Read Online Fangirl by Ken Baker - Free Book Online Page B

light, heading west on Rosedale Highway toward the expanse of farmland that stretched out for thirty miles to the coastal mountain range.
    â€œSo, like, do you want the good news or the bad news first?” she asked.
    Josie rolled her window down, hoping some fresh air would settle her down. When the pizza-oven hot air blasted her, however, she thought better and quickly rolled it up. “How about let’s start with the bad,” her dad said cheerily. “I like happy endings.” Her dad hiccuped that redneck chuckle he reserved for his own jokes—especially the gross ones he knew would incite a reaction out of his daughter.
    â€œThat is so gross.” Josie tried hard not to laugh. “Anyway . . . the bad news is that Ashley backstabbed me. But I don’t wanna talk about it.”
    â€œGotcha. Okay. Well, I’m glad you aren’t bleeding on my seat. And the good news?”
    â€œI got to meet Peter Maxx.”
    â€œPeter who?”
    Josie laughed. The fact that her own father didn’t know the name of her favorite singer reminded her how much theyhad grown apart over the last couple years. “The singer,” she snapped. “You know, the pop star?”
    Her father nodded and offered a cursory, “Oh, right,” though he obviously had no clue.
    â€œSo what did Ashley do?”
    â€œI said I don’t wanna talk about it. Let’s just say she’s a bitch.”
    â€œJosie! You know I don’t like it when you swear.”
    â€œSorry, Mr. F Bomb.”
    â€œSeriously, Josie. Just ’cuz my truck is filthy doesn’t mean your mouth has to be. Work with me.”
    They now were five miles west of the city, flanked on either side by a cotton field and a potato patch that stretched as far as the eye could see. This was Josie’s ritual every other Friday night, an event she sarcastically had come to call “Daddy Duty.”
    As he drove them further outside of town and the strip malls gave way to farms, Josie noticed her dad kept looking in the rearview mirror every ten seconds. She turned back to see what the fuss was. She didn’t see anything but a dark blue sedan tailing behind their truck.
    â€œNot a cop, don’t worry,” Josie said.
    â€œWhat’s that?” he said.
    â€œYeah, the one you keep staring back at. It’s not a cop. It’s a Hyundai. Cops never drive those cars. You taught me that.”
    He gripped the wheel and stopped peering back in the mirror.
    â€œSo where’s Connor?”
    â€œHis coach is dropping him off after baseball practice. So until then you get me all to yourself, lucky lady.”
    â€œGreeeeeat.”
    As part of the divorce settlement, Josie’s mom got primary physical custody of the two kids but, per the agreement, they would spend every other weekend with their father during the school year; in the summer, they would spend half the time living with their dad. Her mom and dad sugarcoated the joint arrangement by telling them things like, “Now you will have two houses instead of just one!”
    But, from the start, Josie wasn’t sold on the new arrangement. Her mom’s place was in the southwest side of town near the state college, and Josie could actually walk to stores or friends’ houses. She could even walk to the movie theater whenever she had earned enough babysitting money to do so. Her dad, on the other hand, lived ten miles due west of the city limits, in a two-bedroom farmhouse wedged between a stinky onion field and spinach patch. Safe to say, Daddy Duty was not exactly a weekend in Malibu.
    Connor had trouble understanding why their dad couldn’t just come to their apartment for the weekend. “We aren’t the ones getting divorced,” he reasoned with maturity beyond his years. “Why should we be the ones to suffer?” Josie agreed, of course, but her mom and dad had sat her down and asked her to play Big Sister and