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  “Yes indeed,” he tells me. I nod and then start the trek past the line that’s winding its way around the building, my heartbeat pounding louder with every person we pass. What if we camp out here all night . . . and still miss out on getting a wristband?

  Chapter 5

  Nerdlam

  “A HUNDRED AND TWO,” CASEY says as he comes back to join me at the square foot of brick wall that will be our companion for the night. He just went ahead and counted how many people are in front of us on line.

  I breathe a sigh of relief. “I’m sure the hall holds at least two hundred and fifty.”

  “Definitely,” Casey agrees.

  I’ve taken out my sleeping bag, but it’s still folded up and currently acting as a cushion beneath me. Casey takes his out of his backpack and places it next to me, making himself as comfortable as possible on the concrete. It’s cold here on the edge of Manhattan, where a wind that holds promises of a New York winter is blowing off the Hudson River. I’ve already put my extra sweatshirt on. Casey, who rarely gets cold himself, probably due to the insulating dark body hair that covers about 95 percent of his body, is still in a T-shirt.

  He takes out a deck of cards and I’m surprised to see that they’re regular playing cards, instead of his usual Magic deck. “Poker?” he asks.

  I eye him warily. “Really?”

  “I’m trying to broaden our horizons. See how the other half lives,” he responds as he shuffles.

  I shrug my assent and he deals. A few minutes in, I’ve flipped over a queen of spades in the river and I have to point out, “It’s kind of boring without some epic backstory for her, isn’t it?”

  Casey squints at the card. “Maybe she’s really a sorceress disguised as a queen?”

  I look at her pointy staff and complicated cloak. “No disguise. Her subjects know she’s a sorceress.” I consider her again. “What they don’t know is that the king and jack of spades are merely her puppets, created by her to give the illusion of a monarchy instead of a totalitarian state.”

  “Not bad,” Casey says as he ups the ante by throwing in a couple more quarters.

  We each win one hand but quickly get bored with the straightforward game, moving on to a diversion that’s much more our speed.

  “Who would win in a fight,” I start out, “a polar bear or a shark?”

  “What’s the playing field? Are they on land?” Casey responds, munching on a banana as his midnight snack.

  “Well, no, the shark can’t be on land.”

  “And the polar bear can’t be underwater for that long.”

  “But he can be swimming. So they’re both in the water.”

  Casey thinks for a second. “Polar bear. He has the sheer mass.”

  “Ah!” I retort. “But the shark can attack from underneath and move much quicker.”

  “Well, that’s why I asked if they were on land! What if the polar bear was on an ice cap and the shark was circling it? Then the bear would have the upper ground and be able to swat at the shark with his massive paws.”

  “Maybe,” I concede. “Until the shark rammed the ice cap, causing the bear to fall in the water. Bear is discombobulated, shark takes advantage. The end.”

  “Dude, how much force would it take for a shark to ram his face into an ice cap and cause a polar bear to fall off? He’d break his jaw first!” Casey finishes his banana, gets up, and goes to the street corner to dispose of the peel in a trash can.

  “I got one!” he says as soon as he returns. “Who would win in a fight: Sean Bean as Boromir or Sean Bean as Ned Stark?”

  “You mean which Sean Bean would die first and who would bite it second?” I retort, before giving it some thought. “Boromir was a noble man who fought many wars.”

  “As was Ned Stark,” Casey points out as he unfolds his sleeping bag. Setting his backpack at one end, he stretches out, using his pack as a pillow.

  “But he’s a captain-general, commanding an entire army.”

  “I’m talking mano a mano here.”

  “Fine. He still has more combat experience. Day in and day out, he’s thinking of battle strategy.”

  “Ned has a Valyrian steel sword.”

  “Ice?” I ask. “Come on. That’s ceremonial. No way he would be using that in battle.”

  “And what if the ring is nearby. Can Boromir resist that?”

  “Nuh-uh,” I counter. “If it’s mano a mano, there’s no one else around. Your rules.”

  “I still think you’re underestimating Ned.”

  I think about this for a second. “Maybe in a world of two Sean Beans, they both die at the exact same moment. Maybe it’s like crossing the streams.”

  “Hmph,” Casey says. “Maybe. Doubtless, it would be well matched.”

  “Indeed,” I concede. I unfold my sleeping bag too, following Casey’s lead by putting my backpack under my head. It’s probably a good idea to keep our stuff as close to us as possible. A queue of Comic Con supernerds would probably be an easy mark for an enterprising pickpocket.

  We play the game for a little while longer, debating the tenth Doctor vs. the eleventh Doctor, Kirk vs. Picard, and Dumbledore vs. Gandalf. Eventually, Casey drifts off to sleep and I’m left alone with my thoughts, which inevitably land right on Roxana. I chose Dumbledore over Gandalf for sentimental reasons because the two of us bonded over the Harry Potter books first of all.

  Dad and I lasted six months in our old house after Mom died. I think that was about all he could take of seeing the places where she used to cook, and laugh, and live—places that were then tainted with memories of her napping, and sleeping, and dying. He thought moving was the only thing to do, but I was terrified of going to a place that had never held her in it, worried that I would stop being able to picture her if we didn’t have the same walls and floors as background. Unfortunately, there’s only so much resistance an eight-year-old can possibly put up. Before I knew it, we were unpacking in a strange, big house that was miles away from Casey. We wouldn’t even be going to the same elementary school anymore.

  As I helped bring in box after box across our back patio, I saw a pair of dark eyes staring at me through the back fence. I didn’t think anything of it until the owner of the dark eyes spoke to me.

  “Which house do you think you’d be sorted into?” she asked, without introduction or preamble. The fence now came up to her chin, so she must have procured a stool to stand on. She held a hardcover copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in her hand, and she smiled at me. It was probably the first time in months that someone had smiled at me without then telling me how sorry they were for me, either with their words or with their eyes.

  “I’ve only read the first one,” I admitted. “I don’t know if I’m qualified to guess.” I didn’t tell her why I’d only read the first one. That Mom and I started reading them together right before her diagnosis and by the time we got to the end of Sorcerer’s Stone, she was too sick to keep going. That I’d stopped myself from reading on without her, like some sort of bargaining chip with a literary god. Thinking if only we still had the rest of the series to read together, she couldn’t die. That my mom, the story lover, couldn’t leave without us finding out what happened.

  “I’m not allowed to read past three yet,” the girl continued. “But I think you know enough to pick your house after the first one, don’t you?”

  I stared at her. Her long, dark hair was flying all around the fence posts like Jolly Roger flags. “Ravenclaw,” I finally said. “I think that’s where I would be.”

  She broke out into a huge grin. “Me too! See, everybody always says Gryffindor just because that’s the one Harry is in, but they don’t pay attention to the qualifications. I’m Roxana, by the way.”

  “Graham,” I said, only then realizing that it was kind of weird to be having a conversation with a girl my own age. I couldn’t remember ever having one that long before.

  “Do you want to read the books together? That way you can get
caught up to where I am, at least.”

  “Okay,” I said, and was immediately surprised at my own lack of hesitation. I should have been worried about how this would feel, about whether I would get sad thinking about my mom.

  But before I had a chance to reconsider, Roxana spoke. “Be right over,” she said. “Oh, if that’s okay?” She looked worried for a second. “My mom says I need to learn how to ask permission better.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. With a swish of her long hair, Roxana left the fence and headed through her yard and inside her house. About a minute later I heard a knock at my own front door.

  And then everything happened just like she said. We read the books together. We read many books together, mostly fantasy series. We grew up in each other’s yards, in each other’s lives. And to this day, I don’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t been there when my dad suddenly announced he was remarrying and then the McCulloughs moved in with us. It was a big change for a ten-year-old boy with a widowed parent, but I took it relatively in stride. Roxy made it easy to.

  She makes everything feel easy. Everything except this new, scary feeling that has settled into me over the past few months. Suddenly I want more. I want to touch her, to feel connected to her by something more than friendship. I want to feel her lips with mine. I’ve never even had a real kiss before, one that wasn’t on a nursery school playground anyway, and there’s only one girl I can imagine having a meaningful one with: my writing partner and my best friend.

  I fall asleep thinking of her and at 7:30 a.m., when my watch goes off, I wake up remembering I just dreamt about her.

  Casey is up too, and he goes to scare us up a bagel from a nearby food cart. I stand and stretch, my back stiff and sore. I reach around and rub my own shoulder blades as I look at the people around us.

  The line stretches far, far back behind us now. I can’t even see the end. Despite the number of people, it’s pretty quiet on the street. All I hear is the flat monotone of some guy who’s saying, “Zinc is considerably overrated in my opinion, though. The series totally drops off after Issue Thirteen.”

  I cast an annoyed look at the line and glimpse the culprit: some hulking guy in his thirties with mirrored sunglasses and a faded yellow trucker hat with Papa Smurf on it. He’s now loudly going off about how the subplot with Althena’s ex-lover who remains on her home planet—basically the antagonist of the series—is totally unnecessary. He is completely and utterly wrong, obviously. Casey comes back with a sesame bagel and a raised eyebrow when he hears the tail end of this rant.

  “Dude, I know,” I acknowledge.

  But a few more poorly constructed arguments later and even that guy seems to have run out of things to say. Maybe it’s just the early hour, but the near silence that settles in is heavy with tension, like we’re all waiting for a starting gun. Casey and I both eat without saying much.

  We roll up our sleeping bags and pack up our backpacks and then we wait, shifting from one foot to the other. I think about the costume in my bag, and I’m itching to get inside and put it on. So far, I haven’t seen anyone on this line with my version of Althena.

  “Hi, guys!”

  It’s Roxana and Felicia. I grin and let out a sigh of relief I didn’t know I was holding.

  “You made it!” I say, glancing at my watch. It’s eight thirty in the morning. “No suspicion from the Afsaris?” I ask Roxana.

  “In the clear, so far,” Roxana says. “How was your night?”

  “Cold and hard,” Casey responds.

  “Nah, it wasn’t too bad,” I immediately say when I see Roxy’s eyes go big with concern.

  “Hey, no cutting in line!” a gruff voice interrupts. We turn around to see some skinny middle-aged guy glaring at Roxana and Felicia. Felicia flashes him her best megawatt smile.

  “We’re not cutting,” she says sweetly. “We’re just hanging out with them until you guys get moving.”

  The guy continues to scowl. “Hang out with them once the floor opens. We’ve all been sleeping out here all night and you can’t just barge in now.”

  “Right. Like I said . . . ,” Felicia starts again stubbornly, but Roxana gently touches her arm and mutters something about Felicia not wanting to mess with early-morning nerditude.

  Louder, Roxana says, “Never mind. We’ll go stand on the entrance line and meet you guys inside, okay? Right by the front doors.”

  I nod. “Hopefully it won’t take too long to get the wristbands.”

  “We’ll wait,” Roxana says, before she grabs Felicia’s wrist and firmly leads her away to a different line around the other side of the building. Felicia looked just about ready to continue her war of words with our grumpy neighbor.

  A few minutes later, we can hear a faint voice shouting instructions from the front of the line. We strain to hear it, and I’m standing on my tiptoes, as if suddenly being an inch taller than six feet will allow me to see over the head of 102 people.

  Everyone directly ahead of and behind me is muttering a variation of “What? What did he say?” People start to move, and we’re all looking ahead, hoping the instructions will trickle down from our neighbors.

  “Ah, our badges,” Casey finally says when he catches a few people ahead of us putting their laminated Comic Con tickets over their heads.

  I nod and kneel down to open my backpack. And in that one moment, everything changes.

  I hear a big glass door creaking open; I feel the pounding of hundreds of feet around me. It’s like that imaginary starting gun has gone off. Only, by the time I look up, I’ve missed it. I stand there like an idiot, my mouth agape as people from all around me rush to the doors.

  “Oh my God,” Casey says. We grab our backpacks and run too, but we’re clearly a second too late on the uptake.

  From behind a sea of people, I can just catch a glimpse of a bewildered NYCC employee standing at the door, shouting something that can’t be heard. People are squeezing past him—including, I can’t help but notice, Papa Smurf—and the employee turns around and calls after them, but he clearly can’t leave his spot to chase them because of the crowd jostling for entrance in front of him. Not that he’s much of a deterrent.

  In a few moments, some other guys in teal staff T-shirts have come out and are trying to herd the crowd of people back into a line.

  “Against the wall, against the wall. Back into the line now,” one of them yells as he comes near us and uses his arms to prod us back into some sort of formation.

  Eventually, Casey and I are back on a line, but we’re nowhere near as close to the front as we were before. A continent of people stands between us and the door. I look around desperately, trying to see if I can find Grumpy Geek or anyone else who was near us in line before to vouch for our place. But I recognize no one.

  The staff members are still calling for order, but they’re turning a deaf ear to the onslaught of nerd rage that is suddenly being directed at them. Probably a job requirement.

  Casey and I stare at each other, unable to believe what has just happened. I’m bewildered and I’m terrified. And then, twenty minutes later, I’m devastated.

  There are about forty people ahead of us when we get the news. The wristbands are gone.

  We will not see Robert Zinc today. I will not be able to take Roxy directly from meeting her favorite artist to a secluded corner of the Javits Center to tell her those three little words.

  Everything is ruined.

  Chapter 6

  Hideous

  Plans Brought

  to You by

  Plebes

  “I’M SORRY,” I BLURT OUT. Roxana looks crestfallen, and there’s no way my face isn’t reflecting her exact feelings right now—probably multiplied. “So sorry.”

  Her face softens a little. “Graham, it’s not your fault. You slept on concrete last night, for chrissakes.”

  “You’re damn right,” Casey interjects loudly. “I cannot believe those . . . assholes. How is that okay? How? And ca
n they really live with themselves knowing they stole something from its rightful owners? Is that the type of person whom Robert Zinc would even want in his audience?” I recognize the beginnings of righteous nerd wrath, but I’m too destroyed myself to try and stop him from having a full-blown rant in the middle of the Javits Center.

  “That sucks,” Felicia says in solidarity, though she’s clearly the only one of us who is not genuinely about to have a nervous breakdown because Robert Zinc is in the building and we can’t see him.

  “Maybe we can find a way to sneak into the panel later,” I say halfheartedly.

  “Yeah. Maybe,” Roxana says with a weak smile. She knows as well as I do that that’s probably going to be impossible. New York Comic Con is usually a well-oiled machine, and this snafu should alert the organizers to the fact that they need to monitor the Zinc panel extra carefully.

  “Well, look, this is still Roxana’s big cut day. So let’s go put on our costumes,” Felicia says, lifting up and shaking her tote bag. “And then I have a surprise for us at eleven o’clock.”

  I’m so taken aback by the first part of her statement that I barely even register the second part. “Wait, you brought a costume?” I ask.

  “When at Comic Con . . .” She smiles. “Besides, I look great in this.”

  Casey eyes her incredulously.

  “The bathrooms are down these escalators,” I say, leading the way. We split when we get to the men’s and ladies’ rooms, but Casey doesn’t go in with me. “No costume this year,” he explains.

  Now it’s my turn to look incredulous. “You’re telling me that Felicia Obayashi is going to be walking around NYCC in a costume and Casey Zucker won’t be?”

  “My schedule is too intense, and I calculated that the costume would just get in the way, factoring in both the aerodynamics of maneuvering through the crowds and people stopping to talk to me or take my picture.” He looks at his watch. “Speaking of which, the Lacey Grotowski signing starts in twenty minutes.”