When I finally reach the stage, panting and clutching my poster tube, the girls in D1V’s Angst Armada are gathered around her. The Vox Populi have been dragged from the room, and one of the police officers is talking with Thad—a woman with thick black hair and a dark blazer. A detective, maybe? The two remaining panelists, looking a bit shaky, each take a moment to say something to D1V as they get ready to leave, and she bows her head gratefully at them.
I start to unscrew the top of my poster tube. It’s now or never.
“Hey. Hey!” shouts one of the security guards. He’s a bit younger than the rest, looks like he might even be a gamer. “What are you doing?”
“I’m a friend,” I protest, looking up at the stage. D1V is wiping tears from her face, thick lines of black trickling down her cheeks.
“Prove it,” he challenges.
My heart races, and I feel flush all over. “I—”
“Hey! Hey, YouTube!” he shouts up at D1V. I glare at him. YouTube? Really? “You know this guy?”
D1V glances down at me, but not before scowling at the security guard who called her “YouTube.” Her piercing bright green eyes seem darker now, with the smeared makeup around her eyes. She blinks, looking confused for a moment, then shakes her head.
“Alright, buddy, let’s go,” the security guard says, shuffling me along.
“Wait, wait!” I say, reaching into the tube I’ve been carrying around with me all morning.
“Slowly!” he barks, putting a hand up.
“Come on, I don’t have—” I huff, not wanting to say something stupid, and pull the first sheet of paper out from inside the tube. I unfurl it. It’s cut out in a speech bubble, with text inside.
I hold it up, the text facing D1V and the stage.
“D1V!” I shout. “You always say ‘don’t read the comments.’”
She looks down at me again, perplexed.
“Read these.”
25
DIVYA
A boy is standing in the middle of a dissipating riot, holding up a sign.
It’s like a scene from Love Actually, a movie my mom makes me watch with her every December. Except a small militia of undercover police officers just busted up a giant ring of online trolls, cyber stalkers, and sexist harassers, so this isn’t exactly a moment for surprise romantics.
But there he is, with a sign.
“Your videos inspire me to try and be a livestreamer one day! My mom says when I’m old enough to have an account, she’ll help me. She says you’re a good role model.”
The boy drops the sign, which flutters to the floor and curls back up into a tube shape as he awkwardly pulls another one out for me to see.
“I don’t have a lot of friends at school, but when I’m with the Armada, and watching you on the livestream, I feel like I have a community.”
He does it again. The paper flapping to the floor, the next one unspooling loudly.
“I know you’re having a hard time right now, but you should know that you’re an inspiration to us geek girls everywhere.”
He drops the third sign and digs into the tube, trying to pull out another. But it looks like it’s stuck. He looks from the tube to me, the tube to me...and tosses the plastic thing over his shoulder. It hangs in back of him, looking for all the world like a sword.
He’s far from the stage, so it’s hard to make him out.
But it’s in the way he’s looking at me.
In his awkward movements.
The over-the-top, unnecessary kindness.
And I instinctively know it’s him.
“It’s okay, girls,” I say to the Armada standing around me, their hair an array of colors, their faces hard and angry as they stare at the boy. I push gently away from them, their hands leaving my arms and shoulders. I hop off the stage and nudge some of the fallen chairs aside, nodding at the convention’s security guards as I pass them.
Until he’s right in front of me.
“I thought you’d be taller,” I say, trying to hide my grin.
“You changed your hair,” he replies, not hiding his. He reaches out, but quickly stops, pulling his hands back. “Sorry. Can... Can I?”
I can’t even speak.
Instead, I reach out to grab his shaking hands.
And in that moment, he becomes real. Out of the headset and into my life.
“Those signs were really dumb.” I smile as he squeezes my hands in his. “Aaron.”
“I know.” He grins again. “I thought you might run into trouble. I was just going to hold them up in the back for you. So you wouldn’t forget who you are. What you mean to people.”
He pauses and swallows hard, suddenly looking shy.
“I didn’t want you to forget...what you mean to me.”
Oh, my heart. This boy.
How could I possibly forget?
I’m overwhelmed. Between the Vox Populi showing up, and now him, I am a sea of emotions.
I look over at the police officers, who are taking statements from some of my Armada girls. Detective Watts is there, her arms crossed, watching everything and speaking into what looks like a small recorder. She’s got her eye on me and Aaron, and her watchful gaze is so welcome in this moment.
“I wonder if it’s only going to get worse now,” I say, turning back to him. “Once this hits the news, someone else will take their place. I saw everyone out here, with their phones recording. There must be a hundred videos online already.”
“Maybe,” he says. “But more people will be afraid to do that now. And more people will stand up. Right? I mean, they have to. Look at all this.”
He looks around, surveying the hall. And I see it, too. The chaos. Stuff everywhere. Chairs all over the place. The result of frightened people.
But then there’s the Armada.
My girls on the stage, and the handful that are trickling back into the auditorium.
I see them, with their wild, brightly colored hair, hairstyles that clearly weren’t meant to just match me—since no one saw me like this before today—but to match my commander, Rebekah. She strolls over with them, leading a few dozen girls and a couple of boys.
“So...we sold out of the pins.” Rebekah gestures at the crew following her. “They cleaned out what I had left on me.” I see her patches and buttons already stuck and pinned on outfits and bags and belts. “At least we have that.”