Parker Lowell
I would have answered back to him(I'm not sure what, but I know I had something in mind at the time), but was stopped when something cold dripped into my ear. I became aware that someone was holding an icepack to my forehead. I jumped slightly and shifted uncomfortably, prompting the person holding it there to move it so that it was dripping in my hair instead.
I finally got the courage to look into the faces of the people surrounding me and found their expressions hard to read. Isaac, though his voice had been worried, his expression was one of irritation at me. I figured it was because I hadn't been able to give him a straight answer to any of his questions all night and he knew that I wouldn't give a straight answer to this one either.
"Is Tay going to die?" one of the little girls in the room asked.
"No, dear, Taylor is not going to die," said the voice of the person who was holding the ice pack to my head tiredly. The voice belonged to Mrs. Hanson.
Another little girl, probably slightly older than the other, opened her mouth in preparation to say something, but was interrupted by a knocking on the door.
"Yes?" Mr. Hanson asked reluctantly, hesitating to look away from me, his brow creased deeply with worry.
"Uh....Mr. Hanson?" a guy with a Red Cross shirt on said apprehensively, sticking his head into the room.
"Yes?" he repeated.
"There's um....something I, uh, think you should see," he stuttered.
"Not now," Mr. Hanson replied, waving him away.
"No, I really think you should see this," the guy persisted nervously.
"Okay, what is it?" Mr. Hanson, now becoming annoyed with him, said, gesturing for him to go on.
The guy turned away from us and leaned out the door a little bit. We heard him murmur something softly and another person entered the room, holding an ice pack of his own to his head, which had a large red mark on it, obviously having hit it on something. He looked somewhat groggy and as if he had very little to no idea as to what was going on.
His eyes opened much wider once he noticed me there. He looked afraid. A surprised kind of afraid. I was afraid as well. But in a much different way.
"What's going on here?" someone asked. I don't know who.
Everyone turned deathly pale. Impassive expressions melted into confusion. Silence took over and speechlessness ensued.
"Tay?" said one of the little girls, grabbing my hand and holding it to her.
I inwardly sighed. I knew that the game was over. I wasn't sorry.
I tried to get up but was immediately pulled back down again by Mrs. Hanson. I groaned and put my hand to my head, which was still whirling a bit from passing out.
"Ow," I couldn't help but mumble.
"Hey," Zac said suddenly. "That's that guy who looks exactly like Taylor that we've been seeing all day!"
"Thank you for stating the obvious, Zac," Isaac mumbled.
"No," I said, moving forward in the chair, preparing for another attempt at getting up. "That's not the guy who looks exactly like Taylor that you've been seeing all day."
I wiggled out of Mrs. Hanson's firm grasp and, as I stood, let the little girl's hand slide from mine. I walked, a bit unsteadily, toward Taylor. Everyone was staring at me.
"What do you mean?"
"This isn't the guy who looks exactly like Taylor that you've been seeing all day because he is Taylor," I said, gesturing toward him.
Confusion was washed away.
"Then who are you?" Zac questioned me after a moment of turning this information over in his head.
"My name is Parker Lowell," I said. "I don't know what happened. I don't know how we got mixed up. I don't know why I didn't tell you in the first place. I'm really sorry about all this." I was aware that I was beginning to babble. It was a subconscious strategy of survival. The more I babbled, the more distracted from calling the police they became.
Mr. Hanson held up a hand to silence me. "Parker Lowell?" he repeated.
"Yeah."
He threw a sideways glance at his wife. She was a shade of pale that I had thought one only saw if they were faced with an apparition.
Mr. Hanson turned his gaze back toward me and seemed to hesitate a bit, picking at a fraying corner of the jacket he was wearing.
"Who...," he paused, frowning in thought, "who is your, um, guardian, Parker?"
Uh-oh.
"Gina Lowell," I said. "Why?"
Mr. Hanson cleared his throat and got up, avoiding answering my question.
"Excuse me for a moment," he said, pushing past us and exiting the dressing room.
Once again, the room was silent. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, sure I was about to get in the worst trouble I had ever been in before in my life. I stole a quick glance at Taylor. His eyes were averted, the pack of melting ice still held to his head. He looked like he was about to throw up.
A few minutes later, Mr. Hanson reappeared, followed by a man and a woman I didn't recognize. I expected them to grab both of my arms roughly and drag me out of the room. Surprisingly, they walked right past me and straight to the Hanson children. I heard the guy whisper something to Isaac and Zac about autographs and then he led them out of the room, quickly followed by the woman, who had the baby cradled in one arm, the hand of the little boy in hers and the two little girls following behind her.
Mr. Hanson spoke as soon as the doors were closed.
"Your friends have been told that everything is all right," he assured me, though it was actually no reassurance. Why had they been told that if things so obviously weren't all right? "We told them they could go home."
Fear rushed through me in a nauseating wave. I swallowed hard and tried to suppress it.
"Oh?" was all I could manage.
He nodded. "I'm not sure if they actually left, but we told them they could go if they wanted to."
How was I supposed to get home?
"We told them that your mother was to come and pick you up," he told me.
At the time, it didn't occur to me that it was odd that they had been able to contact Gina without me telling them our phone number or anything like that. I was too busy trying to keep myself from snorting. It wasn't too often that I heard Gina referred to as my mother.
"She is your mother, right?" he said.
I was taken aback by this question. Where had that come from?
"Why?" I asked.
"I don't mean to be nosy," he said. "She just, uh, sounded really young on the phone. I was wondering if it could be your sister or something?"
"Nope, that was my mother," I answered hesitantly.
"Okay," he said, nodding with badly faked satisfaction.
"She is pretty young though," I said. I nearly slapped my hand over my mouth. I had never meant to say it.
"Oh?"
"Yeah," I said. Half of me started to scream at the other half. "SHUT UP NOW!!" it said.
"She had you young?" he seemed genuinely interested in a suspicious sort of way.
"No, she adopted me when she was young," I said. Where was this coming from? This was stuff I hadn't even told some of my closest friends. Stuff Gina hadn't even told her closest friends. And now it was all pouring out to complete strangers?
He seemed to flinch a bit at that statement. I hardly noticed.
"Well, she should be here soon," he said.
"Okay," I said.
After that, we fell silent once again and I was left to wonder what kind of trouble I was in.