watching as the confetti flew and everyone went crazy. We did a short appearance on TV, singing All I Have to Give, which we were planning to release as the third official single from the album later in the month. After that, we all went inside to this party at the radio station and got ourselves drinks - even Nick - and we had some fun despite the cold - both the weather and the sick.

Around 11:45, Nick turned to me and he asked, "What's your resolution this year?"

I thought about it for a minute. "I dunno," I replied, "I guess to make it to next year."

"That's a stupid resolution," Nick teased.

"At least I know I won't break it," I joked.

"I'ma eat less twinkies this year," Nick decided.

"Now that's a stupid resolution."

Nick grinned, "I know. Just saying it made me want a twinkie." He took a sip of the drink he held in his hand. It was bright blue, and reminded me of raspberry Kool Aid. He looked out at the people in the street, "It's funny," he said.

"What is?" I asked, looking out, too.

"The people," Nick answered. There was a vast assortment of people in the street below. Some of them were wearing those goofy goggles with the numbers 1998 so their eyes peeked out of the loops of the 9's. Confetti flew everywhere, noise makers, and children up on their fathers' shoulders. "It's just funny. It's a new year, a new chance, and everyone's so damn thankful about that, you know? How can so many of us have fucked up so bad in 1997 that we want 1998 to come so badly?"

I smiled at Nick because sometimes he's really wise, and I'm not always sure if he means to be or if it just happens by accident. I reached over and patted his back. "You're a good kid, Nick," I told him.

He looked at me and smiled, then raised his glass to me, "To getting to next year?" he asked.

I laughed, "To less twinkies."

"Hopefully you'll do better keeping yours than mine," Nick laughed. "I gotta go find me a woman to kiss at midnight," he declared, and he bounded off to find a girl.

I turned back to the window and looked out at the sky. Leighanne and I had agreed that at midnight we'd both look at the moon and know the other person was looking up at it, too. I swished my drink in my hand and stared up at it, thinking about her and about what the future would be like with her. I tried to picture myself married, and it was hard. But then again it had once been hard to picture myself in a position like I was now - a Backstreet Boy. Jeez, I'd dreamed of a day like this all my life. I smiled, remembering myself sitting in my room as a kid thinking about how one day I'd be grown up. Getting married wasn't as scary as growing up because I didn't have to do it alone. The more I thought about the idea, the more comfortable I became with it.

Maybe even excited.

I heard the people begin the countdown and I stared up at the moon.

"Ten!"

It was going to be a crazy year...

"Nine!"

But I couldn't wait.

"Eight!"

After I'd asked Leighanne to marry me, I'd never be lonely feeling again...

"Seven!"

...and next year, I'd be standing in some city somewhere next to her...

"Six!"

...and at midnight we'd kiss instead of staring up at the moon...

"FIVE!"

...wishing and thinking.

"FOUR!"

My resolution to make it to next year was a good one, I decided.

"THREE!"

I had a lot of growing up to do over the next twelve months, and it was going to be a tough year.

"TWO!"

But I was ready for it. I was ready to become a man. So I closed my eyes and promised myself:

"ONE!"

No matter what kind of growing up I have to do this year... I will make it to 1999.

"HAPPY NEW YEAR!"