The phone rang and Sandra answered. "Hello?"
"Hi! What ya up to?" Angela asked, happily, when she heard her friend's voice.
Sandra was surprised to hear her friends voice on the other end of the phone. "Angela? Is that you?" she asked sarcastically. "I can't believe you actually took time out of your busy schedule to call me. I feel so honored."
"Cut the sarcasm, Sand. After Friday, I'll be free and clear and you'll be wishing I wasn't calling you," Angela replied, unaffected.
"So, how's that shelter thing going?" Sandra didn't really care how the shelter was going. In fact, she was sick of hearing about it, but it was usually the topic of conversation whenever Angela called from home, so she brought it up to get it over with.
Angela was so self-absorbed in her own end of conversation she didn't notice the lack of enthusiasm. "Pretty good, I guess. It's frustrating, though. Kenneth hasn't helped at all and he's just now getting me help. We really had it out today. I swear I wanted to hit him, he pisses me off so bad."
"Wow. You're still not getting along, eh?" Sandra asked, seeing the fight tidbit as the perfect opportunity to change the subject. "Just hang in there until October. Then you can come down here and party your ass off with me. I miss you. Purdue ain't Purdue without you."
Angela laughed at Sandra's little rhyme, but she was too focused on her present dilemma to stay on the subject of her return to college in the fall. "I'll just be glad once this is all over with. You know, it's a great cause and I enjoy doing it, but as unorganized as it's been, I just want to say 'screw it' sometimes. I wish I would've just gone back with you and finished up at the start of the school year."
"I don't want to hear it, Angela. You're the one who decided to stay and do that crap," Sandra reminded her. When she heard Angela sigh into the phone, she lightened up. "But you did the right thing, " she added quickly. "You're into that kind of shit. I'm glad, too, because you pick up the slack for me."
Angela laughed at Sandra's ending comment. It was so true! She hated doing any kind of hard labor, especially for free, good cause or not.
"So, how many kids will be living there, total? Have you got a number yet?" Sandra shocked even herself with the question. It was her first genuine interest in the Peace House in a long time.
Angela perked up as she elaborated on the kids. "I don't know. I think starting out there's only going to be two kids. The guy's name is Jerome. He's only 15 and he's been arrested for stealing about 10 times. And he's always saying stuff just to see how far he can push it until he pisses you off. And Coco, the girl, is SO sweet, but you can tell she's homeless because she, she, well, she stinks. And it doesn't help that she's pretty heavy. It just makes her sweat more."
"So how come they're not helping?" Sandra asked curiously.
"Well, that's MY choice. I thought it would be more of a hassle than help, you know? Jerome would drive me crazy with his attitude, and Coco's so wishy-washy she'd probably need me standing over her shoulder telling her what to do. They'll be in Thursday to check it out, though." Angela's voice showed her excitement at the thought of the kids seeing how hard she'd worked to give them a home. "That'll be cool. I can't wait to see their reactions!"
Unknowingly, Sandra brought up the initial reason for the phone call during her '50 questions'. "So who's gonna be helping you? Did you get more student volunteers?"
Angela mulled over what Kenneth had told her earlier and realized how insane it sounded. "You see, that's why I called you. He said something about it being the Backstreet Boys, and...."
"The BACKSTREET BOYS?!" Sandra yelled into the phone in disbelief. "Did you say the BACKSTREET BOYS?" She started laughing hysterically. "And you believed him, didn't you!" She laughed louder as the full force of Angela's statement hit her. "He's fucking with you, Angela, and you're believing it! Are you that freakin' gullible?"
Angela was embarrassed and felt stupid for having believed Kenneth. Of course it wasn't really the Backstreet Boys. How COULD she have been so stupid?! "Well, he seemed pretty serious, Sandra," she replied, now unsure if she even had the right group name. "Why would he make up such a thing?"
Sandra's laughter rang out again. "You're so gullible! You kill me!"
"I'm glad you're getting such a kick out of this, Sandra," Angela replied defensively. "It just freaked me out because he was so serious, and I don't know anything about them, so I thought I'd call you and ask you."
"Oh, come on!" Sandra said in disbelief. "You've seen them. They were just on the MTV video awards thingy the other night." Sandra paused as she tried to think of something that might jog Angela's memory about the Backstreet Boys, but nothing came to mind. "Well, don't worry about it, Ange. I highly doubt he got the Backstreet Boys to come to "hicksville" Indiana to work on a crappy house."
Angela was relieved to think that Kenneth was lying and thought to herself that it probably was, in fact, the students she'd hoped for in the first place. She didn't want to sound foolish, but she still couldn't believe that he had pulled such a trick on her and pulled it off well enough to convince her it was the truth. "But he seemed so serious, Sandra."
"Oh my Gawd, girl," Sandra replied emphatically. "You really believe it, don't you! You're so funny!!!" Sandra was cackling to herself on the other end of the phone as she thought about Angela's susceptibility to the power of suggestion. She reflected momentarily on one of the qualities about her best friend that had drawn her to her in the first place: Complete neediness.
When Sandra had first seen Angela at high school, she reminded her of Ally Sheedy in "The Breakfast Club" -- weird, yet oddly pretty in all her depressing glory. After she'd learned her story from the whispers around the school and understood the intentional eccentricities that were being displayed to keep everyone away, it became her goal to befriend her. She recalled having to constantly remind herself as she rallied her efforts towards friendship, that not too many kids could lose both parents and their younger brother in one shot and still be normal - especially after having been shuffled around from foster home to foster home (ten, to be exact) until one decided to stick with it and keep her. She had been hatefully rejected by Angela many times, but had persisted until she finally broke through.
"Hellllloooooooo? Are you there?" Angela couldn't hide her impatience. It was 11:30 pm and she had to be up by 6 in the morning. "What songs do they do? I don't know what songs they do."
"Ummmmmm, They do that one 'you are my fire' song," Sandra replied, trying to remember other songs as she answered.
"You are my fire??? What the hell is that?" Sandra couldn't remember a song that remotely had that in it.
"YOU know it." Angela cringed as Sandra started singing. It was not one of her strong points." 'You are, my fi-re, the one, desi-re'...."
"Ohhhhhhhhhh yeahhhhhhhhh!," she exclaimed. "I know that song!" Angela started writing it all down, knowing she wouldn't remember if she didn't. "Anything else?"
"Oh my God, they do TONS of stuff, girl. Let me think." Sandra sang out the next set of lyrics with confidence, totally unaware of how horrible she really was. "I don't care who you are, where you're from, what you did, as long as you love me."
"WOW! I know that song, too! As....Long.....As....You....Love....Me..." Angela repeated the words as she wrote them out. "And Sandra, don't quit your day job, okay?"
Sandra started laughing -- not because of the criticism, but because she realized that Angela was writing everything down. "Angela, honey, I hate to burst your bubble, but don't count on it really being them. I'm telling you, they're HUGE. They broke all kinds of records with their new CD and stuff. Plus, they're probably out touring or something."
"Yeah, but I don't want to look stupid if it is them, you know?" Angela persisted.
"Whatever...." Sandra replied, rolling her eyes even though Angela couldn't see her.
"Sandra, stop with the 'whatevers'," chided Angela. "I don't really believe it's them. I just want to cover all the bases, just in case."
"Whatever...." replied Sandra again.
Angela pressed on, choosing to ignore Sandra's sarcasm. "So what do they look like? Who's their lead singer?"
Sandra could barely stop laughing to even talk. "Oh, for the LOVE OF GOD! They ALL sing, you idiot!"
"You know, you don't have to make fun of me." Angela was a little hurt by Sandra's laughter. She didn't think it was funny that she didn't know anything about the Backstreet Boys. She thought it was funnier that Sandra knew about them at her age.
"I'm sorry, but you're killing me here, Angie. Let me get my CD cover so I can tell you their names." Sandra still didn't believe it was the Backstreet Boys, but this topic of conversation was much more desirable than the Peace House.
"What?!" Angela said in mock surprise. "You don't know their names?"
"Hey, I ain't no groupie," she replied. "I just like their music. Their new CD is called Millennium, by the way. That's M-I-L-L-E-N-N-I-U-M, in case you need to know how to spell it."
"Fuck You!" Angela yelled back, laughing. "Do you hear me? And that's with a capital F-U-C-K, in case you need to spell it."
Sandra giggled at Angela's outburst. Far from the reaction she'd been baited for. "Oh no, she's cussing. That's not gooo-ooood."
"Screw you!" Angela said impatiently. "Is that better?"
"That's better. I can spell that," Sandra quipped back.
"Okay, Sand, tell me their names," Angela requested, back to business, "and you have to give me a distinguishing feature about them, too, something that would click in my mind when I see them so I would remember who's who. I wouldn't want them to know I don't know who they are. That would probably piss them off and I wouldn't be able to get them to do anything."
Sandra focused on her mission, studying the CD cover and flipping the pages to find their names. "Okay, the first one is.........AJ."
"AJ? That's his name?" Angela was thinking to herself what kind of name is THAT?
"Yup. Well, actually it's his initials, but that's what he goes by. He looks like an AJ, too." Sandra furrowed her brow as she looked at AJ's picture intensely.
Angela tapped her pen, still waiting for a description. "Well, you'll have to do better than that because I don't know what an 'AJ' looks like."
"Okay, I'm thinking! I would just remember the word 'funky'." Sandra smiled as she said it. He does look funky. "Yeah, funky. That's him. He's got tattoos and a goatee thang going on. He looks pretty cool."
"Tattoos and a goatee thing? That's gross. I thought they were a teeny bop group." Angela wrote down AJ/Funky - Tattoo's in her notebook.
"They are, but they're not," Sandra replied. "I don't know. I don't analyze shit. He's just funky. You asked for my opinion and you're getting it."
"Okay! Next...." Angela prodded.
"Okay, this guy…. hmmmmmm," Sandra couldn't make up her mind what to say about him. What would be a distinguishing feature about him?
"At least tell me his name so I can write that down while you're thinking," Angela huffed.
"Okay, his name is…. let me look…." Sandra's eyes scanned the CD cover until she found his name. "Brian. Brian Littrell."
"B-r-i-a-n," Angela repeated again as she wrote it out. "And what about him?"
"Well…. I don't know, exactly. He kinda looks like a fag to me."
Angela burst out laughing, shocked by Sandra's blunt and uncalled for statement. "I can't write that down! Besides, what does a fag look like?" She giggled as she pondered Brian's appearance in her mind. "Sandra, that's not very nice."
Sandra chuckled. She knew she could make Angie laugh if she tried hard enough. "I don't know. He's got these high cheekbones and flaring nostrils thing going on. He looks…." she paused to re-evaluate her description, but couldn't find better words. "…. like a fag."
"Oh, he does not!" argued Angela, without a clue as to what he looked like.
"He does, too!" Sandra persisted.
"Well, I'm not writing that down. That's too mean." Angela scribbled out the 'f' she had written. "And besides, I know your taste in men, so he's probably good looking to me."
"…. If you like fags …." Added Sandra.
" He's not a fag, Sandra." Angela poured on the sarcasm and continued, "He's a Backstreet Boy."
"Yeah," Sandra giggled, "hanging in the back streets with a bunch of fags."
"Stop it! Stop!" Angela's stomach hurt from laughing. "You're killing me!! I just want to know what he looks like, not what you think he looks like. I need facts."
"You said 'you need fags'? Well, he's the man for you." Sandra was on a roll and laughing at her own jokes, which usually meant she wouldn't drop the subject for a while.
Angela threw herself back on her bed and pleaded, "I'm being serious, here, Sandy. It's getting late."
"Okay, okay....here's a better picture of him," Sandra replied, looking at a different picture of Brian. "I stand corrected. He isn't a fag. He's just a little on the faggy side of the fence."
"WHAT THE HELL DOES HE LOOK LIKE?!!!" Angela yelled, dying to get off the fag topic.
"I don't know!!" Sandra yelled back. "I'm doing my best!"
Angela continued pressuring her. "Look, you've got a picture of him in front of you, how can you not know what he looks like?" She thought momentarily…. How can I get her to describe him? "Okay, I've got it. Suppose he mugged you or something, and you had to tell the police what he looked like. What would you say?"
Sandra started softly, "Well, I would say…." And then broke into a dramatic shout. "Officer! That FAG stole my purse!"
Angela had to hold the phone away from her ear. It was that loud. She laughed, but tried to stay serious so she could finish and go to bed.
"Sandra, seriously, I've got to get to bed. Got a lot of work to do tomorrow."
"Okay, okay. He's got medium brown hair with an Amish haircut. Yeah," Sandra said agreeing with herself. "That's it. His haircut looks like a little Amish boy or something. And his eyes are blue, I think. BIG nostrils. High cheekbones. Little mouth....." She finished with a whisper. "…. Fag …."
"I'm going to tell him you called him a fag, too!" teased Angela, quickly adding, "If they really show up." She was hoping that threat would shut Sandra up and get her seriously motivated, but it didn't.
"I don't care. It's not like I'll ever meet him in my lifetime." There was never any intimidating Sandra. She was undefeatable in that category, especially when it was Angela trying to do the intimidating. "So, what did you write down for him, might I ask?"
"I just wrote down 'Brian/Big Nostrils'. That'll work for me," Angela replied.
"No fag?" asked Sandra, a little disappointed after her big production about it.
"No fag," Angela said firmly. "Can we get off the fag thing now?"
"Okay! Next is, ummmm, Kevin. Kevin Richardson."
"Kevin?" Angela asked, even though she'd heard her.
"Kevin,” Sandra replied even though she knew Angela had heard her. "And I got one word for him, and it's eyebrows."
"Eyebrows?!" Angela asked, unsure if she'd heard her right.
"Oh my God, it looks like two caterpillars are growing out of his forehead." Sandra peered into the mirror beside her bed to look at her own eyebrows as she insulted Kevin. Damn, he's got some huge-ass eyebrows.
"Are you critical or what?" chided Angela. "I wonder how they'd describe you if they saw your picture. I should show them one."
"You do that," Sandra replied unscathed by the threat. "They would call me hot and wish they could get a date with me."
"In your dreams," Angela replied, jokingly. She'd always felt inferior to Sandra, who was also a brunette, too, but the funnier, prettier and more popular version. Her smile and laugh could light up any room. No mistaking that. And yet she'd been her friend from the beginning, even when she didn't want her to be her friend. It never made sense to her how a popular girl would hang out with a newcomer who was far from the goddesses her then-current friends were, and even choose her over the goddesses. Not that she was bad looking, but maybe just average compared to Sandra. And Sandra was always the one who got hit on when they were together. It didn't matter, though, because guys were still a big step for Angela. The thought of getting married and having a family scared her into a safe distance from them. Besides, she thought as she came out of her memory lane trance, she had yet to find one worth pursuing.
"Helloooooo?" shouted Sandra, now the impatient one. "I thought you were in a hurry! So what did you put for Kevin?"
"Oh, I just put down Kevin/Eyebrow Man." Said Angela, wondering if they were really that bad.
"Couldn't have put it better myself," agreed Sandra. "You sound like you're getting tired. I'll hurry." She rushed into her next description. "Next, is Howie."
"Howie?" Angela giggled. "That's so dorky. Is he a dork?"
"Oh, Howie ain't dorky, honey, you know what I'm sayin'? DO NOT - I repeat - DO NOT put dorky by his name," replied Sandra, excitedly.
"So finally we have a good looking one," observed Angela. "It's about time."
"It's his eyes. He's got killer eyes. Big, brown, beeyootiful eyes," gushed Sandra.
"So he's the hot one, eh? Should I put that down? Hot?" asked Angela.
"I don't know," Sandra replied thoughtfully. "Seriously, Ange, they're all good looking in their own way. It would just depend what mood you're in, you know?"
That made Angela feel a little bit better. She was actually dreading meeting them, if it were them, because Sandy was making them all sound incredibly ugly. "Okay, I put down Killer Eyes for Howie. What color are they, again?"
"They're brown. He looks Mexican, Spanish, or something like that. Ricky Martin can eat his Puerto Rican heart out. Howie's ten times better looking than Ricky."
"I HATE Ricky Martin. Now, he's a fag." Angela had heard "Livin' La Vida Loca" one time too many. Talk about over-saturation. And when she'd seen him on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine with a bunch of naked women around him it turned her stomach. "What a pig," she added when she recalled the Rolling Stone cover.
"Okay, you've established your Ricky Martin opinion before. I happen to like him." Sandra always got defensive when it came to Ricky, so Angela was surprised when she made the next statement. "But I would pick Howie over him any day."
"What, you don't want the fag?" asked Angela, incredulously.
"Over Ricky Martin? Hell, no! I'd do 'im, though," Sandra added. "What the hell, he's got money."
Angela scoffed at Sandra's shallow remark. "You know, you really nauseate me when you say stuff like that, Sandra."
"Sorry, I was just joking!" Sandra replied defensively. "Geesh, chill out already!"
Angela yawned into the phone, hoping it would prompt her to hurry up. "Who's the last guy? I've only got four written down so far."
"Nick. Nick Car-ter. Wooooo hoooo! He's a cutie. He looks like your type, too: Virginal." Sandra laughed at her own joke (again).
"Very funny. You know, you don't know that I'm a virgin," Angela pointed out.
"Well, seeing how you've never been out on a date, I would say that's a pretty accurate guess," Sandra shot back, knowing that Angela hated it when she brought this topic up.
"My sex life is none of your business," Angela replied, coolly.
"Hey, calm down. I think it's cool that you're a virgin." Sandra cackled as she prepared for her next wise crack. "Besides, it would make a great line for this guy." She turned her voice to a seductive tone. "Oh, yeah, baby, I want you to be my first."
"Fuck off. I'm hanging up. I don't give a fuck who the fuck he is, and YOU can kiss my ass." Angela was ticked off that Sandra wouldn't stop the virgin jokes. It wasn't like she was a freak or anything.
"Hey!" Sandra backed off realizing that she'd really gone too far.
"I'm sorry. Really. I didn't mean to piss you off. I was just having a little fun at your expense. I'm sorry, okay? Calm down."
Angela forgave her reluctantly, like she always did. "Okay. So what's he look like? BESIDES 'virginal'!"
"He's.... Adorable," replied Sandra.
"That's not cuttin' it, Sandra. What color's his hair?" asked Angie.
"Adorable," repeated Sandra.
"I'm serious," pleaded Angela. "Hair color, eye color, something."
"Adorable," repeated Sandra again.
"Sandra, stop it, okay? I want to go to bed!" Angela wanted to thump her so bad!
"Adorable," she replied once again.
"Fine. I'll put adorable. Nick/Adorable, are you happy?"
"Yes. And did I say that he's adorable???" Teased Sandra.
"Yes, you did mention that," giggled Angela.
"Good. Cos he is," said Sandra, hoping she'd made her point to her friend.
"Whatever..." Angela replied, uninterested in Nick and his adorableness. "I'm going to bed now. Take care, and I'll call you tomorrow and let you know what happened."
"Cool. Don't be to upset if he lied to you. I think Kenneth's lying," warned Sandra.
"I won't," answered Angela, wanting to hang up. "Good night."
"Nite," replied Sandra before hanging up.
Angela hung up the phone and looked over her notes. She wondered if she would still really know a Backstreet Boy if she saw one. Adorable? Hmmmmmm…. Adorable.…That would be cool.....and he must be a blond. Sandra knew she had a weakness for blonds. Maybe that's why she kept carrying on about him.
A smile was on Angela's face and she didn't even realize it. She was
really
looking forward to the next day. For once, Kenneth had done something
right.
Not that she believed him.
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