Free Dear Rockstar by Emme Rollins Page B

elevator with a fountain in front carried shoppers between the mall’s two floors.
    Today a stage had been set up, something I’d seen before on a few occasions when they did mini fashion shows or presentations. It had been a big deal several years ago when Tiffany and Rick Astley appeared at a mall performance, before either of them had any real hits. That catchy Rick Astley tune, “Never Gonna Give You Up,” had stuck in my head for months like an ear worm I couldn’t get rid of.
    A stage had been set up and Dale was singing on it.
    But he wasn’t just singing. He was performing.
    I’d seen Tyler Vincent in concert six times since I was fourteen, with all the lights, and the floor-to-ceiling speakers, the costume and guitar changes, but I had never experienced anything quite like this. Dale’s voice called to me, like the wail of a mythic siren or a magical Pied Piper. His singing voice, which I’d heard only once over the phone, with just an acoustic accompaniment, was amplified a hundred, no a thousand times, with a microphone in his hand and a full band behind him.
    “It’s him!” Aimee announced, triumphant.
    Of course it was. I’d known it all along.
    I wasn’t the only one drawn to his energy, like a dark fire, heat lightning at midnight when the air hung so heavy you could barely breathe. Not that I could anyway. My breath had left my body. Girls crowded the front of the stage, hands outstretched, all of them just as transfixed as I was. In one short week, I felt like I knew Dale, I knew where he came from, who he was, what he was about. But this… I hadn’t seen this before. I’d never seen this before.
    He didn’t just exude energy, or even move it—with the force of his body prowling across the stage or the low growl of his voice—he commanded it. He was in complete control, not just of himself and of the band behind him, who played their best because of him—simply because his presence demanded it—but of the entire crowd. There were maybe fifty, a hundred people standing around the stage watching him perform, but I had a strong feeling it wouldn’t have mattered, a hundred, a hundred thousand or a million, Dale could have commanded them all.
    The song was a Police cover, but the song didn’t really even matter. It was Dale, pacing the stage like a predator, that hungry, greedy look in his eyes, the one he gave me when we were alone, parked in my car, our breath so warm it fogged the windows, our bodies strung tighter than any guitar strings. That was the look he gave me before he got out and walked away, denying himself, denying me too. Holding himself back, afraid he would lose control.
    But here, he let that part of him loose to roam the stage, back and forth, his voice calling for one in particular, and yet drawing them all. His gaze moved out into the crowd, like his body, back and forth, searching. It was the hungry longing that brought them all to the front of the stage, clamoring and screaming for him. I’d seen old footage of Elvis concerts, and the Beatles too, girls so overtaken with emotion they cried or sank to their knees, overwhelmed with the experience.
    I’d watched girls faint at Tyler Vincent’s concerts over the years, had seen them jump up on stage only to be taken off by security. But even in that enormous stadium, Tyler Vincent hadn’t elicited in me, or anyone around me, the same feeling Dale did with one dark, heated look.
    “Come on .” Aimee shoved her way through the crowd like a linebacker, clutching her shopping bag to her chest, expecting me to follow. I couldn’t do much else as the crowd parted before us at Aimee’s insistence, filling in behind me as we moved through, as if flesh were water, the crowd all one entity.
    I don’t know how she managed to get us to the front, but she was determined, and there were no security guards here pushing people back into their seats or checking tickets, like they did at the big stadiums during Tyler Vincent