By Julie
Fourteen-year-old
Charisma Delaney walked down the bus aisle and slid into her customary seat,
across the aisle from her best friend, Mara Jacobs.
“Hey,
Charisma,” Mara said, smiling.
“Hey,
Mar,” Charisma replied. She and Mara
had been best friends since they were ten, when Charisma’s family had first
moved into the house across the street from Mara’s family, in the small town of
Briarwood, Illinois.
As
the bus pulled away from Briarwood Middle School, where Charisma and Mara were
eighth graders, Charisma stared out the window, watching as the school property
passed by and was replaced with barren cornfields, looking brown and desolate
now that winter was coming.
It
was a Friday afternoon in mid October, 1997, and Charisma couldn’t wait to get home
and start the weekend. School had just
started two months ago, but she had been counting the days until Christmas
break for weeks, and that wouldn’t happen for another two months.
“Charisma!”
Mara squealed suddenly, jolting Charisma out of her thoughts.
“What?”
Charisma asked, turning around to face her friend.
“This
is that new song I was telling you about.
By that new group.” Mara motioned
towards the ceiling of the bus, where the speakers were. The radio was on, and Charisma could hear a
pop song playing. It was unfamiliar to
her, but she liked how it sounded.
“What
new group?” she asked.
“Um…
I can’t remember what they’re called,” Mara replied, thinking. “It’s Back-something Boys, I think.”
“What’s
the song called?” Charisma asked.
“’Quit
Playing Games’,” Mara responded matter-of-factly. “It’s good, huh?”
“Yeah,
it is,” Charisma agreed. She liked the
beat of the song, and the guys who were singing it had great voices.
“I’m
gonna go turn on MTV when I get home.
Maybe they’ll play the video. I
want to see if the group is cute or not,” Mara said, grinning.
“Yeah,”
Charisma laughed.
A
few minutes later, the bus lurched to a stop in front of Charisma’s house. She and Mara grabbed their bookbags and
climbed off the bus.
“See
ya later, Mara!” Charisma called, as Mara headed across the street to her
house.
“Bye!”
Mara shouted back, waving, as Charisma walked up her driveway towards her front
door.
When
she got inside, Charisma dropped her bag just inside the front door, kicked off
her shoes, and took off her jacket, leaving everything lying in a heap on the
floor. She was home alone, like always,
for both her parents worked until at least five, and she had no brothers or
sisters.
Charisma
decided that watching MTV sounded like a good idea, so she did just that. “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls was
playing. Charisma rolled her eyes. She had been caught up in the “girl power”
phase earlier that year too, but it was getting old by now, and she had heard
“Wannabe” so often she wanted to scream.
When
the video ended, a new video began to play.
Right away, Charisma recognized the music. It was “Quit Playing Games”, the new song
she had just heard. The video showed
five different guys sitting around at what looked to be a playground.
As
the screen flashed each of their faces, Charisma saw that they were cute. The first one to sing lead had very blue
eyes, short, wavy, light brown hair, and high cheekbones. He was hot, and he had a great voice too. But it was the next one who sang, after the
first chorus, who Charisma took note of.
He was also very cute, tall, with floppy blonde hair and blue eyes.
Suddenly,
Charisma was struck with deja vu. He
looked startlingly familiar to her, as did two of the other guys, two Latino
ones. And then it hit her where she
had seen them before. They were the
three boys from her dream.
***