The Rock Star's Daughter (10 page)

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 backstage."

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."

Her voice was shaking with fear. It rattled
me a little to see such a control freak so frightened.

I was stupefied: first at not having been in
trouble at all but also that somehow Kelsey's sniffling had turned
into a major medical emergency in a matter of hours. How was I
supposed to get to the Von Braun Center Arena on my own? I knew
from my street map that the arena was on the other side of town. I
was only fifteen and went to boarding school; I had never been
behind the wheel of a car.

The paramedics and Jill took the service
elevator out the back of the hospital, and I found myself rushing
down to the front lobby.

"I need a car to drive me to the Von Braun
Center," I told the concierge, the same sexy blond with whom Brice
had been flirting earlier that day. She looked at me as if she was
long overdue for a cigarette break and that finding a car for me
was just about the last thing on earth she felt like doing.

"What kind of a car? A cab?"

"A cab, sure, that's fine."

She semi-rolled her eyes and picked up her
phone.

"Taylor," I heard my named called from across
the lobby and saw… of all people, Jake.

Then it all spilled out of me… Kelsey being
sick, at the hospital, needing to get to the arena before Sigma's
set ended and my dad got on stage, and before I knew it or bothered
telling the concierge that the cab would no longer be necessary, we
were making a mad dash across the sizzling hot parking lot for
Jake's Saturn.

"Do you have your license?" I asked as we
roared out of the parking lot.

"Yeah, I turned sixteen in May," Jake assured
me.

All too aware that I was in the very same
gold Saturn that I had been wondering about, I stole a peek over my
shoulder and noticed that an open suitcase was in the jumbled back
seat. Karina's many pairs of espadrilles and high heels were
littering the back area of the car, along with open Dorito bags and
a half-empty 2-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi.

"Where are we going?" Jake asked, and my
attention snapped back to our mission. He was at a stoplight at the
edge of the hotel's property, waiting for me to tell him which way
to turn.

I remembered that I had a street map in my
back pocket, and whipped it out. "Right," I commanded.

At the Von Braun Center Arena, I saw
firsthand the madness that ensues in the parking lot of a Pound
concert. Had it not been for the urgency of my mission that night,
I would have found it intoxicating. Parked cars blared music, women
danced on the hoods of cars, even little kids wore Pound t-shirts.
Big guys with huge bellies drank enormous cans of Budweiser and sat
on plastic lawn chairs that apparently they had brought for the
purpose of tailgating all evening.

The parking attendant charged us ten bucks
just to park, and I forked over a ten dollar bill, the last of the
money I had earned during the early weeks of that summer at
Robek's. Jake and I had to park near the back of the lot and jog
toward the arena, where we informed the ticket takers that I was
Chase Atwood's daughter and urgently needed to reach him.

They looked at me like I was nuts.

The Sigma set had already started, and music
was roaring out of the arena. It occurred to me to use my brain and
call Moose.

"Moose! Are you with my dad?" I asked.

"I'm backstage," he told me. "The band is
getting dressed. Where are you?"

"I'm here," I told him, giving the dopey
ticket taker the evil eye. "Kelsey's really sick and Jill had to
take her to the hospital."

I told Moose which ticket gate we were at,
and he was there in minutes to let us in.

"It's all right, they're with the band," he
told the ticket takers.

I was grateful for a second that he allowed
Jake in with me and didn't ask questions.

Moose led us backstage, where the Sigma
groupies were swaying to the music, and down a hall to where the
dressing rooms were located. The hall was crowded with roadies and
guys talking on walkie-talkies. We paused at a door that had a
peeling gold star decal on it, and Moose held up his hand to tell
us to stay put.

"You two stay here," he commanded, and
carefully opened the door to Pound's dressing room.

And what I saw in that brief moment was
enough to make me wish I had never walked down the hall with Moose.
The room was crowded. I could see my dad in his leather pants
sitting on a vanity table, drinking a glass of white wine. He was
deep in conversation with a Pounder wearing an ugly denim halter.
Wade had his arm around some slutty-looking girl who appeared to be
around my age.

Moose closed the door behind him as he
entered, but even that two-second glimpse made me furious. Was this
how my dad acted behind closed doors when Jill wasn't around? Was
he drinking wine and flirting with women every second he could?

A moment later, Moose returned and led us
back to the backstage area, where he directed us to sit down on
folding chairs. "Your dad's set starts in ten minutes. It's too
late for him to leave. He's calling Jill and will head to the
hospital the minute the show ends."