Free The Rock Star's Daughter by Caitlyn Duffy

made much of an effort to get
me interested in clothes.
    Jill also insisted on buying me a Juicy
Couture leather bag and told me it was high time I started carrying
a purse and stopped tucking my wallet into the back pocket of my
jeans.
    "We need to get this hair cut," she said,
studying me in the dressing room of a boutique called Little Bird.
"Maybe we can book an appointment in advance for when we're in New
Orleans. I know a guy there who works wonders with curly hair."
    After she had put together no fewer than ten
outfits for me, we stopped for salads and ice coffees and I didn't
even grumble when she ordered me a vegan meal. "It's kind of nice
getting away for a girls' day," she said. "Don't you think?"
    I reluctantly had to agree. She was much more
tolerable away from Kelsey. But I still didn't know where I stood
with her. I couldn't figure out why my dad had been hung over back
in Florida when Jill had emphatically stated that she did not
drink. Jill was kind of an enigma – on one hand she wanted to be
friends with me, and on the other I got the sense that she
completely resented me suddenly being part of her entourage.
    Throughout lunch I got the feeling that she
was really making an effort to become friends with me. Perhaps my
dad had suggested that she try a little.
    "I became interested in vegetarianism when I
was about your age," she told me as the salads arrived. "I grew up
near a farm and at an early age felt very sensitive about eating
animals. Then, as I got older, I started reading more about the
kind of pesticides poured into the grain that cattle consume, and
the kinds of antibiotics and steroids that are pumped into dairy
cows, and I made the decision to stop eating dairy as well."
    It made me feel very mature that Jill was
explaining her belief system to me. While initially I had been
daunted by her wacky eating habits, her logic about sympathetic
eating and nutrition was well-researched. She seemed a lot less
flakey and new-agey than my first impression of her.
    "When I met your dad, he was a holistic
mess," she laughed. "He was drinking too much, smoking, his idea of
an exercise routine was going for a twenty-minute run on a Saturday
afternoon and then having a cold beer to cool off. He knew he was
in need of a change and really dedicated himself to making it
happen."
    There it was: she wanted to be clear with me
that she was the positive glue holding my dad's life together. All
right, I could recognize that if she wanted me to.
    "What about you? Are you involved in any
social or environmental causes at school?"
    Jill picked my brain clean about my
interests, life at Treadwell, what me and my friends liked to do
for fun, and if I had a boyfriend. I found words just pouring out
of my mouth like a flood; once I started talking, I just couldn't
stop. It was so rare that anyone asked me about my life that I just
kept going and going. I told her all about Mr. Ferris, our
devastatingly attractive band leader who was rumored to be gay, the
weekends we sold baked goods in Harvard Square to raise money for
the orphans of Rwanda, about Emma Jeffries and her catalog cover,
about the report I had written on the history of Native American
music, and about the fire my roommate Ruth and I had started when
we hung contraband Christmas lights up for decoration in our room
and mistakenly left them on all day.
    "No boyfriend?" Jill asked again.
    "I go to an all-girls school," I said in my
own defense.
    "Relax. You're only fifteen. A boyfriend is
probably the last thing you need right now," she assured me.
Although I definitely got the sense that Jill Cunningham (her
maiden name) probably had more boyfriends than she knew what to do
with at my age.
    "You're going to be in all the papers now,"
she explained quietly on the way back to the hotel. "I don't want
them tearing you apart."
    Which I assumed was her polite way of saying
that if I continued to dress like a big slob, the gossip magazines
were going to have a field