I walked into the kitchen, rubbing out one ear with a finger. I had never understood why Gina felt she needed to yell. My bedroom, where I can almost always be found, was right next to the kitchen.
"Who is it?" I whispered, walking up to where she had her arm outstretched, hand over the mouthpiece so that the person on the other end couldn't hear us speaking to each other.
"Theresa," Gina whispered back.
I raised an eyebrow and stopped in my tracks.
Theresa is the daughter of Gina's best friend, Rose. In an evil plot to one day be related to each other, Gina and Rose have been planning our wedding since the day they found out they had two kids of the opposite sexes and the same age.
Now, don't get me wrong, Theresa's...okay. I mean, she's nice and everything but, well, the last time I saw her(a year ago) all she had talked about was her latest obsession, Hanson, and how much I looked like the lead singer and blah blah blah blah blah until I nearly took a knife to cut my ears off just so I wouldn't have to listen to her anymore.
"You promised," she whispered.
Though I didn't remember promising anything to Gina regarding Theresa, I took the phone grudgingly anyway. There is absolutely no way you can win that one with her. She'll drive you into the ground. It's a wonder she doesn't keep detailed records. Or maybe she does. Just because I haven't seen them...
"Hello?" I said in the phone, keeping my tone bland.
"Hello...Parker?" said the other voice.
"Yup," I answered.
"Um, this is Theresa," she said. "You know, your mom's friend's daughter?"
"Yup, I remember," I told her, wishing I could stop saying the word "yup."
"You do?" she said, sounding mildly surprised and slightly embarrassed. I wasn't sure if it was the flattered type of embarrassed or the embarrassed type of embarrassed.
"Yeah. What's up?" I said, wanting to cut to the chase. I was in the middle of doing something important. Don't ask me what that important thing was, but I know I was doing something important...
"Well, okay," she said, obviously getting ready to say what it was she had to say as fast as she could in one breath. I suddenly regretted not telling Gina I was in the bathroom or something when she had called me to take the phone. And that's with the knowledge that, just to embarrass me, Gina would've told her I was in the bathroom instead of a simple, "He can't come to the phone right now" thing. "Um, yeah, you see, me and two of my friends bought six tickets to a concert at Darien Lake. Um, we bought six of them because they both had dates and I was too embarrassed to tell them that I didn't. So I was wondering if you'd like to come with me?"
A thousand excuses as to why I couln't go were running through my mind but I saw Gina standing in the doorway with alook on her face translating something along the lines of: "If you don't say yes, then I really will send you over a cliff in a car."
"When is it?" I asked, praying that it would be a day I couldn't come.
"April fifth," she answered.
Damn.
"What band?" I asked.
There was a silence at the other end of the line. A thousand bad bands began running through my mind...the Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, 98 Degrees...
"Hanson," she answered hesitantly and I could almost hear her flinch.
Now it was my turn to be silent.
Hanson? Hanson?? Did she actually expect me to agree to go to
a Hanson concert? At Darien Lake, no less. I had heard
that concerts there really sucked.
But, out of the corner of my eye, I could still see Gina.
"Who's going?" I asked, my teeth beginning to clench slightly.
"My friends, Beth Youngman and Kim Bailey," she said. "And their dates, Jared Creek and Cory Van Daan."
I had never heard of those people. I guessed that they went to Theresa's school. I was tempted to ask her how the girls had gotten the guys to agree to come, but I bit my tongue.
"Hold on," I said, my teeth still clenched. I covered the mouthpiece with my hand. "Gina...I'm going to kill you if you say yes to this, but can I go to a concert with Theresa and a bunch of her friends on the fifth?"
"What band?" she asked.
"Hanson," I answered.
She appeared to be thinking for a minute, obviously trying to place the name with the faces. She came up empty.
"Who?" she said.
I rolled my eyes. "Do you live under a rock? Honestly, you've never heard of Tonic--which is half understandable because they're not the most well known band in the world--but you don't know who Hanson is?"
She shook her head.
"You're lucky," I said.
"What kind of concert is this going to be?" she asked. In other words, if this were a movie, what would it be rated?
"G if you're only talking about the band and not the audience of insane, screaming, crying, fainting teenage girls," I said.
"Your Heaven," she said, smirking.
"Not when there's Hanson music playing in the background," I said.
She rolled her eyes. "You may go," she said, walking out of the room.
It took only the fact that there was a person on the other end of the phone line who would probably be able to hear me if I started screaming and throwing a temper tantrum worthy of a four year old to stop me form doing so as I put the phone back up to my ear and, with a grudging tone said, "I can go."
"Really? Great!" she said enthusiastically. "Uh, we'll pick you up at like, ten on that day, is that all right?"
"Ten?" I said back. "What time does this concert start?"
"Seven," she answered. "But we were planning on spending the day at Darien lake before the concert starts."
"Oh," I said. "Well, I guess I'll see you then."
"See you then," she agreed.
In the background I could hear Rose's voice saying something to Theresa and the muffled sound of Theresa answer back.
"My mother wants to talk to yours," she said, sighing with exasperation.
"Okay, hold on," I said.
I called to Gina, who giddily came into the kitchen and took the phone from me. I wasn't really listening to her end of the conversation but when I went into my room to try and remember what the interesting thing I had been doing before had been, I could hear her doing something that could probably be classified as a squeal of some sort. I guessed that it was probably Rose's idea to invite me along when Theresa had told her that she had no date for the concert. It wouldn't surprise me.
Little did I know(don't you just love it when people say that?) what this seemingly harmless experience was going to leave me with.
In the long run, it was going to end up leaving me with my past.