Rachel lay on her stomach, watching the clouds drift under her. Being a fatie, she could float, and was therefore not afraid of falling.
"Hey Angel, come here. Doesn't that cloud look Leonardo di Caprio's head?"
Angel glided over on her Prentice glider, which was the Fatie equevalent of a car. Peering thoughtfully over the edge of the cloud, she stared at it.
"Not really," she remarked, sighing. "What is this obsession with him, anyway. You're acting like some sort of earth girl."
"Whatever. Anyway, have you looked at your gaurdianship papers yet?"
"No. I haven't had time. Have you? I'll look now," Angel decided, digging through her overly messy bag for the large brown envelope. "I know it's in here somewhere. Do you know who you got yet?" she asked, still searching.
"Yeah. You won't even believe who-"
"AHA! Here they are!" Angel yelled, waving the envelope over her head. Noticing Rachel's look, she subsided, looking slightly guilty. "Sorry. You were saying?"
You first. You won't even believe who I got!" Rachel said, her smile returning. In fact, she began to bear a distinct resemblance to the chesire cat from Alice in Wonderland.
"Who could be so great? I happen to know Leonardo di Caprio is taken," Angel teased, ripping open the envelope and quickly skimmed first page of the packet it contained. " I got a fourteen year old girl named Margeret. Now you."
"I got...drumroll please" Rachel used a small bit of magic for a drumroll sound. "I got Taylor Hanson."
"Come on guys! We've gotta practice!"Taylor Hanson yelled. His brothers ignored him completely. Isaac continued to stare wistefully out the window. Zac started humming "It's a Small World After All", and began to drum his feet against the legs of his stool.
Tay jumped out from behind his keyboard.
Guys, we've got to WORK!" he bellowed. Ike gave a start, jolted out of his daydream. Giving Tay a nasty look, he muttered "What?"
Tay glared back.
"We-have-to-work. I want to get out a new cd before I have gray hair."
"We're already releasing "3 Car Garage", this summer, and we released "Snowed In" just a few months age! What more do you want?"
"Once again, I want to get out a new cd. "Snowed In" was mostly just old songs resung, and this one is just our old songs on a new cd. I want a new cd!"
"You were the one that insisted to Mercury that we rerelease those songs."
"I know," Tay sighed, frustrated. "I'm sorry. I've just been really nervous lately, and on top of that I can't seem to sleep for over two hours at a time. I keep having nightmares about being chased by giant man-eating cds."
"That's weird. I've been having those dreams too. Hey, what's that noise?"
Suddenly they both noticed Zac, who was still sitting behind his drumset and humming.
"Zac, SHUT UP!" they both yelled, before storming out of the room together.
"What?" Zac scowled. His brothers had been getting more and more irratable lately, and he was sick of it. Sometimes he just wished they were a normal family, and not Hanson, teen pop band.
Sighing, Zac got up and wandered off in search of something to do.
Angel and Rachel crept backwards away from the window of the Hanson garage. Angel got up first, after glancing around cautiously, and brushed the dirt off her clothes. Looking back at the window to make sure no one had re-entered, she grabbed Rachels's arm and hauled her up.
"God! I think I was sitting on a thorn!" Rachel complained as she tried to get all the leaves and twigs off her clothing.
"Why did you wear a white sweater anyway? The point is not to be seen. Besides, this is your ward, so you can't complain."
"Yeah? Watch me. Anyway, what didja think of him? Different from the interviews, huh."
"Yeah. They're under a lot of pressure. They do need help, because when Ike was checked out a couple years ago to see if he needed help, his family was disgustingly funcional."
"Disgustingly funcional?"
"Casey's words, not mine. She was the one who checked them out for the committee. Look at them now. They're not exactly the Simpson's or anything, but they're certainly not "disgustingly funcional" anymore.
"No, I guess not. That might just be because they're tired. The first thing we have to do is get Rob to stop sending them those cd dreams. Then we'll zap them tonight with a sleeping spell, and keep watch over the house to make sure there's not a fire or burglar or something. After all, the sleeping spell will knock them dead to the world."
"Ok. Hey, how do you know it's Rob?
"He's been talking about dream spells for the last two weeks, and trying them on everyone. Plus, he doesn't exactly love Hanson." Rachel glanced around again. "Let's go inside and sit down. They didn't look like they would be back anytime soon."
She and Rachel bounded (quietly) to the corner of the building and peered cautiously around it.
"The coast is clear," Rachel announced.
They strolled around the corner and into the garage. Looking around, Rachel smiled.
"I love this room!"
The room was rectangular. The walls, or what was showing of them, were white. They were so covered in photos, paintings, and spray paint that the original walls were hard to see. In one corner was Zac's drumset, which had the Hanson logo on it. Ike's guitar was on a plain wooden chair against one of the shorter walls, about five feet ahead of the drums. The keyboards were against the other wall, causing the instruments to form a triangle. There was a large window near the guitar, and another behind the keyboards. There was another one on the wall opposite of Ike's guitar, near where the beds and personal belongings of the boys were kept. That was the window through which the girls had been spying through. The door was on the fourth wall, opposite the wall where Tay's keyboards were.
The side of the room where the beds were, on the opposite side of the room as the instruments, was as appealing as the rest of the room. Ike's bed, at the top of the bunkbed, was as neat as Zac's was messy, with Tay's somewhere in between, with the covers pulled up in a semblance of order. There was a rug on the floor near their bunkbeds, which had dirty clothes scattered across it. There was also a dresser beside the bunkbed, and a closet near the corner of the room. It was a very welcoming, lived in room.
"Friendly, isn't it?" Angel agreed. "Now, let's figure out how to fix those boys, and then go check on my person. I haven't even seen her yet!"
"All right, all right. Ok. First of all the nightmares, second of all figure out some way to give them a short break from all those screaming girls. Then we'll see if they relax a little. If not, we'll.... do something I have yet to think of."
"Good, good. Now let's go to my person." Angel grabbed Rachel and pulled her toward the door.
Just as Angel was reaching for the door handle, the door swung open.
"Hey! What are you girls doing here? Who are you?" Taylor stuttered, surprised to find two total strangers in his room. "Dad! Ike! Come quick!
Angel and Rachel exchanged glances, then looked at Taylor. Rachel nodded.
"AAAAA"