Chapter Two: In which Taylor meets her doom, Daley inflates, and Jackson plummets into addiction.

Taylor took out her frustration over losing her job by pounding the pavement furiously.

"Did I just lose my job? Me? No. How could he fire me? Taylor? Taylor Hagan? The model extrordinaire? Did he? Fire? Me!?"

She was repeating those questions over and over, getting madder each time. She was so distracted with creating a symphony of stacatto questions and crashing, booming heels on the pavement that she didn't notice she wasn't walking in a straight line anymore. It wasn't just clumsiness, because Taylor never stumbles or trips, it is simply a disease she has that prevents her from walking in a straight line. In fact, if she doesn't keep both eyes on the sidewalk in front of her at all times, she It's quite difficult for her to walk down the catwalk, as you can imagine. Anyway, during her storm of temper over what had just occured her eyes were anywhere but the ground, and so she veered into traffic without another thought.

All she remembers is seeing the bright flashing headlights, hearing the screech of tires, and feeling intense pain before everything went black.

She barely remembers seeing the world spin and laying on the ground, seeing the imploring face of a random driver above her.

"Lady, are you crazy?" His voice bounced around inside her head. "You just got hit! You're bleeding! Hellooooo?"

She saw black shadows at the edges of her eyes, and all she remembers is whispering, "Me? Taylor? H-Hagan? Hit?" before she finally passed out.

--

Nathan had no idea how he got away from that crazy photographer; in fact, how did he know so much French? Or...any? And so many curse words? He chalked it up to the magic of being an adult and having lots of hair before leaving the studio through the front door.

Now then, off to see Jackson.

--

It was several hours before Daley was able to stop crying. Now she was laying on the couch and sniffling. She knew Nathan was behind her 100, but she didn't feel like any good could come of this. She sat up quickly and felt a peculiar sensation come over her; before she knew it she was off the couch and headed for the kitchen. She felt a strange out-of-body sensation as she opened the fridge against her will. What was that she was muttering? "Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate..." Wow, this pregnancy thing is already setting in... She looked down in dismay at her growing belly, which was actually quite big even though she found out she was the big P just this morning.

Despite the insane speed with which her belly inflated, as she mindlessly ingested giant lumps of chocolate ice cream with her hands, Daley thought We have a long, long road ahead of us.

--

Nathan arrived at the address Information told him was Jackson's. It certainly didn't look like what he'd expected; but, then again, he never liked Jackson and had always secretly wished he would grow up to live in a dump, so he wasn't all that weirded out anyway. In fact, he whistled a bit too extravagantly. As he walked up to the barred door, rats scurried underfoot. He rang the out-of-order buzzer and decided to enter the decaying building after thirty-seconds into Zippidy-Doo-Dah. What he found didn't exactly surprise him, but nevertheless his jaw dropped open.

The apartment was pretty empty except for the basic, bare furniture; a leaky fridge and sink, a tattered couch and mattress, an out-of-order television, and a good many rats, of course. They grew them around here.

Now was the moment Nathan realized he should have called before coming...not that Jackson would have cared enough to freshen up or anything. He had declined drasically after the island experience. And no, not THE island experience, the OTHER one. The one when he went to Disney Island Adventure and had a very tragic run-in with Island Goofy. Very traumatic, you know. He was now of course an alchoholic and an addict. A very bad case of addiction to very bad music. In fact he was at the precise second Nathan arrived listening to a soundtrack from the Tommy Spanos show, which, as you must know, was recently featured on BadMusic . com. Tragic addiction, it really was.

"J...Jackson?" Nathan asked hesitantly.

The wreck sitting in the middle of the floor did not react.

"Um...it's...Natha..." Nathan trailed off into embarassed silence. He crossed the room and ran his hand through his hair, the multitudes of which caught the very little light in the apartment and managed to somehow glitter and spark...oh, never mind.

"Um...well, I came here because I'm telling all our f...friends..." He was reluctant to address this drunken mess as a friend. "...that Daley..."

Jackson looked up, and Nathan flinched.

"...is...well, she's kind of pregnant."

With those six words a miracle happened. It was slow at first, all Jackson did was take out his inexplicably expensive iPod earphones, turn off the Spanos show music, and jump up.

"Is she OK? When did this happen? Are you two married? How can I help?"

Just like that, the drunkeness had dissapeared an in its place was concern.

"W-wow..." was all Nathan could say.

Just a note: the Tommy Spanos was a real band that can be read about at Bad Music . com, which is a real site. ;)

Coming up:

Chapter Three: In which Taylor finds out a horrible truth, Daley hatches a plan, and Nathan and Jackson set off to find Eric.