"Oh. I better go talk to
Paola took the bottles of
soda from Noah's hand and Noah went upstairs to Scott's room. He walked the red hallway to the room until he arrived. He knocked the door. "Come in," said Scott. He was sitting on the bed with a huge headache. Noah went in and closed the door. "You and I have to talk."
Noah sat on the bed with him and said, "Adrienne told me that you saw Jennifer in her face; in other words, she turned into Jennifer in front of you. What's going on, Dad?"
Scott sighed and said, "Ah, this isn't easy to say, but Jennifer, she's been trying to tell me something, and it's driving me crazy because I don't know what it is."
"She's trying to tell you something?"
"Yes. I dream of her all the time. I dream that I'm looking in the mirror and suddenly she appears, crying, begging me to do her and her son justice."
Noah started to shed tears. "She tells me that it's not
fair, that she and Noah Bryan did not deserve this. She wants me to put Riley and Hayley in jail."
"That's what I want too, Dad, but putting them in jail is impossible, for now. I know that not all crimes are perfect and that some kind of proof is always left behind, but it'll take us years to prove that Hayley raped and killed my son, and that Riley killed Jennifer. I'd rather get revenge against them."
"How are you going to do
that?"
Noah smiled evilly and
said, "You'll see. All that I can tell you is that I won't get revenge against the two of them alone." Scott rolled his eyes in confusion. He had no idea what Noah meant by that, and he was horrified. His good and angelic son was turning evil---very evil.
Dean, Brandy's best friend, also turned out to be Noah's best friend. Scott had held Dean in his arms when Dean was a newborn. In fact, Scott was the first to hold Dean because his mother was fighting for her life immediately after giving birth to him and his father never made it to the hospital the day he was born because he was robbed and beaten, and it took him three months to recover. Surviving was almost impossible, but Devon, Dean's father did it. Scott and Barbara took care of Baby Dean while his parents recovered completely; for three whole months. Then, they appeared, picked him up, and he's lived with them ever since. Dean and Noah had been the best of friends ever since, but Noah lost contact with Dean completely after leaving the Spears mansion. Dean found out through Paola that Scott had moved back in to his father's mansion, and now he was calling him. He was desperate to talk to him. He had a problem, the biggest of all, so far, and every time that he had a problem, he would turn to Noah for help and advice. He needed his friend right now, desperately. No one but Noah could help him now. The phone rang. "May I get that in here, Dad? It's probably for both of us. You know that to your friends and colleagues’, talking to me is the same as talking to you because I always give you their messages and sometimes I even give them what they want before you even hear about it."
Wiping out his tears, Scott said, "Ok, you can get it. Go ahead."
Noah got up, went to the phone and picked up the receiver. "Hello."
Crying, Dean said, "Noah, I need you."
Noah could've been happy to hear his voice and talk to him if he weren't crying so bitterly. He was deeply saddened all of a sudden. "What happened, Dean?"
Scott became alarmed, got up, walked up to Noah, got behind him and said, "Dean?"
Dean said in between sobs, "I think that a woman that I had a one-night stand with has given me the HIV virus. I don't want my best friend Brandy to find out about this because she's capable of committing a horrible crime if anybody hurts me."
Noah said, "Ok, try to stay calm. We don't know if we could test you yet because the virus takes a couple of months to appear in your blood. How long ago did you party with this sick woman?"
Scott screamed, "What?" He started running and dancing around the room just like he did every time he was angry or felt uncomfortable. "Noah!"
"Three months ago," said Dean. "I'm scared."
The next morning, Dean and Noah went to a lab for Dean to get tested. Scott couldn't be there because he was working, but he ordered Dean to call him as soon as he had the results to know if he could give him money for his treatment. Scott didn't mind giving up thousands of dollars to save Dean's life, but he would've felt more relieved if he didn't have to pay for the treatment because Dean was healthy. This ate him up inside because Dean was like a son to him. Dean's parents made him his godson. Scott couldn't stop crying. One of the stock workers was in his office, comforting him. Dean and Noah walked in. Fortunately, today, HIV and AIDS testing only took one hour, and Dean and Noah could go to the vending machine and get a few snacks while they waited for the results. In less than a half an hour, Dean was tested, and he gave away the name of the woman who could've possibly infected him. However, he asked the doctor not to give her his name by all means. When she questioned the doctor, he would tell her that it wasn't known how many sexual partners she'd had, and that any one of them could've given him her name, and this would happen within a few days. That way, she wouldn't insist on knowing the traitor's identity. Dean gave the doctor the woman's name, not to hurt her or to put her in jail, although if he had the virus she would certainly go to jail for having unprotected sex with him knowing that she had the virus; but Dean did it so that all of the men in town knew that this woman was sick and that if they had sex with her anyway, it would be at their own risk. At least, they'd been warned. Noah and Dean walked outside and went straight to the vending machine. Two women that were being tested for a mysterious disease that caused serious congenital defects to their children, smiled at them. One of them was Brandy's best girl friend, Carla. "What do you want," asked Noah, "potato chips, cookies, or M&M's?"
"You know," said Dean, standing in front of the vending machine and facing Noah, "if I am positive, all that we're going to have until dinnertime are these snacks, but if I'm negative, I want you to take me out to breakfast and then take me out to lunch."
Noah put his hand on Dean's shoulder, smiled, gave away a sigh and said, "You know what? Whether you're positive or negative, I'm going to take you out to breakfast and to lunch."
They hugged. Suddenly, Carla asked him, "What are you being tested for?"
Noah and Dean looked at Carla and Frankie and said, "Oh," and walked to the chairs and sat beside them, "Dean's being tested for HIV."
"That means," said Dean, smiling, with tears in his eyes, "that you and I can't have sex, so if you're interested in having a relationship with me or just having a fling, you can just forget about it. I'm not infecting anyone else, and if I have to turn chaste, I will."
Carla looked him in the eyes and said, "I know that you care about me even though you don't know me, otherwise you wouldn't say that even before introducing yourself to me, but don't hurt me like that. Even if you're positive, you and I can have sex, and you and I can even get married, if you fall in love with me. Have you ever heard of condoms?"
"Yes," said Dean, crying bitterly, and Carla stood up to sit next to him and Noah sat beside him on the opposite side. She gave him a big hug and caressed him to comfort him, "but I've never had to protect myself to have sex, and this would mean that I can't have children, because in order to conceive a baby, I'd have to infect his or her mother, and it would be no use because within ten to twenty years, the child would be dead," and cried even worse and hugged Carla.
Carla let go of him for a few minutes while she kept caressing him and said, "You know, when it comes to sex and reproduction, you still have a lot to learn. How old are you?"
"Twenty," said Dean.
"Oh, Dean, I reiterate what I said, baby. You have a lot to learn. You're just starting to live life. You know what you have to do when you go and get those results? You have to ask the doctor what a man and a woman can do when one of them or both of them have the HIV or AIDS virus, if they want to have a child; what they can do to protect the child and ensure he or she's born healthy and continues to live a healthy life."
Dean put his hand on Carla's shoulder and said, "I will. Thank you so much."
Carla said, "Even if you're negative, you have to get this information for any of your friends that have had unprotected sex, so that when they find out that they're infected, they can live their lives just a little more peacefully, knowing that their children will not be infected," and they hugged once again. Carla shed tears on Dean's shoulder. Chapter 8
Carla and Frankie got the snacks for Noah and Dean. They got them four packs of M&M's so that their lives would be a little sweet even if the results were positive. They gave the snacks to them. "Here you are," and sat beside them once again.
Surprised, and with a smile on his face, Dean said, "There were five different varieties of M&M's in there. How did you know that plain M&M's were my favorite?"
Carla laughed nervously. She had no idea that those were his favorite. It was just that there were five varieties, and the plain M&M's were the most likely option for anyone. "I didn't know."
"That's strange," said
Dean.
Smiling, Noah said, "You
know guys, some people say that when a man and a woman coincide in anything without knowing each other, for example, today, when you coincided in Dean's tastes; it's because they're made for one another. That happened to me with Nicole, my mother in law's little sister yesterday."
Intrigued, Dean said, "Really?" and Carla and Frankie looked at one another, completely flabbergasted. "How did it happen?"
"Natasha bought her a computer yesterday, and the men that assisted her in assembling the computer for Nicole, they had no problems assembling it, but they did have problems configuring it, you know, getting the programs that Nicole wanted and setting them how she wanted them..."
Frankie, Dean and Carla said, "Uh, huh," in unison, and they looked at each other and laughed.
"Guess who helped
them?"