Rockoholic

by Skuse, C. J.

  Silence again. Tish sniffs. Teddy sighs. “We always think about going,” Teddy mumbles.

  “I think you should go home, Jody,” says Tish.

  And without one more word, I do.

  I take the long way back to my house, through the churchyard, and sit on one of the benches for a bit, looking at the graves. There’s a slug moving its way down one of them, the nearest one. I wish I was it. Comes to something when your life sucks so bad you want to trade places with a slug. I stare at the pub across the road. I shouted at Mac’s parents. They’re going to hate me now. They’ll never want me at the pub again. If we hadn’t gone to Weston Park, Cree wouldn’t have nearly drowned. If I hadn’t kidnapped Jackson in the first place, we wouldn’t have taken him there like he wanted to. It’s all because of me. I use the phone booth to try and call Mac but his phone just rings and rings. I call again and it goes straight to voice mail. I don’t know how long I’m sitting there, headstone-watching and churning over the day’s events in my head, but it’s getting dark by the time I leave. I go into the house via the backyard, hoping to look in on Jackson before dinner, but the kitchen light’s on and Mum’s in the window, running the tap into a saucepan. She sees me and smiles. I smile back. I look across to the garage and when Mum’s back is turned, I open the door and look inside. Jackson’s gone.

  Oh my God.

  The back door opens. Mum appears. Yet again, she greets me when I’m fresh from a dunking in dirty water, except this time the pondweed and dirt are pretty dried into my clothes.

  And yet again, she doesn’t even ask.

  “All right? How was Weston Park?”

  “Mmm, yeah,” I tell her. And I explain, “Cree fell in the pond. I fished her out.”

  She looks at me as I walk into the utility room and start stripping off my jeans and socks. Where the hell has he gone? Has he left? Is he hiding? Has Mum caught him and forced him to shell broad beans for dinner? Where. The Hell. Is. He?

  “Blimey,” she says. “Is Cree OK?”

  “Yeah, she’s fine. I’m going to take a shower, all right?”

  “All right, dinner’ll be about forty minutes. Beef Wellington.”

  “Lush.”

  So I’m in the bathroom, showering away, but I’m thinking the whole time about my incredible vanishing hostage. I’m thinking about all the places I need to go and look for him. Back down by the river. The train station. I wonder if I could borrow Alfie again without Tish and Teddy noticing. I wonder if they’ll let me after I bawled them out. I wonder what excuses I’ll give Mum when I suddenly have to dash out after dinner. I step out of the bath, wrap a towel around me, and out of nowhere, there’s a chink on the window. And another chink. And another.

  “What the —” I lift up the catch on the window above the sink and shove it open.

  And my moon rock comes flying toward my face.

  “Hey, it’s me,” comes a voice. An American voice. I climb up onto the sink, holding my towel in place to look down into the yard. There’s no one there, but it’s Jackson’s voice. The moon rock appears again, and I realize it’s suspended on a long string. A shoe lace. It’s dangling down. I pull on the string.

  “Jackson?” I whisper.

  “Come on up, the moon is fine,” he says.

  I throw on a clean T-shirt and jeans and slip on my Converse and sprint back downstairs. Halley’s safely watching Hollyoaks in the living room and Mum’s emptying the dishwasher.

  “Where are you off to now?” she asks as I leg it past her, my hair dripping all over the tiles.

  “Just . . . to the pub. I have to give something to Mac. His iPod. I forgot to give it back to him. I won’t be long.”

  “You’ve got twenty minutes.”

  I shut the back door and walk directly to the center of the grass. I look up. Jackson is sitting on the lowest part of the highest roof peak, just above the flat bit where Grandad used to moon-bathe, and dangling his feet just above our bathroom window.

  “What are you doing up there?” I whisper up at him.

  “Just wanted to be up high,” he calls back.

  “Ssh!” I say. “Someone’ll hear you.”

  “No they won’t. There’s no one around. You can see everything from up here, it’s great. Come on up.”

  “How?”

  Jackson guides me up the garden wall, along the top of it, and I have to do a bit of shimmying up the rose trellis and onto the flat part of the roof. I tiptoe over to him and he dangles the moon rock down to me again. I take it. He’s tied it to both of his shoelaces. “How did you get this?” I say, taking it from him.

  “It fell out of your pocket at Weston Park. I picked it up.”

  “Oh. Why are you up here?”

  “Everyone looks down,” he says. “No one can see me up here. Your sister came out to hang out the laundry. And later your mom came out to take it in again cos it started to rain. Neither of them looked up and saw me. It’s nice being up high. I can really breathe up here.”

  “That’s nice, why don’t you come down off there now? It’s dark,” I say.

  “Is Mac still angry with me?” he says, looking far out into the night.

  “I don’t know. I tried calling him but he’s not answering.” Anxiety sits piano-heavy on my chest. I’m worrying about the helicopter I can hear somewhere in the sky that could be sweeping the county looking for him. I’m worrying that the kitchen roof is going to cave in under my weight. I’m worrying that Jackson’s going to fall. I’m worrying about the slates he’s spent God-knows-how-long dislodging and piling up around him like a throne. “Mac didn’t mean it,” I say. “What he said about never wanting to see you again. He’s just scared about what could have happened. He didn’t mean it.”

  Jackson looks at me sideways. “Yeah he did. He’s got every right to hate me.”

  “That’s not true. You’re great with Cree.”

  “No, Cree’s great with me,” he says. “And I could’ve let her die today.”

  “Listen to me!” I tell him. “We were all there. We should all have been looking after her. I’m a trained nursery nurse. Well, I work in a day care. And Mac’s her brother. Cree isn’t your responsibility, she’s ours. The only reason you’re here at all is because of me, so if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. Oh God, look can you come down now and go back in the garage, please? You’re giving me a heart attack being up here.”

  He laughs.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing. I just can’t believe I screwed things up again. I finally meet people I can get along with and then it ends in disaster. Grohman’s right. Everything I do turns to shit. I can’t make good of anyone’s lives, especially my own.” He launches a lump of moss high into the night.

  “That’s not true. You made my life better.”

  His laugh is sour. “Did I? How bad was your life before you met the wonder that is me? What single aspect of my miserable wasted shit of a life made yours better?”

  “Well, you’ve certainly made it more interesting for a while.”

  I bite down on an already throbbing nail that I’ve been chewing since the car ride home from Weston Park. “Maybe I should come away with you, Jackson. Maybe that’s what ‘Don’t Dream It, Be It’ means. Me being out of the way. And Mac doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.” Before I can speak again Jackson pipes up. He’s smiling.

  “I was clowning, Jody. I don’t want you coming with me. Why would you want to? You belong here.”

  “No I don’t. Not anymore. I was so rude to Mac’s parents. They started laying into him and I just went mad. I’ve never seen Mac so upset. He probably hates me, too, after what happened with Cree.”

  “Poor, poor you. Poor tough-luck you.” He jumps down onto the flat roof to stand before me. I wait, holding my breath, waiting for the sound of the back door opening. Waiting for Mum to appear below and ask me what I’m doing up here. He struts to one end of the roof. My blood runs like mountain water in my vei
ns. “These GCDC tests you didn’t pass, were any of them in getting the hint?”

  “I don’t —”

  “Mac’s a guy. I’m sure the only way he can talk you out of coming with me is if he tells you how he feels about you, and he can’t do that. He’d rather face an entire audience, his hometown, wearing stilettos and fishnet stockings, than do that.” He’s smirking at me as if he’s so clever.

  I try and win back a point. “So he’s just going to let me leave, is he? That’s how much he loves me?”

  “What am I, a therapist? But I saw the way he kissed you in the park.”

  “That was just . . .” I stammer, glad he can’t see me blushing in the dark. “That was just because of Cree.”

  He doesn’t say anything more, just shimmies back down the rose trellis and along the wall at the edge of the yard and jumps down onto all fours at the end of the flower bed. I follow him down and we creep back into the garage and close the door. “Where do you think you’ll end up?”

  He shrugs. “Who knows? It’s exciting. Not knowing every single tiny detail of where I’m going, where I’m gonna eat my next meal, how I’m gonna get there. I don’t care.”

  There’s a hideous silence, during which I have a hideous thought. “You’re not going to kill yourself, are you? Is that what you were going to do on the roof? Were you just waiting for me to watch or something?”

  He shakes his head. He reaches across and picks up one of the dog-eared Stephen King books I got him from the thrift shop. Different Seasons. He opens it at the last page of “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.” “You ever read this?”

  “Yeah, of course. Well, I’ve seen the film. I didn’t know it was a book, too.”

  “It’s a novella. OK, you remember Andy, the main character in Shawshank? How he had everything set up in a different-name bank account just waiting for him when he got out of prison so he could disappear into a whole new life?” I remembered the end of the movie where he’s digging his escape hole in his cell wall, behind this huge poster. “Well,” says Jackson. “I kinda been digging a hole behind my poster, too.”

  “Huh?”

  He finds the key string around his neck and holds it out to show me. I’ve seen it a thousand times but it doesn’t mean anything until that moment — the moment he tells me where the lock is.

  “About a year ago, we did a European tour to promote the Strapped for Cash album. Around the same time, I got depressed and I knew I wanted out. We did a couple of gigs in Zurich and I opened up my very own clichéd Swiss bank account.”

  “Why?”

  He points at me. “You’re the only person in the world I’ve told this to. I opened the account in the name of Tom Gordon. That’s what I wanted to be known as if I ever got out of the band. My new identity. I think it’s about time I went and unlocked that box, don’t you?”

  Realization slams into me like a punch. He had it all planned. He had a whole new persona already laid out for him that nobody in the world had a clue about. That was the name he’d wanted on the passport. Thomas Gordon. The name of the man who opened the offshore account. Thomas Gordon. The name of the man in the photos I’d given the BFD. Thomas Gordon.

  I smile. “You bastard.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve had this planned all along, haven’t you? You were never going to kill yourself.”

  “I don’t know about that, I came pretty goddamn close a couple of times there. But call it my rainy-day escape plan. I always dreamed it’s what I’d do. I never got the chance to, until now. Thanks to you. That time before, when they said I was in rehab in New Zealand?”

  “Yeah?”

  He shakes his head. “I’d tried to do a disappearing act then. Had it all planned. Access to money no one knew I had. Got the documents through an ex-roadie Grohman fired years ago. Ran into Pash at the damn airport. So I was whisked safely back into the limelight. Balls-deep in limelight. Grohman did some damage control with the press and all was well, though he certainly kept me on a tight leash after that. Son of a bitch. That night in Cardiff, though I didn’t know it at the time, another door was opened for me. Another way out.”

  “You’ll never be in The Regulators anymore, will you?”

  “As far as everyone but you is concerned, Jackson Gatlin will never walk this Earth again.”

  I reach out and wrinkle up the sleeve of the black Calvin Klein T-shirt — Mac’s Calvin Klein T-shirt — to reveal his burning-rose tattoo. “What about that?”

  He looks down at it and sneers. “That’s the least of my worries.”

  “But won’t you miss any of it? Singing? Performing?” He shakes his head. “I used to pretend you were my boyfriend,” I tell him. “At night, whenever I couldn’t sleep, I’d listen to Regs on my MP3 and close my eyes and imagine you right there with me. Singing just for me.”

  “You won’t do that anymore?” he says.

  “No way,” I say. “Well, I’ll still listen to rock. I don’t know if I’ll listen to The Regulators again. It would be too strange. You’re like some weird brother to me now.”

  He smiles his dimpled smile and pats the feathers next to him. “Come here.” I crawl across the feathers and sit next to him. “You’re making my dream come true. So, I’ll do the same for you. I’ll give you an exclusive, backstage, all-access pass to Jackson Gatlin’s final performance.”

  He lies down on the feathers.

  “What?” I say, not quite sure what he means.

  “Lie down here.”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “I’m not going to do anything, Jody. Come on, humor me.” He pats the feathers next to him. I lie down, staring into his eyes. “I’ll sing for you. What would you like me to sing?”

  “Ooh, this is way cringey!”

  “Come on, pick a song. One of our slow ones? ‘Tortuous’? Everyone always wants ‘Tortuous.’”

  “No,” I tell him, looking dead into his eyes. “Do you know any Fang Morrison songs?”

  “Van Morrison? What one? ‘Crazy Love’? ‘Brown Eyed —’”

  “‘Brown Eyed Girl,’ yeah, that’s it.”

  “OK,” he says and starts to sing. And for the first time ever, I feel his breath on my cheeks. The breath I’ve been imagining for so long. Hot and perfect. And I close my eyes. But he doesn’t stroke my hair as I’ve always imagined. And in my mind it’s not him singing anymore. It’s Mac.

  Friday arrives with gray skies and drizzly windows. Mac’s phone is off all morning. I’m guessing he’s still not talking to me so I leave it, and once Mum and Halley are out of the way, Jackson comes in the house and I finally tell him he’s leaving tonight. I push all thoughts of never seeing him again out of my mind as I help him pack my black rucksack with a few items of spare clothing and a new toothbrush. I gulp down a rush of tears as I’m raiding the cupboards for long-lasting foodstuffs to take with him — beans, crackers, cheese. All morning I daren’t look at his face for too long, because it keeps catching me — that thought. That unbearable thought that after ten thirty tonight, he’ll be gone forever. Before the concert, I’d look at the posters and the magazine articles and the TV interviews and I’d know that I’d see him onstage again some day and I’d know he really existed. But after ten thirty tonight, that’ll be it. He’ll get in that car as Jackson James Gatlin, but when he gets out again, he’ll be plain old Thomas Gordon. Nobody.

  Jackson can’t wait. He keeps talking about all the things he’s going to do. These cliffs in Indonesia he’s going to jump off. This art gallery in Australia he’s going to visit. That blossom tree in Japan he’s going to sit beneath again. The day goes so fast, like galloping horses I just can’t hold back, no matter how hard I dig my heels in the dirt.

  At four o’clock, I walk into town and buy Mac a large good-luck card. I write it in the shop. Then I walk around to the posh flower shop. They’ve got into the Rocky Horror spirit, and I buy Mac the nicest bunch of black roses. I take both around to the P
layhouse. I want to see Mac, even if he doesn’t want to see me. I open the stage door. I’m confronted by a group of people in white makeup, corsets, and garter belts. They’re holding plastic cups and chocolate-chip cookies and are coming up from the room under the staircase, the actors’ canteen. They meander past me like a long multicolored river, all giving me funny looks, like I’m the freak. I stop a short fat bloke, who turns out to be Ann Rackham in a wig.

  “Have you seen Mackenzie Lawless?”

  “Yeah, he’s in his dressing room,” she says, and then rejoins the group of players as they disappear up the stairs to the first and second floors.

  I walk along the corridor that runs parallel to the back of the stage to find Dressing Room One, all on its own at the very end. The door is shut. I can hear music. I lean in closer. It’s that song again — “Brown Eyed Girl.” I knock. After a little while and a lot of clunking around, the music disappears and the door snaps open. Mac stands before me. And for the first time ever, I know what I feel when I’m looking at him. I feel the thunder.

  “Oh,” he says. “I thought you were Geoffrey. Just done my opening song about six bloody times. I’m sick of it.” He returns to what he was doing before my interruption: changing. He flicks off his sneakers. I walk in, still clutching the oversized card and bunch of black roses. He turns back to me and twizzles a finger in the air to make me turn around so he can take off his pants.

  “Why?” I say. “I’ve seen you naked before.” And then I wish I hadn’t said it cos suddenly I remember I was sneaking a look at him when he took a shower at our house once. I know it’s a bit pervy but he was coming out of the bathroom, I was coming out of my room, his towel slipped, he grabbed it, I saw his ass. That was all I saw. Honestly.

  “I’ve never been that drunk in front of you,” he says. “Go on, turn.”

  I turn. “Why have you done your opening song six times? You know it backward.”

  “I did,” he says quietly. “Nerves are kicking in today, just when I least need them.”