Shame swept over me as I compared that to my Raziel cosplay, with its elaborate theatrical pieces, its monstrous wings with eyes. I’d spent so much time trying to make everything perfect, I hadn’t encouraged Dima to embellish more on his own. He could have. He probably would have had more fun too, even though he’d been perfectly content sitting next to me or Aunt Anne Marie, watching the whir of the machine, captivated by our work and occasionally trying it on for a better fit.
Maybe this was what I’d been missing out on with my cosplay group. The chance to just enjoy the experience, instead of constantly performing.
Maybe with a friend like Dima, I could learn.
♱♱♱
I stepped out of the bathroom. Great. Dima was not waiting outside like he’d said he would. I spotted him down the hall, phone out, grabbing selfies. Oblivious to the hoard of girls pressed up to him. Or at least pretending to be oblivious. It was hard to tell.
Someone bumped into me. “Sorry,” they said. I twisted to let them past when something caught the corner of my eye. That fabric—
Time stopped.
My chest rattling with each breath like I’d swallowed gravel.
Thunder in my ears.
I stared at the cosplayer’s back. Slowly, they turned around. Brown skin. Not white. A girl, not an overwhelmingly cis-het boy. A stranger.
Not Lee.
There was pressure on my side. I yelped and spun around, fists raised defensively, prepared to strike. “Whoa, easy!” Dima said, stepping back.
My heart still raced. “Don’t do that. Sneak up on me like that. Jesus.”
“Yeah, okay. Got it. Do you have the phone charger? I’m running low. Do you wanna go to the Fever 33 panel in twenty minutes? Man, I wish Joey were here too. I can’t wait to show him all of the pics. I’d text him but I think I should upload them to social media first and see how long before he notices. He always pretends he doesn’t use it ever, but I think he’s faking it. What do you think about that?”
“Sounds . . . okay . . .” I murmured. But really, I wasn’t sure. My mind was still on the cosplayer, the one who’d reminded me so much of Lee.
“Hey.” Dima looked concerned now. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s stupid.”
“Obviously not that stupid because you’re upset. Talk to me.”
I hesitated. The idea of even vocalizing it . . . “I kind of wonder if this was a mistake. Coming here.”
“What? Why? I thought you were having a good time,” Dima said, shocked. “Is it because I ditched you when you were in the bathroom? Because I thought with the wings you’d take longer and I totally got carried away and there were so many people with amazing costumes—”
“No. No, it’s not . . .” I sighed. “I’ve just got a lot of bad memories and, well . . .” I squirmed. “I thought it’d get better. And that was stupid. No matter how much I try to run away, to get away from it, it’s lingering there.”
“I don’t think I understand,” Dima said.
“It’s like—if there’s something that’s toxic . . . a lot of people put up with it. They say they won’t get caught up in it. But they can’t avoid it. Maybe it’s sort of like being an alcoholic. You can’t just drink occasionally and not be an addict anymore. You have to cut it out, completely. Be sober. Abstain. Like . . . you get what I’m saying?”
I could see the excitement dissolve from Dima’s face with each word I said. His mood crashed visibly. “Maybe we should go,” he said.
I thought about the panel he wanted to go to, but I didn’t have it in me to suggest we stay longer. We walked to his car in silence, Dima not really looking at me. In the car, he turned up his music before I could say a word. I rested my head against the window as the scenery passed.
Remorse swept through me. I shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe I’d had a traumatic experience, but he hadn’t. This was his first con. I’d yanked away the magic of the experience.
And beyond that—Dima might have been the first person I’d met who was relatively well-adjusted, who was safe, and who was into the same things I was into. If I kept my mouth shut, maybe we could have geeked out more. I could have learned to really love something for what it was instead of focusing solely on proving myself. We could’ve had fun together. One of those platonic relationships I’d never really experienced. Friendship.
But by the time he dropped me off at the front doors of the rectory, barely replying when I thanked him for the trip, I knew that I’d missed my chance. Before I could say so much as “sorry,” he was gone.
16 Alexis
Sleep was my go-to when things got tough. Being unconscious meant there were fewer hours to be awake and depressed. Dreamless sleep was the best, although rare for me. It’d take hours out of the day, shortening the emotional storm that was brewing.
But since we’d gotten back from the con, I’d been sleeping worse than usual. I kept thinking about opening my online shop and immediately getting that message: I’m sorry.
I dreamed about walking into that cosplayer. Except in my dream, it wasn’t some random person.
It was Lee.
Lee was . . . I don’t even know what Lee was. One day, he was just there. He integrated with our group perfectly. The one who spoke our language. The “woke” white cis-het dude who was the “good guy,” the “ally.” No one could remember a time without him, even though once I looked online and there wasn’t a trace of him before February of last year.
The winter comic convention: my friends were infiltrating it in their anime cosplays because it was so funny (Narrator: It was NOT funny), but I thought I’d fit the theme for once. So at the hotel, when I pulled out my surprise Ice Siren costume, my friends didn’t know what to think.
“But she’s a girl.”
So?
“Why are you going as a woman?”
I felt like I should have given them a multiple-choice answer sheet:
The costume is super cool.
I didn’t want to freeze my ass off during outdoor photoshoots.
Ice Siren is absolutely fierce, except holy hell, did she have the worst boyfriend EVER with Fire Night.
I want to. Leave me alone.
I guess they wouldn’t have been okay with any of those answers. Internalized sexism, internalized homophobia, who knows what sort of issues they triggered. Nope, they couldn’t handle me as female because that’d mean the girls weren’t as straight as they thought they were, or they couldn’t handle me suddenly not being attractive to them.
So I separated from my group for the first time in at least a year. I didn’t want to deal with their whining about how I wasn’t being a team player. In my toasty cosplay, I trekked through the snow outside, away from the traditional photoshoot area.
That’s when I saw him. Dressed as Fire Night and goofing off with a couple of his friends as they ran around in the snow, knocking each other over, taking turns with their phones to record it. They were making a CMV—cosplay music video—or just some silly takes for fun. We barely made eye contact when he said, “Hey, Alexis! Or uh, Aleks? Sorry, I should have asked first,” and, “Want to help with our video?” I had so much fun as we posed for photos, goofing off wildly. Then Lee brought me to their hotel room, where he’d smuggled in alcohol to make jungle juice, and that was it.