Geekerella (Starfield #1)(36)

“No one—I mean, someone made it. But it’s not really important.” I squirm, training my eyes on the grease-stain splotch on my Doc Martens. “It’s just a…it’s just dumb.”

“I thought you said that if someone likes something, then it’s not dumb.”

She has me there. Defeated, I try to grab the jacket out of her hands, but she steps back, turns it right side out again with an expert flip of the wrist, and fits the coat over her shoulders like a cape.

The blue accentuates the green of her hair, making her look strange and ethereal and awesome all at the same time. I hate how it looks good on her, oversized and all. Anything would. She wears life like Elvis wore sequins, with no apology laced into the seams. I don’t even want to think how it looks on me. Clownish. Frumpy. I’m sure I would be the laughing stock of the cosplay competition.

“It’s really well made,” she goes on. “Is this a costume for something?”

I sigh. “Yeah. Starfield? The Federation Prince?”

Sage bunches her lips together. “I didn’t know you dressed up.”

“It’s called cosplaying, and I don’t—I mean, I haven’t. But I want to.” I lower my eyes again to my shoes, and the words come out in a torrent. “There’s this cosplay competition in like two weeks at ExcelsiCon in Atlanta, and the prize is two tickets to the premiere of Starfield and some cash and…and it’s a long story but I really want to win. I need to win. I mean, I probably won’t but—but my dad said that the impossible is only impossible if you don’t even try. So I want to try.” I swallow the lump rising in my throat. “But yeah. I can’t sew.”

She cocks her head and doesn’t say anything for a long moment.

My cheeks begin to burn red. I spin around toward the Pumpkin. “Never mind. It was stupid—forget I said anything—”

“Sounds like fun.”

I stop. Turn around.

Sage, the girl who barely even looks at me while we’re working, wants to help me? Right, that’ll happen when Princess Amara comes out of the Black Nebula (i.e., never).

She takes off the coat gingerly. “You’re in luck because I need more pieces for my portfolio.”

“Really?”

The service bell chirps. A customer at the truck window. Neither of us moves to leave.

She hands the jacket back to me. The starch is almost gone, the coattails droopy. It doesn’t smell like Dad much anymore, more like me and vegan burgers and that particular musty old-coat smell. When I first got this hare-brained idea, I didn’t think about how I would wear the costume. I just thought that I could find a little of Dad in me again. Maybe whenever I pushed my arms through the sleeves, or buttoned it up, or looked myself in the mirror…but I’m built of different lengths than my dad. Different curves and edges.

“Really really,” she replies after a moment. “You don’t have to always do everything alone, you know.”

I smile, hugging the coat—as blue as the ocean, the perfect shade, the perfect color—tighter to my chest. “Thanks.”

The customer at the service window dings again.

I half-expect Sage to rescind her offer, tell me to go back to staring at people through the order window and scrolling through the forums on my phone because I’m asking the impossible. Get a costume together in a week? Compete in a professional-level competition? It’s crazy. There isn’t enough time in the world to disassemble this jacket and put it back together.

Sage juts out her hand for me to shake. “My house. This evening.”

I unravel one arm from the coat and take her hand, shaking it. “Deal.”

She squeezes it tightly, and for the first time since I met her she smiles—not a demonic grin, but a real human-person smile. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

It was. It was and it wasn’t. But I’m glad I said yes. “You made an offer I couldn’t refuse,” I say truthfully.

The customer at the front window impatiently dings the customer bell again, like she’s trying to send us a message in Morse code. “Hell-oh!” she calls.

Sage rolls her eyes, letting go of my hand. “Ugh, soccer moms. Your turn.”

I gather up my crappy sewing kit, fold up Dad’s jacket, and return to the truck where a very aggravated young mother is standing at the window, banging on the service bell.

My phone buzzes again as I hop into the truck and stash the jacket in a safe cubby. It’s from Carmindor, from this morning—I must have fallen back asleep. A sun-drenched picture comes up beside the text. I can see bits of him, curly hair, the shadows of a strong jaw, but not really his face. I don’t think he took it to show me who he was, actually, but the sunrise behind it.

This morning’s sunrise was pretty spectacular.

“Hello,” the woman calls. She’s wearing a white visor and a determined frown. A tourist. “Don’t you work here?”

“I do,” I reply, putting on my apron. “Would you like to try our pumpkin fritters today? It’s our specialty—”

She shoves a five-dollar bill at me. “A bottle of water. That’s all.”

“All right, all right,” I mutter, reaching for her water and change. Someday customers at the Pumpkin will learn to be nice. Or better yet, someday I’ll get out of this food truck entirely.