And then I push all those thoughts away, because that world is not this world.
I’m working with what I’ve got, and what I’ve got are a bunch of Codemeister fans that ship us together. And this one kid.
So I answer his question and smile.
Seven
Lainey
IF MOM KNEW I WAS OUT BY MYSELF ON THE STREETS OF TORONTO, SHE’D flip and probably never let me go along with Cody to one of these things again.
Mom has zero opinions about anything, except when it comes to me. Seriously, when I try to push her on anything—same-sex marriage, immigration, whether chocolate or vanilla is better—she says, “Well, I just don’t know, Lainey.” I don’t think she even voted in the last election, despite me constantly hounding her. And when I asked her if she regretted it, she just said, “We’ll see,” as if nothing at all had happened yet that she could base an opinion on.
She has lots to say about me, though. I need to wear padded bras, I should try a Christian dating site, I’m not allowed to go with Cody to LotSCON unless I have a female roommate because “it’s a house of boys, Lainey, and boys will be boys.” Ugh.
Like last night, though, Saturday morning in Toronto isn’t the slightest bit scary—at least, the couple of blocks I walk from the Meister Manor to the coffee shop aren’t. There are already so many people around that the city feels awake and alive, despite the fact that not-alive brick and concrete stretch up all around us. The buildings are tall but handsome, with brown and tan brick and countless windows, giving the street a historic feel. I can’t tell whether they really are old or whether they were built to look that way.
A morning away from Cody is just what I needed. I didn’t bother asking him, just texted him that I’d be there in time for his early-afternoon panel. He probably won’t be up until noon anyways.
When I make it to the coffee shop on the corner, the whole place is packed, but Legs has somehow managed to secure us a coffee table and two armchairs. I weave my way through the busy shop and slip into the armchair across from him. On the table are two coffees, a croissant, and a chocolate chip muffin. “You know, it’s pretty antiquated for a guy to presume he knows what a girl wants to order,” I tease, then feel my cheeks flush warm. I didn’t mean to imply that this is a date. It’s not a date, it’s two friends meeting up for breakfast, same as a week ago at PAX, when a bunch of us were supposed to meet for breakfast, but Team Meister all slept in and it ended up just being me and Legs. The fact that this time we planned for it to be just the two of us is irrelevant. You know, aside from the fact that, if I’m honest with myself, I do actually wish it was a date.
“These are both for me,” Legs says, picking up both coffees with a grin.
“Give me that.” I snatch one of them from him and swallow a mouthful of rich warmth. It’s perfectly sweetened, which is no surprise; we discovered at PAX that we like our coffee the same way—sugar only, and not too much of it.
When I set the coffee down, Legs is grinning at me. I narrow my eyes at him. “What?!”
“Nothing.” He takes a sip of his own coffee.
“Nothing what?!”
“You drink coffee like you’ve been in a desert for a week and it’s the first liquid that’s passed your lips since you ran out of water four days ago.”
I lean back in my chair. “That is the perfect analogy,” I say. “That’s exactly what coffee is like. Except it’s about sleep, not water. I feel like I haven’t slept in a week.” I take another sip of coffee. “Willow snores.”
Legs snort-laughs. “She doesn’t!”
“What, you think girls don’t snore?”
“No, of course—I . . .” He fiddles with the lid of his cup as he trails off, then starts up again. “I mean that you don’t look tired. You look nice.”
My face burns hot again. He means it as a joke, probably, to distract from his ‘girls don’t snore’ comment, but he said it so sincerely that it’s hard to take it that way.
“Shut up.” I look down to hide the red in my cheeks.
“Hey, so you weren’t interested in that girl gamer panel that’s on now?” Legs asks. “Seems like your type of thing.”
I didn’t even know it was on right now. I haven’t looked at the program at all. “Why, because I’m a girl and only girls are interested in hearing other girls talk?” I raise an eyebrow at him. “No, wait,” I joke, “I already called you out on one sexist comment just now. You’re probably maxed out for the day.”
If I said that to Cody, he’d probably yell at me, but Legs only laughs. “You can call me out on my stupidity anytime. In fact, please do.”
“Okay, good, because I’ve got another thing to call you out on.”
“Oh?” Legs looks nervous.
I point at the table between us. “Are you expecting me to choose between a muffin and a croissant? Because that seems like cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Of course not!” Legs says with mock seriousness as he picks up the croissant and tears it in two. Then he picks up the muffin and tries to do the same, except it’s a round mass of muffin, not a long, tearable pastry, so he mostly ends up smooshing part of it between his fingers, dropping huge crumbs and a few extremely valuable chocolate chips on the floor. “That went differently in my head,” he says, and he probably means it as a joke, but it comes out sort of sad.
Right, I’m supposed to be trying to talk to him about why a black cloud of unhappiness has been following him everywhere. I could just out and ask him, but the moment doesn’t feel right. “I’ll get a knife,” I say, hopping up.
By the time I return with a plastic knife, he’s managed to pull the muffin into two mangled halves. They sit on our plates with the croissant halves—well, one croissant half. He’s munching the other as he stares out the window, lost in thought. I set the knife down. “What are you thinking about?”
He finishes chewing his mouthful before answering. “Toronto’s a strange city.”
“I think I like it.” I pop a bit of muffin into my mouth.
“I mean, I don’t dislike it. It’s just—there’s a lake, right? Lake Ontario’s—what, a few blocks away? But you’d never know it from here.” He waves his hand toward the window, which hosts a view of wide concrete road and sidewalk and brown and gray buildings that stretch up high enough that they fill the entire window, hiding even the sky.
“I think you could see the water from the top of this building,” I say.
“Right. It’s like an arms race of water views. One building’s built with a nice view of the water, which means the next has to be taller to get its own view of the water, so then the next has to be even taller, and so on up and up and up.”
He sounds sad, like it’s a war against him directly, or maybe like it’s a metaphor for something I don’t quite understand. Once again, it’s the perfect opportunity to ask him why he’s so down, but once again, I hesitate. I don’t know why. Usually, I have no problem saying whatever’s on my mind. But I suddenly feel too aware of all the people chattering away at the tables around us. I stand, zip up my coat, and wrap my own croissant-muffin duo in a napkin. “Come on,” I say.
“Come on where?” he calls after me as I head to the door.
“To find the water they’ve taken from you,” I say, then slip out the door, leaving him to gather up his own coffee and breakfast and hurry after me.
Legs is right; the lake isn’t far away at all. Eating our breakfast as we go, we march down a few gray blocks, passing under a highway bridge and past some enormous yellow construction machines getting their weekend rest.
And then there’s the lake—gray and still, but in a different way from the still, gray buildings we passed.
The sidewalk along the water leads us to a manufactured beach built on a slab of concrete a half dozen feet above the water, with real sand and a dozen tables complete with heavy fake-wood deck chairs and bright-pink beach umbrellas scattered across the sand. “Sugar Beach,” says a sign. In th
e cold, sunless morning, the place feels more like a graveyard than a beach. Or perhaps like a beach made by someone who’s seen pictures of beaches in books but never actually been to one.
“How warm does it get here in the summer?” I ask.
Legs shrugs and sets his coffee down on one of the skeleton tables. I finished my own on the way here. “Hot, I think,” Legs says. “Just as hot as Ohio or Massachusetts, probably.” Ohio, where I’m from; Massachusetts, where Legs is from. He’s based in Boston, though he travels a lot.
“I hope I get into Boston College,” I say.
“Me too,” he says, and I feel as warm as the coffee in my stomach. We’ve talked plenty of times about the fact that I applied to Boston College—Legs knows I applied only to states with senators I like, so when I get into politics, I’ll be supporting the right kind of change—but the discussion’s never before been so weighted around the edges.
“Hey, let’s check out the water,” I say, changing the topic before I can get my hopes up about any of it. I head toward the edge of the beach, and Legs picks his coffee back up and follows me. Along the edge of the dock, a short little fence acts like it’s keeping us away from the water and the risk of falling in. The park designer must think people are idiots—which, admittedly, is mostly true.
Across the water, clumps of trees highlight an island, and industrial boats crawl past us. “Here you go, sir.” I gesture toward the lake. “Your water, as ordered.”
He smiles a half smile only.
I’ve procrastinated enough. “So, are you going to tell me what’s bringing you down?” The question comes out more abruptly than I intend, but Legs straightens with purpose, not anger.
“I suppose it would help to talk about it, if that’s okay with you.”
I want to tell him that he can talk to me about absolutely anything anytime, but instead I just say, “Of course. Talk away.”
A cold wind off the lake makes us both shiver. “Well, let’s just tear off the Band-Aid, I guess,” Legs says once the breeze dies off. “My best friend, Brian—well, ex-best friend, I guess—told me our friendship is over.”
I spit out a sympathetic swear, and Legs laughs unexpectedly. “Yeah, that’s what I’d say if I wasn’t trying to keep myself and my channel PG because of all the kids who watch it,” he says.
“So what happened?” I ask.
His face clouds over again. “I screwed up. Big-time.”
“Oh, come on, I’m sure it wasn’t that—”
“It was. We made this friend at college this year, Steve. He’s a really nice guy, the sort who’ll email you his notes from a class you missed without you even having to ask or bring you by Nyquil when you’re sick.
“But,” he adds, “he’s from down south, from Texas.”
The way he says it makes me think he means the worst parts of Texas. “Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. So he’d make these homophobic comments sometimes, not realizing that Brian’s gay. Not that he should have made them if Brian wasn’t gay. You know what I mean.”
“That’s terrible!” Anger roars up inside me. “I hope you dumped his ass.”
Legs’s jaw clenches, like he’s shutting his mouth on words he wants to say, or maybe words he’s afraid to admit. Right, he did say he screwed up. We all screw up sometimes.
“So you failed to call him out on it, huh?” I ask, taking a guess.
Legs’s jaw unclenches. He nods in confirmation, slowly and sadly. “I’m not great at confrontation.”
I have no problem with confrontation myself—obviously—but I get that it’s difficult for some people. “And Brian ended your friendship over it? I’m sorry. That sucks!”
Legs sighs with relief, like he’s glad to be past talking about his screwup and on to mourning his loss, and for a moment, I wonder if there’s part of the story he’s not telling me. Before I can ask, though, he says, “Yeah, we’ve been friends since we were seven years old. He came with me to my very first convention. Drove with me all the way across the country—even paid for half the gas, though I told him he shouldn’t. It was actually Brian who came up with my username, LumberLegs. You know the type of friend.”
I don’t, actually. I’ve never had that close of a friend. Our school is small, and most of my classmates are still living in the 1800s. Standing here with Legs, I can imagine it, though. “I’m sorry. That’s so hard.” I put my hand on his arm.
“Everything at these conventions reminds me of him. We went to a lot of cons together. I’ve been trying not to talk about it around the guys, though, because I can picture exactly what they’d say if they knew I was crying about some guy.”
“Ugh, yeah.” I can picture it, too. “Cody’s the worst sometimes. I don’t know what to do about it. But I hope you know that it’s okay to cry about anything—guy or otherwise.” I hate that little boys are told to suck it up and be a man whenever they cry.
Legs must think I mean it’s okay to be interested in anyone, guy or otherwise, because he looks me in the eye and says, “To be clear, I’m not gay. Not that there’d be anything wrong with that if I was. But I’m not. You know, just in case you were wondering or anything.” He drops his gaze back down to his feet. I want to believe the hint of red in his cheeks is from what he just said, but it could just as easily be from the chill of the wind off the lake. “I don’t know, I’m just rambling now. Are you looking forward to the rest of the convention today?”
I want to press further on why he felt it was so important that I understood that he’s not gay. Was it the same reason I wanted to make sure on the plane yesterday that he wasn’t actually thinking of me as his sister? But maybe I’m more afraid of some types of confrontation than I realize, because instead I simply say, “Yeah, I’m really looking forward to spending the rest of the day dealing with Cody’s little fanboys.”
“Fans aren’t so bad.”
“Of course they aren’t bad to you. They worship you, which probably feels fantastic.” He opens his mouth to interject, and I hold up my hand. “No, shush, don’t say anything. It’s fine. It’s okay that it feels fantastic. It’s not like you’ve built a temple in your name and are encouraging them to idolize you. And besides, you’re actually worship-able. Cody’s the one with all these fifteen-year-old ‘Codesters’ running around with his face plastered across their chests, not realizing that the person they’re worshipping is actually the devil incarnate. What kind of toxic stuff are they picking up on without realizing it? I wish I could show them all who he really is and watch them run away, screaming in fear.” I don’t actually wish that on him, of course, except that maybe then he’d actually listen.
Legs laughs, and it’s nice to hear him happy. But then he keeps grinning at me.
“Stop looking at me like that. What is it?”
“You think I’m worship-able.”
I grab the coffee from his hand. “Did I say that? I don’t think I said that. You’re imagining things. Oh, look at the time. I’ve got to be heading back to, you know, make sure the cameras are ready to go for the Meister panel and other very important stuff.” I pivot on my heels and start walking toward downtown.
“I’ll get you a shirt printed with my face on it,” Legs calls after me, then runs to catch up with me, falling into stride beside me. “Or maybe yoga pants with my face plastered across the thigh?”
“You can have your face on my thigh anytime” is what I would say if I was in some alternate universe where I’m a braver, flirtier version of myself instead of this universe’s supremely awkward self. “Ha!” is what I actually say.
We walk the rest of the way to the convention center together, brainstorming all the things Legs should start selling on his site with his face plastered across them.
“Oh, hand towels!” I say as we enter the hotel connected to the convention center. We’ve already considered pretty much every type of clothing that exists, pot holders, comforters, pillows, mouse pads, and iPhone cases. “People can wipe off their dam
p hands on your rugged skin.”
“That sounds very wet.”
We wind our way through the hotel lobby to the convention center door. “I don’t think you’d actually feel the water on your face,” I say. “They’re not magic towels.”
“If they’re not magic, what even is the point?” Legs pushes the door open for both of us, and we step into the convention center. It feels more chaotic than last night, somehow, even though there probably aren’t as many people here yet as there were then. Legs and I both step to the side to take it in.
We’re in a wide hallway, wide enough that there are short faux-leather chairs clustered into seating areas along the right wall behind a row of enormous cream pillars, and there’s still plenty of room for the growing crowd of Legends of the Stone enthusiasts to walk through or mill about or stare up at the huge posters on the wall—including one big one of my brother. I don’t know how I missed seeing that last night. Ick. No one needs to see Cody’s face blown up as big as the sun.
The thing I didn’t realize about geek conventions before is that some of the stereotypes about geeks are actually true. I mean, not across the board, but amid the brilliant cosplay and geek chic, there are the clusters of guys in sweatpants and oversize shirts, with questionable hygiene. Part of me wants to yell at them for giving nerds a bad name, but another part of me wishes I could wear sweatpants and an oversize shirt and not care if people thought I looked sloppy.
Except, don’t actually be sloppy about the hygiene part, folks. Can we all agree right here right now that good hygiene is a vital cornerstone of the society we live in?
The day’s just getting going, but there’s already a group of these guys hanging out at one of the coffee tables playing cards. In the circle of chairs next to them is what looks like a whole extended family, with two young kids, parents, grandparents, and probably an aunt—all of them holding LotSCON tote bags emblazoned with the Legends of the Stone logo of a red shield, yellow lettering, and a bright-cyan diamond.
Fan the Fame Page 7
