Geekerella (Starfield #1)(45)

“So he convinced you to steal it, that mystery boy of yours?” she asks, turning the page in her latest issue of Vogue.

“He didn’t convince me. I was already thinking about it. But he said something weird—that we should stop being so powerless. I wonder what that means? Does he have an evil stepmonster too? Or something else?”

She shrugs. “Why don’t you ask him?”

I scoff. “I wish.”

“Why?”

“Because he barely talks about himself. I should be lucky to have gotten even that from him. I mean, if we’re not talking about Starfield or the integrity of the solar flux capacitor, then we just…I don’t know. We talk about me. Not really him. I think he’s just very private.”

“You think…?”

I look at her hard from my spot beside the fryer and she holds her hands up in surrender. Frank woofs, wagging his tail.

“See? Frank agrees.” I give him a scratch behind the ears and look back at my phone. “Hey, um, can I ask you a favor?”

“I’m already babysitting your dog until you can find it a permanent home,” Sage intones dryly. “What more could you want from me, oh Queen?”

I grin innocently. “My lovely servant, may we perchance swing by my abode before our drudgery in your basement tonight? The twins won’t be home but I’m expecting something in the mail…”

Sage heaves a harder-than-needed sigh, fanning through her magazine. “I guess we could…” Then she looks up and asks, eyebrow quirked, “What’s coming?”

“Tickets,” I say. “To ExcelsiCon.”

“Tickets? Plural?”

A blush creeps across my cheeks. “I mean, yeah. I thought you’d want to come—and it’d be my treat. Because, you know, you’re working on the cosplay and…”

“But it’s for my portfolio. I’m already getting something out of it.”

“I know. I just—if you don’t want to come, that’s okay too.” I fumble with my words, wringing my plastic-gloved hands together. “It was silly not to ask you first—”

“Are you kidding?” When I look up, Sage is beaming. “I would love to.”

Surprised, I meet her gaze. “Really?”

“Yeah! It sounds ballin’!”

Franco barks again.

She thumbs back to him. “See, Frank thinks so too! Thanks. It’ll be awesome. I mean, we’re going to have to figure out how to get there ’cuz Mom won’t let me take the Pumpkin outta city limits—”

“Bus. 6:30 a.m. Then there’s one that comes home at 8.” I’d biked down to the Greyhound station early that morning and bought the tickets—nonrefundable. Between that and the con passes, my stash of cash was nearly wiped out.

Sage laughs. “You got this all planned out, don’t you?”

“I have to. This is like The Italian Job. Except we’re smuggling me.”

“Sounds more like Sam and Frodo sneaking into Mordor to me,” she replies. I give her a blank look. She shrugs. “What? So I bleed Hobbit.”

“Aragorn or Boromir?”

“I’m more of an Arwen fan, if you know what I mean.” Sage winks.

I smile, but then I remember what the twins said—about me and Sage. And then I remember the awful, indelible sight of Cal in my mom’s cosplay. I look down to the frying fritters.

“Something wrong?” Sage says. “Oh god, please don’t tell me you can’t be friends with a lesbian.”

“What? No!” I say quickly. “It’s just…they’re entering too. The twins.”

Her eyebrows jerk up. “I didn’t know the hell-twins were Starfield fans.”

“They aren’t.”

“Then how are they entering?”

“They, um, found a costume. A dress.” I want to be as vague as possible. I don’t want her to know it’s Mom’s cosplay. I don’t want to admit that yet. Like a bad haircut you keep trapped under a beanie: if you don’t think about it, then it never happened. “And if we don’t get this cosplay done they might actually win, and I can’t let that happen. But I can’t let the twins know I’m entering the contest either. They’ll tell my stepmom and it’ll be over.”

But Sage isn’t letting it go. “How did they just find a costume? Do you have them lying around the house or something?”

“No,” I reply quietly. “It…was in the attic. With my parents’ stuff.”

Slowly, as the words sink in, her eyes widen. She sets down her magazine, shaking her head. “Oh my god. It’s your mom’s, isn’t it?”

“I mean, I…” My throat begins to close. I don’t want to talk about Mom’s dress, the yards of night sky sewn into the hems. It hurts in a place I haven’t felt in eight years, like a sore muscle I’d forgotten existed.

“Seriously?” she says when I don’t debunk her question. “They’re using your mom’s cosplay? That’s messed up. Why don’t you do anything?”

“What can I do, Sage?” I argue. “If I go to Catherine then they’ll destroy it. And they can’t know that I’m entering the contest too, or they’ll tell Catherine and I won’t be able to go. I can’t win with them. I can never win.”