Maybe we could just smile at each other, and lock eyes, and not have to say anything at all.
Jasper slides past two cosplayers on his way up the escalators. He smiles in greeting, absolutely oblivious to the fact that he saw me just yesterday. He throws his hands into the air. “Mo! That was sick what you did on the panel! Impersonating Amara. Did she just tap you for that panel to do the stunt?”
I give him a once-over. Acid-washed jeans and his own logo on his T-shirt and messy brown hair. I can kind of see what I saw in him, but I much prefer guys in neat trousers with swept-back hair and dark eyes. “I was her for a few days,” I reply.
“Ha! That must’ve been fun,” he begins, and then his smile falters. “Wait, what?”
“‘What, you’re too good for a hug?’” I recite the same agonizing line he gave me, and it finally clicks.
His eyebrows jerk up. “You…that was you, too?”
“You’re a jerk, you know that?” I begin. “I don’t even know why I’m wasting time on you. You used me, and when you found something—or someone, I guess—better, you tossed me away like I didn’t mean anything. I waited for you for three hours at the ExcelsiCon Ball. I sat on the curb waiting—”
“Whoa, whoa, calm down.”
“No, you aren’t allowed to tell me to calm down. You’re whiny, and you’re selfish, and your videos aren’t even funny. And you know what the worst part is? I actually thought that I deserved you, but I was totally wrong. I deserve so much better than you.”
His face hardens. “Why’d I want to date some nobody like you, anyway?”
Maybe three days ago that would’ve hurt me, but now I just smile and step up into his face and say, “Because we both know that you’re the real nobody. And oh? I almost forgot. I reported you for sexual harassment, so you’ll never come to this con again.”
“Are you kidding me? How will you get me to leave?”
And then, as if materializing out of the con crowd itself, appears Darien’s ex-bodyguard Lonny and two of his security guards. Jasper sees them and hesitates.
“I suggest that you leave, Mr. Webster, and don’t come back here again.”
Jasper grits his teeth, jerking his gaze between me and the security guards about ten feet away, and then, with a last glowering look, he steps onto the escalator.
I breathe a sigh of relief as Lonny comes over to check on me.
“Are you all right, Imogen?” he asks, and I nod.
“I’m fine. Thank you.”
He nods back, and then he and his security detail fan out into the crowd once again. I sigh in relief. I should’ve reported Jasper the second he touched me but at least now I know he won’t be bothering anyone here ever again.
After he’s gone, I stand there at the top of the escalators, rubbing my arms, trying to scrub the grossness away—
And then my phone buzzes.
JESS (4:57 PM)
—#SaveAmara
—[Link]
My eyebrows furrowing, I click on the link.
Above me, the announcement for the end of the con booms over the intercom, and around me the world slows to a stop and everyone looks up as if the man speaking is the voice of a god. He’s not—he’s just the creator of ExcelsiCon, Elle Wittimer’s father. He died about a decade ago, but it’s become tradition to run his closing announcement every year.
I scan the article on my phone, and my heart rises, happy in my chest.
“Thank you for coming to ExcelsiCon! Safe travels across the universe, and we hope to see you again next year! As our friends in the Federation always say—Look to the stars!”
“Aim!” echoes everyone on the showroom floor, and I join in for the final word:
“Ignite!”
Cheers rise up across the con, and I close my eyes and relish it, because there’s nothing quite like the possibility of another ExcelsiCon. I put my phone away and turn to descend the escalator for the final time this year, and that ride down is just as magical as the first one I ever took, the lobby of the main hotel spreading like a sea of fandom before me. It feels like leaving home for a little while, but knowing you’ll be back.
That’s when I see him.
He steps onto the up escalator, looking like he just ran a half mile, his glasses askew and his hair wild. He locks eyes with me, and suddenly there is no one else in the world. My breath hitches in my throat as we pass each other—
I turn around, trying to wrack my brain for something to say, anything, and he spins to me, too, and blurts out:
“I think I might like you, Imogen!”
I stand there dumbfounded as I’m carried down the escalator and Ethan is carried up. Then he jumps into action, scuttling down the up escalator, dodging past a Kingdom Hearts cosplayer and a sexy Dalek, taking the steps two at a time to meet me at the bottom, where he straightens himself, patting down the wrinkles on his airplane-patterned button-down and fixing his glasses.
We stand there, me holding my breath, him trying to catch his, and we are two sides of the same coin. Opposite and hopeless and—
“I think I might like you,” he says again, breathless.
My mind is reeling. “Me? That’s just because I look like Jess—”
“No, I like you as you are—as Imogen Lovelace. Not as Jessica Stone. I like that you chew on your thumb when you’re nervous, and that you know how to braid even though you have short hair, and that sometimes you slip into strange accents when you don’t mean to, and that you’re bold, and you’re courageous, and you’re good, and—Look, what I said in the pool, I meant that, too. That you aren’t nothing.” He swallows and says, more softly, “Like Amara, you’re going to be amazing.”
“I’m not already?”
“Starflame, you’re insufferable.”
I take his face in my hands and pull him down to kiss me. He tastes like Cheerwine, his hands rising to cup the sides of my face. The mass exodus from the con bends around us like spacetime around the Prospero at lightspeed. He smells so nice, like sandalwood cologne and crisply ironed shirts, and as I lean into him my heart flutters. Because he is kissing me. The disapproving, insufferable, maddeningly hot Ethan Tanaka is kissing me, Imogen Lovelace.
The best version of me. The only version. Kissing the best, dorkiest, most tall and wonderful version of him.
When we finally break apart, he takes out his phone and asks, “May I get your phone number? Your real one this time?”
“I think you’ve earned it,” I reply, plucking his phone out of his hand, and kiss him again.
“IHM-OH-GEN-NE!” THE BARISTA CALLS.
I duck between two Sailor Scouts to snag my and Harper’s orders and carry them to our table. My hair is pulled up into a beanie, but slivers of brilliant blood red escape and twist across my neck. People aren’t really looking at us, probably because everyone is too tired to confront us, or my disguise is finally working, or because I told the barista Imogen’s name at the cash register. Hey, we promised that we would switch back, not that I would stop using her name.
Although, it’s hard to fool the paparazza sitting in her black SUV outside the café, but a girl can dream.
“Do you think Ethan found her?” Harper asks, taking a sip of her iced latte.
“I’m sure he did,” I reply. He hasn’t texted me saying that he didn’t, and Imogen hasn’t responded to my text yet, so something is keeping them both busy. “I think they’d be cute together.”
Her curly hair is pulled up into a bun atop her head, wrapped with the same purple scarf from last night. “Long distance sucks, though.”
“Well, I guess it would, but a few hours isn’t really that far when you think about it.” I nurse my dirty chai latte, and it hits the spot right where a good eight hours of sleep is missing.
She snorts. “A few hours? Jess, Asheville and L.A. aren’t even in the same time zones.”
“Who says I’ll be in L.A. for the next few months? There could be a job that lands me here for a while. And t
hen after that, who knows?”
Harper stares at me, blinking, before she figures it out. She lives here in Atlanta. It wouldn’t be a few hours for us. She grins around the straw of her latte, and the glimmer in her golden-brown eyes is almost as intoxicating as the thought of starting something with her—something real.
A story that I get to tell.
“After all,” I add flippantly, because I can’t keep her guessing, “someone needs to save Carmindor.”
“Indeed,” she replies, trying to disguise her delight, but her knees are bumping under the table and she is not very good at hiding her excitement. “And you’re okay with playing Amara again? Happy?”
I wish interview questions were this simple. Maybe from now on they will be. I lean over the table to meet her halfway, studying her perfect lips and her perfect eyelashes and the perfect curl of her dark hair. The paparazza in the SUV focuses her fish-eye lens on us.
Are you happy? my heart asks softly.
“Yes, I am,” I reply, and I kiss her. I kiss her in front of the entire world, the first word on the first page of the rest of my life.
#AMARALIVES
By Elle Wittimer
[EXCERPT FROM ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY]
IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED that a fandom in want of a princess will save that princess. And sometimes it’s the princess who saves the fandom.
At the twenty-fifth-annual ExcelsiCon in Atlanta, Georgia, this past weekend, it was revealed that the director of Starfield, Amon Wilkins, leaked the confidential script for the sequel. This morning, the studio announced that they have fired Mr. Wilkins from the project and replaced him with N. A. Porter—the directorial name of none other than Starfield’s original princess, Natalia Ford.
Following the shake-up, Darien Freeman has confirmed that he will reprise his role as Prince Carmindor, as will Calvin Rolfe as Carmindor’s best friend, Euci. The villain in the sequel, revealed (in full costume) in an earlier panel during ExcelsiCon, will be General Sond, played by Blades of Valor actor Vance Reigns.
When asked whether the character of Princess Amara, incarnated so well by Oscar-nominated actress Jessica Stone, would make a reappearance after Ms. Stone’s heartfelt speech on a panel late Saturday evening, the cast reserved their comments.
But they did tell us that Starfield Resonance will begin filming next month. And Jessica Stone will be there.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
EVERY STORY FEELS LIKE LEARNING HOW to write all over again.
But while the plot and characters are new (mostly), I’m so thankful to have constants in my life, like my agent, Holly Root, and my editor, Blair Thornburgh, and the amazing team at Quirk Books. I’m also thankful for my backbone, the smol group of friends who, without them, Princess would never have been possible: Nicole Brinkley, Ada Starino, Kaitlyn Sage Patterson, Katherine Locke, Savannah Apperson, C. B. Lee, Eric Smith—seriously, [in a Bette Midler serenade] did you ever know that you’re my hero?
The past few years have been a little rough, and The Princess and the Fangirl is speckled with all of the things that became lights in the darkness for me—Yuri!!! On Ice and Star Wars and Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Dragon Age: Inquisition and Critical Role. But most importantly, I want to give a shout-out to The Adventure Zone and the McElroy brothers. Thanks, dudes, for giving me some ear-magic to listen to and a punch in the feels.
We find happiness in a kaleidoscope of stories: in books, in comics, in dance, in podcasts, in film and TV shows and video games. We find happiness in cosplaying as our favorite characters, and going to meet-and-greets with our favorite celebrities, and Dimension Door-ing onto the back of an Ancient Black Dragon, and finger-gunning Magic Missiles with our murder-hobo friends in a weekly session of Dungeons and Dragons. We all deserve to be happy, and love what we love, and be unironically enthusiastic about it. There is a magic in fandom that there rarely is anywhere else—where you can raise a TV show from the dead, and un-fridge a favorite character, and write fanfic that becomes canon. It is the kind of magic that brings our far corners of the world together.
So thank you, dear reader, most of all. I hope this story brought you a little happiness, a little feels, and a little love. Keep reading what makes you happy, and keep celebrating the content that makes you feel most alive, and carve out your spot in the universe, and write that coffeeshop! AU. Go on. I’ll be over on AO3 waiting.
Look to the stars. Aim.
Ignite!
Ashley Poston is the author of Geekerella (Quirk, 2017) and Heart of Iron (HarperCollins, 2018). When she’s not inventing new recipes with peanut butter, having passionate dance-offs with her cat, or geeking out all over the internet, she writes books. She lives in small-town South Carolina, where you can see the stars impossibly well.
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