“It’s infuriating! We move down to the boonies, and it’s like I’m living in a flipping time warp. News flash: Girls read comics! Girls like geeky stuff! Big whoop! Portland had me fooled, Snap. I can’t believe I still, still, have to justify my existence to these creeps. What’d I ever do to them?! I’m never going—”
The timer cuts me off.
“Now, did you want to figure out the teeth”—Cooper rips out a page from the comic and holds it up—“or the tail first?”
Sigh. “Tail.”
It’s stuffy in the loft above the garage, but it’s all ours. It was the biggest consolation prize for moving down here when Mom got her new job at U of O. We were priced out of Portland; the rent got too damn high. In Eugene we could afford a whole house. I was incensed when I found out we couldn’t stay for our last year of high school, for senior year with Jen and Liv; then I saw our workspace-to-be. Two giant skylights pouring in beams of sun like rays straight from heaven, and I swear I heard a harp plucking the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
The roof is fitted with dark, wooden slats, and the floor is painted a dusty white. Built-in cubbies and foldaway tables line two of the walls. I stood in the loft, and for the first time I felt truly spoiled. Do we deserve this? Our own place separated from the house, but still close enough to pick up the Wi-Fi. It really is heavenly.
I used to build costumes in the living room of our old apartment, constantly having to repair stuff that got stepped on in the dark, losing pieces to well-meaning parents who were always shuffling gauntlets and cowls out of the way. Cooper has it easier; all he’s ever needed is his laptop and a place to put it. He creates worlds in Word documents and screenwriting software. My creations need the room, and with this space I can finally build the costumes of my dreams. Big, complicated masterpieces.
Costumes that would impress Gillian Grayson, that will impress Gillian Grayson when she reviews my portfolio at the National Portfolio Review in six weeks. And then I’ll get into CalArts, so every comic-shop-working douchecanoe in Oregon can paddle up a creek, because I’ll be one step closer to Hollywood. So long, human armpits. Have fun trying to get girlfriends while I’m on a date with Thor.
“How many squirrels are we going to have to trap and skin?” Cooper asks from his workstation.
“Ew, zero. I’m not going real fur for some con costume.”
“You’re the one always harping about authenticity.”
“Making it look authentic. Faking it till we’re making it.” I fan out a few more pages of Squirrel Girl on my desk. I had a decent grasp on the front of her costume before, but today’s haul from Atomix completes the whole picture.
“This is the last cosplay,” I tell him. “I need you to write me an original character.”
“Nope,” Cooper shouts, “you’re gonna have to do at least one more!” He taps away on the keys of my laptop. Clicking and grinning like a madman. “Do you know some character named Quentin Quire?”
“No, but Google does.” I thumb the name into the search bar on my phone. Marvel: pink Mohawk, punk, telepath.
“Someone saw your blog, and wants to pay three hundred dollars for the cosplay.”
“How do you know?”
“He wrote to you; it’s in your inbox.” He turns the laptop around to face me, and I panic for a moment before remembering I went on a deleting spree last night. Nothing else for him to see in there but spam. But I know that won’t last.
“I told you to stay out of my inbox. Stop guessing my passwords, Snap.”
“Hey, good things happen when I check it.”
“It has to be a scam,” I say, but my heart races. I read the email again. Three hundred dollars is more money than my puny Etsy store makes in a year.
“Oh, hell no. He wants it in a week?” I let Cooper read over my shoulder. We huddle together over the screen. I bring up the client’s blog. It looks legit, full of pictures of him attending different conventions. In each photo he’s sporting a different cosplay, although none of them are very good. Lots of construction paper and felt; there’s heart there, but not much skill.
“Aw, he’s cute. And not afraid to wear tights, I see.” Cooper wiggles his eyebrows and enlarges a picture of the guy in an excruciatingly form-fitting Aquaman outfit. “I’d hit it,” he declares. I ask Cooper to pull up some pictures of Quentin Quire on his phone while I draft a response to the buyer.
“Is it doable? Seven days isn’t all that much,” Coop asks without looking up from his screen.
“Totally. It’s not a build or anything. I could do most of it from thrift store finds.” I start pulling out my scrap bins and picking out anything black, anything remotely usable. There isn’t much here, but I know I can pull it off. I have to. I sweep the Squirrel Girl pages onto the floor; I can make her outfit anytime. This is more important. If he’s paying, I can finally call myself a legit professional.
“So what do I say to him?” I ask Cooper, feeling a little clueless.
“Ask for a deposit,” Cooper directs me as I try to type a polite response.
“God, Cam, you type so slow. Gimme.” Cooper takes over and drafts a perfectly worded email in under thirty seconds. Show-off.
“Okay, what else do you need to start?” he asks.
“If he sends the deposit, get his measurements. And ask if he has a specific version of the character he wants.”
“Aye, aye.” He hammers away at the keyboard and fires off the email.
“Thanks, now stay out of my inbox,” I tell him, and I mean it.
“Whatever, Snip.”
“I’ll cut you in, if you’ll be my stitch-bitch.”
“Good, because…” Cooper clicks his mouse a few times. “It looks like we’re a hundred dollars richer.”
* * *
I love how quiet our new house gets at night. Before we moved, I had to suffer through marathons of French films and the tinny sounds of Beyoncé blaring through Cooper’s headphones, singing him to sleep. Trying to block out the noise of his tossing and turning for hours. I could hear Mom pacing in the kitchen, tapping away at her laptop, planning her week. Dad’s snoring was no match for our paper-thin walls. Here, it’s dead quiet. Everyone is off in their own little corner of the house. It’s peaceful. Until my phone jingles to life.
“Jen!” I smile into the screen. “How’s everything? Did Liv start working at Books with Pictures yet? How’s Portland?! Man, Eugene is so much worse than I expected. I thought it was going to be—”
“Cam, hey,” she says softly. “Can you…You shouldn’t…”
“What’s wrong?” Usually Jen is bursting with news and gossip. I was so happy to see her name show up on my phone that I didn’t realize how upset she looks.
“It’s nice that you posted that picture, but could you not? Please don’t tag me in stuff online anymore, okay? Don’t post my screen name or anything.”
“Oh. Did they start something?” I ask as Jen hangs her head. Her shoulders droop forward. She doesn’t look at the screen or at me. Her bedroom is dark, and the light from her phone turns her skin an eerie shade of blue.
“Yeah,” she sighs.
“I’m sorry. I never meant for—”
“I know. But I can’t handle all the…all of it. You get it, right?” Jen asks, and I swallow the lump in my throat.
“Yeah,” I croak.
“I think I…just need a little space. Time for it to blow over, you know?”
“Liv too?” I ask, hoping I’m not going to lose both of my lifelines in one fell swoop.
“I dunno. She’s on vacation with her mom. No Internet in their cabin.”
“Mm-hmm.” I can barely speak. It feels like I’m losing more than a friend—it’s more like losing a limb. An extension of myself.
“I gotta run. We’ll talk soon, all right?”
“Okay.”
She hangs up. And just like that, Portland seems that much farther away. As upset as I am, I can’t say I blame her. If she were responsible for all the messages flooding my email, I might ask her for space too. I can barely handle it myself.
I open up my inbox. Cooper always guesses my passwords. I have to stop using the names of characters from games and movies. He knows all my favorite numbers, favorite colors. I never used to care; we shared everything. I’d read his emails, and he’d read mine. Our lock screens always unlock with the same four-digit code. Then I started posting my cosplay online, and I needed to keep him away. After Seattle Comic Con, I need all of it on serious lockdown. He has no idea why, and I’m trying to keep it that way.
Enter new password:
The box prompts me. It has to be good. Different. Something he won’t expect. The cursor blinks, ticking the moments away. It can’t be anything from pop culture, or our shared personal life. I look around my room, trying to find something worthy of protecting my one, big secret. Protecting me and Cooper all at once. And there it is, right in front of my face: my huge thimble collection. Standing like little soldiers. Ready for action.
I had tried sorting all the thimbles by style and type, but after a while the collection grew so large it would’ve taken a full day to get it all organized. I have porcelain ones with miniature Victorian ladies and lads painted on them. There are a few carved wooden ones, a glass one that looks like a strawberry. The silver thimbles are my favorites. Bordered with delicate filigree and sometimes inlaid with little stones or gems, they are precious to me. Each and every one.
Enter new password: thimblegirl
There are thirty-two unread messages screaming for attention. Thirty-two comments in a day. It’s getting worse. I can barely even stomach the subject lines. I click each box, highlighting the messages, readying them for deletion. Every click pricks at my skin.
You are whats ruining comics.
attentionwhore
fucking fake geek girl u make me sick.
Genderswap *this* bitch
pls write back. ilu so much id marry you
dykebitch
It’s called research.
I know I can batch delete, and I know I can ignore my inbox altogether, but there’s that dark place, deep down, that I can’t help but visit sometimes. I let all the anons confirm my worst fears. That I’m a faker. Talentless. A waste of space. And when I’m there, in the dark place, there’s no stopping my dye-black curiosity.
There is a part of me that misses the days when no one visited my blog, when the lack of likes was the only thing I had to worry about. Blowing up is a blessing and a curse. None of these jerks realize the time and effort I put into making the costumes themselves. They think I’m some poser with deep pockets and flat tits. I wonder if guy cosplayers have this problem.
I finish deleting the emails, not bothering to actually read them this time. I leave just one message, the one from my first client, right at the top, and star it. This is why all of this is worth it.
Even without reading the emails, I can still hear Brody’s gravelly voice in my head, mocking me about my comic blind spots. I look up pictures of Dazzler. What’s so bad about this one character anyway? What about her offends him so much? She’s very blond and very shiny. The more I scroll, the more I fall in love with her. She’s a diva; she’s on roller skates; she’s everything.
While I’m on an X-Men bender, I switch to researching Quentin. Gradually, the sound of Brody’s voice and all the slimy subject lines fall away, replaced by ideas and plans for sweater vests and T-shirt designs.
* * *
It’s dark, and my head aches from the Internet rabbit hole I just crawled out of. I spent way too many hours combing through way too many pictures of Quentin Quire. Even though I couldn’t find any drawings of him from behind, it was worth it. Whatever happened earlier today is sufficiently buried in the feed of my life. Being hired for the first time is too exciting to let some comic shop creeps and online randos ruin it for me. I’m getting paid, flippin’ cash money, to do what I love more than anything in the world. I’m winning, losers—watch out.
The cold air from the fridge soothes me as I rummage through condiments and strap on my cold mask. Headache relieved, I fumble back to my bedroom in the dark. Everyone in the house has been asleep for hours; they’re all morning people. I am the night.
* * *
“Cameron Rose Birch! I’d like to drink my coffee in peace!” my mother howls from downstairs. She always gets mad when I let my alarm ring for more than ten minutes. Her voice shocks me awake in a way no puny phone alarm ever could. And she doesn’t have a snooze button. I live for the snooze. I finally silence the beeping; the alarm has been going off for two hours this morning, but it’s summer vacation. I should get to snooze as long as I want.
My hair is something to behold in the morning; it twists and swirls into black tornadoes and nests and tumbleweeds as I sleep. I like to keep it wild as long as I can stand it. Cooper has the same problem, but he tames his tresses the minute his eyes open. He’s horrified when I walk into the kitchen.
“Is something living in it? That has to be the only excuse for all”—he waves his hand in a halo encompassing my face—“this.”
“Yes, actually. A small family of raccoons moved in last night. I’m giving them until after breakfast to move out.”
“Breakfast? It’s noon.” Mom pushes past me to the fridge and grabs her travel mug.
“Oh, then I guess it’s brunch. Where’s the lox?” I smile.
“See you both for dinner. Give your father a hand in the garden if he needs it.” She has to reach up to hug us: we both dwarf her; last year we grew three inches, and she lost one. Mom takes a last look in the mirror, smooths out a kink in her own twisty gray hair, and is out the door.
“So today I thought we could hit up the Goodwill on—” I start.
“I can’t help you today; I have work.”
“Are you really going to get screenplay ideas working at Banana Republic?” I ask Cooper as he dashes around the kitchen looking for his keys, his wallet. Just like Mom does. Always in a rush to be fifteen minutes early.
“No, but I’ll get money.”
“I’m earning now too!”
“So get to work, girl.”
* * *
If I had the time, I’d knit Quentin Quire’s cardigan from scratch. Buy some pink and black roving-weight yarn, cast on to my size 15 needles, and let it fly. That’s the kind of effort I like to put in. I’d go down to Kozy Corner and buy muslin and chalk and create the pattern for his pants on sheets of tracing paper myself. But with only a week to create the cosplay, I don’t have that kind of time. So I’m walking two miles to Goodwill, where I can comb through the bins. I know I won’t find the exact sweater there—it’s way too specific. But I know I can scrounge up a good base and alter it.
The bins have a smell about them, an aura. Dusty and funky, desperate and hungry. I savor it. It’s hard to reach the bottoms of the bins standing at the edge. It’s easier just to climb in. With yellow-rubber-gloved hands, I dive deep into the bins, even though it can get a little dicey down at the bottom.
I tell the girl shopping two bins over what I need, and I keep my eyes peeled for a raincoat without holes for her. Anything that looks remotely nice or usable I move to the top of the heap for the next scavenger. I try to spare them the dive.
I’m just about the same size as Quentin’s buyer, which is a lucky break. I’ve already found a decent pair of black jeans that I can tailor. Now I try on whatever sweaters I can find as I dig deeper into the bin. A cream-colored knit sleeve peeks out from the pile, and even though it’s missing a button on the front, I yank it out, hoping for a decent match. It’s cabled, with gold buttons: it doesn’t really work for the design at all, but I try it on anyway. My
arm barely fits into the sleeve. It’s way, way too small. I put the sweater aside on top of a purple plastic coat. No holes.
“I found you a raincoat!” I call over to the girl.
“Wanna trade?!” Her arm shoots into the air, waving a large white sweater. We both crawl to the edges and lean across the gap with our treasures.
“Whoa, this is actually pretty cool-looking.” She inspects the coat. The zipper in the collar reveals a matching hood. “Nice find.”
“You too!” I look over the sweater. It’s really plain, and way too big, but too big is fixable. I could cut it into the shape and style I’m looking for. It’s got all the right problems. “This’ll be perfect.” I look up from the sweater, and the girl smiles, happy to have helped a fellow hunter. She can’t be much older than me; maybe she could be a new friend. Someone to thrift-shop and then grab some pad thai with? All I have to do is ask. That’s what Cooper would do.
“So, what are you doing? You wanna hang…or chill? Or kick it?” Oh God, what’s wrong with me? It sounds like I was raised in a bunker, and this is my first interaction with an outsider. Why am I so bad at this? I wonder why Jen and Liv ever hung out with me in the first place. If we hadn’t met in third grade, would I have any friends at all?
“Um, maybe next time,” she says, too politely, before plunging her arms back into the debris.
“Right. Happy hunting.”
* * *
My workroom is alive with music from the speakers and, occasionally, the sewing machine. I’ve painstakingly deconstructed the sweater, and I’m placing straight pins in the new seams. Every now and then I carefully, carefully slip it on to test the size. One wrong move and the whole thing’ll unravel. Once it’s ready, I’ll show Cooper how to sew it up, and I can move on to the pants, the T-shirt, the buttons, everything.
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