Chapter One: Just my father’s son

I poke my head around the edge of the curtains and glimpse the roaring crowd. They seem as hyped up as me, the music is blaring, I can’t believe I’m here, I can’t believe this is my life. I walk out onto the stage to tremendous applause; I walk over to the man standing in the centre of it, singing his lungs out, his face contorting strangely.

I smile at him and he grins back, continuing to strum his guitar nonchalantly. The music has reached a deafening level now, but I’m blissfully happy. Consciously unaware of it, I begin to hum the lyrics to the song that’s playing. The man with the guitar looks at me again with a happy smile on his face; in fact most of the people are looking at me with happy smiles on their faces.

The song ends. The disappointment that floods me is extreme; those few moments had been the happiest of my life, the adrenaline rush, the happiness. It had been amazing and now it was over. I look up at the man expecting him to announce the next song and begin to play again.

Instead when he opened his mouth this is what he said, “Thank you, thank you. That’s the end of the show folks. I hope you’ll all stay loyal fans, like my son Dimitri over there.” The crowd turned to grin at me and I waved at them, pretending to be the star of the show, pretending to be my father.

David McAdams turned to the crowd and grinned the grin that made him so easy to love, “Aw, look at the little guy. He’s just like his dad.” I was then scooped up by a strong arm and seated on the flat side of my dad’s electric guitar. He smiled at me as he walked off stage, “You wanna go for ice-cream kiddo?”

That’s the last happy memory I have of my father, I was four at the time. After that things just started to go downhill. David started to get drunk every evening, and mum, poor easily influenced mum, got drunk with him. David had always had too much power over his wife; he was more like a god to my mum than a husband. It would have been ok, a beautiful happy relationship between two people who loved each other, but like with everything else, David screwed it up with the alcohol.

So now my two alcoholic parents, David and Sophia, go out and get smashed and do god knows what else every single night. Me, Dimitri, the teenager, I get stuck at home looking after my little sister Cassie. Mum and Dad may think that Cass is blind to every stupid little thing that they do, but she’s not, she’s pretty sharp for a nine year old. I think if I wasn’t here Cassie would be out getting smashed by now too.

I sigh and leave my unhappy thoughts for a second to go and put the said Cassie to bed. “Night Cass,” I say as I switch off the light switch.

“Night Dimi,” she replied, her sweet seven year olds voice incongruous with the rest of my life, her life.

I returned to my room, still feeling dejected, still reflecting on that last good memory. It shone out like a beacon of hope, I knew that David could turn his life around if he wanted to. I knew that he could stop himself from drinking for long enough to record a song, so why not long enough to have a conversation with his kids?

I kneaded my forehead, I wasn’t always like this, I didn’t always think this way, but I had these moods every now and again and when I did they were inescapable. My mind kept on returning to that memory, focusing on David’s words just before he left the stage, “He’s just like his dad.”

I wasn’t. I wouldn’t be like David, not now, not ever. I would not follow in his footsteps; I would not care more for my fans than for my family. In fact I wouldn’t even have any fans, I was determined not to be famous, it just screws up your life.

I wasn’t sure why the idea of being like my father scared me so much, I knew that I wasn’t like him. Sure, on the surface, we were similar in a lot of ways. We were both musicians, though I was not nearly of his calibre. My father was an amazing musician, I’d give him that, there was a reason for his legions of fans.

I also look a lot like David. We’ve got the same shaggy brown hair that’s soft and coarse at the same time and the same hazel eyes. Mine aren’t bloodshot though, unlike his. Still the likeness is unmistakeable, I feel repulsed by my own reflection, it reminds me too much of my father.

I don’t think David understands just how much he’s alienated me, just how little affection I feel for him. He means less to me, his own son, than he does to the fans that have never met him, never even shaken his hand. I refuse to call David dad out loud, he is not my father. If he was my father, he’d be home by now. He’d be home and he’d have tucked Cassie into bed.

Feeling as though a distraction was necessary to stop these thoughts from getting the better of me, I pull over my guitar and begin to play. I don’t know what I’m playing, my fingers seem to form the mellow chords without any conscious demand from my brain.

It’s no song what I’m playing, it’s just a bunch of chords, for now anyway. It’s amazing how much energy and emotion you can pour into a few chords. I hum along absently to the slow, steady beat. Letting the music calm my spirit, lull my soul.

While playing music is the only time I feel a scrap of empathy for my father. After all he started off like this, just playing in his bedroom, loving the music. It was the fame that had ruined David, he couldn’t cope with it. The pressure, the stardom, the god status so many of his fans endowed him with.

I knew that David wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me. I knew that my father was only living for me and Cassandra; he would have committed suicide long ago now if it hadn’t been for that. It was now, with the music flowing over me, that I could feel for David, understand him. It didn’t mean that I forgave him, he had chosen his life, the fame and the infamy that came along with it. He had, in effect, dug his own grave.

I sighed and continued to let the music calm me, eventually falling asleep, my tall, thin frame, still hunched over the guitar. Nobody in my family has ever noticed that I sleep this way, I have since I was fifteen, that was two years ago. No-one has ever noticed that I don’t use my bed, and I like it that way.

Morning, is in some ways, harder than night. Morning is the time of day that I have to realise that neither of my parents showed up during the night. It’s been this way since I was thirteen, but it still cuts me each time I wake up and see their beds empty.

Morning is also the time that I have to get my little sister ready for school , make her lunch, pack her bag and help her comb her hair. Cassie would never admit it to anybody, but she thinks that I’m one of the best hair-dressers in the world.

The other thing I have to do in the mornings is work up the courage to go to school. Now, you’d think being a celebrity’s son and all, I would have plenty of friends. Unfortunately this is not the case, I am of course, surrounded by people who fawn over me, but none of them actually like me. You have no idea how harsh it is when you find out that your girlfriend actually wanted to be making out with your dad instead of you.

I guess school would have been better, fun even, if David had sent me to one of the more exclusive private schools. You know, the one’s where everyone’s loaded and a lot of them are famous to boot. I might have made actual friends at a place like that, but no, David had to put me through public high school. It had been good enough for him and it would be good enough for me.

Still, school’s not all that bad. I do have one friend, her mother’s an actress. Not a famous one though, more of an arty and always broke kind of one. Magenta Scarlet Wielding, as she was christened, is my best friend and the only small ray of sanity in my life.

I say small because no-one could really call Maggie sane. I laughed at the thought, and half of the cornflakes I was now pouring out into a bowl of milk missed their mark. I cleaned up my mess, still smiling. Maggie had an eclectic style, her hair was always stripey, she said her hair was a measure of her mood, and her mood was never one colour, so her hair never could be either. She had been green and white for the last week, because she’d been feeling ‘Tic Tac’.

Still despite being a bit of an oddity, Maggie had managed to carve out a place for herself in the hearts of both the students and teachers of Montbury High School. She was universally adored and I had no idea why, out of the entire student population, she chose me to be her best friend.

She hadn’t done it because of my father, I knew that much, Maggie hated David’s music, she was no fan. Nor had she been endeared to me because of my wealth, Maggie’s mum may be broke the majority of the time, but her father, the CEO of a large company, most definitely wasn’t.

She said we were best mates because she found me ‘interesting’. I didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or not. Most of the time though, Maggie and I got along perfectly well. She was the only person I knew, apart from my family that didn’t put on a facade around me.

Feeling happier than I had last night, I swung my back-pack over my shoulder and headed out the door, herding Cass as I went. Maybe this would be the day that my luck would change for the better, at school at least; maybe today I wouldn’t be just that kid who’s the son of a rock god.