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  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 the
mselves—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.”

  Chapter 2

  What on Earth do you wear to a gig when you kind of like the frontman and you kind of want him to like you back but you don’t want it to be too obvious that you exerted effort dressing up for him? This is what Summer would like to know, and she finds it unsettling that she has been frantically yanking clothes out of her closet and tossing them back in for the past forty-five minutes. It bothers her that a casual, offhandedly flirty invitation could mean so much to her, if only because invitations of any kind were rare occurrences in her life. It also bothers her that there is absolutely nobody she can ask for help—not Roxanne or Meg, not the other girls in the dorm who all seem to be such good friends with one another (they organized Girls’ Night Out every Friday, blasting Ke$ha and Lady GaGa from their speakers and lending each other flat irons and eyelash curlers and fire-engine red lipstick and sparkly sequined tops and six-inch heels), and certainly not Ellie, who would either freak out and forbid her from going, or drive her straight to the mall and fuss over her until she looked halfway decent.

  She settles on a black tank top and dark jeans, pulls her hair into a messy bun, and trades her pearl earrings for the small silver hoops Ellie gave her for her sixteenth birthday last year. She doesn’t even attempt to put on proper makeup—she sees how Meg does it every day, and it does not look like a simple, straightforward process—but she swipes on unflavored lip balm and some clear mascara, and sprays her wrists several times with a vanilla-scented perfume she rarely uses. There is a girl in one of her classes who wore a similar black tank top and dark jeans every day; she would sashay into the room ten minutes late with her guitar in tow and a half-smug, half-sorry smirk on her face, and all the boys would turn to look, their eyes lingering on her creamy shoulders, her slender arms, the words tattooed on the left side of her neck. Summer would give anything to get the same reaction.

  She is studying herself in the full-length mirror beside the door when Roxanne walks in. “Big date tonight?” she asks, almost sarcastically. She kicks off her sneakers and throws her backpack onto the bed.

  “I’m going to Liberty,” Summer says. When Roxanne’s eyebrows shoot up, Summer adds, “Scott Carlton invited me,” and instantly hates herself for doing so. Why does she always have to feel like she has something to prove?

  “Huh,” Roxanne says, yawning and stretching her arms over her head. “I might drop by to check them out too, but I’ll take a nap first. I’m exhausted.” She doesn’t look exhausted—her skin is clear, her hair is sleek and shiny, and her eyes are as bright as they were this morning.

  Summer glances at her watch. “Aren’t they supposed to start playing at eight?” She checked the band’s website twice, and it definitely said eight. It is now seven-forty.

  “They’re supposed to,” Roxanne replies. “But they won’t. I doubt they’ll even start setting up by nine.” She pulls a blanket over her legs and yawns again. “You’re not going there right now, are you?”

  “No,” Summer says, too quickly. “I mean, yes, I’m leaving now, but I’m grabbing dinner somewhere else.” More than an hour earlier, before she brushed her teeth and washed her face, Summer had already eaten a cup of instant noodles and a pack of crackers. She had to force down every bite, and now she can still taste the salt on her tongue, feel the oil settling unpleasantly inside her mouth.

  “Good call,” Roxanne tells her. “The food in Liberty sucks.”

  Summer nods like she knew this all along. “I guess I’ll catch you later, then?”

  Roxanne mumbles something into her pillow. Summer takes one last look at herself in the mirror and heads out the door.

  One of the things Summer likes about her campus is that everything she needs is within walking distance—classrooms, libraries, photocopying centers, cafeterias, restaurants, groceries, convenience stores, coffee shops, book stores. She doesn’t mind walking, even when the sun is beating down harshly and everyone around her is frazzled and trying not to bump into each other as they rush off towards some important destination. She likes the steady stomping sound her shoes make on the pavement, the sight of green and brown leaves littering the road, the busy chatter of other students enveloping her, the way her heart pounds faster and faster as she quickens her pace. She likes walking at any time of the day, but she likes it best in the evenings, especially on weekends, when the corridors are hauntingly quiet and the university is peaceful, when the only people she comes across are joggers and janitors and the occasional professor working overtime.

  Tonight, a cool breeze has replaced the sticky heat of the afternoon, and Summer feels the wind caressing her cheeks and the back of her neck. She has been walking around the campus for an hour, killing time before going to Liberty, debating with herself whether or not showing up at nine would still make her seem too eager. She clutches a bottle of mineral water she got from one of the vending machines; it is now empty but her lips are still dry and her throat is still parched. Her tummy feels strange and fluttery, and she cannot seem to calm herself down. She checks the time—ten minutes to nine—and decides walking in circles is not doing her any good. She tosses the water bottle into a nearby trash can, wipes her wet hands on her jeans, and exits the university gate.

  Outside the campus, the roads are lined with headlights and tail lights: people on their way to parties or family dinners or romantic dates with their boyfriends or girlfriends. The sidewalk buzzes with Friday night excitement, another weekend crashing in. Summer sees a group of teenaged girls emerge from a chauffeur-driven SUV dressed to the nines, all glitter and gold, fluffing their salon-treated hair and teetering on their designer high heels and brandishing their expensive purses like weapons as they strut towards an overflowing bar with a menacing bald bouncer at the door. They remind her of the girls at her dorm, and for a moment she wonders what they are up to tonight. Two skinny, stylish boys pass her by, and it takes
her only a second to figure out that they like each other—like like each other. She tries to get a glimpse of their faces, tries to listen in on their conversation, but they are walking too fast and she cannot keep up, and soon they are several people away. As they stop at an intersection, Summer cranes her neck to see over the many heads separating her from them. She just wants to check if they will hold hands when they cross the street. They do.

  Chapter 3

  As Summer steps into Liberty, she is relieved that it is dark and noisy and crowded, that there are very few seats, that she can stand in a corner and sort of blend in. She takes out her mobile phone and starts playing with it, trying to look like she is texting her friends and asking them what time they were planning to come.

  There is no sign of Scott anywhere, and after a few minutes she has shoved her phone back into her bag and no longer knows what to do with her hands, so she goes to the bar, taps a bartender on the shoulder, and asks for a beer. She almost expects him to ignore her, or demand to see an ID, but he simply holds out a hand and stares her down impatiently as she fishes out a crumpled hundred-peso bill from her pocket. He slams a bottle and her change down on the counter, and she says thank you even though he has already turned his back on her. She grips the bottle and lifts it to her lips, feeling the cold numbing her fingertips and the bitter, icy beer sliding down her throat. The first and only time she drank beer before this was right after her high school graduation, when Ken and Ellie took her out to dinner. They had sisig and bagnet and heaps of steaming garlic rice, and Ken, running on zero sleep after a shift at the hospital, ordered a five-plus-one promo bucket of beer “to celebrate.” Ellie was already pregnant then, and by five bottles, Ken was beginning to talk too loudly, laugh too easily. “Why don’t you have the last one, Summer?” Ellie had asked. “Ken still has to drive all three—four—of us home.” More than the conspiratorial wink that followed, it was the word “four” and the way her sister glanced at her belly that did it for Summer. The beer was lukewarm and made her head spin. She intended to finish the whole bottle, but ended up leaving more than half of it untouched.