Hard Rock Roots Box Set (81 page)

“Lola,” she says, smiling wide and ugly, like a crocodile.

“KK,” Lola responds calmly, and I swear to God, I hear a gurgle come from Ronnie's throat. He looks down at the floor, eyes closed, sweat pouring down the back of his neck. KK reaches out to put a hand on Lola's shoulder and she shrugs it off.

“Stop grinning like a shot fox, you bodgy bitch, and keep your damn hands off me.” I grin while I watch Lola pull out a cigarette and light up right there in the hospital. “Now get me the hell out of here before I puke on your shoes. I could use a bit of shut eye and a fucking drink.” Lola grins right back at me and spins on her leopard print heel, marching out those doors like she owns the place. I hope to fucking God that we see her alive again. Somehow, I have a bad feeling in my gut that we might not.

Chapter 2
Turner Campbell

Shiiiiiit.

The whole ride to the “safe house” is a fucking blur for me. I sit with my elbows on my knees, my head cupped in my hands.
Trey.
God friggin' damn it. I can't shake the feeling that it's at least partially my fault that he got shot. Maybe I said too much on stage? I rock back and forth with the song on the radio, some pop-y piece of shit I won't remember come tomorrow. This is just a useless string of notes plugged into a computer and slapped up with some auto-tuner.
I
never use auto-fucking-tuner. I screw up the take, we start over. That's how it should be.

I rub my temples and try to focus on Naomi's hot, warm body pressed up tight against mine and not on the silent sobs and sniffles coming from the back seat.
Shut up, Jesse. Just shut the fuck up!
We're all hurting here, and I can't take that sound anymore. It reminds me too much of Travis Gaborone. I already lost one best friend, how can I survive another? I … I don't mean to sound like a faggot or anything, but shit, I love the fuck out of that stupid asshole.

“He's going to be okay,” Ronnie says, sitting next to me, brown eyes glassy, cigarette smoke curling from his lips and around his face, framing the sheer agony he's sinking into right now. First Asuka, then Travis. And now possibly Trey? I keep staring at him, wondering how many
to be continue'
s there are in there. Not many, I gather. If Trey … or if something happened to Lola, he wouldn't survive. He'd have a needle in his arm within the hour, and I know Ronnie has just the right cocktail to make it quick and easy. “He has to be alright.” He turns to look at me, pain etched into every contour of his face. He didn't love his babies' mothers, but he sure as shit didn't want to see them carved up like Thanksgiving turkey neither. This has not been an easy tour for Ronnie McGuire.

I turn back to the front window and watch the scenery roll by. I have no clue where we're going which I guess is the point. Milo even took our phones and shit, too. This is all super secretive and crap. Only he gets an iPad apparently. Been on the damn thing the whole drive.

“Smells like blood in here,” I say, slamming the sole of my boot into the back of the seat in front of me. “Like a chick on the rag.” I'm trying to be funny, but nobody laughs. Naomi turns her head to look at me, face blank, eyes open and wide.
But still moist. Still wet.
It's only been like a week or whatever since the tornado, but things have been weird between us. I guess she's having trouble coping with the
I love you
stuff. Doesn't bother me. When you know, you just know. I rest one hand surreptitiously on my jeans to check for wetness.
Crap.
I'm bleeding through my bandages again. I shift to make sure Naomi can't see.

“What happened to Trey was not acceptable. You don't have to pretend that it was.” I just stare back at her. We're in such a freak limbo place right now. Like, is she my girlfriend or what? I mean, I know that she's mine, but does she know that I'm hers? I lean forward and press my lips to Naomi's, tasting fresh lipgloss, cigarettes, trying not to smell the blood that stains all our clothes. She reaches her fingers up and touches the sides of my face so gently, I almost question whether they're really there or not.

“Aw, look, how fucking precious.” I pull away from Naomi and turn my gaze around to Hayden Lee, sitting smashed between Blair and skinny drug dude. She's twirling her hair around her finger and holding her chin up, smirk plastered across her face.
Ugh. I can't believe I actually had sex with this bitch. Thank fucking God I don't remember that shit.

“Hey, princess, why don't you shut your fucking mouth, hmm? I'm not in the mood to deal with bullshit.”

“Turner,” Milo warns, but I keep my glare zoned in on that whore's anorexic head. Behind her, Dax stirs from his drugged up state, pumped full of pain pills, tilting his head and focusing his bleary eyes on me. Hayden just laughs and leans back, spreading her legs nice and wide, smacking a piece of gum in her mouth. Everything about her gets on my nerves.
Everything.
She's the kind of fangirl groupie that I say no thanks to, even if she's the last one waiting outside my bus.

“Don't get all pissy. I'm just saying, you two make a cute couple.” I keep staring at her, waiting for the punch line. Gotta be one here somewhere. Dax reaches out his fingers, touching her shoulder and making her jump. The smirk slides away almost instantly. Don't know what the deal is with these two, but she actually gives a flying fuck what emo bitch thinks. Imagine that?

“Leave them alone, Hayden,” he croaks, adjusting himself and sniffling. “This isn't the time, okay?” He tries to smile, but it doesn't really come out right. Half his face is swollen up and he
really
shouldn't have gotten up onstage, but he did. Couple times since the accident. I try not to think that he was injured because he was trying to help Naomi, too.
Poor stupid fucker.
“Besides, as soon as I'm healthy, I'm going to win Naomi back.” A shiver ripples down my spine and I glance sharply over at Naomi. She's smiling now, too. I try not to scowl as Dax's head flops against the window. Maybe he's just trying to be cool, take the focus off Treyjan or whatever, but it still annoys me.

I stare Naomi in the face for any sign that she might consider Dax. Or anyone else for that matter. Even though she said she loved me, I can't shake the feeling that I'm not in the home stretch yet. I still popped her cherry and left her pregnant and underage. Kind of a hard mistake to make up for. She just looks back at me with the shock of the evening written all over her face, sympathy, and maybe deep down in there, a slight bit of tenderness. I sure as fuck hope so. I reach out and take her hand, curling her fingers around mine, admiring the blank canvas of her skin against my tattoos.

I can't wait till we get to this stupid house. I'm taking Naomi into my bed and curling up around her body in the dark, letting her warm up all the cold places inside of me.
Tyler Rutledge.
Who the hell is this stupid prick, and how the fuck does he think this dumb ass scheme is really going to work? You can overthrow a king maybe, but not a god. I've been chosen by the fucking divine for this shit. Nobody can out rock me. Except maybe Naomi, but I'll never admit that.

I pull her hand to my forehead and touch her skin to mine. I'm not good at waiting, never have been. But here's the thing: Trey makes it through these first forty-eight hours and he's got a good chance of surviving. But none of those stupid quacks think he's going to. He got shot straight through the chest, collapsed a lung, just barely scraped past his spine. The cops think if he hadn't bent down to pick up the pack of cigs he dropped on the ground, that he'd have been dead. Head shot, they said. I shiver and try not to imagine how I would've fared had my best friend's brain been blown all over me. Having his blood soaking into me was enough.

I close my eyes and try to push back that panicked feeling, that feeling of helplessness, the way his blood gushed up out of his chest and mouth. The fans were screaming, clawing at the fences, so desperate to get out of there that they almost killed us all. Stupid fucking stampeding sheep.
Shit.

“Tell me something about Trey that I don't know,” Naomi says, voice quiet, almost impossible to hear over the crappy pop song leaking from the speakers. The van rocks back and forth as we pass over a pot hole on our way to the Middle of Fucking Nowhere America, flashing fresh rays of new sunshine over our faces.

“You mean besides the fact that he has a bad temper and he's stupid as hell?” I feel a frown yank at the corners of my lips and have to push back another wave of misery. I want to sob like a five year old kid, kick my feet against the seat and scream. Why Trey? Why? Lola said they wanted me and Naomi, okay, cool, I can get that. We've been stirring up a storm lately, right? But not Trey. All he ever wants is my fucking approval. He's like the kid brother I never had. I think about what Naomi said about sleeping with him. Ronnie had assured me that she didn't fuck people on the tour, but I guess he didn't know that. Maybe our Gossip King's gaze only extends beyond the four walls of our bus? But I can't be mad at Trey, not even for keeping that from me when he saw how serious I was about Naomi. If – I mean
when –
he makes it through this I'll probably never be able to get pissed at him again. I rub my hand under my nose and think about a crazy story for Naomi. I don't really want to share shit with the rest of these assholes, but I don't know how long this dumb drive is going to be, and I'm going to go bat shit crazy here. Sex, booze, and drugs. That's what I need to get through this. Ronnie might be going straight-edge, but fuck that. This isn't the time.
What I'd really like to be doing right now is banging some heroine.
“Okay, so, I got a story.” I let go of Naomi's hand and rub my palms on my jeans, carefully avoiding the blood stain on my thigh. Good thing I wore dark wash today, huh? I look over at Ronnie who has a careful smile on his face.

“If this is the story I think it is, Trey is going to kill you when he gets out of that hospital,” Ronnie says, all optimistic like.
When. When he gets out.
“But go ahead.” He gestures around with his cigarette, eyes facing forward, towards Milo and the glow of his iPad.

“Alright, okay,” I begin, wetting my lips with my tongue, watching as Naomi's eyes follow the path of my piercing. “Trey and I used to live real close. So close he could always quote my mother's rages word for word.” I get out a cigarette and light myself up. The van quickly becomes engulfed in gray smoke, despite the fact that the front windows are partially rolled down. Lots of smokers and tweakers all up in this bus. I wave my cig around for emphasis. “Like, uh, how it was bullshit that she couldn't buy energy drinks with her food stamp card. Or maybe how the price of crystal was jumping because some drug dealer shot another drug dealer or some shit.” I smile at the filthy memories that crowd my brain. This is why I don't often dredge them up. There's so much bad buried in the good that it hurts sometimes to even think. But right now, this is worse than anything that ever happened back then, so I guess I'll take a merry fucking skip and a hop down memory lane. “Well, Trey used to give me shit for that all the time.” I chuckle at the memory of my friend's face, covered in black lines, mimicking the look of a skull. He was such a friggin' punk ass back then. Virgin until he was twenty years old, too. I shake my head with a sigh. “Anyway, I wanted to get some shit on him, you know? Because he lived with his dad who was this big time crack addict.” I look around for a place to put out my cigarette and can't find one, so I turn the cherry towards my face to stare at it, watch it burn. “One night, I put on all black and snuck over to his trailer, camping out behind the trash cans under his bathroom window.” A smile curves my lips at the same moment that pain stabs me in the heart. I hear the gunshot again, a not so distant memory, haunting my brain. I turn the cigarette back around and gently tap at my forehead with my knuckles. Naomi scoots towards me an inch or so, encouraging me with her silence and open expression. “I could hear somebody jacking it in there, you know. Moaning and whatever. So I climb up on the garbage cans to peep inside and what do I find?” I throw up my arms, like I always do when Trey's around, right before he tries to punch me in the face and storms off growling obscenities under his breath. “Treyjan – masturbating to a picture of my mother.” Ronnie laughs softly and from the back of the bus, Jesse snorts, but that's about it. Usually, I get people pissing their pants on this one.

I look away towards the back of the driver's seat and then stab my cigarette out into the fabric, wrinkling my nose at the smell of burning fibers. Mood's too fucking somber for that story, I guess. But that's Trey to me. That's fucking Trey.

“Turner for God's sake, not today,” Milo says, turning around and staring at the cigarette burn. “Please?” I drop the butt to the floor and crush it into the carpet with my foot. When I look back at Naomi, she's smiling. It's not a rictus grin or anything like that, but at least she's trying. I smile back.

“What kind of picture?” she asks which cools the aching fire of pain in my belly, washes away just a little bit of that stinging pain. I lean forward to brush some of her blonde hair behind her ear, and barely end up with a slight scowl. Now that's what I call improvement.

“See that's the best part about it all. Guess he thought it was cool to abuse the wicked stick to a mug shot.” I drop my hand back to my lap and watch Naomi smile. Behind me, Ronnie laughs so hard he coughs. Jesse stays silent. Any hope of igniting some sort of spark or something in this van just fizzles out, and I slump back against the seat, feeling twice as tired as before. At the very least, Naomi reaches out and puts a hand on my knee. As long as I have her by my side, I'm fucking positive that I can get through anything. Anything. Even if Trey doesn't make it.

But if my best friend does pass away, this Tyler Rutledge better watch his ass because I won't just kill him – I'll make him wish he was dead.