Fangirl (21 page)

Josie cracked a smile. “Deal.”

D slowed the car down and pulled into a minimart. She parked and noticed Josie was staring forward as if she had just witnessed a murder.

“Hey, seriously, so we are clear. I don't want to bust your buzz, Brant. I just don't want you to assume that everyone is as innocent and sweet and kind as you are. That's a big reason why I wanted to come with you. I mean, that and, duh, I've always wanted to go to Vegas.”

D grabbed her purse from the backseat. “Let's get lunch. You hungry?”

“No. I'm good.”

That, of course, wasn't entirely true. “Good” was the feeling that she was just a few hours from hanging out with a guy every teenage girl in the world would die to meet. Good was feeling independent for the first time in her life. Good wasn't now being afraid she was about to be pressured by an older boy to do things she wasn't ready to do.

While D browsed the junk food aisle, Josie sat alone in the car and pulled her cell from the cup holder.

She texted Peter.

almost there. Just checking in with ya

D returned to the car and got back onto the highway. A half hour later they were cruising past Barstow, just two hours from Vegas. Still, Peter had yet to reply.

“You know, Brant, you're a good kid,” D said out of nowhere as they rolled through the middle of nowhere. “I was just thinking that I never really told you that. You're different. Embrace it. I like that you aren't afraid to let your freak flag fly. All those creeps at Lawndale are like robots.”

“Thanks,” Josie said.

“I mean, I know you've had to deal with people talking crap about you, bullying you around, or whatever.”

“Not so bad. It would be worse if I actually had to be friends with most of them anyway.”

“Word to that,” D agreed.

“So did I tell you about Ashley?”

“Only that she's having a rad birthday party right now that you are supposedly at.” D giggled.

“Well, we aren't friends anymore. After I got home from the jail, I called her and she told me she couldn't talk to me and that her mom wouldn't let us be friends. How lame is that? Whatever happened to loyalty?”

“I warned you about cheerleaders,” D said ruefully.

“I know, I know.”

“Trust me, Brant. You're better than her anyway. That chick has, like, zero integrity. She's like the anti-J. K. Rowling.”

“Who?”

“J. K. Rowling. That lady who wrote all the Harry Potter books. She's the bomb. I'm a total Potterhead. I love those books. You've read them, right?”

“No, sorry, I'm not into that witch stuff. It freaks me out. I saw the movies. My brother was obsessed.”

“Smart kid, that brother of yours. Well, if you read them you will learn everything you need to know about how to handle high school. J. K. Rowling was bullied as a kid and lived her life in books and daydreams and fantasy. She was an outsider.
That's why her heroes are all outcasts and misfits.” D looked over at Josie. “Like you and me.”

Josie never took D as the bookish type. She was shocked—but she liked listening to her. Josie imagined this is what it would be like if she had an older sister, or a mom who talked to her like a girlfriend and not a child.

“What I'm trying to say, Brant, is that, well, you and me? Girls like us? We're the heroes. Those stupid popular girls? They're the zeroes.”

D clenched her right hand and extended her knuckle at Josie, who bumped it back. It was the first time D ever fist-bumped her. Josie felt honored. D smiled and told Josie, “So we're friends, okay?”

“Okay.” Josie smiled back.

“Just do me a favor. Please don't ever call me your BFF. Even if I am technically.”

“Deal.”

Josie thought of Ashley. She was probably up at the camp ground right about now, and all her perky cheerleader friends were sitting around gossiping about, well, probably her! She felt relieved not to be part of that circle. D didn't judge. D, as she said, kept things real.

Still, Josie's brain was filled with questions. Things that she didn't ask Peter—not because she was afraid to. Rather, she hadn't even thought to ask.
Does he expect me to stay in his room with him? Does he think I'm going to sleep with him? What if I say no? Will he not like me? Why isn't he texting me back?

She needed answers.
Pronto.
The last thing Josie wanted was to get there feeling so unsure about the situation. She texted him again.

hey 16. It's Almost 15. I have a quesht for you.
Helloooo????

No reply.

Fifteen minutes later she texted him a picture of her sticking her tongue out and making a goofy face that belied the fact that her face was hot and she was having a mild panic attack.

Still, no reply. If it were night and if they weren't amid the lifeless desert scrub, there would be crickets chirping in the silence. It was deafening.

Sick of worrying, she cranked up the volume and for the next half hour Josie sang along to more Coldplay, rapped to Kanye West, and belted out “Empire State of Mind” (D did Jay-Z and she sang the Alicia Keys part).

“You have an awesome voice!” D enthused. “You sound like you should be on the radio. Damn, you got serious pipes.”

Suddenly feeling self-conscious, Josie didn't know what to say.

“You should totally be singing your own songs. I mean, do you really like just writing songs?”

“Actually, I do. I love writing songs.”

“I'd love to see some of them. I've never met a songwriter.” D added, “For what it's worth, a few minutes ago, when you were singing along to that Coldplay song, well, I thought your voice was pretty hot. You can sing, chiquita.”

“Nah, I wish. Singing in the car with you and singing in front of a group of people are two different things. I have big-time stage fright. I'm literally paralyzed by fear.”

Delilah took her foot off the gas and rolled to a stop on the side of the highway.

“What are you doing?” Josie asked. “Why are you stopping?”

D didn't answer as she turned off the car and stepped outside into the hot desert air. Josie craned her neck and strained to look back as D opened the trunk and rustled through the mess inside. A minute later, D returned to the car and dropped a book in Josie's lap. Josie picked up the paperback,
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,
and began thumbing through it as D started the car and pulled back onto the highway.

“What do you want me to do with this?” Josie asked.

“Read it, silly. It's like the seventh in the series, and I promise I'll give you the first ones, but, really, any of the Harry Potter stuff is amazing. One thing all these books are about, especially this one, is confronting your fears and finding the inner strength to overcome them. The thought that you are an amazing singer but too afraid to sing in front of people is beyond tragic to me. Life is too short to let your fears control you, girl.”

Josie began reading the thick novel's first page.

“If you want to learn how to have sex with a vampire, read
Twilight
,” D added. “If you want to learn how to be a total bad ass, read Harry.”

An hour later, Josie was a hundred and fifty pages into the book. As they crossed the Nevada state line, D's beat-up black Honda was now covered in so much dust it looked more gray than black.

It was just after five o'clock and she hadn't heard from Peter all day. But then her phone buzzed awake.

have fun camping, amigo.

Christopher. They hadn't had any contact with each other since four days ago when they got into that spat at her house over her being a brat. She'd been avoiding him ever since. Not because she was still annoyed with him for calling her out, but because she wanted to keep her secret trip to Vegas just that: secret. She also didn't want to lie—that is, any more than she already had to her mom and brother. She decided she'd deal with Christopher after Vegas.

A few minutes later, D noticed Josie nervously checking her phone every ten seconds, and every time grunting in frustration. #GirlProblems.

“I'm sure he's just busy,” D assured Josie. “He told us where to go, right?”

“Yeah, he said just go to the VIP check-in at the hotel, and everything would be taken care of.”

Billboards for casinos, strip clubs, restaurants, golf courses, and hotels lined the freeway, which was filling up with more and more cars as they got closer to the city. Josie could feel her heart beating in her chest—a result of the excitement,
uncertainty, and danger. She hated and loved the sensation all at the same time. D guided the car around a bend in the road, and in the distance at the bottom of the arid valley there it was: the Vegas skyline. “Check it out,” Josie said, pointing into the distance.

D squinted and stretched her neck forward while sliding her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose. “It looks fake,” she observed. “Like it isn't even real.”

Josie just hoped that her connection with Peter wasn't a mirage.

“Good evening, Ms. Brant. We've been expecting you. We have you down for two nights in our VIP luxury suite.”

The perky front desk clerk lady pointed at a uniformed old man standing next to the counter. “The bellhop over there will take your bags. Enjoy your stay at the Palazzo.”

The lady handed Josie two envelopes. One contained two plastic card keys for their thirtieth-floor suite and two complimentary tickets to the Palazzo's long-running musical play
Jersey Boys.

“Awesome,” Josie said when she eye-balled the tickets. “The Four Seasons have the best love songs.”

“I thought you said Peter Maxx did,” Delilah deadpanned.

“Okay, make that second best.”

As D and Josie followed the bellhop across the cigarette smoke-filled main casino floor to the elevator bank, Josie
ripped open the other envelope. Inside, she found two tickets to that night's Peter Maxx concert at the MGM Grand Arena and a single VIP wristband and slip of paper, on which was printed:

The wristband in this envelope is your pass to a PRESHOW MEET-AND-GREET. Please get in the MEET-AND-GREET line next to the will-call ticket booth no later than 6:30 P.M. At 6:45 P.M. your ticket will be scanned and you will be escorted to the MEET-AND-GREET area. There will be NO AUTOGRAPH SIGNINGS and NO PERSONAL PHOTOS. A professional photographer will shoot your photo and you will be able to retrieve the photo at
PeterMaxx.com
. Enjoy the concert!

Now in the rising elevator heading up to her floor, Josie glanced at the clock on her phone: 5:20 p.m. Realizing they had just a little over an hour to get to their room, get dressed, and make it over to the arena on time, Josie breathlessly asked the bellhop, “Sir, how do we get to the MGM Grand Arena?”

“I'd say a taxi is probably the best way,” the old man said.

“And how long will it take to get there?” she asked.

“Realistically, fifteen minutes,” he said, stepping off the elevator and into the carpeted hallway. “Everything in Vegas takes fifteen minutes. Including losing everything you own or winning a million dollars.”

The man chuckled and after passing a few doors down the
hall he stopped and swiped the key in the door and opened it. “Here you are, ladies! Enjoy your stay.”

Josie ran into the room, a two-tiered suite with a king-sized bed on the upper level that sat two steps above a lower living room area. The suite was about the size of her apartment back in Bakersfield. Something, though, that was not the same: the breathtaking view of the Strip was a little better than the strip mall she could see from her second-floor apartment bedroom back home.

D scoped out the marble-and-mirror encased bathroom. “Okay, Brant,” she declared from the walk-in shower stall. “I take back everything I said about Peter. This room is so sweet! I'm a fan.”

Josie zipped open her suitcase and placed her black skirt and metallic tank top and black boots onto the bed. D dangled one of the black boots and joked, “Sexayyyy!”