The Rock Star's Daughter (19 page)

When we climbed aboard the bus, Wade boarded
after Jill and commented upon taking a good look at her behind,
"There's a nice view from down here."

"Wade, seriously, shut your goddamn mouth,"
Jill snapped ferociously over her shoulder. I had never heard Jill
say a curse word before. I cringed as if I were in trouble.

"Yeah, Wade, you pig," snarled Phoebe, Wade's
wife, from behind him.

Wade grimaced. "Geez. What's gotten into the
womenfolk?"

It was insanely hot even at 9 AM when the
staff of Six Flags enthusiastically greeted us in the parking lot
and opened the gates of the park to us. We were joined by six buses
of kids from the Catalyst Foundation, their parents and a handful
of doctors. The kids from this particular foundation were all
suffering from terminal diseases. Many were bald and wore baseball
caps and sun block. Just after entering the park, the band members
posed for pictures with kids who wanted to meet them. Actually, it
seemed like mostly the kids' mothers wanted to meet my dad and the
band, but photographers from a variety of magazines and a video
crew from a nightly gossip show patiently snapped pics of everyone
who asked.

Most of the kids appeared to be much younger
than me. The crowd began to disperse and kids ran off toward rides
in small bunches, eager to take advantage of a day at the amusement
park with no lines. In all the commotion of entering the gates and
the organization of picture-taking, I had lost sight of Jill and
Kelsey, and spun around, looking for them.

I felt a tap on my shoulder, and turned to
see a girl who appeared to be a little younger than me, maybe
twelve or thirteen, holding a pad of paper.

"Are you Taylor Atwood?" the girl asked.

"I'm Taylor Beauforte," I corrected her. "But
Chase Atwood is my dad."

"Could I have your autograph?"

The girl asking for my signature was
painfully thin, and had dark circles beneath her eyes. She was
wearing a patterned scarf, a Pucci knock-off, tied over her head,
and I presumed she was either bald or balding beneath it. To say
that I was moved that this girl would think enough of me to ask for
my autograph was an understatement. I could barely open my mouth to
reply to her for fear that I was going to choke up.

"Why would you want my autograph?" I asked
her earnestly. "I'm just a girl whose dad is a singer in a
band."

"I love your style," the girl told me. "I
read all about you in
Teen Image
. You go to the same
boarding school as my cousin."

I accepted the pad of paper and pen from her
and was instantly curious. "Who's your cousin?"

"Emma Jeffries," the girl told me. "Do you
know her?"

My heart nearly stopped. Of all the dumb and
random coincidences, I could not believe that Emma Jeffries' sick
cousin was asking me for my autograph a world away from the
Treadwell campus. It also occurred to me that no matter how wealthy
the Jeffries family was, here was this young girl dying from a
terrible disease, and her family's wealth was of little use to her.
It didn't make her any different from the other kids at the park
that day. Illness wasn't intimidated by money.

"Of course I know her," I said, deciding to
embellish a little for the benefit of this sweet girl. "She's so
beautiful and popular. Everyone loves her."

Feeling a little self-conscious, I wrote, "To
Courtney, all the best! Love, Taylor," on the girl's note pad and
handed it back to her. She was thrilled and dashed off to show it
to her mother, who watched from a few feet away from behind Dolce
& Gabbana sunglasses.

"That was very lovely of you, Taylor," Jill
complimented me, taking me by surprise. I had no idea she had been
nearby.

She put an arm around me to hug me, and
kissed me on my temple.

Kind of, in a weird way, like a mom would
have done.

By noon I had ridden every ride I dared to
ride, and had taken refuge by myself in a stall on the ferris
wheel, where I vowed to remain until sundown, or at least until I
had to go to the bathroom. High, so high above the rest of the
theme park, I basked in the peace of being above the roaring rock
music blared out by the roller coasters and the computerized sounds
of the game booths where the band members were winning stuffed
animals for the Catalyst kids. I let my thoughts drift to Jake.
This entire day would have been so different if he had been invited
to join.

I wondered where he was, and if he was
thinking about me at all. There was still an eminent possibility
that he and Karina had left the tour for good and that I'd never
see him again. It would have been impossible for me to have asked
anyone on the crew what had become of him, and if he was still
selling t-shirts. I hadn't been allowed to attend many shows since
my grounding, and in an urban environment like Chicago it was not
an option to visually comb a parking lot for a gold Saturn. Parking
for the hotel was underground, and there were no circumstances
under which I could venture down to the parking garage without
getting myself into a heap of trouble.

My thoughts grew darker in the stagnant, hot
summer sky, where even the breeze generated by the movement of the
ferris wheel wasn't cooling me off. If Jake and his mom had left
the tour, there was a great likelihood that he had a girlfriend
back at home in Detroit. He was a really good-looking guy, and I
knew it was naïve of me to think there weren't girls after him back
in his own town. My position was maddening; I couldn't plan for any
kind of future with him, and couldn't undo the past events that had
led up to my obsession with him.

When I finally ran into my father and Jill
again, they were waiting in line with Dusty and a bunch of doctors
from the charity for a ride called X-Force. This particular ride
was nothing more than a circular room that spun rapidly and then
the floor dropped, but because the riders were spinning, they would
stick to the walls of the room rather than fall. Generally any
rides scarier than carousels terrify me, and this was no
exception.

"Come on, Taylor," my dad summoned me from
the line.

"No thanks," I said, intent on my mission to
park myself on the back of a bobbing plaster horse on the
double-decker merry-go-round for the last two hours of our theme
park adventure.

"Aw, come on, Taylor, it'll be fun," Jill
promised me.

I could hear the screams of terror coming
from inside the ride from its current occupants.

"Yeah, real fun," I retorted
sarcastically.

"Don't be a chicken, Taylor," Dusty heckled
me. "Even Kelsey's coming on."

To my annoyance, he wasn't kidding. Kelsey
was in line between my father and Jill, waving at me. I rolled my
eyes and joined them.

Inside the circular room, it smelled terrible
and was humid despite its powerful air conditioning. It stank like
old gym shoes and mildew. I began to feel dizzy before the door
even closed to commence the ride experience, and said a swift
prayer that I wouldn't become nauseous as I stepped back and leaned
against the wall, following the ride conductor's instructions.

The lights in the room were lowered and the
conductor told us to hang on.

"That's right, kids, hang on!" Dusty yelled
in a voice intended to scare us all.

The room began spinning, slowly at first, and
then it picked up pace. My body flattened against the wall behind
me and I barely noticed when the floor dropped. I was completely
focused on trying not to vomit. All of the spinning, and the
humidity, and the stench, were resulting in a spiraling sensation
in my stomach.

And then, as the floor came back upward to
meet our feet, and the ride slowed to a stop, I leaned forward and
threw up.

"Oh, Taylor!" Jill exclaimed. She had a wad
of napkins pulled out of her purse for me to wipe my mouth
instantly.

"Ew," Kelsey whined.

"I told you I didn't like this kind of ride,"
I yelled in no particular direction.

Two theme park staffers, both teenage boys
not much older than me, appeared as the rest of the riders exited
the ride down the ramp that led back outside. Both were kind of
cute, and I was mortified.

"Don't worry, we'll clean it up," they
assured Jill, who had dropped to her knees in an effort to clean up
my mess with her stash of handi-wipes and napkins. "It happens all
the time."

My dad joked as we stepped off the ride and
back out into the unbearable heat outside, "A whole theme park full
of terminally ill kids, and my healthy kid is the one who vomits on
a ride that's not even scary."

"Chase," Jill gently warned him.

"That's not funny, Dad," I told him, meaning
it. "It smelled really bad in there. I couldn't help it."

He threw his arm playfully around my
shoulders. "Aw, Taylor. It's fine. It's not a day at the amusement
park until someone pops their cookies. Don't be a party
pooper."

"I'm not being a party pooper!" I roared. "I
didn't even want to come on this stupid outing and now you're
making fun of me!"

My father's joking demeanor disappeared and
he stopped in his tracks and cornered me. "Taylor, this is a very
important day in the lives of all the children here today, and I'd
appreciate it if you could mind your manners a little bit. I don't
know what's gotten under your skin lately but I'll tell you what,
little lady, I don't like it."

I glared at him. If looks could kill, he'd
have dropped dead on the spot. "You know perfectly well what's
under my skin, Dad."

"Taylor," Jill said in a perky voice to
diffuse the situation, "let's go get you a cold soda to calm your
stomach down, OK?"

We walked with Kelsey briskly to a beverage
kiosk, where a woman dressed like a pioneer gave me an orange soda.
I chugged it in silence, ignoring Jill, whose hands were on her
hips as she waited for me to acknowledge her.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on
with you and your dad?" she asked after I had tossed the paper cup
in a nearby trash can.

I shrugged. "There's nothing going on between
me and him. Are you going to tell me what's going on between you
and him?"

"Chase and I always go through rough patches
when we're on tours," she said matter-of-factly. "It's nothing to
be concerned about."

The next day, on the road to Des Moines, my
father and Tanya were reviewing expenses from the last two weeks.
When I looked up from The Scarlett Letter¸from my summer reading
list, I saw a stack of receipts in his lap, and next to him, Tanya
clicking away at her laptop.

"What in the hell is this one hundred and
thirty-five dollar charge for spa services?" my father muttered,
reviewing the receipt from the hotel.

"I had a manicure," I said nonchalantly,
waving my glossy finger nails at him.

"For a hundred and thirty-five dollars, I
hope they dipped your hand in liquid gold," he continued. "What
kind of a manicure was it? I don't even see any paint on your
nails."

"A French manicure," I informed him. "To look
natural."

"One hundred and thirty-five dollars for your
nails to look natural?"

"Chase," Jill interrupted. "She's taking an
interest in her appearance. Leave her alone."

So much for my indulgence going unnoticed. My
cheeks burned as I stuck my nose back into my book. Allison
couldn't have been more wrong if she honestly thought I was living
the high life.

When the bus pulled into the parking lot of
the hotel in Des Moines, I nearly had a heart attack. There, parked
in the first row of the lot, closest to the front doors, was a gold
Saturn with Michigan plates. Karina and Jake were still on tour
with us!

I was completely unable to concentrate the
entire day and sat listlessly at the window of my hotel room, my
eyes darting between my summer reading and the gold car. Finally,
as the afternoon dragged itself into evening and the band was
heading off to the arena for sound check, I saw a tall lanky guy
with blond hair approach the Saturn. He turned toward the hotel to
look upward at the windows, and of course it was Jake. He seemed to
be looking at the windows for something, and then it occurred to me
that he might be looking for me.

I knocked on my window lightly and waved. It
caught his attention, and he broke into a huge grin and waved back.
He began trying to convey something with elaborate sign language,
but it was lost on me. He had never looked better. I had never
wanted to see him more.

CHAPTER
12

We still had three more cities after the show
in Des Moines to cross off the list before we would arrive in
Detroit. St. Paul, Madison, and a radio station benefit concert in
Milwaukee. I wanted to hit a fast forward button on my own life to
skip ahead until we arrived in Detroit.

Our stay in Iowa was brief – just two days;
one to set up, one to perform. The drive to Minnesota was flat and
green, and throughout Iowa I was astonished at how much an entire
state can smell like manure.

"Ah, it cleanses the lungs, doesn't it?" Wade
exclaimed in reference to the lingering smell.

That evening, when we checked out our hotel
in St. Paul, Jill stuck her head in the room I was sharing with
Kelsey as I was digging through my suitcase for clean pajamas.
Kelsey was playing an elaborate game of pretend on her side of the
room with her teddy bear, which she was commanding to act as a
rabbit.

"Taylor? I have kind of a surprise for you,"
she said.

Her tone frightened me a little. She sounded
like she was afraid to tell me what the surprise was, which was an
indication to me that it probably wasn't something I was going to
like.

"OK," I said gingerly.

Jill sat down on the edge of my bed. "Your
grandparents left a message with the front desk. They'd very much
like to have dinner with you this evening."