Geekerella (Starfield #1)(55)

My heart sinks. “Oh. Yeah.”

“What’s wrong? You just went from exuberant to depressed in the time it takes for Boromir to die in the first movie.”

“Spoiler!”

“Oh you’ve seen it. Aren’t you excited?”

“I am. It’s not that.” I take off the crown. So much detail went into it. All of the small ridges, the handmade stars.

“Well? I’m not a mind-reader,” Sage adds impatiently.

“It’s just…” I can’t meet her gaze. “I’ve never really had a friend before. I mean, I have. Online. But not in person. Not in a long time, at least. So…we’ll be friends after this, right? After the con?”

She puts her hands on her hips and tilts her head. “Now what kind of question is that? Of course we will.”

I finally look at her and drink up the only friend I’ve ever really had. Her chlorine-green hair, her piercings, the way she stands, shoulders back, feet apart, how she can walk into every room and instantly be the coolest person in it. “Thank you.”

“The costume was nothing. It was pretty easy, really—”

I stretch out my arms and wrap them around her because she’s just too badass to start a hug first. But she returns it. She returns it like the rib-crushing fiend she is.

—

EVEN THOUGH THE COSTUME’S DONE, WE decide to finish Starfield. I think that maybe it won’t be that bad watching it with someone else. Spoiler: it totally still is. Sage dabs at her eyes as the final credits roll and passes the tissue box to me. I tell her my theory, that the Black Nebula doesn’t kill Princess Amara, but sends her away. Like the Time Dragon does to Elphaba in Wicked.

“That’s a shitty consolation prize,” Sage moans.

My cell phone buzzes. I dig it out of my pocket and swipe my thumb over the lock screen instinctively; I was wondering when he’d text me tonight.

“The boy again?” she asks, dabbing at her mascara.

“Yeah, the boy.”

She sniffs and shakes off her tears, then turns to me with an eager look. “So what’s the deal with him? How did you meet? You just tricked me to the worst snot-fest in the history of me. I demand this as repayment.”

She has a point. I fiddle with my phone. “It started out as a wrong number, actually. Like you know those Buzzfeed articles where people text the wrong number while going into labor and then these randos show up with diapers and baby formula and they become besties?”

“No, but I’ll take your word that it happened.”

“Yeah, so, it’s kind of like that. He just texted the wrong number—I think he was looking for my dad because I inherited his phone. But then we just…I don’t know, we just kept talking and—”

“So you legit don’t know him,” she interrupts.

“I do know him.”

“Have you talked, though?”

I hold up my brick phone. “How do you think we’re communicating? Smoke signals?”

She waves away my sarcasm. “No, I mean actually talked. Like,” she holds her hand up like a phone, “here’s my number, call me maybe talked.”

I squirm. “Not exactly.”

Sage rolls her eyes. “Elle! He could be a sixty-year-old with a collection of American Girl Dolls in his basement for all you know.”

“He isn’t!” I cry. “He’s our age. And besides, I like texting him. It feels more, I don’t know, You’ve Got Mail-y.”

Sage stares at me quizzically, like I’m a Nox who’s just pledged allegiance to the Federation. “But haven’t you, like, wondered?”

I can’t meet her gaze because the truth is, I have wondered. What he sounds like, how he sounds, whether his words are laced with an accent or a lisp, deep or light or reedy or full.

I shrug. “He’s never given me any clues that he wants to talk. What if he doesn’t feel comfortable talking? Or he’s nervous about having a stutter or something?”

“What if he’s waiting for you to call first?” she argues.

“Maybe. But I mean…I don’t even know his real name.”

She sits up. Squints. Scrutinizes me. I’m about to add that I at least know he isn’t bald when she grabs my phone and in two quick steps reaches the other side of the room.

“Hey, give it back!”

She puts up a finger and lifts the phone to her ear. “Give me a sec.”

Panic surges in my chest. “What are you doing?”

“Calling him—”

“STOP!”

I move so fast I don’t even realize that I’m yanking the phone out of her hand until I’ve already done it. We both hear the ringing stop. Carmindor answers the phone.

“Hello?”

It’s soft. Deep. Male.

I slam END so fast I think I fracture my thumb. I shove my phone into my pocket so deep she’ll never be able to get it. I glare at her. “Happy now?”

Sage falls back on her beanbag, laughing. “Oh my god, you were ninja fast!”

“Not funny!”

“You know I had to.” She sits up on her elbows and tilts her head. “He sounds nice, Elle.”

I sit down beside her. “Yeah?”