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Chapter Eight

Minutes after Zaina had found out the portion of her past, she had fled out to the group tour bus. The acknowledgement of the girls actually really knowing her scared her. It was no wonder they’d been looking at her like that. Zaina shuddered, hoping that the guys would send them on their way and not invite them backstage. She hoped that the fact that she’d run away without speaking to them would be enough to tell them that she wanted nothing to do with them. Knowing her luck though, the guys would invite her backstage, being the friendly people that they were, and drag her butt out, scolding her for being so rude. And then, to make matters worse, he’d make her talk to them…or try to anyways. But under the conditions that she was in, killer bees couldn’t and wouldn’t make her talk to the two freaks who’d shown up out of nowhere. Her life had been so simple and stress free until Chicago. She wondered why they’d been scheduled for the city. Better yet, she wondered why she hadn’t gone with her instincts and gone ahead of the guys to the next city and just waited for them there for a day or two.

Zaina let herself fall freely onto a bed. She was confused and afraid. Things would be so much better if she could just remember something, anything. Even a flashback to prove how close she had once been with the girls. She had nothing though. Taking in a jagged sob, Zaina rolled over, burying her face into a pillow. She smelled A.J’s cologne faintly on it, which made her cry harder. Things were going so wrong for her these days. She hadn’t been in a relationship since…she didn’t know when, if ever. A.J. still looked at her as a little sister as far as she could tell, and now what was happening on that very night. It was all becoming too much for her to handle, and she didn’t know how much longer she could without snapping. She didn’t want to snap either. Not when the Boys had done nothing but try to help her out. She didn’t want to take her frustrations out on them, but knew that sooner or later, she would. Zaina hoped that when the time came, she was able to control herself. She didn’t want her best friends to think that she was ungreatful for everything that they’d done for her. She didn’t want to make them feel bad for anything. Again, Zaina thought about how much she adored A.J. and wanted to be with him. The smell of him made her skin tingle. The sight of him made her breath catch in her throat. She got nervous whenever he was near, but somehow always composed herself to where she could act normally around him. She had it bad for him. She would be the first to admit it, but she felt she covered her attraction enough so that nobody else could tell.

“What’s so wrong with me that he doesn’t like me,” Zaina said aloud, “Am I really that horrible?”

She’d like to think that she wasn’t, but no signs were going against her negative thoughts about her image lately. Again, Zaina sighed dramatically. She figured that all she could do was wait things out and see how it all went and fell together. Waiting was one thing that she hated, but something she’d have to learn to deal with. It was a natural part of life.

~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“I wonder what’s gotten into her,” Nick said aloud as soon as Zaina had run off so quickly.

Darcy crossed her arms over her chest, trying to hide the wounded expression on her face.

“She acted like she barely knows us,” she said, “What, is she too good to be our friends now because she’s living her life in leisure and comfort?”

The remaining for guys again looked at each other, their facial expressions telling that there was something that they knew and Darcy and Bianca didn’t. Darcy hated not knowing things.

“What?” she asked, trying to look mean, hoping that it would scare them into telling her what was going on, “What are you hiding?”

Kevin and Brian’s eyes widened at the girls accusations. They’d just met her not more than about ten minutes ago. The girl was definitely brave and fearless, that was for sure. The guys all had a feeling that despite the girl’s size, she was somebody that you didn’t want to make made.

“Um, you might want to come with us.” Kevin finally said, “We’ll explain everything to you.”

“What’s there to explain?” Darcy asked, wanting to know right then and there.

“Just follow me.” Kevin repeated, “The rest of you, please try to find Zaina and talk to her.”

The others ran ahead of Kevin, breaking off into different directions to search for their frightened friend. Kevin started walking away quickly. Darcy and Bianca looked at one another before quickly following after him.

“Dude, could you walk any faster,” Darcy yelled after him, and then looked behind her at Bianca struggling to power walk in her heels, “And you so aren’t helping lagging behind like that. Next time, leave the damn heels at home.”

“I’m trying,” Bianca whined, dragging her feet while attempting to pick up her pace a little bit before Darcy tried to pick her up and carry her.

He led them well into the backstage area and down some stairs leading outside. Kevin walked briskly to a bus, punching in a code and stepping onside. He held the door open for the girls and they followed him. Bianca was in awe at how amazing his tour bus was. It was more than amazing. It was something that no words could describe. Darcy, on the other hand, didn’t look impressed. Bianca assumed that she had seen the inside of the bus or something similar before. Probably from photos or breaking into it during a show. She didn’t know and didn’t ask questions anymore. Kevin closed the door behind the two girls after they’d passed.

“Have a seat,” he said, sitting down at a booth at a small table. The girls slowly sat down on a small couch across from him feeling slightly self-conscious.

“Now will you tell me what the hell is going on here?” Darcy demanded, surprising Bianca. This was the moment that they’d waited for their whole lives, or at least the past eleven years, and Darcy was being less than friendly toward them, “Why is little Miss High and Mighty acting like she’s never seen us in her life.”

Kevin looked at Zaina’s old friends for a moment, deciding how the best way to tell them what he knew would be. He could tell that they’d missed her and were ecstatic to have found her, but wounded that she was treating them like lepers.

“Is it such a hard question to answer? Gee, didn’t think that I’d be causing any thinking to be done.” Darcy remarked, sarcasm dripping from her voice, “Or are you too dumb to know how to answer me? I thought that it was Nick’s job to think when it wasn’t necessary. Guess it runs in the “family” though.”

Kevin looked startled, but soon recovered, laughing lightly to himself. Bianca was quietly scolding Darcy for being so blunt and rude. Darcy rolled her eyes, and he could tell that she wasn’t exactly paying much attention to her.

“You see,” he finally replied slowly, “Zaina told us about waking up in a crashed car. She said that she remembered nothing.”

“Temporary shock,” Darcy said matter o factly.

Kevin shook his head, “No, it’s more than that. She had no idea who we were when we picked her up…no clue as to anything around her. She’s suffering from amnesia, and still is all of these years later. That’s the reason that she doesn’t recognize you girls. What me and the guys have given her, that’s the only life that she knows.”

Bianca’s eyes widened in shock as she was fed the information about Abrianna, or Zaina, as the guys called her. Darcy too looked surprised. She wasn’t sure how to react to the news, but quickly recovered and went back to her old self.

“Since when are you Mr. Ph.D?” she asked, her tone cool and crisp.

“I’m not,” he admitted, “But I do know a thing or two about these kinds of injuries or head traumas.”

“And you didn’t even take her to a hospital to get her checked out?” Darcy asked incredulously.

“It didn’t seem necessary.” Kevin told her.

Darcy laughed bitterly, “Wow, you really are as dumb and clueless as Nick, aren’t you? Amnesia hardly makes somebody fine.”

“You don’t even know Nick,” Kevin defended the blonde, “So you have no right to talk about him like that, no matter how true or untrue it may be.”

Darcy rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. The thing was, she wasn’t sure what she was mostly upset about. The fact that Kevin hadn’t taken their friend to the hospital to get checked out, or the fact that she had so many mixed emotions running rapid throughout her body about them finally finding her, and she didn’t even realize that they existed on this earth.

“Thanks for taking such good care of her,” Bianca said, speaking for the first time in a long while.

“It was…is our pleasure,” Kevin replied with a smile.

It amazed him that such complete opposites were such close and good friends. Darcy seemed to be fun natured, but also sarcastic and very to the point…fearless, to sum it all up. Bianca just seemed to have a soft nature about her. Sweet, but he also had seen a blunt side of her and defensiveness. He’d heard her defending herself when Darcy was complaining about the boots that elevated her height a good five inches.

“Well, if you ladies will excuse me,” Kevin said, standing up, “I need to go and find A.J. and have a little chat with him. Feel free to stick around, and please think about something for me. I know that you girls are thrilled to have found Zaina. Please think about touring with us. We’d all be more than happy to have you with us.”

Kevin opened the bus door and disappeared out into the night. Darcy and Bianca sat still and looked at each other. They had a lot of thinking to do and only a couple hours time to make up their mind.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“So, what do you think we should do?” Bianca asked Darcy.

The girls had since left the bus and were walking around out behind the venue and around the busses. A cool breeze blew, feeling good against Bianca’s skin. She could still hear people leaving the arena and was thankful that there were gates separating the parking lot area from where the guys were.

“I think that we should take Abrianna back home with us.” Darcy replied, “Her parents will want to know…no, they deserve to know, that their daughter is safe. Alex will be overjoyed and we won’t have to put up with his constant mourning any longer and we can make her learn to deal with her past life again.”

“We can’t do that to her,” Bianca protested, “She is comfortable where she’s at. She knows these people better than she knows us. She is close to them. We can’t just take her away from that.”

The two walked in silence, both thinking different thoughts about the situation. It was a really hard decision knowing what to do. They were all twenty-one years old now. Rightfully, they couldn’t force Abrianna to go back to her home that was less than thirty miles from them at that moment. She was well past old enough to make her own decisions.

“We should at least call her family and tell them that she is okay,” Darcy said, seeing Bianca’s point.

“I totally agree with that,” Bianca said, “And we have nothing going on right now. I just graduated two months ago from my chef program and you’re taking online classes at the moment. I say that we should take Kevin’s offer and tour with them. It would be a great experience, and we’d get to know Abrianna again.”

Darcy nodded, again agreeing with something that Bianca had said, a rare occasion to happen. The two walked a little further, not saying anything. They could hear crickets chirping, making a song of their own in the distance. The night was clear and the moon and stars cast a peaceful light among them. Suddenly, the two saw a figure step out of the last bus and slowly step down the stairs. She looked in their direction, right at them, and began to run.

“Abrianna,” Darcy yelled as she began to chase after the girl, “Abrianna, wait.”

“Here we go again,” Bianca muttered, quickly taking her shoes off this time and leaving them behind as she sprinted to catch up with Darcy.

“Abrianna,” they screamed in sync with one another, their voices echoing into the night sky.

The girl stopped and spun around. Darcy and Bianca caught up with her, completely out of breath. When they looked up, they could tell that she wasn’t happy with them by the way her eyes were glaring at them.

“That’s Zaina to you,” she told them coldly, “My name is Zaina.”

“Um, okay…” Darcy replied, “

You were Abrianna back when we were all friends…before you disappeared.”

“It’s not anymore,” Zaina snapped, “Don’t ever call me by that name again, do you understand me? Or do I need to be more clear?”

Bianca took a step backwards. The friend she knew had definitely changed personality wise with her amnesia. She wasn’t the sweet girl that she had known, but rather rude, to be honest.

“Kevin offered us to tour with ya’ll,” Darcy told her, “We can get to know each other again, and do stuff that we used to, like old times.”

Zaina looked less than pleased. She spun around and started to walk off again in a huff. She was so confused and everything was too much for her to handle right now. Again, the two ran after her, not about to give up on getting some answers out of her. She tried to ignore it, but they were like pesky bloodthirsty mosquitoes that just wouldn’t get the hint and bug off. Finally, she whipped around, fire shooting throughout her veins.

“Why won’t you just leave me alone?” she nearly yelled, “My life was fine until you showed up. So do me a favor and leave. Let me live my life the way I have been and forget this ever happened. Forget you ever saw me. We may have been friends way back whenever, but we aren’t anymore. We never will be. So don’t even try. It’s not going to happen.”

“Abri,” Bianca said, and then stopped catching herself slipping up, “Zaina, we—“

“I said get the hell back out of my life. You’ve already overstepped your boundaries by getting this far,” she repeated, and turned her back on them, walking away.

Bianca and Darcy stood for a moment letting what just happened catch up with them so they could comprehend it. They had only been trying to help, but the conversation ended in wondering what they had done that was so wrong.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“A.J.” Kevin yelled, seeing the crazy one of the group quickly slipping into his bus, “A.J, get your bony ass out here right now.”

Kevin had been searching for the second to youngest member of the group for close to an hour. It was obvious that he was trying to hide, and that’s exactly what he was doing. A.J. had been doing everything that he could to avoid Kevin. He knew that he was in for it, hence the reason he’d darted away. He was cornered now though. Kevin wanted to talk to him. There was no avoiding it. He was pounding on the door now. He wished that the noise would just stop and the man on the other side would disappear for a few more hours. A.J relently opened the door, and Kevin took no time at all to step inside the bus. A.J. shut his eyes, cringing, waiting for the hollering to start. He was really in for it this time around. He was surprised though when Kevin started speaking in a reasonable manner.

“Aje, what in the world was that reaction that we got all about when you saw Zaina in that photo?” he asked

A.J. shrugged. Kevin still didn’t know everything. The less he knew, the better, but the longer he stayed and pressed, the more he’d eventually find out.

“Answer me, A.J.” Kevin said firmly, “I’m losing my patients with you very quickly, and I know you hate it when I get mad.”

A.J. sighed, knowing that he’d avoided this conversation for three years now. It was time he dealt with the secret he’d been hiding.

“Okay,” A.J. replied, “I…recognized her in the picture as the girl we found.”

Kevin rolled his eyes, “Yeah, so did the rest of us. We didn’t completely freak out though.”

“The girls in the picture were the girls standing in front of us,” he continued, ignoring Kevin’s remark.

“Again, we all caught on to this.” Kevin told him, “In case you haven’t noticed, we aren’t all blind.”

A.J wished that Kevin would just let him speak without interrupting. The ore he cut in, the harder it was for A.J. to get to the part of why he’d acted the way he had.

“A few days after we found Zaina, I found a poster of her…a LOST poster, to be more specific. It must have been a few cities away from Chicago and blown over. Anyways, it was of Zaina, and, I kept it secret.”

Kevin’s eyes grew wide in fury and A.J. knew what was coming next. He had to think fast before the shouting match started.

“I…I didn’t want to lose her,” A.J. quickly said, “I’d grown attached to her and knew that if anybody found out, that it would get back to you. You would try to get the contact information to her family and ship her back. I just didn’t want to lose her right after we’d gotten her.”

Kevin’s expression softened just as quickly as it had grown angry. There may have even been a touch of sympathy painted over his features, but A.J. couldn’t completely tell and didn’t want to read too far into things.

“Besides,” he said softly, “Her picture was barely recognizable and the information was worn, torn and holed up. We couldn’t have read anything on it anyways.”

“Aje,” Kevin said, “I wouldn’t have made her go back home. For a few reasons. One, she was already legally adult. Legal enough to make her own choices. Two, she’d already adapted to living with us. Why would we have wanted to confuse her even more by thrusting her back into yet another life style. Besides, if what you say is true, and you couldn’t read the contact info, then, there really wouldn’t have been much we could have done anyways.”

A.J smiled in gratitude towards Kevin’s understanding. But then another thought came to his mind and started to nag at his brain, worrying him a lot. He’d even go as far to say that the idea was already stressing him after less than a minute.

“But now her friends are here. They’ll want to take her back with them.” He said

“Again, Zaina is well past old enough now to make her own choices. She or her friends can tell whoever they want that she is safe, but if Zaina chooses to stay, then that’s her choice. Besides, I already gave the girls an offer that I highly doubt they’ll be passing up. If they did, it would shock me.”

“What’s that?” A.J. asked, slightly afraid.

“I told them that they could tour with us. Believe me, Zaina is going to stay. They want to rebuild the friendship they had. They’re going to take me up on the offer. Just give it a day or two and they’ll be on the road with us.”

The way Kevin said this made him sound so sure of himself. A.J. smiled. He didn’t care what happened as long as his Zaina stayed. A.J’s head snapped up at the way he’d thought that. He’d thought of her as his Zaina. He liked the sound of it. But none the less, she was most likely going to stay, but with it, he knew, would come a lot of new challenges that they would all have to get used to and face.