Author's Note/Disclaimer: I do not own the Jonas Brothers or their family. I'm also not affiliated with their recording label, Disney Channel, or anything else of the sort. I only own the OCs I created and the story itself! Enjoy!
"I think I'm deaf now!" a loud, annoyed voice rang out from the restroom. Eighteen year old Leanne Spinato laughed as her best friend, Erin Mitchell, walked out, shaking her head and looking as if she was trying to unplug her ears as several screaming girls ran past them out of the bathroom to a mini-roller coaster. Erin stared at Leanne in shock, causing her to laugh harder. Erin smiled slowly at her best friend and shook out her hair. When Leanne was able to, she locked arms with her friend and continued their walk through the State Fair.
"Ooh! I know what we can do now! Let's go ride the Ferris wheel!" Leanne called out as she pointed to the large, colorful, rotating wheel in front of them. Erin looked at the height of it with apprehension.
"Uh, I dunno…" she admitted.
"Oh, come on! It'll be fun, ya chicken!" Leanne pressed with a puppy-dog look on her face. "Pwease?" Erin let out a sigh and nodded unwillingly.
"Let's get this over with," she stated. Leanne grinned wide and pulled a reluctant Erin towards the wheel, and Erin grimaced as she looked once more at the tallness. Leanne dragged Erin onto the ride, and both girls dropped onto the center chairs as they waited for the ride to begin; however, before the door closed, two guys made their way on and took the seats behind the girls. Erin didn't look up because she had been looking over the rail, constantly checking the distance, and Leanne was too busy pointing out where she wanted to go next to notice the boys behind her.
"I say we go get our seats after we get a small snack or something! We don't want to miss any bit of the concert, so we should be ready just in case anything happens!" Leanne suggested with a sparkle in her eye. "I can't wait to see them up on stage!" As the ride jerked upward, Erin squeezed her eyes shut, causing Leanne to laugh.
"Is it over yet?" Erin kept asking her friend every three seconds as she grasped the side of the chair with white knuckles. Leanne laughed again and gazed at the distance from the ground.
"What are you two girls here for?" Leanne jumped about ten feet into the air when she heard a male voice behind her. "Oh, I'm sorry if I surprised you. I felt you jump behind me."
"No, no! It's fine! I'm good. I'm cool," Leanne told whoever it was that was behind her with a smile, trying to slow her rapid heartbeat. Any time that something startled her, unwelcome thoughts and memories raced through her mind. "We're here for a concert. Right, Erin?"
"Get me off, get me off, get me…wait, what?" Erin opened her eyes and looked around. "Why did we stop at the top? I don't like stopping! Not good!" Leanne elbowed her slightly and sighed, smacking her forehead with the palm of her hand.
"Sorry. She doesn't like heights," she explained to the guys behind her.
"Then, um, why is she on a Ferris wheel?" one of them wanted to know. Erin immediately pointed an accusing finger at Leanne with a glare. Leanne wrinkled her nose at her friend, and they both glared at each other for a short moment.
"Ask her. She dragged me on," Erin replied as she resumed glancing over the side.
"I did no such thing!" Leanne acted offended, putting a hand to her chest dramatically. "All I did was put on my best puppy dog look and ask you nicely! And then perhaps tug you a bit forcefully til we were strapped in and you couldn't escape..."
"Nice one!" the other boy praised with a laugh. Leanne grinned and said thanks to him, feeling a little flushed by the new boy behind her. The boys' voices sounded oddly familiar, but she couldn't figure out why. "Whose concert is it?" he asked her.
"Jonas Brothers!" both girls forgot their glaring match and chorused the name excitedly, their smiles spreading from ear to ear. "We're in the second row!"
"Oh, those guys. That sounds really cool! Who's your favorite brother? I mean, who do you think is the cutest?" the one closer to Leanne quizzed. She raised a brow at the odd question. A second later, the girls heard a thud and an "Ouch!" let out quietly.
"Would you shut up?! Way to be smooth..." the second boy whispered. The girls laughed and looked at each other, shrugging.
"Why do you want to know?" Erin almost turned around to look at them, but the gondola jerked forward into motion again, causing her to look straight ahead with closed eyes, cursing under her breath and making Leanne laugh out loud.
"Don't worry about him. Forget he said that," the second boy answered. "He has…no idea…what he's…talking about!" He sounded as if he was trying to shut the other guy up.
"So…" Leanne began again. "What about you guys?"
"We're here for the concert, too!" the one that Leanne was starting to enjoy listening to told her delightedly. "I love those dudes! They 'rock!' Haha! Get it? They're in a rock band!" The girls heard another thud, this time louder. Leanne was giggling a bit harder by this time. "Ow!" the one that just spoke yelped. "I mean, ya know, they're perfectly adequate...Yeah..."
"Will you shut up, dude?" the second boy said. "Seriously..."
"Oh my god..." Leanne spoke up in shock and awe.
"What?" the other one asked, sounding nervous.
"You just made Erin smile. On a Ferris wheel," Leanne turned to look at Erin, who was smiling brightly.
"Haha! He said adequate," Erin chuckled to herself as she glanced over at Leanne. She stopped smiling and glared at her friend, who kept laughing.
"Stop that," she told her in a whisper. Suddenly, Leanne saw a wasp buzzing around her and started flailing her arms, letting out a single scream and ducking with her arms over her head.
"Erin, save me! Get it away! Get it away! Eww wasp!" Leanne pleaded with her friend, who gave her an evil smirk. Erin shook her head in determination and folded her arms, fighting back laughter. That was, until the car started shaking, and Erin became anxious. She shooed away the bug and took a deep breath.
"You can add spastic to her meanness!" she added to her evaluation of Leanne. The two boys were cracking up laughing at the situation, and Leanne joined in happily.
"I'm not the insane one, at least!" Leanne argued. Erin giggled and nodded in agreement.
"The asylum is open to me on Fridays!" she smiled at her own joke.
"Uh, today is Saturday, Erin," Leanne confessed with a laugh.
"I know," Erin pointed out. "They let me out for the day." Everyone started laughing at this, and Leanne had to hold on to her chair in order not to fall off from laughing so hard.
"That was a good one," the one with the deeper voice remarked. "You two are pretty cool."
"What are your names?" Erin wanted to know.
"Uh…" the one closest to her stammered. "Well…"
"I'd like a hamburger!" the other one interrupted. The other three froze and sat there in silence before bursting into laughter.
"Okay, bro. Whatever!" the first one answered. "I'll get you a burger when we get back to the bu…ffet! Buffet! Where the food is, ya know?"
"Hey, Leanne! Look at this! This screw is attached to this piece, and it's called a…" Erin started to drone on and on about mechanics and everything her brother had taught her.
"Uh-huh, Erin. That's…great!" Leanne forced a smile, but she looked up at the sky. "God, please help me! Let me get off this ride! She's starting to not make sense!" As she said that, the ride stopped abruptly, and the worker opened the door to their car. "Oh, thank you God!" Leanne said gratefully to the sky as she rushed off the ride, Erin on her heels with more mechanical knowledge. A shiny, silver object caught her eye, and Erin stooped to pick it up. It was a large screw that had apparently come off the Ferris wheel. A flashing light of caution entered her mind immediately, and she hurried over to the worker of the ride, showing him the piece. She was curious about where it came from.
"Excuse me? I found this on the ground. I think it came from the Ferris wheel, but I'm not sure," she told him as she watched him take it from her hands with a subtle nod of thanks. She shrugged and turned to walk away, but she felt someone grab her arm. Erin turned to see the man with the screw stare at her in fright.
"Where exactly did you find this?" he demanded. She pointed, and his eyes widened. She started to get a little scared by his expression as he let her go.
"Why?" she inquired. "Uh, dude? You're kinda creeping me out here..."
"Without this screw, parts of the Ferris wheel can come off!" he practically yelled in her face. Erin's mouth dropped open, and she ran to the other side of the wheel. She spotted Leanne and sped over, flailing her arms when she became conscious of the fact that Leanne was in the danger zone.
"Erin, where've you been?" Leanne questioned as she gazed at her friend in curiosity. "What in the blazes are you doing? You're getting weird looks...people are staring..."
"Leanne, listen to me! A screw's missing from the Ferris wheel! We have to get away from here!" Erin ordered quickly as she tried to pull Leanne away. "Something bad's going to happen if we don't get out of here now!"
"Erin, what are you talking about? You kinda lost me at my name." Leanne thought her friend was literally going insane, and she resisted with a frown. Erin let go as they heard a loud crack and creaking noises from above them. The crowd screamed and started to scatter in many different directions in frenzy as the stunned girls watched a piece of the Ferris wheel slowly breaking off from the rest of the ride. Erin started to get separated from her friend, and she called out to her with no success of finding her in the heavy pack of people around her.
"Erin! Erin, where are you?!" Leanne shouted above the screams after she had realized that who she was holding on to was not her best friend. She tried to move forward through the crowd, but, to her horror, they only drove her backwards closer and closer to the dangerous Ferris wheel. Leanne heard a whimpering sound and whipped around to see a small boy searching around frantically for his parents. She froze in her tracks when she was, which was right underneath the piece. It was almost broken completely off, and she looked from the piece to the young boy and saw that she had enough space to do what she needed to do. A group of people were running towards them, calling out to them, but she only had eyes for the boy.
Suddenly, with another loud crack, the section of the wheel split from the screws and started to fall towards the petrified child. Without thinking, Leanne ran towards him, slammed hard into him, and pulled him out of harm's way. They rolled about ten feet away, and she instinctively threw her body over his to shield him from the falling piece. A hard object hit her in the leg, probably some debris, and she winced in pain as she heard a noisy impact as the large portion of the wheel fell to the ground. The little boy cried out with fear, but she held on for her life.
"Hang on!" Leanne calmed him down slightly.
"Frankie!" she heard a group of people scream, apparently for the little boy underneath her.
"Leanne! Oh my God! Are you okay?! What were you thinking?!" That time, she heard Erin's alarmed voice, and Leanne and "Frankie" heard running footsteps towards them. Leanne slowly got up from the boy and sat next to him, not worrying about her injured leg and checking the kid before anything else. "Are you okay?" she asked in concern as she felt his arms and legs hastily.
"Is anything hurting you?" He shook his head with a small smile to show her he was fine, but she could tell that he was still terrified by his shaking body and large eyes. She held him to her to help him calm down.
"Oh, Frankie! Thank God you're okay!" Leanne heard a woman speak behind her, and the boy stood up to rush over to his mother. She got up unhurriedly with Erin's help and as she looked around, her mouth went dry and she gulped with apprehension. She vaguely felt the throbbing in her leg from the cut but dismissed it.
"You!" Denise Jonas stared at Leanne with a sparkle in her eye. "You just saved my son's life!" She was thanked by Frankie's parents with immense relief. Just then, cameras started popping up out of nowhere all around her, and tons of people swarmed around Leanne. She frantically searched for an escape from the throng of Jonas Brothers fans because she started to feel extremely overwhelmed by the attention.
"How does it feel saving the 'Bonus Jonas?'" someone prodded her. She could barely think straight, let alone answer questions. She couldn't be seen on television. He'd see her. He'd find her, just when she was starting to get her life back together.
"You saved Frankie Jonas! Ohmygosh! Lucky!" Someone else said wistfully. The flashing lights disoriented Leanne, and dots appeared in her vision. She took hold of Erin and started backing away, the terror apparent on her face and making her best friend protective in an instant. She felt that she had to get out of there, and she had to get out of there fast. Erin knew she had to do something, as Leanne was paralyzed with fear, so she yanked her best friend away through a hole in the crowd, sprinting through the Jonas family and the paparazzi. Leanne came back down to reality and took the lead, as she was the faster runner.
"Wait!" Joe tried to call out to the girl who had saved Frankie from the disaster a few minutes back, but she obviously couldn't hear him. "C'mon, let's go!" He glanced around and signaled his two brothers to follow him through a shortcut. They all hurried to find the two girls and split up to do so, Joe going one way and Nick taking Kevin away from a hot dog stand to go look another way, even though Nick was hungry himself. Leanne felt the cameras were still behind her and turned sharply behind some bushes, thinking her friend was following close behind her. She watched silently as the news people and flashing lights rushed past. She sighed in relief and shook her head, trying not to freak out right then and there.
"Where'd the newscasters come from?" she mumbled with a groan. "This can't be happening..." She bent over to catch a breath and spun around at Erin. "Erin, what are we going to do?" she said as she started to look up at her friend. "Oh! You're definitely not Erin..."
"No, I'm not. Hey," Joe Jonas greeted with a warm smile at her, his captivating honey gold eyes stopping her from speaking for a long moment. When she could think again, she turned to run, but he caught hold of her arm. Her eyes locked with his, and she opened her mouth to speak, but a wince of pain took over her features. He glanced down at her jeans and saw a cut on her leg through a hole in her jeans.
"Woah...You need that looked at. Your leg is..." he began to explain.
"Let me go," Leanne begged as she fought to escape his grasp, seeing images of the last time someone held her like this. She had ended up in the hospital for two weeks. Joe held her tightly but not enough to hurt her. "Please! I can't stay...you don't understand...I can't be on the news..." she continued, and his brow furrowed in worried curiosity.
"Look, I won't rat you out, okay?" he responded softly with a serious frown. "I just wanted to thank you for saving my brother's life." She paused to stare up into his softening gaze, and he let go of her arm to look back into her beautiful hazel eyes. They both just stared at each other for a moment before she snapped back into reality first.
"Uh...I just did it without thinking. Instinct, I guess..." she justified her act of kindness as she slowly backed away from him with lifted arms like a fugitive would do to a cop. He tried to reach for her but ended up putting his arms down, looking hurt at her attempts to wave him off. "Joe, just...keep this a secret, okay? Please don't go public with this. I have to go! I'm sorry!" With one last regretful look at Joe, Leanne twisted around and disappeared from his view around a building with a slight limp in her step. He sighed and raked a hand through his wild, black hair, feeling as though there was something more to her story that she didn't tell him, as his brothers ran up, out of breath. Joe just couldn't understand why she wouldn't talk to him about what had happened. After all, thanks to her, his little brother was still alive and unharmed, though probably still shaken up.
"So, did you find her? We had no luck," Kevin reported with a deep exhale. Nick, however, saw the troubled yet happy look in his big brother's eyes and knew immediately what had happened.
"Joe found her, Kev," was all Nick stated before patting his oldest brother on the shoulder and walking away to find the hot dog stand again. Kevin glimpsed over at Joe, shrugged, and went to catch up with Nick, Joe on his heels.
"She was beautiful...She saved Frank from being smashed like a bug...but yet, she runs away from me," Joe told his two other brothers. "I don't get it. There's got to be another reason behind all of this."
"I want to talk to those two girls you both talked to from the Ferris wheel when you were riding it," Nick changed the subject to a happier matter, although he was disappointed by this, too. "Sounds like they were pretty awesome."
"Wait a sec, dudes!" Kevin stopped short, making Joe run into his back with an "oof."
"Ouch!" Joe complained as he stopped to glance at Kevin.
"Joe, one of the girls' names on the Ferris wheel was Leanne, wasn't it? The spastic one?" Kevin asked. Joe nodded with a thoughtful look. "Well, I heard another girl shout Leanne's name after the mystery girl saved Frankie earlier!" Kevin continued with a smile, proud of his own intelligence. "Wow! I am so smart, I scare myself sometimes!"
"Leanne must've been the one who saved Frankie! Exhibit B: She thought I was her friend who she had thought had kept up with her when she was running from the cameras, so when she turned to look at me, she called me 'Erin.' Wasn't her friend's name Erin?" Joe grinned wide and high-fived his eldest brother and nodded with joy.
"Good thinking! Now we know them and can put faces to names."
"Wait a minute! Hang on here," Nick paused the celebration. "So, Leanne saved Frankie's life, and she was one of those cool girls you two were talking about from the ride before? Talk about weird coincidences..."
"Yeah, and she said she's going to our concert," Kevin told his younger brothers. "We could see them both there."
"Speaking of which, we need to go get ready!" Joe reminded them as they started jogging back to the tour bus. He prayed that she would be there. He needed to see her again.