Kat and Meg Conquer the World

by Anna Priemaza

  And then he’s there. On the stage. Legs is on the stage! He scampers—no, scatters . . . no, saunters—across the stage to the table and mic in the center. He’s tall and broad-shouldered and even more muscular than he looks in his vlogs, and his black hair is slicked back in an almost Grease-like puff. And I am going to hear his jokes and banter and advice in person.

  “Woo, LumberLegs!” I shout. Mascara girl glances at me through her curtain of blackness, but I don’t even care. LumberLegs is here. I am here. We’re together in the same room.

  As the applause finally dies down, LumberLegs leans toward the mic and says something. Someone in the front row laughs, but no one else does because none of us can hear him.

  “No sound!” shouts someone off to the side.

  “Fix the mic!” shouts someone else.

  Even from my place a dozen rows back, I can see Legs’s face turn bright red as he reaches forward and fumbles with the mic. Someone wearing a LotSCON polo shirt scurries across the stage, and they fiddle with it together.

  An earsplitting screech echoes through the room as the microphone comes on, and everyone groans. The LotSCON staff member taps it, and the thud thud echoes through the room, so he falls back and LumberLegs tries again.

  “Hi . . . I’m LumberLegs . . . I . . . play video games. For YouTube. On YouTube.” He fiddles with the drawstring on his hoodie. He seems uncomfortable, like the technical problems made him forget what he was going to say, or like he’s used to talking to people through a camera and seeing them in person is frightening, or like he’s actually an alien who’s been warped into LumberLegs’s body and told he has to do this event even though he hates public speaking.

  Whatever the reason, he doesn’t look like the usual, confident Legs he is on camera. As his pause stretches into a full stop, discomfort ripples through the whole room, making people shift in their seats or play with their hair or fidget with their costumes.

  Legs can feel it, I can tell. I want to hug him.

  Instead, I cup my hands around my mouth and shout as loudly as I can, “To the rift!”

  For a terribly long moment, the room is so silent, I can hear my words echoing off the concrete walls. But then a chorus of voices in the front shouts it out, too. “To the rift!” And then half the room is shouting it, and everyone is laughing, and Legs is rolling his eyes and saying, “You guys!” But his shoulders relax, and as his eyes roam over the crowd he’s grinning, and then for just a moment he’s grinning right at me.

  He knows that it was me. Knows that I fixed it. We’re a team now. No more stupid Grayson—third row look-alike or real thing. It’s me and Legs forever.

  And then he goes into his material, talking about how he got into YouTubing, how his Speed Run Fails videos went viral and propelled both him and the speed runs mod into fame, how his life has changed because of it—mostly for the better. People laugh a lot, because now that he’s gotten over his initial nerves, he’s just as funny in person as he is online. He’s just as perfect in person as he is online.

  Partway through, Legs announces that he’s going to answer some questions, and I sit up, ready to hear the question I submitted to the Q & A’s online form about his ideal first date. I mean, it would be with me, obviously, but I want to know what we’ll do.

  He starts off answering a bunch of questions I already know the answer to, since I’ve watched pretty much every one of his videos—multiple times. Which I get. Not everyone’s as big a fan as me, so it makes sense to start with the basics. What did he do before YouTube? Cooking school. What’s his most embarrassing moment? Vomiting in front of his crush in grade six.

  Then a couple of silly ones he’s never answered before. Like what LotS baddie he’d be in real life: filthworm. Or where he’d live if he could live anywhere: Mars.

  He has to be getting to mine soon.

  But the next question asks for advice about how to decide what to do with your life. He rambles a bit about education and dreams and passion. “So just figure out what you’re passionate about. Something you can do because you love it, not because you expect someone to pay you for it,” Legs concludes. “Oh, and be awesome.”

  And then he stands and says, “Thanks, everyone!” and then everyone’s standing and applauding, and Legs is walking off the stage, and my question hasn’t been answered, but LotSCON shirt guy is explaining that autographs will happen out in the hallway where they have a table set up, and I have to get there first, so I don’t have time to worry about what it means that he didn’t answer mine. I grab my poster and dart through the crowd, past mascara girl and her boyfriend, around the dragonlord, through a group of kids who are way too young to appreciate LumberLegs’s brilliance, and into the hallway.

  Where the line is already stretching down the hall.

  Lizard balls. I thought I was quick.

  Once again, I take my place at the end of the line. I shift from foot to foot as I wait, my only encouragement the thought that Legs is probably finding this line just as boring as I am—until he meets me, of course.

  I take my poster out of its cardboard sleeve so it’s ready to go. I watch more people in costume go by. An elf. Another dragonlord. A surprisingly accurate mutant rabbit.

  And then, suddenly, I’m at the front of the line, and Legs is there with his perfect jaw and shining eyes. I wait for him to say that he recognizes me, but he probably doesn’t want to make the people behind me feel left out, because all he says is, “Hi.”

  “Hi,” I say. “I’m Meg. I’m your biggest fan. You might think it’s one of these other dweebs, but it’s not, it’s me.”

  His sharp green eyes meet mine, and he grins his handsome grin, and for one long, perfect moment, my insides are melting and everything in the world is exactly as it should be.

  Then he frowns, tiredly, reaches out to take my poster, and unfurls it onto the table just enough to reveal a small place to write. “What did you say your name was?” he asks without looking at me.

  “Meg. With the turtle? I didn’t put him out in the snow, don’t worry.” Legs nods without looking at me and lifts his Sharpie. “And I just love your Speed Run Fails series.” I’m speaking so quickly it comes out as speedrnfls. “I practically pee myself laughing every time I watch it.”

  He scribbles something on the poster, then rolls it back up and hands it to me. “I’m glad you enjoy them. I hope you have a good evening.” His gaze barely even pauses on my face before it shifts to the next person in line.

  “Wait, don’t you remember—” I start to say, but the people behind me in line have already pushed forward and are telling Legs their names.

  I should tell him my joke. I would tell him my joke if he’d just look up at me again. But he doesn’t. Doesn’t glance my way even once.

  That’s it. My time with him is done. He’s on to the next fan. And then the next. I scan down the line, which has grown at least ten times longer. There are so many of them. With Legs’s face right in front of mine on my laptop or TV screen, it always feels like it’s just me and him, but it’s not. It’s me and him and his millions of other fans.

  I step away from the table, fading into the crowd, just another fangirl among hundreds of other fangirls. Unless—I glance down at the poster in my hand. Did he give me his number? I unfurl the thin paper and find his Sharpie scrawl, hoping for numbers. A phone number.

  There are no numbers. Of course there are no numbers.

  Instead, right below the bubble-lettered “BE AWESOME,” he’s written:

  Meg,

  Be Awesome.

  —Legs

  Be awesome. Be. Awesome. How am I supposed to be awesome when I can’t even be noticed?

  I want out of here. I push my way out of the crowd to the nearest door, then shove it open and burst out of the place.

  I expect to step into icy winds and streetlights and passing cars, but the exit spits me out into a dingy, darkened hallway. The door closes behind me, muffling but not muting the happy chatter
of all the stupid LumberLegs fans.

  My phone reads 9:52. I’d planned to stay out past eleven just to tick Stephen off. I’d planned to stay out past eleven with LumberLegs. Maybe everyone here had the exact same plan.

  Now, all I want is to be back in my hotel room, with some very loud music and maybe a bottle of expensive red wine. I wonder if room service would deliver it without carding me if I told them that my mom had just stepped out and would be right back.

  If I ever even find my way back there. I trudge down the ugly, dark hallway, which probably leads to Mordor. Be awesome be awesome be awesome. The words pound through my head with every heavy step. If I was awesome, people wouldn’t keep leaving me. My friends. Brad. Brad’s friends. My birth dad. Stephen-the-Leaver. Grayson.

  I turn a corner and go through a door and find myself at the edge of the hotel lobby. Which should be a relief, but every step feels like a slog as I hike through the lobby, past the front-desk clerks, who don’t even seem to notice me, to the elevators.

  It’s this poster. This stupid, meaningless, very-not-awesome poster. It’s weighing me down with its epic blah-ness. A garbage can sits beside the elevators, and as the elevator dings its arrival, I scrunch up the poster and shove it deep into the trash, where it belongs.

  The elevator doors open, and I step inside the gloomy, empty cube and stand by myself in the center of the dingy square of carpet. I am not awesome. If I was awesome, I wouldn’t be so miserably alone.

  The doors open again, and I begin my trek down the just-as-gloomy, empty hallway to my room.

  Except the hallway’s not empty. Outside a hotel room door—my hotel room door—someone is sitting on the carpet, back against the wall, knees pulled to her chest.

  Kat.

  She looks up at me as I draw near. Her winter coat is spread out under her like a picnic blanket, and a bulging backpack sits beside her. A strand of hair has slipped out of her ponytail to hang over her shoulder.

  “Hi,” she says shyly, as if we’ve just met.

  “What are you—why—how did you get here?” I slide down the wall, dropping into place beside her.

  “Granddad,” she says. “And Luke. Oh, and this.” She holds out her fist and opens it to reveal a purple button. My button. The one I gave her the night of Granddad’s stroke.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” I say. And then I lean into her shoulder and start bawling like a baby.

  CHAPTER 24

  KAT

  MEG SOBS INTO MY SHOULDER FOR A LONG TIME. TEARS AND PROBABLY SNOT seep through my shirt and press hot against my skin.

  It was actually worth it. The puking in the airport bathroom. The three thousand breaths I counted on the plane before finally falling asleep for the rest of the flight. The long, creepy foreverness of this hallway after Luke dropped me here so he could go to some party. It didn’t feel like it at the time—it felt like I was foolish and irrational—but now it feels like nothing. Because it was nothing if it got me to Meg when she needed me. I wrap my arm around her shoulders and squeeze.

  When she finally stops shuddering, I search through my backpack. I find a single probably-not-used Kleenex and offer it to her. She blows her nose, then pats at her makeup-streaked cheeks with the snot-drenched tissue.

  “Let’s go inside,” I tell her, gesturing toward her hotel room with my head. I’ve sat in this hallway long enough. I’ve counted every faded gold swirl in this bloodred carpet, have imagined every person who might be behind every door and what they might try to say to me if they found me here, looking homeless and out of place in this hallway. I stand, offer my hand to Meg, and haul her to her feet. As she opens the hotel room door, I grab my backpack and Meg’s discarded Kleenex from the floor—I can wash my hands afterward—then follow Meg inside.

  Meg stops just inside the room, shoulders slumped. Her eyes are red-rimmed, and a black smear of mascara cuts across her cheek like a battle scar.

  “I had sex with him,” she blurts out.

  “LumberLegs?” There’s no way. Her bizarre plan can’t possibly have worked.

  “No, Grayson.”

  “Oh,” I say. Then, “Oh!” It all makes sense. The mood swings, the panic, her obsession with marrying LumberLegs. “Are you pregnant?”

  “Why? Because I’m black? Seriously, Kat? We used protection.”

  “No, I—” I break off, catching myself. I want to tell Meg that it has nothing to do with her being black and everything to do with the fact that even though I know in theory that lots of kids in our grade are having it, the word immediately makes me think about health class and signs at the doctor’s office and the terrible things that happen in books like Cider House Rules. But we learned in social studies that people can be racist without even realizing it, and besides, this isn’t about me, it’s about Meg. And if I’ve made her feel like a stereotype, I feel terrible. So instead of asking if they used two different forms of protection, like they taught us in health, I say, “Well, that’s good, then.”

  “I guess.” She marches over to the far bed and pitches herself backward onto it, landing with a grunt. She spreads her arms and legs out like a star and stares unblinkingly up at the ceiling.

  I’m so incredibly out of my depth here. How are people supposed to feel after they’ve done the s word with someone—ecstatic? swoony? broken? terrified? I’ve never really thought about the emotions side of it, just the pregnancy and STDs and other scariness side.

  I snatch the blanket off the other bed. “Here,” I say, spreading it over her. “Make a cocoon.” Cocoons are the best. Warmth, safety—a soft, fuzzy shield.

  She blinks at me for a minute, seemingly confused, even though she’s seen me cocoon half a dozen times. Then the haze clears from her eyes. “Yes,” she says simply. She grabs the edges of both blankets, holding them tight against her body. Then she rolls over once, twice, three times, and tumbles off the edge of the bed with a thud.

  “Meg! Are you okay?” I leap onto the bed and peer over the edge. She lies facedown on the ground, blanket still wrapped tight around her, face smushed into the grimy carpet, shoulders shaking—with laughter, I hope. “Are you okay?” I ask again.

  “Can you roll me over?” she says into the floor. She’s definitely laughing.

  I clamber around her, grab an edge of the cocoon, and pull.

  Meg blinks up at me, arms pinned to her sides inside the blanket.

  “Do you want out?” I ask.

  She shakes her head, sliding her hair back and forth along the floor. She looks like she hasn’t slept in days.

  “Ugh, what is wrong with me?” she asks the ceiling.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you!”

  “Then why doesn’t anyone like me? Guys . . . friends . . . Grayson . . .”

  “He liked you enough to . . . well, you know.” I sit in the nearby armchair.

  “Sure. And then broke up with me right after.”

  “He did what?”

  “I mean, he didn’t explicitly. But he wanted to, I could tell. And so I left, and he didn’t call me again, ever, so that’s basically breaking up with me, right? And it was kind of my fault, but still, I—”

  And then she’s sobbing again.

  I slide to the floor, rest my hand where I think hers is under the blankets, then lie down beside her on the germy carpet, tilting my head until it presses against hers.

  When her shoulders stop shuddering, she sniffs, then cranes her neck forward and wipes her nose along the edge of the blanket. Then her head drops back with a thud.

  “Even my own dad doesn’t want me,” she says.

  “He died. That doesn’t mean he didn’t want you.”

  “No, not—I meant Stephen. I mean, I know he’s not my bio dad, but he was there for like seven years. And then he didn’t want custody of me. Didn’t even ask for visitation time. I saw the court papers.” She kicks her feet, trying to loosen the straitjacket blankets. “I mean, am I super annoying or something?” Kick. Kick. “Do
I have bad breath?” Kick. “Is it an ADHD thing?” Kick. “Maybe I’m too forgetful. Or that other thing. Immunity. No. Imbecile. No. You know, it starts with an i and means I make bad decisions.” Kick. Kick. Kick. Kick. “Ugh, I hate when I can’t think of words. Maybe other people hate that, too. Maybe that’s why everyone leaves me.” Kick-kick-kickkickkick.

  “Meg, stop! Meg!” I grab at her flailing legs, which are only tangling her up further and further in the mess of blankets, and pin them to the ground. “You are not annoying.” I find the edge of one of the blankets under her knee and pull it out. “And I’d tell you if you had bad breath. Lift your shoulder, please. You are amazing. And your other knee. I mean it. You’re smart, and you’re so brave. For my entire flight here, I kept feeling for your purple button in my pocket, and I thought over and over that if that button held even just the tiniest fraction of your bravery, that would be enough.”

  Meg sits up, shaking off the last bit of her blanket prison. She stares at me with big puppy-dog eyes.

  I stare right back. “Meg . . . you inspire me.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Really?”

  “Really,” I say.

  “Then why did he leave? Stephen, I mean. Why did he tell the judge I’m not his real daughter?” She leans back against the bed, shoulders sagging. She loved him as her dad—that much is obvious. Which means the next part is obvious, too.

  “Because he’s an idiot,” I say. “And a jerk. You don’t deserve to be treated like that.”

  She stands abruptly. “You’re right. I’m going to tell him that.”

  “What, now?”

  “Yes, now.” She strides toward the door.

  I pull the purple button from my pocket. “Do you want—” But she’s already out the door. Which is fine. Because Meg doesn’t need a button to be brave. She just is.

  MEG