FicWad

Her name was Isabella Page, but everyone had called her Izzie since she was a baby. And that means EVERYONE, her baby picture was on the cover of Rolling Stone. Her father played guitar in a big rock band in the ‘70s. He was always telling stories about ‘back in the day’ when he toured with Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Who or Black Sabbath. Her mom was an 18 year-old supermodel when she met Izzie’s dad, a 20 year-old groupie when Izzie was born, and a 24 year-old heroin addict when Izzie watched her OD. The only memories Izzie had of her were those found in home movies and tabloid pictures.

Izzie was raised in tour busses and recording studios by a never-ending parade of nannies and roadies. By the time she was six she knew how to set up an amp. By eight, she could restring and tune a guitar. By nine, she could beat Keith Richards at poker. By ten, she knew how each one of her dad’s roadies and band members liked their eggs when they were hung over. By twelve she knew how to cut a line of coke.

The media already followed Izzie around wherever she went. She was the most famous kid in music and they all waited to see what the ‘rock & roll baby’ would do next. This made Izzie’s dad super overprotective. She had four older brothers, who were all scattered around the country with their four different mothers. Which made holidays very confusing. There’s Josh, he’s a doctor in London. Alex is a DJ at a radio station in L.A. Brian runs an upscale hair salon with his boyfriend Matt in New York. Adam is a tattoo artist also in New York, and the closest to Izzie, in age and in friendship. The others could get jealous of the amount of time and attention she got from their dad over them. But there was a reason, Izzie didn’t have a mom, so it was just her and her dad raising each other. Until she was 12. He saw a special on TV about a young Drew Barrymore and panicked. That was when he sent her to live with her grandparents.

They weren’t like normal grandparents. They didn’t smell like mothballs and eat pudding. They were cool. Their son was a rock star! It was still a shock for Izzie to live in a house that didn’t move and didn’t have room service. To go to school. To have a real address. Her grandparents lived outside Chicago, in the suburbs. Close enough that she could go see her dad when the tour rolled through town but far enough away that she was hidden from the paparazzi. It was here that she met her best friends. She arrived in the middle of summer, so she didn’t have much opportunity to meet a lot of kids. Fortunately the family next door had kids around her age. The Wentz’s, as it said on their mailbox. Over the years she probably spent more time over there than she did at her own house. It was like she was a part of the family. She even went on vacation with them.

That first summer, she became friends with their daughter, Hilary. They were the same age and were in the same class at school. They remained best friends throughout high school. The younger son, Andrew had a crush on her since the day he figured out what girls were. The oldest, Pete, couldn’t be bothered with the kid that was always hanging around his house, despite their similarities. She helped pad his CD collection with rare originals and live bootlegs that her dad would send her from Europe and Japan. Until her freshman year in high school, she went to visit her brothers in New York for the summer and became the talk of Hollywood again when a video made it’s way through MTV of her playing guitar on stage with her dad at Madison Square Garden. Her name was on everyone’s lips. To top it off, she grew boobs over that summer. Suddenly Pete wasn’t too cool to be seen with her.

The two became inseparable. They were, perhaps, too alike for their own good and got in giant screaming fights about stupid things. They went everywhere together. If one of them was invited somewhere, it was assumed that the other one would come along. When Pete started playing in bands, Izzie was at every show. People always assumed she would join one of them one of these days, given her family background, but she always stayed behind the scenes. Until one band in high school, their singer was out with mono and her friend Taylor had heard her singing along to the radio in art class one day and practically begged her to come fill in for one show. There happened to be an A&R rep at that one show who signed them immediately. Pete was thrilled when he heard. It wasn’t long after that he formed Fall Out Boy with their friend Joe and followed Izzie down the path to fame.

Everything seemed perfect. Izzie’s band, Lloyd Dobbler, named after their favorite John Hughes character, had one of the fastest selling and highest charting independent debut albums ever and were put on the fast track to superstardom. Fall Out Boy had just been signed by Fueled By Ramen and were getting ready to record their own CD. Then something happened. Both refused to talk about it, and no one knew what it was, but one day they stopped talking. They wouldn’t even mention each other in conversation. Their friends had to choose sides. They refused to attend industry events if they knew the other would be in attendance.

This is that story...



Tell me what you think! If you like it, I'll keep writing. If not, I'll stop procrastinating and do my homework.
(this is actually an old story I started writing about a year ago that I abandoned. I liked the premise, but not what I wrote, so I'm redoing it.)