Free Rockoholic by C. J. Skuse

much as I want!” I look across at Jackson but he doesn’t even flinch. Mouth agape, he is completely out of it. I raise a hand to feel for breath. “You didn’t even see it, did you?”
    “See what?” I frown.
    Mac sighs again. “He’s a tweak-head.”
    “No he isn’t. He’s just got a headache. I saw him take an aspirin earlier. He’s been clean for, like, two years. . . .”
    “Oh, wake up and smell the bullshit, Jody, please. Wild Man Rocker Jackson Gatlin? Angst-Ridden Jackson Gatlin? Drugged-Up Wastoid Jackson Gatlin? You bought the magazines.”
    “Stop it. Not all those stories are true.”
    “No, they are, you just don’t want to believe them.” Mac sighs for a third time, scraping a hand through his spiky black hair, and when he gets right to the back, he rubs it harder and harder through his hair again, like he’s trying to sandpaper his head. The spikes don’t move, though; there’s that much gel on it. “Oh my nightmare day,” he says. “Please, someone,
someone
tell me I’m dreaming. I mean, are you clinically depressed or something? Is there something here I’m missing? You’ve done stupid things, I know. I was the one who broke your fall when you tried to climb that telephone pole. . . .” Silence. Then he shouts. “
WHAT
the
HELL
have you
DONE
?”
    Jackson stirs, but turns over and falls back to sleep, his face right up against the cold window. “I just saw an opportunity,” I say, my voice shaking. “It’s your fault.”
    “What do you mean this is
my
fault, how the hell is this
my
fault?”
    “It was your Curly Wurly.”
    “Oh my God,” he says, scrunching his eyes. “I can almost hear the soap dropping in the shower. Do you realize people will be out looking for him? Police? His manager? The press? They’ll hunt us down. They’ll search the Saxo. They’ll find fibers!”
    “No they won’t. It’s OK. I’ll clean the car. I’ll eat the evidence. Ow, my head hurts.”
    He laughs sarcastically. I feel I should speak, or at least make some noise. I hate that laugh. That’s the “Jody, you are something else” laugh and it makes me feel stupid. Fat and ugly and freckled and embarrassed and stupid.
    “I just wanted more,” I tell him. “I wanted to meet him properly. To spend more than just thirty seconds with him. More than just a handshake. He came with me quite willingly. . . .”
    “Because he thought you were going to stab him, you stupid cow!”
    I flinch like he’s pricked me with a pin. He calls me a cow all the time and I never get offended. But when he says it now, I don’t like it. “I only got to see three songs, Mac. . . .”
    “That does
not
entitle you to take home the lead singer, Jody.”
    “I know.”
    “Most people settle for a T-shirt or a poster. Not Jody. Jody wants actual
band
members.”
    There’s an odd shuffling and clanking noise behind the car and all of a sudden there’s a light knock on the back window next to Jackson’s head. I scream and Mac jumps about two feet in the air. This is it, I think, it’s the police. I’m beyond busted. A figure shuffles along to Mac’s window and knocks again. But it’s not the police, it’s a sketchy old woman pushing a supermarket cart stuffed with trash bags. Mac catches his breath and goes to roll the window down.
    “Don’t!” I cry out. “She could have an ax or hairy hands or something,” I urge him, instinctively clinging on to Jackson, like she might try and take him away.
    He ignores me and rolls the window down an inch. She must be about eighty, and she’s wearing a wool hat, long brown coat, and a Hello Kitty nightgown. Her face looks like a mashed-up envelope and she obviously has no teeth because her jaw seems to be chewing itself.
    “Spare change?” she sniffs, holding her hand up to the crack in the driver’s window.
    “Uh no, not tonight,” says Mac.
    She peers into the car. “Who else you got in there with you, then?”
    “No one,” he says, and rolls his