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Rainee > Fiction > The Maybe Book
12:46 A.M.
Chris rolled over in his bunk. He couldn't sleep.
Of course, the light from below him was making it hard.
"Yo. Blondie." He reached out and thumped the wall beside them. "Whatcha doin' down there?"
"Writing..."
"Writing what?"
"Well..."
Chris slid his legs over the side of the bunk, dropping his light frame onto the floor of the bus. "Seriously. What?"
Lance was propped up on two pillows, holding a pen and a small red hardbound book. He shrugged, glancing from the paper to his bandmate then back down. "Just... it's hard to explain."
"What, your diary?" Chris's tone was almost mocking, but not quite, as he leaned on the side of Lance's bed. "A novel, songs, kinky dreams?..."
Lance couldn't help smiling slightly as he shook his head. "It's my maybe book."'
"Maybe a book?" Chris repeated the phrase, brow furrowing slightly. "It sure looks like a book to me..."
Lance chuckled under his breath. "Ever since we started doing this," he explained, "the group... I've had this book. I think I did originally buy it to be a diary, but I just started writing down all the things that might happen, all the 'maybe's. All the big stuff, and the little inconsequential things..." He flipped back to the earlier pages, smiling slightly. "Maybe we'll play a sold-out show at the Coliseum," he read, referring to Jackson's largest indoor venue. "And now we've almost sold out Memorial Stadium."
Chris nodded a bit to himself. "Cool idea."
"Yeah, I thought so." Lance tucked the pen in a pocket in the front cover of the book, laying it on the shelf above his bunk. "Sorry to keep you up, though." He reached up to turn the light out.
"S'a'ight." Chris climbed back up into his own bed. "Sleep tight, kid."
"You too. Night Chris."
"Night."
~
9:28 A.M.
Chris sat on the side of his bunk, legs dangling. Lance had been delegated to hit McDonald's for breakfast that morning, and Chris's natural inquisitiveness had led him to the book. He flipped through its pages, starting at the beginning.
Maybe this will be the greatest thing that ever happens to me.
Maybe these guys will be my new best friends. And we'll be like brothers, and I can tell them anything.
Maybe we'll be huge. Huger than anything else that has ever been.
Maybe girls will be chasing me around begging for my autograph like they did the New Kids on the Block.
Chris laughed to himself. They'd all had the same fantasies when they started out. Whether or not they expected them to come true was questionable. He flipped ahead several pages to the band's beginnings in the U.S.
Maybe Justin will be taller than Joey someday.
Maybe this is a really stupid CD and we're a really stupid group and nobody will like us.
Maybe we really are ripping off the Backstreet Boys and we just don't know it.
Maybe we could tie Chris to the back of the bus by his braids like they do tin cans at weddings. Chris couldn't help laughing at that one.
Maybe everyone will like Giddy Up so much that I'll sing all the solos on the whole next CD.
Maybe I should cut my hair. This elicited an audible chuckle from Chris. "Best maybe you ever maybe-d, kiddo."
"What's that?" Justin leaned on the side of the bunk, peering over Chris's shoulder.
Chris shrugged. "Nothing, some diary of Lance's."
Justin blinked, incredulous. "And you're sitting here reading it?"
"Well, it's not a diary..." Chris explained the book to Justin as Lance had the night before, then to JC and Joey, who arrived halfway through the discussion.
"...and what did you say was the best one in the whole book?"
"Cutting his hair."
Justin laughed. "Yeah, I'd say so." Despite his misgivings, he was curious as well -- as were the others, leaning over Chris's shoulder to read more.
Maybe we'll beat Millennium's record in the first day instead of the first week.
Maybe they'll release It Makes Me Ill as the next single instead of It's Gonna Be Me. That one's cool.
Maybe those puppet strings will get hung out over the crowd and someone will get stuck.
Maybe the strings will break and they'll fall down and get hurt.
Maybe nobody will show up and there won't BE a crowd to get stuck over.
Maybe we'll break Backstreet's record, and they'll break ours, and then we'll break theirs again, and we'll be stuck doing this forever.
"Skip ahead some," JC said. "See what he was writing last night."
Chris grinned, thumbing ahead in the pages. "He kept you up too, huh?"
Maybe this album will win a Grammy.
Maybe it won't, because Michael Jackson's new album will win everything like Steely Dan did last year. Probably.
Maybe we'll never win a Grammy.
Maybe Joey will win an Oscar.
Maybe I will.
"Maybe the bus will sprout wings and fly us to Kazakhstan," Joey commented.
JC grinned over at Justin. "Or overseas to Canada."
Justin squinched his eyes closed. "Shut up, man." He glanced up, noticing a concerned frown cross Chris's face as he flipped ahead. "What?" They all gathered around to look at the book again, at the most recent entries.
Maybe they're just kidding with the "dork" and "girl" and stuff.
Maybe they're not.
Maybe they honestly don't like me.
Maybe they've just been faking it all along so as not to cause trouble.
Maybe I should go home.
Maybe home wouldn't be any better; they all love me for this now anyway.
Maybe I never should have gotten involved with this in the first place.
Maybe I'd be better off if I'd stayed at home.
Maybe I would have gotten into NASA.
Maybe I'd be the first man they put on Mars instead of just that blonde guy behind Justin.
Maybe I should leave. But where would I go?
Maybe I should really leave. Everything, totally.
Maybe I really don't belong here.
Maybe I wouldn't belong in heaven either.
Maybe I don't quite belong anywhere at all.
The four of them were quiet, looking at the last line as a heavy silence settled over the bus. Justin leaned over to take the book away from Chris, sitting on the bottom bunk and finding the pen. His tongue snuck out of the corner of his mouth as it had a habit of doing as he scribbled a few lines on the paper.
JC peered over his shoulder, then grinned, taking the book. "Here, I've got one."
"Hey, let me put a few in too..."
~
11:24 P.M.
Lance stretched out as best he could in the tiny bunk, yawning slightly. He scratched at his now-slightly-fuzzy chin, wiggling his bare toes to work out the kinks of dancing in the same pair of shoes all night. He reached onto the shelf to fetch out his book and pen, flipping back to the page where he'd left off the night before. His eyes trailed down to the spot where his words ended, expecting to add "Maybe I need bigger shoes", but below his last entry was a line scribbled in Justin's handwriting.
Maybe you belong in a mental institution.
Lance frowned. When had he been reading this? Then he noticed that the writing continued onto the next page, not only in Justin's penmanship, but three other familiar scrawls.
Maybe you belong in a zoo seeing as Mississippi Albinos are still endangered!!!
Maybe you belong in the circus.
Maybe you belong in a museum because you're a real piece of work.
Maybe JC is an idiot for writing that there.
Maybe Chris is calling a kettle black.
Maybe we should get back to Lance.
Maybe Justin's right.
Maybe Justin's always right.
Maybe we should all get together and kill Justin in his sleep so we can be right once in a while.
But then maybe we'd all be even wronger.
Maybe I'm confused.
Maybe you always are.
Maybe Lance might not have ever started up with us.
Maybe we wouldn't have a bass.
Maybe we'd sound like a bunch of squeaky little girls.
Maybe we'd have some other bass.
Maybe he'd have brown or blue eyes and all the girls with a "thing" for green eyes would be listening to someone else.
Maybe everyone in Mississippi would be listening to someone else too.
Lance smiled to himself, shaking his head. Those guys...
Maybe Lance would be in NASA.
Maybe his ass would be on ground control, because they couldn't risk the life of their greatest brain by sending it to Mars.
Maybe we pick on you too much.
Maybe you take it too seriously.
Maybe we should make sure you know we're kidding.
Maybe you should just assume we're kidding unless we say "Hey, you're a pansy-assed dorky little girl, and we MEAN that!"
Maybe we wouldn't say that.
Maybe we don't mean that.
Maybe you're a pretty cool kid.
Maybe we're better off because of that.
Maybe you don't belong here.
But maybe, wherever you do belong, we belong there too.
We love you, kid.
Lance chewed on his lip. He dimly noticed that his eyes were watering a bit, but he didn't pay too much attention. He pulled the pen out of the back of the book and began to write.
Maybe they're right.
Maybe they're just trying to make me feel better.
Maybe they mean it.
Maybe I do belong here, though.
Maybe they think a lot more stuff about me than they say.
Maybe I do the same thing.
Maybe we need to work on that.
Maybe we need to say this kind of stuff.
Maybe we don't have to.
Maybe it's just there.
Maybe we all know that.
Maybe that's what makes what we have so special.
Maybe I should go to sleep.
Lance put the book quietly back on the shelf, and turned out the light.