“I really do love your hair. It’s totally cool.”
“Thanks,” Leta said. “My mom had a cow.”
“Even better,” Agnes said with a giggle. She quieted. “If I call Diana to come pick me up now I’ll never hear the end of it. Can I stay here?”
“Sure,” Leta said.
The house was full of shadows. Leta turned on a lamp that only illuminated the emptiness of the living room. Leta gave Agnes a pair of her pajamas and they pulled the quilt off Leta’s bed and spread it over the carpet in her room.
“Oh, Charlie!” Agnes took Leta’s Appaloosa from its place on the horse shelf and gave him a kiss. She tucked Roger’s jacket under her head and clutched Charlie to her chest. The girls lay together on the floor, shoulders touching, and talked about who was the cutest guy in TeenBeat, whether Leta should let her hair grow out or keep it short, if it would be totally fourth grade to stage Rocky Horror with the Barbies in the morning. As Agnes’s words became softer and fewer, fading at last to a light snore, Leta stared at the glittery flecks in the ceiling and imagined they were stars winking out a message only she could understand.
Libba Bray is the author of the New York Times bestselling Gemma Doyle Trilogy, which includes the novels A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing. She is also the author of the comedic novel, Going Bovine. Besides Geektastic, she has contributed stories to Restless Dead, Up All Night, and Vacations from Hell. Sometimes she tells people she’s won the National Book Award, but then M. T. Anderson comes by and asks for his back, ’cause he’s grabby like that.
Libba is a longtime geek and is fluent in many geek languages including, but not limited to, theater geek, showtunes geek (yes, they are different), music geek, sci-fi TV geek, bad movies geek, “Rocky Horror” geek, campy geek, Hammer Horror geek, and Valley of the Dolls geek, which deserves a category all its own. As a teenager, she saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show every weekend for nearly two years. Any photos that surface of her in a gold lamé top, heavy eyeliner, and tap shoes are absolutely fabricated, especially if the subject in question is sporting a mullet.
a cognizant original v5 release october 10 2010
About the Illustrators
Hope Larson is the author and illustrator of several graphic novels, including Gray Horses and Chiggers. Her short stories have been featured in the New York Times and several anthologies, notably the Flight series and Image Comics’ Tori Amos?–inspired Comic Book Tattoo. Larson has been nominated for awards in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and is the recipient of a 2006 Ignatz Award and a 2007 Eisner Award. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her husband and four cats. She used up all her geek points when she started drawing comics professionally.
Bryan Lee O’Malley was born in London, Ontario, Canada. In high school he joined choir, chess club, the trivia team, and the computer programming club, got his first job in order to purchase a Sega Genesis, attended LAN parties, played Starcraft from dusk ’til dawn while drinking Coke and eating pizza, tried to get his friends to read comic books that he thought were really cool, and hung out with the theater and band geeks. The head of the arts department still speaks of him fondly. O’Malley went on to become an award-winning cartoonist, with a film, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, in development at Universal. He lives in the United States.
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