Nick Carter ran across the lawn and toward the front door, a mob of teenage girls behind him. "BJ!" he yelled through the open window, hoping his sister would hear him. "Open the door!"
The door opened and Nick ran inside, then slammed the door shut and locked it behind him. The swarm of fans stopped a few feet from the door and slowly began to dwindle as they realized that Nick wasn't coming back outside.
BJ shook her head and laughed as Nick flopped down in a chair in the living room, still trying to catch his breath. "What they find so wonderful about you, I will never know," she said, sitting in the armchair across the room from her older brother. She ran a hand through her long blond hair and picked up a magazine that had been lying on the arm of her chair.
Flipping through the magazine, BJ stopped at an article about a little girl with cancer, and her involvement with the Make-A-Wish foundation. "Hey, Nick," she said, quickly skimming the article. "There's a little girl in this article that wants to meet you guys, how come you wouldn't do it?"
Nick stood up and took the magazine from his sister, reading the article with interest. He froze and a look of anger crossed his face when he read the end of the article.
"What the hell do they mean, the managers told her we refused to meet her?" he said, closing the magazine and tossing it back on the arm of the chair. "I don't know about the other guys, but I never knew anything about it! No one told me a damn thing!"
"You think the managers would have lied?" BJ asked.
"Obviously they did, unless this whole article's fake!" Nick said. "I guess the only way I'll know is to ask." A silence fell over the room and Nick left, going downstairs to his room.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Nick sat down on the edge of his bed and reached his hand out to Mikey, one of his two pugs. Mikey trotted over and licked Nick's hand.
"What do you think, boy?" Nick asked. "Should I call someone and find out what's going on?" Mikey just looked at him for a minute, then jumped up on the bed and went to sleep.
Nick sighed, then picked up the phone on the stand next to his bed and dialed his manager's cell phone number. "Might as well find out what's going on," he muttered to himself as he waited for an answer.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Caitlin McHale came in the front door and threw her backpack in the corner. Stopping in front of the full-length mirror in the hall, she took off the hat she'd been wearing all day and looked at her thinning hair. Rolling her eyes with distaste, she put the hat back on and went in her bedroom, leaving the door open.
Caitlin sat down at the small desk under the only window in the room and pulled out a blue wire-bound notebook. Taking a pencil out of the cup on the desk, she opened the notebook and began to write.
I guess I'll never get to meet the Backstreet Boys. Their managers said that they didn't want to see me. They always say they love their fans. If they love them, why won't they meet them?
Caitlin was interrupted by her mother. It was time to leave for her next chemotherapy treatment. Caitlin sighed, closed the notebook and stood up to leave.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Nick screamed into the phone. "You had no right to make that decision without telling us!" BJ stood in the doorway, wondering what was being said on the other end of the line.
After a brief pause, Nick continued yelling into the phone. "What made you think we wouldn't find out? There was an article about it in a national magazine, for God's sake! If I ever find out about you pricks doing something like this again, your sorry ass will be in court so fast you won't know what hit you!" He slammed the receiver down, then looked over and saw BJ standing in the doorway.
BJ came into the room, arms crossed over her chest. "So?" she asked.
Nick sat back against the headboard of his bed and pulled his knees up to his chest, giving BJ a place to sit. "The girl's name is Caitlin McHale," he said. "She's 10 years old. When the Make-A-Wish foundation called our a-hole managers, they told them we'd refused to get involved."
BJ was confused. "Why would they do something like that?"
Nick shrugged. "I don't have a clue, but I'm going to find out, and I'm going to make it up to that little girl."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"OK guys, take a break, good work!" Fatima said, walking across the studio and picking up a water bottle that sat on a stool in the corner. She unscrewed the cap on the bottle, then took a drink. "Be back here in half an hour and we'll go over the changes I made to the Everybody routine."
Nick sat down on a bench that leaned against the back wall of the studio. Directly across the huge room from him was a wall of entirely mirrors. In the corner where Fatima stood, there was a huge stereo system, and speakers were located near the ceiling in every corner.
"Hey, Nick, you've been in here for close to 3 hours, don't you want a change of view?" Fatima joked, sitting down next to him to tie her shoes.
He shook his head. "Nah," he said, "I'm too lazy to go anywhere. I'm waiting for the guys to get back. I need to talk to them about something."
Fatima shook her head and stood up, grabbing her duffel bag from the end of the bench. "You guys work too damn hard sometimes," she said. "Anyway, I'm gone, see you in half an hour!" Nick nodded and waved casually as Fatima left the room.
Nick slumped down a little on the bench, thinking of the little girl who hadn't been able to meet them. I will find her, he thought to himself. I will.
He was still thinking when Brian and AJ came back into the studio. "Hey, Nicky," Brian said, sitting down and opening the bottle of water he'd just bought. "Ya know, when Fatima tells us to take a break, that also means we're allowed to leave the room!" He drank almost half the bottle of water in one gulp.
Nick looked over at Brian and shrugged. "Oh well," he said. "I was just thinking about stuff."
Brian faked a look of shock. "NICKY! You were thinking! I'm so proud!" Then, turning to AJ, he continued, "Did you hear that? Our little Nicky has been thinking!"
~*~WORK IN PROGRESS~*~