He laughed. “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.

“Hey, wait.” I grabbed his arm. It was warm and muscular and the touch was electric. When he looked at me, my breath went away. I had never had such an instant attraction to someone and it scared me a little. “I didn’t mean anything. I think you’d make a great rock star. Hell, you already sort of look like one. I like rock stars. Remember?”

He relented a little, giving me half a smile, but not enough to bring out that dimple in his cheek.

“Do you have a car?” I inquired.

He shook his dark head. “I sold it last year to pay for a new guitar.”

“Do you want a ride to the academy?” I offered. I had to pick up Aimee, of course, but she was just down the road. I tried to imagine her reaction when I showed up with Dale Diamond in the car.

I patted the dashboard of my Dodge Dart affectionately. “I know my baby here is old and temperamental, but she’s transportation. I worked all summer at a Dairy Queen to buy her. Four hundred bucks.”

“You got taken.”

I laughed and he rewarded me with a real dimple-making smile.

“So, do you want a ride on Monday?”

“Yeah. That would be great.” He looked down at my hand, still touching his arm. “Hey… can I still call you tonight?”

“If you want to.” I suddenly wanted him to, very much.

“I want to.” He got out of the car.

I didn’t believe in fate. Strange coincidences happened all the time, but it was all just random, nothing we could control. That’s what I told myself as I watched Dale go into the building.

But I didn’t quite believe it anymore.

I heard it before I even got out of the car, and everything inside of me went silent. I sat there for a moment, hating to go inside. Hating him.

I gathered my purse and notebook and opened the car door. I was glad Dale lived somewhere up on the third floor and had already gone in. I didn’t want him to hear this. I didn’t want to hear this. Dried leaves crunched under my feet as I walked toward the apartment building door. There was one lone tree at the side of the building. It looked as lost and forlorn as I felt.

Inside the building it was a little warmer. Just down that short flight of steps and beyond that plain white door, a monster waited. The yelling got louder. I hated coming here every day, to this dingy building, with its rust-colored carpet and peeling walls. I remembered a time when there was a house to come home to, before the stepbeast had lost his longest-running job. Then there was a succession of lost jobs—and this place.

To descend the stairs and go inside would just put me in the middle—again. It was a place I’d been in all my life. I should be used to it. What was it like for Tyler Vincent’s only daughter, Chloe, to come home every day? She was in her last year of high school—just a year behind me, although I was still stuck in school too.

I spun the fantasy out in my head—

She would come home from school, driving her brand-new Mustang, red with black interior, grab herself a snack from the kitchen, talk to her mom for a minute, and then head to her room. On her way, she would peek in and say “hi” to her dad—if his sign, “Do Not Disturb, Madman At Work” wasn’t out, that was. He would be in his studio, writing, strumming his guitar. She would talk with him for a minute, munching on her apple, about her day, about his song, about life in general, give him a peck on the cheek and say, “Oh, Dad!” when he mentioned how old she was beginning to look and how he was going to have to invest in a shotgun and a porch swing soon.

I sat down on the stairs, unable to think anymore through the bitterness or see through my tears. His voice reverberated in my head.

“You can’t do anything! Jesus Christ! Are you that stupid? I can’t hear you!”

My hands pressed against my ears and I hung my head between my knees, feeling weak. You’d think I could get used to it, but it always made my stomach churn and my ears ring.

“What? What did you say? What did you just say to me? Fuck you, bitch! Get your ass over here!” He went on, and he would continue, berating her, making himself feel superior.

I heard my mother’s voice—a little voice, a mouse voice, a scared little-girl voice.

“Honey, you never asked me to do that. I would have, if you’d told me, but you never did.”

No Mom, I thought, shaking my head. Don’t be a hero. Don’t be brave. You won’t get away with it.

“Don’t tell me what I told you! Are you calling me a liar?”

“No, but I—”

CRACK

Sudden, like a gunshot, or a whip.

And my mother’s tears, always her tears.

And mine. I cried for her weakness, for my own, wondering if there were people out there who lived normal lives, or if everyone hid things like this behind closed doors, behind scarves and sunglasses.

Tyler Vincent doesn’t.

That much I knew. He was known for being a family man, his wholesome image part of his celebrity. Just a normal everyday guy, living in his hometown in Maine, raising a family, who just happened to be one of the biggest rock stars who ever lived.

His kids never sat outside and wished him dead.

I was pretty sure of that.

CHAPTER FIVE

I opened the door slowly, bracing myself. This was the worst part. If I could just make it to my room, my haven, I’d be safe.

“Well, where have you been?” He didn’t look away from the TV, although his words were directed at me. “You can’t just waltz in here anytime you want to.”

I looked at him, sitting in “his” chair, remote control in hand, a cigarette in the other. He looked at me now, but he didn’t glare and that was good. That meant he wasn’t going to keep me. This was just a show of power.

“Sorry, I was at Aimee’s,” I said softly, the door snicking shut behind me. This was a lie. I’d simply waited out on the stairs until the yelling—and the crying—had stopped.

“Well, you can forget about dinner.”

“Did I miss it?” I hadn’t been out on the stairs that long!

“No, but you can forget about eating it.” He flipped the channel and puffed on his cigarette.

“You were late.” He turned back to the television set.

It was my dismissal. Thank God.

“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.