Ace of Spades (2 page)

         
In spite of her misgivings, Melody texted her vote for Union Jack and pressed
send.

         
It was quite possibly the longest hour of her life. Melody could only imagine
how Jackson felt, sitting back stage and waiting for the verdict. She wished
she could be with him, but he didn’t need her right then. He had his band.

         
The voting hour passed and the cameras rolled. The show’s theme music played
again and the stage lights danced. David came back to center stage, holding a
crisp white envelope. The three groups resumed their positions on stage, bathed
in bright white flood lights.

         
“Welcome back to You’ve Got It. The results are in. Two groups will go home.
One will win the recording contract with Rebel Records.  Our celebrity
judges have shared their thoughts, but ultimately, the decision lies with you,
America. And you have spoken.”

         
David tore the envelope open and withdrew the card inside with a dramatic
flourish. Melody held her breath with the collective audience.
Willing it to be Jackson.
Willing it not
to be Jackson.
Okay, so she couldn’t decide what would be worse, him
losing and being disappointed or her losing him to success.

         
“Receiving seventy-three percent of your votes, this year’s winner of You’ve
Got It is…”

         
Melody swore she’d make that man swallow his microphone if he dragged it out
much longer. Or heaven
forbid,
went to a commercial
break.

         
“…Union
Jaaaaaaaaaack
!”

Chapter 3

Three of
a kind

One year later

         
“What’s this I hear about you hiding in your room for the rest of your life?” A
familiar male voice teased through the door.

Melody sat
up on her bed, still clutching her pillow to her chest, and swiped at her
puffy, tearstained cheeks. No way was Jackson back yet. His band, Union Jack,
was supposed to still be on tour for another week or so she’d thought. Melody
felt her heart lift at the thought of having her partner in crime back, even If
just for a little while.

“I like
it in here,” she called back, fighting back a smile. “It’s comfy and my books
make great company.”

Jackson
popped his head through the door, a sham look of affront on his handsome face.
He was growing up too fast, looking more like a man and less like the boy she’d
known. “But do they give better hugs than I do?”

“Never,”
Melody vowed, surrendering to the grin Jackson so easily coerced out of her. He
crossed the space between them to scoop her up in his arms. Melody squawked in
protest when he squeezed her a little too hard against his chest.

“I’ve
missed you,
Melly
-Belly,” Jackson whispered against
her hair.

“I’ve
missed you too,” Mel said, resting her head on his shoulder. His shoulders were
broader than she remembered, his chest more muscled. His cologne was a heady,
masculine scent that tickled her nose.

“So why
have you cordoned yourself off in your room, hugging your pillow and listening
to crappy boy band love songs?”

“You
mean like yours?” Melody laughed.

“No,” he
grinned, “mine are fabulous.
Everyone else’s suck.”

“Agreed.”

“So, why
the shitty music then?”
He asked, dipping his chin down to study
her.

“I’ve had
a bad day,” she said, burrowing her nose into his delicious-smelling shirt.

Jackson
tipped her chin up with his finger and cocked a dark brow at her in question.

“Okay, a
bad week,” she admitted.

“Who do
I need to kill?”

Melody
sighed.
“No one.
Really it’s not a big deal. Let’s
talk about something else.

“How was
Europe? Do French girls really not shave? Can teenagers really drink beer
legally?”

“Uh-uh.
Nice try,” he laughed. “But you are not getting out of it that easy, so just
tell
me what’s going on.”

Rolling
her eyes, Melody grumbled, “You are such a pain.”

“Just
answer the question.”

“Fine,”
she huffed. “You remember Jason
Brimhall
?”

Jackson
nodded.
“Football player, very cool,
very
dumb.”

“Well, I’ve
had this crush on him forever, so I asked him to the Sweethearts’ Dance,” she
said, pausing for a big breath before adding quickly, “He said he’s rather go
alone than go with a fat, ugly nerd like me.”

“He did?”

Melody
nodded sadly against his chest. “Yes, he did. How am I ever going to get my
first kiss if I can’t even get a boy to go out with me? I’m going to die a
virgin,” she cried.

Jackson
chuckled. “You’re fifteen years old, Mel, not sixty. Your first kiss will come,
and then
your
second, and so on. Don’t be in such a
hurry to grow up.”

“Oh,
like you have room to talk,” Melody argued, backing up on her knees to glare at
him. “I’ve heard about you and that Disney star,
Cami
Gilbert.”

Holding
his hands out in front of him as though she might try to beat him with a
pillow, Jackson laughed.
“Easy there, little firecracker.
We’re talking about your first kiss here, not mine.”

Melody
looked at him through wide eyes. “What was yours like?”

“Sloppy
and overrated,” Jackson confessed. “I didn’t know what to do with my tongue and
neither did she. It felt like she was trying to choke me with a slug.”

“Yuck.”

“Yeah,”
Jackson agreed, burying his hands in his pockets. “The point is, Mel, you don’t
want your first kiss to be with some dumb jerk like Jason
Brimhall
.
You want it to be with someone special, someone who realizes how beautiful you
are.”

“That’s
it. I
am
going to die a virgin,” she wailed, flopping onto her back on
the bed.

“No,”
Jackson argued. “You’re just going to be like a fine wine and get better with
age.”

Melody scowled
at him. “What do you know about fine wine?”

A
mischievous grin spread across Jackson’s face. “I may have snuck a taste in
while we were in Europe.”

“
Now
will you tell me about Europe?” she wheedled.

“No,” Jackson
said with a sly grin. “I want to perform an experiment first.”

“Oh,
what is it?” Melody asked, brightening at the idea.

“A
surprise,” he said, rising to his feet. “Stand up.”

Wrinkling
her forehead, Melody studied him. His face was a blank slate. “Okay.”

Her feet
squished into the plush of the carpet as she stepped off her bed. Standing in
front of him, she tipped her head to the side and waited. Jackson held his hand
out to her.

“Come
here.”

Melody
obeyed, sliding her hand in his and stepping closer to him. His callused
fingers closed around hers, enveloping her hand in his warmth. He was taller
than the last time she’d seem him. His chin reached the level of her eyebrows
already. If that boy kept growing, he’d be a very tall man. His breath tickled
her face as he spoke again.

“Close
your eyes.”

Obediently
squeezing her eyes shut, Melody tried to relax and open her other senses. She
inhaled the masculine scent of him, something by Polo, if she remembered
correctly. He was so solid and male, standing there in front of her.
Her best friend, her rock.

Fingertips
callused from guitar strings grazed her chin, tipping her face up. His touch,
combined with his closeness made her heart flutter in her chest. Something full
and soft brushed her lips, the slightest hint of a touch.
His
lips.
Jackson had kissed her! Before she could open her eyes, his
lips were pressed against hers again, his mouth moving tenderly over her own.

As
quickly as it came, the sensation was gone. With a sigh, Melody stepped back
and opened her eyes. Jackson grinned at her, his blue eyes crackling with
electricity.

“Now you
can’t throw your first kiss away on some jerk
who
doesn’t care about you.”

Mel
gaped at him in silence.  There were no words.

“Oh, and
Mel?”
Jackson whispered.

“Yes?”
Melody couldn’t believe how breathless her voice came out.

“Never
let anyone tell you you’re not beautiful. If they don’t know you’re beautiful,
it’s because they’re just too blind to see it.”

He
closed her hanging jaw with his pointer finger, smiled softly, and turned on
his heel. Mel watched him leave, her pulse thundering in her ears and his words
echoing in her mind.

A

One week later

         
“Hey, Mel, you might want to take a look at this,” Melody’s mother called from
the kitchen, an odd edge to her voice Mel had never heard before.

         
“What’s up, Mom? I’ve got to hurry or I’ll be late for school,” Melody shouted
back from her bedroom.

         
“School can wait, honey. Come here.”

         
Melody frowned at her reflection in the mirror and headed toward her mother.

         
“What could possibly be more important than school?” she mumbled as she stepped
into the kitchen.

         
As usual, her mother sat at the kitchen table in her night gown, reading the
paper over her morning coffee. Her face was white as a sheet. The sight made
Mel uneasy.

         
Turning the front page of the paper, her mom held it out for her inspection. “This.”

         
“Oh, my—,” Melody slapped a hand over her mouth, her heart sinking through her
feet to the floor. “There’s no way.”

         
Splashed across the front page of the San Diego Times was a full color picture
of Jackson, spattered in dried blood, being led away by police officers, his
hands in cuffs. The caption read ‘Teen heartthrob charged with murder.’

         
Melody ripped the paper from her mother’s hands and began to furiously scan the
article.

         
‘Friday, October fifteenth, dispatch received a nine-one-one call at one
thirty-two am from the Malibu residence of Mary
Blackner
-Ward.
According to police reports, Jackson
Blackner
,
sixteen, reported to dispatch that his step-father, William Ward, fifty-one,
had been stabbed several times and required medical assistance.

         
Police and emergency medical services arrived on scene to find Ward dead,
stabbed seventeen times in the chest and abdomen with a knife from the family’s
kitchen. Taken into custody early this morning,
Blackner
may face first degree murder charges.’

         
The article continued with a summary of Jackson’s life, detailing his rise to
stardom via the talent show, ‘You’ve Got It,’ and his boy bands’ screaming
success over the past year. A brief tribute to Ward followed, painting him as a
beacon of family values and community.

         
The page fell from her hands, fluttering to the floor. “Mom, I have to see him.”

         
“Well, you’re not driving up to LA by yourself. You just got your license,” her
mother said, her face grim.

         
“Which means you’re going to take me?” Melody asked, watching her mother’s face
with hope.

         
“Of course I will, honey,” her mother said with a wan smile. “I love Jackson
more than you do.”

         
Melody rolled her eyes. “I know you do. I thought I’d die of embarrassment at his
concert when you showed up in an ‘I HEART Jackson’ t-shirt.”

         
“Hey, I wear my heart on my sleeve,” her mother tossed over her shoulder,
heading into her bedroom to change clothes.

         
“Actually, it was written in big bold letters across your boobs,” Mel argued
half heartedly, her focus still on the newspaper in her hand.  Jackson
couldn’t have stabbed his stepfather. He wouldn’t have. Not the boy she knew.

         
“Details.”

         
Melody would’ve laughed at their banter under normal circumstances. But these
were far from normal. She paced the kitchen floor, a bundle of nervous energy
as she silently willed her mother to hurry up.

         
Within ten minutes they’d piled into their old Honda and headed north. The
drawn out car ride was painful. Melody vibrated with impatience, desperate to
get to Jackson. She needed to see him, talk to him, and know he was okay. The
surrounding traffic felt no such urgency. Resisting the urge to lean over her
mother’s lap to lay on the car’s horn, she hugged herself and tried to ignore
her sweaty palms and pounding heartbeat.

         
Her body had kicked in to fight or flight mode. The only problem was -- it was
Jackson in trouble, not her. She couldn’t run away from his problem and she
didn’t know how to fight it for him.