Born to Rock

  Thanks to that nightly time-waster, I didn’t see Melinda until right before Purge went on. I almost dropped down dead at the sight of her. If she hadn’t been standing next to Owen, I’m not sure I would have recognized her.

  Two weeks of nomadic life had changed Melinda. She had either run out of or stopped applying the pale makeup that gave her a ghostly appearance. Countless hours in an uncovered crowd, at the mercy of the sun, had tanned her a deep golden brown. She was no longer dyeing her hair, which was now growing out blond, and held back in a ponytail. Gone were the black flowing layers of clothing, ill suited to the heat and grime of the Concussed venues. Instead, she wore shorts and a tank top in funky counterpoint to her heavy black-and-chrome boots.

  I couldn’t keep from staring. This was Melinda, vampire of the 600-row of lockers? She looked fantastic! Even the nose ring kind of fit into the new style, an eclectic mix of Sex Pistols and the Gap.

  She noticed my saucer-eyes. “You try coloring your hair in a Subaru.”

  “No—” I stammered. “You’re—”

  As I struggled for the right adjective, Concussed announced its headliners: “Lockjaw recording artists—Purge!!”

  Awash in the blitzkrieg of “Bomb Mars Now,” I decided it was time to introduce Melinda to King and the band. Owen, too. He’d been more of a friend than she had these past weeks. They weren’t exactly my soul mates, but who was? Fleming Norwood? Would I fit in with the Young Republicans anymore, even if they hadn’t given me the boot? I had become a displaced person—detached from my old crowd, but not really a part of Concussed. Out here on the road, Melinda and Owen were the closest thing I had to a family.

  King was normally pretty wiped after a performance, but he was nice to Melinda, and I was grateful.

  “You look familiar. Didn’t you get peeled off the back of a cop once?”

  It was the first and last time I’d ever seen her gushing. “I’ve listened to Texas School Book Suppository at least five hundred times.”

  He favored her with one of his rare smiles. “And you haven’t gone deaf?”

  “Your music has saved my life,” she said seriously. “I don’t know if I could have made it without you. I own every note you’ve ever sung, even the bootleg recorded when you guys were in prison.”

  To my surprise, King kept the chitchat going. My bio-dad wasn’t the type for small talk. He told me once that he had given so many pointless interviews over the years that he refused to waste his vocal cords on “white noise.” When he had gleaned what he wanted from a conversation, he had no problem turning his back on you and walking away.

  “Any plans for next year, Melinda?” he asked. “Going to college?”

  In the weeks I’d known King, I could have counted the number of times he’d shown genuine interest in another human being on the fingers of one hand. What did he care about Melinda Rapaport’s higher education?

  It hit me—these were the questions you’d ask your son’s girlfriend! I don’t know what amazed me more—that he thought Melinda and I were together, or that he was acting like a real father.

  King Maggot was a lot of things, but predictable was none of them.

  He was also gracious to Owen, who, naturally, said the exact wrong thing: “I didn’t think a guy like you would ever get old!”

  The other band members took their lead from King, and even Bernie was friendly. The manager had been ice-cold to me since dognapping night. But he greeted Melinda and Owen like VIPs, and made a point of inviting them to the after-party being thrown by Citizen Rot’s new record label.

  Ersatz Records had taken a monster suite at the hotel, and the bash was a wild one. The whole scene was becoming a little old to me, but it was interesting to see it through Melinda’s eyes. For her and Owen, this was a rare glimpse of the rock-and-roll lifestyle, and they had the ultimate tour guide. Bernie was taking the night off trawling for groupies to show them around.

  “Hey, Daddy’s Boy.” Cam threw himself down on the couch next to me.

  I already knew what his line was going to be. “Listen, Cam, if you find a girl tonight, just say the word. I promise I’ll find someplace else to sleep—”

  “Oh, sure,” he said sarcastically. “The crown prince bunking on somebody’s floor? You’ll run crying to Papa.” He accented the second syllable.

  “That’s bull, and you know it!” I was somewhat distracted to notice that Bernie was alone with Melinda. Owen had gone off to talk with Ylang Ylang and another one of the Ball Peens. “Have I ever used my relationship with King to get the better of you or anybody else?”

  “Think you’d have this job if it wasn’t for Daddy?” Cam challenged. “You know how long I spent wheeling cheap amps out of crappy airport hotels before I got this gig?”

  He was getting belligerent, but I was totally focused on Bernie and Melinda. They were practically cheek to cheek as he pointed out the various punk celebrities around the room. It was the standard operating procedure I’d seen him use on a dozen girls over the course of the summer. His left arm had insinuated its way around her shoulders, and he “inadvertently” brushed her hair and neck as he made a point.

  The manager hadn’t passed on his womanizing to hang out with Melinda. Melinda was his womanizing!

  [20]

  I THOUGHT MY HEAD WAS GOING TO explode.

  I had tried to avoid being judgmental about Bernie McMurphy’s favorite leisure-time activity. And on some level, I’d always known that many of his nightly conquests had been more or less my age. But the fact that those girls had been strangers somehow made them seem more mature. As if hanging out with the backstage groupies and wannabes qualified you for the big, bad world.

  Melinda had turned eighteen a couple of months ago. She was old enough to vote. She could join the Army and get shot at in strange and exotic places.

  But she wasn’t old enough for this.

  Warning her with Bernie epoxied on would be tricky. I took a step toward them.

  Cam grabbed my arm and wheeled me around. “Hey, I’m not finished with you yet!”

  “Listen, Cam, if you’ve got a job for me, I’ll do it. If you don’t, get out of my face!” I sidestepped him, and strode determinedly on.

  Owen jumped in front of me. “Who was that?”

  “My immediate superior in the roadie hierarchy,” I growled, not in the mood for his pestering. “Hey, what’s the big idea leaving Melinda alone with Bernie?”

  Owen shrugged. “He wanted to show her around.”

  “Bernie’s always on the prowl!”

  As if to prove me right, the two got up together, and the manager ushered her out of the suite.

  I started after them, but Owen held me back. “She’s a big girl.”

  “You don’t know what he’s like!”

  “She won’t thank you,” he warned me.

  I ran into the hall just in time to see the elevator doors close on them. I watched the indicator go up to twelve, the floor where our rooms were.

  I was blown away by the depth of my emotion. She wasn’t my sister; she wasn’t my girlfriend. She had barely spoken a civil word to me in weeks! Owen had a point. This was none of my business. He knew better than anybody what it was like to have people sticking their holier-than-thou noses into your personal life.

  I stormed back into the suite, a melon-size hunk of plutonium glowing in my stomach. And there was Owen, ready to put out the fire with a bucket of gasoline.

  “I get it—you’re jealous!”

  I unloaded on him, not because he was wrong, but because he was right. There were a dozen reasons to be upset about Bernie and Melinda. But I was mad because I wanted her for myself.

  I scorched that poor jerk with every ill that had been done to me since my McAllister scholarship had gone south. “You think it’s my idea of a great summer job to grub around the country, getting my eardrums busted by a collection of bottom-feeders and lowlifes? You know why I’m here, loving every minute? Because of you!”
r />   “Me?”

  I’d kept it to myself for all these weeks, but in the flood of passion pouring out of me, it was impossible to hold anything back.

  “I used to have a scholarship. But now I have to beg King for money because I lost it, thanks to you!”

  He was stricken. “Lost it? How?”

  “Remember the algebra test? Remember vectors? Borman tried to get me to say you cheated, and I wouldn’t. So he made me the cheater. And cheaters don’t get scholarships.”

  I stuck out my jaw and waited for Owen to tell me Harvard was overrated so I could kill him.

  His face was ghostly white. “Why didn’t you just tell Borman what he wanted to hear? I would have been okay.”

  “Yeah,” I snorted, “you’re gifted.”

  “I didn’t have so much to lose.”

  “Easy to say that now—when it’s too late!”

  “I was talking to you, butt-wipe!” Cam again, red-hot steaming mad.

  “I’m not ignoring you, Cam,” I told him. “I’ve just got something else on my—”

  “You don’t turn your back on me! I’m still your boss—I don’t care who your old man is!” He was right in my face, bawling me out at top volume in front of half of Concussed. Heads began to turn in our direction. I’d had more than my share of scrapes as an employee of Purge. But this was the first time I’d been forced to endure public humiliation.

  My cheeks burned as he blasted away at me. “You’re too busy schmoozing Daddy to do any work! You don’t know a standard jack from a DIN plug! You’re hopeless when it comes to—”

  He never got to finish the thought, because at that moment, Owen stepped in front of me and delivered a sharp slap to Cam’s face. “Relax!”

  Hold it. Back up. Did I hallucinate that? No, the evidence was right there—Owen’s open hand, still frozen in the follow-through position. But why wasn’t Cam on top of the guy, pounding him into applesauce?

  Instead, the roadie just looked stunned. I was pretty stunned myself. In all these weeks, I’d never come close to handling Cam and his mean streak. But Owen Stevenson had managed it with a single, surgical smack.

  Maybe he was gifted after all.

  It was the last straw. On top of everything else, to be rescued by the likes of Owen—to owe him for what was left of my self-respect—that was the end.

  I didn’t wait around for the fireworks. I got the hell out of there.

  I took the stairs all the way up to the twelfth floor.

  Disaster—there was no other word for it. All the stewing combustibles in my overheated garage had gone kablooey at the same cataclysmic instant. I mean, Cam and me—that had always been destined to blow up at some point. But why would I suddenly spill the beans about Harvard after keeping it a secret for so long? How did it help anybody for Owen to know that?

  And Melinda. Talk about something brewing since forever. After seventeen years, I’d finally realized how I felt about her—just in time for it to be too late. I should have seen through the white makeup and black clothes. I had nothing but my own shallowness to blame. I should have paid attention when Gates had a crush on her. If he could scour the entire Internet and come up with KafkaDreams, then he could spot a pearl inside a goth.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  During high school, Melinda and I had become as diametrically opposite as two people could possibly be. Yet never once had she abandoned me, even when I’d begged her to. What a loser I was. No, worse—pathetic. Now that she was out of reach, I was obsessing on her. I could even hear her voice rattling around my skull.

  Then I really did hear her. I strained to listen. What was she saying?

  “Come on, Bernie, I don’t want to…”

  Bernie’s room! But what number? It would be a suite—those were usually at the end of the halls—

  “I said no…”

  The voice was getting quieter. Wrong way! My agitation growing, I pounded down the corridor.

  “Please let go of me…”

  Suite 1223!

  Taking my lead from cop shows again, I hurled myself full-force into the door. One thing they don’t tell you on TV is just how much it hurts to collide with a ninety-pound piece of solid oak. Luckily, the dead bolt wasn’t set. The lock jarred open and I tumbled into the room.

  It wasn’t exactly the attempted date rape I’d been expecting. Bernie and Melinda were on the couch, with some kind of Purge scrapbook spread out on the coffee table. A wine bottle and two glasses sat there. They might have been struggling before, but now they had frozen, their arms still intertwined. They were staring at me as if I had just been assembled from glowing atoms à la Star Trek.

  I scrambled up and bawled, “Let her go!”

  “You mind your own business, Cuz—”

  But I was beyond reason, beyond language, pure action. I kicked the coffee table out of the way, upending the wine, and sending the scrapbook and a pile of mail spilling out onto the carpet. I hauled off, and slammed my fist into the side of his face. Not being much of a fighter, I was amazed to feel solid contact. The force of the blow was enough to knock the manager over the armrest to the floor.

  I reached out to take Melinda’s wrist, but at that moment, she came alive. I’ll never forget the look of horrified loathing she shot me as she ran out the door.

  Me. She was angrier at me than at Bernie. If there had been any lingering doubt that I had blown it with Melinda, it was surely gone now.

  Bernie stood up, his brow a thundercloud over his rapidly swelling cheek. “Get out of here!” he rasped.

  I turned and ran.

  It was only after I hyperventilated my way into my own room that a clear picture of the mail on the floor presented itself in front of my eyes. Close-up on the logo in the upper left-hand corner of a business envelope: ALPHA DIAGNOSTIC LABORATORIES.

  The DNA test.

  [21]

  AS A SPECIAL ADDED BONUS, I GOT TO wake up in the same room as Cam.

  Not that I slept much. I was coming to see that insomnia was as integral a part of rock and roll as hearing loss. Although, in my case, the sleeplessness had less to do with music than my own imploding world.

  The plan was to sneak out while my roommate was still unconscious. But he had grown sensitive to my furtive tiptoeing, and stirred with a subvocalized moan: “Ohhhh—did anybody get the license number of that truck?”

  “Go back to sleep. You’ve got a couple of hours before we plow.”

  “I’ve got to cut down on the beer,” he mumbled.

  I frowned. I knew the difference between alcohol and a bad attitude. Cam hadn’t been all that drunk in the hospitality suite. Why should he pretend to be? “Remember that guy Owen? You didn’t beat him up after I left, right?” If Owen was in intensive care at the hands of my boss, Melinda would put the blame on me for sure. Not that she’d ever talk to me again. I was branded with the KafkaDreams Seal of Disapproval for life, thanks to last night.

  “It’s all a blur.” His eyes never left me. “But I didn’t scrap with anybody. I wouldn’t forget something like that.”

  Thank God. “Don’t sweat it, Cam. It was just another after-party. Standard stuff.”

  I wasn’t being generous. I just had no time for the creep. The DNA test results had arrived, and the only thing between them and me was Bernie. Believe me, I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of facing the manager just a few short hours after punching him out. But in a way, the timing was perfect. Now that the DNA information was in, the connection between King and me would be definite. The moment had finally come for me to come clean to my bio-dad and ask him to front me the money for Harvard. Then I could stop living this lie and quit the tour.

  Funny. The thought of leaving Concussed—even with the money for college in my hot little hand—brought me zero pleasure. I was no punk rocker, nor would I ever be. Yet when I pictured myself back home with Mom and Dad, it all looked a little flat. There, I was the high school kid I’d been for the past four years. The en
tirety of my adult life had happened on the road with Purge.

  But the matter of staying or going was academic at this point. No roadie, not even the lead singer’s son, still had a job after decking the band’s manager.

  So I had a double purpose: get my test results and resign. From there, next stop: King. With any luck, Harvard would be my severance package. I wasn’t asking for charity. It would be a loan. Dad and I would find a way to pay him back.

  I hoped King wouldn’t think this whole summer had been nothing more than a grab for his money, although it had certainly started that way. In spite of everything, I was glad I’d gotten to know my biological father. I’d come face-to-face with the McMurphy in my blood. And no, he wasn’t perfect. In truth, he was pretty damn awful. But he had good points, too. He was an amazing man—a famous man.

  A star.

  Room 1223. Bernie’s suite. The door was open, and the housekeeper was vacuuming.

  “Bernie,” I called over the noise of the machine. “Bernie, it’s Leo. Can I come in?”

  He wasn’t there, and I wasn’t sorry. I crept into the sitting room. The maid had picked up the strewn mail and placed it neatly on the coffee table.

  I hesitated. It wasn’t stealing. This was mine. Nobody had more right to it than me, except maybe King. And he was the guy I was going to show it to.

  I found the envelope and noted that it had been opened. Exactly when was Bernie planning to share this with the people who were truly involved?

  I stuffed the letter into my pocket and rushed out of the suite. Ducking into the stairwell, I sat down on the top step and unfolded the report.

  There were several pages of comparative graphs and points of scientific methodology. But the final conclusion was contained in the covering letter.

  The words stood out. They flamed.

  The genetic evidence indicates that Subject A and Subject B are not father and son. There is, however, a significant family relationship between the two specimens, most likely that of second cousins or first cousins once removed.