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

by Duffy, Caitlyn

  "But," I began, not even sure what I was going to say. I turned to wave goodbye to Jake, but he was walking away, and didn't look back at me. "I'm not a prisoner. I can go wherever I want."

  "Not anymore you can't," Moose told me. "There are a lot of crazy people in this world, and you aren't safe just walking around in the open in a place like this."

  I argued and complained until Moose got me back stage, where Jill was waiting, completely pissed off, with her arms folded over her chest.

  "Where on earth were you?" she roared.

  I was mortified. I had never been yelled at like that before in my life. "I was just… walking around."

  "Well you can't just walk around!" Jill screamed. "You see all these people? These people work here. They work for your father. It is not their job to go looking for you because you feel like exploring. Who do you think you are?"

  The band was still playing, so it was already ear-splittingly loud, but Jill was yelling louder than the music. All of the roadies were looking away, not wanting to get involved. Keith was watching nearby with a serious expression on his face.

  "I just, I didn't think it was such a big deal if I just looked around," I said feebly.

  "It is a big deal! If you can't follow rules then you can stay at the hotel!"

  End of lecture.

  Previously, I had been unaware that there were rules. In fact, if there were specific rules, I had yet to hear them listed out for me.

  "God," I muttered under my breath as Jill stormed off.

  Keith approached me. "Touring is hard on her," he offered up as an excuse.

  I stood still for the last forty minutes of the concert trying to calm myself down. After my heart resumed a normal pace, I remembered that Jake had grabbed my hand. And then my heart fluttered - I know it sounds over the top, but it actually did. I couldn't stop thinking about how and when I would see him again. I wondered if he and his mom were staying at the same hotel as we were in Atlanta.

  Back at the hotel, I could hear Jill and my father discussing something – which I presumed to be the trouble I had caused at the concert – in muffled voices in their bedroom. I told Keith and Tanya, who were reviewing travel plans in our suite's office area, that I was going for a walk and went looking for Jake. Don't ask me what kind of a plan I had to find him other than roaming the halls, which is what I did. I sauntered past the hotel gym, past the rows of soda machines in the snack lobby, past the miniature arcade. I drifted past the hotel bar, and noticed the members of Sigma doing shots.

  "Hey, Chase's girl!" Brice called out to me.

  I halted in my tracks and realized Brice was talking to me.

  "You wanna come have a shot with us?"

  He was motioning for me to join them. Unbelievable. The lead singer of Sigma was asking me to have a shot with the band. My feet were moving in their direction before my brain had a chance to tell them "no."

  Since I grew up with my mom, alcohol and getting drunk has never held much allure for me. My mom let me taste wine and beer at home and even sometimes let me try cocktails at parties, but I never especially enjoyed the taste. Mostly, I think, because I saw how sick she became when she drank too much, and was always so annoyed when an entire day was ruined because she wanted to sleep off a buzz.

  "A round of lemon drops," Brice told the bartender.

  "She looks a little young," the hotel bartender said.

  The hotel bar was pretty empty aside from Sigma, who all looked like they had already had a few drinks each.

  "C'mon, man, she's with us," Brice pleaded.

  The bartender begrudgingly began mixing drinks. I thought I had read somewhere that the guys in Sigma were all nineteen. Not old enough to be drinking. But it was becoming apparent to me that no rules, or laws, applied when it came to rock stardom.

  "What's your name again?" the Sigma drummer, who wore eyeliner, asked me.

  "Taylor," I replied.

  "Taylor," he repeated. "Are you having fun on the tour so far?"

  "I'd have more fun if I actually got to explore the cities we're visiting," I said honestly.

  "Yeah," Brice agreed. "It's impossible when you're touring, though. After a show all you want to do is kick back. You don't have energy to go to museums."

  The drinks were served and I lifted mine gingerly. Brice counted down from three and we all downed our shot.

  "That was good, right, Taylor?" Brice asked.

  Actually, it was good. It was delicious. It tasted like candy.

  "Another round," Brice told the bartender.

  "I can't," I said shyly. "I don't want to get in trouble with my dad."

  "Yeah, dude," the bassist told Brice. "I don't need Chase pissed at us for getting his kid wasted."

  "Or his bitch wife," the drummer added with a smirk.

  This made me laugh. At least Jill was earning a reputation for herself.

  "All right, you get on up to your room safely, Taylor," Brice told me in a very flirtatious voice.

  And then he winked at me. Allison was seriously going to die when I told her this story.

  I turned to leave and heard the drummer say, "Brice, dude, come on."

  "What? She's cute," Brice objected.

  My ego soared about as high as an ego can soar. No one at Treadwell would ever believe that a major rock star had referred to me as cute.

  As I hurried down the long hallway to the elevator lobby, I heard a voice behind me say, "You shouldn't hang out with those guys."

  I almost had a heart attack, fearing that one of my dad's roadies or bodyguards had seen me. But when I turned to see who it was, it was Jake.

  "Oh," I said. "I wasn't hanging out, really."

  "You were," he teased with a smile. "I saw you drink a shot with them."

  I put my hands on my hips, all too aware that he and I were alone in the lobby and he was standing pretty close to me.

  "Are you going to tell my dad?" I asked, knowing that he never would.

  "I'm not going to tell your dad," Jake assured me. His voice was kind of husky and rough, and it was even huskier when he was nearly whispering, as he was then. "Just stay away from those guys. They're tools. They brought some really young girls back to the hotel in Florida."

  I had pushed the button for the elevator before I had noticed Jake following me, and now I heard the ding! of an elevator arriving and ignored it. I could see his chest rising and falling as he breathed. I felt kind of dizzy and I'm pretty sure it wasn't from the lemon drop.

  "OK," I agreed.

  My eyes locked on Jake's mouth, and with every cell in my body I prayed that he would kiss me, and he leaned forward and did exactly that, only on my cheek.

  "Get some sleep," he told me and put me on the elevator.

  I rode up to the sixth floor of the hotel feeling like I might pass out. I had never been in love before, and I'm not sure if it's possible to fall in love with a boy in just three brief encounters, but I was pretty sure in that elevator that I had fallen in love completely.

  CHAPTER 6

  The next morning, my dad asked me to go for a drive with him alone.

  "Am I in some kind of trouble?" I asked when we got into the rental car and he started its engine. It was already hot and steamy at eight in the morning.

  "No, not trouble," my dad assured me. "Jill just told me that you went off on your own during the show last night. I wanted to remind you that you're only fifteen. If someone were to walk off with you, I'm not sure what we'd do, Taylor."

  "Dad, I'm not a piece of luggage. No one is going to walk off with me," I complained. "Besides, you told me that if I came with this summer I'd get to see all this great stuff. So far I haven't seen anything except a couple stores in downtown Atlanta, I have to spend every day with Jill while you're off rehearsing and doing sound checks and I don't think she likes me."

  We drove along a broad highway with an enormous expanse of blue sky above us and skyscrapers in the distance.

  "What do you mean
, doesn't like you? She told me this morning that you guys had a great time yesterday," Dad corrected me. "Look, she's taking this whole thing with you joining our family very seriously. She wants you to be friends but she also knows she's going to have to do a lot of the parenting this summer while I'm on stage. I get that you didn't have a lot of disciplining with your mom. It's cool, all right? If Jill's coming on too strong then we should sit down and talk it out."

  My dad could make anything sound so easy. It was part of his appeal and no doubt part of why the band had been successful.

  We drove into downtown Atlanta and went to a small diner. As we walked in, conversations stopped mid-sentence and heads turned. The buxom middle-aged waitress who greeted us was smiling from ear to ear.

  "Welcome to Buster's Diner," she cooed, motioning for us to follow her to an empty table. "Why this is so exciting! Chase Atwood at our very own little diner! Can I get you coffee to get started, Mr. Atwood?"

  My father loved the attention, I noticed. He really was a bit of a fame whore.

  "Why certainly, Doris," he told the waitress, reading her nametag. "And an orange juice for the little lady, here, too."

  Did I mention that he was also an incorrigible flirt?

  "I'll have coffee," I corrected him.

  "Go easy on Jill," Dad told me. "I know sometimes… she can be tough. But she keeps me in line. She really takes care of me. I know it's her intention to do the same for you."

  After we finished our breakfast, Dad pulled two tickets out of his wallet for the show that night and handed them to Doris along with cash to pay our check. "Two tickets for tonight's sold out show," he told her. "I'd love for you to join us if you don't have plans."

  The waitress was floored. I mean, fanning herself and hyperventilating. The works. And I could tell that it meant a lot to my dad that he had made a working-class waitress so happy. So much so that I wondered a little if our private breakfast in town had been more of a small publicity stunt that he had orchestrated than purely a one-on-one daddy/daughter breakfast.

  On our way back to the car, a gold Saturn was pulling into the parking lot. It was Jake and his mom, I was sure of it, and my heart skipped a beat. I waved at Jake, who was in the passenger seat. My father grunted something and looked at the ground, picking up his pace so as to get me into our rental car before Jake and his mom were able to park.

  "Good morning, Chase!" Jake's mom bellowed across the small parking lot.

  "Hey, Karina!" My father exclaimed as if he hadn't just tried to avoid her entirely. His keys were in the driver's side door of the rental, but he hadn't been able to get the door open fast enough to save himself from the social exchange. "Fancy meeting you here."

  "And hello again, Miss Taylor," Jake's mom said to me. She was walking toward us in a leopard-print sundress and towering espadrilles. Jake was shuffling behind her, looking at the ground. "Are you enjoying the tour so far?"

  "Sure," I said.

  "Be sure to try the Belgian waffle in there, it's not to be missed," my father advised Jake's mom, dismissing her. With that, he hopped into the rental car and started the engine.

  I caught Jake's eye and we both grimaced at each other. Something had just happened here; obviously my dad knew Jake's mom and wasn't at all pleased to see her. Jake's expression gave me no insight into what I had just witnessed. I climbed into the car and Dad backed out of the parking space.

  "I'd appreciate it if you would stay away from that woman," my father told me calmly.

  "Why? She seems nice enough," I said.

  "Groupies are just trouble," Dad warned me. "They ask for help and you offer it and then it amounts to heaps of regret."

  I was no match for his cryptic statements and he was in no mood to be pressed further for information. I had a sickening thought that upset my stomach and stayed with me for hours: if Dad and Jake's mom had any kind of sordid history together, was there a possibility that Jake was my half-brother?

  CHAPTER 7

  Three days later we were in Alabama. I hadn't seen high or low of Jake in all that time, and I was beginning to become obsessed with the idea that perhaps he and his mom might drop off the tour at some point. I would have no idea how to get in touch with him if that were to happen. I didn't even know his last name. And I was dying to ask him what was up between his mom and my dad.

  It was plainly obvious to me that nothing was not the right answer.

  It occurred to me that since we had boarded the bus nearly two weeks earlier, I had not opened my violin case even once. It was late afternoon, and I went out to the tour bus in the parking lot to fetch it. Alabama was hot. Perhaps the only thing I had learned about traveling across the United States so far on our trip was that other cities get much more humid than Los Angeles.

  Moose was on duty watching the bus.

  "You actually play that thing?" he remarked upon seeing my case.

  "Yup," I said. As I was crossing the parking lot on the way back into the hotel, I saw a gold Saturn parked in the second row and my heart stopped. It had Michigan plates. That meant that Jake and his mom were nearby, probably staying at the same hotel as us. I walked a little closer and noticed that the entire back seat of their small car was crammed with luggage, blankets, dirty clothes, and boxes of crackers.

  I'm no detective, but if I had to guess, I would say that Jake and his mom were living out of the back seat of that Saturn. The mystery just continued in its complication. Why would anyone live out of a car just to follow a band around all summer?

  I had made my way almost flawlessly through La primavera (spring), the first of the four movements, and was stumbling through L'estate (summer) when suddenly the door to my room burst open.

  Jill, red-faced, was fuming. "Kelsey is very sick. Could you please practice somewhere else?"

  She slammed the door to my room so hard that the cheesy hotel paintings of beachscapes on the walls shook. I sat down on the bed and put my violin back in its case.

  Thanks a lot, Mom, I thought to myself. See what you've left me with?

  Practice somewhere else, like where? I couldn't exactly go practice the violin in the parking lot or in the locker room of the indoor pool. It was suddenly striking me as ridiculous that I had ever convinced myself that I would be able to finish my summer reading list or master this composition while on the road. How had I ever thought I would accomplish anything during eight weeks of shuffling from hotel to hotel? I thought briefly about sending Mr. Ferris an email from the hotel business center to let him know there was no way I was going to be ready in September and that he should have the girl in second seat start practicing.

  Right then I formulated a plan so sneaky that I had to dare myself to go through with it. I was going to take the bus into the city and see downtown Huntsville by myself. If I couldn't have the summer I had been promised then at least I would make the most of it.

  No one noticed when I left the hotel suite; Kelsey was legitimately sick and Jill was talking with the doctor who had been brought in to examine her. Herschel, the yogi, was cross-legged with his eyes closed as I passed through the living room and did not even stir when I opened the door. I passed Brice in the hotel lobby, where he was flirting with the chesty blond concierge.

  "Where are you headed, Taylor?" he asked.

  "Going into town," I informed him casually.

  My afternoon in Huntsville was perhaps the most relaxing couple of hours I had spent since losing my mom. I bought a street map of the city at a dime store and found the Huntsville Museum of Art. I ate a beignet on a park bench, thinking of Allison, as sharing beignets at the Farmer's Market was one of our traditions. I bought a Talladega Speedway postcard, which I initially planned to send to Allison, but then began writing to my grandparents in Minnesota.

  I'm having a great time on the road with my dad, I wrote, even though it was somewhat of a lie. I signed the card Miss You, Taylor.

  Even though I barely knew them enough to miss them, I bought a stamp and
mailed the card anyway.

  Throughout the entire afternoon I kept waiting for my cell phone to ring, for it to be Jill demanding that I get back to the hotel immediately, but it never did. I began to worry a little bit that I was in serious, serious trouble when I was waiting for the bus back to the neighborhood where our hotel was located. As in, being-sent-back-to-Los Angeles-city-services trouble. The bus chugged along at a pace slower than molasses, and I was miserable for the entire duration of the ride. I didn't get back to the hotel until after seven, which meant Pound's show had already started, and presumably everyone would already be at the venue.

  I flew into a deep panic as soon as I got off the elevator on our floor of the hotel. The door to our suite was propped open and Tanya was in the hallway on her cell phone. I could see a large number of people in our suite, hear the buzz of concerned chatter, and really freaked out when I saw a paramedic barking into a walkie-talkie.

  Tanya, without pausing her phone conversation, urged me to hurry into the room.

  And then it dawned on me that my disappearance for the afternoon was not the cause of the commotion. Paramedics were carrying Kelsey on a stretcher out of the master bedroom and she was hooked up to an oxygen tank. Jill was frantic and still wearing the velour running pants she usually only wore on the tour bus.

  I sank into a chair, feeling like I was having a strange lucid dream. This was eerily similar to the night my mom died, and not even three weeks had passed. I felt both icy and sweaty at the same time. What would happen if Kelsey died? The mere thought made my eyes water and made me feel like sobbing even more than the painful reminder that my mom actually had died.

  I felt hands on my shoulders and turned to see Tanya. "Your sister's come down with pneumonia. Jill's taking her to the hospital. I've tried to reach your father but he's already back stage."

  Jill reached out for my arm as she followed the paramedics out of our suite and into the hall. "Taylor – go to the Von Braun Center. Find your father, tell him to meet us at the Women and Children's Hospital."