Rockoholic (8 page)

He laughs and looks embarrassed. He starts fiddling with the key pendant around his neck. “Yeah. I am,” he laughs again and rubs his eye.

His mood ring is glowing bright blue, like his eyes. His pupils are like pinpricks and make the blue bits of his eyes look even bigger. I’m not poetic enough to think of some fantastically beautiful description of Jackson’s eyes. All I ever come up with are wanky things like that crushed blue ice you suck through a straw. But they’re that blue. As blue as that ice. Chemical blue. He takes the card out of his back pocket again and drops another couple of pills. “Aspirin,” he explains.

I laugh, but I don’t know why. I can’t stop staring at his eyes. I have to say something about his eyes. “Your eyes are like Slush Puppies.”

“What?”

“Oh, uh, nothing. I’m . . . uh, eBay. I’m wearing the eBay shirt. Your shirt for charity.”

“Oh. Yeah. I, uh, I hope you feel better soon,” he says with some finality, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking at the floor, swaying a tiny bit, like he’s about to fall over. Then he takes a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He moves away, stands at the end of my bed, and cups the hand with the mood ring over a cigarette as he lights it. Fat Controller marches over.

“I’m sorry but we do have a smoking ban in this country,” she says, just like she did before with Pash, and her nostrils go all cave-dweller big. He pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and just stands there looking down at her, head bowed. He scratches his fingertips through his scalp and laughs.

And in that moment, it’s almost as though the scenery peels back and me and Jackson step out of it. Everything happens on the other side of the room. In the corner by Cereal Bar Girl, Pash slips over, probably on one of the many ice cubes scattered about the floor, and knocks his head on a plastic chair. There is immediate panic from everyone nearby and they all gather around him. Security guys are on their CB radios. Black Uniforms buzz around. The Fat Controller orders them about like she’s queen bee. Everyone’s preoccupied. Everyone is concerned about Pash. Everyone except Jackson. He stays right where he is at the end of my bed. He doesn’t even seem to care. He puts his hands in the tops of his pockets. He stumbles a bit, and pulls them out again and steadies himself on the bed.

And that’s when rational thought hops aboard the night train out of there. I
have
to talk to him again, I
have
to touch him again, to feel the tingle of him when he shook my hand. I have to tell him about my grandad and the moon rock and everything he means to me.
“Don’t Dream It, Be It.”
He has to know what he means to me.

Be it!

He turns around. And I just react.

“Jackson?” I say.

“Huh?” he slowly, painfully turns to face me.

“Do you want my Curly Wurly?” I blurt out, lurching to the end of the bed and thrusting the thing right up in his face.

O-M-F-G.

He looks at it all big-eyes, like it’s diseased. He thinks I’m a whale. This sad, pathetic loser who has to have chocolate on her at all times in case of emergencies. Some real fat-ass.

“All right,” he says, staring at it wide-eyed. He’s still swaying about. “Take it easy.”

It’s still there, the Curly Wurly, thrust out before him. I can’t move my arm. It’s locked like it’s turned to stone or something. “It’s OK, you can have it, take it,” I insist, jabbing him in the cheek with it. The end I’m holding is limp in my iron fist, I’m squeezing it so tightly.

“I’ll do what you want just . . . p-please, no drama,” he says, like I’ve got a knife against his cheek, not a Curly Wurly.

He’s just staring at it. There’s a blur in my eye again. I blink it away, and as I open my eyes from the blink, he’s there with his hands up in front of him. Not one person is looking our way, they’re all too worried about Pash or having breathing problems of their own to notice. Oh. My. God. He thinks it’s a weapon. Jackson thinks my Curly Wurly is a
knife
!

“Oh, no. No it’s not . . .”

He turns toward the door and, without another single sensible thought, I place my palm on his back and we start walking. I look behind me. No one is watching us.
No one
is watching us!

“Where are we going?” he says, stumbling through the door.

“Uh . . . don’t speak,” I say. And all the time we’re walking out of there into the cold night air, I try not to concentrate on the Mac side of my brain which is saying,
What the hell are you doing? He thinks it’s a knife, he thinks your Curly Wurly is a
knife
! Tell him it’s just a silver wrapper, tell him it’s just a misunderstanding. Let him go, just let him go!

But I can’t let him go, I just can’t.

Keep going, keep going, keep going. Don’t look back. No one notice, please no one notice!

And anyway we’re out the door now. “Put your hands down,” I tell him, and he does.

The door shuts quietly behind us, and we’re walking, across the silent bus parking lot, heading toward some tall metal gates. I look behind again. No one calls out. No one stops us. Two security guards are watching football on a small television screen inside a booth by the gates. We approach them and I slow my pace.
Please don’t see us.
We walk past them. My hearing is so messed up I can’t even hear what they’re talking about.
Please don’t see us.
It’s like they’re speaking through a cardboard tube. But they don’t notice us and as we make it through the gates to the pavement on the main road, I rip my fleece from my waist and put it over Jackson’s head. He’s shaking. His walk is slow and his feet scuff on the ground like a kid coming down from a tantrum. I steer him around trash bins and speed bumps and burger boxes until we arrive around the front of the arena and cross the road. He mumbles something.

“What?”

“Where are you taking me?” he mumbles again, somewhere under my fleece.

I don’t know what else to say to him. I rack my brain, trying to think of movies where people are being taken hostage. What do the bad guys say? I don’t want to tell him to shut the eff up. He is, after all, still my hero. I just want him with me, that’s all I know. That’s all I want at that moment. “Just keep moving,” I say and he does, slowly.

There are fans milling around outside the arena, and scalpers still trying to sell tickets for a gig that’s pretty much over. Some guys stand on the street selling tour posters and cheap-looking T-shirts with band logos on them, and for a second I want to stop and buy one, but then I think I couldn’t possibly buy anything now that will compare with what I already have.

Reality check: OMFG!

But I choose to ignore it. Don’t think just do, don’t think just do. We walk past them all, through a sea of cans, bottles, flyers, and cigarette butts, across the road toward Mac’s car. Right where he said he’d be — hazards on, under the lamppost.

A police car whizzes past, followed shortly by an ambulance. A stab of fear slices through me. It’s OK, they’re not for me. I just pray no one works out what’s going on. But I don’t know what’s happening, so I doubt anyone else will.

“Just walk, I’ll guide you,” I say as we cross the road. Mac is dozing in the driver’s seat, wrapped up in his coat. I knock on the window and he jumps and fumbles with the door before pulling the seat forward.

“That was quick. Thought you’d be ages. Didn’t you get a T-shirt or something?”

“No.”

“Didn’t they do an encore even? Stingy gits. Oh, are we giving someone a lift?”

I push Jackson inside first so he is sitting behind Mac’s seat and then get in next to him and shut the door.

“Why aren’t you sitting in the front —”

“Go, Mac, before we get caught in the traffic.”

“Hang on, where does your mate live?”

“I’ll tell you on the way, please just drive.”

And he does. He puts his foot down and we are out of there like a speed skater. We bolt through the town, straight through every traffic light, increasing speed until the orange streetlamps become blurs outside the windows. It starts raining hard. The wipers are on full pelt and they’re squeaking loudly. We get to a traffic circle. Mac is looking at me in the rearview mirror with his serious face on. He adjusts the mirror to see the face of “my mate” but Jackson still has my fleece over his head so he adjusts it back.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Mac says as we make it to a big traffic circle.

“Are we on the motorway yet?”

“Jody, tell me now. What have you done? Why’s she under your coat?”

“Are we on the motorway yet?” I say again, more forcefully. He pauses, puts his foot down. We head along the edge of the circle. He flips up the blinker. We take the second exit and hit the rumble strips.

“Yes, we’re on the motorway, all right?”

“So you can’t turn back?” I say.

“No, Jody, for Christ’s sake . . .”

I pull the coat off Jackson’s head and he shakes his hair out. Mac adjusts the mirror and flicks on the reading light. “What the . . .” He flicks the light off and on again. Then he flicks it off and doesn’t say another word.

I tend to do stupid things when left to my own devices. Mac will testify to this, if it ever needs testifying to, as he’s usually a witness. So I thought if anyone would understand why I took Jackson when the opportunity came up, it would be Mac. He knows how I feel about Jackson, so he should understand why I did it. But as we speed along the near-deserted M4 motorway out of Cardiff, it becomes clear that Mac is definitely
not
on the same page as me. I don’t even think we’re in the same library.

Jackson falls asleep as the car bombs along. In fact, he goes practically unconscious. And then, without warning, Mac pulls off the motorway at the next exit and hits the turn signal for the rest stop. Red-and-white lit-up signs for a KFC and a drive-through Burger King glow in the misty dark and the parking lot is empty except for two hatchbacks and a tourist bus. He pulls into a space near the entrance and switches off the engine.

“You need . . . to tell me . . . what the hell you’ve done,” he says, very slowly, like he’s had a stroke and is learning to talk again.

“Um,” I begin, and then I try to remember being back in the first-aid room, hearing the music pumping and the Fat Controller and the St. John Ambulance people and Cereal Bar Girl and Pash coming in and Pash falling over. “Well, Jackson came backstage, to see the fans in the recovery area. He shook my hand. And then his manager came in and he was really rude to him, kept swearing and stuff, and Jackson looked really fed up and he said he had a headache. I offered him my Curly Wurly —”

Mac holds up his hand to shush me. “Is that sex slang for something?”

I frown. “No, my chocolate bar.” Mac is silent for another age and I gabble away to fill the void. “Anyway he came over and I didn’t know what to do, my brain just went into overdrive cos I’d fainted and hit my head and I couldn’t believe he was there and I didn’t know what to say so I thought I’d offer him my chocolate bar and see if he would have a bite so I could take it home and frame it or something and when I reached out to give it to him, I think he thinked —”

“Thought.”

“— thought it might have kind of been a bit of a . . . like . . . sort of . . . knife.”

A looooooong sigh. More silence. He turns in his seat to look back at me. “He thinks you’ve kidnapped him? By force?” I nod. “Hmm?” he reiterates in that harsh way teachers do.

“Yes,” I say quietly, so as not to wake Jackson up. “But he sort of relaxed, once I’d got him in the car. He didn’t seem to mind. He hasn’t freaked out or anything. Look at him, he’s asleep.”

“Why do you think that is, Jody?” Mac shouts.

“Keep your voice down.”

“No, this is my car and I can shout as much as I want!” I look across at Jackson but he doesn’t even flinch. Mouth agape, he is completely out of it. I raise a hand to feel for breath. “You didn’t even see it, did you?”

“See what?” I frown.

Mac sighs again. “He’s a tweak-head.”

“No he isn’t. He’s just got a headache. I saw him take an aspirin earlier. He’s been clean for, like, two years. . . .”

“Oh, wake up and smell the bullshit, Jody, please. Wild Man Rocker Jackson Gatlin? Angst-Ridden Jackson Gatlin? Drugged-Up Wastoid Jackson Gatlin? You bought the magazines.”

“Stop it. Not all those stories are true.”

“No, they are, you just don’t want to believe them.” Mac sighs for a third time, scraping a hand through his spiky black hair, and when he gets right to the back, he rubs it harder and harder through his hair again, like he’s trying to sandpaper his head. The spikes don’t move, though; there’s that much gel on it. “Oh my nightmare day,” he says. “Please, someone,
someone
tell me I’m dreaming. I mean, are you clinically depressed or something? Is there something here I’m missing? You’ve done stupid things, I know. I was the one who broke your fall when you tried to climb that telephone pole. . . .” Silence. Then he shouts. “
WHAT
the
HELL
have you
DONE
?”

Jackson stirs, but turns over and falls back to sleep, his face right up against the cold window. “I just saw an opportunity,” I say, my voice shaking. “It’s your fault.”