Rockstar

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

Trace tells Adam he already has the attitude and ego down pat. Now if they can just get the music up to par…

Adam tells him to f**k off. Viral Blue is his band, isn’t it? He thinks so, anyway. He’s the one who’s been singing since before he could talk. He’s the one who told Trace back in high school that they should form a group, a rock group, and did he want in? Trace played percussion in the marching band and while Adam had the voice and knew a few chords on the guitar, he knew all rock groups had drummers.

And it was Adam who picked the band’s name, truncating his stepdad’s surname to the much cooler sounding “Blue” and adding “Viral” in front to make it sound bad-ass wicked. Adam who met Mike Lowell at the community college where he went one summer just to take guitar lessons. Adam who’s the lead singer…therefore, it’s his band.

He used to be into black music—rap, R&B, hip hop—back when he was younger. But those songs are too sappy for him now, full of love and heartbreak and s**t like that. He wants to sing something real, something hard and harsh, something out there. He still does a pretty good beatbox and can out-dance any white boy in any club, but he wrote off his rap ambitions when he realized the only other white rappers who ever made it big were Vanilla Ice and Snow and Eminem, and he didn’t want to be stuck on the same CD shelf in the local record store as those guys. Just what the world needed, another blond, angry, white rapper. He didn’t think so.

Now he keeps his hair short, as short as he possibly can and still call it hair. He thinks he should get it cut again, even though it’s only been what, two weeks since he last buzzed it off? About that. But if it gets too long, it starts to curl. Then he doesn’t look like a rockstar but a pretty boy in one of those ever popular boy bands, and he isn’t into that scene at all. Pretty, yes. Boy, yes. Boy band that doesn’t play its own instruments or write its own music and dances while singing? Not on your life. He isn’t into popular; he’s an artiste.

So he has the cropped hair, though he does let a bit of it grow in at the front, just a scant little wave he dyes an obscene shade of blue to match his stage name. Because his hair’s naturally light, the dye takes well, and the first time he ever came downstairs sporting that cerulean tuft between his eyes, his mother actually screamed. “Mary, mother of God,” she gasped, gaze fixated on the blue strands curling on his forehead.

Adam hasn’t managed to get quite the same reaction since, but he hasn’t stopped trying. He wears a line of silver hoops in his right ear, one above the other, three earrings all in a row, and none in the other ear because he likes the way it looks. They match the large silver cross he wears around his neck; it dangles from a black cord and hangs midway down his narrow chest. He isn’t religious or anything, God knows, but it’s part of his image. He doesn’t perform without it.

In addition to the cross, he wears mostly black—tight jeans and tank tops that show off his arms and body. He has a flat stomach, a taut ass, and the band’s logo tattooed on his left bicep. It looks like a jailhouse tattoo, all inked in shades of gray and blue, but it’s awesome and he goes without sleeves as often as he can just to show it off. It’s a grungy coat-of-arms that looks infected or diseased with the words VIRAL BLUE stamped across a banner on the front. Adam designed it himself. It matches the logo on the back of his guitar, and half the shirts in his wardrobe sport the same image.

Everything about Adam screams ‘rockstar.’ The jeans he wears while performing fit like a second skin, patched with blue bandannas, torn and held together with safety pins, dotted with rhinestones, or drawn on with dark markers until his mom swore off buying him new clothes. His shoes are old black Converse high-tops or clunky Doc Martens. The only jacket he owns has obscure military patches sewn over it, completely covering the original fabric. His favorite jeans, the ones he’ll wear to the Lot, have a spray of fake diamonds outlining the crotch and the words kiss this spelled out across the back pockets in the same studs. Trace calls them slut boy pants. Adam loves them.

Trace sticks to the patented bed-head look, the one he pulls off well with his thick mop of tangled brown hair and bushy brows above heavily-lidded, puppy brown eyes. He has the beginnings of a beard, more than a five o’clock shadow but not yet ZZ Top, and he favors acid washed jeans and T-shirts with weird s**t written across the chest, things like I’d hit that, or Your momma likes it like this.

The thing about Trace is he always has his drumsticks with him. He should; they’re the most expensive thing he owns. They stick out of the back pocket of his jeans, crossed in an X, and his shirt rides up where it’s tucked behind them. He works at Dixon’s, a local family-owned deli, and for some reason Adam’s never quite figured out, all the girls go crazy for him, his flirty comments, and his bawdy winks. He’s banging Janie, even though the girl has the hots for Adam.

Who doesn’t care. Let her want him—she isn’t Adam’s type. She has boobs and cootch and no ass to speak of, and nothing tucked in the front of her jeans that he wants, anyway. Trace is the ladies’ man of the group. Adam thinks he wants to make it big just to get the groupies. Right now all he has is Jane.

Then there’s Mike. Pushing thirty but damn, that man can sing. He has a real high voice Adam would kill for on some of their rock ballads. Adam has actually seen people swoon when Mike hits some of those notes. That’s why Mike’s only on back-up, though, because Adam likes it when they swoon for him. He’s the lead singer. He’s the star of this outfit.

Mike has hair like Trace’s, just as dark and untamable. With his goatee he looks like Robert Downey Jr. would if the actor gained forty pounds. He’s short, stocky, and not too bad on bass. And that voice…damn. If he took the band half as seriously as Adam did, there would be trouble between them, but the thing with Mike is there’s nothing serious about him. Viral Blue is just fun for him. The clubs, the coffee houses, the few gigs they have…it’s all for kicks.

Secretly Adam hopes he has a little more direction in his own life by the time he hits Mike’s age. Thirty and still working at the mall. In a clothing store, of all places. It’d be the setup of a perfect gay joke, if Mike were gay. Which he isn’t. Hell, some days Adam isn’t even sure he’s straight. As long as he’s known Mike, there’s never been anyone he’s admitted to sleeping with. For all Adam knows, Mike might be the world’s oldest virgin. It might have something to do with the way he dresses—baggy T-shirts to hide his belly flab, gangsta style jeans hanging low on his fat ass. Do chicks really dig that? Does anybody?

Adam shouldn’t talk, though. When was the last time he got some action? Something other than humping on the dance floor? He can’t remember. There was that guy in high school he fooled around with, and he slept with Janie once, just to see what it would be like, but he didn’t enjoy it. He didn’t even undress all the way, just unzipped his jeans and stuck it in, then zipped back up and left when she told him she loved him.

He laughed at that. He doesn’t know what love is but he’s pretty sure it’s nothing like what he feels for her, or for any of the guys he meets at the clubs. In his mind love is something carved in diamond, real diamond and not that fake s**t he wears sprayed on the front of his jeans. It’s hard and indestructible and undeniable. That’s what he’s holding out for. Something like that.

But he has other things on his mind at the moment, doesn’t he? He isn’t looking for forever, or even just right now. He’s looking for a deal and a CD with his picture on the cover, his songs on the tracks. He thinks maybe this thing at the Lot is just what he needs to get that dream underway. How old is he again? Twenty-three, and nowhere near where he wants to be with his life. If everyone keeps telling him he’s so young, why does it feel like he’s running out of time?

He always said he wanted to sing in a band when he grew up…is he grown up enough yet? Isn’t twenty-three old enough to know what he wants—and finally go out and get it?