Fan Girl

by Marla Miniano

  “This isn’t due for another two weeks, right?” he asks.

  “I wanted to finish it early,” Summer says. “It’s lame, I know.”

  “It’s not lame,” Scott says. “Do you mind if I read through it and get some ideas? I can’t figure out how to write mine.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” she says. “I can even help you write it, since I’m done with mine.” She panics for a moment, afraid he’d think she was implying he was stupid. “But only if you want me to,” she adds cautiously.

  “I’d love that,” Scott replies, smiling up at her. “Let’s work on an outline now?”

  “Sure,” she says, grabbing a pencil and a notepad and taking a seat beside him. They sit on the small couch squished together, their legs crossed and their bare knees touching. She catches a whiff of cigarette smoke on his hair and his shirt, but she tries to concentrate on her fingers gripping the pencil moving across the notepad; she hopes he doesn’t notice her sweaty palms and shaky handwriting.

  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.

  Over the next three years, Scott would make her feel that way plenty of times, and Summer would learn to take those times and magnify them so they could drown out the other times—the times when she’d sit in her dorm room on the verge of tears waiting for him to call or text or show up, the times when self-doubt and disappointment would rain down on her after another heated argument about labels and trust. Over the next three years, Summer would learn to understand that with guys like Scott—guys whose songs you heard on national radio, guys who rubbed elbows with socialites and supermodels on a weekly basis, guys who were considered local celebrities and featured in magazines and newspapers—you took what you could get, and you didn’t complain. Over the next three years, she would learn to understand just how little a girl like her was allowed to expect from a guy like him.

  Often, Zachary would tell her, in a nerdy nasal voice that makes his every statement sound like a legitimate scientific fact, that she is wasting her time and youth on him. They had grown close after being seatmates in Gen Psych, and every time Scott broke her heart, it would be Zac on the other end of the phone line, comforting her and asking her if she needed anything. Summer was stubborn and defensive when it came to Scott, and this was an endless source of frustration for Zac, who had to listen to her gushing, glowing stories one day and miserable, lovesick ones the next. Once, over red wine and strawberries, Scott looked into her eyes and told her she was different, special. She was over the moon with joy, and called Zac to share the good news (and maybe rub it in his face a little) the minute she got back to her room. “It doesn’t mean anything,” Zac told her. “Guys use that line all the time. It’s just another way of saying that he wants to flatter you but doesn’t know you well enough to give you anything personal and specific. Which means, quite ironically, that to his eyes, you’re just like everyone else.”

  Summer knew Zac had a point. She knew she should train herself to demand more from Scott, to push him until he gave her what she deserved: answers and explanations and definitions, security and commitment and peace of mind. She knew he was seeing other girls, going on dates and trading flirty text messages and drunkenly hooking up with them after gigs; he was upfront about all of this, laying out all his cards on the table because he “valued honesty” and “wanted to make sure they were on the same page.” She knew the loaded, judgmental looks these girls gave her when she came to his shows, knew they talked about her and called her a loser and a groupie behind her back. She knew, even before Zac had told her, that she wasn’t different or special at all. Yet, she also knew one wrong move would completely, irrevocably drive Scott away, and she wasn’t sure she could live with that. Deep inside her, in a secret place she had tucked away beneath layers of denial and assurances that she had everything under control, she believed she could change him; that one day, he’d wake up and realize he loved her all along. She believed—with a faith much stronger and more persistent than she would ever admit to anyone—that she and Scott were destined to be together.

  Chapter 6

  It is exactly one week before they graduate from college, and Summer comes over to have breakfast at Zac’s house, which is a fifteen-minute walk from her dorm. Zac’s family adores Summer, a fact she never lets him forget. His mom is especially fond of her, probably tired of being around three sulky, sullen teenaged boys every day. This morning, she has prepared an elaborate spread of golden brown waffles, dark chocolate chip pancakes, crispy maple bacon strips, buttered scrambled eggs, freshly-squeezed orange juice, and steaming brewed coffee. Mrs. Santos is in a good mood, as she always is every time Summer sees her, and she looks polished and perfect even at eight AM, with her hair in a neat ponytail and her lips a subtle shade of pink.

  She pours juice into a tall glass and hands it to Summer. “So, what are your plans after graduation?” she asks, sounding like every other adult Summer has spoken to these past few weeks. “Are you taking a vacation or looking for a job right away?”

  “Mom—” Zac says in a warning tone.

  “It’s okay,” Summer says. Zac is overly critical of his mother, usually embarrassed by her the way most young boys are. He is insensitive and immature around her, and Summer wishes he can feel the pain that shoots through her body when she thinks of her own mother lying motionless underground forever. She tells Mrs. Santos, “I’ll probably look for a job right away. I don’t think I can afford a vacation.” She could, in fact, afford a vacation with all the money she’s saved over the years, but she didn’t want to deplete her bank account for something as temporary as a trip.

  “That’s good,” Mrs. Santos says. “It’s the responsible thing to do.” She glances at her son, perched on a stool by the kitchen counter, poking his waffles with a fork. “Zachary here has no clue what to do with his life.”

  Summer laughs. “He’ll figure it out like the rest of us.”

  Zac heaves a huge sigh and gets up to put his half-full plate in the sink. “If you guys are going to talk about me like I’m not here, I might as well technically not be here,” he says emphatically, walking out of the room.

  “Honey, that doesn’t even make sense,” Mrs. Santos calls out to him. When the sound of his footsteps has faded away, she turns to Summer and tells her, “I hope you know how much he likes you.”

  Summer is caught off-guard, and her cheeks start burning. She looks down at her coffee cup, studying the light brown liquid, the delicate curve of the rim. She does know how much Zac likes her. But in the three years they’ve been friends, she has grown accustomed to brushing it off, ignoring his lingering glances and pretending his expensive birthday and Christmas presents meant nothing. Zac has never told her anything, never taken the risk or placed his heart on the line, which only makes things easier—neither of them has to acknowledge having felt anything. They are each other’s only friend, and neither of them is willing to upset the balance. And anyway, because they have been pretending long enough, they cannot even be sure anymore if sparks are truly flying b
etween them, or if their chemistry is just a product of familiarity.

  “Your son is a great guy,” Summer says, her face still hot, trying to avoid Mrs. Santos’s eyes. “He’s really great.” She winces inwardly, wanting to kick herself.

  The phone in the living room rings, startling Mrs. Santos, and Summer manages to escape, clumsily mumbling something about having to go to the bathroom. She finds Zac sitting on the floor of his spacious bedroom, dusting and alphabetizing his books. He has been working since yesterday, and he is irritable and ready to take it all out on her. “I don’t even understand what you see in him,” he says, scowling at her. “You do his homework. You edit his papers. You work around his schedule and you follow him around like a lost puppy. You’re pathetic. You’re the poster girl for all things pathetic.”

  Zac always starts a conversation like he is in the middle of one, especially when he is in a foul mood. He would bring up stuff that happened months, years ago, and it disoriented her. Once, after receiving an awful score on a quiz, he said to her out of nowhere, “You know, Scott treated you like shit that first time you talked to him at report card distribution, and you let him. You just sat there and let him.” He usually snapped at her not for something she herself has done, but for something Scott did that she tolerated. He seemed to take them personally, all her Scott-related flaws—her blind devotion, her inability to say no to him, her unwavering confidence in their future together.

  Summer sits beside him on the floor, nudging his arm repeatedly with her bony elbow. “Oh, Zac,” she says. “You worry too much about me.”

  “Well, someone has to,” he growls, flicking her elbow away. “Nobody else does.”

  “That’s not true,” she says. “Ellie worries about me. Sometimes. I suppose Ken does, too. I bet even baby Nick furrows his brows when he thinks of me.”

  Zac continues dusting and alphabetizing, not looking at her. Summer wonders when he decided to make it his mission to protect her, when he decided she couldn’t possibly do this on her own. Summer doesn’t know what it’s like to have an actual big brother, and growing up, her father was never the strict, authoritative type—he let her eat cupcakes and popcorn for dinner, let her stay up late watching cartoons on school nights, let her bring chips and cookies into her bedroom, scattering crumbs all over the carpet. In the early stages of their friendship, Summer was almost convinced that Zac only thought of her as a little sister. She picks up a book and starts flipping through the yellowed pages, the dust bunnies sticking to her fingers. It is a compilation of short stories about a group of teenagers in a Manhattan private school; there is one story about a boy having an affair with his sultry, twenty-something teacher, clinging to the flimsy thread of hope that they can start dating publicly once he graduates. Summer hears Zac say, silently and sadly, “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “And you thought calling me the poster girl for all things pathetic would help?” she asks.

  He doesn’t answer right away. “I think you’re setting yourself up for disaster,” he says, finally looking at her, searching her eyes for a sign that she agrees with him. “He’s never going to feel the same way about you. Let it go, Summer. You had three years of whatever-that-was with him. That was it. Just leave it at that.”

  She wants to tell him to quit making all these careless, cynical comments—that she would appreciate it if he could stop doubting her and Scott. That maybe if at least one other person believed she and Scott would end up with each other, then maybe they actually would. She wants to tell him that he should at least try to be supportive, because he is her only friend and she needs him to start acting the part. She wants to tell him that her feelings for Scott will not be going away any time soon, no matter what he says, no matter what anyone says. “I’m trying to meet him halfway,” she tells him instead.

  Zac shakes his head. “You can’t meet him halfway if he doesn’t.”

  Chapter 7

  On commencement day, right before the booming announcement instructing all graduating students to gather by block and line up outside the school gym where their parents and siblings and professors were waiting, Summer discovers Scott has been seeing Roxanne for months. It is Meg who breaks the news, in a voice much smaller and sadder than her trademark effervescent shrieking, her shoulders slumped and her mouth a thin scarlet line. “They went home together that night you watched his show in Liberty at the end of freshman year,” she says. “They’d both had way too much to drink, and, well… you know.”

  No, Summer wants to scream. I don’t know, and I hate you for assuming I do. She tries to think back to the morning after that gig, tries to picture Roxanne sleeping soundly in her own bed, or stumbling sheepishly into the room at the crack of dawn. She can’t remember witnessing either, can’t remember anything else from that morning other than the optimistic elation she felt despite her throbbing hangover, the curiosity over whether or not Scott would be able to contact her. She tries to think back to the things Roxanne had said as they packed their stuff for storage and cleared out their desks and closets for the summer, but her mind draws no pertinent information—all she remembers is Roxanne asking her if she had a spare balikbayan box and some packaging tape, complaining about the dorm’s policy on students vacating their rooms completely during April and May, when repairs and renovations were made.

  Meg continues, “Nothing happened after that night—I think she flew to Los Angeles to visit her cousins a week later and didn’t come back until June, and by then he had moved on and forgotten all about their drunken hookup. They reconnected at the beginning of senior year, when Roxanne broke up with that law student Gary. I think they had to organize a fundraising party together or something.” This, Summer remembers: the party was for a marketing elective she decided not to enroll in, opting for a basic Spanish class instead. During those months, she would regularly ask how the party planning was coming along, and Roxanne would gladly launch into a tirade about how Scott was such a typical boy, lazy and irresponsible and unwilling to lift a finger as long as he knew there was a girl around to do all the work. Scott, in turn, would call Roxanne bossy and annoying; he would often roll his eyes and tell Summer, “Man, that roommate of yours is something else, isn’t she?”

  The memories come flooding back, tiny hints she must have missed out on, or deliberately chose to ignore: how her fights with Scott escalated at around the start of senior year, even after a relatively smooth summer; how Roxanne, who was always prepared to brag about her most recent conquests and their dazzling smiles and shiny cars and wealthy families, suddenly turned mysterious and secretive. How she saw Roxanne’s name flashing on the screen of Scott’s phone one evening while they sat entwined on his couch, and how he jumped out of her arms and rushed to the kitchen to take the call. How Roxanne and Scott once spent an entire Saturday together; how their “meetings” would run late into the night and he would have to cancel on Summer, saying he was too tired to pick her up and promising to make it up to her somehow.

  Summer can feel her toes pinching painfully against the hard, synthetic material of the five-inch pumps she borrowed from Ellie, her eyes beginning to itch and sting from the hastily applied mascara and eye shadow, her armpits and nape and the back of her knees perspiring underneath her scratchy, stiflingly heavy navy blue robe. She can feel the blood in her chest collecting and curling into a ball, then traveling upward, where it lodges itself firmly into her throat. She can feel Meg’s nervous remorse at the surface, and lurking just beneath, the quiet disapproval—most likely at Scott and Roxanne for doing what they did, but probably at Summer too, for not finding out sooner, for not finding out for herself.

  “A common friend told me,” Meg says, as if this would explain everything. “I confronted Roxanne about it one day, while you were out with Scott, and she said you were aware he was dating other girls. I knew you definitely weren’t aware he was dating her. But I had no idea how to tell you.” She pauses. “I’m sorry I waited this long.” />
  Summer doesn’t assuage her guilt, doesn’t absolve her of all sin. She doesn’t say, Thank you for telling me. She doesn’t say, We’re cool. Don’t worry about it. I don’t blame you. She does not want to lie to Meg, the way she and Roxanne and Scott and God-knows-who-else have been lying to her all these months.

  “I better go line up,” Meg says, fidgeting with the comically large silver ring on her left hand. Her purple eyeliner looks smudged and sloppy in the unforgiving sunlight, and under normal circumstances, Summer would have tactfully pointed this out—over the years, they have become more at ease with each other, more involved in each other’s life, almost becoming friends. Summer thought back then, foolishly, how lucky she was that she didn’t get stuck with two Roxannes, that at least she had one roommate she could sort of like. “Meg seems like a nice girl,” Ken once told her on the phone, when he dropped off a bottle of vitamins at her dorm while she was in class. “She said you really needed the vitamins because you have a long week of exams ahead and haven’t been getting enough sleep. She also asked how Nick is doing.” At that time, Summer was touched that Meg kind of cared, flattered that someone listened to her enough to remember her nephew’s name. “She is,” she agreed with Ken.

  The graduation march starts playing and students obediently file into the gym, the noise slowly dying down as they go. Meg gives her an uncomfortable pat on the shoulder, and Summer flinches before turning away to join her block. The gym is just as stuffy as it was that day more than three years ago, when she and Scott first spoke to each other. There is a joyful anticipation floating above and around her—a joyful anticipation she feels terribly excluded from, like a child abandoned in the playground or left behind by the school bus on a field trip. Only when she is walking down the aisle towards her designated seat does she realize that her fingernails have been digging harshly into her palms the whole time, her fists glued to her sides and a frown etched onto her face while her fellow graduates gamely smile for the cameras, the tassels on their caps swinging merrily in the air.