“Sam! Listen to this!” Zac shouted to me on the phone, I could hear the screaming in the background, but when he put the phone near the door I wondered how their eardrums could take that! It was amazing! Their album had been released yesterday and already they had hundreds of hysterical fans!

“We were only expecting maybe 100 people, Sam, there are 6,000 girls out there!!” Zac exclaimed. Okay, thousands of hysterical fans. Girl fans. Girl? Girl fans? I knew this routine well since they were quite popular back here before they even had a record contract, but now it was on a much larger scale.

“Wow, Zac it’s so loud!” I said.

“What was that?” Zac asked me.

“Loud! It’s loud!” I enunciated myself and spoke louder.

“Oh, I know you’re proud!” Zac said to me.

“That too,” I replied.

“What?” Zac asked again, “I’m sorry Sam, the screaming is getting louder, I have to go, we’re about to go on! I’ll call you later!”

So, while Zac was having fun with his ear-piercing mall rat girls, I was left at home just missing him. I hoped he missed me too. That was the day of Paramus Park Mall. That night it was on the news all the way down here in Tulsa! The very next day MMMBop hit number one! I was excited, but it really was all happening so fast. I started to feel, despite the phone calls once or twice a week, that I was only watching Hanson from a distance. They were on my TV screen more often then they were in my living room.

After the radio tour, the Hanson family came back for about 2 days. Their radio tour was in fact a month, however now they were about to begin a promotional trip around the world! I almost choked when Zac came and told me they would be gone all summer. Once again, I should have been excited for them, and I was..kind of anyway. It was great for them that they were getting to travel all around the world, Europe, Asia, and Australia! It was really just a dream that had become a reality for them, but a night mare for me. What would I do all summer without him? Who am I if I’m not Zac Hanson’s best friend? That’s what I had to figure out. Maybe being apart from Zac for a little while, as painful as it is, would help me discover who I really am, because truthfully I don’t know.

My summer plans weren’t much and I really didn’t look forward to it, only to it’s ending because then I would be reunited with Zac. As the summer began, I couldn’t help but be pessimistic. For two weeks my parents made me join a pottery class at the Arts Council of Tulsa. It was a small class for people from my age, 12, to 16 year olds. There were 10 people in the class. I sort of dreaded going there because I wanted to be outside, not indoors doing art. I know that I am good with art, but really, I think I just about had too much of it. I did, however, need to meet new people, and the art class certainly opened that opportunity up. There wasn’t much you could do while you sculpted random pots and sculptures besides chat with the other kids. There was this one guy in my class named Joe. My first impression was that he was weird. He was 14 and he made the oddest sculptures! They were nothing that I could make out anyway. Him and I actually became closer, which was good since he was “popular”, it introduced me to other people who may not have talked to me otherwise. One day Joe asked if I’d like to leave the class early with him and just hang out around Tulsa. I agreed, I knew it would be all right since the person who led the class was just a college girl who was always on the phone and hardly ever supervising. We snuck past her office with ease.

“So, my lady, where are we off to?” Joe asked me.

“It really doesn’t matter, I’m just so glad to be outdoors!” I said with a smile.

“It is nice. I hate that class, I feel like I’m in a prison or something,” Joe began as we paced down the road.

“Your parents force you to go this class too?” I asked. He nodded.

“You know what Sam?”

“Hmm?” I looked up at Joe.

“You’re amazingly cute,” Joe said, now looking me back in the eye. I looked away. No one had ever told me that, well, Zac had told me before that I looked good, but amazingly cute, never. I blushed.

“Really! You are!” Joe continued, “I think you’d look even better if you wore something like...here, let’s go shopping.” Joe stopped in front of the clothing store.

“Umm...ok,” I replied, I was a bit confused.

“You got money?” Joe asked me.

“I have some, $20,” I told him.

“That’ll be ok, I’ll lend you some if you need it,”

“Thanks,” I said and continued into the door to the clothes shop that he had already opened for me.

I immediately saw a pair of cargo pants that looked comfortable and picked them up to try on.

“No no no,” I hear Joe behind me as he takes the cargo pants from my hands and gives me a pair of shorts, “It’s summer! You should show off those legs more!” The shorts he handed me looked really too small. Then it got worse, he handed me a shirt that wasn’t even one that would cover my stomach! I looked at him and at the clothes and didn’t know how to react. He didn’t like how I dressed? I didn’t want to dress like I was some sort of prize to be won. Something inside me wanted to be shy and agree to get the clothes so I would ‘fit in’, but my outgoing tomboy side took over.

“I don’t want to wear these clothes! I like what I’m wearing! Maybe I don’t want to show off my butt! Is that ok? Cause if you can’t deal with that, I’m leaving!” I blew up. I couldn’t believe what had slipped from my mouth. I was embarrassed since I had attracted attention from the shoppers around us, so I just turned to the door and walked out. Joe dropped the clothes and followed me outside.

“Hey baby, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize...” He started.

I looked up at him, tears forming in my eyes, “Let’s just go back, ok?”

“Ok sure,” He said smoothly but in a way that made me at the same time feel uneasy, “How about I get you some ice cream. I’ll melt all your worries away.”

I was still disturbed about the clothes. I think I knew then that Joe didn’t accept me for who I was, but my stomach was growling, I was hungry. I agreed. As I sat eating my double chocolate fudge ice cream, I noticed Joe moving closer to me. He took my ice cream from me and placed it next to him on the bench where we were sitting. He put his arm around me and then began to hastily kiss my lips. It went so fast I didn’t know what was even going on, until he started to move his hands up the back of my shirt. My impulses kicked in and I pushed him off me.

“Stay away from me,” I told him, shakily, and ran off. I heard him calling behind me, but I didn’t care to even listen. I found a phone about 2 blocks off from where I’d left Joe. I called my sister. She was working at a pharmacy in Tulsa trying to make some extra cash for college which she started in September.

“Jamie?” I asked, it sounded like the voice of my sister. It was.

“Sam? Is that you? Aren’t you supposed to be in your art class?”

“Jamie, I’m in trouble, PLEASE come get me!” I begged.

“Where are you?” Jamie asked with an assertive tone.

“Downtown, in front of the Nearly New Shop,” I told her.

“Okay, can you wait for ten minutes?” She asked me.

“Yes,” I told her.

“I’ll be right there then,” She replied and hung up.

I went inside of the Nearly New store and waited behind some clothes racks by the window watching for Jamie. It was about ten minutes when she pulled up and I ran out to her safety. I slammed the car door as I got in, tears still in my eyes.

“Now why aren’t you in your class?” Jamie asked me with a totally confused look of anger and curiosity.

“Well, Joe invited me to go hang out in town, and well, it’s ok since no one notices if you leave anyway- so we were walking around and-”

“It’s not okay to leave your class!” Jamie interrupted me, “I don’t care if anyone notices or not, you’re supposed to be in that class from 9am to 3pm!”

“I know, I’m sorry, I know now, I won’t do it again. Please don’t tell mom and dad!!” I pleaded with her.

Jamie looked straight ahead at the road and let out a deep breath, “I’ll have to think about that one, but obviously something bad happened because you made me leave work to come pick you up. Now what’s going on?”

“Well, I thought Joe was a nice boy, he seemed so. He took me to a clothes store, he tried to make me wear all these skimpy clothes. I didn’t want to. I ran out of the store. Then he, he was kissing me and- I, I, I didn’t want to and it scared me,” I was beginning to tear up again.

Jamie took another deep breath, “Sam, this is what you get into when you act irrationally, you can’t just do what you please. Part of growing up is making correct decisions, and if you don’t, facing the consequences,” Jamie looked at me, a look that I read well.

“Please don’t tell! I won’t do it again!” I begged.

“I’m sorry Sam, but you’ve got to learn and you’ve got to be dealt with by mom and dad. I can’t always be here to bail you out, and I can’t always offer the best advice. You need mom and dad to discipline you, I can’t be always worrying about you.... even though I already am,” She smiled to herself at that, but then returned to her serious look, “I’m taking you home now, I want you to get some rest and then explain to mom and dad when they get home.”

I moped my way up the stairs and into my room, I tried to plan out all the possible punishments. I really hated to think about what they might do. I cleared it from my mind, and went over to look in my closet. I stared at the clothes for a minute or two, then looked into my drawers. I found an older shirt at the bottom of my third drawer. It was an undershirt I outgrew last year. I took a scissors out and cut the bottom inch of the undershirt off. I put it on to reveal my belly button. I looked in the mirror and forced myself to smile. This could be the new me.