Fan Girl (2 page)

Later that night, I slowly push open my front door, trying in vain to prevent it from squeaking. It’s midnight, and my curfew is ten, so I know I’m in for it. I just wish I could have stayed the night with Stacie. It would have made things so much easier. I get one hand on the banister and one foot on the stairs, when a table lamp in the living room suddenly lights up.

It’s the formal living room, so no one is really allowed to sit in there. I snap my head in that direction, and there is a person sitting in the end chair next to the table. The limited light casts shadows on her sunken cheeks and highlights her protruding collar bone. I try not to recoil. “Mother! Jesus Christ,” I breathe out as I try to not have a heart attack.

She menacingly stands, as her brown eyes glare at me. “Who do you think you are, Alaina Dawson Pierce?” I look around the room, trying not to laugh, because I’m pretty sure her question was rhetorical.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you!” she screeches, making me jump. My mother begins to glide around the room in her silk robe, looking like a fair imitation of a walking corpse.

I wrap both hands around the railing to prevent myself from backing away from her. “I’m your daughter, Mother,” I try to say in as soothing a voice as I can muster.

Mother slowly shakes her head, and I half expect it to start rotating on her shoulders. “You must think you’re a Dawson. Only your father’s hippy parents would raise a child to be so disrespectful. They would probably provide you with your own supply of drugs and alcohol. Make no mistake child, I am not them. You will learn one way or another. There are rules in this house, and I won’t stand for you to break this one, too.” She’s always bad mouthing my grandparents; I’ve never met them, but I’m pretty sure they’re not that bad.
My dad is a successful banker so that means they did okay, right?

She holds out her hand, but I know it’s not for me to take. I must have taken too long to respond, because she snaps her talon like fingers under my nose. “Take out your nose ring, you little brat! You will never have a piercing while you are in this house. I’ve half a mind to ban you from the Newman children, if it didn’t interfere with your father’s work connections.”

I can’t believe I have to take it out! Bobby did it for me in his room about four months ago, and it hurt. Really bad. On the other hand, I’m surprised she hasn’t taken pliers to me in my sleep by now in an attempt to get it out herself. I take the tiny jewel out of my nose, and hand it to her. I hope there are boogers all over it.

My mother walks over to the front door, wretches it open, and hurls the little piece of stainless steel into the yard before slamming the door shut again. “Now go to bed. You’re grounded for a week.” She sweeps by me, polluting my air with her Chanel #5 perfume, and leaving me to trail in her wake while holding my breath.

Lingering on the top stair, I hear the master bedroom door shut. The sound of ice rattling against glass causes me to spin, and I look behind me. My father Phillip slowly advances up the stairs, still wearing his suit and tie from the bank, and holding a snifter of scotch. His drink of choice.

“Your mother is right. My parents were weak and misguided, and never gave discipline when it was needed.” He stops on the step below me. “I will not make the same mistake. Do not disobey your mother again, or you will answer to me.”

As he walks past me, I shrink against the wall and try to edge my foot around the corner, just in case he tries to push me down the staircase at the last minute.
What the ‘F’ did “discipline” mean? And why did “answer” sound so ominous?

~

Stacie tries again with Deklan at the next show, which I am thankful wasn’t the following weekend. She continues trying to get his attention at every other show we go to over the next few weeks. Bobby is finally in with the band, and is helping them load up their equipment at the gigs, so we stow away in his car if we have to wait. He leaves the back door cracked open so we can sneak into the places that card. I collect more and more t-shirts when they have my size. Stacie never gives up the tried and true giggly-valley-girl act, even though I know she isn’t normally like that. When there’s a cute boy around, it’s like her brain gets sucked out, and popcorn is filling the space.

Deklan continues to pick the older, more mature girls, over the vapid groupie my best friend becomes. Soon after her sixteenth birthday, she gets together with the lead in our high school theater production, and is “so done with musicians. Actors are the shit.”

This causes some dissension between us. I'm her best friend, but I'm not into high school theater. I'm into garage bands, Rolling Bridges to be specific, and not just for the view. These guys had the talent to make it far. I knew it now. Bobby was right. I begged and pleaded with Bobby to let me go with him, and promised to stay out of the way. I finally had to pay him twenty dollars a show in bribe money.

It takes two shows for Deklan to notice that I’m there and that Stacie isn’t. After a set, I have cardiac arrest when he comes to my table and pulls a chair out. He flips it around so it’s facing backwards, and straddles the seat, resting his forearms on the back of the chair. He gives me a chin lift, and I try not to drool. He’s even hotter up close. His muscles are visible, because he’s wearing a wife beater, and his arms and chest are glistening with sweat from the lights on stage. Now
I
feel like my head is filled with popcorn.
No wonder Stacie acted like a groupie!

“Your friend finally got the hint?” he asks me. His tone seems rather rude, but his voice is sexy and raspy, and I try to ignore the way it makes me feel.

I lift one eyebrow. “She hooked up with an actor.”
Take that.

He nods and purses his lips in thought, but they’re so full and puffy that my mouth waters. I swallow back the saliva. “But you’re still gonna come, right? To the shows.”

What? What does that mean? Does he want me to? Does he think it’s annoying?
I stare as my anxiety escalates with every passing second. He finally explains, “I noticed you record us sometimes. It would be cool to get some of those to send to record labels since we don’t have the money to make a demo yet.”

I swallow hard again and nod. “Sure, I can give them to Bobby, and he can get them to you.”

“Thanks. Hey what’s your name?” he asks.

“Ali,” I say weakly, suddenly brought back down to earth by the realization that he has no idea who I am. I’ve been going to his shows for four months now. I have actually been to every one, and my best friend has been flirting with him most of the time. I’m one of five people in this bar that came to see them, and I’m pretty sure some of those people are their parents.

“Thanks Ali. I’ll see you at the next show, yeah?” He says this distractedly as he eyes a girl at the bar who is old enough to legally be there. I don’t say anything back, and he doesn’t notice.

I give Bobby the tapes at the next show, and Deklan comes over and puts an arm around my shoulder. “Thanks Ali. Hey, when we hit it big we’ll always have a ticket for you okay? I think you’re our biggest fan.”

I blush red as a tomato, but point out in a snarky voice, “I think I’m your only fan Deklan, don’t count your chickens yet.”

He laughs and squeezes my shoulder, then runs to take the stage. As I watch him adjust the microphone stand, there’s a high-pitched voice in my head, squealing at the top of her lungs –
Did he just touch me?! Ohmigawd!
Shit.
Who’s the teeny bopper now?

Chapter 2

Later that year

Two months later they send out their performance DVDs. Six months after that they get signed to a record label. By this time, the band knows me, and I know the band. We aren’t friends because they live so far away from where I do, but they recognize me and always wave, which in turn makes the groupies shriek. Yes, Rolling Bridges has a following now. Mostly girls my age; all of them ready to put out, and the band takes full advantage.

I’m still the poor rich girl stuck in hell with my shrew of a mother in my ear all hours of the day, shrilling how fat I am, how dumb I am (I got my first B).
Shoulders back, suck in, do you need that much food on your plate, what music are you listening to, why are you out so late?
But on the weekend I get to blast music in the new Honda Accord I got from my dad. Now my twenty dollars of bribe money for Bobby goes in my own gas tank, and I get to the gigs myself.

I don’t sit in the corner anymore. There are no more seats to be had. It’s standing room only so I jump up and down, lost in the crowd of valley girls, and sing along with the band. It’s a release from the stress and anxiety that is my life. I bob and yell the words to the songs, coming away sweaty and without angst. I feel completely calm and a little what I think being buzzed must feel like, not that I’ve ever tried to get a drink. The thought of cops escorting me home is enough to make me break me out in a sweat.

Taking a break from my homework the next day I decide to check the mail. Report cards were mailed out, and I wanted to head that off at the pass. Sifting through the bills and multiple magazines for my mother —
who needs all this crap?
— I see a small plain white envelope with my name beautifully written on the front. It looks like calligraphy, it’s so pretty. I look at the corner of the envelope but it’s empty. When I flip it over there are two names of people I know only in context. I normally never get letters.
Who writes them these days?
Today was different. ‘Estelle and Bernie Dawson’, it says. My dad’s parents. I quickly run to the house, dumping all the other mail on the foyer table, and rush to my room. Reading the single piece of paper as fast I can, then slower a second and third time, I take in their request.

They’re coming here and want to meet me early in the year. I think back on what I know of them. I know from my mom that they’re free thinkers; hippies she would say. Dad tells me they lacked structure, rules and that they hated that word ‘discipline’. I know my parents met on the Stanford campus in California but my dad graduated from high school in New York. To my knowledge, I’ve never met them. I don’t think my mom has ever considered it. So she’s been spouting her hate just based on what my dad has told her. Deciding that’s completely unfair, I resolve to meet them. I write back that I’ll be at a Barnes and Noble the next town over on January third, and not to tell my parents.

When I arrive, the smell of coffee grounds and ink hits me like a wall. Scanning the room and breathing deeply, I take in the various college students wearing backpacks, and women holding self-help books in the checkout. Moving to the right where the Starbucks is located, I immediately see a wrinkly old couple sitting at an outside corner table with tea bags in their cups. I wave shyly as I pass on my way to the counter and order a Venti Chai Frappuccino before joining them. We all study each other, and I fight to fidget in my seat. I have to bite down on my lips to keep from nervously babbling about God only knows what. After a minute, my grandmother leans forward holding her cup in her hands.

“Dear, you are so beautiful.” She says it quietly, and in a kind of soft maternal voice I’ve never heard before.

My eyes immediately flood with tears and I look away, trying not to blink so they don’t flow over. No one has ever told me I was beautiful before. It suddenly dawns on me how my life would be so different if I had just heard some loving words every once in a while. Being put down all the time makes me not want to try anything new or be any better. I knew from the time I took dance lessons in the first grade, that anything I tried was just one more thing she could criticize.

My mother is the worst, but my father has always supported her, never saying a word to counteract her venom. Phillip is unwilling to inconvenience himself with raising a child, his only concerns being money and power. I just shake my head in denial at her words.

My grandma leans her arms across the table and grabs my forearm. I look down at her hand and notice the tattoos on her arms for the first time. They are a swirl of colors I can’t make sense of, and glance over at my granddad and see his arms are covered, too.

I look back up at her face with the wrinkles and white hair. She’s patiently been waiting for me to make eye contact. “I know how your parents are. We thought we were doing the best we could with our Phillip, but sometimes instead of them becoming the people you want them to be, they turn into the complete opposite.” The irony of that was not lost on me. They raised him to be free loving and nonjudgmental, and he turned into a power-hungry man who married… well, her.

Grandma goes on. “We can only ever do the best we can. And we see how they are with you. We are deeply sorry you have to live this way.”

Granddad speaks up with his arms folded over his chest. “It’s important that you know this isn’t going to be your life forever. You are going to go to college and do whatever the hell you want. We have made sure you have the money. We know they’ve been pressuring you to attend a school on the West coast, probably Stanford if we had to guess, but rest assured you can attend whatever school you desire.”

I look back and forth between them. “You know I’m not suicidal, right?” I ask them just to clear that up. This definitely sounds like an intervention. They both laugh, Grandma with a jingling little laugh like Tinker Bell and Grandpa with a rusty, husky wheeze.

Grandma says, “We know, honey. We just wanted to make sure you knew you could go to any college you wanted to. I’m not sure your parents were planning on telling you that we set up a trust for your college. Do you know what you want to study?”