Epilogue
Three days
later
It was a cold, rainy day, and the cemetery was dark and
dismal. The tall, new marble headstone
did not look shiny and beautiful, but dull and stark. The atmosphere seemed to be a perfect match
for the mood of the people who stood in front of the headstone, their tears
mixing with the raindrops that fell from the cloudy sky.
That could have been us, Leighanne thought, as she
watched the video for Eminem’s latest single, “Stan”, on MTV.
She glanced over at Brian, who had dozed off to sleep, and turned
off the television, sending the hospital room into silence.
It had been three days since she had found Brian, and he was doing
much better. His prognosis had been grim
at first, for he was dehydrated, malnourished, and bleeding to death from the
inside, but after successful surgery to repair the internal injuries caused by
his beating and many IV’s full of fluids and nutrients, he was predicted to
make a full recovery.
Meanwhile, AJ lay in a hospital bed across the country in
California, slowly getting better as well.
He had been taken off the respirator and attached to an oxygen tank
instead to help him breathe with his still-healing lung, and although he was
sore and weak, his doctors expected him to recover as well.
Brendan was also in the hospital, recuperating from his
injury. And as soon as he did, he would
be taken straight to jail to await his trial on the charges of kidnapping and
two counts of attempted murder. Howie
could not wait until Brendan was taken to jail, for they had seen his name on a
chart outside of one of the doors just down the hall from AJ’s fifth-floor
room. Although Howie was sure he was in
restraints and too weak to do anything anyway, it made him nervous knowing that
the man who had kidnapped Brian and attacked AJ was so nearby.
Besides Brendan, the police had also tracked down a man by the
name of Sonny Forrester, who was the owner of the house Brian had been found
in, and were holding him in custody too.
Overall, it seemed things were going to be okay. They weren’t good, but they could have been
a lot worse. Howie knew they had been
lucky.
***
Later that day, Nick, Kevin, and Howie were walking down the hall
of the fifth floor at the hospital, on their way to the elevator, when suddenly, Nick heard a chorus of high-pitched
squeals.
The three of them turned around to see a group of five or six girls,
about thirteen or so, running towards them and shrieking, “Ohmygod, ohmygod, it’s the Backstreet
Boys!!”
Kevin groaned. Howie
sighed. But Nick grinned.
“Ohmygod, can we, like, have your, like, autographs?!” one little
girl asked breathlessly.
“Well, girls, we don’t really-“ Kevin started, but Nick
interrupted him.
“Of course you can!” he said, smiling at them.
They all broke into squeals again and dug around in their purses
for pens and something for them to sign.
The three guys signed autographs for each girl. It was then that one of them asked, “Hey,
like, where’s Brian and AJ?”
Kevin and Howie exchanged glances. They had not yet held a press conference
concerning what had happened, so they weren’t sure whether to tell the girls
the truth now or wait.
Nick had a better idea.
“Well, Brian’s here in the hospital,” he said. “He got hurt.”
Panic spread across their little faces. “Ohmygod!
Is he, like, gonna be okay?!”
“Yeah, he’s gonna be fine,” Nick assured them. “But I’m sure he’d love it if you all would
go to his room and cheer him up.”
“Ohmygod, really?!” they squealed, their eyes lighting up.
“Sure,” Nick said, grinning devilishly. “His room’s right on this floor,
actually. Number 508.”
“Ohmygod, thank you!” they shouted and raced down the hall, one
girl turning back to yell, “I love you, Nick!”
Nick just grinned… and waited.
Seconds later, he heard the familiar chorus of teenybopper squeals
coming from Room 508.
And then came Brendan’s scream.
Kevin and Howie burst out laughing as they realized what
Nick had just done. But Nick just shook
his head and tsked.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell him there are prices to fame?”
The End
