The Rock Star's Daughter (The Treadwell Academy Novels)

by Duffy, Caitlyn

  The waiter nodded and said, "I'm a huge fan, Mr. Atwood. I'll bring the appetizers out as soon as they're ready."

  Mid-way through dinner, I noticed while in the ladies' room that I had managed to dribble butter onto Jill's scarf despite my own nerdy plastic lobster bib. I sighed and rolled my eyes at myself. Even the new, better-looking me was no less of a slob than the previous non-famous iteration of me. Rather than even attempt to blot the butter out of the delicate scarf in the ladies' room, I took the scarf off my neck and wrapped it around my waist like a loose belt. The fringe dangled around my legs, which was probably not the most fashionable look, but I hardly cared.

  When I returned to the table, luckily there was a distraction preventing Jill from immediately noticing that I had repurposed the scarf. Keith, surprisingly, appeared to be out on some kind of a date. He and his middle-aged lady friend, who looked a bit like a female version of Keith, had stopped by our table to greet my dad and Jill. I took my seat, and was surprised when Keith reached out to shake my hand as he and his guest were leaving.

  "Wonderful to see you, Miss Taylor, as always," he said, looking me firmly in the eye as he shook my hand.

  Then, as his hand pulled away, it became clear to me why he had insisted on the handshake. A small note, one that had been folded a trillion times until it was a tiny triangle, had been pressed into the palm of my hand. I let it fall to my lap, and hoping that Jill and Dad had not noticed, and moments later let my eyes fall downward to inspect it. My heart nearly skipped a beat when I saw that my name was written on it. The note appeared at a quick glance to be written on loose-leaf.

  The handwriting definitely looked boyish.

  When we stood to leave after dinner, I tucked the note into the pocket of my jeans. My heart was beating so loudly I thought for sure my father could hear it as we exited the restaurant. All I cared about in that moment, more than anything else in the whole world, was getting back to the hotel so that I could read that note in private. The mere thought that Jake would have something important enough to communicate to me that he would take the drastic step of asking Keith to hand-deliver a note to me made it difficult for me to breathe.

  The second we stepped outside the restaurant, however, we were mobbed by paparazzi and flashbulbs. It was yet another reminder that my life had changed forever – even the most boring family dinner was something that qualified for the top story in the gossip pages.

  "Give us some room, guys, thanks," my father was a pro at being gracious and good-natured with paparazzi even when he was not in the mood to have his picture taken.

  Our limo pulled up to the restaurant and for the entire ride back to the hotel, I sat quietly, hopefully, with my hands folded over my knees.

  Back at the hotel, sitting on the edge of the tub in the bathroom that I shared with Kelsey, I unfolded the note.

  Dear Taylor, it began. I've heard through the grapevine that you are grounded and can't leave your hotel room. That really sucks. Can you find a way to let me know how long you're grounded for? In three weeks when the tour moves to Detroit there is something I want to show you. Jake.

  I think I reread the note no fewer than six hundred times. Technically I would still be grounded when we arrived in Detroit. But how could I miss a chance to spend time with Jake in his home town?

  I tiptoed across the bedroom, as Kelsey was already fast asleep in her bed, and withdrew several sheets of hotel stationery from the desk in our room. Back in the bathroom, I began composing my response. I confirmed that I was grounded and added how sad I was that my grounding was going to prevent me from going to the beach to collect seashells. I added that getting grounded wasn't really my fault, and that I would make every effort to break free in Detroit.

  Then I read over the page I had just written, and considered that Keith was probably nosy enough to read the letter. After ten minutes of deliberating whether or not to tear up my note and toss it in the toilet, I shrugged, folded it in the same manner in which Jake had folded his, and wrote his name on top.

  The next morning, when Keith stopped by our room to bring my father some of the stage plans for the show in Cincinnati the following night, I handed him my note with a raised eyebrow and he accepted it, no questions asked.

  Moments later, when Tanya arrived and our hotel suite became the band's business headquarters for the day, she slid a print-out from her computer in front of me at the table where I was picking at my yogurt.

  "You're an internet superstar, kiddo," she informed me.

  I picked up the print-out and inspected it. It was clearly a paparazzi shot from the night before, outside the restaurant, and I cringed when I saw the scarf hanging around my waist, forever preserved in a publicized image. I had managed to rinse the butter from the scarf with warm water after obsessing over my note from Jake, hoping that Jill had been oblivious to the entire incident. What was most curious about the print-out that Tanya had given me was that my dad wasn't in the picture at all. It was a full-body shot, just of me.

  "What is this?" I asked.

  "It's from the Hollywoodland website," Tanya said, as if I should know better. "The hottest celebrity gossip site there is. You're a hit. There were almost two hundred comments on that photo an hour ago when I printed it out."

  I fought the immediate urge to go online and find it for myself. But when I checked my email prior to us boarding the bus bound for the overnight drive to Ohio after the show in North Carolina, my new status as a fashionista had gone international. Riddhi had found it on one of her favorite celebrity gossip sites and had forwarded me the link with the email subject line: OMG YR so famous!

  The drive from North Carolina to Ohio was long, and I was restless on the bus. Bijoux and Betsey were already miles away from the Pound tour, soaring over the Atlantic in a jet to Croatia, where they would be joining their mother and her rich husband at a wealthy beachside resort for the remainder of the summer. I reclined on one of the couches in the hope of snoozing the night away, but my head was racing. I was tormented with thoughts of whether or not Jake had yet received my note. From where I was lying, I could see Keith stretched out in a reclined seat, but his face gave away no clues.

  We arrived in Cincinnati around four in the morning. I gazed longingly out the window at all of the highway signs that we passed announcing Cincinnati attractions I would never see… the Cincinnati Zoo, King's Island, River Downs Racetrack. We checked into the hotel on the city's outskirts in a daze at dawn, the entire tour group mumbling and fumbling with wallets and stumbling into the elevators. I finally fell asleep when I climbed into bed and pulled a heavy comforter up to my ears. The hotel bedroom smelled curiously of heavy cleaning solutions and eucalyptus.

  I slept til mid-morning. When I woke up I saw that Kelsey had already abandoned her bed and I could hear the typical noises of tour operations being handled from the living room of our suite: Tanya tapping on her laptop keyboard, Keith barking orders into his cell phone, Herschel leading Jill in an impossibly complicated routine of stretches and poses. I dressed quickly, anxious to see if Jill would allow me to head down to the hotel restaurant alone.

  "Good morning, sleeping beauty," Tanya greeted me from her station at the suite's one desk. "Someone left that bag in the hallway for you."

  I followed the direction of her nod to the counter top, where a brown paper gift bag had been left with my name written on it in small letters. And when I saw what was inside, my heart stopped.

  The bag was filled with seashells.

  Tiny conches in shades of periwinkle and beige, speckled scallops and several missing a few chunks, there were at least fifty shells in the bag, still smelling sweetly of the Atlantic.

  My eyes got a little wet and I couldn't help but grin from ear to ear. To say that I was completely in love at that moment would be the understatement of the century. This simple act meant that not only had Jake gotten my note from Keith, but he had driven to the beach and collected shells just to show me he cared. I had nev
er dared to imagine that any boy would ever like me so much that he would do something so unabashedly romantic.

  "What's in the bag?" Tanya asked, as if I was really going to believe that everyone in the hotel suite hadn't already taken a peek.

  "Just something I left behind in Virginia," I answered in a sing-song voice.

  Jill would not let me peruse the hotel on my own, and reminded me that I was grounded, but even that annoyance could not darken my amazing mood. I day-dreamed all day. The bag of seashells was wrapped gently in a blanket and tucked into my suitcase so that there was no way any more of the precious shells would be chipped.

  We would be in Detroit in just three weeks. I had no idea how I was going to slip away from the tour long enough to meet Jake, but I knew that whatever it was he had to show me, there was absolutely nothing in my life that I wanted to see more than it.

  Then something completely unpredictable and insane happened. On our first night in Ohio, I was dragged forcibly by Jill to attend the Pound show and sit quietly backstage. Walking the short distance with Jill from my dad's dressing room to the catering table, I noticed at least five women, all in their twenties or thirties, wearing gauzy scarves tied around their hips. Coincidence?

  Backstage, Tanya motioned me toward her over the earsplitting guitar riffs, and she pointed out toward the crowd. There were at least a hundred girls in the first few rows wearing scarves tied around their hips. Had I really caused a fashion sensation with my dripped butter? I had always thought of fashion trends as kind of silly. It was totally incredible to me that women were wrapping scarves around their hips simply because a picture of me, boring old me, had been posted to the web wearing something similar.

  And then, the craziest part of all… after the concert as we exited the back door of the amphitheater and boarded the bus, there were fans lined up with hand-drawn signs. This was nothing new, there were always fans and they were mostly female and usually carrying sheets of poster board with "I LOVE YOU CHASE" written on them. But on this particular night there were several teenage girls, just about my age, tearing at their hair and screaming, "We love you, Taylor!"

  I was so surprised I actually stopped half-way up the stairs to the bus and peered out into the crowd of fans to locate who had called out my name. My eyes came to rest on a group of three girls who looked like sophomores in high school wearing heavy eyeliner and huge earrings. My age. Just like me. And of course, they were wearing scarves tied around their hips.

  "Uh, thanks," I muttered in their direction before climbing up into the bus.

  "Don't let it go to your head," my dad teased me once we were on board. He seemed amused, and oddly, kind of proud, that his fans were taking such a huge interest in me suddenly.

  "It doesn't make any sense," I grumbled, a little self-conscious about the whole thing. "I didn't do anything."

  "It never makes sense," Wade called to me from across the bus. "It never does and it never will. Just go with it."

  Perhaps it was my newfound fame that inspired Jill to send me down to the hotel souvenir store the next morning in the hotel lobby.

  "Are you sure? I'm grounded," I reminded her.

  "Don't be a smart ass," Jill warned me, but I could tell she was just joking for a change.

  I decided to take the long way down to the lobby, which basically meant getting off the elevator on the third floor to walk past the gym and world class spa before descending the grand staircase to the lobby. I paused to linger in the hallway to scan the spa menu out of curiosity about their specialty massages, and nearly jumped out of my skin when one of the guest room doors opened down the hall.

  And my father stepped into the hallway.

  Our eyes locked and I instantly felt nauseous.

  Dad blinked twice with a blank expression on his face, and then took a step backwards as if he was going to try to disappear back into the room that he just stepped out of. His mouth opened as if he was going to object to something, but then nothing came out of it.

  And in that awful, gut-wrenching moment as my brain was on the brink of making the rotten assumption that my father could only be exiting a guest room on the third floor of the hotel for one terrible reason, it got worse.

  The door opened again, and this time a woman was handing my father his sunglasses, telling him he was silly for leaving them behind. And she was wearing a cropped silk kimono, a cheap one, something that looked like a knock-off bought at a mall lingerie store.

  And she was Jake's mom.

  "Taylor, honey," Karina called after me as I turned and ran down the hallway toward the staircase that led to the lobby. I descended the stairs so quickly it was a miracle that I didn't trip and slide down half of them on my butt.

  I tore across the front lobby, not caring that other well-dressed guests were turning to look at me as if I was nuts, and was half-way across the parking lot before I realized that no one was following me.

  I whirled around twice out of despair. I was in the middle of a parking lot in Ohio. I had no one on earth I could call to come and pick me up and take me away. All of my worst assumptions about my dad had just been confirmed: he was cheating on Jill, he was deceitful with everyone he claimed to love, and worst of all, he was behaving this way flagrantly right under everyone's nose. It was almost as if he wanted to get caught.

  My mind filled with questions that I didn't necessarily want answered… did he pay for Karina and Jake to stay in the same hotels as the band throughout the whole tour so that he would always know where Karina was? How long had it been going on? Had Jake known all along?

  And worst of all, did my dad ever tell the truth about anything?

  I sat down on the hot blacktop of the parking lot and stared straight ahead for what felt like hours. I didn't want to go back to our hotel room. But I didn't know where else to go. There was no avoiding it; my father and I were going to have to have a very adult conversation about his conduct. I wasn't planning on saying anything to Jill, but also wasn't sure how I was going to keep myself from acting strangely around my dad in her presence. It occurred to me multiple times to ask my dad if I could just go back to Treadwell early. Surely he could use his fame and financial clout to get them to open the dorm early for me.

  The decision was certainly not simple; if I left the tour early, I would never see Jake again. Which, given the circumstances, should not even have been a concern of mine if I were a rationally thinking adult. However, it's hardly fair to expect a girl who is completely in love to think rationally. As crazy as it may sound, the only thing I really wanted after sitting in the hot parking lot all afternoon was to find Jake and drive as far away from my dad, his mom, the tour, and my life as I now knew it, as I could get.

  CHAPTER 10

  The drive from Ohio to Louisville was brief but one of the most un-scenic and depressing of the tour. Two and a half agonizing days had passed since I had witnessed my dad exiting Karina's hotel room, and in those two days we had not yet had a private moment. My father was going about his business as usual, primarily ignoring me and never once hinting that there was anything for which he felt a need to apologize. I had only made one slight acknowledgement of what I had witnessed in the hallway; I had rolled my eyes at him when he had asked me where I was at with my summer reading list for Treadwell.

  Seriously? As if my summer reading was really a concern of anyone.

  My stomach was in knots on the tour bus for the entire drive to Louisville. I hadn't heard anything from Jake, or seen high or low of him in Ohio. It was possible, and probable, that he knew that I had discovered the truth about his mom and my dad. I was strongly fearful that Karina had told him to stay away from me, or worse, that they had left Ohio early and wouldn't be at any of the remaining shows. I was not sure what I would do if I didn't see Jake at all in the next three weeks, and our two days in Detroit passed without any sign of him. The chance of spending time with him alone was the only thing getting me out of the bed in the morning.

  The
morning after the sold-out show in Louisville, Jill announced in a very uncharacteristic manner that she wanted to spend a day doing normal errands. The band was going to a private event at the Slugger Museum, and Jill asked me if I wanted to join her for what she called a "mundane day of suburban delight," as an alternate option to a day immersed in baseball history.

  My heart skipped a beat when I realized that Jill was driving our rental car in the direction of none other than a good old-fashioned American mall. Our shopping list was as boring as could be: new socks for Kelsey, a birthday present for Jill's mom, a new pair of sandals for my father because he had left his pair behind at the pool in Ohio.

  "That's right, Taylor," Jill hummed, in a good mood. "It's not all Vuitton and Louboutins. You can take the girl out of New Jersey, but you can't take the New Jersey out of the girl."

  My spirits soared inside the mall; no matter how upset I might be, the smell of Cinnabon and Sbarro combined make all of my frustrations and disappointments disappear. As we roamed through the mall passing other families shopping on a summer weekday, I actually felt normal for the first time I had ever been out with Jill and Kelsey. Not famous, not rich. Like just a normal kid out with her stepmom and sister, shopping for junk on sale. A few teenage girls stared at me when we stepped inside Hunter Lodge and I lingered in front of a display of jeans, but not in a way that made me suspicious that they recognized me. Perhaps they thought they knew me from somewhere – a kid who had moved away to another town in grammar school, someone who looked just like a cousin who hadn't been seen in a while. For one afternoon I was just a girl out shopping in a suburb of Kentucky, not the daughter of Chase Atwood.

  In fact, I even glowered at a poster in the Hunter Lodge of Emma Jeffries squirming around in a tight pair of jeans on a grassy lawn and found the pang of jealousy I felt to be kind of a relief, like putting on an old pair of sneakers. It had been a while since I had thought about Emma Jeffries.