“It’s hard,” I mumble in reply, and then I frown, because that’s not quite the truth of it, and I need to tell someone about what happened yesterday. If I keep it bottled up, I feel like it’ll just become this gnarled, tangled mess. “Vance asked me out yesterday.”
Both of my friends sit at attention.
“Excuse me?” Annie gasps.
“When’s the wedding?” Quinn adds.
Oh, good. This is going to go fantastically. I shift uncomfortably in the booth, closing my laptop. “I…sort of turned him down.”
“YOU DID WHAT?” they cry.
The other occupants in the diner whirl around to look at us. I sink lower in my booth. “I know! I know. I just…” I frown and look down into my half-eaten breakfast of pancakes and bacon. I guess I should finally tell them. Rip off the Band-Aid. It’s not exactly my dream anymore, or a story to keep me company at night. “Remember at ExcelsiCon, when I disappeared for that night?”
“Yeah,” Annie fills in.
“Well…I met a Sond cosplayer that night, and we went out and…had an amazing night. The best night of my life, really. I’m sorry I kept it from you. I just felt like…it was mine, for a while.”
Quinn gives me a narrow look. “But not anymore?”
“Oh, please don’t tell me you’re holding out for him,” Annie adds.
“No, because I found him.” I take a deep breath and say, “It was Vance.”
Quinn about chokes on their coffee. “Come again?”
“The cosplayer was Vance,” I repeat with a shrug. “I know, it’s kind of bonkers and really weird but—we found out a few days ago when I sprained my ankle.”
Annie squints at me. “So did you or did you not fall off a bookcase?”
“…Not.”
And I explain to them what actually happened. I tell them about going to look for a missing book, and being annoyingly curious (“Yeah, that’s your MO,” Quinn says, and nods in agreement), and finding the mask instead. The same mask that Sond wore that night. I explain the miscommunication between us—how I thought he didn’t tell me who he was because he was ashamed it was me, and how he didn’t want to tell me because he was afraid I would be ashamed that it was him, and how I accidentally took a tumble down the last few stairs, and then yesterday how we got locked out of the house and caught in the rain and hid in the pool house.
When I recount it, the entire ordeal sounds like a fanfic in the making, right up until I say, “He asked me out and said we could go on dates as other people, but I met him as someone I wasn’t and as someone he wasn’t, and I…don’t want that. I want someone who wants to take me out as himself, you know?”
Quinn and Annie don’t respond at first.
“…Is that weird?”
Quinn puts their napkin over their plate and slides across the booth to me. They wrap their arms around my shoulders and squeeze tightly. “No,” they reply quietly, as Annie slips underneath the booth and pops up on the other side and puts her arms around me, too.
“You deserve better,” she adds.
I melt into my best friends’ hug, and finally for the first time since turning Vance down, I feel okay. “Thank you.”
* * *
—
IF THIS MORNING VINDICATED MY CHOICE to turn down Vance, the special afternoon Homecoming announcement does the exact opposite. It makes me question everything I have every done up to this point in my life. It makes me wonder if I should join a convent and pledge myself to baby Jesus and forget about this whole love thing to begin with.
The Homecoming announcement starts out innocuously enough. I do feel bad about not helping Quinn with their speech, but I can’t even write my own college application essay. How the hell could I write a speech that would make the student body vote for them and not, well—
“First up is William Wu,” says the Not Another News Show news anchor—I forget her name—as the camera pans over to a strikingly stocky guy with a shock of black spiky hair. He’s the high school’s football captain, so he’s popular, which’ll give him a few votes at least.
“ ’Sup, guys,” he starts, giving the camera a bro-nod. “You should vote for me, because these babies are illegal in forty-nine states.” Then he raises his arms and flexes to an astounding degree.
And that’s how it begins.
I find myself trying to make a list of worthwhile college essays as some of the other students running for Homecoming King—Overlord—make their cases. It’s not like running for student body president—they can’t enact change, and they can’t promise less homework or to bring Pizza Friday back—but they can show off their ridiculous pecs and their popular talents.
And then it’s my best friend’s turn.
“Hello there, my name is Quinn Holland,” they begin in their unmistakable monotonous voice, reading from a small neon-pink note card, “and I think you should vote for me because I am diligent and hardworking, and none of that matters.”
Oh, dear.
They drop the card and look deadass at the camera. “Aren’t you tired of voting for the same old boring dudes? Sure, I get it, I like a nice snack too, but wouldn’t you want someone with a little more substance?”
“Yeah, like me,” the next participant interrupts.
My heart drops like a lead balloon into my toes. I know that voice. Before Quinn can finish their speech, the camera pans to Garrett Taylor.
He grins and jabs a thumb over to Quinn. “Yeah, you can vote for them,” Garrett says with a little too much emphasis, “or you vote for me and help me fulfill my dream of taking the most gorgeous girl in school to the Homecoming Dance. I had a good friend tell me the other day that the way to someone’s heart is through getting to know them, so what do you say, Rosie Thorne? Would you want to go to Homecoming together and get to know me?”
Oh God.
He took what I said and he twisted it—again. I slide lower in my seat as half of the class turns to look at me. I angle a hand over my face, trying to pretend that no one can see me in my supreme moment of embarrassment. But people are looking at me, anyway.
I want to disappear.
“Vote for me, and let’s make our dreams come true!”
Never mind that I wouldn’t go with him even if he was the last person on earth, and certainly not now, but try telling that to the entire school.
Soon after the announcements end and the bell rings to dismiss us for the day, a girl from my English class comes up to me as I’m packing up and asks, “Why don’t you just go with him?”