"Do you have your license yet?" Bijoux asked me. She had lit up a clove cigarette the second we exited the hotel.
Driving was a sore topic for me. I was turning sixteen in September and learning how to drive had been one of my goals for the summer… that was, before my mother had died and all of this madness had started. Treadwell did not offer Driver's Ed as normal high schools did, since students were not allowed to keep private cars on school grounds. Having my mom or Todd teach me had been my only chance at preparing for my license.
"No," I said. "I'm not sixteen yet."
"But you've got your learner's permit, right?" Bijoux egged on. She cranked up the radio, playing a rap song.
"Yeah," I admitted. My mother had taken me to the DMV in Hollywood to get my learner's permit the first weekend I had been home for the summer. It was still folded in my wallet, and I had never used it to drive, ever.
"Do you want to drive?" Bijoux earnestly offered. She slowed the car down, as if to suggest she was seriously considering pulling over to let me take the wheel.
"Hell, no!" I exclaimed. "My permit is only valid in California and only if someone over the age of twenty-one is in the car with me."
"Suit yourself," Bijoux shrugged.
We parked the car a few blocks from the boardwalk and my heart soared when I saw a ferris wheel in the distance. I fell instantly in love with Virginia Beach, its salty air, cool breezes and rocky gray waves. It was amazing to me that a beach on the other side of the country could be so vastly different from the beach in Santa Monica even though it was still composed of the basic elements of sand and water.
It was early afternoon and men whistled each and every time we walked past a restaurant with open windows. Because it was a holiday weekend, there seemed to be no shortage of college-age guys out drinking beers despite the early hour in the day. We made our way down to the water to cool off, and I took off my t-shirt while we were in the water, praying the entire time that the strings holding my suit together would not fail me.
I felt like an enormous nerd because I really wanted to collect sea shells to take back to the hotel. I didn't, obviously, because I was afraid of the Norfleets thinking that I was unforgivably immature. But beaches around Los Angeles don't have big beautiful scallop shells like Virginia Beach does, and I hoped I would have a chance to come back to the beach alone so that I could fill a bag before the tour moved on toward the Midwest.
"I need a driiiink," Betsey moaned once we were back up on the walkway. She was nearly two years younger than me and I found it kind of quizzical that someone who was younger than me would be such an experienced drinker.
As if guided by a sixth sense for mischief, Bijoux drifted back down to the sandy shore toward a group of guys who looked like they were in their early twenties after zeroing in on them with her slut-vision. They had with them a cooler that contained a number of soda bottles filled with clear liquid. Bijoux introduced herself.
"Me and my sister and our friend are awfully thirsty," she flirted.
"Help yourselves," a guy wearing a University of Virginia baseball hat told us. "I'm Brian. This here's Nate, Steve, Dan, Elliot, Mike and this other guy here is named Brian, too."
"Are you girls from around here?" the guy introduced as Steve asked.
"We're on vacation visiting our dad," Betsey piped up, helping herself to one of the bottles from the cooler.
"Wait a second," the heaviest-set of the guys, whose name was Dan, said with a laugh. "I know who you girls are. Your dad is the guitarist from Pound."
"Maybe," Bijoux cackled.
"Careful with that," the tallest guy, who had been introduced as Nate, warned Bijoux as she handed Betsey a bottle. "Those are vodka tonics."
Bijoux tossed me a bottle and I sipped its contents carefully, mostly because it was insanely hot out and the bottle was icy cold. Drinking alcohol on the beach was illegal – there were signs everywhere – but it seemed like every group on the beach that had set up a small camp with an umbrella also had a cooler full of plastic bottles. I felt a little scared to be drinking in broad daylight in public, but told myself to relax. It was hardly like I was going to get carried away by the police if I was out with Bijoux and Betsey, who seemed to know what they were doing.
"They look kinda young."
I overheard two of the guys discussing us a few feet away as Bijoux spread herself across Nate's beach towel on the sand. Her long, long legs were deeply tanned and I thought for a moment that I would never have that kind of poise and confidence no matter how long I lived.
"What about you?" Dan asked me. "Is your dad a rock star, too?"
"Her dad is Chase Atwood," Betsey bragged on my behalf.
"Get out!" Brian exclaimed. "I freakin' love Pound. We tried to get tickets to the show tonight but it's been sold out for months."
The guys revealed that they were all juniors at UVA who had stayed in Charlottesville for the summer to work part-time jobs and take a few classes. They were only at the beach for the holiday weekend and were staying at a motel a few miles inland because the beach hotels were far more expensive. I did some quick math in my head and deduced that these guys were probably not the legal drinking age, either.
I tasted the contents of my bottle in dainty sips, kind of wishing I had put my t-shirt back on over my bikini before we had walked down the beach toward these guys. Now that we were sitting with them it would be too awkward to put it back on, and I felt completely exposed without it. I was barely paying attention as Bijoux yammered on and on about what kind of music she liked and where she liked to party in New York. It was a matter of minutes before Brian #1 was sitting next to her and playing with the bikini strings holding up her top.
The guy who had been introduced as Elliot wrapped up a conversation on his cell phone and announced, "Hey, our buddy Jarred has a boat. You guys wanna come out on the water with us? We were going to go jet skiing."
"I love jet skiing," Betsey announced. She had already finished her entire bottle of booze.
I felt a little uncertain about following the group further down the beach to the pier where we could meet Jarred and get on his boat as we packed up the umbrella and beach towels. I mean, drinking on a beach with boys older than us was one thing, but getting on a boat with them and presumably drinking more was another. I knew once I set foot on that boat, I was putting myself in a position to be in a heck of a lot more trouble if my dad were to ever find out how we spent our day away from the hotel.
Nevermind that my mother never would have hesitated about getting on a boat with a group of guys and cocktails. Nevermind that Bijoux and Betsey seemed thrilled. My stomach was starting to feel uneasy. I may have mentioned that I had never really been in trouble before, and that was largely because I had never gone out of my way to get in trouble before.
"I think I want to head back to the hotel," I told Bijoux quietly when the boys stepped ahead of us on the pier to begin loading the cooler onto the boat. Jarred was not, as we had assumed, a friend of the guys. He was Elliot's uncle, and he looked at least ten years older than the other guys. The boat was pretty nice; it was a speed boat that could easily accommodate at least eight people.
"Oh my god," Bijoux exclaimed. "Don't be such a chicken. You're going to have a great time. I personally guarantee it."
I frantically tried to come up with an excuse to stay at the beach. "I've never been on a boat before," I admitted. "I'm not sure if I'm going to like this."
It was really hot out and while I wasn't drunk, drinking vodka under the punishing sun wasn't making me feel great, either. What I really wanted was a bottle of water but something told me that water was one thing that the cooler did not contain.
"Well, if you're not sure," Bijoux reasoned, "then maybe you will like it. You'll never know unless you come with."
She grabbed my hand and led me onto the boat with her.
"Don't be a loser," she warned me once we were on board. The guys were all smiling broadly, like v
ictors. And why wouldn't they? They had managed to get the daughters of rock stars on their boat on a holiday weekend. Mike began taking digital pictures, and I did my best to keep my face covered, not too happy about the possibility of Mike having an opportunity to sell his shots to Expose Magazine once he got back to his motel that night.
Bijoux, however, hammed it up. And I interpreted her order for me to not be a loser to mean that as the daughter of Chase Atwood, I had a reputation to live up to.
We were out on the water for a few hours, long enough for all three of us to start getting sunburns despite the sunscreen we had applied back at the hotel. Bijoux and Betsey took turns on the water skis, and I adamantly refused to try. I have always been somewhat of a klutz when trying new physical activities for the first time (and sometimes the second, third, etc.). There was no way I wanted to make a fool out of myself in front of a bunch of guys older than me.
"Taylor, seriously," Bijoux rolled her eyes. She took off her soaking wet life vest and handed it to me. "You only live once."
"Come on, Taylor. I'll go with you," Dan offered. "No one is a worse water skier than me."
And just like that, I water skied for the first time. Water sprayed me in the face as soon as the boat lurched into full speed, and I screamed. When I screamed, my mouth filled with water, and I almost let go of the bar that I had been told to hold onto for dear life. By the time I finally got the hang of balancing myself on my skis, I looked over and saw Dan struggling to level himself and couldn't help but laugh.
I was having fun, in spite of myself.
By the time I climbed back on board the boat, I was soaking wet, and exhilarated. And Bijoux and Betsey were absolutely, completely wasted. They both had consumed two more bottles from the cooler while I had been on the water, and by late afternoon they were red-faced, giggling and acting like idiots.
"Come on, don't goof around like that," Jarred yelled at them on their last turn riding the water skis.
Betsey was trying to do tricks on her skis, and Jarred slowed the boat down and made the sisters climb back in. He was drinking too, even though he was driving the boat, and I couldn't help but look around to see if there were any Coast Guard boats enforcing the law.
"So Chase Atwood is really your dad?" Brian #2 asked me. He had sat down next to me after I had taken my turn on the skis, and since then had barely budged.
"Yes," I said.
He began telling me about how he was studying engineering at UVA and grew up in Maryland. He was a nice guy, but I was disinterested, and was getting genuinely thirsty. I got up to help myself to one of the cold beers that had appeared in the cooler, and when I bent over to pull one out of the ice, I felt Brian's hand on my butt.
"Let me help you with that," he offered.
"Please, don't," I said nervously, not really wanting anyone on that boat to touch me, anywhere.
"Sorry, sorry," Brian apologized, and when we sat back down he kept a safe ten inches away from me.
Once back on the boat, Bijoux noticed her sunburn for the first time and decided to take off her bikini top.
The guys on the boat could not believe their dumb luck – first to have rock stars' daughters approach them, and then to have Bijoux start stripping! Mike put his camera into overdrive once Bijoux's top came off, and she was happy to pose for him. The only people disturbed to see Bijoux's chest were me and Jarred, who was concerned that other people out on the water in their boats could see that she was half-naked.
"Come on, cover it up," Jarred said, growing decreasingly amused with the Norfleet girls' drunken antics. "This ain't St. Tropez and I don't need a ticket."
The compromise reached by Bijoux and Jarred was that Bijoux would sit on the boat's floor, so that her bare bosoms couldn't be seen by anyone else out sailing. But the compromise didn't make me feel any more comfortable being out on a boat with a bunch of drunk guys who were getting hornier and grabbier by the second. When Betsey pulled off her own top, Jarred finally had enough.
"How old are you girls, anyway?"
"Eighteen," Bijoux slurred back, clearly very, very drunk.
"Not you. Her," Jarred said, nodding his head at Betsey, who had thrown her bikini top at Dan.
"Sixteen," Betsey lied.
With that, Jarred turned the boat around and thankfully we headed back to shore. During the entire twenty minute ride back to the dock, Dan and Mike kept asking me when I was going to take my top off, and I sat motionless and stone-faced until I decided to just put my t-shirt back on. I was no longer concerned with living up to my dad's party animal reputation. I was sunburned and starting to get angry with myself for ever getting on that stupid boat in the first place. Those guys could have done anything to us out on the water and we would have had no way of protecting ourselves. Then what would I have told Jake? My disposition was souring quickly when I thought about how much I would have preferred to have spent the afternoon with him.
"Knock it off and leave her alone," Brian #2 finally told his friends.
When we got back to the boardwalk, Mike invited us back to their motel with them. Bijoux, with her top restored to its proper position over her chest, seemed vaguely interested, but announced that she needed to use a bathroom first. She led Betsey and me to a bustling bar and grill and strode right past the hostess to the ladies' room with us following.
It was almost five o'clock. We were supposed to be back at the hotel by six if we were going to go with the band to the Pound show. At that point in the summer I barely cared to see Pound perform yet again, but I did want to see the fireworks.
"It's getting late, Bijoux," I said in the ladies room while Bijoux and Betsey disappeared into separate stalls. "We should get back to the hotel."
"Those guys are kind of cute," Bijoux said, her voice muffled from behind the stall door. "I mean, for cheesy college boys. It could be kind of fun to hang out with them."
I groaned. I had no way of knowing how I would get back to the band's hotel if Bijoux and Betsey were going to insist on going to some seedy motel with a bunch of sweaty guys.
But, luckily – or unluckily – by the time I used the bathroom myself and washed my hands, Bijoux and Betsey had made new male friends at the bar. The boys from the boat, who were waiting for us outside the restaurant, could see Bijoux wrap her arms around a muscular blond guy who had just ordered her a mojito. They threw up their arms in disgust and I saw them storm off, rejected.
I was so thankful to be off that boat and back on land that I let my guard down. The three guys in the bar with whom Bijoux and Betsey had struck up a conversation were insistent upon plying us with expensive cocktails. We were all seated at a table and the blond guy, Doug, ordered up a round of Brazilian cocktails loaded down with rum and mint for all of us.
By the time the waitress brought the drinks over, it was already six and I knew I was going to have some answering to do when we got back to the hotel. I hadn't brought my cell phone with me out of fear of losing it at the beach, which in retrospect was pretty dumb.
"Another round?" Doug asked us when our cocktail glasses were empty.
I shook my head. I had definitely had enough to drink that night and Betsey stuck her tongue out at me.
"Taylor's a party pooper," she accused me.
I could have easily retorted, "Betsey's only fourteen," but didn't.
"Someone's going to have to drive us back to the hotel," I said on impulse, and as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized I had just sealed my fate.
"I'm glad you're up for it, because I'm in no shape!" Bijoux laughed, handing me the car keys from her purse.
I clutched the keys in my palm so tightly for the rest of the night, I was sure I was drawing blood. The bar began playing music louder after nightfall and everyone got up to dance, but I stayed glued to my seat, terrified of having to get behind the wheel of that amazing Mercedes.
By ten o'clock, Betsey had gone into the ladies' room to vomit at least once. The waitress gave us a lo
ok of concern when Doug and his friends ordered a fifth round of drinks.
"I'm going to need to see some ID for these girls," the waitress insisted.
I wondered why she had waited five rounds to ask.
"I didn't bring any out with me," Bijoux lied.
"I'm sorry, then, I'm going to have to ask you to leave," the waitress informed us, handing Doug the bill.
"Come on, lady, be a bitch why don't you?" Doug yelled as the waitress walked away.
"Oh, crap. She's getting the manager," Betsey observed.
Once outside, it took a good ten minutes of begging to get Bijoux to stop making out with Doug. I was officially freaked out. I knew that this time, no matter what, my dad was going to yell at me when we got back to the hotel. It was almost eleven; we had missed the concert, the fireworks, and I was honestly too scared to even call the hotel and tell him where we were and that we needed a ride home.
So scared, in fact, that when we reached the Mercedes and got in, I sat down in the front seat and tried to orient myself behind the wheel.
I was extraordinarily lucky that night for two reasons. One, because Todd had given me an impromptu "watch and learn" driving lesson in his new car earlier that summer. It had hardly been a true driving lesson, as I had been seated in the passenger seat at the time, but at least I could kind of figure out what I was doing well enough to get the engine of the Mercedes started and get us backed out of our parking space. It was also incredibly fortunate for me that the drive back to our hotel was not a difficult one: it was literally a twenty-minute straight shot up the highway that ran alongside the beach.
Out on the road I gripped the wheel as if my life depended on holding it as tightly as possible, and focused intently on the road ahead of me. I needed Bijoux's drunken help to turn the headlights on. She then proceeded to turn on the radio and jam through several different stations at top volume.
"Bijoux! I'm seriously going to kill you!" I yelled.
"Nice driving," Betsey encouraged me from the back seat, trying to be supportive. "You're doing a good job. You're a natural!"
The Rock Star's Daughter (The Treadwell Academy Novels) Page 10