“… But there’s another signing at three o’clock today.”
Alex turned to look at the volunteer so slowly he felt like he was in an action movie. “There is?”
The volunteer looked at him strangely. (People did that a lot.) “Yeah. Just get here earlier for that one. You know this is GeekiCon, right?”
Alex laughed a laugh that didn’t sound at all like him, pure relief escaping from his mouth in gasps. “Oh! Right! Sure!”
Cat smiled at him and reached out for Alex’s hand. Alex looked down and grabbed it. “Three o’clock,” Cat repeated. “We’ll see you then.”
“Whatever.” The volunteer waved them off.
Alex couldn’t believe it. GeekiCon had blessed them. He had seen victory slip from his grasp, only to have it reappear in front of him. At three o’clock. It was the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him. It was—
“Oh no,” whispered Cat, tugging on Alex’s hand, hard, and interrupting his thoughts.
“What?” Alex asked, concerned. That wasn’t a good sign. That was never a good sign.
“Fi,” was all Cat said—and all she needed to say. Alex spun around and saw their older sister’s face hovering above the crowd. She must have been on her tiptoes, searching for them.
Seeing Fi’s face brought Alex swiftly and painfully back to the real world. They were in serious trouble if she found them, and they still had a ton of items to get through. Fi had that expression on her face she always got when she was angry, the one with the raised eyebrow and the weird thing with her lip. Yep, there was no doubt in Alex’s mind—it was time to run.
But not before he checked on his Epic comic, ensuring its safety inside its bag and board in his messenger bag. He had his priorities, after all.
20. You believe you can fly. (25 points)
6
Fi
“I am not going back to eating lunch in the library alone because of a comics convention,” Fi said to no one in particular, turning in circles in the middle of the show floor. It was hopeless. There were tens of thousands of dang nerds in this building. What chance did she have of finding two wayward twelve-year-olds? None. Absolutely none. She was toast. The toastiest. Burned toast. Burned toast who eats lunch in the library with no friends like the dork she really was.
It was a miracle that she’d managed to run out of the Ducky McFowl panel before her mom and dad noticed that she’d lost the twins anyway. She’d been avoiding her parents’ texts ever since, scrolling frantically through GeekiCon’s tag on social media, before remembering the name of that stupid scavenger hunt her sister had been babbling about earlier. She’d searched #thequest in a panic, desperately seeking any sign of her siblings.
And she found them—not that it did her any good. It seemed like every five seconds one or both of those little nerdy nightmares were updating their story: Cat and Alex in the middle of a rainbow of cosplayers, twenty-nine points! Cat and Alex having a tea party with some dude with giant gold horns, a lady in a black catsuit, and something called the Cowl, sixteen points! A video of some voice actor saying the twins’ team name into Cat’s camera and wishing them luck, fifty-four points! (Well, close enough to earn them some points, anyway.) It was impossible to keep up with the two of them, and there was no telling where they’d be headed next.
As Fi kept scrolling, she almost started to envy the odd little world the two of them shared. How did all these different weirdos come together to admire the things they loved in a space like this? How did twins so different end up enjoying such similar things?
She shook her head. Nah. She would rather be her own independent person than be half of a constant pair or just another face in the crowd. As long as she, as her own independent person, wore the right clothes and had the right friends and got to go on a chaperoned and not-a-big-deal-at-all camping trip with the right boy in three weeks, of course.
Turning slowly in a circle, ignoring the annoyed glances from passersby, Fi thought she recalled something about a comic book that Alex was obsessed with—but she wouldn’t even know where to start looking for something like that. Why hadn’t she paid more attention to those nerds when they’d talked about their nerd stuff? Every inch of the floor was jammed with cosplayers and fans and volunteers and why did the twins have to be so darn short and also wily?! This would never happen at one of her soccer games. Why couldn’t her siblings just have been like … easier to understand and enjoyed good old-fashioned s
occer? Instead, she was stuck here playing social media stalker with their Instagram accounts. And no one cool from Instagram was even at this ridiculous convention. Also, Fi thought to herself in the final throes of despair:
Everything.
Smells.
Terrible!
Worse than the worst locker room. Worse than her gym bag. The combination of sweaty nerds packed together in a tight space, many drenched with extreme amounts of body spray, and what must have been a combination of plastic from the booths and pizza from the only food stalls in the hall, was absolutely and entirely overwhelming.
Letting loose a frustrated scream for which she only got a couple of strange looks (what even was this place?! Was screaming a normal thing here?!), Fi stormed toward the floor exit with a ferocity in her eyes that dared anyone to get in her way. She could be on the field right now, getting in a practice before the next game of the season. But nooo, instead she was on Adventures in Babysitting duty at the world’s largest geek show. And if she saw another bat-carrying clown girl, she was going to explode.
Fi slammed through the doors into the breezeway, slapping her pass against the exit scanner so abruptly that she almost knocked over the volunteer staffing it. Finally—finally—Fi found herself outside in the scorching midday heat. Fi didn’t care how humid or sweaty she got now—she could finally breathe again. Why did all these people want to spend a beautiful day like today trapped inside with a bunch of sweaty dweebs? She had never felt like such an outsider in all her life—though, admittedly, that was by design. If she thought about it too hard, she could almost be impressed by the sheer no-cares-given attitude of most of the people in this crowd. Had she ever been so unapologetically herself? Fi wondered. She turned her face up toward the sun and just stood there for a moment, sucking in a deep breath …
… Right. The twins.
Fi sighed. Never an uninteresting moment. Time to find them so she could lose ’em—for a week of camping with people who mattered.