Fangirl by Ken Baker Page B

keyboard she just wrote a song on for the guy standing right in front of her.
    Confused. Why is my best friend winning a contest? Why is Peter Maxx hugging Ashley and not me?
    Catatonic. The only part of her body moving was her eyes. Every other muscle, frozen.
    Shocked.
    Stunned.
    Betrayed, again.
    #SuchaBitch.
    â€œAshley, you beat out thousands of other contestants,” Jackson announced as Peter placed his arm around the winner. “Your song moved the judges, including Peter. How do you feel?”
    For a split second, Ashley looked at Josie across the room. Their eyes locked, but Ashley nervously looked away.
    â€œUm, I feel like the luckiest girl in the world!”
    Jackson Phillips tried his best to get her to answer a few more questions, but she was too emotional to answer. He instead turned to Peter and asked, “You’ve seen the video, Peter. What made her the winner?”
    â€œThe song. It’s all about the song. Her lyrics touched me.” Peter directed his gaze at Ashley, a fact not lost on Josie, who self-consciously slid off her baseball cap. She was having a bad hair day, but she didn’t want Peter to think she was some tomboy softball girl. Josie fished a hair tie from her pocket and quickly fashioned a ponytail.
    After Peter ended the interview, Peter asked Ashley, “Did we meet last night?”
    Ashley tossed her blond hair over to the side, letting it flirtatiously dance on her left shoulder.
    â€œYeah!” she said excitedly, punching him playfully on his upper arm—almost too hard. “Oops, sorry.”
    â€œYou’ve got nothing to be sorry about.” Peter assured her with a pat on her upper back.
    â€œAh-hem.” Bobby cleared his throat. “Tight schedule to keep.”
    â€œSorry, girls, but we must be going,” the publicist interrupted.
    Josie leaned her back against the far wall of the room, overcome with that weak-in-the-knees feeling. The shrink who Josie’s mom had made her see for a brief time after the divorce had diagnosed her with a psychological condition called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder—or PTSD for short. The divorce was so traumatic, the counselor explained, that certain “triggers” in her life made her feel like she was reliving that traumatic experience, sending her body into feeling as if it were in a state of “shock.”
    For, say, military war veterans traumatized by battle, a trigger might be the sound of the whooshing blades of a helicopter, taking them right back to a moment they feared for their lives. For a teenage girl who felt that her father had abandoned her and her once stable life was seemingly uncontrollable, a trigger could be something like a girlfriend doing something that made her feel like she couldn’t trust her, that she might betray her on a moment’s notice. And her body, in anticipation of the emotional assault, would go into shock mode: Weak knees. Sweaty palms. Heart palpitations. Dizziness. In other words, exactly what Josie was feeling in that classroom.
    Not only had Ashley never mentioned she entered a singing contest, but she specifically had agreed with Josie thatsubmitting a video for “Sing It to the Maxx” would be a “retarded” idea. “They probably don’t even watch the videos,” Ashley had said a few months back when Peter announced it on his fan page. “It’s like a scheme to get you on an e-mail list or something.”
    As Peter’s entourage began to scurry around him for an escort out of the room and into the quad, Jackson Phillips stuck his mic between Ashley and Peter.
    â€œSo, Ashley, what inspired you to write the song?”
    â€œWell . . .” Ashley shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. It’s kind of complicated.”
    Josie’s face began turning cherry red, her cheeks puffing like a blowfish.
    â€œSee?” Ashley began in a rush. “My best friend, Josie? Over