Fan Girl Read Online Free PDF

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