The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love (13 page)

“Um, do you have five hundred dollars?” As per usual, Casey, dasher of dreams, is at it again. He's squinting into the case now too.

“Not at the moment,” I start out slowly, but thinking fast. “But . . .”

“And remember, it starts at five hundred. Who knows how high it'll actually get?”

He's right, but my brain is already ahead of him. Only one person I know has that kind of money: Casey himself. He's been investing his bar mitzvah money for years, saving up for his Ivy League education.

So I start beseeching. I promise him everything I already promised him if we got the Zinc wristbands—including trying to set up the date with Callie—plus I tell him I'll pay him back with interest over the next two years. “By the time you start your freshman year at Harvard or Yale or Princeton, you will have all your money back. I swear.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I'll get a job. I'll work day and night if I have to. Please, Case. Please?”

But he's shaking his head at me with something like incredulity. “Dude. You're obsessed.” This is rich coming from someone who's fluent in both the Sindarin and Quenya tongues of Elvish.

But then I remember the one other card I have, my ace in the hole, so to speak. And I decide to play it. “I know who's currently ranked number one in the class.”

He visibly starts. “Who is it?” he asks wildly.

“If you lend me the money, I'll tell you,” I say calmly.

His eyes narrow. “After all we've been through, it all boils down to extortion, then?”

I feel a little bad. But not too bad. Because this is a negotiation, after all. So I simply stare at him.

He stares back.

We stand at a stalemate as he waits to see if I'm going to spill the beans. But alas, the silence seems to get to him before it gets to me. “I'll . . . think about it,” he finally says darkly. “But we have to run. We're going to miss the panel.”

My mind works furiously all the way to the panel as I realize I'm probably going to have to go through with my room-switching plan with Callie after all. I also start racking my brain for places I want to start working. Maybe Halfling Comics at the mall? That wouldn't be so bad, and I'd get a sweet discount. Plus I'm already there most Friday nights anyway for our Magic tournaments.

I'm smiling by the time we file into the panel room. Because I will get the money and buy the page and this will all happen exactly like the scene I just wrote in my head.

LUCKILY THE BUILDING CHARACTERS PANEL
isn't too packed and we snag seats near the back without a problem. Before the panel starts, I hear someone call my name.

It's Amelia. She's wearing a Young Guns Press T-shirt today, her curly hair with its red streak wild and free. I grin at her, immediately remembering the video from last night.

“Hi!” I say enthusiastically. “Listen, thank you again for the video. I don't know if my message adequately conveyed how grateful I really am.”

“Dude. I really am so sorry you missed it. That was cruel and unusual
punishment for a true Althena fan.” She points to an empty seat next to us. “Mind if I sit with you?”

“Of course not,” I say, and while she settles down I think to introduce her and Casey. “Amelia got into the Zinc panel yesterday,” I explain.

“Details?” Casey asks.

“It. Was. Awesome,” Amelia gushes. “Like, so awesome, I took notes.”

“You did?” I ask.

“Yup. How else am I going to do a proper postcon analysis?” she says with a grin.

I laugh, and Casey looks both impressed and like he's calculating something. “Hey, do you think you'd be willing to share your notes with us?” He roots around in his backpack and takes out his spreadsheet. “If you have some time at . . . noon. Or three thirty? Or six forty-five?”

Amelia looks over Casey's paper, and now it's her turn to look impressed. And perhaps slightly alarmed, but who can blame her? “Wow. That's one well-thought-out schedule,” she says diplomatically.

“Thank you,” Casey responds.

“And the answer is yes. I'd definitely be up for telling you guys what went down yesterday.”

She smiles at me again, and I get a burst of inspiration. “What about noon?” I ask. “Would you be free for lunch or something after this? We have a friend who would
love
to hear about this too. I wouldn't want her to miss it.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Hi, and welcome to the Building Characters panel, everyone.” A voice comes over the speakers, and we turn our attention back to the three people sitting at the front of the room.

Forty minutes and some excellent writing advice later, we all clap for the panel and start to gather our backpacks and file out.

“Do you do character profiles?” Amelia asks me.

“Not really. But I might have to now,” I respond. “By the way, what's with wearing the Enemy's T-shirt?” I raise my eyebrows and point to the logo of
Althena
's publisher that's emblazoned on her top.

She looks down and laughs. “Yesterday was an exoneration. I think Bob would be okay with this.”

“Bob?”

“Yes, we are on a first-name basis now, thank you.”

Outside, we get caught in the flow of the crowd and don't have much of a chance to talk as we walk almost single file back to the Electronic Arts booth. When we find Roxana and Devin, they're about five people away from the front of the line.

“Wow, you guys still haven't gotten to the game?” I ask.

“No, but that's all right. The company was excellent,” Devin says, grinning at Roxana, obviously reminiscing about any number of riveting conversation they've enjoyed over the past hour. Whatever, Stud Crumpet. Soon I will be the one with the ultimate weapon: the Zinc page.

“Hi, I'm Amelia.” She sticks her hand out to Roxy and Devin and they both introduce themselves.

“Amelia is the one who sent me the video last night,” I tell Roxana by way of explanation, and her face lights up.

“Oh, awesome!” Roxana says.

“And she said she'd tell us more about the panel. So I was thinking . . . lunch?”

“Oh . . .” Devin looks wistfully at the front of the line.

“I have about fifty minutes before I have to be back for another panel,” Casey, bless him, chimes in.

“Me too,” Amelia says. “I have something in an hour.”

“Then let's do lunch now,” Roxana says, her eyes shining with curiosity. “I mean, you don't really mind, do you, Devin?”

“Oh. No, that's okay.” Devin, unfortunately, quickly recovers from his obvious disappointment and doesn't throw an enormous tantrum that would immediately point out to Roxana and everyone else in our hearing range that he is clearly the wrong guy for her. Damn him.

“Food court?” Casey asks.

“Actually, there's a pretty good diner just a couple of blocks from here,” Amelia pipes up. “If you feel like venturing out.”

We all agree, and Amelia leads the way out of the Javits and one avenue over to a big diner where most of the patrons are also costumed and/or wearing laminated badges around their necks.

We manage to grab a booth and have just put in an order for sodas when Casey decisively shuts his menu and turns to Amelia. “So, um, you know what you want?”

Amelia scans the menu for a few seconds. “Hmmm . . . I'm kinda feeling like breakfast, actually. Maybe the banana walnut pancakes.”

“Great!” Casey enthuses before switching over to a much more serious voice. “Ready to talk about the panel, then?”

Amelia laughs before closing her menu too. “Sure. Hold on. I'll get this as accurate as possible for you.” She shoots me a smile before reaching into her backpack and grabbing a small spiral notebook that I recognize as the type reporters usually use; I actually carry a similar one for impromptu writing sessions. She opens it, scans a page, and then looks back up at us.

“Okay. So he was already sitting there when we all filed in! Robert Zinc. Like he definitely didn't want any big entrance or anything. So it was kind of super quiet as everyone took their seats. We were all just watching this middle-aged guy in a blue polo shirt, sipping his water and chatting quietly with Solomon Pierce-Johnson, and we were all trying to catch his murmured words. Like he was some sort of prophet, you know?”

The waitress comes over then and we all hurriedly give our orders. I just order whatever Casey does because I definitely have no time to concentrate on something as prosaic as lunch right now.

When the waitress goes away again, we turn our rapt attention back to Amelia.

“So we were told immediately that there would be no Q&A session, just the carefully curated questions Solomon already had. Then Bob
introduced himself . . .” Amelia looks pointedly over at me, referencing her miraculous little video, and I nod in recognition. “And Solomon began,” she says, looking down at her notes again.

“So there were a few softball questions,” she continues. “You know, ‘How did you get your start?' And ‘Where did the inspiration for Althena come from?' Stuff everyone there already knew.”

Roxana and I exchange a glance, and I feel like both of us can conjure up exactly the words “Bob” used to answer those questions in his quiet, measured away.

“But then . . . ,” Amelia says, and stares at each of us around the table in turn, as if she's Hercule Poirot about to accuse the murderer at last. “Solomon asks him, ‘What really happened between you and Young Guns?' ” And as if on cue, there's a collective gasp around the table.

Of course, just then the waitress comes back with our plates of food and I find myself annoyed that any of us ordered anything at all. It doesn't help that Devin asks for ketchup and keeps us waiting even longer until she's gone and everyone is settled. Devin digs in immediately, but the rest of us don't even pick up our utensils as we wait for Amelia to continue the story.

“ ‘What really happened between you and Young Guns?' ” She recaps for us like we just came back from a commercial break. “And that's when Bob says . . . Wait, I want to get this as right as I possibly can.” She looks down at her notebook and reads to us from it. “He says, ‘To be honest with you, I think I was a bit of a pretentious
ass. I do think Young Guns could have stood to throw a little more money and publicity my way, but I think I honestly could have easily negotiated for that. It got a little too personal between me and Adam Warren. I'm guessing many of you might know, we exchanged some words back then.' ”

Amelia looks up at us, as I imagine Zinc looked up at the audience, and we stare back at her aghast in the same way I'm sure they did yesterday. There were a couple of legendary e-mails between Warren, the president of Young Guns, and Zinc that had never entirely been proven to be authentic. But because they contained some seriously creative swearing, any Zinc fan over the age of ten had pored over them and possibly even incorporated some choice phrases into their vocabulary. I still use
crusty unicorn balls
on occasion.

And now here he was, finally confirming their veracity.

“He went on,” Amelia says, and we all just nod, entranced. “He said, ‘Adam and I had some personal issues with each other.' ”

“His wife?” Casey butts in. That was the rumor, that Zinc had slept with Warren's wife.

Amelia shakes her head. “Sorry, chief. Did not get a confirmation on that point. But he continued, ‘But I never should have let that affect the work. At the end of the day, Adam Warren respected
Althena
. His editorial notes always made the work stronger. I think, honestly, we could have made a few more years of really solid issues together.' ”

Amelia stops there and stares at each of us in turn again.

“Son of a bitch,” I mutter under my breath. “A few more years of
Althena
?”

Amelia nods. “Not only that, but Zinc went on to say he had a lot of those story arcs outlined. He
knew
what was going to happen.”

“Oh my God,” Roxana says. “So Althena was going to come back?” In the last issue Althena heartbreakingly went back to Ezula, and as far as the Zinc canon went, Charlie never saw or heard from her again.
“Every night, I dream about a different face,”
he says.
“Every morning, I wake up knowing it was her.”

Amelia shakes her head sadly. “He didn't confirm that, either. But I think we can assume . . .”

We all just sit there in near silence, except for Devin, who is still stabbing at his omelet with a fork. The waitress comes back around and glances at our untouched food. “Is everything okay?” she asks us.

“Oh, yeah. Sure,” we all mutter, and limply pick up our utensils at last. Amelia takes a bite of her pancakes before thankfully starting to speak again.

“That was kind of the biggest revelation,” she says. “He didn't elaborate from there, and Solomon didn't press him. . . .” She rolls her eyes. “And, of course, there was no Q&A session. Though I could've sworn there were people eyeing Solomon's mic like they were thinking about organizing an impromptu takeover.” She chews another bite of her food and swallows before continuing. “The rest of the questions mostly had to do with the movie. Zinc said he had seen some of the
dailies and was very happy with how it was coming along so far.”

“Well, of course he would have to say that with the director sitting right there,” Casey astutely points out.

Amelia nods. “Totally.” She looks down at her notebook again. “Oh! And Solomon asked him one other really great question, I thought. About gender identity, and how
Althena
was really far ahead of its time in that regard.”