Fangirl (25 page)

“Yeah, right,” Peter said angrily.

Choking back tears, Josie stomped toward Peter and slapped her cell phone into his hand. “Look for yourself. Go through my phone. I swear, I didn't send anything to anybody.”

Peter quickly browsed through her sent folder. “Whatever.” He dropped her phone onto the floor. “All this proves to me is that you know how to press delete. You could have sent them and erased it.”

Just then, Peter's phone rang. “Hey, Big Jim,” Peter answered. “No, it's okay. But, yeah, come up and get her.”

Peter hung up and faced Josie. “And your dad's in jail? You'd think that might be something you would tell someone you cared about. Don't you realize how bad this makes me look? Everything I've worked so hard for could be ruined! By you.”

“Well, yes, the jail part is true,” she admitted, quickly adding, “but I wasn't the one arrested. It's a long story, but I
have never touched a drug in my life, I swear to you. It was all a big mistake by my dad. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“So the jail part is true, but you expect me not to believe the rest of it? I can't believe this is happening. I believe nothing you're saying.”

A stream of tears ran from her eyes and over her cheekbones, dripping down her face and chin. As she wiped them, she made a smudge of raccoon-like circles from her mascara.

“You have to believe me, Peter. Please believe me. I didn't tell anyone. I swear to you!”

He snapped, “That's not true. You told your girlfriend, remember?”

“Um, yeah, but I told you about that. I wasn't hiding anything. I'm telling the honest truth.”

“Well, hotel security just escorted your friend off the property. I wish I could trust you, Josie. And, believe me, I want to believe you. I would want to do nothing more than be able to tell my dad that is was all just a big misunderstanding, that you did nothing wrong, and be with you like everything is just normal. I was falling for you, Josie. Falling hard. But now I can't. Just can't. And it breaks my heart. You broke my heart.”

Peter's voice tailed off and, after a breath, perked back up. “As I see it, there are two people who could have sent those texts and that pic, and they are both in this room. And I can tell you this: it wasn't me. That leaves one person. I'm not stupid, Josie.”

Peter bent over and gathered the skirt and tank on top of Josie's black boots. “I think you should put on your own clothes and leave,” he said, handing them to her in a heap. “I'm sorry. But you have to leave. Now.”

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK.

Josie ran into the bathroom, and as she slipped out of Peter's clothes and into her own, she heard the door open and a voice say, “Where is she? Where is that girl?”

“Miss Brant,” the voice shouted through the door. “I want you out of this room ASAP.”

Josie slunk out in her black miniskirt, boots, and silver top and handed Peter his clothes. She couldn't catch her breath and, no matter how hard she tried, couldn't blink back the tears.

“If any media, or any paparazzi, asks you anything about this, you need to just shut up and walk,” Abby instructed. “Got that?”

Josie wiped the sniffles from her nose with her forearm.

“Hey, easy on her, Abby,” Peter said. “She's only fourteen.”

“Easy on her?” Abby asked. “She hacked you, used you, and could damn well take us all down! So, no, I am not going easy on you, honey. Let's go.”

Big Jim waited in the hall for Josie and when she walked out he pointed down the hall at the elevator bank, and she shuffled lifelessly along the carpet like a death row inmate on her way to her execution.

The paparazzi
madness outside the hotel happened in a blur. The flashes. The questions: “WHY ARE YOU LEAVING? . . . DIDN'T YOU KNOW HE HAD A GIRLFRIEND? . . . WHERE'S PETER?”

She didn't know how she even made it to the SUV without falling down, fainting, or both. And, now, her forehead was bleeding like a UFC fighter. She assumed it was from being knocked by a photographer's camera, but she wasn't sure. There were so many things she wasn't sure about anymore.

Sitting in the backseat of Big Jim's SUV, she checked her phone and saw ten texts from Delilah, who had, in fact, been escorted out of the hotel in the morning as Josie slept. D's last text announced that she was already halfway back home to Bakersfield.

They said they were flying you back and some fat old chick told me I should leave town or she'd have me arrested! Drama! C u back in Btown. Text me when u land. Sorry, Josie. This sux.

As the SUV approached the Vegas airport, where a private jet awaited her to whisk her back to Bakersfield, Josie dabbed the blood on her forehead with a tissue Big Jim had given her.

“I did nothing wrong,” Josie told Big Jim. “I swear to you, sir, I didn't tell anyone, didn't leak a single thing to anybody. I don't know why this is happening. It's just so confusing. Why wouldn't Peter believe me?”

Big Jim steered into the aviation terminal parking lot and got out, opening Josie's door. Avoiding eye contact through his Ray-Bans, he pointed across the tarmac at a white Lear jet with the stairs folded down. “There's your ride. Have a good flight,” Jim said, the hiss of the jet engines making it hard to hear.

Josie looked at the burly bodyguard and asked over the roaring engines, “Do you believe me?”

Big Jim placed his giant right hand on her shoulder and said, “Don't worry. I do believe you. Now just go home.”

Josie slouched away and stepped onto the jet. She sunk into her window seat and pulled her phone from her backpack. Scrolling through the contacts to the P's, she stopped with a light tap of her forefinger and pressed on “Peter.” She looked at his name and his 310-area code number. The more she stared at his name, the more she realized what she needed to do. This love song would not have a happy ending.

Delete.

“Trust me.
This is all for the best,” Abby said, pacing Peter's hotel suite like a caged tiger. “You don't need any more of this
drama
in your life.”

Peter's publicist stepped in front to the room's giant swinging French doors. She twisted her neck side to side slowly with a what-a-shame shake.

“Even Britney never had it this bad. And, trust me, Britney—you know, she had it
real
bad.”

Abby snapped the window curtains shut and faced Peter, who sat slumped on the couch. Two uneaten plates of scrambled egg whites and full glasses of orange juice sat on the coffee table. “I know it's hard, sweetie,” she said. “But, really. You're better off without her.”

Peter stared blankly at the TV as an old rerun of a teen sitcom played with the volume turned down. To Peter, the actors looked almost annoyingly happy. Fresh. Young. Innocent. Any problems they might possibly have (such as in this episode where so-and-so got caught kissing so-and-so and was, like, soooo embarrassed!) could be solved within the thirty-minute sitcom format. Tied up in a neat bow and free to return to their superficial bliss. One of the actors sported a gel-sculpted hairdo and an adorable smile, revealing a set of perfectly
straight, white teeth. The tall, handsome teen actor was, in fact, Peter.

The irony of the moment wasn't lost on Peter, yet it wasn't even registering on Abby. “You saw the evidence,” she continued, not even looking at the TV. “Consider yourself lucky. That girl could have really screwed with you if this deception went on any longer. It is what it is, and we will just move on.”

It is what it is

It ain't what it was

Just a little boy lost

Paying a big boy cost

Lyrics sprayed into Peter's brain with a fire-hose burst. These creative rushes had been happening a lot lately. Ever since he got to know Josie. And now he couldn't turn them off even if he tried. He didn't even have to write them down or record them as voice notes into his phone. They were lyrics that kept him up at night and awakened him feeling inspired—the kind of lyrics he wrote with “that girl.”

“I'm sorry, Peter,” Abby said. “I hate to see you go through this. But someone had to tell you. We're just protecting you. You have everything to lose. You're the star, and she's just a nobody high school kid.”

Peter grabbed the remote from the nightstand and obnoxiously turned up the volume to over thirty, trying to drown out Abby's speech justifying why kicking “that girl” to the curb was for “the best.”

To be fair, Abby wasn't saying anything that everyone in
the Twitterverse wasn't already shouting at
@PeterMaxxNow
in a lynch mob chorus.

DUMP THAT PSYCHO SLUT! . . . YOU'RE TOO GOOD FOR HER! . . . JOSIE? MORE LIKE “HO-SIE” . . . WE LOVE YOU, BUT WE HATE THIS HOMEWRECKER!!!

One particularly spiteful
@PeterMaxxNow
follower had even adopted the username “
@JosieBrantSucks
” and had amassed 72,345 followers. In just two hours.

It was easy for Peter to ignore his phone and not check Twitter. In this moment, however, it was impossible for him to escape Abby's inability to just . . . stop . . . talking. If his Southern gentleman father hadn't hammered it into his brain that he had to be polite, especially to women, Peter would have blown her off when she began ranting five minutes ago. But that wouldn't be the Maxx way. The Maxxes, his dad was always quick to remind him, boasted a high tolerance for emotional pain, and making music was a bandage, drugs, and surgery all wrapped in one.

“Like everything else we've been through together, we'll get through this,” Abby went on, settling beside him on the couch, adjusting her shin-length skirt as she crossed her stubble-covered legs that Peter did his best to ignore. She pulled a stick of nicotine gum from her purse and dropped it into her mouth.

Silence.

Agitated, Abby pressed, “So, Peter. Did she sign the agreement or not?”

More silence.

She grabbed the remote out of his hands and turned off the flat-screen TV.

“The envelope we gave you, Peter,” she pressed. “Did you give it to her? It's very important that you
gave it to her
.” Abby paused. “And that she signed it.”

Her question floated uncomfortably between them. Abby let out a breathy exhale of exasperation. “Oh, dear Lord,” she muttered under her breath. “What a mess.”

“Um, what time is it?” Peter asked.

Abby glanced at her phone. “Ten after four.”

Peter's eyes stayed glued on the blank screen. “No,” he said flatly. “I don't think so.”

His publicist checked the time again. “It is. Look.” She showed him the clock on her phone. “I just checked and . . .”

“No,” Peter interrupted. “Actually, I think it's
time
for you to leave.”

Abby's bottom jaw dropped as fast as the Tower of Terror ride at Disneyland. “Well, then,” she huffed, standing up. “I need a freakin' cigarette.”

Abby sprung to her feet, readjusted her skirt, and walked over to the table to grab her phone and purse.

“Okay, well, then,” she said, clearly defeated. “See you at the airport.”

“Wait, Abby. . . . I don't wanna be rude. I'm sorry. You know that I'm sorry, I just—” Peter didn't want to say too much. “I just have a lot of things I need to figure out, and
having a bunch of adults telling me what I should or shouldn't be doing isn't helping.”

“It's okay,” she interrupted, touching his shoulder. “You've been under a lot of pressure. I get it.” She checked her phone and said under her breath, “I obviously picked a bad week to quit smoking.”

She walked back over to Peter, who still sat slumped on the couch, and rubbed his head.

When the door shut behind her, Peter lay down flat on his back on the bed. He kicked off his high-tops and took a deep breath. For the next several minutes, all that could be heard was the drone of the air conditioner. And his steady breath. A deep inhale of air through his nose, then out his mouth. With the release of air came the noise rattling from deep within his throat. Release. If singing was his therapy, deep breathing exercising was his therapist. No publicist. No bodyguard. No dad. No media. No fangirls. Nobody. Peace. Breathing.

Peter's phone then suddenly hopped to life with vibration on the coffee table. The happy-go-lucky text tone used to be music to his ears, the signal often being that a shy girl with dark eyes and bright spirit had sent him a message that would make him smile.

Peter pushed himself up off the couch and hustled over to read the message.

hey petey. Buck up.

Dad.

and do me a favor . . . stay off that Twitter machine.

Not exactly the text buddy he was hoping for.

“Grounded for life.”

These three words from Josie's mom when Josie ambled into the apartment didn't surprise Josie. After all, she had A, lied to her mom about camping with her friends, B, driven off to Vegas with the bad-girl neighbor with whom she had been forbidden from being friends, and C, while in Sin City, managed to tarnish the family name even more than it was already. And, oh, D, acted like a total brat ever since her dad's arrest the week before.