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Author's Chapter Notes:
Oh my god...SHE LIVES! Risen from the ashes of one hell of a school year Jaded Fae walks again! This time she has left Long Island and its community college to a pretty state college. Ohhhhh... Or...Oooooooneonta. Yeah...one sleepless night plus never ending papers creates a tired Vickie. But! It also creates new chapters to a story neglected! Do me a favor though guys, if you see a typo, tell me. I'm extremely dyslexic and it's made worse by being tired, which means it screws up my ability to spell and function grammar correctly. My stories are like rivers anyway, always changing as I am forever editing. So do let me know. :) Anyway I hope you enjoy this and I'm hoping that I can give you guys more chapters soon! Carpe Diem!

And as always, please please please please please please review. Heh...Hemingway even shows up in my fanfiction. And if you get that reference you get a cookie shaped like your favorite BSB.

Oh! And I?m writing this story with Kevin in it. I know the douche fuck left the band but I?m way too lazy to edit him out, so let?s just pretend he didn?t leave so Vickie can have peace of mind while writing this, LoL..
A.J. was unable to sleep. He tossed and turned and by four in the morning both his fitted sheet and mattress pad had been torn from the mattress itself from his restlessness. The night was unusually cold for Malibu but keeping the windows closed was out of the question. He needed to feel the breeze on his skin in order to feel alive.

He lay on top of his blankets, unmoving and staring up at the ceiling. Slowly he counted to himself. “One...two...three...four...” His own tired effort to fall into sleep.

The night haunted him. During the day there were things to keep him occupied, or rather to keep his mind occupied, but at night there was nothing, nothing but the dull ache that lay within him, a slow pain that ate at his heart and taunted at his soul.

There are things in life that you never expect to happen to you or any of your loved ones. Lightning striking you is one of those things. Someone you love being kidnaped is another.



The clock read 8:07 when the phone rang, morning light swept through the curtains and spilled like milk across the floor. A.J.’s hands created a shadow as he reached for the cordless.

“Hello?” He adjusted the receiver on his face.

“Hi A.J..”

“Nicky?” A.J. sat straight up, sleep no longer an option, he knew that voice, had to!

“No, I wish...it’s Aaron.”

To say his heart dropped was an understatement, A.J. was simply crushed. “You sound just like him over the phone.”

“I know, sorry.” He heard Aaron sigh. “I’m sorry to call you, but my step-mom thinks it’ll be a good idea to have everyone over for dinner...see...dad isn’t doing too well and she thinks that maybe having everyone there might cheer him up.”

“Everyone won’t be there.” A.J. wiped a tear that was threatening to slip from his eye.

“I know. Nicky won’t be there. But it’s important for us to be strong and support each other too. So maybe she isn’t far from the right idea.” A.J. could hear Aaron shuffling about through the phone. A small sob escaped the young boy’s throat.

“Aaron? You okay?”

“I never told him I loved him.” Aaron who was still an innocent child in so many ways broke down, “he was my brother and always there and I never thought that I would lose him and I thought that if I needed to I could always tell him but I never did...I never told him. And now I may never see him again and he doesn’t know.”

“Hey..hey...it’s okay..” A.J.’s heart was breaking again, “he knows Aaron, I know he does. You don’t need to tell someone you love them for them to know.” But Aaron was still crying and A.J. knew that nothing he could say would help ease the pain save bringing his brother home. It also didn’t help that he felt the same way. He never told Nick how much he loved him either.




The china her stepmother picked out after the wedding was very pretty. Angel studied the butterfly design carefully as she set out the plates around the large dining room table. Bob had thought his wife insane when she insisted on buying so many plates but Ginger was big on family and told him pointedly: “everyone gets their own plate and you never know whom you’re going to have over for dinner or how many will come. I turn no one away.” They had yet to use more plates then there were Carter’s and it saddened Angel to think that this had to be the first occasion.

She always understood the importance of family, but unlike Ginger, Angel hadn’t grown up with the everyday Leave it to Beaver type setting. Her stepmother was lucky in that her family was more than a little normal. Angel had only a few sparse memories of her family ever being conventional.

“But then again, what is normal?” She thought to herself as she put down another plate. How she grew up was normal to her. Neither she nor her brothers and sisters knew of anything else really. The brief years before Nick was famous was so far in the past for all five Carter children that it was more like a nice bedtime story they remembered let alone how life used to be.

She placed another plate down and peered into the kitchen. B.J. and Leslie were helping their step-mom with the food; Ginger had opted to order out rather than cook for twelve.

The four remaining Backstreet Boys and both Kristin and Leighanne were due at the house in less than an hour.

Angel placed down the last plate and set out the forks, knives, and napkins. Counting the plates to make sure she had enough she saw that the number was wrong.

She had set out thirteen plates by accident. She had set a place for Nick.

With her head hanging low, Angel cleared that last place setting. Looking up she caught Aaron’s eyes. He knew what she had did and an understanding passed through them with use of their twin intuition. But they couldn’t hold each other’s gazes, so each looked away–Aaron to the wall and Angel to the china cabinet where she put Nick’s plate back.

Sadness settled onto the room like a dense fog.



“Here.” A video cassette tape was dropped into his lap. Ever since Nick caught Padrone off guard, the captor had given up on walking into the room only when his prisoner was asleep.

“What is this?” Nick’s voice was meek, he was afraid and Padrone knew that. In fact he played on Nick’s weaknesses, taking each and rolling them in his mind like dough or silly putty. Often he wouldn’t answer Nick’s questions; Padrone knew the young man had quite a vivid imagination and the less answers he gave meant the more Nick’s mind made up its own. In that way he broke the singer down also, by turning his own mind against him.

He grumbled, “never you mind,” and left, slamming and locking the door with a finality that shook Nick’s nerves and set a new stream of tears rolling down his cheeks.

Slowly Nick advanced to the small television, after so many days of it not working he had given up on it. However, Padrone was sneaky and Nick had a suspicion that the man had fixed the television, most likely when his captive was asleep.

Sure enough, when Nick pressed the power button, the screen came to life, though only with fuzz and lines that streamed across the set. Somehow that sight was sadly familiar to him. The picture was smashed together and without any sound, the exact way Nick’s life seemed to be lately.

It took a few tries but the tape finally pushed into the old VCR and with the press of the play button the lines and fuzz dissipated and what Nick saw instead broke him down even more.

Somehow Padrone had video taped his siblings outside on their father’s porch. And they were holding each other and crying. He heard Leslie’s voice over the sobs.

“God let us find him please...let us find our Nicky...”