Fangirl (8 page)

“Ashley Rogers,” Jackson announced. “You've won the ‘Sing It to the Maxx' contest!”

Josie's expression instantly turned into horror-film fright. But Ashley's “OH MY GOD” squeal redirected everyone's focus on the winner, who by now was jumping up and down as if on a pogo stick.

“Ashley,” Jackson said. “Before we tell you what you've won, I'd like for you to meet someone. . . .”

The camera panned quickly to the person sitting behind the teacher's desk with his back to everyone. Slowly, he swiveled the chair around . . . “PETER MAXX!!!!!!”

Few moments happen in life when you experience something so jarring to your system that, just in order to comprehend what you're seeing, your brain, as some sort of primal coping mechanism, turns everything you're seeing into slow motion.

Peter's blue eyes filling up the room like light beams as he stood up and said, “Congratulations, Ashley.” . . . Ashley darting toward the gorgeous pop star and hugging him . . . the cameras capturing all the craziness . . . the room, filled with a hundred or so people, cheering wildly . . . Josie standing stiff as a statue . . . her face turning white as the ivory keys on the piano keyboard she just wrote a song on for the guy standing right in front of her.

Confused.
Why is my best friend winning a contest? Why is Peter Maxx hugging Ashley and not me?

Catatonic. The only part of her body moving was her eyes. Every other muscle, frozen.

Shocked.

Stunned.

Betrayed, again.

#SuchaBitch.

“Ashley, you beat out thousands of other contestants,” Jackson announced as Peter placed his arm around the winner. “Your song moved the judges, including Peter. How do you feel?”

For a split second, Ashley looked at Josie across the room. Their eyes locked, but Ashley nervously looked away.

“Um, I feel like the luckiest girl in the world!”

Jackson Phillips tried his best to get her to answer a few more questions, but she was too emotional to answer. He instead turned to Peter and asked, “You've seen the video, Peter. What made her the winner?”

“The song. It's all about the song. Her lyrics touched me.” Peter directed his gaze at Ashley, a fact not lost on Josie, who self-consciously slid off her baseball cap. She was having a bad hair day, but she didn't want Peter to think she was some tomboy softball girl. Josie fished a hair tie from her pocket and quickly fashioned a ponytail.

After Peter ended the interview, Peter asked Ashley, “Did we meet last night?”

Ashley tossed her blond hair over to the side, letting it flirtatiously dance on her left shoulder.

“Yeah!” she said excitedly, punching him playfully on his upper arm—almost too hard. “Oops, sorry.”

“You've got nothing to be sorry about.” Peter assured her with a pat on her upper back.

“Ah-hem.” Bobby cleared his throat. “Tight schedule to keep.”

“Sorry, girls, but we must be going,” the publicist interrupted.

Josie leaned her back against the far wall of the room, overcome with that weak-in-the-knees feeling. The shrink who Josie's mom had made her see for a brief time after the divorce had diagnosed her with a psychological condition called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder—or PTSD for short. The divorce was so traumatic, the counselor explained, that certain “triggers” in her life made her feel like she was reliving that traumatic experience, sending her body into feeling as if it were in a state of “shock.”

For, say, military war veterans traumatized by battle, a trigger might be the sound of the whooshing blades of a helicopter, taking them right back to a moment they feared for their lives. For a teenage girl who felt that her father had abandoned her and her once stable life was seemingly uncontrollable, a trigger could be something like a girlfriend doing something that made her feel like she couldn't trust her, that she might betray her on a moment's notice. And her body, in anticipation of the emotional assault, would go into shock mode: Weak knees. Sweaty palms. Heart palpitations. Dizziness. In other words, exactly what Josie was feeling in that classroom.

Not only had Ashley never mentioned she entered a singing contest, but she specifically had agreed with Josie that
submitting a video for “Sing It to the Maxx” would be a “retarded” idea. “They probably don't even watch the videos,” Ashley had said a few months back when Peter announced it on his fan page. “It's like a scheme to get you on an e-mail list or something.”

As Peter's entourage began to scurry around him for an escort out of the room and into the quad, Jackson Phillips stuck his mic between Ashley and Peter.

“So, Ashley, what inspired you to write the song?”

“Well . . .” Ashley shrugged her shoulders. “I don't know. It's kind of complicated.”

Josie's face began turning cherry red, her cheeks puffing like a blowfish.

“See?” Ashley began in a rush. “My best friend, Josie? Over there? It's her song. I just sang it. But she wrote it.”

“Well, come on over!” Jackson Phillips said, motioning with his mic.

Josie wanted to walk up and say, “Celebrate what? Your thievery and deception and total betrayal?” But she didn't. Instead, she sheepishly shuffled forward, her feet heavy as bricks.

Peter extended his right hand, said, “Nice to meet you,” and shook her hand. His large hand swallowed hers. His grip was firm but soft. Like a mattress you just want to sleep on forever. Their eyes locked.

As their hands stuck together, Peter's dad picked up his ringing cell phone. “Bobby here,” he answered, stepping out.

If there ever was a time that Josie wished she wasn't a nervous palm sweater, that she wasn't a chicken, this was it. Peter, all six feet of him, stared right into her eyes for what seemed like forever. But, in fact, it was less than two seconds. Still, she had to look away. It was like staring at the sun.

Eyes so bright, stomach so tight

No words can describe your light

“Uh, nice to meet you, too,” she said, pulling back her hand. Nonetheless, Peter gently squeezed it and pulled her toward him.

“Josie is a huge fan of yours,” Ashley butted in. “Like, the hugest. For real. I couldn't have done it without her. She's a songwriter.”

As Peter clutched her hand, her tension suddenly melted away—from her hand, then arm, shoulders, chest, stomach, legs, and feet. It was more soothing than any pill she'd ever taken, including the Xanax her shrink had given her for anxiety when she was thirteen and that she had quickly flushed down the toilet because it had made her want to puke and, worst of all, made her mind so mushy she couldn't write any songs.

Just when Josie, now squinting her eyes as if she had accidentally just seen her mom making out with her boyfriend or something, thought the overwhelming moment had ended, she felt two hands press against her back—one in the middle of her shoulder blades and the other, more memorably, on the small of her back. A boy had never touched her there like that. By
the feel of the blood rushing into every part of her body, she definitely didn't want it to be the last time either.

Unsure how to react to his unexpectedly affectionate hug, Josie looked down at the floor, averting awkward eye contact. Her heart had been racing, but once he touched her back it was as if someone had injected her with Novocain. Her body no longer tingled, and for the first time since Ashley was crowned the “winner” two minutes ago, Josie could feel her feet touching the floor again.

Josie glared at Ashley, who shrugged a sorry.

Peter, oblivious to the drama unfolding before him, smiled as he gently released Josie's right hand.

“She's a great songwriter,” Ashley told him. “I wanted this to be her surprise fifteenth birthday present. A secret present.”

“Well, ladies, luckily there's no rule against singing someone else's song, as long as it is an original,” Jackson explained. “You're still the winner, don't worry. Make that
winners!”

As Ashley bounced up and down, Peter looked askance at Josie. He wrinkled his forehead in thought. “Wait a second,” Peter said. “Were you also at my show last night?”

“Yeah.”

“This might sound hard to believe, but I actually saw you. In that ‘Music Is My Boyfriend' T-shirt, right?”

“Indeed.”

Indeed? Oh, geez. What kind of dork says ‘indeed'?

Peter laughed. “Definitely the best shirt I've seen on the tour.”

Josie blushed and looked downward. “Thanks.”

“So are you on Twitter?”

“Obviously.”

“What's your name? I'll look for you.”

Josie leaned in to him.

“MusicLuvr,” she whispered.

Peter flashed a confused smile. He whispered back, “Music what?”

“Lover,” she said, now full-on blushing.

Peter nodded. “Got it.”

“But,” she quickly added, “It is spelled L-U-V-R. Not L-O-V-E-R. That was taken, unfortunately.” Josie laughed nervously.

“Okay, MusicLuvr.” Peter patted her upper arm. “I'll look for your Tweets.”

Before turning away, he gently brushed a strand of her hair back and tucked it behind her ear, combing it carefully with two fingers. A chill shot down Josie's neck and tingled into her back. “Bye,” he told her. Josie could only stare back at him. Her body looked frozen, but it was on fire.

There's a difference between looking and seeing.
Looking
can only provide a two-dimensional glimpse of a person—an image you get from the pictures, the videos, the carefully crafted photo shoots, the interviews, the paparazzi images, the magazine covers, the impersonal Tweets. For Josie, seeing was definitely believing—that her connection might, just might, be real. At last night's concert, she felt him. Now she was
seeing
him.

All day long,
the texts from Ashley came into Josie's phone. All day long, Josie didn't reply.

How fun was that? Can u believe it? Hes soooo hot.

Cant believe he hugged u!

J, im so sorry I didn't tell u. I wud have but wanted to surprise u.

Jose-ski . . . r u mad?

Where r u????

The desperation oozed onto her phone all through Algebra II, Spanish, History, then AP English.

When the final bell rang at two thirty, Josie hustled quickly across the concrete-and-grass campus to her locker on the freshman row, looking over her shoulder nervously as she unlocked it and grabbed her backpack.
Friday. She must have cheerleader practice. Thank God.

Josie put her head down and bolted for the back exit near the tennis courts, avoiding the front courtyard where most of the students hopped on buses or were picked up by parents.

“Josie!” a boy's voice called out from behind. She could tell it was Christopher, but she wasn't in the mood for anyone at the moment.

She turned around anyway, and saw Christopher running after her, his backpacking jostling awkwardly up and down. She flashed a quick peace sign, but nonetheless kept walking with purpose in the opposite direction.

“I heard what happened with Ashley,” he said breathlessly catching up to her. “That's so messed up. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. I'll text ya later. Promise.”

“I'm here if you need anything. Psycho move on her part.”

“Very psycho,” Josie said as she made her way along the pathway toward a black pickup truck parked at the curb. The four-wheel-drive beast had dried mud splattered all over the sides and a windshield with so many dead bugs splattered on it they looked like they were sprayed on with a paint gun. Josie climbed up into the passenger's seat anyway.

“You really need to wash this thing,” Josie said, settling in. “It's pretty disgusting.”

The muscular man in a tight-fitting black T-shirt sitting behind the wheel nodded in agreement as he turned down the volume on the radio playing an old-time country song.

“Yeah, you're probably right,” the man said. “It's dirtier than a pig pen.”

He had unusually wide hands and thick forearms. His hair was dark, but for slightly graying sideburns, and it was buzzed short, revealing the outline of a receding hairline, the only part of his lean body that looked his age.

“So how was your day?”

Josie didn't respond.

“Cómo estás?
” he said, his Spanish accent as authentic as a Taco Bell burrito.

“Dad.” Josie exhaled. “If you really need to know, it was interesting.”

“Interesting, good? Or interesting, bad?”

“Both.”

Her dad turned left at the traffic light, heading west on Rosedale Highway toward the expanse of farmland that stretched out for thirty miles to the coastal mountain range.