l.o.v.e. spells trouble (and a horse)

chapter six

Taylor was in love. His roving eye had been caught by a girl about his own age, sitting by herself at a table outside a cafe on l’Avenue des Champs-Elysées.
“Who were you going to say you missed?” asked Aaron.
Taylor frowned. ‘I can’t remember...” he said. Taylor shrugged his shoulders and walked casually over to her, ran a hand through his hair and said in his newly-deep voice, “Hey, babe.”
The girl looked up at him and gasped, recognising him. “Hi, I’m Susan. Sit down, Tay. I love you, by the way.” Susan knew she had to move fast.
Taylor was in shock. Wasn’t there meant to be a bit more to it than this? Oh, well... “I love you, too,” he said. Susan smiled.
Taylor was about to order a hot chocolate when Aaron came up to him and tugged on his sleeve.
“Go away, little buddy,” said Tay, annoyed. “I know you’re jealous of me, but can’t you go do something else for a minute?”
“No,” said Aaron desperately. “See, the Backstreet Boys concert starts at 6PM.”
“Yeah, and...?” asked Tay, not seeing the point.
“And, I’m the opening act,” continued Aaron.
“Yeah, so?”
“So it’s 5:50 now!”
“Oh, s***!” exclaimed Tay. “See ya, Susan. I hafta go!” Aaron and Tay wrenched Isaac away from where he had been shooting at the pigeons with the homemade sling he always carried in his back pocket, and jumped into the first taxi they saw. “To the Backstreet Boys concert!” Tay ordered the driver. “On the double!”
On the way there, Tay bit his nails, Aaron tried meditating, and Isaac plucked the feathers out of the pigeons he’d killed. As he was sitting in the front seat, Tay got the job of roasting the birds on the taxi’s cigarette lighter. They were all munching on roast pigeon by the time they arrived at the Reginald Harold Entertainment Centre, and left a juicy drumstick behind with the driver as payment for the ride.

Ike, Tay and Aaron (just doesn’t have that same ring, does it?) ran as fast as they could through the Reginald Harold Centre. It was a six storey complex, including cinemas, video game arcades, restaurants and a swimming pool, as well as the large rooftop stadium where the Backstreet Boys were holding their concert for around eight thousand fans. The floors were all polished wood, the walls were painted red, and every door was decorated with the symbol of a tulip, the late Reginald Harold’s favourite flower. The three boys found it a delightful place; the only problem was, how were they to get to the roof? None of them had ever been there before, and the Centre was so large, getting around would not be an easy task. They couldn’t see a lift anywhere; neither could they see an employee to ask. All the patrons they questioned spoke nothing but French, and were in too much of a hurry to show them where to go. Isaac, Taylor and Aaron were in a hurry, too.
Finally, they gave up on finding the lift and headed outside. “We can climb up the fire escape,” suggested Aaron.
The fire escape didn’t strictly comply with the safety regulations for a building of the Centre’s height. In other words, it was just a ladder hanging brokenly off the wall, rotten wood planks swinging drunkenly in the stiff wind. Taylor gulped as he looked at it, but they had no choice; time was running out. He checked his watch. They had less than twenty seconds until Aaron had to be on stage. And he hadn’t even had his makeup done yet! Taylor knew how long makeup artists took. He reached down into one of the rubbish bins stacked against the side of the building and pulled out a discarded lipstick and half a sodden sponge cake. He painted Aaron’s lips shiny crimson, dabbed the cake against Aaron’s face to wipe the icing sugar onto his cheeks as powder, then examined the young boy critically.
“Your eyebrows need definition,” Taylor decided. He dug around in the bin again until he found a stick of charcoal. He carefully turned Aaron’s eyebrows black before getting a little carried away. Aaron grabbed the charcoal out of Tay’s hand too slowly; the eleven year old now sported a long, curling, black moustache. Aaron tried to rub it off unsuccessfully.
They started up the ladder, Ike in the lead. They had not climbed more than about two storeys when Isaac had another encounter with his ‘spirits’.
“No... No! NOOOOO!!!” he screamed. “Please, oh spirits, no! They’ll kill us all!” Isaac began to jump up and down on the fragile wooden step of the ladder. Predictably, it collapsed. Isaac’s feet hovered in the air for a moment, before descending solidly upon poor Aaron’s head. Aaron lost his balance and flew out into mid air. Taylor, who was bringing up the rear, just managed to grab the boy’s hand before he hurtled to his death on the dirty concrete below. Isaac’s feet landed neatly and gracefully on the step recently vacated by Aaron’s tumble. Of course. He gave a soft grunt and kept climbing. Taylor was stuck, right hand clinging desperately to the splintering hand-rail while his left hand was curled desperately around that of Aaron, who was screaming his blond little head off. Taylor knew no one would hear him and come to help; a passer-by would assume he was just one of the fans whose screams could be faintly heard from the roof above. Taylor heard music, too. That mean the concert had started. He felt Aaron’s small, sweaty hand slip slightly in his and realised how desperate the situation was.
“IKE!!!” he yelled.
“We broke it, dude,” said Ike, for once using an appropriate Beavis and Butthead quote.
“Duh!” exclaimed Tay. “Hey, Ike, are you really the devil?”
“I am the Palaeolithic Yak Devil, young man. Indeed I am. Indeedy-doody. La di da di da...” Ike began to sing nonsense songs and swing his arms around above his head.
“Isaac...” said Taylor desperately.
“Yeah, man?”
“Can you turn into the devil now, please, and fly down and get Aaron and me? Please?” Taylor was becoming distraught as Aaron’s sobs got weaker.
All of a sudden there was a flash of red light on the ladder above Tay, and a gust of smoke blew into his face, blinding him. By the time he had regained enough control over his watery eyesight to see, Isaac had mysteriously grown two red horns, several hoofs and a red cape, and was hovering in the air on a level with Tay’s eyes. It was too much. Taylor’s eyes rolled back in his head and he slipped off the ladder.

Isaac swept the two boys into his arms seconds before they hit the cold, hard concrete below. He flew them up the remaining four storeys and onto the roof...

Zac had been pacing back and forth backstage several hours earlier, waiting for Tay and Ike to arrive and get him back to Melbourne. He had no idea how they would get over to Paris without their parents finding out, but years of examples had given Zac unbreakable faith that his older brothers could achieve anything, even if some of their methods were a little... unorthodox.
It was then that Nick had found him. “Zac... Buddy... Aaron’s not here, pal.”
“Yeah, so?” Zac hadn’t realised what was going on yet.
“So, you hafta go onstage instead!”
“But these girls are Backstreet Boys fans, not Hanson fans.” Zac was confused.
“Buddy... You hafta pretend to be Aaron. Buddy...? C’mon, Zac. It’s important, dude. My mom’ll kill me!”
“Oh, alright.” Zac capitulated. He couldn’t stand to see anyone over six feet cry.

And that was how Zac was in his current predicament. That is, dressed up as Aaron Carter, dancing around a stage pretending to sing some crazy song, “Crush On You”. I can’t dance! he had cried. It had been no use. Zac thought back to his pre-instrument years for inspirational dance moves. It was no use; he’d only been six years old, then, and just couldn’t remember. He tried out a cartwheel. Anything to use up time. He hadn’t even finished the first verse yet. What was that strange red thing flying over the edge of the roof? Oh, yeah, it was just Isaac. Hang on a second... Isaac? It was Isaac! Isaac and Taylor, come to save him! They’d brought Aaron with them. Oh, joy!
Isaac gracefully spun a pirouette for the benefit of the enthralled crowd before alighting gently in the exact middle of the stage. Zac looked at Aaron; Aaron looked at Zac. Through unspoken consent, they ran backstage to switch clothes.

“We should do that more often,” Zac commented to Taylor on the plane back to Melbourne. “A joint Backstreet Boys/Hanson concert, I mean.”
“Yeah, that was cool,” agreed Tay. “Lucky everyone thought all that devil stuff was just special effects, though.”
“You never explained that to me, Tay. Why is Isaac a devil?”
“Not just any devil, little bro,” said Ike proudly. “I’m the Palaeolithic Yak Devil.”
“What?!!!”
“You don’t wanna know, Zac,” said Tay. “You really don’t wanna know.”

[ 7 ]