Fangirl (6 page)

Even though Peter was not always a Happy Harry, he was a whole lot sunnier than before he met Sandy. Many fans saw things differently. They were divided between “Team Pandy” and the hate-a-holics who just couldn't stand the girl group star.

Take, for example, this comments-section debate beneath an OMC blog posting about Sandy and Peter hanging out at the beach:

April 21 @ 1:26 p.m.

lovesIt
said:

She needs to stop being a user bitch. She thinks she's so hot in that bikini. Seriously.

April 21 @ 01:27 p.m.

girlygal
said:

Agree. Sandy is a user. Lame. Y's he even with her?

April 21 @ 01:29 p.m.

IluvMaxx
said:

Because she's BLOND and has big BOOBS. Duh!

April 21 @ 1:33 p.m.

TeamPandy
said:

All haters need to chill. Sandy makes Peter happy.

That's all that matters. Every1 CHILL!

But from the moment Sandy walked onto the TV show set, she brought Peter out of his funk. After the table reading of the script for the G Girls' episode of his show (in which the girl group plays his high school prom and Peter's character falls in love with her), Sandy came up to Peter and playfully said, “Hey, mister. You didn't smile once the whole time.”

“That's because the script is kinda lame.”

“You know what you need?”

“Better writers?”

“No, silly,” she replied with a punch to his upper arm. “A trip to Baker's Bread! They've got
the
best mac and cheese. Let's go.”

She made him laugh and was extremely cute, and at the end of his staccato chuckle, he realized it was the first time he had genuinely laughed in weeks. They drove together to North Hollywood to Baker's for lunch, their first date, and hadn't stopped dating since. They were, so far, an “everything but” couple. Sandy had been pushing for sex, but Peter wanted to wait. “You're probably the first guy in the history of guys whose girlfriend wants to have sex and you don't,” Sandy pestered him.

It's not like Peter didn't
want
to have sex. He just wasn't sure if he really wanted to do it with Sandy, wasn't sure if he was in love with her. He had made that mistake with his last girlfriend—and when they had broken up, it had only made things harder.

It had taken him almost a year to figure out his confused feelings about his girlfriend. Yet, since paparazzi followed him practically everywhere he went, it wasn't long before the entire Peter Maxx fandom felt as if they knew everything about Sandy and Peter.

Everything, that is, but the truth.

PING!

Josie snapped awake and sat up straight.

Josie, where r u? duh!

Oh, no. Ashley. 7:34 a.m. and Josie and her mom were supposed to pick her up at 7:30 so they could get to school by 7:52, the latest they could walk into first period without being marked “tardy” and assigned to detention hall that afternoon.

Forgot 2 set alarm. Sorryz
. . . b right over.

Josie had forgotten to tell her mom she needed a ride to school. The good news: Josie's neighbor, Delilah, was a senior and drove a 2005 Honda beater to school every day. Delilah served as backup transportation for when she missed the bus or her mom had already left for work because, on Fridays, her mom went in early so she could get out early and drive the hour down to L.A. to see her boyfriend, Thomas. She was relieved that her mom was finally moving on from the divorce; after two years of kissing frogs she had found someone she loved and who loved her (even if he was a nerdy accountant). But it was doing nothing for her ability to get to school on time.

Seeing her hair was a mess, Josie put on a purple baseball hat with a pink heart logo on the front. She ran out of the apartment just in time to catch the attention of Delilah, who was backing out of her parking spot.

“D!” Josie shouted over the muffler rumble as she ran toward the car. “D!”

D rolled down the window.

“What up, Brant?”

“Could I catch a ride with you?”

“Why? Where's your mom?”

“Work.”

“Oh, that sucks.”

“Yeah.”

Delilah looked at the time on her phone. 7:42 a.m.

“Okay, whatevs. Hop in.”

Josie plopped into the passenger's seat. “Is it okay if we pick up my friend? It's on the way.”

“Who?”

“She's a sophomore,” Josie said tensely.

“Don't tell me it's that cheerleader chick who's always at your apartment.” D's face twisted into a sourpuss. “That girl is whiter than a roll of toilet paper.”

“Ashley?”

“Don't know her name. But, yeah, she looks like an Ashley.”

“Well, actually, yeah, Ashley is her name. But she's really not lame at all. She's pretty cool.”

D thought for a few seconds, and then declared, “There's no such thing as a cool cheerleader.” D looked at the time on the dashboard clock. 7:43 a.m.

“All right. Whatevs. Let's go.”

D threw the transmission into drive and peeled out of their apartment complex and headed south on Gosford Avenue for about a half mile. She swerved right into the Oaks, one of the dozens of upper middle-class subdivisions spread around Bakersfield. When Delilah banked a hard right onto Ashley's street, the wheels squealed into the morning air.

“Whoa!” Josie said, her right shoulder pressing against the door frame.

But D howled like she was doing loops on a rollercoaster.

“The tires only squeal 'cuz they're bald,” Delilah explained with an almost maniacal laugh. “No worries—unless the road's wet. Then we'd be in the ditches like bitches.”

Luckily, Josie thought, it hadn't rained recently.

Ashley stood in waiting at the end of her driveway, a drab-blue book bag on her shoulder matching the bummed-out look on her face when she saw the black Honda streaking toward a stop in front of her.

“Jeesh, Josie.” Ashley plopped into the backseat. “You weren't out
that
late last night! I mean, I'm the one who should be tired. I was out way later than you.”

D shook her head in disgust and wiped her tongue across her purple lipstick-caked lips, as if she was mustering every ounce of energy in her body not to haul off on the perky
cheerleader in her backseat.

“Sorry,” Josie said. “Speaking of late, did you make it to Peter's hotel after?”

Ashley hesitated.

“Well?” Josie pressed. “Tell me!”

“When we get to school. I will. Don't worry. No big deal.”

The car screeched to a stop at a red light. 7:49 a.m.

“Okay, okay. Seriously, sorry I'm late,” Josie said. “I hate being late, but I had trouble falling asleep last night after the concert.”

“What concert?” D asked.

“Peter Maxx,” Ashley replied instantly.

Josie cringed as D burst into laughter and let out a noise from her throat that could only be described as a wrenching sound of disgust. “Oh, man, you guys. I can't believe you guys went to that lame-ass concert.”

Ashley checked the time on her phone and exhaled nervously to no one in particular.

Josie definitely wasn't about to share the real reason she couldn't fall asleep: because she was so inspired by Peter's concert that she stayed up writing at her keyboard all night. As a matter of fact, it was a rush of creativity she hadn't experienced in a very long time, and she wrote an entire song.

She had already gotten into her shorts and a T-shirt, wiped off her makeup and was brushing her teeth when, just before midnight, the opening verse came to her out of nowhere.

I could craft a song with a catchy rhyme

But words can't describe your committed crime

You've stolen mine

She spat out her toothpaste and ran to her notebook that almost always could be found resting on her bed like a second pillow.

Texting hi, just because

That'll never happen

'Cuz we never was

Just twenty yards away you play

You might as well be miles away

She sat at her desk and turned on her Casio keyboard. And as she worked out a singsong melody in C, it was no longer a ballad, as she had hummed in the bathroom mirror. Instead, it was fast and it rocked.

Feeling what I've only heard for so long

There's no sad, just glad

No crime, but a gift

Each strum, each note a lift

D squeezed into a spot in the very back of the parking lot at exactly 7:51 a.m. “C'mon, Ash,” Josie prodded. “At least give me a little hint. Did you meet Peter or not?”

“Yes.”

“So tell me!”

“When we get to class. It's a long story.”

Josie's friendship with Ashley often treaded the fragile border between love and hate, between mutual admiration and
profound jealousy, between being true friends and being, well, frenemies.

The BFFs did have a storied history of on-and-off conflict, going back to the infamous
The Wiz
debacle, during auditions for the lead role of Dorothy (who wants to play a witch or a troll?).

Ashley ended up getting the part. Ashley, objectively, was a great singer. She had serious pipes. Ever since she was a little kid, her parents had her in church choir, taking vocal lessons, grooming her to be a vocalist. Ashley, Josie believed, deserved to get the role and, while the two friends occasionally engaged in healthy competition with each other, Josie acknowledged that if she couldn't stand up long enough to sing one song in a rehearsal, she probably wouldn't make a very good Dorothy when the theatre was full, the lights were bright, and that scary-ass twister was coming.

Instead, she decided then and there to focus exclusively on writing songs and became Ashley's biggest fan, happy to sing from the pit, or to pop onstage as a background performer. Just as well. Writing songs, after all, was her first passion.

As Josie sat on her bed after Peter's concert, she flipped through one of her old, tattered notebooks. Just reading lyrics conjured the emotions she felt at the time.

Angry . . .

Who claims you can't come in first

Like that

Who claims you can't rhyme a verse

Like that

A fool who makes a claim

Like that

Is nothing but jealous and lame

Like that

Sentimental . . .

Teddy bear hugs

Imaginary bedbugs

Bedtime stories and eyelash kisses

Missing my life before boys and high school disses

Lonely . . .

Plotting a plan to make yourself cool

Eating fried dough and blowing off school

If this is what it means to be a teen

Throw me into a nerdy time machine

As lonely as she could feel at times, Josie thought everyone else spent way too much time wondering what group they fit into—the drama kids, the band geeks, the jocks, the cheerleaders, the stoners, the math nerds, the punks, the bro hos. She was perfectly happy in her own clique: songwriter.

Her parents never could explain where this unusual talent came from, but she'd had it since the first grade. Her mom didn't play an instrument, didn't sing, and generally didn't listen to music. And while her dad had self-taught himself piano and as a result could play a little keyboard, he had never actually
written a song in his life. The closest thing to a song Josie even knew about was when her dad penned a poem to her mom that he had written on a napkin the night of their first date.
Kimberly, you're a babe that boggles/I swear I don't have beer goggles.
Not exactly a romantic sonnet, but cute enough that some twenty years later Josie's mom, even though now divorced, still hadn't found the heart to throw it out.