Rockoholic (36 page)

“Jackson’s leaving. Tonight. Hopefully.”

“About time.” It’s just mumbled but I hear it all the same. But then he stops mascara-ing and turns around again. “He really is going? Where? How?”

I swallow. “The BFD. I know what you’re going to say, but he’s fixed everything.” Mac just stares at me. “He can do it, I know he can.”

“You . . . what?”

“I gave the money to the BFD.”

“You . . . stupid . . . your grandad gave you that money!” he shrieks.

“Yes, I know where it came from, thanks. And he told me I could do what I wanted with it.”

“He wanted
you
to do something with it! The BFD will piss it away, Jody! It would have been more productive to burn it. God, you idiot! You could have done so much with that money.”

“No I couldn’t,” I say. “I didn’t know what the hell to do with it. I didn’t want it, I told you that. I don’t give a shit about money. If it meant having Grandad back, I would have given the BFD every single penny.”

“How much
did
you give him?”

I don’t want to tell him but he’s looking at me so bug-eyed, I feel I have to before his eyes pop right out of his head. “Five.”

“FIVE GRAND?!”

“Yes, five grand. No one else was going to help me, were they?”

“NEITHER’S HE!”

“He will. I know he will.”

Mac shakes his head. His voice is calmer now but there’s a thread of hate running all the way through it. “I just don’t believe what you’ve put yourself through for that waste of space.”

“My money. My risk. My decision. So save your lecture, OK? I’m not interested.”

“What about our holiday?” says Mac, looking up.

“I’ve still got five grand left.”

He shakes his head. “No, you need to put that in a secure vault somewhere and leave it alone. You’ll have no savings left at all at this rate.”

“Stop talking to me like you’re my dad or something!” I shout at him, not that my dad ever encouraged me to save, quite the opposite in fact, but a normal dad would. “I’m fed up with your bloody preaching to me. I
KNOW
I’ve done the right thing. Jackson
HAS
to get out of here and I found the one way he could do that, so leave me alone.”

“Well, I suppose there is one glimmer of light at the end of the never-ending tunnel of doom. If the BFD
does
perform the miracle of the disappearing rock star, then at least
I
won’t have to deal with him anymore.”

“What’s he actually done to you?” I ask. “Apart from what happened yesterday, what’s he done that’s so wrong?”

He doesn’t answer. I’m so frustrated I could scream in his face.

“So are you going with him, then? I assume you are.” He smudges a fingertip of mascara into both his eyebrows.

For some reason, I let him think that I’m still going with Jackson. I want to know if he cares enough to stop me. “We have to meet the car at ten thirty.”

He nods, clicking the mascara back in the tube and picking up a small eye-shadow stick with electric blue powder at one end and smoky black at the other. He dabs some more over both his lids, all clumsy, and he has to keep dabbing away at the corners where he’s messed up.

“Let me do it,” I snap, stepping forward.

“No, it’s fine,” he says. I step back. He runs the straightening iron up his spiky layers again and quickly hairsprays over it to keep it in place. He picks up his silver glitter spray and starts squirting it all over his head. “I won’t see you off tonight. Show doesn’t finish ’til quarter to. I’d miss my encore.”

He’s not going to beg me to stay. Ask me to stay, even. I knew it — he hates me.

“No, I . . . I know. I’m still coming tonight. Jackson wants to come as well. We’ll see most of it. We’ll just have to skip out a bit early.”

He stops spraying and slams the can down on the side. “You’re making the biggest mistake ever, Jody. I thought you were stupid before, but this . . .”

“Yeah, well, you know me.” I laugh, thinking he’ll laugh, too, but he doesn’t. He gets up, looks at me, sparkling all over, like my moon rock when it catches the light. His mouth is as thin as a pavement crack. “Good luck for tonight,” I say and move back toward the door. He sighs.

“And what happens after tonight?” he says finally, turning to apply some black lipstick. “You’re not going to be here.” He strides over to his clothes rack and flicks down a pair of black fishnet stockings that have been hanging over the rail. He starts fumbling with one of them, stumbling about on one leg trying to put it on. “You don’t give a shit about me, do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“So wrapped up in yourself and your stupid bloody deadbeat rock star.”

“Don’t talk about him like that.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” he says, one leg finally netted. “He’s driven a wedge right between us, Jody. If you can’t even open your strobe-light dazzled eyes for one minute and see that, then I feel sorry for you.”

“I know I’ve been preoccupied with him lately and I’ve—”

“Preoccupied? You’re infatuated with him!”

“No I’m not, Mac, I’m not infat—”

“Oh yes you are. Everything you do, it’s all about him.”

I feel in my pocket for the moon rock and clutch it hard. “You were there, too. You helped me. You helped me look after him.”

“Because that’s the only way I could see you. But he’s always bloody there, like a bad smell. If he’s not singing in the background, he’s staring down at me from your wall, and now he’s in your bloody garage. I can’t talk to you without him being there. Can’t say what I want . . .”

I step forward. “What do you want to say? He’s not here now, say it to me now.”

For a second he looks me straight in the eye and I hold his blue-black gaze until I feel my cheeks starting to burn. But then he blinks and starts groping around with the other stocking. “What’s the point? You wouldn’t listen, anyway.”

My heart’s like fists on a door. “I’m listening now. Tell me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

He stands up straight. “How about the fact that I waited for you all day outside that concert. All day.”

“No, you didn’t. You went into town. You met your cousin —”

“Ally’s digging for fossils in Arizona, has been for six months. I just used him as an excuse in case you felt sorry for me being on my own all day. For sitting in my car for five hours after the shops closed. I needn’t have worried, though. Not like you were going to leave that queue for anything or anyone, was it? Not like you were going to think about me for five seconds.”

“Why didn’t you tell me your cousin wasn’t there? I’d have —”

“What? What would you have done? If you’d known would you have come out of your precious queue and kept me company? No, you wouldn’t. You don’t give a shit about me just like Jackson doesn’t give a shit about you and
I’m
the only one who can see that. You know what? I don’t give a shit about you anymore, either. Why would I? It doesn’t get me anywhere. He’s obviously the one for you.”

His words skin me like a hot blade. “You . . .” A dozen words flash up in my mind as to what I should say. Bastard. Prick. Wanker. Arsehole. But all he’s done is ignite the truth. He’s not a bastard. He’s not a prick. He’s just been bottling his resentment for too long and now it’s all vomiting violently back at me.

“Why did you wait for me all day, then? Why did you do that? Tell me, Mac.”

“Just go. Have a nice life. Just go.” He finishes attaching his stockings. There’s a dirty great run all up his right leg. “Oh shit!”

“If you tell me not to go, I won’t.”

“Oh, what’s the point? There’s no contest, is there? You worship the ground he walks on.”

My chest is pounding so painfully. I don’t even want to look at him anymore. He hates me and now I hate him, too. That’s how it’s supposed to be.

“I’ll go, then.”

“Yeah. Go,” he says, turning back to his mirror and rooting through every compartment of his makeup bag again. “Tell Ozzy Osbourne I said bon voyage.”

I’m crying as I walk back toward his door. Through his door. Along the corridor toward the stage door. By the time I’m on the street, I’m crying so much I walk straight into someone.

“Sorry,” I sniff. Then I realize who it is. Yellow jacket. Waxwork smile. Sally Dinkley.

“No problem,” she winks. “Oh, you’re not looking well, Jody. Something you want to get off your chest, love?”

“Wh . . . you’re still here?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a ticket to
Rocky Horror
. I’m not quite done with Nuffing yet, Jody. There’s definitely something about this place. I’ll see you later, yeah?”

She says it like we’re meeting up at the mall to go shoe shopping, and carries on walking past me.

“What are you still doing here?” I call after her. “What are you doing?!”

But she doesn’t look back, just disappears through the stage door.

A million images of Sally Dinkley’s evil face hurricane around my head as I walk into town to collect my outfit from Fancy That. I can’t even remember paying for it, picking out the red feather boa, speaking to the man behind the counter, even. I’m still thinking, thinking, thinking about it when I get home. I don’t want to be thinking about Mac but he’s all I can think about.

• • •

“How’s that?” says Jackson, stepping back from me and holding my little makeup mirror in front of my face to show me his handiwork.

I look like one of Jack the Ripper’s prostitutes. Black eye shadow. Rosy red cheeks. Lips like Salvador Dalí’s sofa. Hair with more crimp in it than the eighties and a small costume tiara in the middle. “Bargain. Thanks.”

“Too much?” he says.

I shake my head, wrapping the feather boa around my neck. “Just right, actually.” I fidget about in my black-and-red tutu. I have black fishnet stockings on and my black DMs and a little red bolero cardigan of Mum’s to go over my shoulders. I look well rough but I’ll fit in if nothing else. “Mum’ll be back in a minute. You better get back in the garage.”

“OK,” he says, putting the mirror down and grabbing the heavy rucksack from the stool. He disappears out to the yard and I stand at the window, watching him. Watching the garage door shut behind him. I stand there until I hear the front door slam. Mum. And Halley.

“All right?” says Mum, lumbering in with bags of groceries. Waitrose bags. “Ooh, wow. Look at you.”

Yeah, look at me. Just look at me.

• • •

I stand by the crossing, across the road from the Playhouse, watching them through the glass. It’s well weird to see people like old Marge from the library in a black corset with a pink feather boa around her neck, but she doesn’t look out of place. That’s how people dress when they go to see this show. There are men in black corsets and garter belts, too. A couple of women are in short bridal gowns with frilly white garters and there’s a man walking around in a doctor’s coat and see-through heels. There are women in white underwear with long beads around their necks, giggly on wine. Groups of girls in black silk suits with Day-Glo pink and green shirts underneath, black masks across their eyes, and feather crowns on their heads.

I don’t feel right. I wasn’t going to come at all, after our argument, but I still want to see him, even if he doesn’t want to see me. The crowd inside the theater is slowly disappearing into the auditorium. I think it’s time.

I run back home through the gravel alley and creep across to the drum room, keeping one eye on the kitchen. Mum is making her and Halley hot chocolates to settle down for three hours of soaps, like she always does.

“Jackson?” I say. He’s waiting for me on his pile of feathers with my black rucksack alongside of him. He’s not dressed up for the show. He’s wearing Mac’s old clothes, the black leather jacket Mac pinched from his dad’s closet, gray hoodie underneath, a black-and-white checked scarf, jeans, and a gray knit hat.

“Teddy’s going to kill Mac if he finds out you’ve got that,” I say, nodding at the jacket.

Jackson smiles. He puts his gray hood up. “I didn’t know what you wanted to do with the feathers.”

I shrug. “I’ll sweep them up later. Shall we go, then?”

• • •

The show has started by the time we sneak in through the back of the auditorium but Mac hasn’t come on yet. Jackson looks out of place in his normal clothes.
Everyone
else is dressed up. But that’s how he wants it. He doesn’t want to play dress up anymore. He’s done enough of that as the Madman. Tonight is the first night he’s just himself. He hasn’t even got his contacts in.

People are up in the aisles, singing and dancing along to “Time Warp,” and there’s some drastic dance moves going on all over the place so we can’t get through to our seats at the front. So we stay at the back, behind the barrier, behind the sound-mixing desk. It’s still a pretty good view. I’ll still be able to see Mac.

He struts on about three minutes later from the trap door underneath the stage. He looks phenomenal. A black corset over his diamanté see-through top. Bright red heels. His hair the usual black spikes with the new shock of red, but it glitters in the stage lights. And he is amazing, better than amazing. He is the only one to watch. I don’t see anyone else onstage, just him. Song after song, all I see is Mac.

Jackson says something but I don’t hear it. He nudges me again.

“Intermission.”

“What?” I say, sneezing as one of my red boa feathers tickles my nose. He lifts up my wrist to show me the time. Suddenly it’s half past nine. We’ve been watching the show for over an hour.

We hide in one of the stalls in the ladies’ toilets for fifteen minutes, to allow people to come and go and get drinks and warble on about how good the first half was. In between all the bathroom noises — the creaky door opening and banging shut, the hand dryers blasting on and off, water splashing, toilet seats clattering — I hear so many good things.

Who’s that boy playing Frank-N-Furter?

He’s wonderful, isn’t he? He ought to go to London, the West End.

That Frank-N-Furter, what a body! Is that Teddy Lawless’s son?

Yeah, I think I saw Tish, too. Must say hello.

He’s fantastic. And he’s only eighteen.