Hotels built for conventions are not what you’d call glamorous, and this one is no exception. I mean, it’s fine and everything: it’s got a fancy automatic revolving door like they have in airports (the kind where someone always stands in front of the sensors and makes it grind to a halt so everyone trips over everybody else) and a couple of big concrete planters outside the entrance with a selection of flowers and tiny trees. Inside, it’s all polished tile floors and monogrammed carpets and basically the clone of every other convention hotel I’ve ever set foot in.
In short, it’s my second home.
Dad drives the car right up to the door, ignoring all the No Parking! signs.
“It’s only for five minutes. Ten at most,” he mutters when I point at the sign right outside my window. The boot and back seat of the car are loaded up with boxes of paperwork, registration cards, folders, name badges, lists, lists and more lists. Everything you need to run a convention. Well. I say “everything”. Most of it’s in the van that he drove over yesterday, and left parked around the back. As I said, hardly glamorous.
Noon on a convention Friday. We have exactly five hours before the first of the early arrivals turn up. No pressure.
The faint click-click-click-click from the driver’s seat tells me Dad’s already back on his emails. He can plan a massive convention almost single-handedly (almost) but has yet to work out how to turn off the stupid keypad noises on his phone.
Someone bangs on my window, making me jump. The clicking pauses as my dad peers round me, then sighs.
On the other side of the glass is a tall olive-skinned girl my age with bright red hair. Bright red, like scarlet-lipstick red. She’s grinning and waving madly at me, shaking her hair from side to side.
Sam.
“Go…” Dad says wearily. He knows that if I don’t get out, she’s going to get in. Or try to, anyway.
My hand rests on the door handle. “Do you want me to help unload the car?”
“Paul and Marie can help, I’m sure. Go. Get checked in while you’re at it, but be in the lobby in fifteen minutes. We’ve got work to do.”
I nod, and open my door.
“You!” Sam throws her arms around me like she’s on a mission to squeeze all the air out of my body. Sam’s hugs take some getting used to – and, ideally, enough warning to be able to brace yourself. I guess it has been a couple of months since we saw each other face-to-face; apparently Skype doesn’t count.
“You!” I croak back with the last of my available oxygen.
“Sorry…” She lets me go, and suddenly I can breathe again.
“What the hell did you do to your hair?”
“New wig. You like it?”
“It’s very…red?” It’s the best I can do. And it is. Very red.
“I’ve got a different one for every day. You’ll see.”
“I am veritably breathless with anticipation.”
“Oooh. What’s got into you?” Sam narrows her eyes at me and pulls back as we shuffle through the revolving door into the lobby.
I immediately feel guilty. I shake my head. “Sorry. Nothing.”
“Mmm. Nothing.” She snorts. “It’s either your dad or college, right? Did your tutor have a go at you again?”
“No. It’s not that.” I hesitate. Do I tell her? I don’t know. It’ll sound stupid, and sulky, and like I’m some silly kid having a tantrum…
Oh, of course I’m going to tell her. She’s Sam.
“Dad and Bea. They’ve set a date,” I say, hoping it doesn’t sound as bad out loud as it does in my head. “It’s really happening.”
“Uh-huh.” Sam makes an interested sort of noise, but doesn’t actually answer. She’s too busy looking at the floor, at the glass around us, at a bit of fluff on her top…anywhere, I realize, other than at me.
“Sam?”
“It’s not like it’s a massive surprise though, is it? Technically, they’ve been engaged for a bit, right?”
“Yeah, but…” If I close my eyes, I can still see the writing on the neat little save-the-date card Dad plonked in front of me at breakfast. His name alongside Bea’s, and there in black and white: a time, a date, a place.
How can I explain to Sam that – being my father’s daughter – it’s always been drilled into me that nothing happens until the date is locked? If you don’t have it on a schedule, it doesn’t exist. It’s one of our unbreakable convention rules: set the date first, then plan it. So when Dad originally told me a few months back that he and Bea had decided to get married, I braced myself – waiting for the when. But it never came, and as minutes turned into hours turned into days, it showed no sign of coming either. It’s not like I ran away from it – I dropped hints, I left sentences hanging; gave him every possible chance to provide that crucial piece of information. But he carried on as though nothing had happened. After a while, I assumed it was just one of those Things Dad’s Going To Do – like how he’s going to get the leaky landing window fixed, or call someone to sort out the light in the kitchen that hasn’t worked for five years…all stuff he says is going to happen and never does (because, obviously, no date locked). Nothing was different. Bea didn’t move in, and she didn’t even cut down the travelling she does for her own events business. Dad didn’t mention the “M” word again, so I figured I could just forget about it.
And then: save the date, because – surprise! – Max Angelo’s getting married again.
He actually thought it was funny, springing it on me out of nowhere, and a bit of me wondered whether that was Bea’s idea. (The cards definitely felt like her; Dad would never have chosen that font.)
Except – and this is where I know I sound ridiculous, and much as I hate it, where I know Sam’s right – it wasn’t out of nowhere and I can’t pretend it was. He’d told me – they’d told me – and I’d just kind of assumed the same rule applies to people as to conventions.
Obviously not.
The revolving door finally lets us out and Sam waves across the hotel lobby to her parents, unpacking a crate full of books onto a table: conventions don’t just run in my family. I pick at a hangnail on my left thumb.
“Well, anyway… Dad and Bea are actually, really, seriously and most definitively getting married.”
Sam cocks her head at me. “You okay?”
“Mmm. Yes. I’m fine. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.” It’s not quite a lie, but it’s not quite true either. “Still processing, maybe?”
“What does your mum say?”
“I haven’t had the chance to talk to her about it yet – he literally just dropped this on me.”
“But he told you months ago…?”
“He only told me they’d picked a date this morning. This morning!” I say stubbornly.
“Lexi…” She rolls her eyes theatrically, and I know what she’s thinking: she’s picturing me running up and down a hillside in the sunshine, picking flowers and wearing a dress called DENIAL. But she doesn’t punch me on the shoulder and tell me to get a grip, which is her usual support tactic, and I can see there’s something which might actually count as concern in her eyes – despite the rolling.
“I know, I know. You’re right. I’ve been pretending it wasn’t going to happen. It’s fine, I’m fine. Fine fine fine. I just need more time to get my head round it. Really,” I add, watching her watching me.
But I don’t have time – not right now, anyway. Because, date or no date, this convention’s happening first.
And what I do have now is plenty of work.
I give Sam a smile and poke her arm. “So, are you checked in already?”
“Of course. Checked in, unpacked and everything.” She says this like it’s a Herculean achievement. I suppose it is – Sam doesn’t exactly travel light. Last time, she had so much stuff that I ended up carrying half of it for her. It’s the costumes. Sam’s cosplaying is legendary; last year, she dressed up as Spider-Man, Black Widow, something inexplicable from an anime that seemed to involve a lot of neon, and Draco Malfoy – which involved slightly less neon. The costumes are how we became friends, back when I started helping Dad. Sam had managed to glue her hand to the one she was making, and came to the convention operations centre to ask for help getting unstuck. She was hoping to find her parents, but instead she found me. The rest is history…and a lot of messages and online chats I never want to fall into the wrong hands.
“What room are you in?” I ask as we walk towards the hotel reception desk.
“406.” She lounges back against the desk beside me. “Did you hear about Nadiya?”
“What did I miss?”
“She broke up with Ajay.”
“Seriously?”
On the other side of the lobby, a couple of traders I recognize are rolling three racks of comic book T-shirts through to a massive room full of stalls. They give me a wave and point at the racks. “Last lot!”
I wave back. They already look knackered and we’re not even open yet; they’ve probably been unloading stock from their van since the crack of dawn. For anyone selling merchandise at a convention, it’s very definitely a marathon, not a sprint. Sam watches them get caught in the fire door, then carries on as though nothing happened to break her flow.
“She messaged me this morning. It happened last night.”
“Is she still coming?”
“Alexandra Angelo! One of your friends is in serious emotional pain – and all you’re worried about is whether she’s still coming to work?” Sam wags her finger at me.
“You think Ajay is as much of a dick as I do. And anyway, we’re already one staff member down from ops, and the art team had a last-minute dropout.”
“Really? Who bailed?”
“Not now.”
“I say again, really? I smell scandal.”
I give her a mock-serious glare. “Samira, are you fishing for gossip? After the ‘serious emotional pain’ thing?”
“Shut up.” She rolls her eyes, trying not to laugh.
“You shut up.”
The hotel receptionist who has just appeared behind the desk blinks at me. I think I might have offended her.
“Sorry. Not you, obviously. Hi. Hello. Checking in? My name’s Lexi Angelo. You should have a reservation for me under the convention booking?”
At the word “convention”, the receptionist raises a perfectly-plucked eyebrow at me, then starts tapping on the keyboard of her computer.
Sam leans over the desk and switches on her brightest smile. “And if she could have the room that interconnects with 406, that would be magic.”
Just like every convention hotel has the same entrance (with or without inflatable palm trees) and the same lobby and – weirdly – the same carpet in the upstairs hallways, every con’s operational office is always the same. It’s the nerve centre, the room where everything happens, containing several laptops, a printer that won’t connect to any of them, the biggest Wi-Fi black spot in the entire hotel, a first-aid kit, a corkscrew and enough paper to make it a serious fire hazard. Which is why there’s always a fire extinguisher in there too – often being used as either a doorstop or a paperweight. Or occasionally both at once. Somewhere, there’ll be a clock. It’s almost always wrong – not by much, but just by enough to lull anyone keeping half an eye on it into a false sense of security. There will be a trail of discarded plastic cups, crisp packets and other detritus.
Above all, there will be people; none of them sticking around for long, but all of them passing through regularly and at high speed. And – at an Angelo convention – there will be me. This is where I live. Has been ever since I can remember; from just following my dad round, or stuffing the tote bags everyone gets when they sign in and pick up their membership badge (all those flyers and bookmarks and freebies don’t get in there by magic) right up to now – when I’m actually part of the crew. Running the crew, in fact. We’re what Sam cheerfully calls the “cannon fodder”: the ones who run around keeping the plates spinning and making sure the show goes the way it’s supposed to – and that everybody comes out in more or less the same state they went in. We’re the first in the firing line when there are problems, so we’re the fixers and the make-it-work-somehow-ers. My crew are my friends, my tribe, my band of brothers (and sisters, obviously) and I’d be lost without them. So would Dad. And so would any of the general membership who keep insisting on asking us where the toilets are instead of looking at an actual map.
I push the door open. Someone, almost certainly Sam, has already stuck a Post-it note on the laminated Convention Operations sign taped to the outside – it’s bright pink and reads Abandon hope all ye who enter here. My crew are sitting on folding chairs dotted around the room – all except Sam, who left me to lug my bags alone once I’d checked in and is now lying on the floor with her hands behind her head. Bede is on the chair closest to her, throwing Smarties at her face, which Sam’s trying to catch in her mouth. Right at the back of the room, Nadiya is furiously typing on her phone, occasionally stopping to scowl at it and shake her head, then smooth the folds of her hijab with a sigh. Still, at least she’s here.
“MORNING!” I shout cheerfully at the room.
A Smartie bounces off Sam’s nose. “It’s quarter past one, babe.”
“Eat your Smarties.”
Dad has obviously unpacked the car while I was taking my bag up to my room; several boxes’ worth of paperwork sit stacked on the table. Maps, programme scheduling, staff rotas, lists of guests and attending members, extracurricular events, contact numbers: everything we need to keep the show running. It has taken me weeks to pull this stuff together…and I know that within fifteen minutes everything will change and the whole lot will need updating, and I might as well have written it in peach crayon for all the good it’s going to do.
But that’s life. That’s conventions. Kind of the same thing to me, I guess.
I look at the to-do list Dad has stuck to the front of my clipboard, already propped on the table. Forty-two items. And at the bottom of the page he’s written Continues… alongside an annoying little arrow. Like I don’t know him well enough to always, always check the next sheet.
I consider the clipboard. I pause. “He’s already been in, hasn’t he?” I ask the room.
Nadiya swears at her phone.
“Missed him by five minutes,” says Bede, aiming another Smartie at Sam.
“So why are you all still here?”
“Wanted to make you feel special.” Bede shrugs, lobbing the empty sweet packet at the bin. It misses. I stare at him pointedly until he gives in and picks it up. “Nice to see you, Lexi,” he mutters.
“Yeah, yeah. Missed you too. Now shift your arse. We’ve got to set the registration desk up.” I swipe at him with my clipboard as he slouches past me out of the room. He dodges, and blows me a kiss before strolling out into the corridor and sticking his hands in his pockets. I can hear him whistling the theme from Game of Thrones as he goes.
Sam rolls over and pushes herself up off the floor, throwing me a salute and a “Sir! Yes, sir!” before running off after Bede, laughing. Nadiya keeps tapping on her phone, then finally looks up.
“Hey, Lexi. Heard your dad and Bea have set the date. Big news,” she says, coming over and giving me a hug.
“I only found out this morning! How do you know already?”
“You know convention staff. And this is your father we’re talking about.”
“Don’t remind me.” I stare at the clipboard. Hard.
Obviously realizing we could do with a change of subject, Nadiya clears her throat and whistles. “So where do you need me to go?”
“Didn’t my dad…?”
“Assign me already? Yeah, but that’ll only take me half an hour.”
“Uh, hold on.” I scan down the list of Impossible Tasks I’m Supposed to Accomplish Before 5.30. “Do you want to go over to the traders’ room and the art show and see how they’re doing with set-up? Make sure they’ve got everything they need, and all the stalls are ready?”
She nods. The art show and the traders’ room set-up are the two real headaches: they’re so big that they have their own teams and their own staff, but they always need backup if it’s available. With so many different stalls in the trading space selling everything from collector cards to toys via superhero costumes and board games, and a load of original artwork to display on the specially-constructed art show walls, there’s plenty of work to go round.
“Nadiya? Before you go…”
Talking to Nadiya isn’t quite the same as talking to Sam. How could it be? Sam’s Sam, and that makes her one of a kind (luckily for the rest of us – I’m not sure the world’s ready for two of her yet). With Nadiya it’s a little more awkward. Even though she only lives on the other side of London to me, I haven’t seen her since the end of the last convention six months ago. She’s never really seemed fussed about meeting up in the real world, and that’s okay with me. Besides, at home, the people I know from sixth-form college – the ones I occasionally hang out with when I don’t have coursework or Dad-work – they don’t really get conventions, and while I’m with them I guess I’m slightly less…conventiony. So being able to turn up here and be me – really me – with everyone I love, it’s a relief. College friends are fine, but these are my people. “How are you doing?”
She knows exactly what I mean. “Sam told you?”
“About Ajay? Yeah. Sorry.” I try a shrug. “Convention staff, you know?”
“He keeps messaging me. Saying he’s sorry, saying I’ve made a mistake, saying…a load of shit.” She shakes her head.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Uh-uh.” Another head shake. “He’s a dick. Better off without him.”
“Want me to block his number for you?”
“No. Yes. Maybe? Ask me tomorrow.” Her phone buzzes again and she rolls her eyes. “Scrap that. Ask me in an hour.”
“Any time. You just say the word and he’s gone.”
“Thanks. Sam offered to throw my phone in the fountain for me.”
“That should worry me. But I’d actually be more worried if she’d been anything other than incredibly dramatic.”
Nadiya tries to cover her laugh with a cough.
I smile back at her. “I mean it, though – you need anything, you tell me.”
She nods – and then mutters “Dick” again, slipping her phone back into her bag without even looking at the latest message.
“Where did Daddy Dearest put you first then?” I hold the door open, then lock it behind us.
“Signage,” she says, holding up a stack of laminated signs with directions, room names and arrows printed on them. I wince. Hotels hate convention signage. “Wish me luck?”
When she’s gone I look at my clipboard.
Item 1: unpack books for membership bags. Priority.
The next twenty-two items all have Priority written after them.
Don’t they always?
Thanks, Dad.