Welcome to My Life

Chapter Four – Suspicious

“Patrick, wake up, we’re here” Tom said as he shook the young boys’ shoulder. He opened his eyes and sat up quickly, remembering where he was.

“Yay, we’re in Massachusetts!” he cried.

“We’re in Maine, genius” Noah said rolling his eyes. Patrick rolled his eyes back at him.

“Well excuse me for not knowing my Geometry” he said sarcastically.

“It’s Geography” Sydney corrected, shaking his head. He turned to Jake and McFly. “Its obvious that he’s not very bright, but we needed him for the band anyway”

“Hey!” Patrick protested.

“Just shut up and get off the plane” Riley snapped and shoved her brother.

He stuck his tongue out at her, grabbed his bag, and they all got off the plane. They were instantly bombarded with fans, but Jake and Robert apologized to them, saying that they bands couldn’t waste time signing autographs and they went off to get some rental cars.

“What do you think the hotel is going to be like?” Patrick asked as he took out his contacts and glasses cases.

“It doesn’t matter to me, as long as I don’t have to share a room with Dougie” Danny said and slapped his friend on the arm.

“What’s wrong with sharing a room with him?” Noah asked as he helped Patrick take out his contacts.

“He farts in his sleeps” Tom replied and Riley made a face.

“Wow, that’s a pretty picture” she said sarcastically. “Thanks for the disturbing mental image.”

Sydney giggled into his palm and Rhuben gave a small smile, reaching over and mussing his hair. Dougie watched them.

‘They don’t seem so bad’ he thought to himself. ‘They’re so much nicer when they’re with their brothers. I guess they really love each other’

“What are you staring at?” Riley snapped when she noticed Dougie watching them. Dougie shook his head and turned away.

“Why are you two so mean all of the time?” Danny asked Riley and Rhuben, they shrugged in reply.

“I guess it’s the way we were raised” Rhuben replied casting a small glare at her father. “Hey,” she reached into her duffel bag and pulled out a Digital Camera. “Time for a photo”

“What for?” Harry asked, he didn’t particularly like getting his picture taken, but he did it for the fans and for the press. They would be disappointed if he didn’t.

“We always make scrap books of our tours” Sydney replied and motioned for McFly to come over. “You don’t mind if they’re in the picture do you?”

Rhuben shook her head and waited for McFly to get in the view of the camera and got ready to take the picture, but Riley stopped her. Rhuben raised an eyebrow impatiently and Riley pointed with her chin behind her. Rhuben turned around and saw that there was someone watching her. She shuddered and turned back to the others and took the picture. She held the camera out in front of her and gave a small smile.

“Was that a smile I saw?” Danny asked as soon as she took the picture. “Was that a smile?”

“I think it was” Patrick agreed in surprise and wonder. Noah laughed and slapped his twin on the arm.

“A smile?” Sydney asked in mock horror. “From Rhuben Jackson? Never!”

“It must be the sign of the apocalypse” Riley joked, causing her brothers to laugh.

“Ha, ha, ha” Rhuben said as she rolled her eyes. “Is it really that surprising to see a smile on my face?”

“For a person like you, probably” Harry replied. Rhuben turned to him with a fierce glare and he held his hands up in defense and backed away.

“That’s funny” She said sarcastically. “Oh, and by the way, that’s the fakest face fungus (1) I’ve ever seen”

“Face fungus?” Tom repeated, looking confused.

“Facial Hair” Riley replied with a smirk as she tried not to laugh. “More of the moustache or beard variety.”

“No need to be narky (2), Rhu-Rhu” Sydney said quietly. Rhuben leaned down and flicked him in the nose and ruffled his feather soft hair, to show him that she was teasing him.

“Hey, we got the cars, so all we have to do is go to the hotel and unpack. We have about an hour before we have to go to the radio station” Jake said as he jingled two car keys. Riley grabbed one.

“I’ll drive” she said with a grin.

“But you don’t have your license yet” Robert protested, taking the keys from her hand. Rhuben grabbed them back.

“But we can learn” she insisted.

“I’m not taking the risk of you guys crashing us” Robert said harshly, causing the two girls to wince. “Now grab your bags and let’s go!”

“What was that about?” Jake asked McFly, they shrugged in reply. But Danny thought he knew. Although he would rather not admit it, he knew what it was like to be bullied. But being bullied by your own father was more likely a case of child abuse.
“Ouch! Daddy, stop!” Sydney wailed as he covered his body with his arms. Robert grabbed the young boy by the hair and pulled him out of the corner of the room.

As soon as they got to the hotel room, their father had gone out of control, and knocked Riley, Rhuben, Patrick, and Noah across the room, hitting the stronger of his children first. And then went after Sydney, the weakest one, last.

“Stop!” Patrick cried, grabbing his arm.

Noah, who was slowly pulling himself from the floor, and spitting blood out of his mouth, saw his father turn and start to raise his arm. Quickly, he ran across the room and jumped in front of his brother. Robert hit him in the stomach, but the force of it, knocked him and Patrick backwards to the floor.

Riley and Rhuben sent punches to Robert’s face, but he grabbed their arms and painfully bent them backwards, causing the two girls to fall to their knees in pain. Robert grabbed them by the hair and slammed their heads together. Riley and Rhuben fell onto their sides, on the verge of blacking out.

“CLEAN THIS MESS UP! STOP SCREWING AROUND, AND GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!” He roared.

He turned and stormed out of the hotel room and down to the hotel’s restaurant, where Jake was sitting at a table, drinking coffee and looking at a newspaper. He looked up as Robert sat down and started drumming his fingers on the table.

“I take it that something is bothering you” Jake said slowly.

“Here’s some advice, never go into anything with your children” Robert replied gruffly.

“Have they been annoying you?”

“You could say that, but I’ve taken care of it.”

-

“Wow, nice hotel” Tom commented as McFly walked into their rooms and threw their bags onto the floor. “Ok, we get the beds and who gets the floor?”

“We’ll do it like we always do” Danny said and ran and jumped onto a bed and Dougie quickly jumped onto the other one. “First ones on the beds get it”

“I don’t think so!” Harry said and grabbed Danny’s feet and pulled him to the floor. “You two got the beds the last time, and the time before that, Tom and I get them this time”

“No chance!” Dougie replied and gripped the ends of the mattress as Tom tried to pull him off. There was a loud farting sound and Tom quickly let go of Dougie’s feet to cover his nose.

“Oh my god!” He cried, gasping for air.

“Dougie, not again” Harry added.

“Oh my god! It stinks!” Danny shrieked and he, Tom, and Harry charged towards the front door, frantically trying to pull it open. They flung the door open and ran into the hallway, gasping for air. Dougie walked out behind them, laughing his head off.

Riley and Rhuben walked out of their hotel room, and down the hallway. Each was massaging the opposite side of their head.

‘Why does he do this to us?’ Riley thought to herself. Soon she cleared her mind though; she knew what her anger could do to her if it got out of control.

"Hey guys” Tom said when he noticed Riley and Rhuben walking towards them. He scanned their faces with his eyes. "What's wrong?" He said.

"It's nothing," Rhuben said coldly. “Nothing you need to worry about anyway.”

"Uh, huh," Danny said unconvinced. "I'm gonna guess it has something to do with that bruise on the side of your head. That's gonna leave a mark, what'd you hit it on?"

"A counter, in the hotel room." Rhuben said. "I fell. Not that it's any of your business."

"Really?" Danny said his eyes hopped back and forth from Rhuben's bruise to Riley's, "So both of you fell and hit opposite sides of your head?"

"Yes!" They replied. "Now leave us alone."

"Ok, but those dressers can hurt, I know, first hand." He said. He ignored the confused looks he got from his band mates and kept going. "Was it one of their new oak dressers, or one of the old cherry ones?"

"If I tell you will you shut up?" Riley snarled. Danny nodded. "We hit one of the oak ones! We were rough housing and hit the oak dresser."

"Oh ok," Danny said. He face looked slightly annoyed but his voice remained as calm as ever. "Now you two wanna stop lying to us?" He looked at their stunned expressions.

"How...dare..." Riley started.

"Three quick ways I know." Danny cut her off. "First, there are no counters in these hotel rooms." He waved his hand at the hotel room behind them. "Second, you said it was a counter, than an oak dresser, well? Which one was it? Third, the only way you both could have identical bruises on opposite sides of your heads is if someone smacked your heads together.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about” Rhuben said, shaking her head.

“Listen if you guys are going through something, we could help” Dougie offered. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he knew that something was bothering them from the way they acted when their father was near them.

“Yeah, we’re working together now” Tom agreed with a nod and a small smile. “We can help you. You know you can’t get rid of us that easily, no matter how hard you try”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about” Rhuben said slowly. “Nothing’s going on. We don’t need help. And if we did, which I’m not saying we are, we don’t need it from you”

“Rhu-Rhu?”

Riley and Rhuben turned around to see Sydney walking down the hall, holding tissues to his bloody nose.

“Please, let us-“Riley cut Tom off.

“Shut up! There’s nothing going on so leave us alone” she snarled, grabbed Sydney’s hand and walked off in the other direction. Rhuben followed her siblings.

-

“You’re listening to KHI 22.6, this is your DJ Merri-Lee, and with me are McFly and the DarkElements”

“Hey everybody” the two bands said at multiple times. Tom looked over at the DarkElements and was surprised to see the Jacksons were smiling as if nothing had happened to them earlier.

“We’re glad to be here” Sydney said cheerfully.

“Now, we know that you that you’re here because you’re going to be kicking off you’re tour, tell us about that” Merri-Lee said with a big smile.

“Well, we’re really looking forward to be touring with the DarkElements, who are famous from Australia. Jake Hardin, our manager, has told us that we’ll be playing a few of their songs with them, they’ll be playing a few of our songs with us, and stuff like that, and it sounds really cool” Tom replied.

“What kind of songs do you play?” Merri-Lee asked.

“Uh, well, we play/perform a variety of songs” Patrick replied. “Alternative, Pop, Rock, Country, Screamo. Lots of stuff, we want to play a variety of songs so we have a wider audience”

“You said you perform screamo songs, who is the one that screams when you perform that?” Harry asked.

“Oh, that’s Patrick, he has the biggest mouth and lungs out of all of us” Sydney said with a small chuckle.

“Now, I imagine that all of you have a lot of fans, do you get a lot of letters and stuff?” Merri-Lee asked.

“Yeah, we get tons” Danny said. “There are some that are pointed to specific people, but a lot of them are for all of us”

“Well, what about you guys?” Merri-Lee asked the DarkElements. Riley sat up in her seat and leaned towards the microphone.

“You see, our dad, who is also our manager, screens most of them to see if they’re ones we want to read.” She paused. “We don’t get to see some of them because they aren’t nice. We didn’t have many friends at out school because they hated that we were famous and thought we had to be treated like it. But they just treated us like crap, and they send us a lot of hate mail”

“But we do get a lot of positive feed back” Rhuben added quickly.

“When’s your first concert to kick off the tour?” Merri-Lee asked, changing the subject.

As Rhuben was talking, she had glanced outside the window and saw her father/manager giving them a cold stare. Even thought it was directed towards his kids, she could feel it as if it was directed towards her.

“Its tomorrow night, in Westbrook Arena” Dougie replied.

“Its starts at 7:30 we hope you all can be there” Tom added.

“And that was my interview with McFly and the DarkElements, thanks for coming you guys” Merri-Lee said to them.

“Thank you for having us” Noah said politely. The two bands took off their headphones and exited the sound booth.

“Ok, you guys have free time for the rest of today. But when its 8:00 we’re going to either have dinner here in the hotel, or go find some other place to eat” Jake said to them.

“Why don’t we give them some space” Robert said as he placed his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “I mean, we’ve been up their asses…I mean, down their throats all day, we should give them time to relax”

“Cool, I’m going to the game room!” Patrick cried and he and Noah took off down the hallway so they could get outside as fast as they could. Sydney ran after them and Rhuben started to follow.

“You coming?” she asked her sister. “I might need help watching these monsters”

“Nah, I’m going back to our room as soon as we get to the hotel” Riley replied, shaking her head. “I’m working on a song right now, and I need to perfect before tomorrow night if we want to perform it.”

“I could help you” Tom offered. “I mean, Danny and I could, we write a lot of our songs and could help you.”

“We could?” Danny asked, turning to him.

“…Sure” Riley replied after a few seconds of thinking. She slowly followed her siblings down the hallway.

“You know, I was expecting her to snap at your or something” Harry said slowly.

“I know so was I” Dougie agreed. He didn’t want to mention anything, just in case he was wrong, but when Sydney turned to go down the hallway, he noticed that there were three round burns on his neck.

“Maybe they’re finally warming up to you guys” Robert said casually.

“Somehow, I doubt that” Danny said as he shook his head in disagreement.