Fan Girl (4 page)

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 between 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.

Summer almost feels
bad about confronting
Scott. She almost feels bad about coming up to him right after the graduation
ceremony, interrupting the fun while he is posing for wacky photos with his
friends, and telling him, in front of everyone, “We have to talk.” The guys
start heckling him, of course, and the girls give each other snide little
looks, not even bothering to conceal their disdain for her. She almost feels
bad about dampening his spirit; he is laughing with his head thrown back over
something someone just said, and here she is pulling him aside, about to throw
his betrayal right in his face. She almost feels bad for him, but more than
anything else, she feels bad for herself. Because now that she thinks about it,
Scott and Roxanne do make sense together—at least more sense than he ever
did with her. The worst part about this heartbreak is that she cannot say, with
absolute sincerity, that she never saw it coming.

He
keeps his head down and his hands shoved deep into his pockets. For the entire
ceremony, while the honor students and keynote speakers were delivering their
speeches, she composed a reasonably dignified exit monologue in her head. But
now that he is in front of her, she finds it a struggle to open her mouth and
start saying goodbye to him. “What’s wrong?” he asks, and it sounds less like
“What did I do?” and more like “What the fuck is your problem?” She does not
want to lose her temper, does not want to make a scene—she just wants to
get this over with. So she tells him, trying to keep any emotion out of her
voice, “I heard about you and Roxanne. Is it true?”

He
says, “You weren’t supposed to find out about that.”

“Is
it true?” she asks again, and she can feel her voice and hands shaking with
disconcerted disbelief. She would give anything not to be crumbling to pieces
at this moment, to be able to hold her head up high and tell him with
conviction that she is better off without him. She has never been capable of
hiding her feelings; her delight and depression and anger and relief would
always proclaim themselves without her permission, parading all over the place.
“I just need you to tell me,” she says, as gently and as kindly as she could.

“I
don’t know what you want me to say,” he mutters. It is neither an admission nor
an apology, and his eyes dart towards the spot where his friends are signaling
for him to hurry up and standing impatiently with their hands on their hips or
their arms across their chest. Summer knows she cannot stay long—Ellie
and Ken are waiting in the parking lot to take her to a fancy restaurant. Their
dinner reservation is only until eight-thirty, and they have to pick up Nick
from Ken’s parents’ house before eleven. She looks at Scott, tries to convince
herself that maybe he never meant to hurt her, tries to find an easy way out
for the both of them. But all she can say is, “I guess I already know
everything I need to know.”

“I
guess you do,” he says, his tone frosty and every word laced with undisguised
contempt. She is used to hearing him speak like he hates every bone in her
body. In those three years, their fights would often get ugly, and he always
told her exactly what he was thinking:
You expect too
much,
or
You should
stop acting like my girlfriend
, or
I
don’t remember ever promising you anything,
or
I
warned you from the start that I will not be falling in love with you
, or
Why do you have to ruin everything?
He has never been one
to soften the cold, hard realities that defined the boundaries between them,
and she always admired him for this—she always thought being brutally,
unyieldingly honest was such a big, brave thing to do.

She
thinks,
When are you allowed to give up on
someone?

There
is nothing else left to say and nothing else she wants to hear. When she walks
away from him, he doesn’t run after her, doesn’t call her name, doesn’t grab
her arm to say something repentant or bittersweet or meaningful. When she walks
away from him, he just stands there and lets her. Summer continues walking.
Around her, people are hugging each other furiously, vowing to stay in touch,
wishing one another all the luck and success in the world. They promise each
other all sorts of happy, hopeful, wonderful things, in between their goodbyes.