American Girl On Saturn by Nikki Godwin Page B

Bring it loud! We wanna hear you scream!
    My heart actually sinks like a mutilated artery. I feel so terribly sad for them. There they were, in their hotel rooms or maybe backstage warming up, tweeting to their millions of fans. All of those Saturnites were in the audience, waiting for this big NYC show, with their posters and their Spaceships Around Saturn T-Shirts.
    Milo thought he had the best life everrrr, and Noah was excited about the loud fans. God, this sucks for them. There’s even a twinge of pity in my faltering heart for Jules. I shouldn’t have said he was untalented, even if I never verbalized it. He’s obviously got something that appeals to 6.9 million followers. This is what he meant, though. He should be living that DVD, not watching it on lockdown with us while arguing with Aralie.
    I don’t know how long I stare at Milo’s Twitter feed before there’s a knock at my door. I slam the laptop shut, so no one will know what I was doing, and announce that the door’s open. Emery peeks her head inside.
    “Hey,” she says. “Can you do me a favor and get on the Twitter and see what’s going on?”
    She slides in between the door and the frame like a little snake slithering into my bedroom. Then she bounces over to my bed and hops up with a big smile.
    “The guys haven’t been on Twitter,” I remind her. “They don’t have access, remember?”
    She nods. “I know. I just wanna see what all those stupid girls are saying about our boys.”
    She says ‘our boys’ in that same insinuating voice that Tate used when he said ‘ooh la la.’ Part of me knows that she only chose my room to come into because I follow them on Twitter. But another part of me wants to believe that she knows I’m secretly becoming a Saturnite.
    I laugh and open up my laptop. I click the ‘home’ button on Twitter before she can see Milo’s feed plastered on my screen. The screen refreshes in record nanoseconds.
    “What I am looking for first?” I ask.
    “Look up that Zoe girl who is always talking about Benji,” she says.
    Sadly, I know exactly who she’s talking about. Zoe is maybe fifteen, a huge Benji fan, and has pink streaks in her blonde hair. Her profile picture is one of her with Benji when she met SAS in January. She also tweets fifty to one hundred times a day, mostly to Benji, and she has two million followers herself. People retweet her religiously. She’s like a Saturnite cult leader.
    I type the Z into the search bar. Zayn Malik from One Direction pops up instantly. Without thinking, I click on him, and Emery sees that blue button that says I’m following Zayn all lit up before I can hit the back button in the browser.
    She gasps. “You follow a One Direction guy?”
    I should lie. I should say it was an accident. I don’t know how I clicked to follow him. It must be a mistake. But she’ll see right through me.
    “He can sing, like, amazingly well,” I say in my own defense. “And he draws. He tweets pictures of his drawings, and I like to look at them. He’s their best singer. Give me a break.”
    She studies my face for a second, glances at Zayn’s rarely-updated Twitter feed, and squints her eyes at me.
    “Who is the best singer in Spaceships Around Saturn?” she asks, all serious and businesslike.
    I fake hesitation to make her think that I’m having to debate my answer.
    “Milo,” I finally say, holding back all of my eagerness.
    She stares at me even harder now. “Who is a better singer – Milo or Zayn from One Direction?”
    This time, I don’t hesitate.
    “Milo,” I say. “Definitely Milo.”
    She smiles a pageant-winning smile, slowly and happily.
    “Good!” she says. “You can follow Zayn.”
    Nice to know I have the permission of a five-year-old to follow a boyband guy outside of Spaceships Around Saturn. I didn’t think she’d be so kind to an Earthling like that.
    We browse Zoe’s Twitter feed, which is nothing but wishes of return for ‘our b oys.’ I dig