Days Like This (26 page)

“Look, I’m sorry,” Lissa said for
the fourteenth time in the last hour.  “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

Paige pointed the high-pressure hose
at the fender she’d just scrubbed.  “Sorry doesn’t cut it.  I’m stuck doing
this crap for the next month, your old man is blaming me for the whole debacle,
and as if that’s not enough, I’m grounded for two weeks.  No football games. 
No hanging out after school.  I can’t even go to band practice!  The guys have to
come to my house to practice.  It’s humiliating.  I’m reduced to sitting at
home watching
General Hospital
with Leroy, and standing here scrubbing
squished bug guts off the grill of a police cruiser.  I have you to thank for
that.”

“I couldn’t tell my dad the
truth!  If I did, I’d be stuck in the house until I turn thirty.”

“My heart bleeds for you.”

With her sponge, Lissa scrubbed
at a particularly stubborn stain.  “So, your stepmother is a hardass?”

“Not really.  But she made me
talk to
him
.  My father.”

“Did he ream you a new one?”

“He just gave me this lecture
about responsibility and maturity, and made sure I understood how much I’d
disappointed him.  He said he’d be expecting a different kind of behavior from
me in the future.”

“Oh, boy.  The old guilt trip.  When
will parents figure out that it never works?”

“I don’t know, it kind of did. 
This whole thing makes me look like a fool.  Even worse, a thieving fool.”

“If you’d been a little quicker
at pocketing the freaking lipstick, and if you’d looked a little less guilty,
we never would have been caught.”

“Excuse me?”  Slowly, Paige
lifted her Foster Grants and stared at Lissa from beneath them.  “You’re
blaming this on
me
?”

Lissa had the grace to blush. 
“Not entirely.  But, Jesus, Paige, I never got caught before.  Because I know
what I’m doing.  I should’ve known better than to tag-team with you.  You’re
such a goody-two-shoes.”

Paige stood there with her mouth
hanging open while Lissa went back to scrubbing.  She took a deep breath, struggled
briefly with her inner demons.  And then caved.  To hell with it.  She was
already in trouble.  What was a little more?  This time, at least it would be
worth whatever punishment she was dealt.  She shot a quick glance at Officer
McDoofus, whose idea of supervision was to sit in a lawn chair, eating a ham
sandwich and reading a paperback novel. 

She adjusted the nozzle of the hose,
picked its heavy weight off the ground and wound it around her arm a couple of
times.  “Hey, Lissa,” she said.

Crouched in front of the car,
Lissa looked up.  “What?”

“Just this.”  And Paige turned a torrent
of icy water, full-force, on her partner in crime.

***

 “What on earth am I going to do
with you?”  Her stepmother, shoulders squared and knuckles white on the
steering wheel, sounded really ticked off.

“She deserved it!” Paige said. 
“She blamed this whole mess on me!  The girls at school already hate me.  Now
they whisper and laugh at me when I walk by.  Her dad thinks I’m responsible,
because his precious baby girl can do no wrong, and I’m the big, bad city kid
who came here to corrupt his poor darling.  Well, guess what?  His poor darling
has been stealing for years!  When I told her it was unethical, you know what
she said?  That she does it all the time, and I’m just a big chicken!  Now,
she’s saying it’s my fault we got caught.  That I blew it for both of us
because I’m not good enough at being a thief.  The little witch!”

“Have you considered the
possibility that it’s time you found yourself a better class of friends?”

Paige snorted.  “That 20/20
hindsight thing’s a real bitch.”

“Biff is making a lot of noise
about this.  He’s threatening to sue.  Assault with a dangerous weapon.  Pain
and mental anguish.  Whatever other trumped-up charges he can come up with.  He
knows we have money.  His kind is really good at sniffing it out.  If he finds
himself an ambulance chaser, this could cost us a pretty penny.”

“Dangerous weapon?  Oh, please.  Lissa’s
old man is a blowhard.  He’ll rant and rave, but in the end, he won’t do
anything.  Bullies never do.”

“Your father is not going to find
this amusing.”

Her own pain and mental anguish
suddenly skyrocketed as a headache sprang to life directly behind her left
eye.  “Do we really have to tell him?”

Casey seemed to consider her
question.  “Why do the girls at school hate you?”

Heat suffused her face.  “It’s
nothing.”

“Paige,” her stepmother said, in
that parental tone of voice that meant
proceed at your own risk
.

 “Fine.  If you must know, I was
seen talking to Mikey one day in the cafeteria.  Apparently he’s the sex god of
Jackson High, so every feline claw in residence came unsheathed.  Just in case
ripping me to shreds became an option.  How dare I, one of the Great Unwashed,
have the audacity to actually speak to their god?  Especially when he has the
good sense to not even give the time of day to most of them?”

“I had no idea.  It wasn’t like
that when I was in school.  There were cliques, but for the most part, they
peacefully coexisted.”  Casey went quiet for a moment.  “Have there been any
incidents I should know about?”

“It’s not like that.  Mostly they
just pretend I’m invisible.  Or they did, until this whole shoplifting thing. 
Now they laugh behind my back.  But it’s not that big a deal.  I don’t care
about any of them.  I have friends.  I have Luke, and the guys in the band. 
And—”  She laughed, but there was little humor in it.  “I guess I probably don’t
have Lissa any more.”

“After what you did to her
today?  Probably not.  Which doesn’t appear to be any great loss.”

“I’m sorry.  Really.  I wasn’t
thinking about you having to deal with her old man or the cops.  I just got so
mad, I wanted to annihilate her.”

“You have a hot temper.  While I
understand your motivation, that doesn’t make it right, what you did.”

“It’s not like I hurt her.  It
was only water.”

“High-pressure water.  No, you
didn’t hurt her, but you could have.”

“Actually, it was pretty funny. 
It knocked her right on her—”

“Paige!  You’re not making this
any better!”

She’d never heard that tone
coming from her stepmother, and it was shocking enough to bring her back down
to earth.  “Okay.  So…I’ll just shut up now.”

“Good choice.”

When they got home, the boys were
already there, waiting in their eclectic collection of beat-up cars for band
practice.  Paige retrieved her guitar and the keys to the studio, unlocked the
barn, then helped Tobey carry in the various pieces of his drum set.  For a few
minutes, they busied themselves setting up equipment.  “Hey, Paige,” Craig
said, “where’s the nearest electrical outlet?”

“Behind that table.  You can move
it out from the wall a little.”

“Holy crap,” Corey said, “take a
look at this mixing board.  Sweet!”

“Touch a thing,” Paige said, “and
I’ll amputate your fingers.  All this stuff belongs to my old man, and he
dropped a small fortune on it.  You break anything and I’ll be homeless.”

“Hey, there’s Coke in this little
fridge,” Tobey said.  “Can we have some?”

“One each,” Paige said, wondering
if this had been a mistake.  But Casey wouldn’t let her go to Tobey’s house
while she was grounded, and it had been decent of her stepmother to offer the
studio space for their practice.  Paige didn’t want to blow it.

“So what’s with the poster?”  Tobey
stood, Coke bottle in hand, studying the huge framed photo on the wall. 

“It’s an old publicity shot.” 
Paige came over to stand beside him.  She liked the photo, liked the way it
illustrated the dynamic between her father and his two best friends.  Set
against a clean white background, they stood in a comfortable grouping. 
Danny’s arms, wrapped around his wife, held her close against his chest. 
Paige’s father, just inches away, had a forearm resting on Casey’s shoulder. 
In his free hand, he clutched the neck of an old guitar, its butt end propped
against the floor near his feet.  The photographer must have stood on a ladder
to take the shot, because all three of them were looking up into the camera
lens.  Casey’s hair had been long then, hanging all the way to her waist. 
Danny Fiore had the bluest eyes Paige had ever seen, and a single, deep dimple
in one cheek.  Rob MacKenzie had been so scrawny that his legs, encased in
scruffy jeans, looked miles long.

“I know your dad,” Tobey said,
“and your stepmother.  But who’s the other guy?”

She just looked at him.  Raised
an eyebrow.  Said, “That’s Danny Fiore.”

He looked blank.  “Who’s Danny
Fiore?”

This time, she couldn’t help
herself.  She gaped at him in incredulity.  “You’re kidding me, right?”  Tobey
shrugged, unfazed by his unfathomable ignorance.  She looked around the room. 
“Tell me he’s kidding.”

“I don’t think he’s kidding,”
Luke said.

She slowly shook her head in
disbelief.  Said to Tobey, “And you call yourself a musician?  Go home and ask
your mother.  Meanwhile, are we here to dub around, or are we going to play
some music?”

He tapped his pen impatiently
against the postcard resting on his thigh.  It was hard to find anything
meaningful to say.  He barely knew the kid, but Casey said she was reading the
cards he sent, that she seemed pleased by them, so he worked daily to come up with
something pithy to write.  His own off-the-wall brand of humor, blended with
what he hoped was paternal wisdom, was a screwed-up way to try to build a
relationship, but from this distance, it was his only option.  He probably
shouldn’t have run off and left Paige for his wife to deal with.  He should
have told Chico he wasn’t available.  The kid was, ultimately, his
responsibility, and his mother was right.  He should be home, getting to know
his daughter.  When had Mary MacKenzie ever not been right?  He’d spent decades
ignoring her advice, to his own detriment.  He’d been well into his thirties
before he finally started listening.

His mind a blank, he temporarily
gave up on the postcard.  The scenery that flashed by his window was flat and
boring, that boredom broken only by the occasional run-down farmhouse standing
solitary in the distance.  There had been a time when the road had piqued his
wanderlust.  Now, he just wanted to go home.  He’d done more than his share of
wandering, and it was getting old.  He was getting old.  It was no longer an
adventure, showering twice a week, trying to sleep slouched against the
rattling side of a moving bus, eating at random intervals dictated by the
location of the nearest highway rest stop.  Yearning for the intimacy of lying beside
his wife at night.  The playing was heaven; being onstage was close to a
religious experience.  But the trade-off wasn’t worth it.  He couldn’t imagine
going back to this kind of lifestyle on any permanent basis.

The bus hit a bump, and his
postcard fell, drifting on an air current toward the center aisle.  He reached
out to grab it, but Chico was faster.  He caught the card in mid-air, handed it
back to Rob, then plopped down beside him.  “Hey.”

“Hey.  Thanks.  Good catch.”

“So what’s with you, writing
War
and Peace
in postcard-size bites?  I’ve been watching you.  Love letters to
the little woman?”  Chico waggled heavy, dark brows.

He let out a soft laugh.  “Nah. 
They’re for my kid.”

Those dark brows went sky-high. 
“You got a kid, man?  I didn’t know you had a kid.”

“Neither did I, until a couple of
months ago.  Paige.  She’s fifteen—”

“Oh, boy.”

“—and she’s a handful.  Right
now, she’s giving Casey a real run for her money.”

“Girls,” Chico said, and shook
his head.  “You think boys are bad?  They’re nothing compared to girls.  I wish
you luck with her, my friend.  So…”  Chico studied him with curious brown
eyes.  “You and Casey.”

“What?  Does that seem so odd?”

“Hell, no.  I had my money on you
a dozen years ago.  It just took you a while to catch up.”

“Yeah.  Well.”  He glanced out
the window again, watched a broad expanse of brown farmland pass by in a blur. 
“How do you do it?  At our age, how do you keep on keeping on?  With a wife and
kids at home, doesn’t the road get to you?”

Chico leaned back on his tailbone
and crossed his ankles.  “Let me tell you.  It’s called paying the rent.  It’s
how we make our living.  My wife and kids?  Three hundred days a year on the
road keeps a roof over their heads and food in their bellies.  We all have
different journeys in life, MacKenzie, and not all of us made it big like you
did.  Most of us actually have to work for a living.”

He opened his mouth to respond,
but again, Chico was quicker.  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.  You’ve
earned everything you have.  I’m just stating facts.  You made it to a level in
music that I can only dream about.  And being on the road so much is a hardship
in some ways.  But I’m a musician.  I may not be rich, I may not be famous, but
by God, I’m making a living doing what I love.  And in my book, that makes me a
rich man.”

“You want to hear something
really dicey?  You say I’ve earned everything I have, but the truth is, there’s
only one reason why I got to where I got:  Danny Fiore.”

“Not true.  Your talent outshines
all of us.”

“It is true, and here’s why.”  He
shifted position, stretched out his legs as far as the cramped seating would
allow.  “I’ve never told this to anyone before, and I’d appreciate it if you
didn’t repeat it.  Drew Lawrence—the Ariel Records executive who signed
Danny—told me this a couple of years ago.  It blew me away, because I had no
idea.  I’ve never said a thing about it to Casey, and I don’t think she knows,
either.  But when Drew offered Danny that record contract—”  He met Chico’s dark
eyes.  “Danny told him it was a no-go unless we signed together.  He wasn’t
doing it unless he could take me along.”