Diary of a Rocker's Kid (D.O.R.K. Book 1)

by Haley Despard

  Gio walks in the back door, and I quickly move to something else on Twitter. “’Sup, bae?” he says, beaming at me and coming my way. Seeing that handsome face smile only for me still gives me butterflies.

  “Hey,” I say, kissing him when he reaches me.

  “Listen, I talked to Steph, and he really wants you to come in for measurements today. Do you have any plans?”

  Measurements for my dress. The custom-made dress is finally happening. “No way, let’s go!” I say, immediately jumping off my stool, and Ana follows suit, looking even more excited than I am.

  After Ana and I get dressed, Gio drives us to Stephan’s shop on Rodeo Drive. The store is three stories high, and the front facial is lined with nothing but tinted windows. When we enter the store, there’s an entry area with a white, clean, modern winding staircase directly in front of us that connects to the second and third floors. Gio leads us up the stairs all the way to the top, and then he takes us to the right down a hallway with a lot of rooms. He explains to us on the way that this is where the magic happens: fittings, staff meetings, etc. and so on.

  At the very end of the hall, Gio knocks on the door with the name plate, “Stephan Lowe.” “Come in!” Stephan’s voice answers, and Gio opens the door and lets me enter the room first. “Madison, darling! I’m so glad you could come,” Stephan greets me warmly, standing up from behind his giant oak desk.

  “Hi, Steph,” I say, chuckling and still not fully believing that I’m on a first-name basis with this person, let alone dating his stepson.

  Stephan motions to me to come behind his desk, and the three of us come over to look at the sketches he’s already drawn up. “I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of analyzing some pictures Gio took of your wardrobe for me.” Ah… so that’s what Gio’s been doing in my closet with his phone. Good to know he’s not an undergarments-obsessed perv, like I was beginning to suspect. “From what I’ve seen, you are a rocker girl through and through, am I right?”

  “Damn straight!” I say, grinning widely at him.

  “Well, I’d like you to take a look at this one first,” Stephan says, and he holds up one of the sketches for me. As I look it over, he describes exactly what it would look like: black and purple, one-strapped and backless, with a black lace overlay in the front and a large purple rose up near the left shoulder. The skirt would start mid-thigh length on the left side and then it would cascade down below my feet on the right. He managed to capture my essence to a T.

  “Oh, Steph, that is beyond perfection,” I say, gazing at the design breathlessly. He shows me a few other designs, and I politely look them over, but then I end up choosing the first one anyway.

  Then he takes me into a room and stands me up on a platform while he takes my measurements. “Well, look at that sweet little booty!” he says while he’s taking measurements around my hips. “Girl, I’m a little jealous.”

  I giggle so hard. “Thanks,” I say. If Stephan Lowe says I have a nice ass, it’s got to be true. “It’s from years of mounting horses and hard farm labor.”

  He continues to take my measurements and talks to Ana simultaneously about upcoming fashion trends. Gio has his nose in his phone again, so I take the opportunity to take a good, hard look at myself in the mirror in front of me. I’m wearing my contacts and dark eye makeup, along with an asymmetrical smoky grey shirt and black jeans. My hair has some extra volume from this product Ana’s making me try, and all-in-all, aside from my skin tone, I’m really starting to look like an LA native. For the first time in years, I actually smile at myself in the mirror. I’m hot enough to have a model/actor boyfriend who wants to take me on the red carpet. If that’s not a self-esteem booster, I don’t know what is.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  When we get home, Dad is sitting on the couch in the living room watching a game show. Gio and Ana are still with me, and I turn to them and say, “Hey, can I talk to Dad alone?” They nod, and Ana goes upstairs while Gio goes out the back.

  I sit down next to Dad on the couch, and he smiles at me like nothing is bothering him at all. “Hey, baby girl, what’s up?”

  “Can we talk?” I ask him, and he nods and mutes the TV. “I, um… I just want to tell you that… I really, really want you to do what you want.” I sigh, trying to collect my thoughts. “I mean, you being gone—it’s not going to hurt me or anything. We can video chat every day. And I’ll stay out of trouble, I swear. I know my track record isn’t good, but—”

  “Sweetie,” Dad interrupts, tipping his head a little with a tender expression, “it’s just not that simple. You are what I want, but so is music,” he explains. “One of the reasons I never sang or played back in Kentucky is because I didn’t want to feel what I’m feeling now—this torn, split-in-half feeling. Being a parent and a rock star is hard. One always has to suffer for the other.” He puts his arm around me and hugs into me. “I don’t want to miss your life. You’ve only got a little bit of teenager-hood left, and that’s all the time I’ve got to have you all to myself before the world takes you from me as an adult. That’s why I feel like I don’t want to go back to touring, and there’s really nothing that can be done about it.”

  “What if you brought me on tour with you?” I suggest. “I could be homeschooled and live in your trailer.”

  “Mads… the life of a rock star really isn’t something I want you seeing first-hand. Not yet, anyway. Going back to music would mean that I would go away, and you would either be here with a nanny or in Kentucky with Nana. Period.”

  I sigh long and hard. “So, this is your decision? To not go back because of me?”

  “I haven’t made any decisions yet,” Dad promises, “but it’s kind of looking that way.”

  We sit in silence for a minute, and then I finally work up the courage to ask him another question. Screw missions… I need to know this now. “Dad… who’s my mom?”

  Dad closes his eyes and sighs, and looks off to the side. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

  “Why not?” I ask, the hole in my heart growing with every second that the truth is held from me. I start tearing up. “You said you didn’t want to treat me like a little girl anymore. Whatever the truth is, I can handle it. I need to know.”

  Dad turns towards me and looks me in the eye very solemnly. “You’re sure you’re really ready?”

  “Yes,” I say with a pounding heart. “Please tell me.”

  “Okay, well… Uh…” He sighs shakily. “When I was working on my fourth album, I met Jess Redinger for the first time.” Jess Redinger? Wait… Jacie stands for JC, Jessica Charity, her given name. OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD. “We hit it off as friends, but there was an attraction there, and… well, we only slept together once, but I guess it was enough to make twins,” he says.

  “Twins??” I yell, my shock and emotions getting the better of me.

  “Yes,” Dad says. “Your twin’s name is Raven Redinger. They live here in Los Angeles, which is one of the main reasons I decided to move away back when you were a baby.”

  I’m hyperventilating. “Wha… Wait, you knew this whole time? Even back then?”

  “Yes,” Dad tells me. “Two months after Jess dropped you off at my doorstep, she called me up and told me the truth. She wanted you back, but I said ‘no,’ because by then you were my baby.” He looks at me affectionately. “Jess is a determined woman, though, and she took me to court for custody. She lost, since her career was just starting off and I had better lawyers. I let her see you occasionally at first, but then one day, she tried steal you away.” My jaw drops. Jacie tried to kidnap me?? “I mercifully didn’t file any charges against her, but I did stop the visitation and I took a restraining order out. I decided at that point to move back to Kentucky, too, just in case she was crazy enough to try it again and succeeded.” Dad sighs, like this next part is going to be super painful to say. “I didn’t know at the time about Raven—I didn’t find out about her until after we had
already moved away. By then, Jess had taken out a similar restraining order against me out of revenge, and gotten better lawyers. That was right after her first popular movie came out.”

  “Hold on hold on hold on,” I say, trying to get a grip on my breath. It feels like there’s a tube being squeezed around my chest. “Jacie Redinger is my mother, and Raven is my twin?”

  “Yes,” he confirms.

  “And the real reason we left is because she tried to kidnap me?”

  “Pretty much,” Dad says.

  Still breathing hard, I lean back on the couch and cover my face with my hands. “I don’t know what to think…” Never in my wildest dreams did I think that my crazy theory was actually correct. “So the woman in the ski mask was Jacie.” Tears build in my eyes as the truth finally smacks me in the face. “My idol gave me up.”

  “That is why I’ve been so hesitant to tell you,” Dad says in a husky voice.

  “Oh, my God… Jacie Redinger gave me up…” I drop my hands and turn to Dad. “Why? Did she ever say why?”

  “She, uh…” Dad looks away and clears his throat. “She only wanted one child.”

  A moment of stunned silence. “That’s it?” Now I’m sobbing. “She kept Raven and gave me away because she only wanted one child?”

  “Come here,” Dad says, and he pulls me into his embrace. “I’m so sorry, angel. I’m so, so sorry.” He’s starting to cry, too. I cling to him and sob my heart out. “She regretted it, you know,” he reminds me.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say miserably. “She still gave me up. I’m the child that Jacie Redinger gave up.”

  “Honey, it was her loss,” Dad says, kissing the side of my head. “She gave away something infinitely precious, and I know she has longed to see your face every day since then.”

  Ana hears my sobs and comes to the top of the stairwell. “Hey, is she okay?” she asks Dad.

  He sighs heavily. “Time will tell.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  I’m curled up in a ball on my bed, and Ana has her arms around me. She’s been crying almost more than I have, all day, and hasn’t left my side.

  “Ana, I don’t know what to do,” I tell her. We skipped dinner, and now it’s 8 PM. “I really feel like never eating again.”

  “Don’t say that,” she says in a hoarse voice. “You’re gonna get through this.”

  “I don’t know how,” I say quietly. “I’m the only person in the world who can say ‘Jacie Redinger gave me up.’”

  “Well, maybe you need to talk to her,” Ana suggests. “Maybe if you got closure it would help you to move on.”

  “There’s a restraining order, Ana—“

  “Yeah, but it was probably temporary,” she says. “The only reason I know that is because Dad had to counsel someone at church that went through something similar.”

  “Honestly, both Jacie and Raven sound so crazy that I’m a little scared to come within fifty feet of them,” I say, and we laugh a little. “However, they are family… Ugh, I dunno.”

  “Well, we could at least creep on their social media accounts,” Ana says, grinning.

  I sit up. “Now, there’s an idea.”

  Ana and I find Jacie’s account on Twitter, and we go through a bunch of posts that she took with Instagram. There are a couple with Raven in them, but most are just of Jacie traveling to this or that place and living it up. Then I visit Raven’s profile, and I’m shocked to find out that she was a child actress, too.

  “Why did I not notice this?!” I exclaim, glued to Raven’s profile.

  “Most people don’t imagine that they have an identical actress twin when they live on a farm in Kentucky,” Ana reminds me.

  Raven’s show ended in 2012, and she also has over two million followers. I go to her photos and gaze in awe at this person who looks like a mirror image of me… but she’s not me, and she’s not in a mirror. I scroll down through pictures of her at parties she likely threw for herself, for quite a while, and then I see something from last school year at Wilcox that puts a rock in my stomach. “Uh, Ana? Who’s this?”

  I hold up a picture of Raven kissing a very familiar Italian boy.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  “Madison, I didn’t know she was your sister!” Gio says, looking wide-eyed and horrified. “I swear, I didn’t know!”

  “But you knew I was identical to someone you dated all of last school year!” I scream, livid. We’re standing in his room, which is where I marched the instant I realized I was being used. “How could you do this? I thought you were a good person!”

  “Mads, you looking like her has nothing to do with my feelings for you—” Gio starts to say, but I interrupt him.

  “How could it not?? You just broke up with her in April!”

  “Because aside from the looks and the scheming minds, you and your sister could not possibly be any more different,” Gio tells me. “You’re the good one. The fun one. I don’t even think about her when I’m with you.”

  “That is bullshit!” I yell, and Gio starts yelling back with a defensive scowl.

  “You don’t know the first thing about me, Madison Daley, so stop telling me when I am and am not being sincere!!”

  That comment nearly knocks me off my feet. “You’re… you’re right,” I say shakily. “We don’t know each other at all. This whole thing… it was a mistake. We’re done.”

  Shock registers on his face, and then pain. “Fine,” he says. “Please leave.”

  “Gladly,” I say, hurrying out of the room and slamming the door behind me. I try to go down the hall and leave, but the shock of everything, plus the fact that I haven’t eaten anything in ten hours, hits me like a ton of bricks, and I stop at the top of the stairs and vise-grip the railing because I feel like I might fall over.

  Stephan passes by me going down the stairs, and then he turns around, and he’s instantly concerned when he sees my face and how I’m standing. “Madison, are you alright?”

  The black spots are coming back. “I’m gonna pass out,” I say breathlessly.

  “Oh, my God!” Stephan comes up and grabs me, and then he helps me down the stairs and takes me to the sofa in their sitting room. He lays me down, and then gets me some water. While he’s sitting beside me and nursing me back to health, I tell him about everything, including the yelling match with Gio. “Oh, sweetie,” he says, brushing some hair back from my face, “Gio isn’t like that. I’m sure he wasn’t pretending you were her.”

  “It feels like that, though,” I say, with a catch in my voice.

  Stephan chuckles a little. “Honey, I don’t think you fully understand the extent of his hatred for Raven Redinger. That little bitch destroyed him. There’s no way he’s ever going to want to be with her again.”

  “Then… I mean, how can he even stand to look at me?” I ask.

  “I think the glasses helped at first,” Stephan says, smiling, “and then after that, we all just fell in love with you for who you are. You are a beautiful human being, Madison Daley. You bring sunlight and happiness to everyone around you.”

  I snicker a little bit. “Me? Sunlight and happiness? You’ve seen my wardrobe, Steph.”

  Stephan shakes his head. “This has nothing to do with fashion choices, dear.”

  Gio comes down the stairs, looking just as upset and disheveled as I felt when I left, and he’s confused to see me laying on the couch. “You’re still here?”

  “She nearly fainted,” Stephan explains. “This poor girl has been through the wringer today.”

  Gio’s face is solemn as he looks at me, and then back up at Stephan. “Hey, Steph, can I talk to her alone?” Stephan nods and leaves us, and I sit up slowly so Gio can sit next to me. Gio sighs as he lowers himself to the couch, looking at the floor. “Look, I’m sorry for yelling up there. It just sucked to be accused of something like that.”

  “I know… I’m sorry, too,” I say. “It’s just, like you said… I haven’t known you f
or very long. It's hard to know what you're really like sometimes.”

  “Well then, let me tell you exactly who I am,” Gio says, looking me square in the eye. “I do not use women. When I was with Raven, she…” He sighs, and starts looking around again. “She used me as a device to skyrocket her own fame. We broke up and made up a couple of times, and then she started cheating on me just to get magazine spreads. Finally, in April of this year, I listened to reason from my friends and family and broke things off with her for good.”

  “Wow,” I say, looking at him with sympathy.

  “It felt like there was nothing inside me for about a month… I went through the motions at school and started hooking up with girls just to feel better about myself. Then I saw you, and I was terrified that Raven had found another disguise to try and trick me. She does crazy shit like that. Then after a closer look, and looking you up on the internet to see if you were legit who you said you were, I relaxed… and then you chewed me out for being on my phone.”

  I laugh. “So that’s what you were doing on the phone that first day? You were running a background check?”

  “Basically, yeah,” he says, looking up at me and half-smiling. “I liked the way you called me out on it, though… You were direct and confident without being mean. I got a good idea of who you were just in that one conversation.”

  “Well, my first impression of you wasn’t quite as good,” I admit.

  “You got the front I was putting on, and I’m sorry about that,” he says. “Like I said, it was just self-protection. I just wanted to be sure. Then, when I totally failed at flirting with you in the pool—“ I giggle a little bit, “—I was reverting to my previous ways, and you pulled me back. You’ve been so good for me, bae… It killed me upstairs when you told me you didn’t want to see me anymore.”

  A yucky post-breakup feeling settles in my stomach. “It killed me, too. It’s just… I’m really going through hell right now. I don’t know how to deal with all of this. I guess I took some of that out on you, and I’m sorry.”