“NO!” I screeched, horrified at what lay ahead for me. “Do Killian and Derek do that?!”
“Every time. They actually feel it enhances the experience.”
“WHAT?! OH MY GOD! Why didn’t anybody TELL me that?! There’s no fucking way that I would have… ever…”
By this point the corners of Ryan’s mouth were beginning to tremble and turn up, even though he was trying so hard to keep a straight face.
“You LIAR!” I howled, and smacked him on the arm.
He burst out laughing. “You bought that one hook, line, and sinker.”
“You’re a jerk!”
“Who, me?” he asked. He was trying to be innocent, but it’s hard to act innocent while you’re choking back laughter.
“Just to be absolutely clear, I’m not in any danger of crapping my pants, right?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say no danger – ”
I hit him again, and he stumbled off to the side of the dirt road in fits and snorts of merriment. “You’re fine, you’re fine!”
“Asshole,” I said, though I said it good-naturedly.
He trailed off laughing and wiped a tear from his eye.
Suddenly I got it.
“You did that to make me stop worrying, didn’t you?”
He didn’t look at me, but instead gave a secret little smile. “Did it work?”
I looked up at him… then hip-checked him playfully.
“…yeah,” I admitted.
He grinned. “Good.”
63
“Hey, I want to ask you a question,” I said as we walked along.
“What?” Ryan asked.
“What’s Killian’s deal?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’s his deal’?”
“The only questions he wouldn’t answer in the car were about his love life.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, is he straight? Is he gay? What is he?”
“He told you about those two girls.”
“Yeah, but he might as well have said they were playing tiddlywinks. I know about Derek… and you told me about some of your adventures – ”
“Is that what they were?” he joked. “Not misadventures?”
“Call them what you like, but at least you had them. And I’ve seen Riley in action – which is something I wish I hadn’t seen. But the entire time I’ve been here, Killian hasn’t so much as made a pass at anybody. The most I’ve seen him do is share a joint.”
Ryan was quiet for a moment.
“Maybe you ought to ask him,” he suggested.
“I did, remember?”
Ryan sighed. “I didn’t tell you this, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Seriously, this is off the record.”
“Of course.”
“I’m not sure Killian has a ‘thing.’”
I was quiet for a few seconds.
Then I whispered, “He doesn’t have a penis?”
Ryan burst out laughing. “NO, no, that’s not what I meant! I mean… I’m not sure he’s interested in anybody. Not like that.”
“So he’s asexual?”
“Maybe. I’m not really sure.”
“But you haven’t seen anything, either?”
“You mean, have I ever seen him make out with somebody, or take them to bed?”
“Yeah.”
“No, I haven’t. He mostly just keeps to himself.”
“Huh…”
“But you can’t print that without his consent,” Ryan cautioned.
“I won’t,” I promised. “Is there anything else you can tell me about him?”
“Like what?”
“Wellll… he’s kind of… odd.”
“You noticed that, did you?” Ryan teased me.
“Ha ha,” I said, not laughing. “What’s with the always playing the guitar thing? I mean, it’s non-stop. And even for a rock star, his pot smoking seems a little bit excessive, don’t you think?”
Ryan was silent again for a few seconds.
“Again, off the record,” he said quietly.
“Of course.”
“I tend to think people self-medicate with drugs and alcohol.”
“Like… they’re easing their pain?”
“Or treating conditions that a psychiatrist would give them a prescription for. It’s just that they find something that works for them, and they use it to dull the pain, or help them cope, or whatever.”
“You think Killian is coping with something?”
“We’re all coping with something. Riley? There’s so much pain there I can’t even begin to describe it. That’s why she stays smashed half the time.”
“Really?” I asked, intrigued. It was the first hint I’d had that she wasn’t just a drunk horndog.
Actually, no, that wasn’t true. I suddenly recalled what she’d said when Ryan’s parents came to watch his concert:
It’d be cool if somebody came across the country to watch ME like that.
“You’ll have to ask her if you want to know more,” Ryan said. “I can’t betray confidences.”
“She confides in you?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “…yeah. Kind of.”
“You two are really close, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I guess we are. For being two totally, completely different people.”
“Yeah, you’re from Mars, she’s from Pluto.”
He laughed. “I think she’s actually from another galaxy.”
“What about Killian?”
“He doesn’t really open up that much to the rest of us. He’s a total genius at what he does, but he keeps everything else locked away. I learned more about him on the car ride over here than I ever knew about him before.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“But you said you think he’s self-medicating.”
“Absolutely.”
“For what?”
“OCD, for one thing.”
“Obsessive compulsive disorder?”
“I don’t know that for sure… but have you ever seen anybody do something repeatedly, non-stop, the way he constantly plays the guitar?”
I considered. “No… no, I guess I haven’t.”
“I mean, don’t get me wrong. He’s a musical genius, there’s no question about that. He’s constantly coming up with new material for songs, and we’ve incorporated a lot of stuff that he came up with when he was sitting around stoned… but seriously, he never stops.”
“What happens when he does stop?”
“He doesn’t.”
“But what if he can’t get to his guitar? What if you took it away from him?”
“Then watch out, ‘cause it’s not pretty. What’s even worse is if you take his weed away.”
“Why? What happens then?”
“It’s like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“Really.”
“We played a short tour of Asia one time. And by short, I mean we had to cut it short. The problem was that in some of those countries, you can get thrown in prison for life for smuggling drugs. So we absolutely would not let Killian take weed with him. Miles packed Killian’s luggage himself, and inspected all his guitar cases, even stripped him down to his underwear and had the roadies search him. Getting caught with pot in the US or Canada is one thing… but Thailand? Singapore? Malaysia? Unh-unh.”
“I thought Thailand was pretty permissive.”
“Not about smuggling in drugs, they’re not.”
“So what happened when he went cold turkey?”
Ryan gave a baleful little laugh. “He turned into the most ornery S.O.B. I’ve ever met.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No. He was cranky, and angry, and short-tempered, and mean. Just an all-around a-hole.”
“Holy shit…”
That did not sound like the Killian Lee I knew.
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “And he doesn’t play nearly as well sober, either.”
“He plays better
stoned?”
“Well, yeah… because he’s always stoned.”
It made sense. I knew a girl in college who was a big pothead, and always smoked out when she did her homework. She said that when she took her tests sober, she would always bomb them. It wasn’t until she got baked before a test and aced it that she figured out what the problem was: she studied when she was high as a kite, so she needed to be high as a kite to take the tests, too. Her state of mind had to match up.
“We all agreed to cancel the rest of the tour because he was just a monster to deal with,” Ryan continued.
“Worse than Riley?”
“Ten times worse.”
“That doesn’t seem possible.”
“At least Riley is basically fun-loving and playful. When Killian’s sober, all he is is miserable… and he makes everybody else around him miserable, too.”
I tried to wrap my head around that one. Tried to imagine the placid, easy-going guitarist a hundred feet down the road as a raging asshole.
Couldn’t quite do it.
“After we canceled the tour, we had a long layover in Amsterdam on the way back. The first thing he did was to go out and score some pot in the Red Light District. Within five minutes he was back to the kind, sweet-natured Killian we all know and love. It was bizarre – a 180-degree turn, just like that,” Ryan said, snapping his fingers.
“So Killian has OCD… Riley has issues you don’t want to talk about…”
“That I can’t talk about.”
“What about Derek?”
“What about him?”
“What’s he trying to deal with?”
Ryan shrugged. “His parents’ divorce… his dad… his step-dad… a whole bunch of stuff.”
“So Killian uses pot, and Riley uses booze. What does Derek use?”
Ryan looked uncomfortable. “…booze… mostly.”
I could tell he was evading the question. “Mostly?”
He looked at me like he wasn’t sure how much he wanted to say. “And attention.”
I nodded. “He is kind of an attention whore.”
Ryan laughed. “I wouldn’t have put it that way, exactly, but yeah.”
“You just wouldn’t use the word ‘whore.’”
Ryan grinned. “I suppose that’s part of it.”
I was quiet for a moment. Then I asked, “By ‘attention,’ did you mean women?”
He took a long time to answer.
“…kind of,” he finally said.
My stomach twisted a little.
“But I’m sure that’s all changed now,” he added hurriedly.
I wanted to say, I know.
Of course it has.
But the truth was, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure.
Either way, I didn’t want to dwell on it. So I moved on.
“What about you?” I asked. “What did you self-medicate for?”
“Who said I did?”
“You did. ‘Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the hat,’ remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” he laughed. “Right. Forgot I told you that.”
“So?” I prodded. “What were you self-medicating for?”
“Because I couldn’t handle it.”
“Handle what?”
“The fame. The craziness. The absolute insanity of being in a world-famous rock band. Life on the road 200 days a year… everything.”
“And so you slept with a lot of women?”
He bobbed his head back and forth noncommittally. “…yeah.”
“Did you drink a lot?”
“Yeah.”
“What about drugs?”
“A little.”
“But now you’re back to the straight-and-narrow.”
He smiled. “Because I’ve been off the straight-and-narrow and didn’t like where it was taking me.”
“What about me, then? I mean, I just ate a bunch of mushrooms, for God’s sake.”
“So?”
“So you must think I’m terrible.”
He laughed. “I don’t judge, Kaitlyn. You’ve got to do what’s right for you.”
“I don’t know if it’s right or not,” I said morosely.
“‘The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,’” he quoted.
“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. What do you use to self-medicate now?”
He smiled. “Music. Just music.”
64
Ryan and I got off of the heavy topics and onto some more light-hearted fare – how his sisters kept asking him for cell phone pictures they could show around school, how his mother kept trying to set him up with the daughters of her friends – when I started giggling uncontrollably at one of his comments.
“It wasn’t that funny,” he said.
“I know,” I said, slightly alarmed at my reaction.
“Well, thanks,” he joked.
That set me off giggling again.
“No, I mean… oh my God, is it happening?” I asked, suddenly remembering that I had eaten an illegal substance about twenty minutes ago.
“Could be.”
“Could be?”
“I don’t know. I never did mushrooms.”
“What did you do?”
“Cocaine, pot, some uppers and downers… nothing psychedelic.”
For some reason beyond understanding, that was the funniest thing I’d ever heard.
He just stood back and smiled as I doubled over in laughter.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I was more than okay.
I was absolutely fan-fucking-tastic.
“I’m just… happy,” I told him. And it was true; the corners of my mouth ached, I was smiling so big.
“Okay, well, that’s a good thing.”
“It is, isn’t it?” I said. I couldn’t have been more overjoyed that we agreed on that fact.
“Do you see anything yet?”
I looked around. “No, I don’t – uh… wait…”
I’d been expecting giant crocodile skeletons in the sky and fire hydrants with feet, so I missed it at first. But as I scanned the horizon, I noticed something odd.
The land kind of moved in… and out… and in… and out. Slowly. Like respiration.
“It’s breathing,” I whispered.
“Breathing?”
“Yeah… it’s like I can see it pulsing… real slow…”
“What is?”
“Everything.”
“O-kaaaay…”
I looked down at my right hand and was suddenly enthralled.
All the tiny, tiny lines – the creases in my palms, the quarter-millimeter grooves in my skin – were suddenly as distinct and obvious as if I were looking at them under a microscope. The blue shadows of my veins were absolutely fascinating as they twisted and branched under the pink of my skin.
Patterns.
Just like Derek had said.
And then my fingers – first the ring finger, then the middle, then the pointer – sloooowly grew longer, maybe a quarter of an inch… and then sloooowly retracted back to their former length.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “I’m tripping.”
“Are you okay?” Ryan asked in concern.
I looked up at him.
And started grinning again like the Joker.
“I’m AWESOME,” I announced.
He laughed. “Okay, good.”
I looked down the road. Derek was standing out amongst the cacti and rocks, legs spread wide, arms flung out in the air like he’d just won an Olympic gold medal for… something. Probably for being Derek.
Killian was slowing turning around beside him, taking in the whole world in wide-eyed awe.
I gave Ryan a questioning look. “Is it okay if…?”
“Go ahead,” he smiled. “Have fun.”
I whooped, threw my arms around his neck and hugged him, and then ran off to join Derek.
When I ran up to him, he was beaming. “Did it kick in?”
“Yes!” I
giggled.
“Isn’t it AWESOME?!”
“YES!”
He took me in his arms and kissed me, and for a moment, it felt like I was on the verge of exploding with happiness. All I was conscious of was that he was kissing me, and I was kissing him, and together we were sharing one perfect moment of absolute bliss.
It was all downhill from there.
65
There are a lot of things about hallucinating that are really only interesting if you happen to be the person on drugs. In general, though, I can tell you this: the colors were amazing. Everything was vibrant and beautiful.
And just like Derek said, there were patterns everywhere. Every line and edge among the rocks and scrub brush was fascinating, seeming to interweave with others until they formed a tapestry put there by the Universe and Nature and God, a wonder of design totally ignored by the average person until mushrooms lifted the veil and allowed them to see.
And everything pulsed. Everything was alive – and by that I mean in an organic way, like the earth and the desert and the rocks were all part of some living, breathing organism. It was astounding.
I was also giddy beyond belief. I could never remember being that happy, that overjoyed at the mystery and beauty of creation.
I would say that the first hour of that trip was one of the best of my life.
Unfortunately, the next three hours were among the absolute worst.
Everything was fine at first. Derek and Killian and I were laughing and pointing out things and oohing and aahing, while Ryan followed at a distance, watching the proceedings with a benevolent smile.
And then the sun started to go down.
The closer it sank to the horizon, the more unsettled I began to get. I didn’t realize it at first, the shift was so gradual – but I went from hilarity, to happiness, to contentment, to vague unease, to mild anxiety, to raging fear… and with no understanding of why.
In retrospect, it was obvious. There are two things I absolutely hate: being cold… and darkness.
I think my problem with darkness is more about feeling safe. My apartment at night is tolerable.
New York City streets at 2AM? No.
A strange, alien landscape getting swallowed up by shadows as the sun dipped below the horizon?
HELL no.
And the lower the sun went, the more rapidly the temperature fell.
By the time the sun was gone and the sky was a haze of pink and orange, I was starting to shiver.
I should have been totally geeking out on the beautiful colors in the sky.
Rock All Night (The Rock Star's Seduction #2) Page 23
