Never Say Never

A
NOTE FROM THE  AUTHOR

Thank you for choosing
Never Say Never.  I wanted to write about a young woman who was the lead and
manager of a rock band full of young men and what it was like to be a woman in
a tough industry.  Along the way, I also wanted to write a different coming of
age story, of a young woman finding out what she wanted.

College is all about
learning and discovering, as well as finding out who you are and what you want
to do, and perhaps whom you want to do it with.  

For many, it is also
the time to become independent.  For me, that was the case. 

I worked as a DJ, radio
host of a women’s show, and as a student peer adviser at the women’s center on
campus when I was an undergraduate.  And I would come across incidences of regrets
and issues from many women who felt pressured to do what they truly didn’t want.
  

If you can relate to
this book and to Never, know that your body is yours no matter how you dress,
no matter if you’re a private person or constantly in the public eye, no matter
if you are already in a sexual relationship with someone.  Your body is yours,
and you have the right to feel secure in it. And no one has the right to make
you feel inferior.

If you ever come across
sexual harassment, stalking, bullying or anything that makes you feel unsafe,
please seek help, speak up, and tell others.  There are help centers everywhere
on campus and in the community. 

Speaking out is
empowerment.  Your body is yours.

This is a YA-Mature/New Adult novel which may contain
scenes not suitable for younger teens. Recommended age of reading is 17 years
and up.

Never
Say Never

Published by THE EDGE

THE EDGE is an imprint of
Sparklesoup Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Kailin Gow

All Rights Reserved. No part of
this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic,
electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any
information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from
the publisher except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles
and reviews.

For information, please
contact:

THE EDGE at Sparklesoup

14252 Culver Dr., A732

Irvine, CA 92604

www.sparklesoup.com

First Edition.

Printed in the United States of
America.

ISBN:
978-1-59748-016-1

For
anyone who dares to dream.

Prologue

           
I
feel the sweat pouring down my body. The
feedback from the amplifier reverberates in my ears; my body is shaking to the
sound of Geoff's guitar. The music is pulsing; I can feel it all around me in
waves, feel my body twisting and turning as my voice echoes through the
microphone, refracting like shattered glass through the room. I feel the energy
of the keyboards – their sound like an electric shock thrilling my whole body
with every movement. I feel the slow throbbing beat of the drums deep within my
belly and I sing harder, sing louder, to catch the glory before it fades.
They're all dancing – their eyes closed, locked in a trance, swaying together,
cheering us on. Beautiful people – girls who look like models and men with
eyeliner and leather jackets – the kind of defiant half-punk ecstasy you only
get in nightclubs like these. Steve had been worried they wouldn't accept us. “The
clientele at Veridium's the hardest crowd in the biz,” he'd said. But I'd known
as soon as we started playing that they'd love us. I knew it from the look in
their eyes – that look of surprise, of shock, of vague recognitions that we
were playing something great, and we were playing on the strings of their
souls. The second the music had started up I'd felt the crowd shift –
flint-eyed models accustomed to looks of disdain closing their eyes and waving
their arms in the air, for one brief and glorious second not worrying about the
poses they were making or whether or not happiness had calories. Trendy
cocktail-makers behind the bar spilling their drinks as the whole zinc bar
reverberated with our sound.
We had them.
I could feel our effect; I
could feel the effect the audience had on me: they were offering us their love,
their admiration, their adoration.

           
Just
like paradise
, I thought. Because that's what this was – paradise. They say
Los Angeles is the city of Angels. Well, tonight I was an angel – an angel in a
punk-rock tank and a beat-up leather skirt and spiky boots that came up to my
thighs – and tonight I was in heaven. I'd always known this is what I wanted to
do – to sing strange songs at three in the morning in an LA nightclub, to make
girls' mascara drip down their faces when they cried while singing along, to
feel this energy flooding through me like an electrical storm.

            I'd
never had the voice for opera. I'd learned that long ago, when Dad had
reluctantly caved into my relentless pressure to hiring a vocal tutor for me.
My voice wasn't clean and pure and formal, that's what the tutor had said. It
was raw – animalistic – powerful without ever being controlled. It wasn't a
voice to lace up into corsets or pretty costumes; it wasn't the voice to hum
along to on the radio. It was husky – sweet only when I tried – filled with
emotion and rage and somewhere in there I could carry a tune. The classically trained
soprano my dad had hired had thrown up her hands when I refused to moderate my
tones for the fiftieth time and said, “Well, I don't know how she does it – but
she's got a voice like her father, all right.”

            Some
girls have their fathers sing them lullabies. My dad sang me punk rock from the
time I was six months old.  The one time he sang me “Hush Little Baby”
backstage at a rock concert, one of the groupies recorded it on camera and it hit
the celebrity gossip shows in a matter of hours; today, you can buy the bootleg
“Lullaby EP” on the Internet if you know where to look. I didn't grow up with
too much “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” anyhow – my father used to sing me his greatest
hits instead. “Black Death,” “Eyes of Defeat,” “Your Endless Hurt.” He used to
sing in that raw, wild voice of his and caress me with his guitar-calloused
hands and I grew up singing all of his greatest hits in the shower.

            Of
course, I didn't know he was Keith Knight –
the
Keith Knight. The guy
who'd shown up to the Grammy Awards in blue eyeliner and a black leather
doublet with a parakeet on his shoulder. The guy David Bowie had once said he
wished he could have been. By the time he had me, all traces of the
drug-addled, androgynous, heavily made-up, leather-clad glam rock star my
mother had fallen in love with had fallen by the wayside. The Keith Knight I
knew was a family man – he'd gone off drugs the second he'd heard my mom was
pregnant – slightly pot-bellied, with nothing to suggest to me that he was
anything but a normal dad except for the characteristic twinkle in his eye. To
his fans, of course, my dad was still Keith Knight of the Dark Knights, the
eighties punk-glam band that defined a generation. But to me, he was just Dad.

            My
eyes quickly scanned the crowd for familiar faces. I could make out a few amid
the sea of anonymity. A place like Beverly Hills is a small town – if you know
it well enough. The same kinds of people go to all the same parties. Minor
celebrities, a couple of socialites, a potential reality TV show star in the
making trying to talk her way past the bouncers at the door. A few
cynical-looking older men who assume that the only reason I'm here at all, the
only reason the Never Knights are even playing, is because of my father and his
credentials.

            Please.
If my dad knew I was out here, I'd be grounded. Not that I could be grounded
anymore, of course – at 18, I was a freshman at USC and out of the house for
the first time and leading one of the hottest up-and-coming bands in the music
world.

Chapter
1

           
A
s we were packing up our instruments, I could
feel the last of the adrenaline start to wear off. My face was flushed; my long
dark hair was tangled with sweat and exertion. My makeup had run down my eyes,
giving me the mild appearance of a raccoon. But I felt beautiful. I could feel
my happiness and excitement emanating from every pore in my face, from every
cell in my body. I walked over to the boys who were packing up their kit. “Hey
guys!” I wrapped them all in a big bear hug. “You did an amazing job out there
tonight. Couldn't you feel it? And if I'm not mistaken, I thought that I saw
Richard Slayton in the crowd...”

            This
was enough to knock them into silence. They looked up at me in shock. “Really?”
asked Kyle in a small voice. Then he broke out into a broad grin and laughed
with joy and relief. Luc jumped up to his feet and gave me a high five, his
skin hot against mine. “I told you to have faith,” he said, “I knew he'd show.
He wasn't going to miss this for the world. Not the Never Knights...”

            Steve
got up from his drum set, stretching his long and lanky frame. “Don't jinx it!”
he said. “You know the rules. We're going to play it cool, Luc. Not going to
get excited until it's in writing on the dotted line. I don't care if it's
Richard Slayton or any other record exec – I don't want to jinx it. Besides...”
his eyes trailed across the room to a pair of blonde twins giggling over at the
bar. “I've got other things to worry about tonight. Those two were giving me
the eye all evening. I don't want to be distracted.” He laughed loudly. “If you
know what I mean.”

            I
rolled my eyes. Steve might be the world's biggest lady-killer now, but I
remembered the awkward gangly kid he used to be, and the idea of him bagging
not one, but two of those perfect-ten blondes in the corner was less
awe-inspiring to me than faintly ridiculous. He was unmistakably handsome now,
of course – if I was being rational I'd point out his emerald green eyes and
affable, boyish charm – but somehow I couldn't get past seeing him as the
muddy-faced pre-adolescent I used to mercilessly mock in the schoolyard.

            “Color
me impressed, Steve,” I said loudly, trying to match his masculine bravado word
for word. “I remember when the ladies didn't even give you a chance to
disappoint them. Just because you've managed to bulk up on egg-yolk-powder and
protein shakes doesn't change anything – I know the truth. You're still the
skinny-bones I remember.”

            Steve
grinned widely, evidently ready for a challenge. “Freckle-face,” he chanted
back at me. “Don't get so high and mighty. I seem to remember you were a late
bloomer.”

            “At
least I didn't have a butt like a flat board,” I laughed.

            “At
least I didn't have a flat
chest
!” Steve retorted, and the other boys
laughed and whooped. They were used to our little teasing matches, and although
I usually won, the boys liked to cheer on Steve as the underdog.

            “Snot-nose.”

            “Pimply.”

            We
were in each other's faces, now – barely an inch of space between us. As I
looked into Steve's green eyes, watching them go vaguely cross-eyed at the lack
of distance between us, we both gave up at the same time, collapsing into
giggles and guffaws as the memory of our schoolyard banter came back to us.
“Aw, come on, Neve,”  Steve put a muscular sweaty arm around me. He smelled of
beer and guitar wood – a warm, reassuring smell I associated with our nights of
jamming in Luc's basement.

            “Aw,
I'm just kidding, Neve. Those pimples cleared up good after a visit to the
doctor. And let me tell you, I'm pretty sure you're not flat-chested, either.
They can measure that these days – with science!”