Rachel Authors Comments: Don't worry. I know it's long, but it has a purpose. Just bear with the first chapter and the rest of them will flow like clockwork! This is a happy story! It really is! This story is fantasy-fiction! Rachel: The Documentary Star "There she sits..." Isaac began quietly in a strained British accent, camera shaking slightly. He was on the tour bus driving on the road. Zac sat in the background with Taylor, who were both fixated on their Playstation game against each other. But the camera wasn't focused on them.
"...The creature is drawing; a favorite pass-time of those of it's kind..."
A girl looked up to the camera of which Clarke Isaac Hanson held in the palm of his hand. She was wearing a tight dark blue shirt with a white collar and a pair of burgundy leather pants. She had wide dark eyes and a sleek body. She had paper and pencil and had stopped what she was doing to look up at Clarke. She looked at him with her sparkling brown eyes and laughed,
"Jeez, you guys act like you've never seen a girl before!" she shook her shoulder-length brown hair and continued to chuckle.
"She SPEAKS!" Isaac cried and backed away in awe. Then he zoomed in on her olive skin and freckled face.
"Get outta here, Ike!" she giggled, dropping her paper and pencil. She then leapt forward and covered his camera with her hand and he cried in agony,
"SHE'S GOT ME! AURGHH!"
Her room was covered with her own artwork. Pencil shaded delicately across the once white paper, acrylics flying across canvas wildly. She had a talent for the arts, mostly pencil work, but expanding in color. She had paintbrushes and paint scattered carelessly on the floor. She had pencils falling down every crack between every drawer and table possible. She had watercolors drying in the air of her room, brown with mixing on the lids and CD's face up on her cabinet. A music stand stood in a corner with sheet music from school on it, as well as a number of newspaper articles and clipped out magazine photos. Her oboe and saxophone sat on the ground in their cases and her father’s guitar that she played was under her parent's bed. She was an artist and musician.
Rachel was a dreamer.
Rachel had been calling Steve over and over again. She'd call and would get the reply of "Oh, we have company, I'll call you back," or "I'm busy, I've got to call you later..."
Steve was Rachel's best friend of four years. They both were 16 years old. Rachel was a matter of hours older than he was and, if they didn't look so much like their parents, one would think that they were twins. They did everything together and had their weekly three-four hour phone call on a Friday night. They knew everything about each other because of these calls no one on earth could separate them as far as they both were concerned. They were two turtledoves that always flew together.
But something happened to them. Steve wanted to be so popular so bad during the summer of '98 that he started hanging around girls that would hang all over him and do odd physical things with him that Rachel just refused to do. Now she was nothing. The girl that Steve had claimed to love mutually and sexually was just in the way of all his other friendships. They were growing out of each other. Rachel was lost.
"I hate this so much," she said to herself under her rain cloud. Her brown hair hung in her freckled face and she closed her big brown eyes tightly, making even her long dark eyelashes seem small. She had the phone in her tired hand and she started to break down. She became scattered and her nerves started jumping, "I have to leave..." she breathed heavily crying, only without the tears. She became reckless, having an anxiety attack. She looked around frantically, trying to look for something to take with her when she left. Her hands shook and she knocked everything she touched over because of it. But she knew she couldn't leave. She couldn't survive on her own. So she had to stay here and watch Steve leave her alone again and again...day after day...
"God DAMN it!" she threw the phone to the ground and the batteries came out of the back and rolled under her bed, collecting with papers and shoes, "I can't stay here and be ignored!" She carefully took the picture of her and Steve in their marching band uniforms in her hand and growled. They both stood regally in their blue and white uniforms with fake smiles on both their faces. That picture had horrible memories. Out of 30 minutes of waiting to take the pictures, all but 3 were spent by Rachel waiting with their friend Christi while Steve ran off with the color guard who hung all over him and "licked" the cut on his lip from his trumpet to make it "all better".
So she sat down upon her bed, sighing painfully. She then curled up and closed her eyes, trying to not think of what was going on around her. She looked up at her orange Hanson poster.
Ah, Hanson. Her and her friend Gina had discovered Hanson in the summer of 1997. Rachel wasn't too impressed when she saw Mmmbop video on MTV and thought they were just a bunch of dorky high-pitched boys with long hair. And that keyboard playing lead! That's one grubby looking girl! But Gina had the Mmmbop single that gave the male name Taylor Hanson as well as having several other songs on it which impressed Rachel. And so it started: Hanson was her favorite band.
Hanson's music meant a lot to Rachel. That seemed to frighten Steve a bit, but he respected Rachel's love for Hanson and actually didn't mind their music--until he became "cool".
Rachel's eyes traveled to look at Isaac and she smiled relieved. She knew that, when things got frantic and when things got crazy with her loved ones, she could always think of Isaac. After all, it couldn't hurt! She'd never meet him and there was no harm in being attracted to Clarke Isaac Hanson. He was Isaac Hanson, for crying out loud! She laughed to herself.
"God Damn it, Ron!"
Rachel jumped a bit, and then realized it was her mother storming up the hall.
"Then what the Hell am I supposed to do?" her mother, Lynn, continued. "You know I can't cook worth shit!"
"Then learn how to cook! Jesus Christ, Lynn! Don' buy that TV dinner shit!" her father's booming voice came in.
Rachel sat and heard her parents grow quiet. She then heard her father slam the door and she waited for her father's car to start, but it didn't. The high pitched sound of pipes creaking sounded as the water from the hose turned on outside. The crack of snapping clothes drifted up the hall as mother started to fold laundry.
Her parents had been fighting like that for the past couple of years or so and Rachel was tired of it. They never were friends before they married. They started with courting, then dating, and then marriage. She knew her father wanted out. She just wanted him to get it over with and ask for a divorce. She loved both her parents but them as a couple?: She hated seeing it now--with a passion.
She wanted to get away and leave. Leave her parents who were never friends to begin with. And she wanted to get away from Steve--the only male friend she could ever live with. Her best friend. She started to softly cry, fogging her contacts and warming her face.She went on like that for a while and eventually calmed herself enough to start working on her painting of Hanson she had been working on. To get into the mood, she popped her worn Middle of Nowhere CD that she hadn't listened to in a while. She was just starting to put shadows on Zac when there was a knock at her door; It was her father. Rachel sighed, pausing the player and putting the cap on her paint,
"Yes?" she inquired, wiping her hands on her dirty painting shirt.
"You've...uh...got some visitors..." her father went on being vague, as usual.
Rachel rolled her eyes, "Who is it?"
"Uh..." her father went on "..it's your boys..."
My boys? She thought to herself. She had friends who were boys, but none of which you could classify as hers--not anymore, at least. But she'd heard that one before when her father couldn't remember the name of the Hanson brothers and wanted to show her that they were on TV. So she sighed again "Just a minute..."
She couldn't believe this. Who in the world was coming to visit her on a Saturday afternoon? She became agitated and didn't want to talk to anybody. She then unlocked her door hearing her dad walk away. She turned the corner and looked through the front door--and there they stood. The three of them, their blond locks and everything; the Hanson brothers were standing at her front door. Their father stood behind them and Taylor spoke "Are you Rachel?..."
Rachel was at a loss for words. What the?...She took a breath to speak a few times but couldn't think of anything to say. She scratched at some paint on her face and replied unsure of herself, "Uhh...I think so..."
The three chuckled and Rachel collected herself and she tentatively walked over to the brothers who smiled at her, almost in flattery.
Taylor was the first to hold out his hand. He smiled, "Nice to meet you, Rachel." he said in his deepened voice.
Rachel held out her hand uneasily and shook Taylor's, "Nice to meet you, too..." she smiled, starting to feel more professional now that she had gotten over the initial shock of having her favorite musicians knock at her door. She looked to she the Zac and Isaac looking at her with a warm smile.
She went along the line and then came to Walker and shook his hand.
"Rachel, you seem like a nice girl..." he commented.
"Really?" Rachel didn't see what was so seemingly nice about her. So she smiled uneasily. Then, "Excuse my appearance!" and she looked down at herself, covered in paint and then at the brother's clean, shiny new clothes, "I've just been painting..."
"Oh, that's okay..." they all continued to pardon her.
"Anyway," Walker continued and Rachel looked over to Isaac who smiled warmly back. "You wrote the boys a fine letter, sending some of your artwork of them and they like what you can do!"
"Really?" Rachel laughed "Thanks, I'm glad you guys like it!" and they smiled back.
"You made me a little crazy looking, though..." Zac commented and grinned wildly "You gave me HUGE eyes!" and he widened his eyes to the extreme.
Rachel giggled and Isaac took hold of his little brother "Zac needs sleep! He's just a little loco!"
"Yeah..." Taylor commented. He didn't goof off as much as his brothers, especially when a girl was there. He stuck his hands in his back pocket and began a proposition. "We want you to draw a comic for our Moe magazine...now, I don't know what you'd make it of..."
"Actually," Zac came in "You could make, like, Hanson of the Jungle..."
"Oh...so we'd have you all naked except for an appropriately placed cloth running around the jungle just like Brendan Frasier!..." Rachel cocked her head to the side in a think-that-one-over manner.
"Oh..." Isaac said in a strained voice to be funny "I think we should seriously reconsider that one!..."
"Yeah!.." Rachel laughed "No offense, but I don't do Hanson nudes!..."
"...What the boys were thinking," Walker stepped in before this one went on further than it already had "Is that you document what they do on tours and on vacations and stuff...because, as you know, these three can be a lively bunch!"
Isaac grabbed Zac around the shoulder and they both gave an exaggerated smile and Tay laughed, playing it cool, as always.
"We'll just write you," Taylor began as Isaac laughed and joked with Zac "And we could all make little story boards for you..."
"Wow..." Rachel smiled "That sounds great!" she looked over at her father who smiled.
"Hey," he said shaking Walker's hand, "Rachel here has some...uh...musical talents too...she plays the...er...Saxophone and..." he looked over at her "What's that other thing you play?"
Rachel looked over at the four who had now made their way into the house and into the living room. "Well, I play the saxophone in marching band. I can play simple guitar stuff, namely Mmmbop, in A. But I usually play the oboe..." she stood and folded her arms for an explanation.
The brothers didn't get it at first, so she spoke up "What's wrong with the oboe, Ike?"
"Oh!" he laughed remembering their visit to "O" on Nickelodeon where they had sarcastically considered putting an oboe in their music and then turning it down in disgust."That? Ohh...there's nothing' wrong with the oboe! I was just jokin' around!..."
"Sure..." she smiled.
"So, you march, then," Tay commented, "That seems pretty cool..."
"Yeah," Zac squeezed a word in for once in his life, "The saxophone's a cool instrument!"
"Yeah, it's fun!" she said, "You have a lot more freedom on the saxophone than the oboe, but I still like oboe better..."
"I've never actually heard an oboe in person...or seen anybody play it..."
"Oh," Rachel said and turned towards her room, "I could play it for you...both the oboe and the saxophone, if you want...but not the guitar! Not in Isaac's presence!"
Isaac grinned, flattered as the four exchanged glances and agreed to it. It couldn't hurt.
"You might want to get out of those rags first..." her mother commented.
"Oh, Lynn," her father snapped "It doesn't matter any..."
Rachel got in her room and closed her door quickly and held it there with her back and grimaced unhappily. Her parents couldn't even stop bickering in public! But all in all she tried to ignore it. She then got out of her paint clothes and put on her dark denim jeans and short-sleeved flannel shirt and got her boots on for she had noticed she had been in her socks. She then grabbed both her instruments and headed for the boys.Now that she was dressed like a normal person, the boys looked at her and noticed she was a pretty young woman rather than a starving artist. She developed shape and had a feminine aura that she was missing before.
She sat down, bringing chairs over for the Hansons and laid the case on her lap. Walker spoke with her parents and the trio asked her about school and she inquired into home school. When she finally got her oboe together, she took her reed out.
"Woah!..." Zac said, "What do you do with that thing?"
"See," she showed the three "This thing is two reeds tied together with this red wire so that when you blow on it-" and she did, causing it to buzz and the brothers to smile at the weird noise "-it vibrates together to creates a nasally sound." She then placed the reed into her oboe and said "Now, I'm not warmed up, so wait a second." She then blew into it and a nasally, rich sound came from the instrument."Hey!" Isaac recognized the similar sound of the English Horn and said "It's just like a snake charmer!" and he squinted his eyes and hissed. Rachel then started ad-libbing to the melody of More Than Anything, and playing slow riffs from songs with oboe features, as well as the Egyptian-like Elephants on Parade oboe feature from Dumbo.
"Hey, now..." Tay said "That doesn't sound that bad! You're a really fine player!"
Both Isaac, Zac, and Walker agreed.
Rachel then started talking about the oboe and her music, and then got to her saxophone.
She got it warmed up and started ad-libbing to Look at You and Speechless, as well as I Will Come to You and Ray Charles's Georgia.
"She's got this stuff down!" Walker exclaimed and repeated what Taylor had said.
Ideas went through their heads.
"Come on..." Isaac came from nowhere, "Get the guitar!"
"Yeah!" the other's agreed and prodded until Rachel gave in and got it from her parent's room as her father told how the guitar was actually his, but he never played it...of course overlooking the fact that Lynn had bought it for him.
Rachel got it out and tuned the guitar by string with help from a chord sung by the three brothers. She then started, trying to remember chords and then began Mmmbop slowly and sang a little, waving a tad in pitch.
When she was finished she laughed,
"I taught myself all that! Bad singing and all!"
"You have a nice voice!" Walker said. "We might need to give you a little pitch training, but you have a nice voice."
Rachel tittered, "Thanks..." What were they up to?
"You know," Isaac mused "We could use another guitar player, or even a sax player on the tour..."
"Yeah," Tay realized that this was a great idea "Your ad-libs of the songs sound great!" he was getting excited over this new venture, but didn't show it. Then, with an odd notion, "Can you play cello?"
"No..." she tilted her head, oddly.
"Do you think you could if someone stuck a bow in your hand?"
"Well," Rachel admitted "I am a fast learner!...""I dunno," Rachel's father came in, overbearing as usual "I don't know if she can take that..."
You don't know what I can take...Rachel thought, angrily locking her jaw."Well," Walker said "It seems they would like her on tour as a cello/sax player! I'll talk it over with the boys--I'm very impressed with your daughter's talents..."
"Thanks..." Ron said gruffly, defending his daughter unnecessarily.Rachel became disappointed. She wanted to tour with Hanson and her father wasn't going to let her. Plus she could finally get away from all this turmoil she'd been going through.
"We're staying at a hotel down the street," Walker said "We'll stop by tomorrow and you can talk things over..." he motioned for his boys to follow.
"It was nice to meet you!" Isaac began and shook her hand.
"Nice to meet you, too!" she smiled back at him.
She exchanged similar good-byes with Tay and Zac. And then they were gone.
She turned to her father who shook his head to himself,
"The nerve of some people..."
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