Ransom Read online

  “You know, you’ll eventually gain weight, eating the way you do,” Paige says. “Then you’ll be begging me for my healthy tips.”

  “Keep dreaming.”

  I follow them over to the line. It’s hard keeping up with their flurry of conversation, but I would rather listen than join in. And if I can manage to shovel down my pizza fast enough, I should be able to get out of here in ten minutes. My good luck lasts about as long as it takes to get our pizza and find a seat in the busy food court.

  Paige says, “Daisy and I bonded over your favorite thing on earth, Karen.”

  “Yeah?” Karen asks, turning her brown eyes to me. “What would that be?”

  I look at Paige, at a loss, and she grins. “The hottie.”

  Karen’s face lights up. “Might this have something to do with my favorite rocker?”

  Oh. That.

  “It does indeed.” Paige closes her eyes, a dreamy expression on her face. “The one and only Daltrey Ransome.”

  I shift awkwardly in my seat. I really don’t want to talk about Daltrey.

  “I just love him,” Karen gushes. “He’s so insanely hot.”

  “Yeah,” I mutter, picking up my pizza.

  “Get out that magazine,” Paige says, gesturing at my bag. “I want to see the sexies.”

  With growing dread, I pull out the magazine. I can’t very well refuse. I would look even crazier than Paige probably already thinks I am. I lay the tabloid on the table then flip through the pages until I find him. Daltrey.

  Both girls sigh as we stare down at him. Saying he looks good is an understatement, like saying the surface of the sun is warm. He’s beyond gorgeous.

  “What’s the article about?” Paige asks, reaching for the magazine. “The tour?”

  “Who cares?” Karen slaps Paige’s hand away. “I want to see if there are more pictures.” She flips the page.

  Several more pictures of Daltrey cover the next two pages. Daltrey walking into a recording studio. Daltrey ducking into a cab. Daltrey leaving a restaurant with Lennon, Cash, and Levi. A knot has formed in my stomach, and I’m sure I’m about to start crying. This is why I’ve avoided most media this year. I knew I wouldn’t be able to deal.

  “I can’t believe we get to see him in a few weeks,” Paige says happily. “What’s the countdown?”

  “Fifteen days until Ransom,” Karen replies. “It can’t come too soon.”

  “You’re seeing them?” I ask, confused.

  “Yeah, we’re spending a few weeks following the band. Starting in Boston. We’re road tripping.”

  The tour… of course. The girls are going to see Ransom in concert.

  “You should totally come,” Paige tells me. “We’re following them up and down the east coast for two weeks. It’s going to be amazing.”

  Her causal offer has the effect of making my urge to cry intensify. My eyes start to water.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Paige asks.

  I try to smile, but I have a feeling it comes out much more like a grimace. “Yeah,” I manage. I reach for my Coke, hoping to dispel the lump in my throat. I need to hold it together until I get back to the peace of my apartment. I have a feeling my self-imposed Daltrey-information-fast is about to go out the window. I’ll probably be gorging on pop-culture websites within the hour.

  Then again, there’s probably no better source for information than his fans. “Is it a big tour?” I ask, trying to keep my voice casual. “I’ve been so busy with school that I haven’t really heard much about it.”

  “Yeah, they keep adding dates,” Karen says, leaning over to get a better look at Daltrey’s tattoo-covered biceps. “These guys are so on fire right now. And they get more popular every day.”

  “Whatever,” Paige scoffs. “Bandwagoners. We’ve been fans from the start.”

  “Hey, those bandwagoners are good for us,” Karen says. “The bigger Ransom gets, the more tour dates they add, and the more chances we have to see them.”

  “That’s true.” Paige takes a bite of her pizza. “And the more attention they get from paparazzi.” She points at the magazine. “This totally made my day. They can invade his privacy all they want.”

  Karen laughs, but I feel sick. This conversation is dancing far too close to way too many forbidden topics. I need to get out of here.

  “I should get going,” I say, throwing my napkin onto my half-finished pizza. I stand and gesture at the magazine. “You guys want to keep that?”

  “Nah,” Karen says, pushing it in my direction. “I get that one delivered. It will probably be at the dorm when I get there.”

  I don’t want to admit how relieved I am as I slip the magazine back into my bag. “Thanks for inviting me to lunch.”

  “Any time,” Paige says. “And you should really think about coming on the tour. It’s going to be so much fun.”

  I give them both a small smile and turn to go. It was nice of her to offer, but the last thing I need to do is to go running off after Daltrey Ransome. He’s not a part of my life anymore. And the only way I’ll manage to hang onto my thin grasp of sanity is if it stays that way.

  Chapter Three

  Daltrey

  I wake up, alone in a dark hotel room, my heart racing, scared out of my mind. When I finally figure out where the hell I am, I rub my aching chest. I’m glad I’m not on the bus, glad there’s no one in here to see me like this. I’m pretty sure the wetness I feel on my cheeks is tears, and my brothers would never let me live that down.

  Knowing sleep isn’t going to return anytime soon, I climb out of bed and head for the mini bar. I grab a cold beer, even though I could probably use something stronger. You’re too young for a drinking problem. So-called rock star or not.

  I take the beer to the small balcony of my room and lean against the railing, looking out over the lights of Memphis. We played a kick-ass show, and I should still be on a high from it. The crowd was amazing. Everything felt right in the world, for a few brief hours. I could forget about the knowledge that I’d traveled halfway across the country without actually seeing any of it. Forget the fact that the tour bus, though more luxurious than our old van, was cramped and starting to make me feel claustrophobic. Forget about how tired I was and how my throat hurt pretty much every day now. When we played like that, when we somehow managed to tap into that almost magical, synched-up, out-of-body place I can’t even describe, I could forget about all the shitty stuff and remember why we were doing this in the first place.

  I had felt that tonight, for the first time in weeks, and the sensation had been fantastic. I should have slept like a baby. But here I was again, drinking a beer by myself at three in the morning.

  I keep having dreams about her.

  Which is pretty fucking ridiculous because I haven’t talked to the girl in about a year. Daisy made it perfectly clear that, for whatever reason, she was done with me—just like that, years of friendship, gone. And I don’t even know what the hell I did.

  Okay, so I left, but she always knew that was going to happen. We planned for it, for Christ’s sake. Worked for it. Both of us. She had every bit as much to do with our success as anyone in the band. She was our biggest supporter, our loudest critic. We never performed a song without her hearing it first, never played a gig without her there. She was with us on that first horrible so-called tour, riding around Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana to all those dingy dive bars. She helped us plaster the towns with our flyers and sell our homemade CDs, just waiting for our big chance.

  And when it came, when we got the call from Grey Skies that they wanted us to open for them, she was there then, too. She sat at our kitchen table, just like she had a thousand times before, waiting with bated breath for my dad to get off the phone with their manager. When he finally hung up and confirmed that our big break had appeared, she was the first person I grabbed as the kitchen erupted around us. She was happy for me—not the fake kind of happy that you think another person wants to see. She was genuinely, ho
nest-to-God, screaming-her-face-off-while-hugging-me happy.

  The only bad thing about those hectic, heady weeks before the tour was leaving her. I wanted to tell her then, the thing I’d always known but been too afraid to say, but I didn’t. I couldn’t imagine saying those three words—finally saying them, out loud, not just in my head where I imagined it constantly—and then leaving. So I held my tongue, and my tears, as I hugged her one last time before heading for the airport.

  Maybe I should have said it. Maybe then she wouldn’t have disappeared the way she did. But I had a plan, damn it. I was going to come back, take her to her prom, the way we always talked about, and drop the bomb that I wanted us to be more. The way it played out in my head was that she’d be so happy she’d be willing to leave with me. She would forget about the business school she never really wanted to attend to come on tour with us. I wanted to experience this with her. I wanted to show her the world.

  Taking another sip of beer, I wonder—not for the first time—what in the hell I could have done to piss her off so much. She stopped taking my calls about three months after we left for California. By then we’d recorded our album and started to tour as the openers for Grey Skies. I used to call her every night, eager to tell her all about life on the road in a proper tour. We had a lot more free time back then, and I was actually getting a chance to do things in the towns where we stopped. Was that it? Was she jealous?

  But that wasn’t like Daisy. I cannot imagine that she would throw away a thirteen-year friendship out of jealousy. It didn’t make any sense. But one day, she didn’t answer when I called. And didn’t respond to my voice mail. Or my increasingly panicked text messages. My emails went unanswered, too.

  I tried for weeks to reach her, calling her house, her phone, her dad’s phone. He told me flat out she didn’t want to talk to me, but I still couldn’t accept it. Even when her cell number was disconnected, when my emails started to come back with the message that there was no such address, I didn’t get it. It wasn’t until she finally called me to cancel our prom plans that I realized what she’d been trying to tell me: She didn’t want to have anything to do with me.

  I replay those weeks all the time, wondering what I could have done differently. I always come back to the same thing: I should have gone home. I should have told my dad to screw himself and gotten on a plane. They could have managed without me for a few days. Even if they couldn’t, even if it would have jeopardized our chance to open for Grey Skies, I should have done it anyway. Daisy was worth it.

  But I didn’t. And now she’s away at college, probably having the time of her life, forgetting all about her old friend. I can see her so clearly, sitting on a green lawn, surrounded by friends, like some fucking commercial, her brown curls blowing in the breeze as she laughs. The image makes my chest ache again. She’s gone, man. Accept it.

  I look out over the city again, my beer bottle empty. She is gone, hundreds of miles away, totally out of my reach. And I’m here, alone in the middle of the night, haunted by memories of the only girl I ever loved.

  Chapter Four

  Daisy

  As we near the end of the semester, the weather is warming. I’ve noticed a definitive uptick in my anxiety level in the past few weeks, and I’ve been trying to keep my mind off the reasons why for days now.

  In my apartment, my sanctuary, I don’t have to worry. I keep it cool enough to hide the change of seasons. There is nothing in this space to remind me of my past, of old friends, or of once-familiar places. To most eyes, certainly those of girls like Paige and Karen, I’m sure my place looks depressingly sterile with its white-and-cream color scheme and bare walls. I have no pictures on the walls and no knickknacks or mementos on the tables, nothing to distract me from the quiet and calm that I crave above all else.

  I head to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water. On my way back, I pick up my laptop from the counter before sitting on the couch. I sink into the cushions and slip off my Converse so I can pull my feet up and tuck them underneath me. The laptop remains firmly closed while I sip my water, contemplating what I know I’m about to do.

  The laptop has very strict filters. Having them installed was the only way I would agree to having a computer in the apartment at all. Of course, my father insisted I needed one for school, and the assistant dean we worked with on my admission agreed.

  Doctor Jacobs, my therapist, encouraged me to leave the filters off entirely. “You need to learn to trust yourself, Daisy,” she said.

  In the end, the four of us compromised with the social media filter—to which only I had the password. Dr. Jacobs insisted that I be the one who had the control should I decide to head out into the wild.

  I shiver in spite of my totally weather-inappropriate hoodie and jeans. I replace the cap on my water and set the bottle on the table beside me. Am I really going to do this? Am I really about to open myself up to all the fear and pain I know is contained in that little button for my web browser?

  I know my fear is not normal. My generation seems to be constantly online, hooked in, networking, heads bent over phones and laptops and tablets all over campus. Most nineteen-year-olds have probably spent several hours online already today. But I am not a normal teenager. The Internet is not a fun place for me, not a place to chat with friends and look at pictures and procrastinate when I don’t want to do my work. At least, it isn’t anymore. It hasn’t been for the past year.

  You can do this, Daisy. The voice in my head sounds suspiciously like Dr. Jacobs. You can go online and look up Daltrey and his brothers without anything bad happening to you. You are strong enough to stay away from the things you’re afraid of seeing.

  With trembling hands, I unlatch the MacBook and hit the Power button. Within moments I’m staring at the access page for my filters. My fingers hesitate over the password box. Moment of truth.

  I quickly type the passcode before I can change my mind and sigh in relief once it’s done. That wasn’t so bad. Next, I open a search engine and type in Daltrey’s name, holding my breath for the split second it takes for the results to return.

  There are more than a million hits. I gasp, shocked by this proof of the enormity of their success.

  When I went into my self-imposed radio silence last summer, Ransom was getting some good buzz online and on the entertainment shows. At the time, they were touring with Grey Skies, one of the biggest names in the alt-rock scene, and their album had just dropped. I could tell, even in those early days, that they were about to hit it big.

  Of course, I haven’t been able to completely escape news of them over the last few months. They are occasionally mentioned even on the “safe” websites and TV shows I frequent. Every so often, I would see their faces smile out at me from a magazine rack at the drugstore. The weirdest thing was when I started to see the name Ransom scrawled out across the chests of classmates. The band had apparently reached the point where their names were on T-shirts.

  It still felt totally surreal to click on the link for their name on Wikipedia. They have a freaking Wikipedia page, for God’s sake. These are the boys I grew up with, the boys I shared a hundred family dinners with, the boys who used to moon me and pull my hair. They were same boys I listened to for hours as they practiced in their garage. I sat giggling with Daltrey and Lennon on the upstairs landing the first time Cash had gone on a date, trying to peek over their heads to see if he’d kiss the girl. And now I’m looking at him, his hair professionally tousled, posing with his brothers, as they all stare moodily out at me from some photo shoot. It’s beyond weird.

  I quickly move to the more gossip-happy entertainment sites. I soak in information about the boys as if I can’t get enough of it. Their album hit number one on the Billboard chart a month ago and is holding steady. They’ve done appearances on Letterman and The Tonight Show. Apparently, Reed is dating some actress—I snort at that—and Cash is frequently seen with a dizzying array of models and reality stars. When I find no mention of who Daltrey is da
ting, I start to feel more comfortable. I’m not sure I could handle seeing him draped all over some pop starlet.

  I click on a link that takes me to the band’s ConnectMe page. I haven’t been on my generation’s most popular social media site since everything went down last year, and I remember why as soon as I click on the familiar yellow M icon. I barely register the fact that the boys have more than a million fans on their page before I see it—her name—right there, front and center on my screen. Joanie was the last person to comment on the band’s page.

  Can’t wait to see you in Cleveland again! It’s been way too long since you’ve been home!

  There are dozens of responses to her post, no doubt from other Cleveland fans looking forward to the band’s homecoming performance at the end of the summer, but I’m transfixed by her name and the tiny picture next to it. Joanie Hartfield. She used this very website to make my life a living hell only twelve months ago.

  I close the browser and slam the laptop closed. Images are racing through my mind. Horrible, evil, hateful words. Pictures of me. Threats. All of the things that Joanie and her friends had flung at me, relentlessly, gleefully even, for months, until I finally broke, until I went to pieces and decided sheer nothingness would be preferable to living in the kind of world where people could be so cruel.

  My breathing has become heavy, and beads of sweat pop out on my forehead. I know a panic attack is imminent. How could I be so stupid to go to that site, of all places? And what are the odds of her posting there on the one day that I actually logged on? Can the universe hate me any more?

  I half-laugh at the thought, because the universe has made its opinion of me quite clear in the past year. But the strangled laugh actually manages to calm me somewhat. I grab my water bottle from the table and take a long gulp before beginning my counting exercises.