December 25th, 1997

I didn’t know how long I had been asleep this time. I woke up in pitch black, the only light coming into my room was the soft light of the street lamp. Little J or Oreo must’ve attacked my nightlight again. I gotta keep them in their kennel next time. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, wincing at the slight burning in the corners of my eyes. Figures, I cried myself awake again. When’d I get so soft again? Whatever happened to my brick wall, the damn behind my eyes? What happened to the old Mack? I slowly shook my head, marveling at how stuffy it felt despite not being sick. You promised the guys you’d change, that’s all you’re doing. Crying is human. You’ve kept things trapped inside for too long, I told myself as I kicked back my covers. I gently put my feet against the floor and got out of bed, making a beeline for the door, glancing down from time to time to make sure I didn’t crash into anything. I left my room and quickly but quietly made my way to Justin’s room. Last night the guys’ family had finally gotten here and after minutes of stress and pencil biting I’ve finally been able to figure out their rooming assignments. Now, the only problem with that was now that we were all on one floor I had to make sure I didn’t wake the younger ones.

“Justin,” I called softly into the dark room. I paused and heard his soft yet noticeable snoring. I moved a bit further into the room and closed the door behind me. “Justin,” I called again. His breathing stopped shortly before he rolled over and let out a slow breath. I walked over to the edge of the bed and gently shook his shoulder. “Justin!” I hissed, shaking him. He groaned and rolled onto his back, blinking his eyes rapidly to adjust to the darkness. He looked up at me for a couple of seconds before reaching over and turning on the lamp light. I squeezed my eyes shut for a couple of seconds before looking at him.

He was up and alert at an instant. “What’s wrong? Are you ok? Did you have another bad dream?” He paused and leaned forward slightly. “Were you crying?” Aint he the deductive one.

“I can’t sleep, I’m fine, yes, and yes,” I replied. He rubbed an eye as he motioned for me to sit down. I sat on top of the comforter and crossed my legs criss-cross-applesauce style. He stared at me, asking the most important question with his eyes. I shook my head and sighed. “I’m scared, J,” I admitted. “I mean, Dad has high-risk Leukemia. What if my bone marrow doesn’t work? I’m the only match in our family that has a chance, even the slightest. If it doesn’t work then they’d have to search for a different match and who knows how long that can take? And then he might…during the wait…it might be too long…” I couldn’t even form a complete sentence.

That’s why I couldn’t sleep. The day after I had found out my Dad had cancer we went to the hospital. A doctor had sat me down and talked to me about the kind of cancer he had and the treatments he had to go through. Dad had high risk ALL which mean that they needed to hit the cancer hard if they wanted to save him. That meant he’d have to go through intense rounds of chemotherapy and they needed to find a bone marrow donor. We tried his sister who had a really good chance to being able to be a donor. Unfortunately the chances weren’t enough so I had to be the new donor before they got a donor off of a list. They prepped me, put me to sleep, and supposedly stuck a gigantic needle in my hip straight to my bone marrow. Thank GOD I wasn’t awake for that, it wouldn’t have been pretty. And now we just had to wait, which I don’t do well with if you hadn’t figured that out yet.

“Your Dad will be fine,” Justin said as he took my hand and gave it a squeeze.

“How do you know? The doctors said he has a 70-30 chance because the signs didn’t show up until recently,” I replied. “Ohh, I should’ve known he wasn’t sick actually. Dad never gets sick. This is all my fault. I knew something was wrong with him but I didn’t think it was worth mentioning. Ohh, if I had just told my mom–”

“Girl, stop,” Justin interrupted me, snapping. I knitted my eyebrows together. Justin never raised his voice at me before. I sat staring at him, stunned. He had to understand that I was freaking out, right? He sighed and rubbed his head. “None of this, your dad being sick, it’s not your fault despite what you think. You’re not the one who got him sick in the first place. You didn’t know what was wrong with him because he kept it from you because he didn’t want you to worry about him. It’s our parents’ job to worry about us, not the other way around. And your dad will be fine.”

“How do you know that? Can you see into the future or something?”

He laughed. “No, silly. I know because he’s a Desrosiers and you Desrosiers are strong-willed people and I know he won’t let something like cancer stop him from living his life and seeing you take over the world.”

I chuckled and wiped my eyes. “You’re such a dork.”

“But I’m your dork,” he corrected. He looked out the window and I followed his gaze. Snow started to fall again, smaller flakes this time but more frequent. They sparkled as they passed through the light coming from the room, shining a small rainbow briefly before falling past the window. “Can I ask you a question?” I nodded. “Is Nick, like, your new best friend now or something?” He asked, turning his head and scratching at his neck.

“Someone’s jealous,” I said in a sing song voice.

“I’m not jealous,” he denied. “It’s just…I feel like you’re drifting and all you talk about is Nick this and Nick that and the Backstreet Boys did this as soon as you came back to help us over the summer.”

“And you think I’m replacing you guys?”I questioned. He nodded. “Do you mind reminding me who got me this job in the first place?”

“I did, but what does that have to do with anything?” He questioned.

“It means without you I wouldn’t have gotten one step closer to reaching my dreams. I’ve always wanted to be a choreographer, J, and you helped me get there at the age of fourteen. Even though I’m technically still not a professional or anything but I wouldn’t even have gotten this far without you. You guys will always come first. I promise.”

“I don’t think you can keep that promise,” Justin pointed out honestly.

“You’re right,” I agreed. “I promise that I’ll try to put you guys first. Ok?” I leaned forward and gave him a hug.

“I’m your best friend, right?” He asked suddenly. I pulled away and looked at him, holding him at arms length. “Am I?” He questioned.

“Yeah, of course. Why? You don’t need to ask that,” I said dropping my arms and pushing my hair out of my face.

“And we can tell each other everything? Even when we’re mad at the other or we need to deliver bad news or–”

“Yes! What is it?” The look on his face was starting to worry me. Oh my gosh, did he know something about Dad? Or was it something else? My mom? Talk, dammit, talk!

“Remember when the doctor’s put you to sleep before you got your bone marrow removed?” I nodded. “Remember how the doctor’s let us talk to you before they put you to sleep?”

“Yeahhh,” I said slowly. Where was he going with this?

“Well, I saw something before you got your procedure done and I…I didn’t know what it was. I…I had a suspicion but I didn’t know how to ask you about it.” Just ask all ready, god! He took my left hand and flipped it over. I looked down and kicked myself when I realized I hadn’t bothered to put my watch back on. Now staring up at the ceiling were my scars, soe of them was still red and slightly puffy. Let’s just say Mom’s miscarriage and Dad’s cancer pushed me over the edge. “How’d you get these?” He whispered, gently running his finger over them.

“Little J and Oreo. I haven’t gotten their nails filed in a while,” I replied. I don’t know how that lie instantly came to my head but it was a pretty good one if I do say so myself. And it was true, I did have to get them filed soon or they’d break on their own.

“I’ve known you for fourteen years, I can tell when you’re lying to me.” I looked up and saw tears collecting in his eyes. No matter how many times he blinked they refused to fall. “Please…just tell me you haven’t been doing this to yourself.”

I pull my hand out of his grasp and close it into a fist. “I, J, I can’t do that,” I whispered.

He blinked rapidly and I was amazed to see him get angry. “What the fuck is your problem?” He snapped. Whoa, talk about doing a 180. “Huh? Do you like causing us pain? Do you? You have a sick sense of humor, you know that!” He got off the bed and started pacing as I watched him.

“I don’t hurt you on purpose,” I muttered.

“Bullshit,” he instantly replied. “We’ve told you time and time again that you could always come to us with whatever problem you had. Instead…you pull shit like this. Do you understand what you’re doing to yourself? How could you be so fucking stupid?”

“Keep it down,” I hissed, standing.

“I don’t give a fuck if the others hear, let them, you deserve to be yelled at by them as well,” Justin snarled.

“You don’t get it–”

“You’re right, I don’t. I don’t get why you’d be so fucking stupid to rip open your own skin. Does it feel good to cause yourself harm? Huh? Does it really feel that good? Let’s see.” He turned away from me and started digging through his bag.

“J, what’re you doing?” I asked, walking over to him. He ignored me and continued to search through his bag. He stood as he turned the razor that was in his hand. I watched as he shoved a thumbnail into a small space between the parts. He dismantled the razor before my eyes until he only held the blade in his hand. “J, stop,” I said, reaching out for it when it suddenly hit me what he was doing.

He roughly pushed my hand and backed away from me. “You do it all the time. Why can’t I? I mean, there must be something appealing in it.” Why the hell was he being so horrible? Something must be taking over his brain, he wasn’t the normal Justin and it was really starting to scare me. His normally calm eyes were wild and his mouth was twisted into a sneer. I shook my head and tried to keep the dam behind my eyes from leaking again but the cracks were getting too big.

“Don’t,” I begged as I reached for it again. Once again he slapped my hand away. “J, don’t! Stop.”

“No, I want to see why you continue to hurt yourself.” He pushed me away again and quickly dragged the blade across his skin. We both watched as the skin remained the same until a thin line of blood seeped to the surface. “Huh,” he muttered. “The only thing that did was hurt me. And it makes you feel better? Wow, you must be weaker than I thought.”

I stared at him in shock as he threw the blade away and pressed a tissue to his arm. I didn’t have to look in the mirror to know that I was crying, I could feel the tears slipping down my cheeks. Justin was being so horrible…so horrible. “I’m not weak,” I muttered.

“Really? You could’ve fooled me. If you weren’t weak then you wouldn’t result to doing something so stupid to make yourself feel better.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “You don’t understand!”

“Then make me understand!”

I opened my eyes. “It’s the only thing I can control, Justin! It’s the only thing I have the power over.” I dug my fingers into my hair and grabbed at the roots as I turned and started pacing, feeling the weight press down on my chest again and I struggled to regain my breathing. “I can’t do anything about my mom and dad splitting up. I can’t do anything about Momma and Mike. I can’t do anything about my dad’s cancer. I can’t control anything but this. This is all I can control!”

“This is not the only way out of your troubles,” Justin said as he checked his cut before looking at me. He shook his head and looked at the ceiling as if asking the Lord for help. “Fuck, Mack, how long have you been doing this?” I shrugged and muttered my answer. “What did you say?”

“I said about a year, maybe a year and a half,” I replied. He laughed but I knew it wasn’t an actual laugh, it was more of a laugh of disbelief. “I started when I heard my mom and dad’s argument over the phone. And then…things got worse and I just couldn’t stop.”

“How about now?” He picked up the blade and held it in front of my face. I watched as he slowly sung it back and forth taunting me. I slapped it out of his hand and he let his arm fall to his side. “You’re stronger than this, I know that for a fact. Just…fuck, don’t give up, Mackenzie. You have the whole world in front of you. I’m proud of you, I fucking love you but I don’t love what you’re doing.”

“I need help,” I whispered.

“That’s what I’m here for, girl. Haven’t you noticed? I’ve never left you. I’m always here, ok?” He reached out and brushed away the tears that were on my cheeks before hugging me and kissing my forehead. “It’s late, we should get some sleep.”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered.

“Hey, there’s no need to apologize to me, BabyGirl. Ok?” He gently placed a hand on my cheek and brushed away a straw tear with his thumb. I nodded and he smiled.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Justin forced open an eye at the sunlight that hit him smack dab on the face. He lifted his wrist to his face to see what time it was. 9:47. His stomach growled right as a heavenly smell wafted over his nose. He sat up and stretched, smiling a bit when he heard Jonathan’s pounding feet as he ran around the house.

He carefully managed to climb over Mack and get off of the bed, shoving his feet into his bunny slippers and left the room. He stopped by the bathroom to relieve the pressure in his bladder before following the smell down the stairs and into the kitchen.

“Mmm, breakfast smells good, Momma,” Justin said as he walked into the kitchen and placed a kiss on Lynn’s cheek. “I hope the others don’t wake up. I want to eat this all by myself,” he added. Lynn playfully smacked his arm as he grinned. All of a sudden the patter of little feet reached their ears as a little boy ran in. “Hey, Merry Christmas, Jonathan,” he said as he scooped up his step-brother and held him in his arms. “Are you excited to open presents?”

“Yeah! Yeah! Can we do it now? Please, Justy, please?” Jonathan begged.

Justin laughed as Jonathan wrapped his small hands around Justin’s neck to keep from falling as he held onto the little boy. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask my Momma. Be really polite and charm her with a big smile.” He smiled at his mother who winked back at him.

“Lynnie, can we open presents now? Please? Please?” Jonathan asked, turning his big eyes to the curly haired woman.

“I don’t know. What will I get out of it?” Lynn asked in her southern drawl, wiping her hands on her apron. Jonathan unhooked his hands and reached over to Lynn. Justin stepped closer to her as Jonathan wrapped his hands around her neck and placed a big kiss on her cheek. “Awww, thanks baby. Ok, we can open presents now.”

“Yay!” Jonathan cheered.

“Go and wake everyone,” Justin said, putting him down. Once his feet touched the ground he scampered out of the room.

“Did I hear you talking last night?” Lynn asked, tossing some cut up kiwi into the large fruit filled bowl. “I thought I heard you and Mackenzie talking last night.”

Arguing, actually. “Uh, yeah, she was upset over her Dad’s cancer and everything. It just…she suddenly exploded. She couldn’t sleep so I talked her to sleep. I think she’ll be fine now, I think she finally understands that we’re here,” Justin said with confidence. Lynn kissed his forehead. “What was that for?”

“For being you,” she replied simply. “She’s lucky to have you.”

“No Momma.” He shook his head. “I’m lucky to have her.”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

“David, be careful it’s hot,” I said to my younger cousin as he reached for the hot chocolate that was in my hand. I was mainly warning him because of everyone moving around. There were a lot of people in this living room I was surprised we fit. Let’s see, there was me, Mom, Mike, Mamaw, Poppy, Grammaw, and PopPop. Then there was Justin, Lynn, Paul, Jonathan, Lisa, and Randy. The Fatones: Joey, his mother, his father, Steve, and Janine. The Chasezs: JC, Heather, Tyler, Roy, and Karen. The Kirkpatricks: Chris, Beverly, Molly, Taylor, Emily, and Kate, and Lance and his parents and my cousins Julie and David and aunt Abbey, thirty five people! I can easily say this is my biggest Christmas. I wish Daddy were here, though. I hate knowing that he’s spending Christmas in the hospital. Maybe if they give him his chemo today he can come home.

‘Oh my gosh’s and ‘I love it’s filled the room as people opened their gifts, pausing every now and then to yell across the room to thank the person they got their present from. I was happy, honest I was, it just didn’t feel right to be over the top happy without Daddy here. He always took pictures, I missed the irritation flashes that would go off periodically.

“Did you open ours yet?” Chris’s voice broke my thoughts. I looked at him and noticed that the guys were looking at me with smiles on their faces. “C’mon, open it,” he urged.

I picked up the brightly wrapped box and looked it over. There was no way they could’ve wrapped this themselves, they weren’t that good. I pushed the thought away and ripped open a side, unsticking the little ribbon bow and pressing it to Joey’s forehead. I chuckled as I gripped the end of the box and pulled it out, staring hard at the item.

“Well? Do you like it?” Chris asked hopefully.

“You guys aren’t funny,” I muttered despite chuckling at the fact that they gave me an Elmo doll. They’ve always claimed that I supposedly laughed like Elmo and they wouldn’t let me live it down and now they had to poke fun at me this way.

“But you like it, right?” Lance asked.

“Of course I do, thanks guys.”

“And the best part…” Chris grabbed the toy and held it by my head. “You’re finally taller than someone,” he quipped as the others laughed.

“Like you can talk,” I laughed, grabbing my toy. I reached over and grabbed the ringing phone that was by my head. “City morgue, you kill ‘em we chill ‘em,” I greeted the person on the other end happily. On the ground leaning against the couch, Justin reached back and lightly smacked my knee. I lightly kicked him in the back of his curly head.

“If your mother caught you saying that…” Dad’s tired voice said on the other end.

“Hey Daddy,” I greeted him. “Um, are you ok? How is everything. Oh, Merry Christmas.”

Dad laughed. “Of course you would get right to the point. I’m feeling good. Better than I have in a while, I’ll admit.”

“Good, that’s good Daddy. Can you come home?”

“Well, they want to look some things over and send some information to the hospital in Orlando but they said there isn’t any reason I shouldn’t be able to come home.”

“That’s great, Daddy. I can’t wait. I haven’t opened your present yet. I’ll wait for you to get home, ok?”

“Ok sweetie.” He paused. “Don’t worry about me,” he stated firmly. I knew that tone of voice.

“I can’t help it Dad,” I said, noticing Heather looking at me in concern. I shook my head and rolled my finger in the air as if drawing a circle, our silent signal of ‘I’ll tell you later’. She nodded and turned to Tyler who was protesting loudly at the shirt JC had given him. “I just wish I could do something.”

“You did, you gave me your bone marrow. That’s all you can do. I’m supposed to worry about you, not the other way around,” he replied. “Don’t worry, I’m going to stick around long enough to see your movie premier and see your CD come out and see you tour and see you dance and walk you down the aisle and hold my first grandkid.”

“Who said anything about me getting married?”

“Who wouldn’t want to marry you? Anyone who would even think about turning you down will end up kicking themselves later for giving up such a good catch, and I’m not just saying that because you’re my daughter.”

Now I know why they call it a warm and fuzzy feeling. “Thanks Dad,” I whispered.

“You’re welcome, Gorgeous. I’ll see you in a bit.”

That’s’ another thing to check off of my Christmas list. “Ok, bye.” I hung up the phone right as David jumped into my lap.

“Cuzzy, let’s play in the snow!” He said excitedly as he started to bounce up and down.

Julie climbed onto my lap next to him. “Let’s build a snowman.”

“Wait guys I didn’t finish opening presents yet,” I laughed.

“We’ll take them,” Molly said as she stood. She gathered up Kate, Emily, Steve, Janine, Heather, Tyler and Jonathan as well as David and Julie and they ran out of the house, happy to play in the snow. I laughed at the amount of wrapping paper and ribbon that was strewn across the floor.

Mom and Mike started going around, picking up the wrapping paper as I reached for my last two presents which I held off on purpose. As I mulled over which one to open first I watched in amusement as JC played with the light up yo-yo I gave him and Oreo and Little J jumped up and down and tried to bat it out of his hands. I returned my attention to the thicker gift and read the tag. It simply said that it was from the Backstreet Boys. I opened the card and red the cursive handwriting (most likely Kevin’s): This is a little thank you gift from us. Thank you for giving us your time and we hope you had as much fun as we did. We hope to work with you again. Love: Brian, Howie D, AJ, Nick, Kevin (The Backstreet Boys).

Setting the card aside I tried to think what it was they could give me but they were hard to figure out. I didn’t know them nearly as well as my boys. To be honest it surprised me to see AJ’s name on the card, he seemed to have some sort of hostility towards me when I worked with them and Fatima. Otherwise he was completely civil towards me and let his guard down from time to time and I enjoyed being around him.

Pushing that thought aside I ripped through the wrapping paper and slid my finger under the edge of the box to get the tape off. They went a little slap happy with the tape, I’ll bet it was Brian’s idea to keep me in suspense. It’s workin’ buddy. I finally got all the tape off, scraping off some of my finger skin, and lifted the lid, staring in awe at the shoes that were resting in the box. It was a new pair of black dance shoes, the lining between the bottom of the shoes and the top was a strip of electric blue. The laces were electric blue as well and had stars on the ends. The inside had electric blue insoles built in and my nickname, Mini D, was written in silver cursive.

“Wow,” I breathed, looking the shoes over. “These are so cool. I wonder how they knew I needed new shoes.” Really, who cares? I got new shoes for free designed by the Backstreet Boys. How many people can say that? Yes, I was a fan on a certain level, an admirer on another and a co-worker at the top but still, they were so awesome. There was no way my Christmas gift was going to top this. No way at all. I put the shoes back into the box before the others saw it and questioned me about it and grabbed the gift from Nick. From the feel of it I guessed it was a picture frame.

I gently removed the wrapping paper and turned the picture frame over, my mouth fell open at the picture, well to be precise, the sketch. It was a hand drawn picture…of me. Very realistic, he even managed to get a cool light reflection effect in my hair. Every little detail was there, even the small dimple that appears in my cheek when I smile. I tugged at the paper that was in the corner of the picture, hiding his signature.

Mack,

You don’t know how hard it was for me to admit what was happening (or maybe you do, you’ve been going through it too unfortunately) but I’m glad it was you that I told first. I feel so comfortable around you, I hope we can hang out soon, good luck with the CD. I’ll be the first to buy a copy, promise. As always I’m here if you want to talk or you’re just bored. Thanks for listening.

Nick

P.S. the shoes were my idea. I noticed that yours were starting to fall apart. The others designed them.

I rested my palm hear my mouth and noticed that my skin was hot. There was no denying it, that Carter was a charmer.

Goodbye 1997, hello 1998. New year, new Mack.

It’s my time to shine.