Ordinary people stayed in hotels when they went on vacations. They enjoyed the change and unfamiliarity; the escape from their humdrum lives at home. However the Hanson clan were not normal. The three band brothers seemed to spend an overwhelming number of hours more in hotels then in their own home, and a vacation to them was like a scent of sweet heaven they rarely saw. A vacation to them consisted of time off in their own home sweet home.

Taylor Hanson, like his brothers, was all too familiar with hotel life. It was a fact he had grown accustomed to but also grown to hate.

Now, lying resolutely on the stiff hotel bed in his own home town, he cringed that he was, in fact, living out of his expensive black suitcase and he was, yet again, going to wake up to the smell of Isaac's morning coffee perking.

And for what? For what? For renovation, that's what. The elderly Hanson members had chosen to remodel the house, add a touch of spice to their ordinary and domesticated home.
Taylor only wished they could have chosen to do so at a more
convenient time for he and his brothers, so that they could at least sink into all the home atmosphere they could get while they had the time.

Diana Hanson had insinuated that the boys were home, in a sense, for they were in Tulsa after all. But Taylor begged to differ. They weren't home, they were at their home away from home; this particular time being the Tulsa Resort.

Hotels were all the same. The workers all looked the same to Taylor, as did each room and each lobby. Each had their own special events that were the same as every other nice hotel's special events and they received the same attention in each hotel and each city.

However there were a few occasions in all of four years that Taylor had actually enjoyed his stay. At the peaks of his good days, Taylor, high on life, caffeine, or other products, sometimes liked to roam around the long hallways, the occasional girl in her bathing suit pulling his gaze from the red carpeting.

Memories of a recent hotel visit in New Jersey disembarked on his brain and the tune of the great oldie 'Wild Thing' flooded into his thoughts, ready to roll off his tongue at any moment. There at the Mariott hotel in New Jersey, he'd met Greta Morrison and the two had sang karaoke in the hotel diner with so much soul it blew Taylor away. After endless hours of karaoke, when just the two of them and a very small crowd of other hotel goners were left, and the singing had come to a tired end, Taylor had left Greta in the lobby with a tender kiss on the cheek and wise words to pursue a singing career. Greta had blushed immensely, but Taylor was taken by her anyhow.

Greta would forever be a great memory of Taylor's, and he was saddened to know that the chances of seeing her again were slim to none. And the chances of having another nice experience in a nice hotel seemed also to be slim to none.

A sudden sense of thirst burdening him, Taylor swung his legs over the side of the made up hotel bed and stood his body upright. A dose of the cold he was just getting over showed itself in the form of dizziness. However it was very possible it was his hangover inducing the light headedness, rather than evidence of a recent cold.

As he made his way towards the door, finding his sandals in his path and slipping them on, he wondered what restaurant his family had ended up going to, and he was not sorry he had not gone. The thought of food was about as intriguing to him at the moment as the thought of having to eat again that gooey glop that had been slapped on his plate at the so-called 'five-star' restaurant he and his bandmates had been forced to suffer through two nights earlier.

The door handle was eerily cold against his warm palm and it sent a shiver down his spine.

As he stepped out into the cold hallway, key card secure in his back jean pocket, a young girl and a tiny kitten bounded past him, not giving him a second look. Taylor hoped no one else did either, for his ill appearance and crabbiness might send a friendly fan running for mercy.

The hallway was cold. Taylor had come to the conclusion that all hotels were always cold. Why did hotels always have to be cold? he wondered, rubbing his hands up and down his bare arms, warming away the goose-bumps.

A friendly pointer that vending was to the right changed Taylor's course of direction and he took a slow turn to his right, not moving too quickly for fear of his hang over
inducing more dizziness on him and forcing his head to pound even harder. A hang over mixed with the diminutive evidence of a cold felt deadly together.

Though the evening at Derek's last night had been fun, Taylor doubted the end result was worth it. All day Taylor had played cool to his parents. He had acted as if he were fine, but once it came time for dinner he explained to his dear family that he simply was not hungry and that he had eaten too much candy from the vending machines already.

The sound of ice clunking into the brown buckets the hotel offered could be heard loud and clear as Taylor rounded one more corner into the vending room. A little boy filled up his bucket to the brim then kept going until large ice blocks spilled over the side of the bucket. The little boy laughed and kept pouring ice.

Three vending machines in the back seemed to glow a reddish tint in the darkness, and Taylor only glanced at it momentarily before returning his gaze to the young boy. The awkward light hurt his eyes and upset his headache. The boy
grinned.

Not wanting to deal confrontation at the moment, Taylor swiftly passed the ice-happy little boy and headed towards his destination. How good a Dr. Pepper sounded. He looked at the price. $1.25. The price nearly made him fall over in a daze. He'd only brought a dollar! Who the hell charges a buck twenty-five for a Dr. Pepper? He wanted to know.

"Great," he muttered softly. He turned to the little boy inadvertently. "Do you have a quarter?"

The boy smiled evilly, his brown eyes lighting up like a light bulb. "Nope. But I have a lot of ice." He laughed and reached into his bucket to pull out a block of frozen water. He held it up in front of Taylor as if to prove there really was ice in his bucket then another idea seemed to come over him. His eyebrows raised and eyes grew wide and he tossed the ice cube at Taylor.

Taylor gasped, much to the approval of the boy. Reaching into his bucket again, he tossed another cube of ice at Taylor. The another, and another.

Chapter 2

What We See