Rockoholic (12 page)

I bend down and pick it up. “This is his. It’s Jackson’s key pendant.”

“Are you sure?” says Mac, looking awake for the first time this morning.

“Yeah, definitely. I remember seeing it on him, Mac. Backstage. This is his, I know it is.”

Mac plucks a tennis ball out of his pocket and bounces it on the ground in front of Alfie, who jumps up and eagerly snatches it out of the air. And then Mac’s all over him like a rash. “Good boy, good boy, Alf,” he says, ruffling his back.

I hold the key between my finger and thumb. “God he’s good,” I say, looking at Alfie.

“Told you. He’s ex-police. Didn’t make it through his training, but he’s good enough for us. He’s probably taken us to the exact same places where Jackson’s been since he left the pub.”

“He must be scared. If he’s been to all those places, imagine how jittery he must be.”

“I know,” says Mac. “We’re onto something now; we’ve got to keep looking.”

We come to the walkway across the River Nuff, which leads to the library and the parking lot at the back of the Playhouse. Alfie leads Mac over it and to the right, along the bridleway toward the old stone bridge, which crosses the river a little farther down. That’s when the grip of dread clenches me like King Kong’s fist. Alfie is taking us along the river. What if he takes us down the bank? What if he takes us to a body? What if Jackson’s dead? Oh God, oh God, oh God.

And I can’t breathe and my chest is tight and I’m walking behind the dog and I know it, I know we’re going to find Jackson with his face all puffy and bloated. And it’s going to be my fault. It’s going to be like finding Grandad all over again, only a million times worse, because when Grandad died, there was only me and Mac who really cared. This time, there’s going to be photographers and journalists, not to mention hundreds of thousands of fans giving a whole big shit about this. It’ll be the end of everything. My hot breath hits the cold air faster and faster. For the first time in ages I don’t reach for the moon rock. I grip Jackson’s key instead and I pray.

But then I see a man, wearing a white T-shirt, sitting on top of the stone bridge directly opposite the walkway. Sitting on the bridge, like he’s going to jump into the greeny-brown water below any second now. Mac and Alfie have carried on down the walkway.

“Wait!” I call after them, still watching the figure on the bridge. He’s spinning an empty glass bottle in his palm. “That’s him,” I say to Mac. “That’s Jackson. And the vodka bottle.”

“Oh God,” says Mac, coming back toward me on the walkway, dragging Alfie behind him while Alfie’s pulling the other way. “The empty vodka bottle. What is it with him and bridges?”

“I think he’s going to jump.”

“You can’t kill yourself, jumping in there,” says Mac, almost laughing. “The bridge isn’t high enough. And the water’s only two feet deep.”

“I’ll handle this, OK?” I tell him, and begin walking down the rest of the path toward the bridleway that runs along the river at the side of the library.

“What are you going to say to him?” says Mac. I turn around and shrug, but keep walking.

“It’s OK, Mac. I know what I’m doing.”

I don’t know what I’m doing, as usual. I don’t have a single clue what I’m going to say. I’ve seen it in movies. People on building ledges. People on bridges. People with guns against their heads. What does the negotiator say to stop them from jumping or pulling the trigger? I can’t think straight. I’m not in a movie and I’m not an actor. I’m on a tiny stone bridge across the River Nuff in a tiny market town in Somerset and I’m sixteen years old. What the hell do I know?

I stand on the bridge, watching him for the longest time, like he’s a figure in a glass case at a museum. A glass case teetering on the edge about to shatter into more pieces than I can imagine. Something quacks on the bank.

“Jackson?” I say. “I’m Jody.”

He looks at me, then snaps his head to look back down at the water. “Where. Am. I?”

“Nuffing-on-the-Wold.”

“Where the hell is that?” He rolls the empty vodka bottle along the wall next to him.

“Somerset. In England. Y-y-you did a gig last night, at the Cardiff Arena. You were amazing . . . from what I saw.”

“Where’d Cardiff Arena go?”

“It’s . . . in Cardiff.”

“Where’d Cardiff go?!”

“Um, why don’t you come back off the bridge and we can talk.”

“No.” He bangs his fist down on the stone wall with every syllable. “I don’t know where I am, I don’t know what I’m doing here, why I’m not on the bus, I should be on the bus. . . .”

“The tour bus?”

He sniffs. He’s crying! Then he stops crying and shouts. “Where’s the goddamn bus?!”

I step forward. “Please, just come back off there and —”

“No, get away from me.”

“I’ll take you back to Cardiff, or you could give me Frank’s number. . . .”

“No, Jesus, Grohman’ll kill me!” He’s laughing now. “I can’t go back. We should be in Venice . . . no, Vienna, Verona. Some ‘V’ place.”

“But you just said you wanted to go back. . . .”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, I can’t go back, I can’t go back.”

“OK, OK, so . . . what can I do, then?”

“I don’t know. I can’t go back. Grohman’ll kill me.”

“He’s not going to kill you. I think the media or your fans would have something to say about that. Or the press. He can’t go around killing his —”

“You don’t know Grohman.”

I take another step toward him. I hold the key out by its string. “You dropped this.”

He snaps his head around. His eyes widen. “Gimme that!” I move toward him until the key is within his reach and he snatches it back. “Jesus,” he mutters as he puts the black string back over his neck and looks down at the key. He kisses it.

“I’m sorry I’ve put you through all this,” I tell him. He’s still kissing the key. “It’s just . . . last night, after the show, you came backstage, and I met you. I didn’t mean to kidnap you. I saw your manager talking to you. You looked really sad. You must have thought I had a knife but . . .”

“I don’t remember anything!” Jackson shouts. He draws his knees up to his chest so he is in an even more wobbly rocking position on the edge of the bridge. I can’t catch my breath. He chants through chattering teeth, “I don’t know where I am, I don’t know how I got here, I don’t know where my blackberries are. . . .”

“You have more than one BlackBerry? They must have been in your jacket or jeans.”

“And where are they?”

“You threw them off the Severn Bridge.”

“What? When?”

“Last night. Coming back from Cardiff.”

“Last night when you were kidnapping me?”

“Well, yeah . . .”

“And why would I do that?” His face is wild. He grips the hair on both sides of his head so he’s not holding on to the bridge at all now. “Why would I throw all my clothes over a bridge, huh?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Of course I don’t remember, that’s why I’m asking you, you frickin’ moron!”

I stutter. “I-I don’t know why you did it, you just did it. You kept screaming that something was on you and you had to get it off.”

He stops, turns back to the river. “Yeah . . . I do that sometimes.”

“Why do you do that?” He twizzles the bottle. “You weren’t . . . on something, were you?”

“I’ve forgotten what it’s like
not
to be on something.” He shoots me a look. “You think I put on shows like that ’cause I get such a natural kick out of it? I’m tired, OK? I’m tired of going to every corner of the globe and the only thing that changes is the wallpaper in my hotel room. Tour bus, hotel, venue, tour bus, hotel, venue, tour bus, hotel, venue. Round and round we go. If I wasn’t tweaked every night, d’you think I’d put up with that shit? Go to this bridge place and get my stuff.” He ushers me away like I’m a moth flapping around his halo.

“No,” I say.

His face lurches toward me. “You will or I’ll —”

“I can’t get your clothes back. They’re gone. Floating in the Bristol Channel by now. I know this must be really difficult for you to understand and I really am sorry.”

He flings the bottle down into the water. I don’t hear it splash below cos my heart’s banging too much in my ears. “What do you care, you . . . kidnapper.” He points at the water. His finger shakes. “That’s what my life is now. That’s all I’m good for.” He sniffs. “Grohman won’t let me get away — I’m his ‘investment.’” He points his hard white finger at me. “He knows people. He knows people who’ll find me and kill me. He’s a complete nut ball.”

“You’re not exactly in a position to talk,” I say quietly, but he doesn’t hear.

“Bet the media are all over this. I’m one of their favorite targets.” He throws me a look. “The paparazzi are after me. Always. There’ll be pictures, photos.”

“I’m sorry I’ve put you through this. I’d banged my head. I really wasn’t thinking straight. I just wanted to spend some time with you. I thought it would be, I don’t know, fun . . . or something.”

“
FUN?
Do you know what you’ve done? Who the
HELL
do you think you
ARE
?”

“I’m just . . . a fan.”

“Fan? Don’t talk to me about fans! Stupid bitches. I see them outside the shows — fat, ugly lesbians, kidding themselves they’re hot for me . . .”

“What? You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“. . . thinking if they put on enough eyeliner I’ll see them in the crowd and I’ll be hot for them. ‘Oh, Jackson, I’m a lost soul, too.’ Bullshit. Talking to me like they know me from way back, just ’cause they once read a book I’d read. Whoop-de-fuckin’-do . . .”

Tears drop down my cheeks. His voice rings around my head like a roulette ball. I’m still, like a sponge, sucking in every insult for every fan who’s ever waited all day or all night in the cold. Who’s saved up all their pocket money just to buy his album. Who’s kissed his posters at night. Who’s run away from home because of one of
his
concerts. He keeps on going, hammer blow by hammer blow, smashing down the perfect little house of love we’ve all built.

“. . . just because they think that if they buy that key ring or that Regulators T-shirt, then they’ve got a little piece of Jackson to show off to all their friends. Just ’cause ya ain’t got boyfriends, you buy into our crap thinking that somehow
we’re
your boyfriends.”

I bite my lip to stop the sob escaping but it doesn’t help. I’m spluttering all over the place. “Y-you do care about the fans,” I say, tasting salt water on my lip and licking it away. “You g-gave me my rock back. Last night. At the concert. You told off th-that security guy.”

“What?”

“I lost my rock. You g-gave it back and you shouted at a security guy who stood on my —”

“I probably just wanted to shout at a security guy, that’s all. I hate those guys. And before you say ‘If it wasn’t for us fans’ and gimme all that shit, let me tell you something, Josie —”

“Jody,” I squeak, but he doesn’t hear.

“— there’ll always be stupid fan girls, buying all the crap we put out, putting up our posters. Listening to our records, ’cause ya know what?” He glares at me. I don’t even recognize him anymore. He is wild-eyed and sour. He is still the madman. He’s just ditched his straitjacket.

“You’re all the same. Sheep. Fat sheep, too.” He looks at me, down to my feet, and up to my face and laughs evilly like a Bond villain. “And I’ve been over feeding you bitches for too fucking long.”

My mouth hangs open. My sponge has just been squeezed out. I don’t think. I don’t even breathe. I take one step toward him and push him off the bridge.

“I don’t want any more chemo. Enough enough enough. It just makes me even more tired and even more old,”
Grandad once told me. He’d just tipped his tea tray onto the carpet and I was cleaning it up.
“I’m going out with a bang, Jody. I’m taking a different road out of here.”

My grandad hated being a burden on us as he got weaker. He wasn’t meant to be weak. Inside, he was a fireball of energy and laughter — outside he was shrinking, drying up. Turning to dust. After his diagnosis, the color started running out of our house. When he’d gone, he’d pulled the plug right out. My grandad liked The Regulators. He liked the fact that their
The Punk, The Priest . . .
album was a concept album and told the story, in songs, of four men who escape Heaven in order to enter Hell. I used to show him my magazines, the pictures of Jackson taking his trash out or running away from hordes of screaming girls.

“They can’t leave them alone for a bloody second, can they?”
I remember him saying, as he went on this long tirade about the paparazzi and their treatment of celebrities.
“It’s no bloody wonder they want to kill themselves, some of them. It’s no bloody wonder that poor princess got hounded to her death. And poor Michael Jackson and all his problems. It’s not right, it’s not bloody right. Who’s looking after these people for God’s sake?”

“You were supposed to be talking him
out
of jumping, not pushing him in!” Mac shouts as he and Alfie thunder up the bridge to where I’m standing.

“I just . . . saw red. He called me fat. He said . . .” Mac runs to the side of the bridge and cranes his neck over. I can’t go near, I can just hear the splashing about and shouting and ducks flapping below. I’m welded to the spot. “Is he dead?”