"Wake up, Ike. We're home." Ike moaned and turned his head away from his father. "Isaac, wake up. Unless you want to stay in the van all day."

"'Kay, alright already," Ike grumbled as he pulled himself up out of his seat. He tried to shake out the crick in his neck that had been there since the plane ride back to Oklahoma. "I just want to go to bed," he mumbled under his breath. He didn't care if it was only 2:00 in the afternoon.

"Home! Home! Yes, I am home, Tulsa! Ha ha ha ha!" Zac stood in the middle of the road outside their house dancing on the pavement and jumping around. It was good to be back to someplace familiar, even if it was only for a couple of weeks.

"Zac! Come help with this stuff."

"Yeah, just a second Dad." Zac made one last leap into the air before he sprinted towards his father and swiped a bag out of his hand. "See! I'm helping!" he yelled as he ran into the house with the tiny carry-on.

Zac headed straight for his and his brothers' room and hurled himself onto Taylor's lower bunk, throwing the carry-on bag onto the floor. "Home, home, home, la la la, home, home..." he sang to a made up tune.

"Zac, get off my bed." Taylor stumbled into the room carrying 3 bags and his laptop. Suddenly, he felt his foot slip out from underneath him. He lunged forward landing on his face. His computer flew out of his hand and across the room, crashing into the wall. "ZAC! Who put this bag here!"

"Uh...sorry."

"Oh, no. My computer!" Tay raced across the room and grabbed his computer case. He slowly opened it, afraid to see the damage that had been done.

An exhausted Isaac shuffled into the room. "What happened?" Ike asked when he saw the sickened look on Tay's face.

"My computer is dead," he said in a low voice.

"Oh my...it looks...Tay, it doesn't look like much of anything...anymore. What did you do to it?"

"What did I do to it?! You mean what did Zac do to it! You are dead Zac, and I mean that. This can't be fixed! Look at it. It's completely ruined!" Taylor was fuming and his cheeks were turning a bright red.

Zac cowered back in the bed and tried to avoid Taylor's scathing look. He had never seen his brother this angry before, at least not at him. "I'm really sorry, Tay. I didn't mean it. Really. I didn't know that you..."

"Forget it, Zac. I'm tired of you. You're always doing something wrong! You embarass me all the time and then you go and do stuff like this. You're so absent-minded! Do you know that? Why do you even have to be in this room?!"

By this time, Zac was trying hard to hold back the tears that he knew were inevitable. "Fine, Taylor! If you want me to leave then I will! I hated sleeping in this room. I'm tired of you too, you know. You're always trying to tell me what to do and say and I'm sick of it!"

"I do not!"

"Taylor, it's not the end of the world," Ike reassured him. "Maybe, you better just calm down."

"Don't tell me to calm down, Ike. What would you do if your video camera looked like this?!" With that Tay got up off the floor and stomped out of the room, carrying the remains of his laptop with him.

"He won't stay mad," Ike said as he went over to comfort his little brother. Zac's eyes were red, but he looked intent on keeping himself together.

"Just forget it." Zac crawled out of the bed, ran out of the room, and left Isaac alone to ponder exactly what just happened.

Taylor had dropped what was left of his computer in the living room and stormed out of the house. He was tired of always being with his family. He just wanted to be alone. He hadn't meant all the things he had said to Zac. In fact, he felt guilty for saying them. But he was still too mad to even think of taking those words back.

"He's always doing things like that," he mumbled to himself. "He just doesn't think of anyone but himself. I wouldn't have to tell him what to do if he wasn't always doing so many embarrasing things." Taylor headed down the sidewalk, not sure exactly where he was going. "I'm sick of it, just sick of it," he continued to grumble.

"Having a nice conversation with yourself?"

The voice startled him and he swung around to see a young girl stretched out on one of the lawns, a book in her hand.

"Oh, gosh. You scared me Leigh-Ann."

"Sorry, maybe I should've just left you and yourself alone to finish your little chat." She raised up her book and sat there pretending to read.

"What are you reading?"

"Huckleberry Finn. I have to read it for school." She tried to look engrossed in the novel, and didn't bother to look up. In actuality, she was only on page 10 and had been on that page for about a half an hour. She was dying for an excuse to stop reading, but Taylor Hanson was not going to be that excuse.

"I read that. It's pretty good."

"Really, that's nice." She continued to stare at page 10, which looked more and more like Greek the longer she stared at it. "Is there something you want?"

"Hey, you're the one who talked to me." His pride told him to leave, but he really wanted to talk to somebody...somebody that wasn't a member of his family. "So, what part are you on?"

"Um, I'm at the part where...you know with Tom Sawyer and they are in a club and...why do you care, anyway?"

"I don't care. I just was making conversation." Taylor climbed onto the lawn and sat next to Leigh-Ann. He peered over her shoulder and started to read a paragraph.

"Taylor! Stop it. That is so annoying. Look, I have to get this done. You know, some people don't have their parents for their teacher. My teacher is gonna flunk me if I don't know this book backwards and forwards for the test on Monday."

"Sorry," he said in his most sarcastic voice. "I just thought we would talk that's all. We use to be friends you know. I bet you didn't even notice that I was gone for the past month and a half."

"Not notice? It wasn't even like you were gone. Every 5 seconds I would see you guys on TV." Leigh-Ann rolled over and turned her back to Tay.

Leigh-Ann had moved to the Tulsa suburb of Jenks about 3 years ago. She had met Tay while rollerblading down one of the steep roads that line the suburb. She was headed downhill and gained too much speed. When she reached the intersection of the street she had no way of stopping when 11-year-old Taylor zoomed in front of her. The crash had left both of them dizzy and confused. They had been friends ever since, at least up until 4 months ago.

"You want to go and do something?" Taylor was desperate for any kind of companionship, even if it meant biting the bullet and hanging out with Leigh-Ann.

"Why me? Why don't you just go ask Rebecca. I bet she would love to go with you. Oops, I forgot. She dumped you. Sorry." Leigh-Ann knew she was being cruel, but she just couldn't get over the way Taylor had used her.

"Why are you still mad?"

"Taylor Hanson, you tried to use me to make that girl jealous! And the worst part is that you didn't even care about our friendship. All you cared about was sweet Rebecca. She's not even that great. And then you go off and do all your band stuff and don't bother to even apologize."

"Look, I'm sorry, okay. And I'm sorry that I didn't get to say that before I left for the promo tour, alright. And I'm sorry that I felt so bad about it that I was embarassed to say I was sorry until now." Taylor was exasperated. How many people was he planning on alienating that day. "I've just had a really, really horrible day."

"How horrible?" Leigh-Ann was interested in this.

"Zac and I got into this huge fight." He layed back onto the grass and closed his eyes. He could feel a headache starting to form.

"About what?"

"He broke my computer. Well, kind of. I don't know. Maybe it's just everything lately is all piling up and I just took it out on Zac."

"That's probably it." She sat up again and stared at the book.

"Thanks for the support."

"Look, you want my advice? Go home and make up with your brother. You can't very well stay mad at him. You have to spend, like, all your time with him so..."

"See, that's the point! I never have any privacy." He sat up again and looked intently at Leigh-Ann. She didn't even look interested in what he had to say. She sat there, her legs crossed, still looking at her book. "Forget this. Why am I even talking to you."

A pang of guilt swept through Leigh-Ann. She hadn't meant to be so dismissive. She remembered the long talks that she and Tay used to have on the phone and in her room. It was the kind of friendship that you hope someday you'll get to have. It just got messed up somewhere along the way. "Sorry, Taylor."

"What?"

"I know you must be going through a lot right now, with the band and all. It seems like a lot of pressure." She finally set her book down and scooted closer to where Tay was sitting.

"No, I mean this is what I want to do. It's a lot of fun, but there is a lot of stuff that comes with it...not so fun stuff."

"Look, it's only 4:00. Why don't we go to the mall for an hour or something? I can finish reading this tonight."

"Okay." Taylor and Leigh-Ann got up and dusted themselves off.

"Leigh-Ann?"

"What?"

"Thanks."

"Zac? What on earth are you doing out here?"

Zac sleepily opened his eyes to see his mother staring down at him, her hair sweeping across his face. "Mom, get your hair away from me."

"Why are you sleeping on the couch? Did you sleep here all last night?"

"Yeah, why?" Zac rolled over and pulled the blanket up around his ears.

"Alright, get up." Mrs. Hanson grabbed the blanket.

"Why?! It's Saturday!" Zac whined as he played tug-of-war for the blanket with his mom.

"Well, first of all, it's already 10:00. Second, you are not supposed to be sleeping in here. I want to know what is going on around here. Taylor's moping around, his computer is broken and you're sleeping out here. Why do I get the feeling that these things are connected."

"I didn't break it." Zac almost believed himself.

"Taylor!"

"No! Mom, you don't have to call him. He's just moody, that's all." Zac jumped up from the couch and grabbed his mother's arm. Taylor strode into the room gobbling down a huge bowl of chocolate ice cream.

"Taylor, it's 10:00 in the morning, why are you...nevermind," Mrs. Hanson put her hand on her forehead and sighed. "Tay, how did your computer break?"

"Uh, I dropped it."

"How?"

"I tripped."

Zac looked at his brother in disbelief. He thought for sure that Tay would immediately blame him, especially after all the things he said yesterday.

"Well, then why is Zac sleeping out here? He only does that when he's fighting with you or Isaac."

"Didn't you say that the room was too cold last night, Zac?" Taylor innocently looked at Zac, who was now deeply confused, but appreciative.

"Yup, that's it. It was cold in there. You know that the window is way too big."

"That's it?" Mrs. Hanson didn't believe a word of it, but didn't care at that point. The two seemed to be getting along and that was all that mattered. "Alright. I'm going to lay down for a little while. This baby is kicking up a storm and it doesn't feel so good right now."

"'Kay, mom," Tay managed to say in between shoveling ice cream in his mouth.

After Mrs. Hanson left, Taylor gave a slight smile to Zac and headed back into the kitchen. Zac was grateful to whatever put Tay in a good mood. He plopped back down on the couch and turned on cartoons. Maybe things were looking up. Then, from another room his mom yelled, "Oh, I forgot! Amanda Wallace, you know, the one from Mercury, is coming over this afternoon! Make sure you're dressed, Zac!"

Perfect.