What Happens Now

by Jennifer Castle

  I turned to Camden, who had already slid his wig into place, his eyes sharp with excitement.

  “This is it,” he said. “These are our people.”

  He took the wig from my hand and slowly lowered it onto my head, glancing back and forth between the hair and my face, trying to get the position just right.

  “There,” he finally said. “You’re Satina again. Hi, Satina.”

  He leaned in to kiss me but Eliza stepped between us. She inspected me, then Camden, then gave a nod of approval.

  Max, Kendall, and James had already started toward the hotel entrance, so we rushed to catch up. I watched as Kendall took pains to fall into step behind James, not next to him.

  Inside the lobby, a huge sign on an easel said WELCOME TO THE TRI-STATE SUPERCON. Arrows pointed us to a registration table down the hall.

  “Look,” said Camden. “The arrows are silver. That’s a good omen.”

  “Watch what happens when they recognize us,” whispered Eliza.

  After we signed in and got our badges, we crossed the threshold into the heart of the SuperCon, aka a hotel ballroom filled with booths selling comics, books, figurines, T-shirts, costumes, and accessories. Most of the people browsing the booths were dressed as something. There was a lot of hugging and picture-taking going on.

  Eliza grabbed my arm briefly, indicating that I shouldn’t move on yet. She wanted us to linger. To wait and see if anyone noticed us.

  Her plan was this: we’d spend the morning on the exhibit floor, then there were a couple of panels to check out. Somewhere in there, we’d have lunch. At four, there was a costume contest—the highlight and whole point, really, of the day. At six, the dinner and dance party began. We’d be on the road by ten and home at eleven.

  Eliza scanned the crowd and said, “I saw on the message boards that there’s a group here cosplaying the Silver Arrow Reboot. We have to find them.”

  “Then we rumble,” said Max.

  Kendall snorted but Eliza gave him a dirty look. “If you’re not going to take this seriously . . .”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” He spread out his hands and waved them all around himself. “I’m dressed as a silver-haired alien and trying as hard as I can not to feel like a douche bag! How much more serious do you want me to get?”

  Something in Eliza’s face softened. “No more serious, babe.” She took his hand. “You look great.”

  Max drew a deep breath and let her keep hold of his hand, but he didn’t relax into it the way he usually did.

  “Why don’t we split up for a bit, meet back here in an hour?” I suggested.

  “No!” said Eliza. “We have to stay together. Well, those guys can take off.” She indicated James and Kendall with a dismissive wave. “But we are a cosplay group. We are basically one costume.”

  I nodded. It was a nice try, I guess.

  It’s going to be an awesome day, Camden had said, and I said it again to myself now. It would be awesome because I would make it awesome. The fact that everyone seemed on the verge of slapping one another had nothing to do with it.

  Kendall turned to James. “Do you want to go off on our own, since we’re not part of ‘the costume’?”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking relieved. “Let’s go. We’ll meet you guys at the cosplay panel later.”

  As they walked away, Kendall gave me a quick, hopeful glance over her shoulder. I nodded. Go have fun.

  Two girls came up to Camden and me. “It’s you guys! Satina and Azor!” squealed one.

  “We loved your pictures,” chirped the other, who then ran her eyes slowly up and down Camden’s entire body. I found myself reaching out to grab his hand.

  “Can we take pictures with you?” asked the first, and we nodded. She turned and handed her phone to the closest nearby person. Who was Eliza.

  Eliza not looking happy.

  “Can you . . . oh, it’s you!” the girl said. “I love your Atticus Marr! Really brilliant!”

  Eliza smiled, but the girl still had her phone out, expecting Eliza to take it. She did, and after the girls posed with Camden and me, she dutifully took a couple of shots.

  Then Camden said, “Here, let’s get Marr and Bram in here, too,” and beckoned Eliza and Max to join us. All of us huddled close with these two people we’d never met. We found a passing Bender from Futurama to snap the photo.

  After the girls left, Eliza led us forward through the exhibit floor. The booths were supposed to be the whole point of the place, but clearly, the real action was in checking out everyone else’s costumes. Calling out a person’s character, stopping to compliment him or her. I thought of the way it felt that day in the parking lot at the lake, when we all found ourselves talking Arrowhead language. The sensation of being seen, of being welcomed back to a tribe you didn’t know you’d lost.

  This was that, times a thousand.

  At one point, Eliza was out of earshot and I turned to Max and Camden.

  “Why is she being such a dictator?”

  “She’s planned this day for six months,” said Max. “You know how important this stuff is to her. Although I know that doesn’t help when she’s making it so much less fun for the rest of us.”

  Camden added, “Cosplay is the thing that helps her keep it all together.”

  Max and Camden exchanged a glance. I couldn’t decipher its meaning.

  “What does she need to keep together?” I asked.

  Camden and Max answered simultaneously, speaking over each other.

  “Stuff,” said Max. “We all have stuff.”

  “Maybe she’ll tell you another time,” said Camden.

  They wanted me to try and understand her. For them, maybe I would.

  As we wandered through the floor, at least a dozen other people recognized us from the “Ferris Wheel” shoot, asking for a photo. Camden and I would lean in close to each other while Eliza crouched in front and Max stood behind. Smiling blindly, as if friendship and fun and fandom were all bound up in one simple story we had to tell.

  At Merlin’s Sci-Fi and Fantasy Bookstore booth, Camden tugged me toward the bins of vintage books. “Are there any you’re missing?” he asked.

  “A few.”

  “Let’s see if we can find them.”

  We sifted through two boxes labeled “Sci-Fi TV” and there, under the layers of tattered paperbacks, was a book called When the Stars Spun that I’d been looking for online for at least two years. It was a gap in my bookshelf that always bothered me, the numbers on the spines jumping from eleven to thirteen. This was number twelve. I fanned through the pages to make sure the book was in good shape.

  “You know what that is, don’t you?” asked Camden.

  “The universe wanting me to have something?”

  “Bingo.”

  Then Camden went to pay for the book.

  I bought a stuffed animal for Danielle that I knew was some kind of character from some kind of anime series, but I just thought it was cute.

  At a booth that sold replications, I found an Original Silver Arrow flight pin. I showed it to Camden.

  “This is nicer than the ones Eliza found online,” I said, holding it up to the pin on my tunic. The metal was heavier, more expensive.

  “Why don’t you get it for your mom?” he suggested.

  I shook my head, but didn’t put the pin back. “It would seem like I was trying to buy her forgiveness. If she even wanted it. I don’t think she’d even want it.”

  “It doesn’t matter if she’d want it. What matters is whether or not you want to give it to her.”

  I looked him in the eye and he looked right back at me. God, how I loved him.

  I bought the pin and tucked it into my Satina satchel. As we were walking away from the booth, Camden said, “Your mom must have started watching Arrow in 1988, when it first aired.”

  “I guess,” I said, not wanting to admit I had no idea when she first started watching it. To me, she had always been watching it. “She would
have been in college then,” I added, mostly to myself as I did the math.

  “How terrific it must have been to watch when it was new.” He paused. “And how horrible to have to wait a week in between each episode!”

  Huh. I’d never thought about my mom’s Silver Arrow life before me; but she’d had one, of course. And despite everything that had happened between her and me, I was still so grateful for all those afternoons in front of the TV together. We’d both gotten something we’d needed at the time.

  Now I had my own life with Silver Arrow. Maybe I could live it for both of us.

  An hour later, Kendall and James found us on our way into the “Cosplay Tips and Tricks” panel.

  “Hey,” I said. “Having fun?”

  Kendall had a light in her eyes. She bit back a smile and nodded. Then she saw Eliza, who was settling into a front-row seat by herself, and leaned in to whisper, “Wait, are you sure I’m allowed to be in here? Isn’t this just for cosplayers?”

  I laughed. It felt good to do it at Eliza’s expense.

  A girl stepped around us but stopped when she saw my costume. I looked up at her.

  Reboot Satina. She was with a Reboot Marr and a Reboot Azor. Their costumes were good, but not great. Not as good as Eliza’s had been at Camden’s party, for sure. This must have been the group Eliza was on the alert for.

  “Hi,” I said. “Nice Satina.”

  The girl laughed and smiled warmly. “Thanks! You, too. I loved your ‘Ferris Wheel’ photos. I never got into the Original Arrow but I’m told they were very accurate.”

  “Thank you. That means a lot.”

  We stood there staring each other down, not sure what to do with this strange familiarity the costumes gave us. Then the flow of people entering the conference room pushed her forward, and the three of them moved on.

  We found Camden and Max, who were saving some spots on the floor because all the seats were taken. Over the next hour, we learned about cosplay supply websites and catalogs, how to get coupons for craft and fabric stores, and why planning one’s cosplay up to a year in advance can really save you money in the long run.

  After the sci-fi/fantasy panel called “New Trends in Other Worlds” and a session previewing the biggest upcoming movie releases, we headed outside to a landscaped courtyard to kill the hour before the costume contest started. Grass, a scattering of flowers, a single tree—all tokens to remind us of the boring and normal earthbound world we knew, so easy to forget about in the windowless hotel conference rooms. Nobody was what they wanted to be, anymore. They were back to being people trying to eat their sandwiches without spilling on their costumes, drink their lattes without ruining their makeup.

  We found a patch of lawn we could claim as our own and James jingled his keys. “I’ll make a run to the McDonald’s down the road. Who wants what?”

  After we gave him our orders, which he actually wrote down on a pad, he turned to Kendall. “I’ll need some help. Want to come with me?”

  “Yes, please,” she said, and they left.

  Eliza stretched out on the ground and put her head in Max’s lap. I opened up my new book and Camden looked over my shoulder, and we began to read. We were too tired to speak, too busy processing the day. My phone sat like a dead weight in my bag.

  When Kendall and James came back with the food, she looked stricken.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked her. James went straight to sit with Max and Eliza.

  “Bathroom,” she whispered as she leaned down to hand Camden and me our bags.

  “You feeling sick?”

  “Meet me in the bathroom!” she whispered louder.

  Camden and I exchanged a look, then I followed her inside. The hotel hallway was crowded and I almost lost her a few times, but eventually, somehow, we ended up locked in a handicapped stall together. She crumpled against the wall, put her face in her hands.

  “That was so horrifying,” said Kendall.

  “Jamie?”

  She only nodded.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “‘Kendall,’” said Kendall, in a weird dumb-guy voice. “‘You know I like you as a friend, right? You know I’m not looking for anything romantic, right?’”

  I stepped forward and put my hand on her head. “Because you’re supposed to magically know.”

  “He’d be such a jerk, if he weren’t so great.”

  I paused. “I’m sorry, Ken. Maybe it’s for the best, with you leaving and all.”

  She gave me a dirty look. “Don’t try to help. I just want to be sad and pissed for a while. And the worst part is, I’m stuck at this stupid SuperCon with him until tonight.”

  “You’re not with him. You’re with me. And Camden and Max.”

  “And she who shall not be named.” Kendall laughed a bit, but the weight of her emotions pulled down the corners of her mouth again. “Why doesn’t he like me?” she asked.

  “Camden told me James had a bad breakup last year. Maybe he does, but he’s afraid.”

  I’d never been here before, giving relationship advice to Kendall. I felt like a fraud. Who was I to pretend I had any wisdom?

  “None of that helps me.” Kendall looked up at me. “Why is it so easy for everyone else? Last year you wanted a boyfriend and boom, there was Lukas as your boyfriend. Then you wanted Camden and boom, there was Camden as your . . . Camden. What is wrong with me that I can’t make it happen?”

  I was quiet. I didn’t want to echo the default answer—there’s nothing wrong with you.

  “The boom may be easy, but everything else that comes after it is totally not.”

  “I would welcome the everything else,” said Kendall. “If someone would only go there with me.”

  Kendall and I ate our Happy Meals in the hotel lobby. We were silent, chewing and drinking and people-watching. It felt a little like being in the cafeteria at school with her. We didn’t need to talk; simply being present for her heartbreak was enough. Then she left to go for a walk while I met the others for the costume contest.

  The room was filling up fast and I searched the crowd for Camden. I thought I saw him by the water fountain, but when I got closer, I realized it was the other Azor. The reboot version. Which would have been horrifying on multiple levels.

  “Hey,” said the right Azor with a hand on my shoulder. “We were starting to worry you wouldn’t make it. Is Kendall okay?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Do you want to leave?” he asked, but I could tell he didn’t want me to say yes.

  “No.”

  “Don’t stay for Eliza.”

  “This is for me. A hundred percent.” And for you, I wanted to add.

  “Good.” He smiled. “But I’m sorry about Kendall. I talked to Jamie about her, like you asked. I didn’t think he was going to—”

  “Azor! Satina!” barked Eliza from nearby. “We’re saving you seats!”

  We followed the sound of her voice until we found her and Max. They were sitting right in front of the reboot group.

  “Hi again,” I said to Reboot Satina, who waved back at me.

  Eliza pulled me down into my chair. “What are you doing? You’re fraternizing with the competition.”

  “I’m celebrating the Satina sisterhood.”

  “Not when there’s a group cosplay title on the line, you don’t.”

  I laughed, thinking she was joking, but she glared at me. Okay, then. I scanned the room and spotted James over near the stage, fiddling with his camera. Was I supposed to hate him now? I didn’t want to hate him. He didn’t feel hateable.

  Camden sat down beside me and put his arm around me, then a few seconds later, he took it away. I looked at him and he whispered, “We shouldn’t block anyone’s view.”

  The host of the contest was a local cosplay celebrity known as RedSmoke. (The term local cosplay celebrity came from Eliza.) She stood tall on the stage in black high heels, silver lamé minidress, and a completely shaved head.

  “H
ello, all you fabulous freaks!” she called. The room erupted in cheers. “Are you ready to blow us away?”

  More whoops and hoots and hollers. A chill pushed through me. I hadn’t planned on getting excited about this, but the excitement got me.

  RedSmoke called up the contestants in the Individual category. They paraded one by one across the stage. There were superheroes and warriors, creatures and characters. Time periods and competing realities intersected and exploded. The crowd went nuts for each one.

  It was the closest thing to pure shared joy I’d ever experienced.

  By the time RedSmoke announced the Group category, I’d almost forgotten that I had to go up there, too.

  “Ready?” asked Camden close in my ear.

  I mentally reviewed everything Eliza had laid out for us. She had a whole Atticus Marr pantomime planned. She was supposed to run up, pretend she saw some huge threatening creature, draw her weapon, then beckon to the rest of us. We’d rush into formation behind her, staring out at the crowd with approximations of the expressions our characters were best known for.

  After a group dressed as gaming characters left the stage, RedSmoke said, “Next up in the Groups, we have Temporal Anomaly!”

  Which was us. Eliza led the way up the steps to the stage and started to do her bit. When it was time to fall into position, I paused. The reality of being on stage in my Satina costume felt suddenly huge, insurmountable. Camden stepped away from me, then glanced back and saw my hesitation.

  “Come on,” he said, with that mischievous smile, offering his hand. I took it.

  As soon as I did, the applause from the crowd swelled louder.

  “Azor! Kiss Satina!” someone shouted.

  Camden stared out at the audience for a second, then gave me a questioning look. I nodded imperceptibly, on impulse. He pulled me to him and we kissed. For the first time ever, it didn’t feel right. Who was I even kissing? The applause rained down around us.

  When we pulled apart, the first thing I saw was Eliza glaring at me.

  I didn’t look at her again until later, after the reboot group and several others went up, already acting defeated, their efforts halfhearted in our wake.