"If I Die, Tell Taylor I Love Him"
Written by Laura Speidell.


        If there is one thing I remember about my best friend Joanna it’s her love for Hanson. Who’s Hanson you ask? You know, those brothers from Oklahoma who sang the song “MMMBop” that was ALL OVER the radio in 1997. They have blonde hair, it used to be long but two of the band members cut their hair over the past year. Come on, you have to have heard about them. You think you have? Good... Yes, yes, the ones everyone called “girls” and “gay” and every other name in the book. Sure, now you know who they are!
        Anyway, Joanna is the biggest Hanson fan that has ever lived. Even bigger than me! She was the one that brought me to my first Hanson concert. She was the one that introduced me to them, literally. She took me by the arm, brought me over to the three cuties and told them these exact words, “Isaac, Taylor, Zac, this is my best friend Julie.” I was standing their in awe as the first boy stuck out his hand. “Shake it, will ya!” Joanna whispered in my ear. I didn’t move so Isaac grabbed my hand. “Nice to meet you, Julie.” He said in a voice I had only heard on television. Zac, the littler of the three but by then was towering over the eldest, grabbed my hand next and said “Hello Joanna’s best friend Julie!” in that joking voice of his. The next brother, the “middle” one, took my hand gently in his own. His touch was less rough than the previous boy’s, Zac had squeezed my fingers together. Taylor’s hand was smooth, his hand covered my own and his grip was firm but not intimidating or pressing. I looked up into his bright blue eyes and my heart stopped.
        “How are you, Julie?” Taylor asked carefully letting go of my hand.
        I must have stood there for a few seconds just starring into the ocean of blue before Joanna jabbed me in the side. “OW!” I cried. “What’d you do that for?” I asked, holding my side.
        “Answer him!” She scolded.
        I turned beet red with embarrassment. Joanna was gonna get it when we got home, that’s for sure!
        “I’m all right,” I told him. He was smiling at me, not laughing at me and my stupidity, his smile was understanding. He knew that I was embarrassed and he wasn’t going to make fun of me for it. I gazed into his eyes a little longer and I realized then that I wasn’t going to hide it any longer, this was the man I wanted. Those eyes, that smile... I wanted them to be mine and only mine.
        “Taylor, we have to go now,” Isaac told him.
        Taylor nodded and he did something that totally threw me off, I was not expecting it and neither was anyone else that was looking on. I bet he didn’t even know what he was doing until it was over. Taylor leaned over and hugged me gently. “I’ll see you again sometime,” he said softly. He let go of my shoulders and I think he glanced over and Joanna and realized he needed to show her he cared about her as well. He hugged her quickly but didn’t say anything to her. “Goodbye!” He said as he followed his brother’s up the stairs of their hotel.
        The second I was sure that he was gone I collapsed to the floor and started crying. Joanna crouched down next to me and asked me what was wrong. “I love him!” was the only words that escaped from my lips “I love him!”
        Needless to say I made a fool out of myself that day. I regretted crying hysterically like I did. It was so stupid of me. But over the past few months I’ve realized that you can’t change the past. You just have to keep going on with your life. I’m just happy that Taylor didn’t know that I cried hysterically like that. If he did know then I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t have ever let on that he knew, he was like that: sweet, compassionate, and caring. And that’s why I loved him.
        Let’s backtrack for a moment here shall we. Let me tell you a little bit about my love for this band called “Hanson.” I will point out now that I wasn’t always a Hanson fan... actually that’s not true... I wasn’t always an OPEN Hanson fan. I was a closet Hanson fan for three years, I hid my love for the band very well. When Isaac, Taylor, and Zac came out with “MMMBop” I made fun of them endlessly, I even made fun of my best friend for loving them the way she did. Joanna knew there was something special about Hanson, and so did I except I wouldn’t admit it. To this day I believe that she knew I was a closet Hanson fan. I don’t know how but she knew. I bought their first CD to “make fun of” although inside I really LOVED that CD to death. It even wore out from overplay so I had to buy another one secretly! I bought all of their CDs secretly. I even went to another town to purchase them, that’s how pathetic I was back then. Joanna always asked if I wanted to go see Hanson with her and inside I was dying to go but I always said “ew no.” I regret that so much that words can’t even explain it.
        During the summer of 1998, I broke down and went to a concert and a TV show with her. Afterwards I told everyone that I didn’t want to go, but in reality I had a BLAST. It was the best two days of my whole life. It was just amazing!
        In 1999, Hanson was across the country from Joanna so she didn’t see them at all. She went down to their hotel on a rumor once or twice but they never showed up. It was that summer, around June of 1999, when I admitted out loud that I was a closet-fan. It was at a sleepover, a popular chick’s birthday party, and everyone who was anyone at school was there, me and Joanna included because we were friends with people in the popular clique. We were playing truth or dare and someone told me “tell us something about you that not even Joanna knows.”
        Well it didn’t take long for my mouth to open and my voice to blurt out “I own 38 Hanson CDs and I’ve woken up to ‘Where’s the Love’ every morning since last summer.” I remember there was silence and then laughter. I ran from the room and locked myself in the bathroom. I sank to the floor and cried to myself. In a way I was relieved to get that out in the open, I felt as though a huge weight had been lifted off my chest. There were no more secrets to hold inside. It was out, and it was out for all to hear.
        There was a knock at the door. I found my voice. “Go away!” I yelled, my voice choked with tears.
        “Julie, it’s me.” Joanna’s voice. “Open the door. I want to talk to you. There is no one here with me. Please Julie,” she begged.
        I got up, unlocked the bathroom door and sat back down. My friend opened the door and locked it behind her. She sat next to me and didn’t say a word. We sat there for what seemed like forever, not talking, just staring ahead at a blank wall.
        I looked over at her. “I’m sorry!” I said. My best friend grabbed my neck and hugged me tightly.
        “Why should you be sorry? You didn’t do anything wrong! Loving Hanson is not something to be sorry about!”
        “I made fun of you so much!” I sobbed. “Yet I’m just like you! I made fun of you because I was really making fun of me for being such a chicken!”
        “Let’s forget about all of that,” Joanna said. “You can’t relive the past. You just have to go on with your life.” I looked up at her and realized she was right. I couldn’t pretend anymore and I couldn’t take anything back, I just had to go on. “I love you,” I told her.
        “I love you too, Julie.”
        Once it was out in the open that I was a fan, I didn’t hide it at all. I wrote about Isaac, Taylor, and Zac all over my school bag and I made a Hanson webpage and pretty soon it was known that me and Jo were the Hanson fans of our town. We both liked the same brother the most even though we both said we loved all of them the same. We couldn’t hide it from each other, we actually had a “favorite.” Our choice brother was Taylor. We were always joking around about him and how much we adored the guy. When we went on the science trip to Six Flags Great Adventure we both wore Hanson shirts and got Hanson bracelets. When we went on the thrill rides we’d say to each other “if I die, tell Taylor I love him!” We both promised and then we’d either fly down the huge hill of a roller coaster or get shot 185 feet into the air, just like Hanson did in their long form video Tulsa, Tokyo, & The Middle Of Nowhere.
        When Hanson came back to our state in March of 2000 I went with Joanna to the hotel and that was when she introduced me to them officially. There had been two other fans there since it was eleven at night and the band was coming in from the airport. While Joanna called her father to come pick us up from the hotel, I gathered my thoughts together and stood up shakily from the ground. I took a few deep breaths. I knew I was acting like a teeny-bopper and I definitely wasn’t one, it was just that I hadn’t expected the hug.
        I leaned up against the marble pole that Taylor had just passed on his way up the stairs. I know it sounds stupid but it was almost as though I could feel the heat radiating out of the pillar just like I had felt when Taylor was touching me. Taylor had touched that pillar before, his “germs” were on it.
        “Dad’s coming,” Joanna told me, closing the cell phone. She smiled at me.
        “What?” I asked her. “What’s so funny?”
        “You are!” She told me. “You look like you died and went to Heaven!”
        “I did!” I insisted. I smiled as I thought about the events that had just occurred. “God, he’s SO hot!”
        “I know!” Joanna said. “He just hugged us!” She started jumping up and down. She grabbed my hands. I jumped with her. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that he only wanted to hug me but when he saw her standing there he felt compelled to do the same for her.
        I never told her that. After what happened over the course of the next few months I didn’t want to tell her.

*


        Joanna and I wanted to see Hanson at their hotel whenever they were in our state, and we did. We even booked a room in their hotel one of the times they were staying there. We spent all our money staying in the hotel but we knew we’d get money to see them on tour even if we had to beg our little brothers for it later on. It was great to see Hanson again, especially on the day when their new CD hit stores. I felt so special being there on their big day. Jo and I told them how much we loved it the second we saw them. While she was talking all I could do was stand there starring into Taylor’s eyes, wanting and praying for another hug. Another one never came. He could never hug me there again, not in front of all those fans that were invading our private territory.
        Hanson left on May 10th and came back again in June, so Joanna and I made plans to go down to the hotel. Unfortunately we never made it.
        I went over to pick up Joanna from her house on June 14th because my dad was driving us down to the train station. I was already five minutes late because I couldn’t find the CD I wanted the guys to sign, and when I didn’t see a car in the driveway I panicked, thinking that maybe she had left without me. “Jo would NEVER do that to me,” I insisted to myself as I climbed out of the car and up the front steps of her house. I rang the doorbell once. No answer. I ran it again harder this time. I saw a light flick on in the living room. The door opened slowly and Joanna’s grandmother appeared in the doorway.
        “Julie!” She exclaimed in a tired voice.
        “Hello Mrs. Rodriguez,” I said. “Joanna is supposed to be coming to the city with me this morning, is she up yet? I hope she didn’t leave because I was supposed to pick her up five minutes ago! She didn’t tell me you were visiting this week!” I was babbling. I felt bad because it was obvious I had woken the older woman up. I was turning red as I talked because I was so embarrassed, something that had never happened to me before admitting my love for Taylor Hanson who also had the same blushing problem. I think that I was becoming more like him as my Hanson addiction grew stronger.
        “Oh Julie!” Mrs. Rodriguez exclaimed again. I noticed that there were tears falling down her face and I could tell it wasn’t the first time that she had cried that day. She opened the screen door and hugged me tightly. She rocked me back and forth, her tears splashing on my shoulder.
        “Mrs. Rodriguez, what’s wrong?” I asked, not knowing how to act. I touched her hair lightly. I had no idea that what she was about to tell me would change my life forever.
        “It’s Joanna!” She explained. “She’s very sick!”
        I stood there in shock as the old lady loosened her grip on my shoulders. She held me at arm’s length. “What happened?” I asked her, my voice catching in my throat.
        “Come in!” She insisted. I stepped up into the house. She closed the door behind me and wisked me away into the living room where we sat down on the couch, apparently where she had slept the previous night. “Joanna woke up with a headache and she couldn’t move at all. She got very sick and her father took her to the hospital.” Mrs. Rodriguez wiped at the tears that were falling down her face. There were none on my face. I couldn’t believe any of it, I wouldn’t believe any of it. “The doctor says that she doesn’t have use of her legs. Did she complain of feeling sick at all in the past few months?” I shook my head. “You were with her every day, she never complained of head aches or stomach aches?”
        I shook my head again. “Never,” I said softly. “What does she have?” I asked Joanna’s grandmother.
        “She has a viral infection in her brain that damaged her nervous system. It has developed steadily over the past month. She never went to the doctor about it and went without treatment so now it is very severe.”
        “She never told me anything about feeling sick.”
        “I believe you honey,” Mrs. Rodriguez assured me. She hugged me again.
        “Will she live?” I asked her.
        "She has been seizuring off and on for a few hours. The paralysis is getting worse as the infection spreads, and when it gets to her chest she won’t be able to breathe. The doctor gives her a few days.”
        As it turns out, Joanna beat out the odds and lived longer than expected. I went to visit her every single day and every day I thought it would be out last one together. Joanna assured me that she was going to beat this thing even though the odds were stacked up against her. I don’t know why but I believed her, I think it was because she was living longer than what the doctor’s expected. In fact, she even got some of the motion back in her legs, something that was a complete medical miracle. No one with an infection in the brain got any feeling back in their dead limbs, and to get some motion back was amazing.
        One day, as Jo and I were sitting around listening to Hanson’s new CD, she asked me if I was going to the concert in September for the tour. “Only with you,” I told her.
        “Remember the last concert we went to?” She asked me.
        I nodded. “June 4th. That was so cool.”
        “Yeah,” she agreed. “Which ones are we going to? Atlanta, Philly, Virginia, New York, and Boston, right?”
        “Yep!” I told her. “And they’re going to ROCK!”
        Joanna reached over and patted my hand. “We’re going to get hugs again from Tay.”
        I nodded. “Of course we are!”
        Jo’s doctor rapped on the door. “Say your good-byes girls,” he said. “It’s two hours past visiting hours and Joanna needs some rest.”
        “I’ll rest enough soon,” Joanna muttered. I glared at her but she didn’t look me in the eyes.
        “Bye Jo,” I said carefully, finally deciding to ignore the comment. I leaned over and gave her a quick hug.
        “Bye Julz.”
        When I got home that night I sat down at the desk in my room, took out my flowered stationery, and wrote a letter to Hanson like I did at least three times a year, except this letter was different. This time I poured out my heart and soul to these three angels that me and Jo loved so dearly. I explained to them that this wasn’t an ordinary letter, my friend was dying and she wanted to see them one last time before she died. I cried as I read what I wrote. Joanna and I didn’t even talk about this last wish and I knew that I was going make sure that it would happen. I was sure she’d want to see them one last time even thought we hadn’t even discussed it. I knew she wanted to hear Taylor’s voice, see his eyes, and feel his touch. I knew and she didn’t even have to tell me.
        I addressed the letter to an address where I thought that it would get noticed. I wrote something on the envelope to make sure it would catch Hanson’s attention, I didn’t care how desperate the words sounded because I was in fact desperate and I wanted them to respond. Even if they didn’t come in person, I still wanted them to know that Joanna still existed and she was more than someone they met a lot, she was a person, a friend, my BEST friend... and she was dying.
        What did I write on the envelope, you ask? Why did it sound desperate? I wrote “EMERGENCY! MY BEST FRIEND IS DYING!” I felt horrible seeing those words sprawled across the pure white envelope. The black color of the marker reminded me of death and how I would soon be dealing with it. It wasn’t a matter of weeks, it was a matter of days. I kissed the letter for luck, stamped it, kissed it two more times and stuck it in the mailbox. I stood there for a few minutes praying it would get to Tulsa and that the boys would read it within the next week. I knew Hanson would be home for Independence Day and probably for the whole month of July because the tour kicked off in their hometown on July 27th. They’d have to get it by the time that Jo was no longer breathing. They just HAD to... and if they didn’t get to read it first I was pretty sure someone would read it and get it to them right away.
        Over the next few days Joanna’s health declined. As fast as it had gone up since June, the thing that gave us all the false hope of her getting better, it failed even faster. I know now that when her health had gone up, Jo knew that it would fall again. She knew she was going to die soon... very soon.
        Each day I sat next to my best friend, praying for her and praying that Hanson would get my letter. One day near the middle of July I admitted that I sent Hanson a letter asking for them to come see her.
        Joanna smiled at me. “You did not!” She argued.
        “I did!” I insisted.
        Her eyes lit up more than I had ever seen before. “Julie! I LOVE YOU!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!” A tear rolled down her check. “Thank you!” She said again. “Thank you!”
        I hugged her. “No problem!” I told her. “I hope they come.”
        “They will!” She told me. “They will! I’m sure they will!”
        I nodded. “You’re right. They will.”
        “When you get a call from their management, you better tell me!” She warned. “And don’t listen to them if they tell you to keep it a secret. I don’t want any surprises! I want to be able to get ready for this. I don’t want to be eating and have lettuce in my teeth when Taylor Hanson shows up at my door!”
        “All right!” I said with a laugh. “I’ll tell you the second they call me. I’ll probably run over here I’ll be so hyper!”
        Joanna laughed. “Yeah I can picture that!”
        We sat for a few minutes, talking, laughing, imagining the future when Hanson would come to visit Joanna in the hospital. We were sure they’d come, we were very positive that I’d go home and find a message on my machine from their father telling me that the boys would be coming the next day and to make sure it was a surprise for Joanna. I wouldn’t break that promise to Jo, I’d tell her if they were coming, no matter what Mr. Hanson told me! I couldn’t let my best friend be surprised like that during dinner time. We would have to get her ready about a three hours before hand, get her hair done, put on makeup, and put on a cute outfit. We wouldn’t let Taylor see her like that. It was too cruel.
        When I went home that night there was no message on my machine. There wasn’t one the next day either or the day after that. I started to loose hope but Joanna never did. She was sure a call would come and after spending the day with her I felt the same way, I was positive Hanson would come through for us. But then when I got home at night I’d get discouraged again when there was no message.
        One day I was sitting alone with Joanna when she asked me to put on track 13. I did as she asked. The song was called “A Song To Sing” and it was recorded live in the studio with no mastering. The piano was amazing and the blending of the voices was incredible That song always made us realize how much we loved Hanson. At the middle of the song when Isaac was singing “All that I have found in reason is reason just to not believe. When all that you have left is treason, it’s treason just to let it be” I started to cry hysterically. I wanted what was happening not to be true, I wanted everything just to be a bad dream. I would give anything at that moment to change my friend’s future. And I wanted Taylor to be there with us.
        “They didn’t call!” I sobbed. “They won’t call!”
        “They will call!” Joanna assured me. Her voice was light and I could hear pain in it. “They will call.” She hugged me tightly. “Julie, this is our song. Whenever you hear it I want you to think of me. I want you to remember how much fun we had with Hanson and I want you to never give up hope. They WILL call. I’m ‘sure about it’!” I sat up and wiped my eyes. I smiled at her play on words.
        “They will call.” I agreed with her. “I know they will.”
        The next day I got a call around seven in the morning. Joanna was asking for me. I rushed to the hospital and sat with her until visiting hours were more than up. I sort of wondered why the doctor was allowing me to be there for so long but I didn’t question it aloud.
        Joanna decided around ten that it was time for me to go. She held my hand, looked me in the eyes, and said in a steady voice “when I die, tell Taylor I love him.”

*


        My father picked me up from the hospital and took me to get something to eat. He was complaining that I wasn’t eating enough and that I looked pale and tired. I told him that I was too scared to eat and that was true. I hadn’t eaten in days in fear that my friend might die while I was at the cafeteria. Finally I gave in to my dad’s whining and got a bagel at the 24 hour bagel shop. When I finally got home that night I went into the kitchen and saw the light blinking on my answering machine. There were two new messages waiting.
        The first message was from Taylor Hanson saying that he and his brothers were catching an early flight from Tulsa to come visit Joanna in the hospital and they would arrive around noon. He asked if I could please keep the visit a surprise.
        The second message was from Joanna’s mother telling me that my best friend passed away.