Fangirl (13 page)

The sound of the crickets in the fields was gradually drowned out by the
whoosh
of a low-flying helicopter hovering over the house.

Connor ran out to Josie and stared skyward while her father dropped the spatula and ran inside.

An army of uniformed men in visor helmets and bulletproof vests charged through the backyard fence door pointing guns at them.

“Down. Get down!” they told them.

And so they did.

“No! ‘Face down,' we said. On your bellies!”

And so they did.

“Drop everything!” Josie dropped her phone to the ground next to her brother who lay frozen on the cut grass like a corpse. “Do what we say and everything will be fine. Do not move until we tell you.”

“It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Don't worry, Connor. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay.”

“Suspect ran inside. Get him!”

“Is he armed?”

“Don't know, Chief.”

“Keep your weapons drawn, boys.”

“Mr. Brant, come out now and no one will get hurt!” The guy repeated himself, and his body armor jostled as he ran toward the doorstep. “You have ten seconds to walk out that door before we use force. We have a search warrant, Mr. Brant.”

“Get the kids out of here,” the guy in charge yelled to the others.

A man grabbed her arms back like chicken wing bones. “Get up. Move it!”

“Connor. Where's Connor?”

“Don't worry. He's safe.”

Some had holsters on their belts, walkie-talkies strapped to them like something out of
G.I. Joe.
Others had holsters tied around their thighs, too. Some had both and wore combat boots thumping as they walked—like Stormtroopers. Only these commandos were real.

Josie felt a forceful push down onto the ground next to the oak tree in the front yard—on her butt. The man turned around. On the back of his jacket in bright yellow letters was the name DEA. What the heck was that?

The helicopter was still circling.

“Where's my phone?”

“Don't worry about that, honey. That's the least of your problems.”

“What's going on? Why are you doing this to us?”

“Ask your dad, honey. He knows what's going on.”

She was shaky. Her lungs tightened. A panic attack had begun. If only her lungs weren't so tight, she would suck in the night air. But she couldn't.

She heard yelling in the backyard. “Suspect in custody,” the voice crackled on the walkie-talkies.

They found Josie's dad inside the house. He was sitting on the piano bench. “Hands up! Don't touch the piano. I said ‘HANDS UP,' sir!”

“You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent.”

“He armed? No. Okay, take him downtown.”

“The kids? Call next of kin.”

Connor was brought to the tree by two armed men who plopped him down next to her. She gripped his hand. Tightly. For dear life.

“I don't understand, Josie. I don't understand. Are we in trouble, Josie?”

“I don't think so.”

“What about Dad?”

“I don't know, Connor. I don't know. . . .”

As much as
Peter could dish out the silent treatment, he didn't take it very well when the tables were turned on him—especially when he really wanted to hear back from someone, especially when it was a girl he liked.

Maybe Josie was busy? Or, possibly, she didn't think it was really him Tweeting her. It was pretty random for him to reach out to a fan directly, after all. Or maybe she didn't have a cell phone or access to a computer? No, everyone had a phone and a computer. Maybe he wrote down the wrong username?

He Googled her: “Josie Bakersfield Twitter.”

Nothing but hundreds of random results.

He typed in “MusicLuvr.”

At the top of the results was a link to her profile:

@M
USIC
L
UVR
bakersfield,ca

Changing the world one song at a time

The Twitter profile pic looked exactly like her. And the messages in her profile all but confirmed it. Most were about music or, more importantly, sweet, supportive messages to him.
How did I not ever read these? Oh yeah. I get thousands a day.
Her last Tweet was from Peter's Bakersfield show, a pic of him onstage along with the message, “Heaven.”

Boom, boom, boom!
Three forceful knocks on his door.
It better be important,
Peter thought. It was past midnight.

“Open up,” barked a deep voice on the other side of his hotel door. “It's the police!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Peter said, reaching to open the door. “Nice try.”

Standing before Peter in the doorway was Big Jim, fashioning his finger and thumb into the shape of a pistol with his right hand and holding a bottle of water in his left. “Always wanted to be a cop, but my knees are shot.” He ambled past Peter. “So now I get the pleasure of babysitting you—you know, feeding and watering you like my Chihuahua puppy.”

“Woof-woof,” Peter barked.

“I'm just seeing if you need anything before I crash for the night. Was just lookin' at the itinerary. Long day tomorrow. You got the show over in Oakland and then right after we fly down to L.A. And oh . . .” Big Jim handed Peter the jumbo-size bottle of water. “Your pa said you gotta drink this before you go to bed. Something about ‘lubricating' your vocal chords.”

“Please tell me he did not really use the word ‘lubricating.'”

“I swear, he did.” Big Jim laughed. “I couldn't make that up.”

Jim noticed the opened laptop on the coffee table by the couch. “Speaking of Jesus. You watchin' dirty videos again? 'Cuz God just isn't gonna approve of . . .”

“What do you mean
again
?” Peter scurried over to the table and slamming the laptop closed. Jim erupted in one of his signature belly laughs that sent his rotund stomach heaving up
and down like a shaken bowl of jelly.

“Relax. Just jokin' with ya.”

“Good one. You really wanna know what I was doing?”

“I don't know.” Jim cracked a mischievous smile. “You tell me.”

Peter sat on the couch and opened back up his laptop.

“If you really must know, well, I'm stalking a fan.”

“What? You're stalking a stalker? Now that's funny.”

“Well, I don't know if she's a stalker,” Peter corrected. “In fact . . .” Peter refreshed his Twitter for the fifth time in the last minute. “The girl won't even write me back.”

“Bummer, huh? But now you know what it's like for the rest of us dudes who live in
reality.
You were a rejection virgin. This is a first for you. You should be proud.”

“First time for everything.” Peter sighed.

“How's it feel to get thrown the Heisman?”

“Not good.”

Jim gently patted Peter between his shoulder blades. “If it makes ya feel any better, I've been turned down more times than the volume on your iPod.”

Peter kept surfing. “Just make sure you don't tell Dad. He'll kill me.”

Peter knew Bobby might just blow a major fuse, especially because, with gospel-like fervor, he had instructed his son, “The first two rules of dating a fan are . . . Number One: Don't do it. And . . .” This is where Bobby would flash two stiff fingers. “Number Two: Still don't do it.”

Peter looked out the window at the apartment building across the street. The curtains were pulled closed in front of the window he had peered into earlier in the night. “Either way,” Peter continued. “He'd be real mad.”

“Trust me, I know. My job's makin' sure you don't get kidnapped or die. So telling your dad you were stalking a fan, well, that would kinda make me bad at my job now, wouldn't it?”

“Good man,” Peter said, with a fist bump.

“So who's the girl?”

“I met her down in Bakersfield this morning.”

“Ah, the cute little chick in the hat.”

“How'd you know?”

Jim plopped his plump self down on the couch. “Son, I've been around the block. I saw that whole thing goin' down.”

“What
thing?
The hug? I hug, basically, every fan. C'mon, dude.” Peter knew he was sounding defensive.

“Not the hug, Romeo. I saw what you did to her hair. You flicked her hair.”

“And your point?”

“My point is that a guy only plays with a girl's hair when he's really into her. Kid, I watched you bop around with Sandy for like the last year, and I never once saw you do that to her. Not once.”

Peter didn't have a comeback for that one.

“Just be careful,” Jim added.

“Why?” Peter asked with a smirk.

“First of all—no offense—but you don't even know this girl. Plus, all the Web wing nuts are already up your butt on this one.”

“Well, discretion is the better part of valor.” “What?”

“It's Shakespeare. Word!”

“Wow, I guess that tutor really is teaching you somethin', isn't she.”

“You know it,” Peter said. “Anyway, it means that I just have to be careful to keep it secret and I'll be okay.”

“Good luck with that one. And she has to write you back first, remember. As of now, you're just hanging naked out there in your birthday suit.”

“True.”

Jim added, “Just, do me a favor, make sure she's a fan—and not a Stan.”

“Stan” was an old Eminem song about an obsessed fan, but Big Jim coined the word as meaning a wack-job fan, a girl who might kidnap her idol, stuff him in her trunk, and kill him—or maybe even kill herself, because she's so obsessed with him.

Part of Big Jim's job was to always separate fans from Stans.

“Well, you've got the best Stan radar in the business. What's your Stan-o-meter say about this girl?”

“Lemme see her again,” Jim said.

Peter flipped up his laptop and opened up her Twitter
page, revealing Josie's smiling face with the dimpled cheeks and warm, walnut-colored eyes. Jim studied the picture and scrolled through her posts.

Then he shook his head, handed the laptop back to Peter, and got up.

“Okay, I've seen enough.” He shuffled his hefty body toward the door. “My work is done.”

“So what's the verdict?” Peter followed closely behind him. “You just can't walk off and not tell me. So not cool.”

Jim turned the handle and opened the door. Before stepping into the hallway, he turned back to Peter and said with a smile, “Don't worry. She's cool.”

“Now breathe in as deeply as you can, and now slowly through your nose . . . and let it out your mouth. . . . Nice, Peter. Now just let it all go.”

Peter had never asked, but he guessed his therapist had to be close to seventy years old. She had studied clinical psychology, even gotten a PhD in it, but for the last twenty years had come to believe that traditional “talk” psychotherapy could only go so far, especially when it came to healing deep-seated anxiety and past traumas, experiences that seemed to be burned into patients' brains as if with a branding iron.

Peter had been seeing her for the last six months, and the results for him were nothing short of miraculous. The mere thought of his mom no longer sent him into an emotional tail-
spin and into darkness. The general sense of anxiety and worry over all the pressures of being a pop star suddenly seemed manageable. With each deep breath, each meditation session, he felt the pain blowing out of him like steam from a tea kettle.

The Oakland concert had gone well. Another sellout. Another arena filled with adoring fans. Now it was Sunday, and he had the day off before leaving Monday for a string of back-to-back nights: Kansas City (Tuesday), Denver (Wednesday), and two shows in Vegas (Friday and Saturday). The meditation sessions left him feeling so energized and refreshed and healed that he made sure to book an hour-long appointment with Judith on his rare day off—and again the following Sunday since he would have two days back in L.A. before picking back up the tour in Seattle.