The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love (14 page)

One of the most interesting things about Althena's alien species is that they don't have two genders, they have fifty-seven to choose from. In fact, it's one of the things that fascinates and amuses Althena the most about humans, being limited to only two and being so staunch about how they get paired up. Throughout the series, Althena herself changes back and forth between male and female human forms pretty constantly. And, of course, Charlie falls in love with her anyway.

“What did Zinc say?” I ask Amelia.

“He said it was of course a conscious decision on his part. Things were different back in the early nineties, especially with the AIDS epidemic, and there was a lot of fear about homosexuality and transgender people and just . . . anyone who was different. Living in Greenwich Village, he saw how it affected so many people he knew and was friends with. And one day he just wondered, if an alien species came down here, would they find this whole obsession with gender norms so absurd?”

“Wow,” I say.

“Wow,” Roxana repeats, and we stare at each other. It's always pretty
amazing to find a new reason to put one of your idols up on an even higher pedestal.

“Yup,” Amelia says. “The whole thing was really amazing. I mean, even more so . . . not to be disappointed, you know? That something you built up for so long was even better than what you'd imagined?”

We all nod, completely understanding the nerdticipation that all too often leads to an enormous letdown—usually hashed out in message boards and comments sections across the great World Wide Web. So to have something—or in this case, someone—live up to impossible expectations is a real cause for celebration.

Amelia tells us that Zinc left the stage then and they made everyone file out, so she has no idea where he went afterward.

“Sounds great!” Devin says too brightly, breaking our enchantment, because, of course, he hasn't been waiting years and years to hear some of these sacred revelations. I sneak a look at Roxy, who looks dazed at being pulled out of Amelia's story. “Shall we get the check?”

With the spell lifted, Casey realizes that he does have to get going to make it to his panel. So we wolf down some food, pay, and make our way back over to the Javits.

“I LIED,” AMELIA SAYS AS
she glances at her phone. “My next panel doesn't start for another forty-five minutes, actually.” She looks up at me and smiles.

“Ah, cool,” I say, meaning it. We're now roaming the Block behind Roxana and Devin. This is kind of the random section of NYCC, where a lot of vendors are hawking their wares and there are lots of neat toys and objects to look at. The booth we're just walking by, for example, has something called 8-bit pixel art, where all the objects—from portraits to crossed swords—look like they come straight from a very early video game. I point out a particularly cool-looking Batmobile to Amelia.

“Awesome,” she says, and then turns to me. “Okay, so Burton
Batman
or Nolan
Batman
?” She has a mischievous gleam in her eye that I don't understand because this is sort of a no-brainer.

“Um, Nolan?” I say, which is, of course, the obvious choice.

“See, I prefer Burton!” she exclaims, clearly delighted that I went with the other option so that she can explain her argument. Which, naturally, I make her do. “I just think there's a certain playfulness with Burton that mirrors the original intention of the series. The dark stuff is there, but more subversive. I really like that.”

“Yeah, but Nolan also ushered in this era of the true, dark superhero movie,” I counter. “There's so much depth to it.”

“But a lot of the humor is gone,” she argues. “And Michael Keaton? Such a bold, unusual choice for Batman. But it so works.”

“Oh . . . I see what's going on here,” I say slowly. “You're a hipster nerd.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” she responds, but I can see she's genuinely amused. “And what kind of nerd are you, then?”

“Oh, I'm definitely an all-arounder,” I immediately answer, because I have given this a lot of thought. “I'm kinda into it all. Comic books, regular books, movies, video games, television. Also, you know, like, actual school.”

“Show-off.” She's raising her eyebrows at me. “Isn't it funny, though? How it's become kinda cool to self-identify as a nerd? I doubt our parents had that luxury.”

“They definitely didn't,” I say before going on to explain about my OG dad. “He's got some stories that are straight out of, like, an episode of
Saved by the Bell.
I'm pretty sure there was a Kick Me sign involved.”

Amelia laughs. “No way.”

I nod. “The way he tells it, it's a miracle he ever met and married a woman. A miracle that I'm even here. But get this, you want to know how he got the nerve to speak to my mom?”

“How?”

“They were in college by then, mind you, so I think things were a little better. But he's in the park in the middle of campus, and he sees this pretty girl carrying this enormous book about . . . wait for it . . .
Star Wars.
And he realizes if he can't get up the nerve to talk to
her
, then he is just a completely hopeless cause. So he gathers up all his courage and he marches over to her and does the impossible: strikes up a flirtatious conversation.”

Amelia smiles. “That's so cute!”

“Yes, trust me. It was a real triumphant moment for him. Of course, the real kicker is that she was carrying that book because she was a cinema studies major, not because she was a huge fan or anything.”

Amelia laughs. “But he stuck with it anyway?”

I nod. “The OG may have been a shy nerd, but he's also a stubborn one.”

“That's a really great story.”

I nod. It is. I never tire of it, and after Mom was gone, I'd sometimes
make my dad tell it to me at night, even when I was maybe too old for bedtime stories.

“And that's so cool about your mom,” Amelia continues. “I've actually been considering going to film school myself.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Excuse me.” A voice interrupts our conversation. A short girl in a Superman shirt is smiling at us and brandishing a microphone. She gives me the once-over and then seems to be staring at Amelia's chest, which is a little bit disconcerting.

“I run a podcast, and we're doing a special Zinc fandom compendium,” she explains. “Would you mind if I interview you?” She points toward Amelia again, and it's only then that I realize she's been observing Amelia's T-shirt. “If you're a fan, that is.”

Amelia looks at me and I shrug. “Sure,” she says. “And yup, we're fans.”

I look ahead and see Roxy and Devin exiting the Block, not noticing that we've been held up. I don't want to lose sight of them, but it would be rude to leave Amelia now, so I just make a plan to text Roxy and catch up with her again as soon as this is over.

“Great!” the podcast host says. She turns on the little recorder attached to her microphone, looks down at some notes in her phone, and then looks back up at Amelia with a plastered smile. “A few easy ones. So do you think Zinc was well represented at New York Comic Con this year?”

“Um, well, he was actually here. Which has never happened before. So I would say yes,” Amelia responds, throwing me a quizzical look. I shrug.

“Great,” the girl says. “And how much of Zinc's work would you say you've read? Like what percentage?”

“One hundred,” Amelia says.

“Really?” the girl asks.

“Well, there really isn't much of it,” Amelia responds, throwing me another look. “Unless you're counting unpublished pieces . . .”

“No, no. Got it. You're a
huge
fan.” The girl says the word
fan
as if she really wants to say
nerd
 . . . and not in a cool twenty-first-century way, but kind of like she's a mean girl in one of my mom's eighties DVDs.

She looks up at Amelia again, and this time there's something piercing in her gaze, like she's a hard-hitting journalist about to throw a real curveball. “So if an alien came down to earth today, what do you think he or she would find most disconcerting about our legal system? Would it be pertaining to gun control, immigration, health care, or something else?”

This time Amelia shoots me a fully alarmed look. “Er, what?”

The girl doesn't flinch. “If, like in your favorite fantasy story, an alien came down to earth,” she says more slowly, as if Amelia didn't comprehend the question because of how fast she was talking, “what—”

But Amelia stops her. “Um, okay. Right, I got the question.” She thinks for a second. “I'm not a legal expert and I don't really see what
this has to do with Zinc, to be honest, but I do think our gun control system is pretty broken.”

“And how would you fix it?” the girl immediately asks. “I mean . . .” She stares down at her notes. “How would this alien maybe think to fix it?”

Amelia gamely and astutely answers a couple more in the girl's bizarre line of questioning, before cleverly saying she has another panel to get to.

“Me too.” I jump on her gravy train when the girl looks as if she's about to start in on me.

As soon as we're out of earshot, Amelia turns to me and laughs.

“What was that?” I ask.

“I don't know, but sneak-attack politics at Comic Con is a little low, don't you think? Especially if you've clearly never even read your gateway series of choice.”

“And obviously think it's beneath you,” I point out.

Amelia rolls her eyes.

“Um, amazing answers, by the way,” I have to say to her. “If she'd cornered me, I think I would've made a run for it.”

“Ha! Thanks. I try to keep up with the news and have opinions on things, you know?”

I nod, a little awestruck. I have opinions on things too, but few of those things are part of what most would consider the real world.

I'm about to ask Amelia to tell me more about her interest in film
school when a peculiar movement catches the corner of my eye.

We're a few feet down from the pixel art booth, and when I look over, I see a tall, muscular guy with shoulder-length dirty-blond hair about to scamper away from it. The thing I could have sworn I just saw him do is something very strange: tuck a sword into his pants like there was a scabbard there.

Normally, I wouldn't think twice about anyone carrying a sword at Comic Con as part of a costume. But this guy is dressed in nondescript baggy jeans, an oversized sweatshirt, and a Yankees cap. Not to mention there's just something about the way he's skulking away that seems . . . off.

More out of curiosity than anything, I find myself drawn back to the booth. “I just want to check something,” I say to Amelia as I quickly walk over. She follows me.

“Excuse me,” I say to the girl behind the counter when I get there. “Weird question. But, um, did you just sell a Master Sword?” I'm looking at the display case in front, where Amelia and I were just admiring a life-sized Zelda sword beautifully rendered from hundreds of tiny pieces of plastic. It was priced at $900 and is not there now.

The girl, who has dark hair and thick, sculpted eyebrows and doesn't look much older than me, glances down at the case, and her eyes grow wide. She mutters something under her breath that sounds like it might be a curse in a foreign language, and then she looks up at me. Her heavy eyebrows furrow in an accusatory scowl. “You take?” she asks angrily.

I put my hand up. “No, no!” I say. I look around and see the guy
in the Yankees cap still ambling along, about to reach the end of the Block. “I think I saw him take it,” I say.

She frowns as she looks down the aisle.

“Well, come on, then! Let's go catch up with him,” a voice next to me says, and suddenly Amelia is jetting off after the guy.

“Wait!” I immediately run after her, but as we get closer to the guy, I can hear my pulse throbbing near my eardrum. Oh my God, what is she doing? And what are we going to do once we catch up to this guy? Confront him?

Amelia reaches him first, and she touches his elbow to get his attention. “Hey!” she says angrily. He turns around and stares down at Amelia, and I realize he looks far, far scarier up close. He's at least a foot taller than her—he's a few inches taller than me—and he looks decidedly mean. He has small blue eyes, a scraggly goatee, and a deep, ugly scar running down each side of his face.

He's glaring at Amelia, and with my eyes on his scars, I yell the first thing that comes into my head. “Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

When I say I yell it, I mean it. I swear, half the con comes to a halt, staring at me. There's almost a hush in the Javits, and I think I can hear my line of regurgitated dialogue reverberate along the metal bars of the high ceilings.

“Is this like Comic Con theater?” I hear someone whisper.

“Shhh . . . I caught it on my phone!” someone else responds.

Meanwhile, the thief's glare is jumping up about ten notches in the menacing department and I have a feeling I'm about to pay for my knee-jerk—or should I say nerd-jerk—reaction to his face.

But then we hear footsteps behind us. “He stole sword.” I look up to see the girl from the pixel art booth behind me. And she, thankfully, has a burly security guard with her.

“I didn't do nothing,” the guy says right away, still staring at me as if he's memorizing my face.

“He saw,” the girl says, pointing at me.

I'm sure my cheeks are about the color of Superman's briefs right now, but I think it's too late to back down at this point. “I think he put it in his pants,” I mumble to the guard.