Free Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway by Cherie Currie Page A

of outfit was in order. I did have an outrageous silver glittery outfit picked out, but after seeing how handsome Bowie looked on the cover of David Live, I decided to go with a suit and tie. It was a hand-me-down from my brother, small and fitted, and it hugged me in all the right places, but I was still a little bummed that it wasn’t an actual zoot suit. Still, I had to admit this was a pretty good compromise. I struck a pose in the mirror and smiled at myself.
     
    It was eight o’clock and Marie was in the bedroom getting ready with me. She was dressed in blue jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, boots, and a belt. It was way too conservative for my taste, but I had to admit she looked good for a surfer chick. T.Y. knocked and then peeked around the bedroom door, smiling at us indulgently. He looked like a doting father. I knew back then that T.Y. really wanted kids, but Sandie was dead set against it. I still believe that this was because Marie and I had flushed her favorite dolls down the toilet when we were toddlers. We didn’t do it to be mean—we were trying to give them a bath. But Sandie took it badly, and I honestly think that this put her off of the idea of having children, ever.
     
    “Cherie-zee!” he boomed with that movie-star voice of his. “Look at you! You look great, darlin’!”
     
    “Oh, thanks, T.Y.!” I smiled. I felt a flutter of pride. I never usually got this kind of affirmation about the way I looked in those days, so when it did happen, it made me feel pretty special. T.Y. looked over at Marie, who was looking at him expectantly, her eyebrow raised.
     
    “And look at YOU, Marie-zee!” T.Y. grinned. “Lookin’ beautiful!”
     
    “Love you, too, Tony . . .” Marie smiled as she went on doing her makeup.
     
    T.Y. stepped into the room, dressed in his uniform of white linen pants and a tan tunic. He looked like he’d just got back from an Indian spiritual retreat. T.Y. was a West Coast free-spirit kind of a guy. Nothing seemed to get to him, and even his attitude toward work was pretty laid-back. Not even Mom’s blatant objection to his and Sandie’s relationship could rattle him. T.Y. took it all in stride. Sure, he attended acting classes, and he worked once in a while, but he didn’t go out and beat the pavement looking for acting jobs the way my sister Sandie did. Tony was more content to just sit back and let the universe take care of itself. He had a daughter from a previous marriage who was around our age, but it was always amusing when he’d attempt to get all paternal with us. To that end, he cleared his throat. “Now, uh, girls . . .” he said, trying his best to sound responsible. “I don’t know what you get into at these parties or whatever . . . whether you have a beer, or you take a hit off a joint . . .”
     
    Hearing Tony talk to us about grass made me smile. It was always funny when an older person tried to talk to me about drugs, even Tony, who was pretty much a party guy. He’d once allowed Marie and me to throw a party where we invited all our friends from school. He’d even provided the beer. Fast-forward a few hours, and the house was full of staggering, vomiting, crying, and otherwise incapacitated fifteen-year-olds, and there was T.Y., walking around unfazed by it all. I knew that at least T.Y. knew what he was talking about. My mom tried to have that talk with me, and I couldn’t take her seriously. At fifteen, I felt that I knew more about drugs than she did.
     
    “Well”—T.Y. smiled—“I’m not trying to get into your business. I just want you to be cool . . .”
     
    He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a couple of enormous pills. “Just take these,” he said. “They’re vitamins. They’ll make you feel a whole lot better in the morning . . .”
     
    He threw a pill to me and I caught it. He repeated the routine with Marie. We looked at him, and I thought that T.Y. had to be the coolest grown-up I’d ever known. If my mom