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

by Duffy, Caitlyn

  Out on the high way, Jake cursed at his dashboard.

  "I'm really sorry but I have to get gas," he said. He pulled off at the next exit and into the first gas station.

  I hopped out of the car with my purse hoping to find something decent to eat in the mini-mart. I hadn't really eaten a dinner and it was nearly morning. An energy bar and water were going to have to hold me over until I got back to the hotel.

  Jake was standing at the magazine rack, flipping through a cheap gossip rag. I held up two bottles of water and asked, "Ready?"

  But Jake only slightly nodded, completely engrossed in whatever he was reading. And then, with a little bit of horror, I caught a glimpse of the front cover of the magazine in his hand. It was a picture of me and Bijoux Norfleet on that terrible day in Virginia Beach, below a large glaring title that read, "DADDIES' GIRLS GONE WILD."

  "Oh my god," I muttered. I picked up another copy off the rack and flipped through the story, which unbelievably enough was on the third page, which meant it was somehow considered big news. And there I was, a solo shot of me holding a plastic bottle right beneath a huge picture of Bijou spread out across the entire width of the page. The picture of Bijoux featured her topless on the boat, stretched out and smiling, with red rectangles carefully positioned by Expose Magazine's graphic designer over her boobs. In my picture, someone had erased my bikini strings to make it appear as if beneath the photo's crop mark I was likely topless, too.

  "Jake, this is nothing," I muttered, continuing to read the small paragraph of copy that accompanied the photos.

  Virginia Beach was taken by storm when the daughters of Pound front man Chase Atwood and guitarist Wade Norfleet *pounded* its shores. Bijoux Norfleet, 18, and fashion world darling Taylor Atwood, mixed it up with young male locals and took a power boat out for a spin on the July 4th weekend.

  My heart was thumping erratically in my chest and I could feel my scalp starting to break out in a cold sweat as I read on.

  "They were really wild girls," our source tells us. "They were looking to party hard and couldn't keep their clothes on."

  "Jake, this isn't real," I said in a shaky voice, and looked up to confirm what I feared – that he was looking at me with disgust.

  "Oh, so it's not you in these pictures?" Jake asked sarcastically.

  "Yeah, it's me," I began, "but I just went on a boat with those guys. I didn't take my bathing suit off. Nothing happened. My dad knew I had been drinking and grounded me."

  Jake remained silent, closed the magazine and put it back on the rack. "I really thought you were different, Taylor."

  "Different than what?" I asked. "Different than Bijoux Norfleet? I am different."

  "No, different than other girls," he said, sounding really upset. His voice was low. I had never seen a guy cry before but I wondered if I was about to. "You tell me you're not ready for me, you're afraid of something – you don't even know what – if we have sex, and then this? You're running all over the country with guys? This is bullshit."

  "Jake," I called, following him out of the store.

  "Miss!" The clerk called after me. I was still carrying the two bottles of water and had to backtrack to set them back inside the store on the counter.

  "Jake!"

  He was already in the car behind the driver's seat and for a split second I was worried that he would drive off and leave me in the middle of this part of Detroit alone. But he didn't; the engine was idling and the passenger side door was unlocked.

  I climbed in the car and sat in the passenger seat. I had a sinking feeling that the more I talked, the deeper the hole I would fall into.

  "Jake, you have to believe me that nothing happened that day in Virginia Beach. And that if I'm not sure if I'm ready to be with you, then I'm not ready to be with anyone, because the way I feel about you…" I trailed off. I was a relationship dummy but even I knew that nothing would scare off a sixteen-year-old boy faster than I-love-you. And those words were on the tip of my tongue.

  "How do you feel?" he asked softly.

  "You already know," I said.

  "I need to hear it."

  I took a deep breath. "I think I love you," I confessed. "It's just been a confusing summer for me. Maybe under different circumstances…"

  I could see that he was still miffed that I wouldn't sleep with him, and there was nothing I could tell him that was going to make him feel differently.

  When we pulled into the hotel parking lot, he slowed to a stop without getting anywhere near the front doors and let the car idle. I lingered in the car for a moment, really not wanting our time together to end this way.

  "Goodbye, Taylor," he said, forcing a smile.

  "Bye, Jake."

  "Take care of yourself," he added.

  And that was it. No promise to see each other again, no hint that perhaps we'd meet again someday.

  Jake and the gold Saturn pulled out of the parking lot and I lingered and watched until it was just a speck on the horizon. I felt strongly that this wasn't how he wanted our friendship to end, either. I felt my lower lip trembling and could only hope that he felt a little bit of regret about the way our special night together had turned out.

  Then my stomach sank, because not only was he gone from my life, but I was going to have to go upstairs and face my father and Jill.

  CHAPTER 15

  In perhaps the luckiest turn of events in my life, my disappearance for the night had been mostly overlooked because of other drama that ensued after I had left the amphitheater in Detroit. My father had taken the stage with Pound, and if I hadn't left during the first song with Jake, I would have been present to see my father forget the words to My Angel. And then announce mid-song that he hated that track and demand that the band stop immediately and start playing December instead, infuriating both the band and the lighting crew because that song was a B-side that wasn't on the set list and had no stage directions defined.

  After stumbling through December, my father literally tripped on the edge of the stage and fell into the first row. In the press release that Tanya sent to a variety of magazines, she claimed this clumsiness and unprofessional behavior was a result of prescription drugs my dad had been taking for migraines. But I knew the truth. My dad had taken the stage that night totally drunk.

  So when I got back to the hotel room that morning from my night with Jake, expecting that Dad and Jill would pulverize me on the spot, Jill was waiting up calmly for me on the couch. The lights were off in the hotel suite and she sat quietly with the television volume on low. The morning sun had risen and there was no one else in our suite – no management, no band members, no yoga instructors.

  "Do you want to talk?" she asked as I entered and quietly closed the door behind me.

  "Not really," I said, sitting down on the couch next to her instead of skulking off to my room. She looked exhausted and worn out, still wearing jeans and her blouse from the night before, her eye-makeup smeared.

  "Your father is checking himself into a rehab facility," she informed me. "Last night was a major wake-up call for him. He's been drinking too much and lying to me, and it was only a matter of time before something like this happened."

  "Where is he?" I asked cautiously, hoping that he wasn't in the suite's master bedroom, sleeping off a hangover.

  "He's at the hospital, and when he's discharged later today, he's getting on a flight to Phoenix," Jill said. "I gave him an ultimatum. Either rehab or a separation. I can't keep going through this every time the band releases an album and goes on tour. The rest of the tour is cancelled."

  I sat quietly for a moment, taking this all in. "Is this all because of the fight we had at dinner?"

  "No, no, honey," she said. "He was very intoxicated at dinner last night and made the mistake of thinking he could pull off a show in that state. He made an ass of himself, fell off the stage, broke his collar bone, and the entire band is mad at him. He is terribly embarrassed right now, as he should be."

  "Wh
y do you put up with him?" I blurted without thinking. But really, I wondered. Jill was beautiful. She could divorce my dad and surely walk away with a handsome sum of money. Why would she put up with the humiliation of him always flirting with other women, and prioritizing stardom over family?

  "When you love someone, Taylor," Jill began slowly, "you love them for their faults as well as their attractive traits. It's the whole package. Love is about sticking around when there are more bad parts than good parts."

  I didn't know what to say. With my dad away in rehab, where was I going to go? Had he even been informed that I had disappeared last night?

  "We're going back to New Jersey," Jill assured me, answering the biggest question on my mind. "We're going to take it easy for a few weeks until you go back to school. You deserve that, Taylor. You could use a little stability after this crazy summer."

  "OK," I said. Going back to New Jersey and doing nothing for three weeks sounded like a relief to me.

  Jill studied me up and down, and I instantly knew that she could tell I had been out with Jake all night. "Are you sure you don't want to talk?"

  I sighed. "I just… I thought this boy really liked me, and I really liked him, but then he took me to this club last night, and I got the feeling that he was kind of lying to me about other girls in his life, and suddenly it just didn't feel right."

  Now the tears that had been building up all night long began to fall. My whole summer romance with Jake had been in vain and now I had nothing to show for it except a bag of seashells on the tour bus. I cried that I had let him get my hopes up about us running off like rebels to Tokyo, that he had made me feel uncool and unworthy of his attention at the club, that I had seen him kiss that girl at the club, and that if all of that hadn't happened, I probably would have been more than willing to lose my virginity to him.

  "Oh, Taylor," Jill tried to comfort me.

  "I just really wanted him to like me, you know? But all he wanted was for me to sleep with him. And when I told him no he just tried to make me feel guilty, like he had waited all summer for me, and I don't even really think he did," I sobbed.

  "Good for you for sticking up for yourself," Jill told me. "I know you aren't going to believe me when I tell you this, but there will be other boys, Taylor. Lots of other boys. And when the time is right, you'll know."

  "That's what my mom said," I told her, sniffling and trying to brush the tears off my face. "But she never said how I would know."

  "When you're not afraid, that's how you'll know," Jill said matter-of-factly. "When you're with a boy who you know will like you whether you do or whether you don't, and that he is just as afraid of how it might change your relationship as you are."

  Put in those terms, I was glad I hadn't slept with Jake.

  "Go get some sleep," she commanded me. "We're getting on a flight to Newark this afternoon come hell or high water. I miss my house and I'm tired of all these miserable old sluts I have to look at in every hotel."

  I laughed. Jill wasn't as oblivious to the women flaunting themselves for my father as I had previously thought. I got up to head to the second bedroom.

  "Jill? How come you didn't call the police or anything when I didn't come back to the hotel last night?" I asked on a whim.

  "I knew you'd come home," Jill said. "Your mother raised a smart girl."

  I smiled.

  There were hasty but heartfelt goodbyes that afternoon as we boarded a private jet. Tanya told me in a low voice that she'd be in touch; she wanted me to attend Fashion Week with her and she claimed to have some ideas about reality television appearances for me. I feigned interest but immediately ruled out any possibility of following up on that connection; nothing would be harder to live down at Treadwell than appearing in a weekly television show that would be scorned in the TV lounge.

  "Goodbye, my darling," Keith said, kissing me on the cheek. "You behave yourself in New Jersey, now."

  Dad and Jill's house lived up to my fantasy. It was a five story mansion, with a bowling alley and a miniature movie theater in the basement and a huge pool in the back yard. I had my pick of four different guest rooms, but chose the smallest of the four because it was next to Kelsey's bedroom.

  The lifestyle in New Jersey was as much to get used to as life on the road. There was an entirely different staff there than the people who ran the tour. There were two personal chefs, a housekeeping staff, the lawn and garden crew, and a chauffeur. Kelsey ran herself ragged showing me every room in the house and every toy she owned. Jill somehow got me to agree to wake up every morning to join her and Herschel in their morning yoga routine.

  Jill brought in her designer, a blond man named Patrick, to help me redo my bedroom. We ordered new carpeting, a cool cast-iron bed frame, and sky blue paint to match my old room in L.A. I unpacked my suitcases from the tour, and tucked the bag of seashells from Jake into the top corner of my closet on a shelf. I didn't especially want to look at them, but also knew that if I hastily threw them out while I was still upset, I might regret it. I wondered dubiously if he had ever actually gone to Tokyo. The more I wondered, the more it seemed unrealistic that there had ever been a possibility that he was going.

  Next to them I placed my copy of Jane Eyre, in which I had pressed the flower I had taken from my mother's wake. I couldn't bring myself to look at it, but knew it would bring me comfort during the school year that it was safe and sound on my closet shelf.

  I spoke to my father only twice during our weeks in New Jersey. The first time, he called me as part of his rehabilitation program to apologize for the way he had been treating me.

  "Taylor, I am so, so sorry for the way I've been speaking to you for the last few weeks. The honest truth is," he paused, "you saw something that I hadn't wanted you to see, and I didn't know how to address it. I'm not proud of the way I've been conducting myself this summer and I'm committed to making some big changes."

  I didn't have a response. I was glad he had finally acknowledged that I had seen him with Karina but I didn't believe for a second that he was making a commitment to anything.

  "Are you there?" he asked. I was so quiet he thought the line had gone dead.

  "I'm here," I said.

  Two weeks later, when I was already counting down the days until I boarded the train to Massachusetts, he called again. This time he spoke with Jill at length, and it sounded like they were making travel plans. When she handed the phone to me, I wasn't sure what to expect.

  It turned out that Pound's last show on the tour had originally been scheduled for Los Angeles for a good reason. The Jam Television Music Video Awards were held in Los Angeles during the last weekend in August, and Pound had been nominated for two awards. Even though Dad's record label knew he was in rehab, they were laying on the pressure thick for the band to attend the show. They were telling him that his image needed some good press.

  "There are a few things I'd like to tell you when we're in L.A.," my dad told me. "Just to set the record straight. And it sounds from what Jill's told me that you're having a great time in New Jersey. That means more to me than anything, Taylor, that you're happy being a part of our family."

  I felt a little sick packing a small weekend bag for our quick trip to L.A. I hadn't been home in three months and feared that the nostalgia and homesickness were going to be overwhelming once we arrived there. It had always been hard for me to leave for Treadwell in the fall, and this time it was going to be especially painful if I had to say farewell my hometown again.

  When we arrived, it was as hot as I've ever experienced it in L.A. The Santa Ana winds were kicking up, and those can get hot enough to make you feel like your body is baking when they blow. When we stepped out of the airport and the heat hit me, and my eyes fell upon a palm tree, I nearly wept with joy.

  "Good to be home?" Jill teased.

  Paparazzi swarmed as we boarded the Escalade that had been sent to retrieve us from the airport. Some things about being back in Los Angeles were entirely d
ifferent this time around. It was the first time I had ever landed at L.A.X and not been picked up by my mom in the enormous clunky old Benz. We had a ritual of stopping for French fries at a drive through and sharing them hot out of the bag on the way home. I dared not ask Jill if we could stop somewhere for French fries. Some rituals are too sacred to be recreated.

  Dad was waiting for us at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He looked slimmer and tanner since I had last seen him in Michigan. He seemed really happy to see us, too, although when he reached for Jill to kiss her she turned her face so that he could only peck her on the cheek. He still had major work to do in regaining her trust.

  All of us got to attend the awards show, which was exciting. There were a ton of stars in attendance and for once I got a little star struck. Pound didn't win the award for Best Video, but did win for Best Special Effects. My father kept his acceptance speech very brief and let Wade do most of the talking, which was pretty out of character for him.

  After the show, Dad asked me he could take me out for a drive. I agreed on one condition, that we not drive past my old house. I had a horrible feeling that a new family had moved in and it would kill me to drive past and see lights on inside.

  We drove up to Mulholland Drive in Dad's rental car, an inconspicuous Volvo station wagon. Mom used to like to drive up to the Hollywood Hills and look at the fancy houses, and when I was little I liked to go with her. Mulholland is a twisty road that snakes along the edge of the hills, overlooking all of Los Angeles. Dad pulled over and parked along the side of a road where there was a clearing in the trees, and we both sat for a long time in silence.

  The city below us sparkled and moved like an electric dragon. The Capitol Records building punctuated the blue night sky and Thursday night traffic shimmered on Sunset toward the bars in West Hollywood. I hadn't admitted to myself until that moment just how much I had missed home. I guess going to school on the East Coast, I had fallen in love with the idea of crisp New England autumns and snow days in the winter, but it occurred to me for the first time that perhaps I would apply to UCLA or USC.