Geekerella

  “Now you will go upstairs and take off that ridiculous outfit,” she commands. I turn to leave, defeated, but Catherine isn’t finished.

  “And,” she says, “you will give me your phone.”

  I freeze.

  “Danielle!”

  I reach for the phone in my jacket pocket. For a brief, crazy moment, I imagine that dream I had of me and Franco. Setting off west, never looking back. I knew it was just a dream, because this house can’t move and without it I’m not sure who I would be. This was the last place I belonged, and I don’t even belong here anymore, and soon it won’t even be my home. I won’t belong anywhere.

  But if I have nowhere to go, what’s the use in fighting?

  Like ripping off a Band-Aid, I hand her my phone. Her manicured fingers curl around it. “Good. Now go to your room.”

  Tears come back before I can stop them and I take the stairs two at a time. Catherine doesn’t come after me. I’m not worth the energy, and there’s really nothing left for her to take. In my room, I press my forehead against the door and squeeze my eyes tight.

  I can’t take this anymore. I have to leave—now. But I don’t have my phone. I can’t call Sage and tell her what happened.

  And Carmindor…In the end even he knew I was no one worth talking to.

  When Darien called me ah’blena I almost thought it was him. That Darien Freeman was my Carmindor. But it couldn’t be. The universe can’t be that cruel. And Darien, like Carmindor, wouldn’t talk to a nobody.

  I clutch my dad’s jacket and sink to the carpet, crying into the costume harder than ever. Because now the glowing constellations above me just look like fake glow-in-the-dark stars. And the coat just smells like sweat. And the house, old and creaky, is just cold. And the living room will never be waltzed in again.

  That is why this universe is impossible: because all the good things are impossible to keep. The universe always takes them away.

  TURNS OUT, CHARLESTON ISN’T THE EASIEST place to go hunting for a food truck.

  “I think this’s it,” I say, and tap the back of Lonny’s seat. He pulls onto the side of the road. I think he’s relieved. We’ve already been to three other food trucks before someone—at a shrimp and grits truck—had an inkling about where we might find one that’s orange and yellow.

  “Oh, you’re lookin’ for the Pumpkin,” the older woman had said, rubbing her greasy hands on an apron that read G.R.I.T.S.: GIRLS RAISED IN THE SOUTH. “I think that old girl’s somewhere over by the market today. That way,” she pointed in the opposite direction—Kings Street, apparently—and gave us directions.

  Travel tip: if you’re visiting Charleston, know where you’re going ahead of time. There are so many one-way streets, once you go down the wrong way you’ll never want to drive in this town again. After nearly grilling a baby stroller and double tapping a marathon runner, we finally found an orange and yellow truck parked at the far side of the market toward one of the touristy piers.

  Lonny flicks on the hazard lights. “I can wait,” he says. “Or come with.”

  “I think I got this.”

  “You sure?” he rumbles, looking at me through the rearview mirror.

  “Unless you want to come,” I say. “For moral support?”

  “I’m good, boss.”

  “Real pal you are. I’ll call you when I need you.” I get out of the car and watch Lonny pull away before I make my way over to the Magic Pumpkin. It’s horrendously orange. You can see it a mile away, which is probably the point. Its entire body is painted to look like a pumpkin, with yellows and reds and blacks highlighting the drawn-on curves and ridges. A girl with bright teal hair leans against the counter, and my heart leaps when I recognize her—the same girl Elle drove away with.

  “We’re all out of fritters today,” she says as I get close, without looking up from her magazine.

  “I wasn’t coming for the fritters.”

  “Well, I hope you aren’t coming for the sweet potato fries either. Because we’re out of those too.”

  “I’m not coming for food at all,” I say. This girl kind of scares me.

  “Huh.” She still hasn’t looked up. “So what do you want? I’m understaffed and irritated.”

  “I, um.” I try to catch a peek into the back of the truck. Where’s Elle? She has to be in there somewhere, doesn’t she? I don’t remember her ever talking about a day off. “Actually, I…” I swallow hard. “I thought I could find Elle here.”

  That piques her interest. She finally looks up at me. “Huh.”

  I shift. “Huh what?”

  She shows me her magazine. My promo shoots from after Hello, America. I wince. “You look way better Photoshopped.”

  “That’s a first,” I say. “Hearing it out loud, I mean.”

  “Everyone probably thinks it.” She puts down the magazine and cocks her head. “What’re you doing here?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”

  She lifts an eyebrow. “You’re right.”

  I take a deep breath and pull out Elle’s lost shoe. Her eyes widen.

  “Okay. I’m interested.”

  I explain everything—from the first text to someone I hoped was Robin Wittimer to the weeks talking with Elle to ExcelsiCon to the ball to the moment the truck pulled away. “I want to find her and tell her the truth. I want to apologize.”

  She leans farther over the counter, debating. “Why? So you can clear your conscience? You just gonna run away again, Carmindor?”

  It’s irony, we both know. Carmindor never runs away from anything. He stays and he fights and he deals with the consequences. And I think we all have the chance to be him.

  I think this is my chance, now.

  “No,” I reply. “I won’t run away from her again. Unless she’s chasing me with something and then I’ll probably run—but never from her.”

  Teal-hair girl debates for a second, chewing on a chunk of bright pink bubblegum. “Well, Elle quit. Or her stepmother quit for her. And she’s not answering her phone and she isn’t at home. I have no way of contacting her.”

  My heart begins to sink.

  “But,” she holds up a finger, “I thiiiink know where she might be. If you’re interested. I can take you there.”

  I hesitate. “Now? But aren’t you—”

  “It’s a restaurant on wheels, Carmindor. It’s supposed to move.” She closes the serving window, climbs through the middle to the cab, and pushes open the passenger door with her foot. I climb into the seat. The entire vehicle smells like pumpkin fritters and oil and twenty-year-old leather seats.

  “I’m Sage, by the way,” she says, as she cranks up the monster of a truck, “and I suggest you buckle up.”

  The Magic Pumpkin roars to life with a belch and begins to rattle like it’ll come apart at the seams. I quickly heed her warning and wrap the seatbelt around me. She forces the truck into gear and slams on the gas, swirling onto a one-way street with the speed of a NASCAR driver. My eyes dart to the rearview mirror—I see Lonny has fired up the rental car and is hot on our tail. Sage tears through historic Charleston, the crowds simply peeling out of the way, and points us out of the city.

  “So…where are we going?” I ask, once I’m sure I’m not going to die.

  “This country club over in Isle of Palms. It’s horrible.”

  “Then why is she working there?”

  “Because she wasn’t supposed to go to the convention,” Sage says. The truck jostles across one of the many bridges in and out of town, their white suspension cords intertwined overhead. “Her stepmother didn’t want her to, but we took the truck—I got in major trouble for that by the way, grounded until the sun rises in the west. Like hell I am,” she adds under her breath, before going on. “But we went anyway and entered that contest. We thought we could make it home but—”

  It begins to make sense now. “That’s why you left in such a hurry.”

  “Bingo.” Sage grins. “And now I?
??d bet the Pumpkin that her stepmom’s got her chained up at the club.”

  Sage turns off the bridge, following the signs to Pointe Greene Country Club. Everything suddenly grows greener, with lush grass and dense foliage. The roads improve, too. She follows the winding route up to a checkpoint and eases the truck to a stop in front of a yellow barrier arm. She leans out as the guard on duty opens his window.

  “Business?” the guard asks.

  “Just here to look around,” she replies. “I think I might want to become a member.”

  He twitches his mustache. “I’m sorry, I can’t let you in without permission.”

  “From who?”

  “People who belong to the country club,” he says slowly, as though Sage is stupid or something, and gives her a lookdown, from her teal hair to her piercings to her Killer Queen halter top. “And I don’t think you’re a member.”

  Her hands tighten around the steering wheel. She scowls. “I’ll show you what I’ll do to your member if you—”

  “Excuse me,” I interrupt, leaning forward in my seat. I flick up my Aviators and put on my best smile. Slipping into Darien Freeman in the blink of an eye. I never thought I’d actually be happy for the mask.

  The security guard narrows his eyes. “What?”

  “Hi. Darien. You might know me. Starfield?”

  His eyebrows dart up. Ah, bingo.

  “I’ve got a friend who works here, and I’m in town for just a little while. Do you think you could, you know, let us in to see her? Please?”

  He begins to nod—thank you Starfield, thank you—but then his eyebrows collapse down again. “I don’t care if you’re the prince of England,” he says. “You can tell your friend to back her pretty truck up. You ain’t getting in.”

  “Well that’s rude,” I mumble.

  Sage mutters something under her breath and slams the truck into reverse. The security guard sits back triumphantly and begins to close the window.

  My shoulders slump. “I guess I’ll wait until she gets off work.”

  “No.”

  “Why not? It’s only a few hours, right?”

  “Because the only way Elle can get home is with her stepmom. And if the security guard won’t let us in, what do you think Catherine’ll do?” She eases the truck to a stop and slowly slides it into gear. The engine belches black smoke.

  “What else can we do?”

  Sage narrows her eyes. “This day, we fight.”

  She slams her foot on the gas pedal. The truck’s tires squeal, burning rubber, before they catch traction with a jerk. I grapple with my seatbelt. You’d think by now I’d be good with stunts. You think I wouldn’t want to kiss my butt goodbye.

  You’d be wrong.

  Sage pulls the truck to the side and we curve around the barrier, barely squeezing through. The security guard throws open the window, his face beet red, and shouts after us, but Sage just slams the PLAY button on the stereo and cranks the music as loud as it’ll go.

  The Starfield theme roars from the speakers like the trumpets of war.

  THE COUNTRY CLUB IS ALREADY STIFLING. This morning, Catherine yanked me out of bed at six and made me clean out the attic for good: all of my Starfield DVDs, the statue of Carmindor, the replica communicator toy that Dad got me as a kid, and a few posters and postcards and collectibles (including one hella rare Pez dispenser). Then she drove me over here, chatted up the manager, and five hours later I’m stuck at the café on the veranda in a sweat-stained green shirt and khakis, bored out of my mind. I hated this job when I had it before, and I hate it now. But I’ve given up trying to fight.

  The café overlooks most of the greens at the country club. To the left is the pool, to the right is about a mile of shorn golfing hills. Most of the morning I’ve been serving middle-aged golfers with too much time and money on their hands, but they’re not the only ones here today. Chloe and her friends are sitting at a corner table, gossiping so loudly I know it’s on purpose. James sits right beside her, but unlike last year when it seemed she couldn’t be close enough (while he was pretending to fall in love with me), today she couldn’t be less aware of him. She’s too good for him now. Or something. Cal’s there too, in her usual chair, but she’s completely silent.

  She had come up to me when I was cleaning this morning, when Catherine wasn’t looking, and held something out.

  “Chloe and I found this with the dress in the trunk upstairs. Did…did you write this?”

  The paper was yellowed with age, but I would remember it even if a hundred years had passed. Tears welled up in my eyes, even though I didn’t think I could cry anymore, and I took it, nodding.

  “It’s—it’s a story. Fanfiction. I used to write them for Dad all the time.” I blink back the tears and sniff. “Where did you find this again?”

  “In the trunk. There are a billion of them. He must’ve saved them all.”

  “All of them?” I look down again at the piece of paper. “Thank you, Cal.”

  She smiled, shyly, as if she shouldn’t. “It’s the least I can do.”

  But now Cal is silent. And the sound of Chloe’s voice is blasting across the veranda like a foghorn.

  “He was such a dream,” she gushes. “And so nice. And way sexier in person. Gives you a run for your money, James,” she adds, playfully patting his knee. “I wish y’all could’ve been there. Like, it was a blast.”

  “How did you get tickets?” James asks.

  “I bought them.”

  “I didn’t know you liked that kind of stuff,” says Erin, the twins’ second-in-command. “You’re always picking on your sister about it.”

  The pictures went viral overnight: two dancers at a cosplay ball, a movie star and a regular girl in a dress made from the night sky. “Darien Freeman, Prince Charming?” the headlines read. And the girl they’re calling Geekerella. I can’t say it isn’t catchy. You’d think everyone would be freaking out, seeing me with Darien Freeman, but the girl in those pictures? She’s wearing a mask. And Chloe, surprise, came down this morning with dyed-red hair—just like mine.

  Her YouTube channel gained ten thousand followers literally overnight. Her views have skyrocketed. She’s gone from internet nothing to internet celebrity at warp speed. There’s even an online petition to get Darien to come meet Chloe again so they can have their “happily ever after,” which I wouldn’t be surprised if Chloe started herself. Honestly, I don’t know what’s funnier: Chloe pretending to be me, or that ExcelsiCon me is famous. Or as famous as internet celebrities go. The girl who danced with Darien Freeman.

  Chloe waves her hand. “Stepsister. And it’s not my fault she’s weird. Speaking of my which—Elle!” She calls out, glancing over her shoulder at me. “Elle! Another latte!”

  With a sigh, I dog-ear the page in my book. “Whip or no?” I ask, taking the milk out of the fridge under the counter.

  “What do you think? And it better be soy.”

  I fix up her drink and walk it over to her. She can’t be bothered to come get it herself.

  “I had to escape out of there so fast, though.” Chloe takes the cup without even thanking me. “I didn’t even have time to give him my name! And now all these other girls are pretending they’re me. Look.” She holds out her phone, flicking through a bunch of hashtagged photos. “Posers.”

  “I hear she lost a slipper,” I say. Chloe’s eyes narrow to slits but I shrug it off because what have I got to lose now? I’ve totally given up. “Maybe the real girl has the slipper?”

  “You didn’t say she lost a slipper,” another friend, blond hair with purple tips, says. “Chloe, that’s it! You should totally—”

  “I lost the other slipper,” Chloe grinds out. She sips her coffee, gags, and spits it out. “Ugh, I said nonfat, not soy!”

  She shoves the mug back at me. Liquid sloshes over the rim, all over my apron and green polo shirt. Hot—scalding hot. I yelp, jumping backward. The latte splatters across the floor.

  “Oops,”
she sneers, whipping her head around to ignore me. “As I said, I lost the slipper, so the point’s moot.”

  I grab a handful of napkins from a dispenser on another table and begin mopping up the coffee. James takes a few napkins too, gets out of his chair, and helps me. Chloe glances over. “James, you don’t have to do that. That’s why she’s working.”

  “I know but—” James cocks his head. “Is that…thunder?”

  “Of course it’s not thunder. It’s gorgeous outside.” Chloe rolls her eyes as I finish cleaning up the spill. “Honestly. Let’s just get going.”

  She takes a club from her golf bag and twirls it in her hands as she heads onto the green. Then she snaps her manicured fingers for us to follow, and we do. With a sigh, I hike her golf bag onto my shoulder and set off down the grassy slope. Of all the days for Phil the Caddy to be sick, it had to be today. Or any day. And of course my boss doesn’t care if I leave my post at the café—not if Catherine’s daughter needs a caddy.

  Once we’re out in the sunlight, Chloe drops the ball on the grass and squints into the distance. Then she pulls back and swings. The balls arcs high into the air and plops down five hundred feet away, in a sand trap.

  “Oops,” she drones. “Elle, fetch that for me, would you?”

  The thunder is getting louder, even though the sky is crystal clear. I wonder if Carmindor is looking at the same sky. And then, with a pang, I wonder why I care.

  “Elle!” Chloe screeches. I start after her but the noise is so loud now, and I swear I’ve heard it before. A deep rumbling, like a dragon. Or…no.

  No way.

  Suddenly, one of the gardeners setting out the sprinklers for the evening yelps and throws himself to the side. Over the bushes to the parking lot, emerging like the great pumpkin in flight, flies an orange and yellow truck. It hits the ground with enough force to carve a dent in the immaculate grass and tears across the greens toward us, the bright-green fender smiling with a mouthful of leaves and twigs. And with the truck, blaring from the open windows so loud I can hear the speakers pop, is the Starfield theme.