Fan Girl

Sparkly-eyed
and giddy

Twenty
minutes
—
or
maybe thirty, or maybe forty-five—pass before Scott jumps up and says,
“Will you be mad at me if I can’t stay? I just remembered I have to do
something for our gig on Saturday. Will you be all right here on your own?”

Summer nods, handing him the almost-completed outline.
Scott stuffs the piece of paper into his pocket and leans in to give her a
quick kiss on the lips. Summer is glad she is sitting down because she feels
faint and dizzy and deliriously happy. She hears a high-pitched giggle and
realizes it came from her own mouth. “You just caught my germs,” she tells him.

“I don’t care,” Scott says, leaning in again for a
longer, slower, gentler kiss that leaves her out of breath and at the same time
makes her want to run around the campus dancing and shouting. “Now I really
have to go,” he says, and when he is gone, she studies her reflection in the
fingerprint-stained mirror and can barely recognize the sparkly-eyed, giddy
girl staring right back at her, a bright, bubbly grin stretching perfectly from
ear to ear.

Fan Girl

Marla
Miniano

SUMMIT BOOKS

This book is a work of fiction. Names, charaters, some
places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.

Summit Books are published by

Summit Media

6F Robinsons Cybergate 3

Pioneer Street

Mandaluyong City

Philippines 1505

Copyright © 2011 by Marla Miniano

Book design by Studio Dialogo

Cover illustration by Abi Goy & Rommel Joson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced
 
in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval
systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer,
who may quote brief passages in a review.

www.femalenetwork.com/summit-books

For Maris, who
never stopped

believing I’d finish this book—and

never stopped believing, period.

Chapter 1

Summer knows who
he is—of course
she does. But when Scott Carlton saunters across the stuffy school gym towards
her to claim his freshman year second semester grades, a self-satisfied smirk
on his face, she has to ask, “Your name, please?”

“Scott,” he says in a slightly irritated voice, like she
shouldn’t even be asking. He is wearing a short-sleeved black and gray
button-down that looks expensive and brand new, a sharp cologne that reminds
her of tuxedos and prom night, and black and gold aviator shades glinting
impressively underneath the fluorescent light. His forehead and cheekbones are
damp with sweat, and beads of perspiration cling to his thick, dark eyebrows
and the stubble lining his jaw.

“Your
full name,” she says patiently, smiling up at him from a small wooden desk
marked
Report Cards: Q-S
.

“Scotty,”
he replies curtly. Summer imagines him rolling his eyes behind his designer
sunglasses, exasperated with this poor dumb girl who wasn’t cool enough to keep
up.
 

The
guy behind him, almost completely obscured by Scott’s bulky, towering frame,
pokes his head out and raises his eyebrows at Summer. “Why is it taking so
long?” he whines, sounding like he is about three years old. Summer wants to
stick her tongue out and tell this skinny boy wearing a red fleece hat in the
middle of summer to zip it, but reminds herself just in time that she is in
college, not kindergarten.

Summer
ignores Fleece Hat Guy, looks up at Scott, and tries one last time. “May I have
your first and last name?”

He
sighs, shifting his weight from one artfully worn-out Chuck Taylor-clad foot to
the other. “Scotty Carlton,” he tells her.

“Oh,”
she says, feigning surprise. “You shouldn’t be here. Please proceed to the desk
marked A-C.” She feels sorry for him and adds, “We distribute report cards
according to family name.”

He
takes off his sunglasses, looks at her like this is all her fault, glances at
the long queue for the A-C post and says, “You mean you’re going to make me
line up again? I’m late for band practice.” Summer knows which band he is
referring to, of course—he is the frontman for Violet Reaction, a group
whose members all happen to be half-Filipino and insanely good-looking. They
were a staple at every university event and they had one song that was a hit
all over the country; you had to be living under a rock under a haystack inside
a cave to not know who they were.

Summer
wants to ask if they’re working on a new album, but she shrugs helplessly at
him instead and says, “You can come back this afternoon. We’ll be here until
five.”

He
shakes his head at her and mutters, “This is ridiculous.” His shoes make
squeaking noises on the hardwood floor as he storms off.

“Finally,”
Fleece Hat Guy says as Summer hands him the brown envelope with the university
seal and asks him to sign the confirmation sheet. He whips out his card, scans
his grades, and says to nobody in particular, “If these numbers are crappier
than that pretty boy’s, I’d have to choke myself with an
H&M
scarf tonight.” He chuckles, satisfied with his own joke (and lame Katy Perry
reference), and walks away.

Summer
watches him leave. She is not surprised at the way Scott and Fleece Hat Guy
(she checks the confirmation sheet for his name—Zachary Santos) acted
around her. She is used to being treated like this, always straddling the fine
line between feeling invisible and feeling inferior, and not knowing which one
is worse. She has had enough practice within the four corners of her dorm room,
which she shares with Roxanne, a tall girl with honey caramel skin, a tiny
waist, blunt bangs, severely-layered pin-straight tresses tickling her ribcage,
and a distinct smirk; and Meg, a bubbly, slightly overweight, curly-haired
Communications major with neon fingernails, a different eye color every day,
and shoes that no longer fit inside her closet. Roxanne has a habit of looking
Summer up and down, taking in her shapeless jeans, tiny pearl earrings, and
safe one-hundred-fifty-peso trim from the guy who has been cutting her hair
since grade school. She neither sneers nor smiles as she does this, and it is
often difficult for Summer to tell whether she should be insulted or flattered.
Sometimes, Roxanne would ask about her weekend plans, or whether she is seeing
anyone special at the moment, or what she thought about the new James Franco
movie. Summer is never completely sure that these aren’t trick questions. Meg
rarely speaks to either of them, although her high-pitched voice is a constant
presence in their room—she is on the phone every night, giggling and
gasping and
OMG
-ing away with her girl
friends from her exclusive high school while she paints her nails and lays out
clothes on her bed, trying to decide what to wear to class the following
morning.

Nobody
warned Summer that college was going to be this tough. Back in June, when she
and her brother-in-law Ken hauled boxes and bags out of his black car’s
backseat and trunk, she felt optimism tiptoeing around her. Standing in the
middle of the dorm lobby, where parents said tearful goodbyes to children who
were attempting to put on a brave face, Summer’s sister Ellie clutched her
husband’s hand, then turned to her and said, “I bet Mom and Dad would have been
so proud of you, if they were alive.”

“Proud
of me for what?” Summer asked. Ellie looked at the ceiling, like she was asking
God to undo that tragic earthquake more than a decade ago, then down at her
seven-month-big belly, like she was asking her unborn baby for help. “For
embracing your independence,” she finally answered. Summer thought of the
alternative—continuing to live with Ellie and Ken in their condo unit
(the house Summer and Ellie grew up in had been sold one year ago when Ellie
married Ken, a handsome surgeon nine years her senior), sleeping on the couch,
feeling like a gate-crasher as they built a happy home and a loving family for
themselves—and said, “Well, it had to happen sooner or later.” Ellie’s
eyes welled up, but Summer shooed her hugs away, insisting she was going to be
fine.

And
she was. Until about the fifth time Roxanne gave her that head-to-toe and the
third time she responded to Meg’s cheerful “How are you?” only to realize she
was on the phone. Until that first red F on a quiz she stayed up all night
studying for. Until she got used to having lunch in the cafeteria alone,
surrounding herself with a mountain of textbooks and scattering her things all
over the table so it would look like she was waiting for someone, or at least
that she was crazy-busy and couldn’t be bothered with company. Until she started
volunteering for all these organizations and committees, only to find out that
all of them treated timid, unpopular, poorly-connected freshmen like crap.
Until that time she first saw Scott Carlton from across a crowded corridor and
immediately reeled from the hard, devastating truth that he will never, ever
notice her the way she wanted him to. Until she figured out that she will feel
like a gate-crasher—an uninvited, unwelcome guest—no matter where
she went or what she did.
    

Since
June, Summer has learned not to expect any form of interest or attention or
even kindness from anyone in this place. She has learned to keep her head down,
stay out of everyone’s way. But at ten minutes to five, as Scott Carlton walks
towards her, smiling sheepishly, apologizing for his “honest mistake,” and
proudly telling her he got better grades than he’d been expecting, Summer feels
her hopes rising into the late afternoon air, like a couple of helium balloons
escaping from a kiddie party and soaring towards the clear blue sky. She has to
pinch herself back to reality; she has to blink twice, thrice, four times to
make sure she isn’t imagining him standing right in front of her, talking to
her. She almost asks him to repeat himself, but even someone like her couldn’t have
made up something like this: “I think I owe you a drink for being such a jerk
to you earlier. My band has a gig tonight at Liberty Bar. Are you coming?” She
must have nodded, or opened her mouth to say “yes” or “okay” or “cool,” because
he grins, checks her name tag, and says, “Awesome. See you there, Summer.”