Fangirl (20 page)

Josie massaged the muscles in her palms, rubbing especially hard in the area just below her thumbs. They were sore from texting. She and Peter had been texting a lot over the last couple days about just about everything. About her family (though she still hadn't told him the little fact about her dad being in jail for operating an illegal marijuana farm). About her life in Bakersfield, about her high school drama, about some of her favorite songs she'd written. He asked a lot of questions, a quality that Josie believed showed true intelligence. Late last night, after he had gotten back to his hotel in Denver, she had texted him a few lines from a song she had written about being a big sister.

P—wow, these are awesome. Where did you learn to write?

J—whadya mean?

P—your lyrics . . . they r like poetry!

J—I guess im a poet and I dont even know it.

P—HAHAHAHAHA

J—

Peter shared that he and his dad had been arguing a lot—and that he often missed his mom.

P—sorry if im being a buzzkill

J—not at all. No one is more emo than me

P—nah, I bet I top you, 4 sure

J—we will see in vegas

P—you mean VEGA$$$$$!!!

J—oh right. Vega$$$$$$$ hahahaha

P—this might be hard to believe, but being on the road is sorta lonely to be honest

J—like how?

P—I feel so detached from reality. City to city. Hotel to hotel. Plane to plane. Yea yeah I know it is hard to feel sorry for me

J—sounds like fun to me!

P—it is. Usually. I dont wanna be a brat. But when youre not able to just be urself, it isnt as fun as it can be. So many ppl around me, but they dont know the real me.

J—I feel same way. Well, except not cuz im
famous. But cuz ppl think im strange.

P—they do?

J—yeah. Im a supes loner.

P—so am i.

J—so perf! We can be loners together!

P—so funny. Totally

J—you should write a song about it.

P—about bein a loner?

J—well, yeah . . . or whatever is bugging you. It helps me a lot. Cheaper than therapy and cheaper (and better for you) than drugs.

P—truee . . . hahah. actually, to be totally honest with ya, I wrote a song about you on the plane the other day.

J—WHAT? For real?

P—uh yeah. Hehehe

J—no way. Don't believe u. sorry :/

P—youll see.

J—sucha tease u r.

P—;-) . . . k. gotta go, bedtiiiime. Gnite

J—nighty

As Josie lay on her towel soaking up the rays, she scrolled through the chat history, rereading their conversations over and over. It was all she could think about. All she wanted to think about.

“Josie!”

Connor was yelling from the top of the stairs down to his sister.

“Dad's on the phone!”

Dad. Definitely not what she wanted to think about.

Yet she had felt like a superbitch going MIA when he had called from jail earlier in the week, so she got up and began walking toward the apartment.

“Hurry!” Connor called out. “He's only got a minute and they shut it off.”

Connor handed Josie the home phone before she even made it to the top of the stairs.

“Hey, Dad,” Josie said unenthusiastically.

“Hey, baby.” Josie could hear clanging and hollering in the background, as if he was calling from the middle of Game 7 of the NBA finals in Madison Square Garden and angry fans were making a racket. “I just wanted to say I'm okay, and I will be getting out of here soon. My lawyer is working on it. So don't worry.”

“Okay,” she said in a numb monotone. “Whatever you say.”

“Look, Josie,” he said. “I'm sorry about everything. Everything. I wish I could change it but I can't. But, look, it's all been a big misunderstanding, and it will all work out. I can't get into it, but, trust me, it will all work out—”

Josie didn't, couldn't, speak.

“I'm sure that, uh, you know, once everything gets pieced
together, this will all blow over. I mean, we got some piano playing to do, eh?”

When Josie didn't immediately respond, her dad continued, “Everything will be back to normal, baby.”

“Whatever you say, Dad,” Josie said coldly. “I mean, if you say so, it must be true.”

Josie's mom stepped beside Josie and began eavesdropping. “Be nice,” she whispered into Josie's ear.

“So Mom tells me that you're going camping this weekend, eh?” he said.

“Yeah. Old-school camping trip.”

“That's good. Make sure you've got bug spray—and sunscreen, baby.”

A clicking sound crackled on the line.

“Time's running out here, Josie. I'll call you soon, next time I can. Okay? Love you.”

“Okay.”

The line went dead.

Josie handed the phone to her mom while looking away. She stepped back outside, tiptoeing down the stairs to finish her bronzing session.

“What did he say?” Josie's mom asked.

“Does it really matter? It's all lies anyway.”

“Please tell me
you brought protection, Brant,” Delilah said.

Josie twisted her neck abruptly to the left and wiggled in her car seat to face D. “Protection? Like a bodyguard?”

Delilah laughed, still not taking her eyes off the desert highway in front of her. “You know: BC. Rule number one: Never hit Vegas without BC.”

“Seriously, D, I have no idea
what
you are talking about.”

“Birth control. You know: BC.”

“Oh. My. God. Why would I bring that?”

“Girl, if I have to tell you that, then you obviously weren't paying attention in Health Ed.”

Until that moment, “Operation Sin City” (as D had decided to call their adventure) was working to perfection. Josie had never felt so free. It had been two hours since she had hugged her mom and Connor good-bye and had sneakily slipped into Delilah's black Honda Accord that awaited her behind a Dumpster on the other side of their apartment complex. About an hour into the drive, as D had blasted Coldplay and she had tapped her foot to the beat, Josie had looked around at the dull-brown expanse of cactus-and-scrub and had thought to herself that this was the farthest she had ever been away from home—without a parent. Sure, she had made day
trips with friends down to L.A. to go shopping and hang out at the Santa Monica pier, but someone's mom or dad had driven them there and babysat them the entire time.

She could get out of the car and walk across the desert and no one would know where she was, who she was, or where she was going. For the first time in her life, she had felt like rather than belonging to someone else, out here, away from everyone and everything she knew and that knew her, she could only belong to herself.

Adult. That was the word that had come to her mind. She had felt so adult.

Then, somewhere east of Mojave and west of Barstow, Delilah had reminded Josie that maybe she was not as grown-up as she had thought.

Protection. Josie certainly knew what that meant. Duh, she'd taken that class in sixth grade. She knew how babies were made and her mom had—awkwardly—given her “the lecture.” But, she had thought, that was stuff that older kids had to worry about. At least, until this moment on a desolate high-desert stretch of Route 58 when it struck Josie that she might be getting herself into something she wasn't yet prepared for, that maybe she was all of a sudden one of those “older” kids.

Delilah was doing nothing to calm her traveling partner's fears. She turned down the radio and chuckled.

“Brant, Brant, Brant,” Delilah repeated with sighs of exasperation. “You're asking
me
why
you
might need protection? I mean, do you think this guy, who by the way is
sixteen,
is asking
you to come all the way to Vegas—I mean VEGAS of all places—is putting you up in a hotel and is sexting you nonstop for the last week because he just wants to hang out like a couple of grade-school kids? He's a celebrity, Brant. He's a hottie. He totally has sex with fans. That is just what they do. Remember that Justin Bieber story?”

Josie thought about it for a few seconds. “Well, to be honest . . .” The car was heading east at about sixty m.p.h. , but suddenly Josie felt like they were speeding toward Vegas at three times the legal limit—too fast for her comfort. “I actually do think he just wants to get to know me better. Sex has never come up once. He's not like that.”

Delilah tilted her head to the right and glared over at her car mate. Arching her thick dark eyebrows, they formed an are-you-kidding me line of wrinkles in her forehead. “Really, Brant? I seriously don't wanna pee on your parade. I mean, this trip is gonna be epic sexy. Epic sexy. But I'm just keepin' it real.”

“Honestly. I know it sounds naïve, but he's a different kind of guy. He's the kind of guy—”

“Guy,” D interrupted. “Stop right there. Exactly my point! He is
a guy.
All guys say anything just to get in your pants. If they think you're a Bible thumper, they'll say they're born-again and say grace before dinner. If you say you like sensitive guys, they'll fake-cry during a movie just to make you want to sleep with them. Guys are dogs. Panting, pathetic, horny dogs.” D looked back over at Josie, whose face had turned
white as rice. “Even pretty emo boys like Peter Maxx.”

Josie uncrossed and crossed her legs and sat up straight. “You don't know him. He's not like that at all. You're wrong.”

“That's what I thought about Derek Gibbs.”

“Who's that?”

“The dirt bag I lost my virginity to when I was around your age.”

Josie's eyes lit up. She assumed D had done it, but wasn't sure. She was officially her first friend who had. “You were my age?”

“Well, yeah, I was fourteen. A young fourteen.”

“What happened?” Josie asked.

D cruised past a tractor-trailer. “We were good friends at first. Like best friends. I liked him, but then one night we kissed and I realized I more-than-liked him, and so, basically, we started dating. He was a senior and I was a freshman, so I thought I was pretty cool dating an older guy like that. I mean, for weeks he bought me flowers, texted me little poems, treated me like a queen. And, I'm not gonna lie, he was
very
hot. Not kidding. He made me want to do things I had never done, Josie. You know, sex stuff. But, Josie, I have never told anyone this, but I wasn't ready for it. And, well . . . it was a bad scene.”

D's shoulders slumped and her face softened. In the three years they had been neighbors, Josie had never seen D remotely look sad.

“What happened, if you don't mind me asking?” Josie hoped that D wouldn't start crying because if she did, it would
be like finding out Santa Claus isn't real.

“I was at a pool party, and I got drunk—like an idiot.” D gripped the steering wheel tighter. “And, well, he pushed things too far and I was too out of it—drunk off my ass—to stop him. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late. I cried for the next month. Every day for a month.”

“Did you tell your parents? Did they call the police?”

“My parents?” D glared at Josie. “If you haven't noticed, I don't exactly have real parents. I haven't talked to my mom in four years, and my dad would have blamed me somehow. Whatever.”

Josie gently placed her hand on D's right shoulder. “I'm sorry. That sounds horrible.”

“I survived,” D said. “Lesson learned.”

D noticed her travel partner staring blankly out the window at the desert scrub blurring by.

“Hey, Brant.”

Josie looked back at her.

“I'm not telling you not to do anything with Peter. In fact, if you think it is right, then go for whatever. I'm just saying that there's more to life than sex. I know that when you haven't had it, you can make it out to be a bigger deal than it is. My advice: just chill and see what happens.”