Chapter 1:
Dark Highway
Nick Carter tossed his bag
carelessly on the floor beside his bunk. All he wanted to do was sleep. He’d
started coming down with something after leaving
He was preparing to crawl
into bed when Brian came up behind him, absently humming the tune from “Back To
Your Heart” while looking intently at a schedule for the next day.
“Man we are booked,” he
said with a shake of his head. “I don’t know about you Frack, but I’ll be ready
for our break.”
“Yeah,” Nick muttered. “Me
too.”
Brian looked up from his
paper and frowned slightly at his friend. “You know,” he said thoughtfully,
“Some of our harmonies seemed a little off tonight. Did you notice anything?”
Nick shot him an annoyed
glance. He was exhausted and sick and didn’t want to hear Brian’s criticism.
“Don’t you mean to say I was off?”
Brian’s blue eyes opened a
little wider. “It was just an observation. You’re usually right on target.”
“I don’t need to hear this
from you right now, if you don’t mind.” Nick closed his eyes, feeling
his headache double in intensity.
“Well you don’t have to
jump on me. I was just trying to help. Is something wrong?”
Nick rolled his eyes and
used his superior height to look down condescendingly on his shorter friend.
“Nothing is wrong, Brian,” he said patronizingly. “I just don’t need you
mothering me all the time. I can take care of things myself. Please go
away and leave me alone.”
Brian’s concern changed
quickly to irritation. He was tired and his temper was short. “I didn’t know it
was a crime to be concerned about your friends. Why don’t you grow up a
little?”
“In case you missed what I
said a few seconds ago, let me say it again. Shut up and go away.”
Brian was taken aback. A
tiny voice in the back of his head was telling him over and over to shut up and
drop it, but right then as far as he was concerned that little voice could go
straight to hell. “You know what?” he said angrily. “I am so tired of your
shit. You have been blowing everyone off for the past three days and I want to
know what the hell is your problem!”
“Brian,” Nick said slowly
and deliberately. “Fuck. Off.”
Now Brian was furious. It
wasn’t like him to lose it so quickly, but tonight just wasn’t his night. It
never was the day after he let A.J. take him out partying. “You know what?
Screw you. I swear, you can be such a whiny brat Nick, and as far as I’m
concerned you can just go straight to hell and not come back. I don’t want
anything to do with you and your ‘pop star’ attitude. I am so glad this tour is
almost over, because dealing with you another day is just asking too
much!” He crumpled up the paper and threw it forcefully at Nick’s feet and
stormed off to the living area of the bus.
Nick closed his eyes and
got into his bed. I’m sorry, he thought miserably. Shit, Carter. You
really did well on that, didn’t you? Your own best friend can’t stand the sight
of you. Way to go. He sniffled a little and wiped his nose on his sleeve,
unable to shake the disgust in Brian’s voice. He never yelled at him like that.
With a forlorn sigh, Nick pulled out more aspirin from a pocket of his bag and
popped two into his mouth, knowing it wouldn’t do him any good. As he was about
to doze off, Kevin, A.J. and Howie finally made their way noisily onto the bus.
Nick groaned. He was never going to get any sleep.
“Yo, yo Howie!” A.J.
called.
“Yeah, man?” Howie said,
tossing a bag up onto his bunk.
“Did you see how
hard it’s raining out there now?”
“I walked through it
didn’t I?” He said shooting an exasperated grin in A.J.’s
direction. “I’m as wet as you are.”
“Isn’t
“Not as well as I’d like,”
their driver said with a lopsided grin. “We’re gonna take it slow out of here,
just to be safe.”
“Slow?” Kevin interjected,
feigning shock. “You? Somebody better buy the devil a parka.”
“I think A.J. already has
one,” he cracked.
Kevin guffawed loudly.
“I’m gonna tell him you said that.”
“You do and I’ll take you
to
“I think we’ve been
there!” Howie yelled at them from the opposite end of the bus.
The oldest Backstreet Boy
snickered as he walked on through the sleeping area. The engine of their bus
roared to life under his feet, engaging in that familiar thrum that had become
the song of their lives. Mile after mile the highway rolled steadily on beneath
them, so much a part of them that it almost seemed like a living thing. Kevin
smirked at the thought. The real Backstreet Boys: Nick, A.J., Howie, Brian,
Kevin, and The Road. He exhaled a deep breath through narrowly parted lips. It
was definitely too late (or was it too early?) to try and be profound. He
paused by Nick’s bunk, seeing that the curtain was already drawn. “That was
quick, Kaos,” he remarked, rapping his knuckles lightly on the outer edge.
“Come on, Nick, we’ve got to have a group meeting before you can crash.”
“Don’t bother with him,”
Brian said disgustedly as he came over to stand with his cousin. “He is in one
hell of a mood.”
“Is that so?” Kevin raised
an eyebrow, silently asking what was the matter. Instead of Brian though, he
got a reply from Nick.
“Kevin, it would be great
if I could skip this one. I’m really tired.”
“It’d be really great if
he’d drop dead,” Brian muttered quietly under his breath. Nick heard him
anyway, and behind his curtain his mouth fell open. Brian’s words were like a
kick in the stomach.
Kevin elbowed his cousin
sharply in the ribs. Brian grunted and then threw up his arms. “I’m outta
here,” he said disgustedly, and walked back to the table in the back where
Howie and A.J. had already made themselves comfortable, chatting about nothing.
“Dude, what is up with you
and Nick?” A.J. asked him as he sat down.
“Oh, he’s just being
difficult.” Brian rubbed his eyes.
“You’re looking a little
tired, Rok,” Howie observed.
“Aren’t you?” Brian
replied.
“Of course. But you look
like you’ve been run over by a cement truck. Twice.”
“It’s the new look. I’m
setting a trend,” he joked.
A.J. grinned and slapped
him on the back. “Now that is a look that even I would not try. And that should
tell you something right there.”
Brian chuckled and then
sighed. “Maybe I was a little hard on him. We’re all tired this late in the
tour, who are we kidding? I lost my temper.”
“What did you say to him?”
Howie asked sympathetically.
“I hollered at him. I was
an ass. But so was he.”
“He has been acting a
little weird since
“Well, I’ve asked him a
couple of times, and except for just now when he told me to fuck off, he said
he was absolutely fine.”
A.J. removed his feet from
the table and let them drop to the floor with a thud. He leaned forward and
placed his palms flat on the table with a loud thwack. “He told you to fuck off?” he asked,
incredulous.
“Yeah.”
“He says that to me all of
the time, but I’ve never heard him say it to you and mean it.” A.J. said. “That
is interesting.”
“That’s what you call it,”
Brian muttered, shaking his head. He glanced at his watch. “What the hell is
Kevin doing?” he wondered, and angled his head to look over towards the bunks,
where he assumed his cousin was still standing, trying to convince Nick to show
himself.
“Don’t sweat it, you’ll
both get over it.” A.J. said swinging his feet back on the table.
Howie gave him a Look.
“Bone, do you ever wash your socks?” he said in disgust. “You could probably
register those things as a new species of life. McLeanians.
Found only in the darkest reaches of A.J. McLean’s four month old laundry.
Gross!” he made a terrible face as A.J. tried shoving his feet in Howie’s lap.
“Get your scrawny ass legs away from me!”
“Whoo!” A.J. whooped with
a grin. “Howie D. has spoken!”
Howie laughed and shook
his head. A.J. had that knack for making sheer exhaustion the most amusing part
of what they did. “What the hell are you on Bone? Do you know how long
we’ve been awake? Wait, don’t answer. If I hear, I’ll cry.”
A.J. tried to look serious
for a moment and failed. “Let’s just say I am feeling a success high right now.
We are on top of the world right now, and I am determined to enjoy every
minute. Nothing is gonna knock me down, especially you guys.”
* * *
Kevin gave up trying to
coax Nick out of his bunk. He was beginning to suspect that the younger man was
sick, and with more than just a cold or a touch of the flu. Nick had that habit
if denying that he felt bad until it started to get serious. Why he did it,
Kevin didn’t know, though it probably stemmed through too much ribbing from the
other fellas when he was younger. Being sick and being away from home had not
been something Nick had dealt well with in their earlier years. I guess we
can save the meeting until the morning, Kevin thought. He poked his head
into the driver’s seat before he headed to the back.
“How’re the roads,
“Not too bad,” the driver
replied. “Rain is still coming down pretty hard, so it’s slow going. But we’ll
get there eventually.”
Kevin allowed his gaze to
drift to the flat, dark highway. It was fairly deserted; he could only a lone
set of headlights from the other direction off in the distance. It was actually
a little creepy, and he felt a shiver run down his spine. Chalking it up to
exhaustion, he said goodnight.
He had not gotten more
than a few steps when the hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up, and
a strange sensation overtook him, almost like he was flying. Before he knew
what hit him, Kevin was slammed forcibly into a wall of bunks. He had barely
registered that something had gone wrong when the bus swerved again. This time,
another body was hurled at him, a tangled mass of flailing legs and blonde
hair.
“Nick!” he yelled at his
band mate who was suddenly on top of him. Nick had been on the verge of sleep
when he was thrown, and as he was catapulted from his state of near-sleep he
struck his head brutally against the wall.
“Are you ok?” Kevin cried,
trying to get a grip on the boy. Nick never had the chance to answer.
The sound of screeching
brakes and splintering glass ripped through the starless night, skewing that
steady musical thrum into a high pitched scream that destroyed the careful
harmony the years had created and scattered it mercilessly to the darkness,
where no one would find it again.
Brian stood up from the
table. “I’m gonna go see what the hell is taking Kevin so long,” he called over
his shoulder to A.J. and Howie. The words were not even fully uttered when the
ground was yanked out from underneath him. He was flung to the ground like a
rag doll, landing painfully on his side.
“What the…” A.J. cried as
he was thrown from his seat. He had barely struck the floor when things went
bad.
In a moment that his brain
would never allow himself to remember, Brian was flung mercilessly against side
of the bus, where he felt an explosion against his back as the glass of the
window shattered upon his impact with it. As the ground came rushing up to meet
him, he was dimly aware of the shock of the cold rain hitting his torn skin.
And then he could remember no more.
***
