Ship It(27)

“His show?” I can’t believe what she’s saying.

“We have our fanfic. We don’t need it to be canon,” she says.

I stare at her. “Of course we do.”

“Why?”

“Not for me, or for you, but for… for all the kids out there who are watching the show and didn’t even know that someone like Smokey could be gay.”

“But it’s not a kids’ show, Claire.”

“Then for teenagers, whatever! Not everyone reads fanfic, Tess. Do you know how many people this show could reach?”

“Okay, okay, fine.” She throws up her hands like I’m coming at her, but she’s the one who started this. “Do what you gotta do.”

I gape at her. I thought we were on the same side.

“Well, uh, I guess let’s hang out in Portland?” she says, and it takes me a second to compose myself and realize what she’s saying.

“Wait, you’re going to Portland?”

“Hell yeah, and Seattle, too!” she says. “I got a sleeping bag in my car, fifty bones in my pocket, and a Wizard Rock playlist for the road. Demon Heart road trip!”

“You’re… sleeping in your car?”

“Yeah, totally. I wouldn’t miss these cons for the world. But don’t tell my friends.” She laughs. “They all think I’m visiting my grandma in Phoenix.”

“Wait, you didn’t tell your friends?” I thought that was the whole point of friends, that you told them things.

“You kidding? I wanna still have a social life when I get back from this. I mean, if they knew I was a groupie for Demon Heart…” She trails off. Too unspeakable to even think about, apparently. “Why? Do your friends know where you are?”

I pause before answering. “Everyone knows.”

At least, everyone on Tumblr.

“Whoa.”

Yeah. “I’ll see ya.”

“Damn right.” She gives me a wave and starts off toward her car. I can’t believe she’s on this trip, all on her own, just because she loves the show that much. How cool is that? Tess is honestly unlike anyone else I know.

Then, over her shoulder, she shouts, “I hope you find someone to sit with!”

Well, great. I didn’t even think about that. I take a breath as I look up the steps to the driver, and then gather myself. No big deal. Just sitting on a bus with Forest and Rico. I can do this. I climb aboard.

My mom is sitting in the very front seat, reading her paperback novel, but I’m not going to sit up here with her. Behind her, a few of the seats are full with Ms. Greenhill’s entourage. Farther back, I see Jamie, working on his laptop. Near him is Caty, who I met yesterday. She’s got on a red plaid shirt with a blue plaid bow tie and it’s the most extreme look, but I’m into it. I consider sitting with her, but she’s got her bag out next to her and her laptop open, and she seems hard at work. Sitting together toward the back are Rico and Forest.

My heart zips just seeing them again. Right here. On a bus. With me.

Rico’s in the middle of telling Forest some story that I can’t hear, his hands gesturing animatedly, his eyes all lit up. Forest is laughing along, not taking his eyes off Rico. I can’t turn away from them. Their proximity, their ease with each other… My heart lurches. Do they know how they look?

“Excuse me,” someone says, coming up the stairs behind me—one of Ms. Greenhill’s assistants, I think—and I tear my gaze away from the shipper’s paradise happening in the back of the bus.

“Sorry,” I mumble, and find an open seat across the aisle from Jamie. This travel day seems as good a time as any to begin work on my mission, and also to avoid thinking about Rico and Forest snuggled up to each other in the back of the bus and how terrifying it is that one of them might try to talk to me. But Jamie’s typing away on his laptop with headphones in. I don’t want to interrupt him, because what if it’s important? What if he’s working on Demon Heart? I push the button to lean my chair back in order to get a better view of his screen. He’s composing an email. But I see a messy array of documents cluttering his desktop. What if one of those is the script for the finale? Or a rough cut? My mind boggles at all the secrets that Jamie’s sitting on, but I hold it together. I need to be calm when I talk to him.

A few minutes later, the bus driver turns on the engine and closes the doors as Jamie takes off his headphones and closes his laptop. I seize the moment.

“Hey, Jamie.”

He looks a little startled to find me sitting across the aisle from him. “Hi,” he says curtly.

“Hey, this is so cool, the way you guys get to ride on a bus all together like this,” I say, looking for some kind of casual opening.

He squints at me. “Is it?”

“Yeah, I mean, I think so.” He kind of turns away from me and I sense that I’m about to lose him, so I just dive into what I want to say. “Hey, I was wondering what you guys had in store for the Portland panel.”

“In store?” He takes his glasses off and rubs at his eyes with his palms.

I press on. “Yeah, I just think, you know. You don’t want a repeat of what happened in Boise… with me.”

“Sure, sure, sure,” he says, putting his glasses back on and finally focusing on me.