“Yes sir,” I mumbled anyway, just in case he thought about it later and decided I hadn’t been humble enough to suit him. I made my way past his chair, glancing into their room to see my mother lying on the bed with an ice pack on her eye. She appeared to be asleep.
I opened my door at the end of the hall and sighed in relief when I shut it behind me. I dropped my notebook and purse and lay down on my bed.
I made it. I was safe. Well, relatively.
. It felt good to relax, to let my guard down a little. This was the only place in the world I could “be myself.” This room was me, completely and totally me, from the pictures of Tyler Vincent wallpapering the walls, to the Tyler Vincent cassettes I had lined up on the shelves.
I looked around and wondered how long it would be before I could get out of here forever. My ticket out was sitting on an easel in front of the window. Like everything else in my room, it was Tyler Vincent. This was special though. This was the painting that would get me out of here—I hoped. I had taken my favorite picture of Tyler from People magazine and made a portrait of it.
ughed. “Touché.”
“You must know someone at Ticketmaster,” I mused. The thought of front row seats to see Tyler Vincent seemed almost too good to be true. Was he telling me the truth? “Or the radio station?”
“Yeah, I know someone,” he agreed, going back to his search through my glove compartment. “Hey! The Violent Femmes. There might be hope for you yet.”
I rolled my eyes. “So you obviously don’t play any Tyler Vincent.”
“Occasionally.” He made a face. “We have to do some covers, because the crowds want to hear familiar songs. Some day I’m going to perform my own.”
“So punk rock?” I prompted. “Like the Dead Kennedys?”
“Yes and no.” Dale closed the glove compartment, giving up. “I spent most of last summer in Seattle and you wouldn’t believe the music coming out of there. It’s like hardcore punk mixed with heavy metal and something else, like its own thing. You’ve never heard anything like it. That’s what I do. What I write, what I play.”
“Where can I hear you? Are you playing clubs?”
“Some, when we can get the gigs.” Something about his energy had shifted. He wasn’t so cool and casual and who-gives-a-crap anymore. “We’re auditioning for MTV’s Battle of the Bands. By then we should have it all together. I hope.”
“You don’t sound convinced.” We were coming up to Kensington Gardens, three stories high, red brick face, windows like dark eyes. It reminded me of a prison, even with the tall white columns in front, and my heart always sank when I pulled into the parking lot.
“Well, I got these guys together this summer,” he admitted. “We’re working hard, but the band I had back in Maine… we’d been together for years.”
So he had lived in Maine—Wendy had been right.
“But you moved to New Jersey,” I reminded him.
“I know.” He sighed, looking up at the apartment building in front of us, and I wondered if I looked just as forlorn when I contemplated its red brick visage. “Up until today, I couldn’t tell you one good thing about living in this hellhole.”
I nodded, fully agreeing with his assessment. “Wait… what happened today?”
He turned and looked at me, a question in his eyes, a half-smile playing on his lips, like he thought I must be kidding him. “I met you, duh.”
“Oh,” I replied stupidly, feeling even dumber than I sounded, but he didn’t seem to mind. His gaze moved over my face, lingering for a moment on my lips, and I licked them nervously, attempting to change the subject. “So why did you move here?”
Dale glanced back at the apartments, looking up and waving to someone standing in a window. “My dad got a job teaching at Rutgers. He couldn’t turn it down.”
“Rutgers?” It wasn’t Harvard or Yale, but it was still pretty prestigious. “Wow.”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m at the stupid academy.” Dale hooked a thumb in his belt, drawing my attention there to the silver studs as he leaned back in the passenger’s seat with another sigh. “If I get my high school diploma, my dad can send me to Rutgers for free.”
I blinked in surprise. “That’s quite a deal. A degree from Rutgers for free?”
“I don’t plan on going to Rutgers,” he replied flatly, giving me a dark look.
“What do you plan on doing?” I asked, although I had a feeling I already knew. He didn’t respond but the answer was written all over his face. He didn’t just look like Tyler Vincent—Dale Diamond wanted to be Tyler Vincent. Or some cooler, funkier version of the rock star, I could only assume, from his Dead Kennedys t-shirt and his ultimate disdain for my cassette collection.
“Let me guess,” I smirked. “You want to be a rock star?”
“I gotta go.” He reached for the door handle and I felt my stomach clench into a ball, suddenly sorry I’d teased him.