When our alarms woke us up the next morning, the very first thing I said was, “Hey, can I borrow something to wear?”
Because, okay, Soleil had been totally right about the dresses. I guess I’d been planning on going through the convention like I went through the rest of my life—quiet and backgroundy and unobtrusive—but as soon as I’d put on that dress and walked into the banquet hall arm-in-arm with Soleil, everything had changed. People had stared at us, and I mean not just her, but actually both of us. They’d stared, and they’d smiled, and—this was the best part—Soleil kept shooting me these conspiratorial grins, as if to say, Sure, all these people think we’re hot, and obviously they’re right, but they don’t even know the half of it.
In other words, the kind of grins that promised kissing later.
Not that there had been kissing later. After an evening of stuffing our faces and dancing till our feet were sore, neither of us had really had the energy to do anything more than come back to the hotel room and face-plant on our beds. Our different beds. I’d thought about crawling into Soleil’s bed so we could fall asleep with our arms touching, or even with her back pressed against my front or vice versa, but by the time I worked up the courage to ask if I could, she’d already started snoring.
But that was okay. We’d get there eventually. Just like she would kiss me eventually. She was probably just waiting for the right moment. She’d probably waited for the right moment with Dave, too.
“Hey, Soleil?” I said, when she didn’t answer. Sheets rustled in the other bed, and she murmured something unintelligible. “Soleil! We should get up. Your panel’s in an hour.”
“An hour?” she said, sitting bolt upright. “Ugh, no, I’m late.”
I pushed the covers aside and fumbled for my glasses. “You’re not late. You have an hour, like I said.”
“But I have to shower and eat and drink all the coffee in the universe and I don’t even know what I’m going to wear and—wait, did you ask me something?”
She was already zooming around the room, checking herself in the mirror and grabbing things out of her giant suitcase and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, as I sat on my bed and watched her. I felt like a tree in the middle of a hurricane.
“I asked if I could borrow something to wear.”
“Oh!” she said, with a breathy little laugh. “Sure, yeah, anything you want. You don’t mind if I take the first shower, right?”
“Sure,” I said. She was already closing the door behind her.
I took my time getting ready, stretching and yawning as Soleil buzzed around me, angling herself this way and that in front of the mirror in order to get her makeup exactly right. Personally, I thought she looked great no matter what she did, but I didn’t say anything. I just kept myself out of her way as I swabbed deodorant under my arms, put on my jeans and the red blouse I’d found in Soleil’s suitcase, and dotted concealer over my zits.
Despite Soleil’s insistence that she was going to be late, we actually arrived in room A-21 about fifteen minutes early. There were only six other people there, and they were all clutching cups of coffee. Three of them were girls, all pale and wearing similar costumes: dapper suits with purple shirts and purple ties, bulky headphones looped around their necks, and eyes drawn on their foreheads. One was a dark-skinned guy in a bloodstained prom dress, and two were a white guy and an Asian girl dressed in regular clothes and, unlike last night, none of them gave Soleil or me a second glance when we walked in.
We claimed a pair of seats on the side of the front row, and Soleil rubbed her hands frantically on her thighs, wrinkling her skirt and smoothing it out again, over and over.
“You’ll be fine,” I said. “You’ll be great. Haven’t you done, like, a million of these before?”
She let out a strained laugh. “Maybe ten, tops. But those were just panels. This is different. I’ve never read my stuff out loud before.”
Our stuff, I wanted to say—but stopped myself, because Soleil’s nervousness was genuine, which meant this was not the time to argue semantics. So I just repeated, “You’ll be fine.”
“Thanks, sweetie.” She reached over to squeeze my hand. “You’re the best. You know that, right? Ooh, there’s the moderator. Beth! Hey!”
And with that, Soleil shot out of her seat and threw her arms around a petite black girl in a Ravenclaw tie. Beth, apparently. Maybe they knew each other from previous conventions. I felt a little pang of jealousy at the thought … but that was dumb. It didn’t matter how long they’d known each other, because whatever kind of relationship Soleil had with Beth, it had nothing on her relationship with me. If I could make myself not be jealous of Boyfriend Dave, then I could do the same thing with Moderator Beth.
So instead of staring at them as they talked, I pulled out my schedule and went over my plans for the rest of the day. After this panel—Your Fandom’s Best Fiction, Volume One—Soleil and I were going to the Wonderlandia meetup at eleven thirty. Then lunch. Then we would go to a panel about diversity in young adult fiction, and then this book-to-movie panel, where a bunch of Soleil’s favorite fantasy authors would be talking about film adaptations of their work. After that, we could either get in line for the main-stage costume contest or do our own thing.
Personally, my vote was for taking advantage of the massive swimming pool on the roof of the hotel.
“Are these seats taken?” asked a voice that definitely wasn’t Soleil’s.
I looked up, and there, looming above me, were three girls in Harry Potter costumes. One was in a floaty dress accessorized with a bunch of scarves and a pair of round glasses that magnified her eyes: Professor Trelawney, obviously. One wore dark green robes over a black dress, accompanied by a classic witch hat and a scowling expression: clearly Professor McGonagall.
Both costumes were great, but the third girl, the one who’d actually spoken, was wearing probably the best costume I’d ever seen. She was dressed as Professor Snape. But not the black-robed Snape that I’d already seen ten times over since registration—or, for that matter, the almost-naked Snape who’d started shouting things like “Death to the Mudbloods!” while running drunkenly around the convention center. This Snape was dressed in a woman’s coat and a hat with a bird on it—which was to say, Snape in Neville Longbottom’s grandmother’s clothes, straight out of that one scene in Prisoner of Azkaban. Boggart Snape.
She smiled and raised her eyebrows, which was when I realized I’d been staring. And not answering.
“Sorry! Sorry, didn’t mean to be a creeper.” I shifted Soleil’s purse to the floor beside my own bag. “Go ahead, sit down. Sorry. It’s just, you know, your costume. It’s awesome.”
“Aw, hey, thanks,” said Snape, taking the seat next to me. “I’m Merry. That’s Jaya, and that’s Tiff.”
The two professors waved; I waved back. “I’m Vanessa. Call me Ness.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Merry, as Jaya and Tiff paired off into a separate conversation. “You here alone?”
“Actually, no. My, um, roommate. She’s a panelist.”
“Ah.” Merry looked up at the tiny stage at the front of the room. There was one long table with five chairs behind it, all of which were full. “Which one’s your roommate?”
“Blond hair, pink shirt,” I said, pointing. “Her name’s Soleil.”
Merry’s eyes widened. “Wait. You’re friends with Soleil? The Soleil? ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ Soleil?”
“Yup!” I said, suddenly all kinds of giddy because I so, so wanted to tell her that Soleil and I were way more than just friends. I wanted to tell her that I was wearing Soleil’s shirt right now, and that Soleil had dressed me up and taken me out last night and everyone had stared at us as she whirled me around the dance floor after dinner. I wanted to tell her. But I didn’t. Somehow, that information seemed too private to share.
“Oh wow,” said Merry. “Oh … just, wow. She’s actually the one I’m here to see. Wait. Soleil does use she, right?”
“Yup. Why?”
Merry gave me a nervous smile. “I just like to try and be respectful. Because—you know.” And she pointed to a button on her chest. It was small, and it was formatted like one of those My Name Is stickers. Except instead of My Name Is, it said My Pronouns Are. And underneath that, in a font that was clearly supposed to look like handwriting, the words They/Them/Their were printed.
“Oh!” I said. “Sorry, I didn’t see. You’re … gender-fluid?”
“Gender-neutral.” Merry’s smile loosened a little. “You?”
“Just a plain old girl,” I said. “She and her. Sorry.”
Merry laughed. “Why are you sorry? Being a girl is awesome. Some of my best friends are girls.” She gave a quick nod toward Jaya and Tiff, who were both wearing My Pronouns Are buttons, too.
“No, I mean, I’m not sorry,” I said. “I just … never mind. I don’t know what I mean. But yeah. I’m a girl.”
“Cool,” said Merry, and looked back up at the stage. “Seriously, I’ve been fan-crushing on Soleil like crazy ever since that StraightFlush thing. God, remember that?”
“StraightFlush?” I echoed with a frown.
“Yeah,” Merry said. “Were you not around for that whole thing? Some dude named StraightFlush got all up in Soleil’s business, being like, ‘God, why is everything you write so gay? Ugh!’”
“Ohhh, right, yeah, I think she told me about that,” I said. “That was, what, a year ago? We didn’t know each other yet, back then. What happened?”
“What happened is Soleil totally reamed the guy out!” Her eyes—their eyes, rather—were alight with admiration. “She wrote this huge post about how important it is to have diverse representation, and about how everyone knows Five and Seven are actually gay in canon, despite that idiotic hetero-fantasy ending, and—I mean, god, all her posts are amazing. Did you read the one about how being in fandom gave her the courage to come out to her parents as pansexual?”
I nodded. “Actually, that was the post that got me to come out to my parents.”
Suddenly, Merry’s gaze was laser sharp. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m gay. Or—well, mostly gay, I guess? Or homoflexible. You know. Mostly I like girls, but you never know what’s gonna happen.”
And omigod, how amazing was it to just be able to say that stuff? Out loud? To someone wearing a button saying what their pronouns were? It was like my little fandomy corner of the internet had come to life, in the best possible way.
“Same, actually,” said Merry, giving me this weirdly secretive look. “Only I usually just say I’m queer. Fewer syllables, more bases covered.”
“Nice,” I said, and meant it. Soleil called herself queer, too, whenever she didn’t feel like explaining what pansexual meant.
Merry’s eyes lingered on me just a second longer, then they cleared their throat and looked up at the stage again. “Anyway! Soleil!”
“Soleil, yeah,” I said. “Have you read that one Wonderlandia fic? ‘Carry Me Home’?”
“Ooh, yeah,” said Merry. “The one where Seven is gender-fluid instead of male, right? That one’s gorgeous.”
My entire face was about to go up in flames. This was the actual literal best day of my life, or maybe the worst, because I was definitely about to die.
“Well, the reason I asked is, um—I actually wrote that one with her.”
Merry looked at me like they were about to faint. It was identical to the way they’d just looked at Soleil, and oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.
“I totally forgot she had a co-author on that one,” they said, reaching over to squeeze my forearm. “Seriously, you two are amazing.”
“Thanks,” I said, or squeaked, or something. “Actually, ‘Carry Me Home’ is the one she’s doing for the reading.”
“Really? You must be so excited.”
I was actually kind of petrified but also kind of giddy, and between the anticipation of Soleil pointing me out as her co-author and the memory of how fabulous we’d been last night, my entire stomach was turning into a sea of bubbles, but that was a lot of information to give to a total stranger, so I just nodded.
“Yeah. Pretty excited.”
That was when Beth the Moderator tapped her microphone. The room fell quiet, and everyone looked at the stage, and Soleil looked over at me. She winked, all traces of nervousness gone from her demeanor. I flashed her a smile.
“Hey, guys, welcome to the fourth annual We Treasure Fandom convention!” said Beth, surveying the room from her chair at the very end of the table. “Wow, not a bad crowd for ten in the morning.”
Understatement of the year. The room was on the smaller side—maybe two hundred chairs, at most—but it was full to bursting. People stood along the walls and crowded in the back, straining their necks for a view of the stage. I was very glad I’d gotten a seat. My own little oasis of space in the crowd.
“So,” she continued, “welcome to Volume One of Your Fandom’s Best Fiction! I started this series because—well, there are so many fandoms being represented at WTFcon, you know? I’ve never even heard of half of them! So I figured, why not put together a series of panels where we can all share our fandoms with each other? Right?”
The panelists nodded, and the audience responded with claps and cheers.
“Thought so,” said Beth, eyes sparkling as she grinned. “And thus was born Your Fandom’s Best Fiction. We’ve asked a representative from each of WTFcon’s most popular fandoms to read a few pages of fanfic they’ve written. Then I’ll ask them some questions—and then you, my fine audience, will ask questions, too. Sound good?”
More clapping. More cheering. Beside me, Merry stuck their fingers in their mouth and let out a wolf-whistle.
“Great!” said Beth. “And if you like this panel, we’ve got Volume Two at four o’clock this afternoon, Volumes Three and Four tomorrow, et cetera. It’s all on your schedules, and you know how those work.
“But for now, without further ado, here are our four panelists for Volume One. Representing Welcome to Night Vale, we have Tricia from Tennessee, better known on FicForAll as ‘Cecil’s Dead Mom’!”
Clapping and cheering, mainly from the girls dressed in purple, who were sitting right behind me.
“Representing My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, we have ‘The Artist Formerly Known as Todd,’ all the way from Toronto!” More cheering, this time for a guy who looked kind of familiar. And kind of hungover. “Representing Frozen, we have ‘Ice Princess Sally’ from San Francisco!” More cheering. I twisted my hands together as my stomach tried to turn itself into a pretzel.
“And finally, representing Wonderlandia, we have ‘Soleil’ from New York City!”
This time, I joined in the cheering. Up on the stage, Soleil beamed.
Beth turned to her panelists. “Soleil from New York City, why don’t you start us off? Tell us a little bit about your fandom, and read us some of your fic.”
“Sure thing,” said Soleil, her voice all peppy as she leaned closer to her mic. She smiled out at the room, picked up one of the notecards she’d prepared, and said, “So, if you plug Wonderlandia into a search engine, you’ll find a website with the following description. Ahem.
‘Wonderlandia is your loveliest daydream. Wonderlandia is your worst nightmare. Wonderlandia is a wonderland with no Alice, where caterpillars smoke up all day, cards make experimental art, queens think fondly of all the people they’d love to behead if only they could summon the energy, and nobody likes that rabbit who’s always in a hurry. Nobody.’”
She put the notecard down and smiled at the room again. “What it doesn’t say is that the series was made by a bunch of friends who’d just graduated from college and basically had no idea how a video camera works. Let alone costumes. I mean, the Caterpillar’s costume is basically a green sleeping bag. You get me?”
A low tide of laughter rippled through the room, and she went on: “But the series isn’t all low-budget weirdness-for-the-sake-of-weirdness. At its heart, it’s got one of the best love stories I’ve ever seen. It’s not only really unique, but it’s also a great example of positive queer representation in media, which is so, so, so important to me. Well, at least, it was a great example until the end of the show, when it got all messed up because they were angling to get picked up by a network. Can we say ‘forced heterosexuality’ much? It was almost as bad as Cap and Sharon Carter in Civil War.”
More laughter. Beside me, Merry leaned forward in their seat, nodding and nodding and, yeah, I got that. Soleil had that effect on people.
“But anyway,” Soleil continued, “the romance is between the Five of Spades and the Seven of Hearts.” She described the trajectory of the relationship between Five and Seven, just enough to give her audience a context for understanding the story she was going to read. When she was done, she picked up a few pages and said, “And that’s where my story begins. It’s called ‘I Knew You Were Trouble,’ and this is the first chapter.”
My whole body went still. She wasn’t supposed to read “I Knew You Were Trouble.” She was supposed to read “Carry Me Home.” The one she’d written with me. I’d even helped her pick out a good section.
Soleil’s reading voice, silky and melodic and totally unlike her speaking voice, washed over us, with sentences that I practically knew by heart. I’d read this story over and over when she’d first posted it, and eventually written a sequel to it, which had basically started our entire friendship. I loved this story.
But why had she changed her mind?
Everyone around me cheered when Soleil put her pages down. Merry whistled again. I clapped kind of halfheartedly—and when Soleil looked over at me, she must’ve seen the disappointment on my face, because she actually started looking kind of worried.
It was a good panel, full of well-written fanfic and interesting questions from both the moderator and the audience. Why did all of you choose to write slash pairings instead of hetero pairings? How do each of you feel about how outsiders seem to perceive your fandom? Would any of you ever want to write original fiction instead of fanfiction? Stuff like that.
And when it was over, people actually asked the panelists for autographs. Seriously. Autographs. Soleil looked like her face was about to explode from smiling so hard.
“Hey, girl!” she said, bounding over to me when the crowd started to disperse. “Hey, listen, hope you didn’t mind the last-minute story switch.”
“Yeah, uh, I did notice that,” I said. “I thought we said chapter two of ‘Carry Me Home’ would be—”
“I know,” she interrupted, “but see, here’s the thing. And I didn’t realize it until just a few days ago. The point of this panel isn’t to show off your best writing. It’s to convert new people to your fandom. And you have to have so much more context to understand ‘Carry Me Home.’ ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ stands more on its own.”
I thought about that. She did have a point, but …
“You decided a few days ago?” I asked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I’m a forgetful moron,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I thought I told you. I didn’t realize I hadn’t until I saw you looking all sad over here. I’m so-so-so sorry, Nessie. Forgive me?”
A smile tugged at my lips. “Well, obviously, I forgive you.”
“Aw, yay! You’re the best.” She leaned in, all conspiratorial. “So how’d I do?”
“Totally great,” I said.
“Amazingly great,” added Merry, beside me.
Soleil blinked at Merry, clearly thrown by the sudden presence of a third person in our conversation. As was I, actually. Caught up as I was in wondering why Soleil had switched stories, I’d forgotten that Merry might want me to introduce them to Soleil. I looked around for their professor friends, too, but apparently McGonagall and Trelawney had already left.
“Aw, that’s sweet of you,” Soleil said, in this weirdly different voice. The kind of voice that sounded like her perfume smelled. “What’s your name?”
“Merry.” They stuck out their hand, and Soleil shook it. “I was telling Ness here that I’m a huge fan of your writing. I especially like all the stuff you do with gender in your stories. It’s nice to see people writing about identity-exploration that way, you know?”
Soleil’s eyes flicked up to the badge on Merry’s chest—and immediately, her whole face brightened. “Ooh. You’re a ‘they’? That’s so super cool. Good for you.”
Merry blinked, and their lips twisted into a wry smile. “I mean. Sure. Yeah, good for me. Woo.”
Apparently missing Merry’s sarcasm, Soleil went on: “You’re exactly the audience I was trying to reach with those stories. I’m so glad you found my stuff. Yay. Hey, do you want an autograph? Apparently we’re doing autographs. I mean, isn’t that so crazy? I’m just a fanfic writer!”
She dug in her purse and pulled out a pen.
Merry’s expression turned kind of unreadable, and their gaze flicked over to me, then back to Soleil again. “Uh, no, that’s okay. But are you guys going to the house meetups next? You’re Hufflepuffs, too, right?”
I was about to ask how they knew that, but then I remembered: I’d put a Hufflepuff ribbon on my badge this morning. One more example of why this convention was infinitely better than real life.
“This one is,” said Soleil, gesturing to me. “But I’m Gryffindor all the way, baby.”
“Aha,” said Merry, and turned back to me. “Well, how about you? Hufflepuff meetup? Jaya’s already saving me a seat, and I could text her to save one for you, too.”
“We’re going to the Wonderlandia meetup,” said Soleil, before I could answer. “Sorry. Actually, Nessie, we should get going. Want to make sure they still have seats, you get me?”
“I get you,” I said.
Soleil hooked her arm through my elbow and started steering me toward the door—but Merry followed us. “Also, hey. Ness. Any chance you’re coming to the costume contest tonight?”
Soleil and I looked at each other. “Dunno yet,” I said. “Why, are you entering?”
“You bet,” said Merry, fondly touching the brim of their black hat. “So it’d be super cool if you came. I mean, no pressure or whatever, since we just met. But, you know. It’d be cool.”
“It is officially under consideration,” said Soleil, even though the question had been firmly directed at me. She tugged at my arm again. “But we really have to run, okay? See you later!”
This time, as we darted out into the hallway where hundreds of other con-goers were taking pictures of each other’s costumes and lining up for panels and meetups in other rooms, Merry didn’t try to stop us.
“It’d be suuuuuuper cool if you came,” said Soleil, her voice going high and snotty as she echoed Merry’s words. “Come on. If you want people to cheer for you, bring your own friends. Don’t try and steal mine.”
She squeezed my arm, which made me feel about a zillion things at once. I mean, on the one hand, she’d just proven my specialness, my belonging-to-her-ness, with a single gesture, and what could possibly be more awesome than that?
But on the other hand: “Come on, don’t be mean. Merry’s got friends. They just went ahead to save seats at the Hufflepuff meetup. Besides, Merry came to this panel specifically to see you, so maybe we should return the favor. Show some support. Fannish solidarity, you know?”
“Oh, please,” said Soleil. “I’m not about to show solidarity with someone whose costume sucks.”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “That was the best costume ever!”
Soleil raised an eyebrow. “In what universe? Isn’t Boggart Snape supposed to have a vulture hat? That was, like, a bluebird or whatever.”
“Maybe they couldn’t find a stuffed vulture,” I said. “And that’s a pretty tiny detail coming from someone who told me, not even twenty-four hours ago, that Harry Potter is over.”
“Oooh, there’s that biting Nessie wit,” said Soleil. I couldn’t tell whether or not she was being sarcastic. “Anyway, didn’t you want some pool time tonight?”
That was true. I definitely wanted some pool time. Not to mention some one-on-one time, because literally everything we’d done so far had either involved being in a crowd, getting ready to be in a crowd, or talking about having just been in a crowd, and don’t get me wrong, all that stuff was fun, but if Soleil was planning on kissing me? It wouldn’t be with a bunch of people around. We’d need to be alone.
“Yeeeaaah,” I said, hesitating as we reached room A-16. They were about to open the doors for the Wonderlandia meetup. Yet another crowd. “Yeah, screw the costume thingie. Let’s do the pool.”