Dear Rockstar (3 page)

I watched his gaze skip over the Flashdance twins but he was heading straight for them, threading his way slowly, easily, through the maze of tables like a big cat surveying his territory, looking for the best rock to sun himself on while everyone watched him with baited breath. I felt myself sinking in my chair, trying to make myself invisible behind my notebook, keeping only one eye on him, part of me hoping he wouldn’t see me, part of me hoping he would.

He didn’t walk so much as saunter, taking his time. I think he knew everyone was watching, whispering about him behind their hands. Most new kids would have been embarrassed but he seemed unaffected. In fact, he seemed rather used to the sort of attention he attracted, and I guess I couldn’t blame him. Some people were just like that. They had a kind of magnet inside of them that drew people like moths to a flame.

I’d fallen in love with Tyler Vincent in an moment, the first time I saw him on a television screen, even before he opened his mouth and began to sing. I understood that sort of instant fascination, the thrill it gave you just to watch someone walk across a room, filling all the available space, radiating so much energy people found themselves turning toward the source, like the sun. They couldn’t help it.

And I couldn’t help staring at Dale Diamond like that, even though I told myself not to. I was giving myself a very stern lecture in my head. Where was my loyalty? What kind of fan was I, if my head could be turned by some look-alike, just a wannabe, a cheap knock-off, nothing even close to the real thing? My mind was trying hard to reason with my body, but it wasn’t gaining much traction.

My hands, gripping the edges of my notebook to keep them from trembling, were damp and clammy. There weren’t butterflies in my stomach, there were fire-breathing dragons. My belly burned. I felt like I could barely breathe, which was good, because I thought I might just breathe fire, I was so hot. The temperature in the room had risen by about a hundred degrees. I was actually sweating, quivering, sure I was going to melt into a little pile of nothing, and that was
before
he met my eyes.

He moved toward the table behind the Flashdance twins—it was empty and they were practically dancing in their seats—when he stopped, looking my way for no reason at all, peeking over their Aquanetted hair-dos at me. I swear it was like he felt me or sensed me staring at him,
thinking
about him, even though I was mostly hidden behind my notebook. His dark hair fell haphazardly over one eye and he flipped it out of his way, like he was trying to get a better look, the expression on his face like an animal spotting its prey.

Then he cocked his head and smiled, and I was done for. He hadn’t even pounced yet— was still in the tall grass watching, tail swishing, while I grazed nervously nearby—but I was already a goner. His smile was instantly captivating. If I thought he’d been as bright as the sun before, his smile doubled the wattage. His smile was perfectly white, perfectly perfect, a dimple appearing high up on one cheek, and it reached the corners of his eyes like a rising tide, finally pooling in them with a warmth that would have buckled my knees if I’d been counting on them to support me at that moment.

And once he saw me, he didn’t stop. He didn’t look away. There was no shyness or hesitation. Part of me hadn’t wanted to be seen, was afraid of what might happen if he looked my way, afraid of what I would feel, what I might do or say, but another part of me wanted to be seen. Not just seen—chosen. That secret part of me, one I hadn’t even known existed until that very moment—he seemed to bring it out—wanted him to
choose me
.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.

“Sit here, Dale!” One of the Flashdance twins, the one furthest from me but closest to him, clearly felt his energy shift and didn’t like it, not one bit. She tried her best to redirect him, pointing to the empty table behind her, even daring to reach out and tug a handful of his Dead Kennedys t-shirt in her fist to get his attention.

He glanced down at her, annoyed, taking a step back.

“Mr. Diamond, would you please choose a seat?” Mr. Woodall insisted.

The class snickered, all eyes still on Dale, who changed direction, walking in front of the Flashdance twins’ table like they didn’t exist, their longing gazes following him and finally settling on me with so much jealousy I could feel it like an atomic bomb blast.

“Yes, sir.” Dale snapped him a salute, the energy in the room shifting. They were laughing at the teacher instead of Dale now as he approached my table and sat down.

And my body reacted like Tyler Vincent had just dropped into the chair beside me.

     
CHAPTER THREE     

Mr. Woodall resumed his lecture, but I wasn’t listening. I concentrated on staring at the notebook propped on my knees, hair hanging down to cover the flush in my cheeks—I hoped. I couldn’t focus on anything. Sound receded. Woodall was still talking but I could barely hear him, like I was underwater. To me, he sounded like one of the teachers in a Charlie Brown cartoon.

I tried hard not to pay attention to the guy sitting beside me. It was bad enough he looked like Tyler Vincent, which brought up an instant, involuntary response—at least I understood Aimee’s enthusiasm at the lunch table now—but having him just a foot away was beyond distracting. And quite unfairly so, I reasoned. So he was good-looking—so what? So he looked a little like Tyler Vincent—big deal. There were a lot of cute guys at the academy. What made him so special?

Nothing.
That’s what I told myself as I tried to catch my breath and started back in on my drawing, ignoring Dale’s existence beside me. He wasn’t the man I wanted, after all. My pencil on the page reminded me with every stroke who my heart really belonged to, filling in his strong jaw and that sweet dent in his chin, adding a little morning stubble, because in my fantasy it was the morning after and I was watching him sleep.

Beside me, Dale leaned back in his chair, putting one black combat boot up across his knee, drawing my eye away from my notebook, tracing the denim seam up from his knee to the V, hesitating at that shiny, studded belt securing his jeans at his waist, all the way up to the Dead Kennedys logo, but I didn’t dare look up any further. I felt his gaze on me. He wasn’t paying any attention to Woodall either, or the dirty looks we were getting from both the Flashdance twins and Holly Larson across the room.

My heart felt like it wanted to burst out of my chest, my body betraying me with every breath, every damned beat of my heart. What the hell? What was wrong with me? I’d never had a reaction like this to any guy—even David Hall, who I’d dated during most of my junior year and had finally lost my virginity to on prom night. We had a horrible break-up, including him calling me an obsessed, crazy bitch in front of our algebra class, a fight that continued out in the hallway where I told him every time we’d ever had sex, I’d been thinking about Tyler Vincent.

Which, of course, just served to prove him right.

But this feeling, whatever it was, this dizzy, soaring, sick-to-my-stomach feeling, I hadn’t ever experienced it with any guy I’d ever dated or had even been attracted to.

Tyler Vincent aside, of course.

That’s it. It’s because he looks like Tyler!

I was just transferring my feelings for him to this imitation sitting beside me! Relieved, I went back to sketching, even if my palms were still sweaty and my breathing far too shallow, at least I had worked out an explanation for my body’s response. It wasn’t my fault. It was like Pavlov’s dogs responding to a bell.
Tyler Vincent
made my body react this way. It made sense a look-alike might get the same response.

My stomach growled loudly, reminding me of the lunch I hadn’t eaten. Carrie had obviously interrupted my fry-stealing far before I was full enough to get through to the end of the day. That, too, could have explained the slightly sick, dizzy feeling I was experiencing. In fact, I was sure it was mostly that. I’d been shoving a granola bar in my purse in the morning to eat after lunch, but of course that morning I’d woken up late and had forgotten.

Growwwwwwwwwrrrrreeeerrrrrrlllll.

My stomach sounded like a beached whale and I sank down further in my seat, thankful Woodall was still going on—and on and on—quite loudly about his disappointment in our performance and his plans for correcting our shortcomings as a class. If it had been yesterday, when the whole class was quietly taking the “pop quiz,” my stomach would have interrupted everyone like Moby Dick looking for Ahab.

Greeeeeeeeeooooowwwwrrrrrrrrlllll.

That one sounded more like a distraught cat—Garfield lamenting a missing lasagna perhaps.
Lasagna!
Now I was really hungry. Mortified, I sank even further in my seat. I was going to be drawing
under
the table if I got much lower.

“Hungry?” Dale’s breath was warm on my cheek when he leaned in to whisper his question. I smelled a combination of spearmint and Polo cologne.

I didn’t look at him, vehemently shaking my head, cheeks burning. I expected him to leave me alone, but he didn’t move, and I realized, too late, he was looking over my shoulder.

“Nice drawing.”

I snapped my notebook closed, tossing it on the table and crossing my arms over my stomach. It wouldn’t stop rumbling. Loudly. Dale leaned back in his chair again, straightening his long legs and digging into his jeans pocket. I looked at the clock and saw it was only one-fifteen—forty-five minutes left. Now I really did feel faint.

I glanced over at the crinkle of Dale opening whatever he’d taken out of his pocket. Skittles. We weren’t supposed to eat in class. He popped a few into his mouth, cocking his head at me and tilting the red plastic package in my direction.

“Want some?”

I shook my head, concentrating on looking straight ahead like Mr. Woodall was the only thing in the room but my stomach growled so loudly the two girls sitting at the table next to us giggled and pointed. I ignored them, feeling Dale shift in his chair, leaning forward to put one yellow Skittle on the edge of the table right in front of me. I ignored that too, watching Mr. Woodall waving our pop quizzes around like a madman, still on a rampage.

It was just a piece of candy, a little bit of sugar-coated lemon-flavor decorated with an “S” sitting there looking sweet and delicious and mocking the hell out of me. I resisted, watching Dale out of the corner of my eye, his jaw working as he ate another handful of Skittles. My stomach growled again, not just a noise this time, but an actual, gripping pain.

I grabbed the piece of candy off the table and popped it into my mouth, lemon flavor bursting on my tongue, savoring the sugary sweetness, but it was gone far too soon. Next to me, Dale leaned forward again, this time putting a green Skittle on the table, but not directly in front of me. This time it was six inches to the right of where he’d put the first one—six inches closer to him.

I turned my head to look at him and saw him smiling, still chewing Skittles. Damn that smile. It was infectious. I smiled back, unable to stop myself. He nodded toward the candy as if to say,
“Go on,”
so I did, popping it into my mouth and chewing blissfully. My stomach was actually protesting even louder now, clamoring for more.

Dale put a red one up, another six inches closer to him, and I didn’t hesitate this time, grabbing and eating it quickly. I loved the red ones. He raised his eyebrows under that shock of dark hair, reaching into the bag and putting another red one up, but we’d progressed far enough across the table this one was directly in front of him. I would have to reach across him to get it.

He jerked his head toward it, that same motion,
“Go on,”
but I hesitated to lean so far into his personal space. He just watched me struggle, pouring more Skittles into his hand and popping them into his mouth, chewing them up while he waited. Finally, I reached over his lap, leaning in to sweep the piece of candy into my hand, when Dale caught me.

I looked up, surprised, meeting his eyes, and then down at our hands, his thumb and forefinger encircling my wrist. I couldn’t breathe. All the air had escaped my lungs. I might as well have been on the moon for all the air I could manage to take in. I couldn’t do anything but watch him turn my hand over and pry my fingers open, where the piece of candy was already leaving a red stain because my hands were so damp.

Dale touched the red spot, rubbing it into the skin at the center of my palm, a sensation that sent electric shockwaves through me, as if that one tiny spot on my hand was connected to every nerve ending in my body. I watched as he put his finger in his mouth, sucking off sweetness, lips puckered like a kiss, eyes never leaving mine. It was the first time I noticed they were blue, not hazel like his rock star look-alike’s. They were a deep, bottomless ocean blue, a bright, sun-on-the-water, blinding sort of blue, and there was so much revealed there I found myself torn between not being able to look away and feeling like I couldn’t hold his gaze for one more second.

Then he took the Skittles package and tipped it over, spilling a rainbow into my palm. He closed my hand over the myriad of colorful candies, letting me go with that same motion of his head.
“Go on.”
I smiled, opening my hand and looking down at the already melting little bits of sweetness he’d offered. My head argued with my body, telling me I should eat them like a girl, one-by-one, draw it out, tease him, make it sexy and fun and even a little erotic because—well, even I couldn’t deny there was something going on here, some sort of attraction, even if it was just my Pavlovian response to his Tyler Vincentness.

Instead, my body won—somehow my body always won—and I opened my mouth wide, probably looking like a snake unhinging its jaw but too hungry to care, shoving all of the Skittles into my mouth at once and chewing them into a mass of indistinguishable flavor, just pure sugar, glorious energy, my brain lighting up as I looked at him, thanking him with my eyes. There were so many Skittles in my mouth I felt like a chipmunk.

He grinned, tilting the package at me again, but I shook my head, licking the traces of the rainbow off my palm in a very embarrassing but unavoidable way. He tilted the package back, spilling Skittles into his mouth, chewing with me.

Then he leaned over with his fruity breath and whispered, “Hi Sara.”

I startled, head snapping toward him, eyes narrowing. How did he know my name? He tapped my notebook, sitting closed on the desk, but I had doodled on the front—I doodled on everything—a little heart with an arrow and “Sara loves Tyler” scrawled in the middle. I flushed, grabbing my notebook and turning it over, realizing there were just as many Tyler doodles on the back as there were on the front. I felt him shaking with silent laughter beside me when I opened my notebook to a blank page, leaving it on the desk that way.

“Can I ask you something?” His voice low in my ear, not touching me but so close I felt his body heat.

“You just did.” I glanced up at Woodall, heaping more abuse on the poor periodic table up front. He was randomly calling on people to identify elements—something he claimed we should all already know—and I knew I’d better pay attention before he randomly called on me.

“She speaks!”

I gave him a withering look. Behind him, the Flashdance twins mocked me with big eyes, pretending to lick their palms, batting their eyelashes. Frowning, I crossed my arms over my chest and turned my attention back to the front of the room, where it should have been all along, I reminded myself, if I ever wanted to graduate and get the hell out of this town.

“You like Tyler Vincent?” Dale nodded toward my notebook, leaning back in his chair again to shove the Skittles packet back into his jeans pocket.

I shook my head, feeling a rush of heat in my cheeks, knowing exactly how red and blotchy that made me look but unable to help it. I couldn’t believe I’d just denied my adoration for Tyler Vincent. Who was I? What was wrong with me? But of course he knew—he’d seen my drawing, plus all the doodles of hearts and flowers and the adolescent practicing of signing with Tyler’s surname instead of my own—
Sara Elizabeth Vincent
.