Fangirl Read Free

spent doing laps at the Bakersfield Dolphins SwimClub. On “fat” days, she wished she could undergo a 90210 -style makeover. As much as she was always told how “skinny” she was and thus hated thinking this way, she would stare at the tiny bulge in her lower belly and obsess over what she had eaten over the last few days. On these kind of self-critical days when she felt as bloated as a water balloon, Josie would catch herself fantasizing about having a flat stomach and a bigger chest like Ashley’s.
    Today, though, she was not having a “fat” day. She twisted, craned, and turned and poked and stared and, well, didn’t think she looked all that bad, actually. A victory. #ThankGod 4SkinnyMirrors.
    She hustled back to her bedroom and pressed play on her Peter Maxx playlist, pumping up the volume. In front of the mirror that leaned against the wall opposite her loft bed, she began brushing her hair.
    PING!
    Josie put down her brush and glanced at her phone.
    Ur meetin me at 630?
    Ashley.
    Totes am, Josie texted back with thumb-busting rapidity.
    Josie slid on a pair of her mom’s spiked heels from the shoe pile and squeezed into a tight-fitting denim miniskirt, sucking in her stomach as she snapped it on. “I hate skirts,” she growled, uncomfortably wiggling out of it and kicking the shoes off into the closet.
    Still a tomboy at heart (even though she quit ice hockey and softball when she turned twelve), Josie changed into her favorite pair of blue skinny jeans, black TOMS, and a tight white T-shirt, on which was printed in giant pink letters: MUSIC IS MY BOYFRIEND . The only girlie-girl addition was her silver peace-sign earrings, plus the carefully applied red lipstick and smoky eyes and Peter Maxx’s sweet-scented Dreamcatcher perfume she sprayed on her neck.
    She had to make one last check of @PeterMaxxNow .
    Nothing. No updates in the last twenty-four hours. In fact, his last Tweet was of a pic he took from the stage of a packed arena two days earlier in San Diego:
    You’re welcome, San Diego! #SoGrateful #BestFansEver
    Josie checked the time on her phone. Six o’clock. Two more hours until showtime.

2
    Bakersfield. Another city, another arena waiting to be packed with screaming fans—mostly female ones, of course. Sure, there was the usual spattering of man fans, but they were pretty much either just boyfriends dragged kicking and screaming, or “cool” dads wearing baggy blue jeans and untucked office shirts trying to make their daughters think they were hip to the cause.
    But Peter Maxx stayed most focused on his core demo: teenage girls. They were the ones who downloaded his music, stalked him on the Web, bought his concert tickets, T-shirts, hats, pens, screensavers, ring tones, pillows, cell phone covers, bottles of perfume, hairbrushes—whatever commercial products his management team could dream up making money by selling to his devotees. So devoted, in fact, was his following that thousands of “Maxx-a-holics” held online “group therapy” in live chats. Peter may have been only sixteen, but he was wise enough to know that he’d be just another struggling singer posting YouTube videos without his dedicated fans.
    That being said, the tour was fast becoming a blur. Last night, he was at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The night before that, San Diego. Three nights earlier, Phoenix. The next day . . . he didn’t even even know yet. Oakland, maybe? Hecouldn’t keep track. It was all so hectic. But Peter’s dad was touring with him all along the way, keeping him focused on the music, keeping him from burning out. He always taught Peter that great performers “focus on the moment, not the memory.” So, being the good boy who listens to his daddy, on that night it would be all about Bakersfield’s fans.
    It was a forty-city North American tour, Peter’s first as a headliner. At the start, just