Geekerella (Starfield #1)(43)

But the moment I step into their room, the words die in my throat.

Cal can’t even turn to me as she frantically braids her hair down her shoulder, standing in front of their full-length mirror in a beautiful silk dress.

My mother’s cosplay costume.

“What do you think?” Chloe asks, smirking.

What do I think? I think my heart is breaking. I remember the way the dress looked when Mom twirled, like the galaxy was spinning, stars sparkling across the living room. Now a ghost, twirling, twirling, dancing around the living room, the heels of her starshine shoes clipping across the hardwood like a heartbeat.

Chloe waves her hand dismissively toward Cal’s feet. “I couldn’t fit into the stupid shoes—who makes glass shoes?—but Cal looks nice in them, doesn’t she?”

“Where did you…” My heart thumps in my throat, swelling, making it harder to breathe. “Where did you find this?”

“In a trunk full of a lot of trash,” Chloe replies.

Her words cut a searing pain through me, snapping me to my senses. “That’s my mom’s cosplay!” I cry. “It’s not trash!”

That must’ve been what she was looking for me to say, because her face brightens and she smiles. “So it is one of those stupid costumes from the show! I told you, Cal.”

“We just need it for a week,” Cal adds, as if that makes things better. “Then we’ll give it back.”

“But it’s not yours!” I protest.

Cal winces, but Chloe scoffs. “Like it’s yours either. I don’t see your name on it.”

“It was my mom’s!”

“Yeah, well.” Chloe shrugs. “So was the house.”

My mouth falls open as though she physically slapped me. “But…but Catherine’ll never let you go to the con.”

Chloe clicks her tongue to the roof of her mouth. “See, we might’ve lied and said we had a tennis tournament that weekend. Cal here will enter the contest and we’ll win and record ourselves meeting Darien Freeman, which’ll skyrocket our vlog to fame. We’ll be famous. And you never know,” she adds, her grin growing, “Darien might fall in love with me.”

My hands clench into fists. “I won’t let you go. I’ll tell Catherine—”

“And we’ll tell her why you’ve been coming home so late. You’ve been smoking weed or doing whatever nasty things that girl—what’s her name?—Sage does.”

“How do you—”

“James saw you going into her house today. So, what, did you just give up on men entirely?” She smirks, knowing the words dig under my skin. They do, like briars. “Because it’s pathetic that you went with her.”

“Chloe, stop it,” Cal says, looking down at the floor.

“No,” Chloe says simply. “She threatened to snitch on us, so if she snitches—we snitch. We’re going to that contest, and we’re going to win and meet Darien, even if we have to play along with this ridiculous Star Wars thing—”

“Starfield,” Cal corrects.

“Whatever. We’ll win and meet Darien and it’ll be perfect—and I won’t let a nobody like you ruin it for us.”

Then she slams the door, trapping my mom’s dress in a room of nightmares.

“Danielle!” Catherine calls from downstairs. “Dishes!”

If I tell Catherine, then I don’t know what they’ll do to Mom’s cosplay, but if I don’t…then what? Then they win. Maybe not the competition—because cosplay is more than putting on a costume—but they’ll enter. With my mom’s cosplay.

Clenching my fists, I hurry downstairs to do the dishes and put away the food, my hands shaking. If I don’t finish fixing Dad’s costume, if I don’t prove that there’s more to cosplaying than just putting on the right clothes, then they’ll win. Maybe not the competition, but they’ll win against me. And I can’t let that happen—not with Mom’s cosplay.

Not at Dad’s convention.

Not in this universe.





“DARIEN, MARK’S ON THE LINE,” GAIL says, extending her phone to me. “He says he’s been trying to call for the last few days.”

I turn the page in Batman: Year One. “Oh, is that who’s been calling me? I thought it was a telemarketer or—”

“Darien,” she says my name flatly, with the no-bull-right-now kind of inflection.

I close my book with a sigh and take the phone. “Hi there, M—”

“Who are you dating, again?” Mark interrupts.

My mouth falls open. “Um, I…” Is this a trick question? “Jess?”

“Oh good, so you remember.”

“Of course I remem—”

“Then why is TMZ reporting that you’re cheating on her?” he asks tersely.

I shoot a look at Gail, who’s sitting on the side of my bed, nibbling on her thumbnail, knees bopping up and down from nerves. She couldn’t have told. She wouldn’t have. I pull myself up in my chair.

What is it? she mouths.

We’re in my hotel room, spacious and beautiful thing that it is. But the walls are paper thin and Jess is in the room next door. We have a shoot in an hour with a star-chase scene, and I don’t want it to be awkward.