The Rock Star's Daughter (6 page)

"This must be the world famous Taylor," Keith
said, extending a hand to shake mine. Keith was British and
balding, with a big pot belly. One of his front teeth was
noticeably chipped and he wore a dangly gold earring in his left
earlobe. Despite looking like a stereotypical dirty old man, Keith
was instantly likeable.

"None other," my dad told him, tearing into a
greasy drumstick and dabbing at his mouth with a napkin.

"Rumor has it you're coming on the road with
us," Keith told me.

I had been piling my plate high with Spanish
rice and refried beans, but froze. I couldn't very well tell my
dad's tour manager and his whole band that I had no intention of
traveling with Pound all summer.

My dad was enthusiastically nodding.
"Taylor's going to see the whole country this summer," he said
proudly. "You ever been to Disney World, Taylor?"

I shook my head. I had never been much of
anywhere, other than Los Angeles and Massachusetts. Mom was not too
fond of vacations; we never had any money to go far, anyway. One of
her boyfriends once drove us all night to see the sunrise at the
Grand Canyon. That was as close to a vacation as I had ever been
on. Mom reasoned that we had a pool at home and the beach twenty
minutes away; why travel?

"Uh, no," I said uneasily, wishing I could
ask him to talk privately.

"What about Texas? You ever been to a game at
the Astrodome?" my dad continued.

"They've got deep-fried Snickers bars in
Texas," Wade added enthusiastically.

"Or New Orleans? You ever walked through the
Garden District at dusk? Smelled those roses blooming?"

"San Francisco," Dusty piped up. "She looks
like she'd like walking around The Mission and poking around in all
those book stores."

"You'll have to take her up to the top of
Telegraph Hill," George told my dad. "I just saw a documentary
about how they've got wild parrots up there. Cherry-headed and blue
crown parrots, just flying around from tree to tree in the middle
of the city."

And before I even had a chance to remember
that I was firmly against leaving Los Angeles, my head was spinning
with the exciting prospect of traveling. Being out on the open
road. Nosing around from city to city, shopping for souvenirs,
sampling the local cuisine, seeing it all before school
started.

"Wait til she gets a load of the Pounders,"
Dusty muttered under his breath.

I was too caught up in the fantasy of having
hours to myself to prowl around new cities to wonder what Pounders
were.

********

"So, you're going?"

It was Tuesday night, hours before our red
eye flight to Florida departed L.A.X. Dad had dropped me off at
Allison's for dinner since it would be the last night, for who knew
how long, I would get to hang out with her. We were stretched out
on lawn chairs in her back yard watching the sun set, drinking cans
of diet soda and waiting for our toe nail polish to dry. Of course
my mind was on a loop wondering if Todd might happen to come home
early from his part-time job at the ritzy bowling alley at the
Hollywood and Highland mall even though he typically worked until
midnight.

"I'm going," I said.

"Thank God," Allison told me. "I was really
afraid you were going to miss this opportunity."

"An opportunity to be berated by my
stepmother all summer for drinking diet soda?" I rattled my can for
effect.

"No! To travel with Pound!" Allison insisted.
"I'd trade places with you in a heartbeat. You're like… a celebrity
now."

"I am totally, absolutely, one hundred
percent not a celebrity," I reminded her.

Allison smirked uncomfortably. "Uh, I wasn't
going to show you this, but you need a reality check." She stepped
inside the house and returned with a dog-eared copy of the previous
week's
InStyle
. She flipped open to the style section full
of paparazzi photos and pointed to one of me.

Me. In
InStyle
. Sitting at the Polo
Lounge eating dinner with Jill, Kelsey and my dad. I was grimacing
and picking at salad in the photo, not looking especially
glamorous. Completely unaware that I even was having my photograph
taken. Dressed like a bum with my hair damp from the pool and in a
sloppy ponytail. I made a solemn vow to myself to do in the future
exactly what Jill had told me: make more of an effort.

Chase Atwood spends some quality time with
his girls, the caption read.

"Oh my god," I whispered. "This is horrible.
People from school are going to see this."

"Uh, yeah, and they're going to be freaking
jealous!" Allison exclaimed. "Do you even know who your dad's
opening band is? Sigma! You're going to be on the road with Brice
Norris for two whole months. You guys could end up like… becoming
close personal friends."

I wasn't interested in becoming close
personal friends with Brice Norris or any of the other members of
Sigma. I was worried about my dad actually liking me once he got to
know me. I was worried about my future, and every element of my
life being up in the air. I guess I was worried about everything
that might possibly happen, and about missing home.

I have to admit, it was kind of exciting
going to the airport at four in the morning in a limousine, and
even more exciting flying on a private jet. We boarded the plane
with the other members of Dad's band, Keith, and several other
members of the touring crew, who all looked decidedly un-rock &
roll. Wade and Phoebe's son, Drew, who was Kelsey's age, squirmed
in Phoebe's lap. Tanya, Pound's publicist, was already wearing a
beige suit and heels at that insane hour of the morning, and was
calling ahead to Florida as soon as we were seated on the flight to
ensure that the tour bus would be meeting us at the airport.

It seemed like everyone on board the plane
had a job to do; there were laptops open and newspapers being read
and conversations being had about ticket sales and refunds across
Europe. All I really wanted to do was go back to sleep, but it was
too loud on board the plane to even think about that. We idled on
the tarmac waiting for a runway, and I sat back in my leather
chair, watching the sky slowly start to turn pink.

My father had told me the night before that
his lawyers had been able to secure parental custody with the city
of Los Angeles without having to go to court. He was my legal
guardian now, and was having a cleaning crew pack all of the items
in my mom's house and place them in storage. My whole life was
being put in a warehouse in Santa Monica, and I could go and claim
it when I was 18. I was leaving everything I had behind.

"It's a lot to get used to," Jill told me,
noticing how overwhelmed I looked. "But you will."

We would be visiting sixteen cities in just
nine weeks; an abridged U.S. tour across the South and Midwest,
wrapping up back in Los Angeles. It would be more traveling than I
had ever done in my whole life.

I put my headphones on and listened to
Vivaldi's composition, which somehow I would have to learn by
September, and watched the patchwork of lawns and pools that
composed Los Angeles grow tiny beneath us after we took off.

********

Now might as well be the best time to mention
that I had only kissed one boy in my whole life at that point. And
I had decided that my first kiss didn't even really count, because
the boy who kissed me never even told me his name. Treadwell
Preparatory Academy is two towns over from the St. John's Academy,
a private boarding school for boys. Every December, Treadwell hosts
a Winter Ball. The girls wear prom dresses and the St. John's boys
arrive on a very un-cool school bus wearing their dress uniforms.
The whole affair is pretty nerdy but it's all we have; there's no
such thing as prom in boarding school life.

I spent most of the entire night in the
ladies' room with my friend Riddhi adjusting the safety pins that
were holding up the lavender strapless gown I found on sale at
Nordstrom, never imagining that I would actually meet a boy
interested in me. The Treadwell gym was decorated with paper
snowflakes dipped in glitter. A DJ had set up a booth near the
doors to the locker room and for the most part, girls were dancing
on one side of the room and boys were clowning around on the
other.

And then, the impossible happened: a slow
dance came on, and a tall guy with blue eyes and thick dark hair
asked me to dance. My circle of friends was floored – none of us
had been asked to dance all night. After all, we were only
sophomores – but oddly enough, one of the cutest guys in the entire
Treadwell gymnasium was asking me to dance.

While we were dancing together I was really
nervous; I wasn't sure where to put my hands and I was afraid of
stepping on his feet. We barely even really danced, more just kind
of rocked back and forth slowly. He asked me if I was having a good
time. I said sure. That was the full extent of conversation.

And at the end of the song he planted a soft,
wet kiss on my lips. Then he walked away. The whole deed was done
before any of the chaperones even noticed.

I've replayed that kiss in my head about
fifty million times since it happened, sometimes wishing it had
been Todd Burch instead of the mystery St. John's guy. Later, I
heard that my anonymous kisser's name was Kevin and that he was
very much already someone's boyfriend; Emma Jeffries', to be exact.
There really is no such thing as a popular clique at Treadwell. At
a normal high school, the girls who are most well-liked by boys are
typically the most popular, and at Treadwell there are no boys
around to determine status. And most of the girls at Treadwell come
from well-to-do families, so money isn't even really a status
symbol; we all share the same lousy dorm rooms and wear the same
ugly uniforms.

But Emma Jeffries is the closest thing we
have to a popular girl. She's very tall, very blond, and has a set
of six-pack abs that would make an Olympic volleyball player
jealous. Her father is a retail tycoon and owns Hunter Lodge, an
international chain of fashion stores that sell sportswear. Last
year Emma modeled for the catalog and her sunburned sneer was on
its cover.

So I'm not sure if Emma Jeffries made up a
lie that Kevin only kissed me because he's a huge Pound fan and
couldn't pass up an opportunity to kiss Chase Atwood's daughter
once he heard that I was a student at Treadwell, or if he actually
kissed me for that reason. Either way, the entire event was very
unexpected and weird, and ultimately doesn't really count as a
first kiss.

Not at all.

So it would be a lie to say that finding
another boy to kiss wasn't on my mind basically… all the time. In
my opinion, my perfect boyfriend would also be a musician, perhaps
a pianist, someone who came from a very normal, traditional family.
I would take weekend leaves from school to visit his normal family
in their totally normal house in a place like New Hampshire or
Connecticut. His parents would dress like normal parents and have
real jobs and value education.

The topic of my own family would never come
up, and I would never, ever have to go into detail about finding my
mom passed out in her bikini on the couch after parties, or
catching C-list actors sneaking out our front door at dawn.

Where I was going to find this boyfriend, I
had no idea. Boys are strictly forbidden on campus grounds when
school is in session. This is not to say that sex is entirely
absent from dorm life; a lot of girls have boyfriends back at home.
Occasionally Allison and I went to parties over the summer where
there were boys, but even when we had conversations with boys, they
never led anywhere. So at fifteen, I was desperately
inexperienced.

The first time I caught a glimpse of Jake, my
first thought was definitely not that he was boyfriend material. We
had landed in Jacksonville and immediately boarded an enormous
tricked-out bus with POUND painted in cursive letters on its side.
The bus was more fabulous than any house I had ever entered; it
boasted two bathrooms with showers, both tiled with Italian marble,
and rows of bunk beds in the back. There was a large flat-screen
television already playing an episode of Dora The Explorer for
Kelsey's benefit when we boarded, and she plopped herself down on a
small pink beanbag chair as if all of this luxury was commonplace
for her.

When the bus rolled into the parking lot at
the hotel where we would be staying, I noticed a blond guy around
my age pulling a heavy cardboard box out of the trunk of a Saturn.
His hair hung straight nearly to his shoulders, and he had a deep
tan, dark enough to suggest he was a surfer. He looked a little out
of place in the parking lot of such a fancy hotel, and not to be a
snob or anything, but the Saturn was by far the least fancy car in
the lot packed with Mercedes' and Lexus'.

And that was it. It was hardly love at first
sight, but I found myself wondering who he was and if I'd see him
again.

After settling into the hotel suite we would
call home for the next three days, I witnessed what I would come to
know as the "tour routine." It was nearly nine in the morning.
Jill's traveling yogi, Herschel, a very thin bald man who was
shirtless and shoeless and wore spandex pants, arrived for Jill's
morning stretch. Dad took that as his cue to find the hotel gym for
his morning five-mile run, which he tried to always squeeze in
before traveling to the new venue in any city for light and sound
check.

"You're more than welcome to join me," he
offered on his way out of our suite in his track pants and fancy
running shoes.

"I don't have any workout clothes," I said.
In addition to not having proper exercise attire, I had never set
foot in a real gym with treadmills and weight machines before.
There were a number of things I did not have with me, and
considering that walking over to the nearest drug store to obtain
them as I would have back in Los Angeles was no longer an option, I
had no plan in place for how I was going to get them. Specifically,
my need for tampons, acne medication, and a new stick of deodorant
was becoming urgent, along with the need for a variety of other
items that I really did not want to have to ask my dad or Jill to
provide.