When Soleil flashed her name tag at the Wonderlandia meetup, pretty much everyone recognized her. Most people were as chill about meeting her as Merry had been—except this one trio of girls. They basically pounced on Soleil and started bombarding her with praise, and then showed up at the next panel we went to and the one after that, and now, as we left the book-to-movie panel seven hours later, they were still following us.
I asked Soleil if she thought it was creepy. I mean, stalkers, right?
But she smiled beatifically and said, “Nah. They’re just nervous. Working up the nerve to talk to us again, probably.”
Us, I thought. Us, us, us.
As we approached the walkway that linked the convention center to the hotel, she added, “Bet you a dollar one of them asks us to hang out.”
I thought about this. It’d been seven hours. The whole time, they’d been glancing at Soleil—and, by extension, me—every four seconds or so. Like they wanted to make sure we were still there. But none of them had said anything since the meetup this morning.
“You’re on,” I said.
But as soon as we shook on it, I heard the distinct sound of walking-footsteps becoming running-footsteps.
“Told you,” muttered Soleil under her breath. “Get that dollar ready.”
“We’ll see,” I said, just before a hand reached out and tapped Soleil on the shoulder.
“Oh, hey!” she said, turning around with this look on her face like she was totally surprised to see the three girls there. “What’s up?”
“Um, well,” said the girl who’d done the shoulder-tapping. Her hair was almost as blond as Soleil’s, and her cheeks were bright red. She looked older than me, and maybe even older than Soleil. Her two also-probably-older-than-me friends hung back a few paces, watching us. “Well, so. Soleil and”—a quick glance at my badge—“Vanessa? We were wondering if maybe you wanted to, you know, maybe have a drink with us? Or maybe have dinner? Or whatever? Our treat, obviously, because … you know …”
Soleil smiled broadly, her eyes softening. “That’s so sweet of you.”
The blond girl—Aimee, Rochester, NY, said her badge—blushed even harder. “So you’ll come?”
Soleil glanced quickly at me, but I didn’t have time to weigh in before she said, “Well, Nessie and I are still figuring out our game plan for tonight, actually. And whatever we do, we have to head back to the room to freshen up first. So—”
“Wait,” said one of the other girls, a brunette whose name tag said Danielle, Buffalo, NY. “Nessie? As in the Ness who wrote ‘Carry Me Home’ with Soleil? That’s you?”
My face—no, my entire body—was on fire. But in a good way.
“That’s me!” I managed to reply.
Danielle from Buffalo looked back and forth between Soleil and me, eyes shining like she was about to cry. “Oh man, I didn’t know. I’m sorry, I should’ve— Okay, I know this is creepy, but I read everything you guys post on the boards. I ship you guys so hard.”
“Awww!” said Soleil, and slung an arm around my shoulders. “Hear that, Nessie?”
I was going to explode from sheer joy.
“And ‘Carry Me Home,’ right?” Danielle continued. “Just, that story! That story! It was … gah! I have so many questions to ask you guys!”
“Like what?” Soleil asked eagerly, as Danielle’s friends exchanged a knowing look behind her.
“I mean, there’s the gender stuff, obviously,” said Danielle. “Seven being gender-fluid was just so, so well done. But it was actually Five that really got to me. The part in the beginning, right? Where he goes to the Caterpillar’s dance club with all those other Spades, but he ends up just drinking in a corner by himself the whole time because he feels so awkward because he doesn’t know how to do the normal-social-person thing because he overthinks everything all the time? That part.”
“Aw, yeah, that’s one of my favorite scenes,” said Soleil.
This time, when I didn’t reply, it wasn’t because I was too happy to form words—it was because I’d written that scene. With the Five of Spades in the Caterpillar’s club. And I’d basically based it on how I felt every day at school. Hanging off to the side, not really talking to anyone, not understanding how other people seemed to feel so comfortable around each other and, sure, maybe drinking in the corner of a dance club wasn’t exactly the same as eating lunch in the school library—but it wasn’t exactly not the same, either.
“Was all that social anxiety stuff from, you know, personal experience?” said Danielle, lowering her voice.
“Dani, come on, that’s not something you can just ask,” said the third girl. Marziya, Buffalo, NY.
“No, it’s fine,” said Soleil, giving Marziya a dazzling smile. “And yeah, it was.”
I gave her a sidelong look because, yeah, it was definitely personal, but it was personal for me, not her. I took a deep breath, trying to work up the nerve to claim credit for that scene—but by the time I got there, Danielle was already talking again.
“I knew it!” she said. “Nobody writes stuff like that so well unless they’ve, you know, been there. Listen, you guys have to come for dinner with us, okay?”
“Maybe,” said Soleil. “Like I said, we’re not sure what the game plan is. But how about if you tell us your plans, and we’ll come if we can?”
“We were going to that fancy-looking Mexican place in the lobby,” said Aimee. “El Sol? Say seven o’clock?”
“El Sol,” repeated Soleil, smiling widely. “You know that means sun in Spanish?”
“Oh, ha, like your name,” said Danielle.
I snort-laughed; Soleil didn’t seem to notice.
“Yup,” she replied. “So, okay, El Sol, seven o’clock. We gotta run, but hopefully see you there!”
“Hope so!” said Danielle.
Soleil looped her arm through mine and steered me rapidly onto the walkway. “One dollar, Nessie. I win.”
“You don’t win.” Hey, look, apparently I was capable of speaking again, now that it was just me and Soleil. “The bet specifically said they’d ask us to hang out. At no point did any of them use that exact phrase.”
“Oh, stop being nitpicky,” said Soleil. “I totally won that bet.”
I rolled my eyes and dug a pair of quarters out of my bag. “You half won. So here’s half a dollar.”
She pocketed the quarters. “Close enough.”
Only when we were safely inside our hotel room, with the door firmly shut, did I say, “We’re not really meeting up with them, right?”
Soleil, who’d been beelining for the mirror, stopped dead in her tracks. “You mean you don’t want to?”
“You mean you do want to?”
“Hello, free dinner,” she said. “And I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly rolling in cash.”
Neither was I. Sure, I had my mom’s credit card, but I would have to pay her back for anything over a hundred and fifty dollars. That wasn’t the point, though.
“I just thought we were going to the pool tonight,” I said.
“We can go after.”
“It closes at nine.”
She shrugged, grabbed an eyeliner pencil, and started applying it to her left lid. “Then we can go another night. Do you want some of my mascara?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “But wait: The pool tops cheering for Merry’s costume, but letting your fans buy you dinner tops the pool?”
“Merry?” she said absently. “Oh! Oh. The Boggart Snape person. Right. Well, obviously, yeah. Here, you should try some of this blue liner. It’d look so great on you.”
I sat on the bed, wondering if she’d notice my complete disinterest in her makeup tips. “Well, I still think the pool’s the way to go. It’d give us time to hang out, just us, you know?”
“Mmm,” said Soleil. “True.”
She didn’t seem too convinced, though, which meant clearly it was time to pull out the big guns. “Also … it would give us time to start thinking about our Creativity Corner project.”
The Creativity Corner was the super dumb name of the fanworks competition that would happen on the last night of the convention, three days from now. Anyone could enter, and the entry could be anything at all—a play, a reading, a drawing, whatever—as long as (a) it was original and (b) it contained a tribute to something made by someone else.
Soleil and I had entered under my name, because hey, if there was one thing we both knew, it was that we worked super well together.
Her eyes widened in the mirror at the reminder, and she spun around to face me. “Ooh. Yeah. I’ve been meaning to tell you, I had an idea for that!”
Well, this was promising. “What’s the idea?”
“A dance piece,” she said.
“A … what?”
“A dance piece! Like a parody one! We dress up as characters that everyone knows, preferably characters that everyone ships, and we do a totally overwrought dance of, like, epic unrequited longing. You get me?”
“That’s kind of genius,” I said. “So, like, Five and Seven doing a pas-de-deux?”
“Exactly!” she said, clapping her hands together. “Except not Five and Seven. Wonderlandia’s fandom isn’t that big, so people might not recognize them. You don’t want to do something for a fandom that even the judges might not know, right?”
“Right. So we have to think bigger,” I said. “Like Frodo and Sam or something.”
“Exactly!” said Soleil again. “Or Finn and Poe from Star Wars. Or Dean and Castiel from Supernatural.”
“Or the Doctor and Rose from Doctor Who.”
“Or the Doctor and the Master from Doctor Who.”
“Which version of the Master? Dude or lady?”
“Like it matters,” she said. “Either way, the audience will eat it up.”
“So let’s get choreographing!” I said. “After we swim, I mean.”
“Oh, come on, not tonight,” said Soleil. “I already said I wanted to meet up with those girls.”
All the energy drained right out of me. “Really?”
“Like I said: free dinner. Plus, that one girl with the black hair— Crap, what was her name?”
“Danielle.”
“Right! Danielle. She wanted to talk about our story!”
“My club chapter in our story,” I added quietly.
“Yeah, exactly! Don’t you wanna hear what she has to say about it?” Then she paused. Looked over at me. “Oh, shoot, Nessie. Are you mad that I didn’t say it was yours?”
I looked down at my feet, clicking the toes of my red shoes together. “Well, not mad. I just. I would’ve said something myself, but—but you guys were talking so fast. I dunno. I’ve never actually talked, like face-to-face, with someone who’s read my stuff.”
Well, except Merry, this morning before the panel. But talking to Merry had been different, somehow. Easier.
“So you can say something when we’re at dinner.” She reached out to give my shoulder a squeeze. “How often is it that you get to hang out with fans? Besides, it’s Mexican food!”
“So?”
“So … well, you’re Mexican, right?”
I cringed, because oh my god, what in the world was up with her? She was never this thoughtless online. “Uh, half Mexican. Also half Irish. So.”
“So we’ll see if they have corned beef and cabbage. Whatever.”
“Hey, come on. Don’t be …” I hesitated because, well, this was Soleil. The fandom queen of calling people out on stuff exactly like this. “Don’t be stereotype-y,” I said, and slightly hated myself for it. I was the worst social justice warrior ever.
“Oh. Sorry.” Before I could figure out if she was actually sorry, though, Soleil went back to her makeup. “But you should still come. It’ll be fun.”
The problem was, she was right. It would be fun. They’d buy us food and shower us with compliments, and we’d talk about “Carry Me Home” and eat enough guacamole that we’d maybe die of avocado poisoning, and it would be surreal and wonderful and everything I’d come to WTFcon to do.
But it would also be a whole lot of attention, and what if it ended up being just like before? When Soleil and Danielle had done all the talking before I could even think of what to say? I didn’t want that again. Right now, all I wanted was some alone time with Soleil. I wanted space to be all flirty with her like I was online, and I wanted her to be thoughtful and kind, the way she was online, and more than anything I wanted her to kiss me already.
“Nessie?” said Soleil, who’d started on her lipstick while I’d been sitting here, considering what to say.
“You go.” My voice came out kind of wobbly. “I’m gonna go to the costume contest.”
Soleil’s eyebrows shot up—but she wasn’t nearly as surprised as I was. What I’d meant to say was, I’ll stay here and order room service and go swimming by myself. But now that I’d said the other thing, I found that it was a pretty appealing idea. Maybe I didn’t want to watch Soleil soak up even more attention from her fans, even if some of that attention was technically aimed at me—but I also didn’t want to be the pathetic loser who waited alone in a hotel room for her girlfriend to come back. If she was going to do something cool, then so would I.
“Is this because I said the thing about Mexican food?” she said. “Listen, that was dumb of me. Like, Microaggressions 101 level dumb. But I already said I was sorry, okay?”
“It’s not that,” I said, even though maybe, yeah, it was a little bit that. But what I said out loud was, “Merry asked me to come.”
“Oh, right, Merry,” said Soleil, rolling her eyes.
I frowned. “What’s wrong with Merry?”
“Nothing at all.” Soleil shrugged and turned back to the mirror again, poking at her already-perfect eyebrows with an index finger. “Do what you want, and we’ll catch up later. I was just hoping we could spend some quality time together, that’s all.”
I was hoping the same thing, I thought—but obviously didn’t say it out loud. Murmuring a quiet goodbye, I patted my pocket to make sure my hotel key card was still there, then headed for the elevator.
Only once I’d reached the lobby downstairs did I realize something very important: I’d left my bag in the hotel room.
I swore under my breath, which made this nearby woman shoot me a look. The kind of look that made me want to swear again, louder, just to see how angry I could make her. Except she had a little kid with her, and my family, while not anti-swearing in general, was absolutely anti-swearing-around-small-children.
Besides, the sight of this particular small child stole any lingering swears right out of my mouth.
She couldn’t have been older than five or six, and she was dressed in what could only be described as … well, a disco ball. Except dress-shaped instead of round. There was a matching silver barrette in her blond hair, and gobs of silver eye shadow that shone gaudily against her pale skin. And she was wearing heels. Tiny, silver, little-girl heels.
When she saw me staring at her, she gave me a pink-lipsticked smile that looked a hundred percent practiced.
The woman, seeing this, took the little girl’s hand. “That’s a stranger, Delancey, honey. Remember what Mommy said about strangers?”
“Ignore them!” said the disco ball, in a voice like lollipops and sunshine and newborn puppies.
“That’s right,” said her mom, shooting me another look. “Save your pretty smile for the judges.”
I fled.
Despite the thick crowd in the lobby, nobody joined me in the elevator, which meant it was an express ride back up to the fifteenth floor. The doors slid open and I started marching back toward 1502 … but slowed down as I got closer to the room.
I hadn’t been gone that long. Soleil was probably still in there, fixing flaws in her makeup that only she could see. And did I really want to see her again so soon? While I was still kind of annoyed at her, and probably vice versa?
I thought about heading back toward the elevators, but there were faint voices coming from that direction now. Girl voices. Soleil hadn’t given our room number to the Fangirl Trio, had she? I couldn’t remember. And encountering them again, right after she’d chosen them over me, was the very last thing I wanted to do.
For a second, I felt this primal urge to escape. To go into my room, lock the door, and wait for Soleil to meet me online so we could talk, the way I did almost every day after school, except I obviously couldn’t do that now, and what in the world did people do when even the internet wasn’t an escape option?
Right between 1506 and 1508, there was a little doorless room with a vending machine and a thingie for ice. It wasn’t much, as far as hiding places went, but it was something. So I slipped inside.
And promptly sank to the floor, because what was I even doing?
Seriously, after all the effort I’d put into begging my parents for registration money and time off from school? All that time poring over the WTFcon schedule and making plans with Soleil? All that stuff for all those months, and this was where I’d ended up: sitting on a cold, tiled floor in front of a vending machine.
On top of that, I’d given all my change to Soleil, so I didn’t even have money for Doritos, which were literally the only food in the universe that never failed to make me feel better.
“Oh,” said a voice from somewhere above me. I looked up, totally prepared to ask Soleil, very politely, to leave me alone—but it wasn’t Soleil.
Hovering in the doorway, looking at me with no small amount of surprise, was a girl I didn’t know. Pale skin. Wavy reddish hair. Tall. Her gaze flicked from me to the vending machine, then back to me again, which made me realize that I was basically blocking her path. Politeness warred with the desire to stay exactly where I was. And instantly lost.
“You can step over me,” I said. “I don’t mind.”
“Oh,” she said again. “Cool, okay.”
But once she’d stepped over my knees and given the machine a quick once-over, she looked down at me again. “Are you all right?” She said it kind of like she felt she should say it, not like she really wanted to know.
“I’ll probably live.” Wow, what a stupidly melodramatic thing to say. “Sorry. Yeah, I’m fine. Don’t mind me.”
“You don’t look like you’re fine,” said the girl.
Ugh, this sucked, this suuucked. I was so pathetic that strangers stopped to take pity on me. “Totally fine. A hundred percent fine.”
A pause. “Then why are you on the floor?”
The answer slipped out before I could actually decide whether I wanted to give it: “Because I’m waiting for my girlfr—uh, my roommate to leave, so I don’t have to see her when I go back to get my bag, which I forgot in our room, and which contains my wallet, which I need in order to get dinner.”
And then my stomach growled, like it wanted to prove a point. It growled so loudly that the redheaded girl actually laughed. It was kind of rude, but it also made her look a lot friendlier.
“Sorry,” she said immediately. “I didn’t mean …”
“It’s fine,” I said.
“God,” she said, slumping against the vending machine. “I swear, Mercury’s gotta be in retrograde or something. Your life sucks, my life sucks, everything sucks. I bet even if I hide in my bed for the rest of the night, that’ll end up sucking somehow.”
I straightened up again. “Your life sucks, too? How come?”
“No reason. It’s nothing. Never mind.” Her face closed off, and she shook her head sharply and shoved her hand into her pocket. “Sorry. You look like you have enough problems. You shouldn’t have to deal with my craptastic life.”
As she pulled a bunch of loose change from her pocket and started slotting coins into the machine, it occurred to me that I actually kind of wanted her to tell me about her craptastic life. But only kind of. Because this wasn’t some FicForAll forum, where I could just be like, “Rant away!” and she could be like, “Here are all my problems!” and I could be like, “Sending hugs and virtual cookies!” and we could go back to talking about Five and Seven and their epic romance.
It didn’t work that way in real life. Or maybe it did. But that was just the thing: I had no idea how it worked in real life. It wasn’t like I was drowning in friends, and I was the baby of my family, so I didn’t really have much experience comforting people face-to-face.
So I kept quiet and watched her as she punched in the numbers for the snack she’d selected.
The machine whirred, and a bag of Doritos fell from its row.
Doritos.
Suddenly, I was sure that I was about to cry.
It must’ve shown on my face, because when the redhead turned back to me, she suddenly looked all concerned. “Seriously, you’re not okay, are you? Hey, you want me to get you some of these, too?” She held up the chips.
“Oh god, no,” I said. “I don’t need Pity Doritos. I’m really okay. Thanks, though.”
She considered me for a moment, then she settled down on the floor beside me. “Have some of mine,” she said, ripping open the bag. “That way they’re Friend Doritos, not Pity Doritos, and I don’t have to go back downstairs yet.”
She shoved the bag at me, and I really wanted to refuse, because of politeness or something—but the smell of all that fake cheese was too much to resist.
I took a chip and ate it. So did she. For a moment, we both crunched in reverent silence.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I’m Callie,” she said, holding the bag out to me again.
“Good to meet you,” I said, taking another chip. “I’m Vanessa. Call me … actually, no, just call me Vanessa.”