Fan the Fame

by Anna Priemaza

  I move toward the stairs, looking back just in time to see Cody wink at Willow. The same way he winked at Janessa when he picked me up at school a few months ago. I was right. He wants in Shadow’s leggings. Gross.

  When I glance back at Willow, her cheeks are flushed pink and her eyes are twinkling like something exciting just happened. Double gross.

  “He’s a misogynistic jerk who’s not worth your time,” I want to tell her, but I doubt she’ll believe me.

  “Don’t be silly. He wouldn’t be so popular if that was the case,” she’d probably say. Which is too bad, because I was actually starting to like her, but I don’t have time for people who live their lives with blinders on. I dart up the stairs ahead of her, leaving her to trail after me. Or not. I couldn’t care less which.

  Up in the bedroom, I collapse onto my bed and pull out my phone. Thinking of Janessa has reminded me that I never responded to her earlier question. I pull up my private chat with her. There’s her original reply of No, he didn’t. Are people saying he did? followed by another message from her that I hadn’t noticed until now:

  Why did you ask?

  It’s way too complicated to explain to her, so I simply type:

  No reason. Just making sure.

  Then it occurs to me to ask:

  You okay, by the way?

  It’s got to suck to have the school calling her a slut. I hope she owns it and goes the whole scarlet-letter route.

  Her response comes right away:

  I’m fine. I can take it.

  If she means that as a Hamilton reference, she’s cooler than I realized. Stupid Cody.

  I’m about to slip my phone away when Willow backs into the room, pulling her suitcase behind her. She must be a ninja to have gotten that thing up the stairs without making any noise.

  She releases the suitcase and pulls out her own phone. “This is so great,” she says, holding up her phone to snap a picture of the room. “Do you mind if you’re in the picture I post?”

  “I’d really rather I wasn’t,” I snap.

  “Okay, no problem,” she says pleasantly, then adjusts her angle so I’m not in the oh-so-exciting shot of our small bedroom with two single beds, a closet, and that’s pretty much it.

  I roll my eyes. This is the annoying thing—well, one of the many annoying things—about traveling with content creators; everything you do could end up on the internet. All week long, the guys have been posting public pictures and vlogs of everything we’ve been doing.

  Which is when it occurs to me: judging by the way Cody and Willow were ogling each other, there will probably be video up of them sucking face by tomorrow. Triple gross.

  I need to warn Janessa. I barely know her, but that doesn’t matter; women should support other women. I open my chat with her again and type a new message.

  By the way, do yourself a favor and stay away from Cody’s social media, okay? Nothing to worry about. Just a tip.

  And with that good deed done, I grab my pajamas out of my suitcase to change, head into our en suite bathroom, and firmly lock the door between Willow and me.

  Five

  SamTheBrave

  WHEN I WAKE SATURDAY MORNING, THE GIDDY FEELING FROM MY STREAM THE night before is replaced with drool caked onto my cheek, a newly sprouted patch of achy pimples—not on my face, but on my butt of all places—and my sheets turned into a drastically lopsided tent.

  I am going to LotSCON today.

  I am going to LotSCON.

  I repeat it to myself to try to amp myself up, but I can’t shake the desire to lie here forever and wait for my brain to transcend and leave my stupid body behind. The fact is that I am going to LotSCON by myself, to wander around all by my stupid lonesome, because that’s what I do when I have to exist in the real world, where people think of me as a thing to shove into lockers instead of as a human.

  My phone buzzes with a notification, and I roll over and stare at it on my side table. Reaching for it feels like a gargantuan task, but it could be Jones or Dereck, or a YouTube comment, or another streamer wanting to do a co-op—and the thought of any of those is enough to propel my arm out to snatch it.

  It’s a YouTube comment. There are five of them, actually—four on the streaming highlights video I stayed up way too late editing, and one on an older video.

  One of the comments, of course, is “FIRST!!1!” I used to roll my eyes at those comments until Jones shot down my whining one day and said, “Dude, I think the sign of having made it as a YouTuber is if people excitedly try to be the first to comment on your videos.”

  Which is bogus, because I definitely haven’t “made it” as a YouTuber, but she’s right that those “first!” comments are a good thing. Gone are the days when I’d stream or post videos and get only crickets and maybe ten views, which I’m pretty sure was just Mom playing my video on repeat. After a year of streaming regularly, polishing my editing skills, connecting with other streamers, building up my social media, playing niche games regularly to stand out in a saturated market, and following every other bit of advice I can find online, at least I finally get comments now. And views. And people in chat. But I’m doing everything I can think to do, and I’m still a nobody. Which is why I need Code.

  I glance at the “FIRST!!1!” comment again. It’s from MortalWombat, who’s claimed first on other videos, I’m pretty sure. I scan through the comments on my other videos. On the last one, the “First!!!” is from Chickennuggetzzz, but the one before that is from MortalWombat. I used to assume the “first!” comments were from randos trolling the internet, but I’ve started to notice regulars. Which gives me an idea.

  I scroll through my last fifteen or so videos and count them up, then return to MortalWombat’s latest comment and type out my reply:

  MortalWombat, you’re currently winning the “First Comment” competition.

  MortalWombat: 7

  asfdeLOL: 5

  Chickennuggetzzz: 2

  Who will be victorious?

  I giggle to myself in a way that the guys at school would definitely make fun of me for, then return to the other comments. A “nice vid” and a “lololol” and then an “OMG THIS IS AMAZING I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!”

  From a girl. A hot one, with red hair and bright-green eyes.

  Instead of going to LotSCON, maybe I should stay in bed all day and let my mind go places that turn my sheets back into a tent.

  But then the sound of Mom’s clomping around the kitchen just down the hall reaches me and the fear that she might poke her head in and check on me is enough to force me out of bed and into the shower to clear away the evidence of my body’s constant desire to betray me. My dick should never play poker.

  In the shower, I come up with a million different brilliant ways I could respond to the girl’s comment, but when I finally get out, instead of picking up my phone, I wipe away the steam from the mirror and just stand there and stare at myself. I’ve been told in health classes over the years how hair would fill in down there and how dealing with both hair and pimples would be a new fun game for my face. What no one ever mentioned was that those same pimples can pilgrimage their way down your neck and back to settle on your big mound of a butt. Or how hair can grow not just on the normal places of your face and your chest and around your junk, but also in inconsistent patches on your shoulders and butt and toes—like you’re a tree battling an invasion of toxic moss.

  Some guys wax, don’t they? In real life, I mean, not just the movies. The movies make it look like torture. I guess that’s one good thing about probably being a virgin until I’m eleventy-one: no one’s going to care if I’m a sasquatch. No one but me.

  I sigh. I wish there was a virtual LotSCON that I could show up to in my LotS skin. It’d be easy to walk up to Code as a shadowlord, wings spread wide, sword glinting in the sunlight. Instead, I’ve got to do it in this crappy body.

  I turn backward and peer over my shoulder to try to check out my shiny new butt pimples in the mirror, which
is a terrible idea, because the next thing I know, it’s ten minutes later, and there’s skin and blood under my fingernails, and the two pimples on my butt, a scab on my back, and a pimple right smack-dab in the middle of my forehead have all been reduced to bloody holes.

  I hate my skin. I hate my hairy butt. I hate my stupid compulsions to tear off any bump on my body—compulsions that are apparently like OCD, but not enough like OCD that OCD medication will make them go away. If I had a prescription instead of just prickly fidget balls and cognitive behavioral therapy, maybe Opa would stop calling it my “disgusting habit” and telling me to “get over it.”

  In the morning after I shower is always the worst time for my picking. Knowing that should make it easier to control, but instead it makes me feel like a complete failure, because no matter what I do, I can’t ever seem to stop. I give up on trying to stop the bleeding, ignore my phone, which blinks with a new message, and trudge into my room to get dressed. I ignore the clothes I set out for myself last night and instead throw on black sweatpants and a long-sleeved black shirt, because black hides the bleeding and long sleeves hide the scarring. And besides, it’s comfortable.

  In the kitchen, Mom stares at me like she wants to say something.

  “What?” I snap.

  “Nothing. Eat your breakfast first.” She hands me a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, peanut butter French toast, and an orange cut into thin, fancy slices like at a restaurant. The smell alone is almost enough to distract me from the call of the scab on my wrist, and the entire time I’m eating, I don’t pick at it once. When I finish, I check my phone, and there’s another new comment on my video: “Hahaha, this is hilarious! Nicely done.”

  I respond with a “thanks, man!” then scroll back to the other comments and reply with a smiley face, another thank-you, and on the comment from the girl, a simple *blushes*.

  By the time I’m done, I feel a whole lot lighter, so when Mom says, “Now go get changed—you look like an emo couch potato,” I listen.

  I throw on jeans and the T-shirt I bought specifically for this weekend: a light-blue shirt that says “CODESTER” (what Code calls his fans) in electric green, with Code’s logo underneath. It’s one of about seven million pieces of merchandise on his site. Then I wrap Band-Aids around my two main picking fingers and slip a tiny orange fidget ball into my jeans pocket, and Mom and I head out.

  An hour and a half later, we’re pulling into a parking lot full of people with LotS shirts and LotS swords and full LotS cosplay who are all exiting their cars and heading toward the convention center doors, like they’re all pulled in by some homing beacon.

  LotS lovers. Gamers. Geeks.

  The giddy thrill I felt last night comes thrumming back. This is my place. These are my people.

  A girl with mutant-rabbit ears and a short white skirt passes us, and the last of the self-loathing that was keeping me in bed this morning completely disappears.

  “Okay, Mom. Thanks, Mom. See you later, Mom.”

  “Wait a minute, Sammy boy,” she says, clearly not understanding the gravitational pull of the homing beacon. I sigh as she makes me go through all the normal mom checks.

  Do I have my phone, debit card, and some cash? Check.

  Do I remember what time to meet her back at the car? Yes.

  Have I jotted down anywhere what section—B7—of the parking lot our car is in? Um, no, but—yes, now it’s in my phone, see?

  Then she releases me, and the homing beacon pulls me in—though I’ve only gone a few steps when I turn back. “Thanks, Mom. You’re the best.”

  “You can do it, Sammy boy,” Mom says. “Just be yourself.”

  And at this moment, surrounded by fellow Legends of the Stone fans, gamers, and nerds, that feels like enough.

  My plan is to rush through registration so I can get to the vendors hall and find the perfect conversation starter for Code to autograph, but the moment I step inside the convention center, I halt, letting my jaw drop. Beyond the registration area, just before the escalators, is a shadowdragon the size of my entire bedroom. Its eyes glitter silver as it glares over the crowd, and its black skin gapes open at its chest to reveal the bare white bones inside. Chills run through me.

  I never dreamed I’d get to go to a LotSCON; since Legends of the Stone chooses a different international location each year—last year’s was Finland—and considering how many countries there are in the world, the odds of them choosing Canada were low. But then they did, and here I am.

  I stare up at the shimmering shadowdragon for a moment longer, then realize I’m blocking the flow of people coming in the door. I hurry out of the way, toward the nearby registration tables as planned, and soon I’m exchanging my printed ticket for a wristband, program, and Legends of the Stone tote bag emblazoned with the LotS logo—a red shield, Legends of the Stone in yellow block lettering, and a diamond.

  Then it’s off to the vendors hall—except before I can go two feet, a grinning Asian guy taps me on the shoulder and asks me if I’ll snap a picture of him and his friends below the shadowdragon’s menacing glare. The group of five all squishes together. Two of them are cosplaying as an elf archer and some kind of dwarf, while the other three are in various nerdy shirts. They all smile cheerfully as I move back as far as I can without knocking anything over and take the shot.

  Of course, I have to ask the guy to return the favor. I hand him my phone and hurry to position myself right by the dragon’s reaching claw before someone else nabs the spot. Then I freeze my body into a run and my face into a scream, and the elf archer girl laughs, and for a moment, I wonder if this convention is so magical that I might have a chance with her. But by the time the guy hands my phone back, all four of his friends—including the girl—are almost at the top of the escalator that leads to the vendors hall, having already forgotten about me and my hilarious pantomime.

  Which is fine. I have things to see and places to go. My fingers slip to the re-formed scab above my wrist, but the Band-Aids snap me back to attention, and I stop myself and head past the shadowdragon and up the escalator into the vendors hall, which takes up the entire top floor of the convention center.

  As soon as I step off the escalator, I’m surrounded by booths of nerd gear, Noar the Boar shirts, fan art, handmade purses and baby clothes, and knit dragon hats. The booth two down looks like it’s selling handcrafted chain mail and other armor. The hall isn’t too busy yet, though the pathways between the booths still flow with people in nerdy shirts and cosplay. My people.

  I try to keep one eye out for Code or any of Team Meister, though I’m not expecting them to be here. Seeing them here would be an added bonus—one extra opportunity—but I’ve got certain chances later today: the Team Meister panel after lunch, and the signing late this afternoon.

  Until then, I’ve got my morning planned. The vendors hall now, then the girl gamer panel, followed by the mutant rabbit versus wereboars debate.

  When I mentioned the girl gamer panel, Dereck called it hot (and then Jones reamed him out for a long time), but my main reason for going is ShadowWillow. I started watching her channel after she and Code completely destroyed in the PvP tournament a couple of months ago. And yeah, she’s hot, and I’m not going to pretend that purple hair hasn’t made it into my dreams a couple of times, but mostly I watch her channel because she’s the most badass sharpshooter I’ve ever seen.

  I mean, in that tournament, she single-handedly wiped out about half the opposition, and her channel’s full of videos of her completely whooping butts at CS: GO or Rainbow Six.

  There’s this one video I’ve watched approximately a dozen times where her entire team’s wiped out immediately, and she’s the last one standing, so the other team’s all cocky—until she snipes one of them from a rooftop, then drops in through a hole in the ceiling and takes out the other four in this stunning bam-bam-bam-bam whirlwind of a circle. It blows my mind. I’m stoked to see her in person, because I’m not sure I believe she’s not actual
ly a robot.

  At a nearby stall, I pick up a magnet that says, “Ask me about my kill:death ratio,” then realize I’m thinking of ShadowWillow, not Codemeister. Code’s known for his hilarity, not for his gaming prowess; in that tournament, Shadow totally carried him. Fortunately for me, the entertainment factor is what people care about most.

  I glance around the stall, which is mostly full of factory-manufactured knickknacks that fifty different people here could buy and ask Code to sign. Not a good way to stand out. I put down the magnet and move back into the aisle.

  “Nice shirt!” I say to a guy passing by whose black shirt features a cartoon of three LotS shadowwolves howling at the moon.

  “Thanks, man!” he says with a grin before moving farther down the aisle with his girlfriend.

  I’ve gotten distracted again, but it doesn’t matter, I realize. I’ve got plenty of time, and I know I’ll find something epic. Here, the universe is on my side. Here, the universe is mine.

  Sure enough, in a booth of artisan-crafted nerd stuff less than fifteen minutes later, I find it: a LotS diamond, about the size of my fist, made of some sort of foamy clay. It’s the “stone” in Legends of the Stone that you never actually see in game, only in the logo; Code did a whole ridiculous video series searching for it. The perfect thing for him to sign.

  “I’m pretty sure I just beat Legends of the Stone by finding this,” I say to the girl running the booth as I hand over my money, and she actually laughs.

  This is my place. These are my people.

  It’s going to be a good day.

  Six

  ShadowWillow

  CODE ISN’T IN THE KITCHEN WHEN I WANDER DOWNSTAIRS, WHICH IS DISAPPOINTING. After that wink from last night, hope tingles over every inch of my skin; maybe this will all be even easier than I thought. Maybe great things are ahead, and for once, I won’t have to work so hard for them.

  This morning, though, the whole place is empty except for Zzzzzmeister, who’s staring into the toaster like it’s an entrance to a rift, his reddish-brown hair pointing straight up in fear of the shadowdragon within. He’s all arms and legs, as if on his latest birthday, his family each grabbed a limb and stretched and stretched until he aged up a year or ten. At eighteen or so, he’s the youngest member of Team Meister, though in his wrinkly shirt and shorts, he looks like he’s about twelve.