by Nancy Werlin
“Interesting,” she said as she looked at the flyer. “It seems like a cross between M*A*S*H and Firefly and maybe a little Star Trek, is that right?”
“I don’t know M*A*S*H,” I said. “But definitely Firefly and Star Trek.”
“You’d be too young for M*A*S*H. It was set in a mobile triage hospital during—”
A guy in a rubber Joker mask leaned in behind her, his mouth an inch from her ear: “Ugly fat freak. You’re disgusting.”
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. Leia’s shoulders hunched and her eyes flew wide. The Joker strode away like he owned the earth.
Slowly, Leia straightened her shoulders, her eyes narrowing, on fire.
“Oh my God!” I said. “Bloodies! Did you hear that asshole?” I pointed down the corridor, but I couldn’t pick him out in the crowd anymore.
“I heard every single word,” said Meldel.
“I did too,” said Cam. “That was totally against the code of conduct.”
“We’ll report him,” Meldel said. “White man in a Joker mask, about five foot eight, one hundred sixty-five pounds, brown hair.”
I stared at her.
“What?” she said. “I’m observant. Leia, did he touch you?”
The Leia shook her head. “No. I didn’t actually see him, either. And yes, we should report him, for all the good that’ll do now. But it’s good to have backup. Thanks.” Her lips compressed. “Of course he was here to see skinny, sexy, young Leias. Well, I’m happy to have disappointed.”
“White Leias, too,” another voice said dryly. “With big breasts.” This was a different Leia, brown-skinned and middle-aged and small, wearing the military jacket and pants of the older Carrie Fisher from The Force Awakens. “He said something to me, too.”
Our original Leia’s expression softened. “I’m so sorry. Well, to hell with him and whatever he thought he was going to get here. I cosplay for me. Not to please anybody else.”
“Exactly,” said military Leia.
The two Leias and Meldel went off together to report what had happened. Numb, I kept handing out Bleeders flyers, mechanically hawking the show.
The crowd thinned around us. Without speaking, the remaining five of us slipped back into the abandoned ballroom, collapsing on some chairs. Todd looked up from his phone. “Meldel will meet us back here in a few.”
The Leia incident had not taken long. A very small amount of time compared with the whole con. One rude asshole was involved. One.
It shouldn’t overshadow everything.
We were silent.
Finally, Sebastian said conversationally, “In high school, Meldel and her friends used to say stuff to me, stuff that let me know they didn’t think I was worth anything. Wasn’t even human to them.”
“People say shit to me, too,” said Cam. “And to Liv.”
Liv nodded. “Or they say stuff about other people in front of me. Sometimes that feels worse. Do you respond? Do you keep silent? What happens if you do say something? What do you say? What will be the consequences? It’s exhausting.”
I nodded silently, remembering freshman year, when I’d stumbled on three boys covertly examining a manufactured (manufactured!) armband with a swastika on it. One of them had noticed me. Cold eyes fixed on mine, he’d drawn a finger across his throat and mouthed Jew. It had changed something in me. Oh, I’d told my parents, who talked to the principal, and there’d been a big deal including an apology—and I even believed one of those boys was sincere in his apology. But the damage inside me stayed. And that was only one incident, to one person . . . only kids . . . nobody died. “It seems like hate pops up everywhere,” I said. “Like whack-a-mole. So what do we do?”
“Okay, question,” Sebastian said, raising his hand like he was in a classroom. “I started talking about me and Meldel and high school and I really thought I had the floor. Did I give some social signal to start a group discussion of how everybody has experiences like that? Because I’d like to know what the signal is.”
There was a beat of time.
I said, “As far as I know, there is no such signal, Sebastian. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I fucked up,” Cam said promptly. “Me. Sorry. I missed your totally appropriate social signal that you wanted to talk, and I barged in.”
“And me,” said Liv.
“And me,” I said.
“Not me. I didn’t interrupt Sebastian,” Todd remarked.
I narrowed my eyes at Todd. “The floor is now yours, Sebastian,” I said.
There was another beat.
“Joke,” said Sebastian.
We all stared at him.
“I was making a joke,” he explained. “About a social signal to start a group confessional. I know there’s no such thing.”
“But you do want the floor,” said Liv. “You have more to say, right?”
“No,” said Sebastian. “I already said what I wanted to say. So it wasn’t funny? My joke? I was just . . . hoping to get back to all of us having fun. I didn’t want to veer off forever into talking about hate. We don’t have much time left this weekend.”
Cam snorted. “I wish there was a signal for going back to fun. Can you imagine?”
We all began to laugh then. It was slow, rueful laughter at first, maybe even forced to please Sebastian. But wherever it came from, and whatever it meant, somehow the laughter grew until we were all bent over, roaring, moaning, practically convulsing, eventually even pounding the floor with fists. There was even sort of a laughing group hug toward the end that involved jumping up and down.
Mine was the kind of laughter that gets all mixed up with tears.
When Meldel came back, we had calmed down. There was the sad feeling of things ending. I wiped my eyes and knelt to pick up the flyers that had dropped to the floor during the laughter-tears group hug. I gathered them in my hands, tapping their edges straight.
“Time to go,” Liv said.
“Just a minute,” said Meldel. “I was hoping . . . well, there’s a con next month in Austin, called Weird World. If you can all get there, Todd and I can put you up. So there’d be like no other expenses. Except food, I guess. And memberships to the con.” She paused. “I don’t want to lose our group. And we still have so much work to do to save Bleeders. We can do better than we did this time. I can do better.”
I looked up from where I was kneeling on the carpet. I didn’t want to lose the group, either.
Or Bleeders.
“I hate Texas,” Sebastian remarked.
“Give it another chance,” said Todd.
After a moment, Liv turned on the flashlight on their phone. Silently, they held it up.
Cam turned on his. He held it up.
The rest of us scrambled to do the same.
“To Bloodygits,” Liv said. “To us.”
“To Bloodygits,” the rest of us chorused. “To us.”
“Next month at Weird World?” asked Meldel.
“Weird World!”
Why me? I thought as Josie settled herself into our row’s window seat, breezily assuming I would take care of stowing her carry-on in the airplane’s overhead compartment. Which I did.
I needed this complication like a hole in my head. Just when I had effectively minimized my own risk, too! My parents knew about my new fannish friends now. My mom had actually even “met” Liv one day while we were FaceTiming, and—since my mom was active in her alumnae association at Bryn Mawr—they’d ended up having a long talk about how women’s colleges were and weren’t changing because of admitting nonbinary and trans and gender-nonconforming students, and what the issues, if any, might be for Liv. Liv thought my mom had made some helpful points. My mom thought Liv was super-nice and smart. And I’d felt smug about the introduction until my mom said afterward (with a nonchalance that did not fool me for a microsecond), “I love how your enby friend Liv is open to considering the educational benefits of a nonmale atmosphere.”
Gritting my teeth at the
memory, I settled into my cramped plane seat. Josie promptly elbowed me, which did not improve my mood.
“I’m so excited! A real con! And I’m actually going to meet Melisande Du Lac!”
I withdrew my arm from our shared armrest and silently fastened my seatbelt.
“Don’t be like that, Zoe.”
“I’ll be however I want.” I fished out my phone. “Leave me alone. I have things to do to cover our asses. Such as lie to your mother and brother.”
She smirked. “I’m just doing what you did.”
“I’m a bad influence!” I snapped. “You should know better!”
Infuriatingly, she giggled. “Simon doesn’t even really know you, does he?”
“Simon knows the best me!” I hunched my back to her.
My entire future happy life hung in the balance, so I had to bring the little blackmailer along for one glorious, secret con weekend. It had been a tremendous shock. But once I’d put my mind to the logistics, I’d had to admit it wasn’t impossible. It had just required—to use Todd’s term—some balls. But there was no question that the risk was nonzero.
I sent a carefully worded text to Simon, a breezier, easier one to my parents, and a final note to Maggie.
ME: I owe you my firstborn child.
MAGGIE: What if I don’t want your firstborn child?
ME: Of course you do. My child will be delightful.
MAGGIE: I like the name Ravioli. Ravioli Kwan.
ME: No!
MAGGIE: Yes. You gave me your child and I get to use whatever name I please.
Simon probably wouldn’t respond to my text for hours, if at all. That was actually part of my plan. Simon was likely too busy to notice much of anything. The election was Tuesday—four days away! He was flat-out frantic at Alisha Johnson Pratt’s campaign headquarters and ecstatic to be that way, too.
My parents knew I was in Austin for the con, and to check out UT Austin. So far, so aboveboard. But they certainly didn’t know Josie was with me. As for Simon, UT Austin wasn’t on our college list, and besides, with the election so close, he could not conceive of my being concerned with anything else. So he thought I was with Maggie, going door-to-door on behalf of a national congressional campaign up in New Hampshire. My parents liked that I was looking at a college that Simon wasn’t applying to. Deep breath over that, but they had agreed to secrecy. As for Josie’s mother, well, there was a whole different plan for her.
It was complicated enough that I’d put together a spreadsheet (which you’d better believe was password protected) specifying exactly who knew what. I was also getting into the benefits of yogic breathing.
I sent Maggie another text.
ME: I use my superpower for good, right?
MAGGIE: Feeling guilty?
ME: A little sick to my stomach.
ME: Josie is sitting here like the cat who got the cream.
ME: But I really had no choice.
ME: And it’s not like anybody gets hurt here.
MAGGIE: Agreed, but when you become an Evil Overlord, be warned, I won’t be your minion.
ME: I’d have stayed home and canvassed if Josie hadn’t blackmailed me!
MAGGIE: Yes dear. I know. Have a good time.
ME: You’d never be anybody’s minion.
MAGGIE: Why do I suspect that’s what you’d say if I were yours?
Our plane lifted into the air. Josie watched out her window. Exhibiting calm maturity, I took out my bullet journal. With a purple Sharpie, I drew a dotted line down the exact center of a fresh page.
“What are you doing, Zoe?”
“Planning.”
In thin orange, I wrote down all the stuff I was going to accomplish next week, including working after school on Monday and Tuesday—election day!—for Alisha Johnson Pratt. Then, in purple again, I drew a small square checkbox next to each task. Then I began a sublist about schoolwork, with Catch up in calculus at the top. I reviewed the cost of paying for Josie’s trip: basically her plane tickets plus her food, so approximately five hundred dollars deducted from my kitty, ouch. And also the cost of Maggie’s replacement tote would have to come from the kitty—and it would have to be quality. (Pause to silently direct a few choice words at Wentworth.) As God is my witness, I am going to find a way to nail Wentworth’s furry butt to his YOU’RE FIRED pink slip.
Josie stuck her face in mine. “Zoe, what’s Melisande Du Lac really like?”
“You’ll see for yourself soon enough.”
“I know why you’re really mad. You thought you were going to slip off without me.”
“No,” I said repressively. “I wasn’t going to go at all.”
“Yes, you were. You wrote down all the possible flights.” Josie pointed her chin at my bullet journal.
“That was just informational. I hadn’t bought a ticket.”
“Only because you were still talking yourself into it. Melisande Du Lac says you did that last month too. No no no, I can’t possibly go! But then you went. Pattern?”
“Twice is not a pattern, Josie.”
“Is so.”
“Is not.”
“Is so. Anyway, you needed someone to cosplay Monica.”
“We were doing just fine without a Monica.”
“No, it wasn’t right,” Josie said judiciously. “The Mae Jemison has to have the full crew.” She giggled. “You look so good as Lorelei. But you have to admit that you were dumb not to realize you could be recognized.”
I gritted my teeth. It had never even occurred to me that anyone I knew would look at New York Comic Con photos. But Josie had caught me. Fair and square, as my dad would say.
“But you forgive me,” Josie said. Her voice got very small. “Right, Zoe? Bloodygits together?”
I didn’t answer.
“And now that you’ve done this for me, which I truly, truly appreciate, I will never tell and I’ll love you forever. Even if you hate me.”
I relented. “I don’t hate you.”
“Really? Promise?”
“Yeah. I get why you wanted to come.”
She beamed at me. Reluctantly, I smiled back.
I remembered being fourteen like Josie. I’d had one special, secret weekend then, too.
It was the green sign featuring the wide-open mouth of Janice the Muppet that drew me in. It was the second day of my freshman year of high school and dozens of the signs were taped up in the halls. There was even one on my locker:
CAN YOU SING? DO YOU HAVE A WORKING RIGHT OR LEFT HAND? LEAD FEMALE VOCALIST WANTED FOR OUR PUPPET ROCK BAND. WHY NOT TRY OUT? WE’RE DESPERATE!!!
In smaller letters at the bottom, it said COME TO BAND ROOM ON FRIDAY BETWEEN 3 AND 4.
I had not darkened the door of a school music department since I quit orchestra in middle school. Violin had been something my parents wanted me to do and I didn’t love it, and once I realized my parents would accept it—I explained that I needed more study time—I quit. Huge relief.
But approaching the band room still felt familiar, even navigating with my school map while half wanting to turn back (but it was just an audition, ten minutes of my time, I had all weekend to do homework, I could have a little fun, it didn’t mean I wasn’t smart). You could always hear music as you got close to a band room, even if it was just kids blowing softly into clarinets or tapping drumsticks. At three forty-five in the afternoon on that particular Friday at my new school, what I heard was an electronic keyboard, accompanied by a high warbling soprano.
Ever since seventh grade, I’ve hated you—ooo—ooo—
The voice jumped off-key and stopped. My stomach twisted on behalf of the soprano. As I looked in from the doorway, the singer said to the keyboardist, “Sorry. Can I try again? I don’t know this song. It’s not really fair. Can’t I try, like, something by Adele?” The singer’s hands—one of them encased in a brown paper bag—went out in a half-pleading gesture.
The keyboardist’s back was to me. He tilted his head questioningly at a
n Asian girl with a guitar and at a white guy holding a Barbie doll. They looked back with impassive faces. The Barbie shook her head slightly.
“We’re looking for a grittier sound,” said the keyboard guy to the soprano.
“Oh. Okay, yeah.” The soprano pulled the paper bag off her hand. It fell to the floor. Just after she brushed past me in the doorway, she whirled back. “It’s a really stupid song!”
“Shoot me now,” said the keyboardist to the other two when she was gone. He banged his head softly on the keys, a smash of discordant notes. “I hate this. Do we really need anybody else? Jordan, tell me again why you can’t do lead vocals?”
“Because I don’t want to,” said the Barbie-wielding guy in a patient bass voice. “I want to bang on the drums with my Barbies.”
“But—”
The girl with the guitar nodded her chin to me. “How about we hear her?” She met my gaze directly. “You came to audition?”
“Yes,” I said. I was feeling more confident simply because, and I hoped this wasn’t mean, the soprano had been just that bad.
The keyboardist swiveled on his piano stool. We looked at each other.
So.
So there I was in my black leggings and gleaming white New Balance sneakers and pink tank top from Lands’ End, with my hair in a smooth ponytail and zero makeup, with my backpack, everything about me screaming SERIOUS and STUDIOUS and also FRESHMAN. And there he was, keyboard guy, with his ragged gray hoodie with the sleeves pushed up to reveal a tattoo on the inside of one tanned forearm, and eyeliner, and everything about him screaming ARTSY and WEIRD and SENIOR.
He smiled at me. “I’m Henry Ferlinghetti. That’s Marina Liu on lead guitar, and Jordan O’Halloran on the Barbie.”
“By the way, I identify as nonbinary and my pronouns are they/them,” said Jordan.
This was the first time I’d ever experienced someone saying something like that, directly, to me. I froze for a second, unsure what to say that wouldn’t be wrong. Luckily Henry gave me time to recover.
“Right, sorry,” he said. “I guess I should have said everybody’s pronouns. I’m he/him.”
