Free Fan Girl by Marla Miniano Page B

an ordinary, everyday guy who can break your
heart just as brutally as the next person?” or “Can you deal with the crushing
insecurity, the crippling self-doubt, the pressure to compete with every other
girl on the planet?” Or perhaps most importantly: “Are you ready to feel, every
single day, that this guy is way out of your league?”
    Summer
didn’t know what to do or say so that Scott wouldn’t be out of her league
anymore. She didn’t see how this particular reality could possibly be altered,
tailor-fit to suit her needs; there seemed to be nothing anyone could do to
change the fact that he was Scott Carlton, Breakthrough Artist, and Summer was
just…well, Summer.
    Sometimes,
when Scott was busy talking to someone on the phone while Summer was knee-deep
in songwriting, she would sneak glances at him and try to will him to see her in a romantic light again. She would summon
all her mental strength, focusing intently on transforming the sound waves
passing through Scott’s phone into brainwash waves: You
are in love with me. You are in love with me. You are in love with me. Sometimes,
Scott would catch her gaze and hold it, and she would think, Oh
wow, it’s working. But then he’d put down the phone and
say, “Crap. Leon says we have to write double-time,” or “I hate this stupid,
stupid day. Nothing is going right.” And Summer would want to say, You’re
with me right now. Doesn’t that count for something? But
she’d chicken out and feel like a complete loser instead.      
    Summer
wondered if it were possible to just take a shovel, dig deep into the ground,
and bury all these feelings. She wondered if she could put all these feelings
in a box, seal it shut, and send it far, far away to some exotic location where
it would be lost forever. She wondered if she could turn these patient,
persistent feelings into threads and start tying them together, making big
knots and small knots everywhere until she was left with a tangled, useless
piece of junk she wouldn’t even recognize anymore. She would stare off into
space as she pondered this, and Scott would snap his fingers in front of her
face and say, “Earth to Summer! Double-time, remember?”
    Once,
she came remarkably close to telling him the truth: “I love you,” she told him,
but because she did her best to empty her voice of all emotion, and because she
looked away immediately after saying it, and because she didn’t say anything
more to make it substantial and significant, the idea barely took
shape—it crackled weakly in the air between them for the briefest moment
before fizzling out in a cloud of smoke.
    “I
know you do,” he said dismissively. His phone rang, and he stood up and said,
“I better take this outside. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.” Through
the window, she could see him smiling—not the cool, detached superstar
smile he usually reserved for girls like her—but a smile that radiated
warmth and joy, like he had a strong, solid connection with whoever it was he
was talking to. He looked like a different person.    
    Some
nights, he took her to his gigs, where she blended into the half-critical,
half-appreciative crowd. She would stand there, in the middle of the darkness
and noise, and listen to him. Every time she saw him on stage, it came
naturally for her to detach herself from anything personal and just lose
herself in the music—he may not have written his own songs, but they were
undeniably good, and she knew them by heart. When the show was over, they would
either go back to his place or head out to a party, where Scott would
demonstrate just how much of an expert he is at the fine art of schmoozing.
He’d flit from one spot to another, high-fiving or fist-bumping with some boy,
putting his hand casually on some girl’s waist, listening to some random person
hell-bent on impressing him. Summer wasn’t good at schmoozing at all—to
her, every party seemed like a flurry of names and faces