Geekerella (Starfield #1)(22)

He adjusts his cuffs. “You know the rule about fight club?”

I give him a surprised look. “So you can talk!”

He raises a single eyebrow. “I will be right outside your door if you need me. You have to be down at the lot in twenty minutes. I suggest you hurry.” Then he takes his burly frame and saunters out of the room.

I shove my head into a clean shirt and pull my arms through just as my phone blips.

There’s a message. Well, two messages.


Gail 8:36 AM

—HIS NAME IS LONNY. BE NICE.

“Lonny?” That name definitely is not fit for a three-hundred-pound machine of total annihilation, but okay. I find a clean pair of gym shorts and socks. My phone dings again, and that’s when I remember the other message.


Unknown 8:44 AM

—Okay, sorry to bother you but I thought you might know this. What do you call it when Eucinedes does that thing to the ship’s guns? Correcting? Fixing?

—Bah.

Right. The stranger. My lips twist into a half grin as I respond.


8:44 AM

—Writing fanfic this early in the morning?


Unknown 8:44 AM

—NO.

—That sounded too strong, didn’t it?


8:44 AM

—Slightly. I’ll give you a hint.

—It starts with a C.


Unknown 8:44 AM

—Crap, I knew it was a C! Let me think…..

I pull on my gym shorts and socks, stick the phone in my pocket, and run my hands through my hair while looking in the bathroom mirror. The scar on my chin is more prominent in harsh lights, a razor-white line against my brown skin.

Mark’s right. Carmindor doesn’t have a scar. Just another reason on my list of why the casting director was crazy to pick me. Crazier to think I could pick up where David Singh left off.

Another message flashes and I sort of dread it. I hate text messaging. Especially with strangers. But somehow…I don’t know…there’s something comforting about texting this person. Being completely anonymous. I don’t have to be anyone. They haven’t even asked for my name—I haven’t asked for theirs. I don’t need to make excuses for why I have a bodyguard or my weird diet or why I insist on wearing my favorite T-shirts even though they have holes in the armpits.

We’re just…we’re just talking.


Unknown 8:45 AM

—Correcting? Calculating?

—Come on, Carmindor!

—Collecting? Catering? I have NO idea

—wait

—OH MY GOD IT’S CALIBRATING.

—I am terrible.


8:46 AM

—And you call yourself a fan…


Unknown 8:46 AM

—A TERRIBLE one!

—I’ll never forgive myself for this.

—Thank you, Your Highness.

“Ten minutes, boss.” Lonny-aka-My-Doom has poked his head in from the hallway.

“What are you, a timer too?”

“I’m whatever I’m paid to be.”

“Can I pay you to disappear?”

He gives me a deadpan look.

“It was a joke,” I say, shoving the phone in my pocket and grabbing my keys. I wouldn’t say that I make my way out of my room fast, but I don’t take my time putting on my shoes, if you’re wondering. And just before I leave, I send one final message.


8:56 AM

—Just Car is fine. :)





CALIBRATING.

I’m going to kick myself for eons.

“Euci calibrates his guns, Elle,” I grouse to myself, scribbling it in my notebook. “Why the hell was I thinking with calculating?”

The high Tuesday sun bakes over our heads as I watch tourists wander down the Battery. My brick of a phone rests in the shade, struggling to play a YouTube video about how to measure and sew darts on its ancient screen. I must’ve watched this one about forty times. There’s a lot of weird sewing vocabulary I don’t understand, and the tutorial lady is using a sewing machine, which I don’t have and have no way to buy. All my savings is already going toward materials and, eventually, a bus ticket and convention pass. I’ll be lucky if I can afford a needle and thread, let alone figure out how to use it.

“Why couldn’t it be a fanfiction contest,” I grumble. Writing is easier. When I’m a screenwriter, I’ll get to draft dialogue and describe characters all I want, and someone else can handle the costumes.

But for now, I’m a one-woman shop.

I’ve decided to enter as Carmindor, stupid as that may be. Mom’s Amara dress probably fits better, but there’s something about it that keeps me at arm’s length. I always needed permission to wear that dress. Dad would pull it down from the top of the closet and make me promise to tread lightly or else the galaxy sewn into the seams would swallow me up. But really he was asking me not to ruin the costume that held the memory of Mom. To treat it cautiously. To pretend it was spun gold. Besides, you cosplay who you want to be, and I’ve wanted to be Carmindor for as long as I can remember.

The problem, of course, is that Dad’s jacket swamps me. He was a big guy, but I must’ve forgotten just how big. Memory becomes funny after a while. In my head, he’s this broad-shouldered hero, with a soft smile that tugs up one side of his mouth more than the other and eyes as deep and dark as the Atlantic Ocean. I got Mom’s brown eyes. He used to hum “Brown-Eyed Girl” as he danced her around the living room. Her head fit against his shoulder like a lock and key.