The Rock Star's Daughter (13 page)

Bijoux and Betsey Norfleet, Wade's daughters
from his first marriage (to cosmetics heiress Nadine Von Weurth),
were filthy rich, foul-mouthed, and terrible influences. They would
be joining the tour for a week as part of their annual visit with
Wade. The rest of the year they lived in a penthouse in New York
with their mother, who had remarried an insanely wealthy count from
Eastern Europe. Technically they were some kind of royalty through
this remarriage, with preposterous titles.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Taylor," Bijoux
purred when we were introduced over dinner the night I arrived in
Virginia with my dad, Jill and Kelsey.

Bijoux had bleached blond hair and a tattoo
of a seahorse on her left shoulder blade, visible at all times
because rarely did she wear anything other than a bikini top and I
don't think there was a sleeve in her entire wardrobe. She was
eighteen and had just graduated from high school. Never did she
mention having plans for higher education, but she often talked
about doing guest-star spots on reality television shows and
launching a handbag line.

Betsey was fourteen and looked more like Wade
than Bijoux did. She had his round face and curly hair, and
appeared to have inherited his body type and appetite as well.
Bijoux was stick thin, and clucked her tongue at Betsey during
dinner twice when she reached for second helpings of baked beets
and cous-cous.

Both of the Norfleet sisters had their
father's steely gray snake eyes, which gave them the visual
appearance of being up to no good, and that was usually the case.
Bijoux had already been engaged once to a TV sitcom star, a
relationship that had ended in a bar brawl despite the fact that
she was far under the legal drinking age.
Nylon Magazine
had
featured the sisters in a fashion photo spread, which had led to
Marc Jacobs placing them in one of his iconic ads. They had a huge
online fan club based in Asia. They had the lifestyle of a rock
star's daughter down to a science.

"This place is a total dump," Bijoux declared
that night at the pool, waving her hand around to imply that she
was talking about the hotel.

I kept my mouth shut. I had actually been
thinking that the hotel in Virginia Beach was the nicest one I had
seen yet. We were drying off on deck chairs after taking a sunset
dip in the enormous heated outdoor pool, and the waiters had been
bringing us icy virgin banana daiquiris in fancy cocktail glasses.
I was only down at the pool with these girls, of whom I was a
little frightened, because Jill had strongly urged me to make
friends. It had crossed my mind that I might see Jake if we
lingered at the pool, but after spending only a few minutes in the
company of the famous Norfleet sisters, I began praying he would
not surface. I was not sure what I would do if Jake were to become
the prey of Bijoux. I feared Bijoux was as dangerous as a raptor
when it came to boys.

"What's up with your granny swimsuit?" Betsey
asked me, sneering at the red and white striped suit that I had
been given in Alabama. It had a halter top and a cut-out in the
back that I had thought was kind of risqué for me. "Did your
stepmother pick that out?"

"Tanya sent someone to buy it for me in
Huntsville," I said. Until Betsey had opened her mouth I had
thought that the bathing suit was kind of sophisticated and liked
it.

"Gag," Bijoux added. "You're cute. You should
borrow one of my bikinis."

I agreed, flattered that Bijoux would offer
to share with me, and kept my fears about potentially catching some
kind of disease from her bikini bottoms to myself.

"Speaking of granny clothes, Jill's hot,"
Betsey continued, on the subject of my father's wife. "She should
work it more. I don't know what she's thinking, dressing like some
kind of a Stepford wife with all these groupie whores flirting with
her husband all the time."

I kind of wished Betsey would shut up,
because I was feeling more than a little sensitive about my dad and
all of his groupie whores. If Jill dressed more like my mother, it
would have just freaked me out. As much as I didn't like Jill, I
was appreciative of the order she brought to our lives and was
instinctively protective of her role.

"We're hitting the boardwalk tomorrow,"
Bijoux continued, changing the subject. "You should totally come.
You're probably climbing the walls by now being surrounded by these
geriatric dorks."

"What's at the boardwalk?" I asked,
childishly hoping that the answer would be ferris wheels and funnel
cakes.

"Boys and bars!" Betsey exclaimed. "Duh.
That's what all boardwalks have."

The sisters were not exaggerating. We left
our hotel the next day and my father seemed pleased that I was
getting along so well with Wade's daughters. Bijoux had put me in
one of her many, many bikinis – and I was feeling uncomfortable
enough in the miniscule red string number that I wore a t-shirt
over it. Not the Norfleets, though, they both wore bikinis and
flip-flops as their outfits and we drove to the boardwalk in the
silver Mercedes convertible that Wade had rented for Bijoux's
use.

"Do you have your license yet?" Bijoux asked
me. She had lit up a clove cigarette the second we exited the
hotel.

Driving was a sore topic for me. I was
turning sixteen in September and learning how to drive had been one
of my goals for the summer… that was, before my mother had died and
all of this madness had started. Treadwell did not offer Driver's
Ed as normal high schools did, since students were not allowed to
keep private cars on school grounds. Having my mom or Todd teach me
had been my only chance at preparing for my license.

"No," I said. "I'm not sixteen yet."

"But you've got your learner's permit,
right?" Bijoux egged on. She cranked up the radio, playing a rap
song.

"Yeah," I admitted. My mother had taken me to
the DMV in Hollywood to get my learner's permit the first weekend I
had been home for the summer. It was still folded in my wallet, and
I had never used it to drive, ever.

"Do you want to drive?" Bijoux earnestly
offered. She slowed the car down, as if to suggest she was
seriously considering pulling over to let me take the wheel.

"Hell, no!" I exclaimed. "My permit is only
valid in California and only if someone over the age of twenty-one
is in the car with me."

"Suit yourself," Bijoux shrugged.

We parked the car a few blocks from the
boardwalk and my heart soared when I saw a ferris wheel in the
distance. I fell instantly in love with Virginia Beach, its salty
air, cool breezes and rocky gray waves. It was amazing to me that a
beach on the other side of the country could be so vastly different
from the beach in Santa Monica even though it was still composed of
the basic elements of sand and water.

It was early afternoon and men whistled each
and every time we walked past a restaurant with open windows.
Because it was a holiday weekend, there seemed to be no shortage of
college-age guys out drinking beers despite the early hour in the
day. We made our way down to the water to cool off, and I took off
my t-shirt while we were in the water, praying the entire time that
the strings holding my suit together would not fail me.

I felt like an enormous nerd because I really
wanted to collect sea shells to take back to the hotel. I didn't,
obviously, because I was afraid of the Norfleets thinking that I
was unforgivably immature. But beaches around Los Angeles don't
have big beautiful scallop shells like Virginia Beach does, and I
hoped I would have a chance to come back to the beach alone so that
I could fill a bag before the tour moved on toward the Midwest.

"I need a driiiink," Betsey moaned once we
were back up on the walkway. She was nearly two years younger than
me and I found it kind of quizzical that someone who was younger
than me would be such an experienced drinker.

As if guided by a sixth sense for mischief,
Bijoux drifted back down to the sandy shore toward a group of guys
who looked like they were in their early twenties after zeroing in
on them with her slut-vision. They had with them a cooler that
contained a number of soda bottles filled with clear liquid. Bijoux
introduced herself.

"Me and my sister and our friend are awfully
thirsty," she flirted.

"Help yourselves," a guy wearing a University
of Virginia baseball hat told us. "I'm Brian. This here's Nate,
Steve, Dan, Elliot, Mike and this other guy here is named Brian,
too."

"Are you girls from around here?" the guy
introduced as Steve asked.

"We're on vacation visiting our dad," Betsey
piped up, helping herself to one of the bottles from the
cooler.

"Wait a second," the heaviest-set of the
guys, whose name was Dan, said with a laugh. "I know who you girls
are. Your dad is the guitarist from Pound."

"Maybe," Bijoux cackled.

"Careful with that," the tallest guy, who had
been introduced as Nate, warned Bijoux as she handed Betsey a
bottle. "Those are vodka tonics."

Bijoux tossed me a bottle and I sipped its
contents carefully, mostly because it was insanely hot out and the
bottle was icy cold. Drinking alcohol on the beach was illegal –
there were signs everywhere – but it seemed like every group on the
beach that had set up a small camp with an umbrella also had a
cooler full of plastic bottles. I felt a little scared to be
drinking in broad daylight in public, but told myself to relax. It
was hardly like I was going to get carried away by the police if I
was out with Bijoux and Betsey, who seemed to know what they were
doing.

"They look kinda young."

I overheard two of the guys discussing us a
few feet away as Bijoux spread herself across Nate's beach towel on
the sand. Her long, long legs were deeply tanned and I thought for
a moment that I would never have that kind of poise and confidence
no matter how long I lived.

"What about you?" Dan asked me. "Is your dad
a rock star, too?"

"Her dad is Chase Atwood," Betsey bragged on
my behalf.

"Get out!" Brian exclaimed. "I freakin' love
Pound. We tried to get tickets to the show tonight but it's been
sold out for months."

The guys revealed that they were all juniors
at UVA who had stayed in Charlottesville for the summer to work
part-time jobs and take a few classes. They were only at the beach
for the holiday weekend and were staying at a motel a few miles
inland because the beach hotels were far more expensive. I did some
quick math in my head and deduced that these guys were probably not
the legal drinking age, either.

I tasted the contents of my bottle in dainty
sips, kind of wishing I had put my t-shirt back on over my bikini
before we had walked down the beach toward these guys. Now that we
were sitting with them it would be too awkward to put it back on,
and I felt completely exposed without it. I was barely paying
attention as Bijoux yammered on and on about what kind of music she
liked and where she liked to party in New York. It was a matter of
minutes before Brian #1 was sitting next to her and playing with
the bikini strings holding up her top.

The guy who had been introduced as Elliot
wrapped up a conversation on his cell phone and announced, "Hey,
our buddy Jarred has a boat. You guys wanna come out on the water
with us? We were going to go jet skiing."

"I love jet skiing," Betsey announced. She
had already finished her entire bottle of booze.

I felt a little uncertain about following the
group further down the beach to the pier where we could meet Jarred
and get on his boat as we packed up the umbrella and beach towels.
I mean, drinking on a beach with boys older than us was one thing,
but getting on a boat with them and presumably drinking more was
another. I knew once I set foot on that boat, I was putting myself
in a position to be in a heck of a lot more trouble if my dad were
to ever find out how we spent our day away from the hotel.

Nevermind that my mother never would have
hesitated about getting on a boat with a group of guys and
cocktails. Nevermind that Bijoux and Betsey seemed thrilled. My
stomach was starting to feel uneasy. I may have mentioned that I
had never really been in trouble before, and that was largely
because I had never gone out of my way to get in trouble
before.

"I think I want to head back to the hotel," I
told Bijoux quietly when the boys stepped ahead of us on the pier
to begin loading the cooler onto the boat. Jarred was not, as we
had assumed, a friend of the guys. He was Elliot's uncle, and he
looked at least ten years older than the other guys. The boat was
pretty nice; it was a speed boat that could easily accommodate at
least eight people.

"Oh my god," Bijoux exclaimed. "Don't be such
a chicken. You're going to have a great time. I personally
guarantee it."

I frantically tried to come up with an excuse
to stay at the beach. "I've never been on a boat before," I
admitted. "I'm not sure if I'm going to like this."

It was really hot out and while I wasn't
drunk, drinking vodka under the punishing sun wasn't making me feel
great, either. What I really wanted was a bottle of water but
something told me that water was one thing that the cooler did not
contain.

"Well, if you're not sure," Bijoux reasoned,
"then maybe you will like it. You'll never know unless you come
with."

She grabbed my hand and led me onto the boat
with her.

"Don't be a loser," she warned me once we
were on board. The guys were all smiling broadly, like victors. And
why wouldn't they? They had managed to get the daughters of rock
stars on their boat on a holiday weekend. Mike began taking digital
pictures, and I did my best to keep my face covered, not too happy
about the possibility of Mike having an opportunity to sell his
shots to
Expose Magazine
once he got back to his motel that
night.