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

by Duffy, Caitlyn

  I was sure Kelsey had never had pizza before in her life, but at my mention of it, she jumped up and down on the sofa yelling, "Pizza! Pizza!"

  Randy, who was in his late twenties and had a huge pot belly, shrugged. "Sure, just tell me what you want and we'll send someone to go get it."

  I perused the thick yellow phone book in the suite's desk and decided on a deep-dish pie from Uno's Pizzeria. Salad pizza, however, without cheese. I wasn't feeling snobbish enough to risk Kelsey getting sick again.

  While Kelsey and I were wolfing down our slices of pizza in front of the hotel suite's large-screen TV, another one of the production assistants entered the suite with a large white shopping bag just for me.

  "You can place that in my room," I commanded him.

  After dinner, I ran my fingers over the gorgeous Coach royal blue fabric and could hardly believe the bag was mine.

  What was most amazing to me as I drifted off to sleep that night was that I probably could have been pampering myself and buying stuff left and right from the moment the tour started, and no one would have ever stopped me. The funny thing was, however, that the only things I really wanted couldn't be bought with money. I wanted Jake to be my boyfriend. I wanted my father to be a better man. I wanted Allison to remain my best friend and not hate me. I wanted Todd to break up with Nicole Farley. I wanted my mom back.

  None of those things were for sale in the window of the store across the street. Allison's words hung heavily in my head in the dark bedroom and I didn't bother wiping the tears away as they rolled down the sides of my face and onto my pillow.

  CHAPTER 11

  On our fourth day in Chicago it was becoming evident to me that something was up between Jill and my father. She stayed at the hotel on the night of the third show rather than hang out back stage during the performance, and she went to bed at eleven PM even though Dad wasn't back from the arena yet. Jill refused to make eye contact with him during breakfast before we piled on the tour bus to go to Six Flags, even when he tried repeatedly to joke with her.

  When we climbed aboard the bus, Wade boarded after Jill and commented upon taking a good look at her behind, "There's a nice view from down here."

  "Wade, seriously, shut your goddamn mouth," Jill snapped ferociously over her shoulder. I had never heard Jill say a curse word before. I cringed as if I were in trouble.

  "Yeah, Wade, you pig," snarled Phoebe, Wade's wife, from behind him.

  Wade grimaced. "Geez. What's gotten into the womenfolk?"

  It was insanely hot even at 9 AM when the staff of Six Flags enthusiastically greeted us in the parking lot and opened the gates of the park to us. We were joined by six buses of kids from the Catalyst Foundation, their parents and a handful of doctors. The kids from this particular foundation were all suffering from terminal diseases. Many were bald and wore baseball caps and sun block. Just after entering the park, the band members posed for pictures with kids who wanted to meet them. Actually, it seemed like mostly the kids' mothers wanted to meet my dad and the band, but photographers from a variety of magazines and a video crew from a nightly gossip show patiently snapped pics of everyone who asked.

  Most of the kids appeared to be much younger than me. The crowd began to disperse and kids ran off toward rides in small bunches, eager to take advantage of a day at the amusement park with no lines. In all the commotion of entering the gates and the organization of picture-taking, I had lost sight of Jill and Kelsey, and spun around, looking for them.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder, and turned to see a girl who appeared to be a little younger than me, maybe twelve or thirteen, holding a pad of paper.

  "Are you Taylor Atwood?" the girl asked.

  "I'm Taylor Beauforte," I corrected her. "But Chase Atwood is my dad."

  "Could I have your autograph?"

  The girl asking for my signature was painfully thin, and had dark circles beneath her eyes. She was wearing a patterned scarf, a Pucci knock-off, tied over her head, and I presumed she was either bald or balding beneath it. To say that I was moved that this girl would think enough of me to ask for my autograph was an understatement. I could barely open my mouth to reply to her for fear that I was going to choke up.

  "Why would you want my autograph?" I asked her earnestly. "I'm just a girl whose dad is a singer in a band."

  "I love your style," the girl told me. "I read all about you in Teen Image. You go to the same boarding school as my cousin."

  I accepted the pad of paper and pen from her and was instantly curious. "Who's your cousin?"

  "Emma Jeffries," the girl told me. "Do you know her?"

  My heart nearly stopped. Of all the dumb and random coincidences, I could not believe that Emma Jeffries' sick cousin was asking me for my autograph a world away from the Treadwell campus. It also occurred to me that no matter how wealthy the Jeffries family was, here was this young girl dying from a terrible disease, and her family's wealth was of little use to her. It didn't make her any different from the other kids at the park that day. Illness wasn't intimidated by money.

  "Of course I know her," I said, deciding to embellish a little for the benefit of this sweet girl. "She's so beautiful and popular. Everyone loves her."

  Feeling a little self-conscious, I wrote, "To Courtney, all the best! Love, Taylor," on the girl's note pad and handed it back to her. She was thrilled and dashed off to show it to her mother, who watched from a few feet away from behind Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses.

  "That was very lovely of you, Taylor," Jill complimented me, taking me by surprise. I had no idea she had been nearby.

  She put an arm around me to hug me, and kissed me on my temple.

  Kind of, in a weird way, like a mom would have done.

  By noon I had ridden every ride I dared to ride, and had taken refuge by myself in a stall on the ferris wheel, where I vowed to remain until sundown, or at least until I had to go to the bathroom. High, so high above the rest of the theme park, I basked in the peace of being above the roaring rock music blared out by the roller coasters and the computerized sounds of the game booths where the band members were winning stuffed animals for the Catalyst kids. I let my thoughts drift to Jake. This entire day would have been so different if he had been invited to join.

  I wondered where he was, and if he was thinking about me at all. There was still an eminent possibility that he and Karina had left the tour for good and that I'd never see him again. It would have been impossible for me to have asked anyone on the crew what had become of him, and if he was still selling t-shirts. I hadn't been allowed to attend many shows since my grounding, and in an urban environment like Chicago it was not an option to visually comb a parking lot for a gold Saturn. Parking for the hotel was underground, and there were no circumstances under which I could venture down to the parking garage without getting myself into a heap of trouble.

  My thoughts grew darker in the stagnant, hot summer sky, where even the breeze generated by the movement of the ferris wheel wasn't cooling me off. If Jake and his mom had left the tour, there was a great likelihood that he had a girlfriend back at home in Detroit. He was a really good-looking guy, and I knew it was naïve of me to think there weren't girls after him back in his own town. My position was maddening; I couldn't plan for any kind of future with him, and couldn't undo the past events that had led up to my obsession with him.

  When I finally ran into my father and Jill again, they were waiting in line with Dusty and a bunch of doctors from the charity for a ride called X-Force. This particular ride was nothing more than a circular room that spun rapidly and then the floor dropped, but because the riders were spinning, they would stick to the walls of the room rather than fall. Generally any rides scarier than carousels terrify me, and this was no exception.

  "Come on, Taylor," my dad summoned me from the line.

  "No thanks," I said, intent on my mission to park myself on the back of a bobbing plaster horse on the double-decker merry-go-round for the last two hours of our theme
park adventure.

  "Aw, come on, Taylor, it'll be fun," Jill promised me.

  I could hear the screams of terror coming from inside the ride from its current occupants.

  "Yeah, real fun," I retorted sarcastically.

  "Don't be a chicken, Taylor," Dusty heckled me. "Even Kelsey's coming on."

  To my annoyance, he wasn't kidding. Kelsey was in line between my father and Jill, waving at me. I rolled my eyes and joined them.

  Inside the circular room, it smelled terrible and was humid despite its powerful air conditioning. It stank like old gym shoes and mildew. I began to feel dizzy before the door even closed to commence the ride experience, and said a swift prayer that I wouldn't become nauseous as I stepped back and leaned against the wall, following the ride conductor's instructions.

  The lights in the room were lowered and the conductor told us to hang on.

  "That's right, kids, hang on!" Dusty yelled in a voice intended to scare us all.

  The room began spinning, slowly at first, and then it picked up pace. My body flattened against the wall behind me and I barely noticed when the floor dropped. I was completely focused on trying not to vomit. All of the spinning, and the humidity, and the stench, were resulting in a spiraling sensation in my stomach.

  And then, as the floor came back upward to meet our feet, and the ride slowed to a stop, I leaned forward and threw up.

  "Oh, Taylor!" Jill exclaimed. She had a wad of napkins pulled out of her purse for me to wipe my mouth instantly.

  "Ew," Kelsey whined.

  "I told you I didn't like this kind of ride," I yelled in no particular direction.

  Two theme park staffers, both teenage boys not much older than me, appeared as the rest of the riders exited the ride down the ramp that led back outside. Both were kind of cute, and I was mortified.

  "Don't worry, we'll clean it up," they assured Jill, who had dropped to her knees in an effort to clean up my mess with her stash of handi-wipes and napkins. "It happens all the time."

  My dad joked as we stepped off the ride and back out into the unbearable heat outside, "A whole theme park full of terminally ill kids, and my healthy kid is the one who vomits on a ride that's not even scary."

  "Chase," Jill gently warned him.

  "That's not funny, Dad," I told him, meaning it. "It smelled really bad in there. I couldn't help it."

  He threw his arm playfully around my shoulders. "Aw, Taylor. It's fine. It's not a day at the amusement park until someone pops their cookies. Don't be a party pooper."

  "I'm not being a party pooper!" I roared. "I didn't even want to come on this stupid outing and now you're making fun of me!"

  My father's joking demeanor disappeared and he stopped in his tracks and cornered me. "Taylor, this is a very important day in the lives of all the children here today, and I'd appreciate it if you could mind your manners a little bit. I don't know what's gotten under your skin lately but I'll tell you what, little lady, I don't like it."

  I glared at him. If looks could kill, he'd have dropped dead on the spot. "You know perfectly well what's under my skin, Dad."

  "Taylor," Jill said in a perky voice to diffuse the situation, "let's go get you a cold soda to calm your stomach down, OK?"

  We walked with Kelsey briskly to a beverage kiosk, where a woman dressed like a pioneer gave me an orange soda. I chugged it in silence, ignoring Jill, whose hands were on her hips as she waited for me to acknowledge her.

  "Are you going to tell me what's going on with you and your dad?" she asked after I had tossed the paper cup in a nearby trash can.

  I shrugged. "There's nothing going on between me and him. Are you going to tell me what's going on between you and him?"

  "Chase and I always go through rough patches when we're on tours," she said matter-of-factly. "It's nothing to be concerned about."

  The next day, on the road to Des Moines, my father and Tanya were reviewing expenses from the last two weeks. When I looked up from The Scarlett Letter¸from my summer reading list, I saw a stack of receipts in his lap, and next to him, Tanya clicking away at her laptop.

  "What in the hell is this one hundred and thirty-five dollar charge for spa services?" my father muttered, reviewing the receipt from the hotel.

  "I had a manicure," I said nonchalantly, waving my glossy finger nails at him.

  "For a hundred and thirty-five dollars, I hope they dipped your hand in liquid gold," he continued. "What kind of a manicure was it? I don't even see any paint on your nails."

  "A French manicure," I informed him. "To look natural."

  "One hundred and thirty-five dollars for your nails to look natural?"

  "Chase," Jill interrupted. "She's taking an interest in her appearance. Leave her alone."

  So much for my indulgence going unnoticed. My cheeks burned as I stuck my nose back into my book. Allison couldn't have been more wrong if she honestly thought I was living the high life.

  When the bus pulled into the parking lot of the hotel in Des Moines, I nearly had a heart attack. There, parked in the first row of the lot, closest to the front doors, was a gold Saturn with Michigan plates. Karina and Jake were still on tour with us!

  I was completely unable to concentrate the entire day and sat listlessly at the window of my hotel room, my eyes darting between my summer reading and the gold car. Finally, as the afternoon dragged itself into evening and the band was heading off to the arena for sound check, I saw a tall lanky guy with blond hair approach the Saturn. He turned toward the hotel to look upward at the windows, and of course it was Jake. He seemed to be looking at the windows for something, and then it occurred to me that he might be looking for me.

  I knocked on my window lightly and waved. It caught his attention, and he broke into a huge grin and waved back. He began trying to convey something with elaborate sign language, but it was lost on me. He had never looked better. I had never wanted to see him more.

  CHAPTER 12

  We still had three more cities after the show in Des Moines to cross off the list before we would arrive in Detroit. St. Paul, Madison, and a radio station benefit concert in Milwaukee. I wanted to hit a fast forward button on my own life to skip ahead until we arrived in Detroit.

  Our stay in Iowa was brief – just two days; one to set up, one to perform. The drive to Minnesota was flat and green, and throughout Iowa I was astonished at how much an entire state can smell like manure.

  "Ah, it cleanses the lungs, doesn't it?" Wade exclaimed in reference to the lingering smell.

  That evening, when we checked out our hotel in St. Paul, Jill stuck her head in the room I was sharing with Kelsey as I was digging through my suitcase for clean pajamas. Kelsey was playing an elaborate game of pretend on her side of the room with her teddy bear, which she was commanding to act as a rabbit.

  "Taylor? I have kind of a surprise for you," she said.

  Her tone frightened me a little. She sounded like she was afraid to tell me what the surprise was, which was an indication to me that it probably wasn't something I was going to like.

  "OK," I said gingerly.

  Jill sat down on the edge of my bed. "Your grandparents left a message with the front desk. They'd very much like to have dinner with you this evening."

  It took a few moments for this to register for me. My mother's parents? I had written them the postcard back in Huntsville, but after waving goodbye to them at my mother's wake, I never thought I'd see them again.

  "Really? This evening?" I asked. It was already nearly evening. I wasn't going to have time to mentally prepare. These were the people who had raised my mother, and it was fair to presume that they would be studying me, judging the success of their daughter as a mother by my behavior.

  Even though Jill told me I didn't have to go if I didn't want to, I agreed to meet them. They were picking me up at the hotel at seven and I imagined they would take me to some old-fashioned restaurant. I dressed in an outfit that I hoped would be acceptable to them; I didn't ha
ve many dressy options with me, so I wore a white sundress and sandals.

  "Where are you going?" Kelsey asked as she watched me brush my hair in the mirror over our hotel bureau.

  "Out to dinner with my grandparents," I told her.

  "Can I come?" she asked hopefully.

  I told her she couldn't because she would be bored, and experienced the odd sensation of wishing I could spend the evening at the hotel with her and Jill instead of having dinner with strange old people.

  At five to seven, my father called Jill on her cell from the lobby of the hotel to let her know that my grandparents had arrived.

  "Have a good time," Jill encouraged me on my way out the door of the hotel suite. "Remember, they love you."

  I rolled my eyes as I pushed the button to summon the elevator. My mind was racing with possible conversation topics I would want to have handy once I was alone with my grandparents as I stepped onto the elevator.

  And that's why I was utterly taken by surprise to find myself looking directly at Jake.

  "Oh my god!" I exclaimed, so shocked to see him.

  We couldn't have done a better job of planning a moment alone together if we had tried. Jake said nothing, just pressed me against the wall of the elevator and kissed me hungrily. There was no time for questions or niceties, we only had about ten seconds to make out wildly as the elevator descended eight floors. It was thrilling to taste his salty mouth again, to feel his firm biceps beneath my fingertips. I ran my hands through his sun bleached hair, and couldn't believe that it was actually him, there, with me.

  Neither of us had the bright idea to pull the emergency brake on the elevator to prolong our time together.

  Jake pulled away and breathlessly said, "God, I missed you."

  "I missed you, too," I said, pulling my hair back from my face and straightening my skirt just as the elevator doors opened.

  My dad, who was standing all the way on the opposite side of the luxurious lobby, noticed us instantly. Luckily we had taken a few steps away from each other before the elevator doors parted, and to anyone other than my father, we looked like complete strangers. But my dad raised an eyebrow in our direction, causing both of my grandparents to follow his gaze.