'Scene' and heard

'I don't like to be labeled," says my brother, 15-year-old Zackary Riel, as I drill him with questions.

"I'm just the same as you," he says. "I put my pants on one leg at a time, just like you."

My brother's agitation with my continuing questioning grows stronger. But do I let up? Of course not!

For 15 years now, I've lived with Zack and all the different phases of life he's gone through. Being three years older, I've had the opportunity to observe -- from an inside perspective -- his truly eccentric life.

My brother and I are different; everybody says that, I know. But one glance at us and most wouldn't even suspect we're related.

My blond hair and his jet-black strands bear a similar resemblance to night and day. My clothes, tame and conventional, hardly compare to the seemingly endless supply of band T-shirts and skinny jeans in my brother's overflowing dresser drawers.

"Zack does his own thing," says his friend, 15-year-old Scott Shively of Yakima. "It doesn't bother me, though; we've been friends forever."

Zack's style stands out at Yakima's Riverside Christian School, but it hasn't always been so. His fashion sense changed about three years ago.

"I think it started around eighth grade," he says. "I think that time in your life is when you really start to find yourself."

Looking back, I can recall my brother's increased interest in drumming and music, the emergence of a patterned style, a change in his general attitude. Not a bad one, just a change in the way he began to develop thoughts all his own.

"My dress and my music and all of that stuff that would typically be labeled as 'scene' is simply a part of me because I like it," he says. "I like the styles and the sounds of music I hear at Edgefest and at a show at Glenwood Square. But all of this, if anything, just serves as a representation of my attitude."

That attitude, the one that became so apparent in junior high, is one of individuality. My brother values free and challenging thought.

"I'm trying to add some flare to this world," says my brother, whose music is his passion. "It's what I love. It's what I love to do."

Zack desires to stand out in the crowd and be a person who stands firm in the face of a challenge.

But he does live by a standard.

Many would be quick to view those who appear as he does as passive in spirituality. Not my brother. His commitment to his Christian faith and the doctrine outlined by the Bible serves as a basis for the free thoughts of this young man.

"I wouldn't say that my desire to avoid conformity comes directly from scripture, but it's definitely a biblical message," says Riel, referring to a passage found in Romans 12:2.

The New International Version of the Bible reads: "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is -- his good, pleasing and perfect will."

"Most 'scene' kids wouldn't say that they are actually 'scene'," he says.

And in a sense, his simple statement might provide for the elusive definition for the so-called "scene" crowd: These teens love their music, they love their individuality, and they'd love for us to stop categorizing them.

* Brandon Riel attends Riverside Christian School.