It was still dark when the Backstreet Boys left their hotel that morning. As soon as he set foot outside, Brian Littrell wished he were back in bed. The hard hotel mattress wasn’t exactly the most comfortable thing he’d ever slept on, especially compared to his waterbed back home, but at least it had been warm under the covers. Not the case on the streets of Chicago, where it felt more like mid-winter than the last day of summer. It had rained overnight, and a thick fog had rolled in with the cold front. The fog was so dense that, looking up, Brian couldn’t even see the tops of the tall buildings. They just seemed to disappear into the clouds.
A fat raindrop fell from the awning they were huddled under and splattered in the center of Brian’s forehead. He wiped it off quickly and took a step backwards, shivering from the sudden chill. His fingers fumbled with the zipper of his jacket.
“Shit, it’s cold!” he heard AJ exclaim. “Mom better hurry the hell up with the van before I freeze my nuts off!”
“Language,” warned Lou, wagging a sausage-like finger at AJ. “You boys better start watching your mouths. None of that kind of talk at the radio station, got it? I want you to present a professional image. Be polite - please and thank you, all the way.”
“Got it,” said AJ, rolling his eyes behind Lou’s back.
Brian smiled to himself. He had never been on the receiving end of one of Lou Pearlman’s lectures about etiquette - after all, his mother had taught him to mind his manners - but at the same time, he could understand AJ’s annoyance. Lou expected them to behave as professionals, but sometimes he treated them like children. Calling them “boys” all the time, reminding them to say “please” and “thank you.” Granted, their group was called “The Backstreet Boys,” but most of its members were no longer “boys.” Howie and Kevin, the oldest, had been legal adults for several years now, and Brian would turn twenty-one in another five months. Even the youngest, Nick, was fifteen already. He was growing up - literally - before their eyes. The little blond kid Brian had met two years ago was now a lanky teenager, taller than Brian. How had that happened?
He looked over at Nick, who had his hands crammed in his pockets and was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. Even when he wasn’t trying to stay warm, Nick was always moving. He could play video games for hours, but even then, he couldn’t sit still - he would jerk from side to side and jump whenever his character did, as if he could control its movements with his body. It was no wonder he stayed so skinny, despite eating like a garbage disposal. He clearly burned off every calorie he consumed and somehow still seemed to have boundless energy. The only time Nick really stopped moving was when he slept - and he hadn’t slept nearly enough the night before, thought Brian, stifling a yawn. The kid had kept him up late last night, playing video games in their hotel room until after midnight. They’d only gotten a few hours’ sleep before Kevin came pounding on their door, telling them it was time to get moving.
“Why do we have to be there so early?” Nick whined, echoing Brian’s sentiments.
“It’s a morning show,” Lou answered curtly. “They’re on air at five a.m.”
“But we’re not going on ‘til seven. Why couldn’t we just leave at six-thirty?”
“It’s always good to get there early, especially for a live interview. Besides, you never know what traffic will be like in a big city like Chicago - hopefully we’ll avoid rush hour this way.” Lou turned around to smile at the rest of the group, his breath puffing out of his open mouth in large clouds. “When you’re big stars, boys, you can be fashionably late,” he said, wagging his finger again, “but until then, we’ll arrive on time. Remember, the early bird catches the worm! Ah, there’s the van now.”
AJ rolled his eyes again once Lou had turned back around. Brian caught Nick’s eye and grinned. They called Lou “Big Poppa,” but it wasn’t because of his fatherly advice. Lou was like the fairy godfather of their group, the reason Brian had been whisked away to Orlando from his home in Lexington, Kentucky to live a dream he hadn’t even realized he’d had. It had been Kevin’s dream to be a pop star, not Brian’s. His cousin had moved to Florida first to kickstart his music career, while Brian had been happy just singing in church at home in Kentucky. He would have been halfway through Bible college by now, had it not been for that fateful day, two-and-a-half years ago, when Kevin had called him out of class to invite him to an audition in Orlando. It was there that he’d met Nick Carter, AJ McLean, Howie Dorough, and Lou Pearlman, the honorary “sixth Backstreet Boy,” who had been working tirelessly to get his new vocal group off the ground.
For the past two years, the Backstreet Boys had been chasing fame. They had traveled across the country, performing at schools and malls. They’d put in hundreds of hours at rehearsal halls and recording studios, most recently in Stockholm, Sweden, where they had spent one week of the summer recording with a pair of Swedish songwriters named Max Martin and Denniz PoP. They had produced a single, “We’ve Got It Goin’ On,” which Lou was desperately trying to get on the airwaves. He had organized their current publicity tour, booking the Boys interviews on radio stations throughout the United States in an effort to promote the single. So far, the reception had been lukewarm.
Thankfully, the van was warm. Brian felt the blast of heat as soon as Kevin opened the back door. He sighed with relief. “I call the back!” he shouted, ducking under his cousin’s arm to scramble into the van first. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t all that grown up, but he couldn’t help trying to annoy Kevin. It was so easy - and so much fun.
“I’m sittin’ by Brian!” Nick echoed, barreling past Kevin to get in the back seat with Brian. He was like an overgrown puppy who didn’t realize how big he had gotten. He tripped over his own feet in the aisle and fell, rather than sat, face first into the seat.
“Have a nice trip, Frack?” Brian couldn’t help but say with a grin.
Nick flopped over, pushing his hair out of his face as he settled back into his seat. “Yeah, yeah, I know what comes next,” he said, grinning back good-naturedly. “‘See ya next fall!’ Ain’t that right, Frick?”
“Guess I need to learn some new jokes, huh?”
“No duh!”
Brian smiled to himself as he fastened his seat belt. Frick and Frack. They were five years apart, but closer than anyone in the group. Brian supposed the fact that he was best friends with a fifteen-year-old didn’t speak much for his maturity, but it was more than just a friendship. Nick Carter was like the little brother Brian had never had, and since Nick was the oldest of five, Brian was not only a best friend, but a big brother. He loved the way Nick looked up to him.
“Seatbelt, Nick,” reminded Kevin, turning around in the seat in front of him. “You too, AJ.”
AJ had wedged himself into the back seat between Brian and Nick, while Howie took the middle seat next to Kevin. Lou rode up front in the passenger seat, so he could navigate while AJ’s mother, Denise, drove. “It’s on North Stetson,” Brian heard him say, as the van pulled away from the curb. “Just on the other side of the river.”
“I still didn’t hear your seatbelt click, Nick,” said Kevin in a sing-song voice, sounding just like someone’s father.
“All right, Dad!” Nick retorted, rolling his eyes as he grudgingly pulled the belt across his lap. “I hate these things,” he muttered.
Brian smiled. “He just doesn’t want you bouncing all over the place.”
“Yeah, well, I can still do this.” Nick kicked the back of Kevin’s seat, hard.
“Knock it off back there,” Kevin warned, sounding even more like a disgruntled dad. He didn’t seem to realize he was only encouraging them.
Brian couldn’t resist. “Are we there yet?” he asked in an obnoxious whine.
Kevin’s head whipped around, his thick eyebrows furrowing as he frowned. “Seriously? It’s too early to start this. Please stop.”
“You stop,” said Nick.
“Boys,” reprimanded Big Poppa from the front seat. Kevin sighed and turned back around.
With Nick sulking in the back seat, they settled into a sleepy silence as the van crawled through the city streets. Brian looked out his window, watching the sights through a film of drizzle and fog.
“Why don’t you get on Lake Shore?” he heard Lou telling Denise. AJ’s mother had been heavily involved in the Backstreet Boys’ business since the beginning, but lately, she had become more like a manager than the couple Lou had hired to be their real managers, Johnny and Donna Wright. The Wrights, who had also managed New Kids on the Block, had stayed behind to work with Lou’s other boyband, another quintet of Florida boys who called themselves *NSYNC.
The other boyband had become a point of contention between the Backstreet Boys and their managers. Brian thought at least one of the Wrights should have come along on their radio tour, but he supposed having Lou and Denise there was just as good, if not better. He knew his mom appreciated knowing that another mother was traveling with them. It didn’t matter that he was twenty and too old for a chaperone; she still worried. Jackie Littrell would always worry about her “Baby Duck.” It worked out well for Nick’s mom, too. He and AJ were both still minors, but while AJ was an only child, Nick had four younger siblings at home. With Denise McLean on the road to baby-sit “the boys,” Jane Carter could stay home to take care of her other children. Nick seemed to appreciate this arrangement as well. Brian knew it made him feel more grown up to be on tour without his mother around.
The van’s brakes squealed against the wet pavement as Denise stopped at a red light. “Sorry!” she called back. “The fog’s really bad. I can hardly see ten feet in front of me!”
“That’s all right. Take your time,” said Kevin in his slow, mellow drawl. The light changed to green, and the van turned right. “Look out your window, Nick - there’s Lake Michigan.”
Kevin always liked to play tour guide and point out interesting sights to the younger group members. Normally, Nick loved anything to do with water, but he was in a cranky mood that morning. Yawning with boredom, he replied, “I can’t see nothin’.”
“Can’t see anything,” Kevin corrected.
“Exactly. The fog’s too thick. I can’t tell where the sky ends and the water starts.”
“It’s like the edge of the world,” said Brian, peering out Nick’s window into the endless gray haze.
This comment seemed to fascinate Nick. “Yeah… we could drive off a cliff and never know it!” he exclaimed, pressing his nose against the glass.
“Dude, don’t say shit like that,” said AJ from the middle seat, shuddering.
“Language,” warned Lou and Denise in perfect unison from the front.
“Sorry.”
Brian was still looking out Nick’s window when he heard Lou shout, “Denise!” He turned his head and saw the red glow of brake lights emerging out of the fog, heard the tires squeal against the pavement once again, and felt the van swerve sharply to the right. He never saw what they hit, but he heard the chorus of screams and the crunch of metal and glass and felt the impact only briefly before his head bashed into something hard. Then, with the sound of screams still ringing in his ears, the gray fog seemed to surround him. It swallowed him up, and down, down, he descended into total darkness.
***
