And I don’t think he said anything misogynistic or terrible in any way, but really, I was so enamored with watching his nonstop busy chat that maybe I wouldn’t have noticed if he did.
“I need to hit the washroom,” I say. “Can you guys—”
“Hold your spot? On it.” Mark spreads out his arms like he’s reserving extra space.
“Thanks, man,” I say, and then weave my way back out of the fenced-in line.
In the bathroom, I ignore the stalls and head over to a corner, where I switch to Code’s YouTube channel and pull up one of Code’s recent videos on my phone. I don’t have headphones with me like Mark did, so I turn the volume down quiet and hold it up to my ear. A guy at a urinal glances over at me, but I turn my back to him and press Play.
It’s a pretty typical Code video. He’s creeping through the dark hallways of a horror game, shrieking at an incredibly high octave any time something jumps out at him. Aside from the shrieks and grunts, he doesn’t say anything particularly coherent except to rant and swear at us, his audience, about how he’s probably going to die and it’s all our fault for making him play this game and—scream!
I switch to a multiplayer video, which is mostly just chaos, as he and his buddies run around on a tiny LotS map trying to slaughter each other.
I’ve watched a lot of Code’s streams in preparation for this weekend, and I don’t remember him saying anything bigoted in any of them. Surely if he did, I would have noticed, right? I want to believe I would have noticed.
I message Jones. Do you have any reason to believe that Codemeister is a terrible human being?
Jones’s face bubble appears in chat. I don’t watch a ton of his videos, but no. Why? Has he asked you for your soul and you have to decide whether it’s worth giving it to him?
My shoulders relax a little. Jones is the kind of person who would definitely say so if she’d heard Code say some bad stuff. She calls me on my crap all the time.
I tap out a response. Exactly. What do you think? Could we still be friends if I had no soul?
Dereck’s face appears. He must have just gotten up. Ask if he’ll take your brain instead. I’ve always wanted a zombie friend.
Jones: Zombies still have brains, idiot. They’re just infected brains.
Dereck: Do they? Are you sure? Well, ask him if he’ll settle for infecting your brain instead.
My laugh echoes through the concrete box of a bathroom. I’ll see what I can do.
I slip my phone away, wash my hands, and head back out to Mark and Leroy. I’ve been gone for so long that they probably think I just took a big, long, constipated dump.
The line for Team Meister autographs has grown substantially while I’ve been in the washroom, so I guess I should be thanking Mark for making us get in line. It’s already curved back and forth through the fenced-in grid a few times.
I study the lined-up people as I pass. There’s a short black girl with a tall white girl, a group of Asian kids, a couple of black guys, and two girls in dwarf costumes holding hands. The growing line is way more diverse than my whole school, which makes sense since this is Toronto, not Stratford—a place I’m pretty sure no immigrant has moved to ever (aside from Opa’s German parents, I suppose), and lots of them are girls.
More evidence; I’ve been worrying for nothing. That girl must have genuinely been talking in hypotheticals. Maybe she was wondering about someone else’s career, but using Codemeister as a comparison.
“You’re bleeding,” Leroy says when I make it back to them. He points to his jawline.
I tap my own jawline, and my fingers come away red. Crap.
I spend the next half hour with a Kleenex pressed to my face, though it’s not so bad, really. Me watching a ton of Code’s streams and never realizing he was a sexist jerk would have been a whole lot worse than me having a bit of blood on my face.
Mark chatters away to me for a while about the LotS-based card game he and Leroy play, and then the two of them get into an intense debate about whether it’s better to stack the deck with swords or shields that goes completely over my head. I check my phone again to see a rambling string of messages from Dereck about how he’s watching the replay of my stream last night and it’s hilarious, though not as good as the stream where I played Battlegrounds with random strangers and pretended to be all sorts of eccentric people—doing things like talking nonstop to one guy about how much I love Cheez Whiz, or singing Disney parodies to another girl every time we got a kill.
Which bolsters me up enough to admit something to him. I’m nervous. About meeting Code. I force myself to type the words instead of writing them into my skin.
Nervous? Are you kidding me? It’s no different than when you were playing with those strangers, talking to them about all sorts of crap.
Jones pokes her head in too. Dereck’s right. You can talk to anyone. Remember in that stream when you asked that guy if he still sleeps with a stuffed animal and he said yes?
I chuckle. I think he was joking.
Jones: Regardless, it’s no different than this.
Dereck: What she said.
It feels different. Online, I’m SamTheBrave—prankster, streamer, shadowlord.
Here, I’m—well, me.
Though as Mark and Leroy continue to argue about their LotS card game and I overhear the people behind us discussing whether it would be more fun to cosplay as an elf or a dwarf, I remember: being me here is not the same as being me at school.
Here, I’m the same as everyone else.
I can do this.
I’d better be able to do this. After this, the Meisters don’t have any other events scheduled. And yeah, I might see them around the convention, but I also might not. This is my best shot.
I thank Dereck and Jones, then open a new window on my phone and type out an intro for myself, because Mark is right: winging it won’t do. Once it’s written, I repeat it to myself over and over inside my head. “Hi, I’m SamTheBrave, a streamer and YouTuber. You should check out my latest Twitch stream in which the prank I spent twelve hours preparing for goes terribly wrong. Spoiler alert: it involves Shadowwolves and a hot girl and me trapped in a closet.” Hopefully Jones’ll forgive me for referring to her that way (or rather, hopefully she’ll never find out).
“That looks good, man,” Mark says, looking over my shoulder. “You going to pitch it to any of them other than Code?”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to be that guy who won’t stop talking about my channel to every single person I meet.”
He glances over to the signing table, where five chairs are set up in a row. “Guess it would sound pretty ridiculous if you pitched it to all five guys one after another.”
“Exactly. And Code streams the most, aside from maybe Ben, but Ben doesn’t have that many followers.” I’ve watched one or two of Ben’s streams, and they’re a lot quieter and less epic than Code’s. “Hey, do you have any paper?” I ask Mark.
“Only this.” He holds up his program.
“Yeah, me too,” I say, pulling out my own. I flip through it, trying to find a clear spot somewhere that isn’t marred by schedules or fine print. I settle on a page near the back that has an advertisement with a castle on a gray background.
I fold around the advertisement, then around the castle, marking off a small, plain rectangle of gray. I fold the page back and forth and back and forth along the lines, then carefully start to rip it.
“What are you doing?” Leroy asks. He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor beside me. I don’t think my legs bend that way.
I survey the autographs line that winds through the rope-fence zigzag, then along the far wall. “I don’t think there’s going to be much time,” I say. “Definitely not enough time to show him a video. So I need an alternative. Pen, please.”
He passes over the pen, and I set the small gray rectangle on the floor and lean over to write on it clearly: SamTheBrave. It’s just like I did for that girl, but tidier and more legible.
“If I ever do something like this again,” I say, “I’m paying for proper business cards.” I pass the pen back to Leroy.
“Yes!” Mark says. “You should do that! And you could wear a sharp black suit. Or maybe even a tux!”
“Uh, it’s still a gaming convention, not prom,” I point out.
“What if Codemeister was going to be at your prom?” Mark asks.
“Oh, in that case, full tux, gold-plated business cards, and I’d give Code a corsage to match his dress, obviously.”
Mark laughs and Leroy looks at me like he doesn’t really understand the joke, and then there’s cheering, and we whip around, and there’s all of Team Meister—well, except Oz, obviously—walking across the room to file into their chairs, looking like total badass superstars. We all cheer, too, and some people browsing a nearby stall turn to stare and to puzzle out who we’re all lined up to see.
Code is in the very first seat and then the others are after him in some order that I can’t keep straight in my head because Code is right there. And the line is moving already, as each person in line walks up to Code, gets his signature, then moves to the next Meister down the line.
And suddenly, I hate that we lined up so early and are so close to the front of the line, because I am not ready. I’m not. Not not not.
I reach for my phone to reread my spiel, but Mark’s pushing me from behind, and there isn’t time, because I’m there, I’m right there, and Code is in front of me saying, “Hey, man,” and my mind goes blank.
For one long second that stretches to eternity, I stare at him. And then I grin. “I brought something very special for you to sign,” I say, and then I pull out the cyan clay gem I bought and hold it out to him. I thought it would just be a silly joke from an old series of his, but it goes even better than I possibly imagined, because he snatches it up and holds it over his head and shouts, “The Stone!” and all the Meisters and everyone around us laughs.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: these are my people.
And my nerves are magically gone, so as he signs it with his Sharpie, I say, “By the way, I’m a streamer, too. My channel’s SamTheBrave, and I do ridiculous pranks that I spend way too much time on. Like last week, when I spent an entire weekend moving my entire castle over a rift to prank one of my girl friends, only to end up locked in a closet, surrounded by shadowwolves.”
He chuckles as he hands the Stone back to me. “That’s cool, man.”
“Like I said, my channel’s SamTheBrave if you want to check it out.” And then I reach out and hand him the rectangle of gray with my channel name on it.
And he takes it.
He takes my makeshift business card in his hand and says, “Thanks,” and then I’m moving on to Noog signing the Stone and then Wolf and Z and Ben or maybe Ben then Wolf then Z or who knows because I’m filled with the lightest, brightest euphoria I’ve ever experienced.
“It worked!” I whisper excitedly at Mark and Leroy when they step off the metaphorical conveyor belt. “It actually worked!”
And I turn back to grin at Code, at the Meisters, at the world!
Which is when I catch Code give a flick of his hand. An intentional flick. A flick that sends something fluttering to the ground like it’s garbage. A little gray rectangle.
It settles, discarded, on the convention floor.
Fifteen
ShadowWillow
THE BUG IS BIG. ABOUT THE LENGTH OF MY THUMB, IT SITS SHINY AND BLACK in my palm, ready for eating. At least it’s all dried out and brittle and doesn’t look at all alive. I slip it back into the bag just as Z enters the room. He cocks an eyebrow. “Checking out the eats?”
“I washed my hands first,” I say.
“Oh, good. Because the thing I was most worried about eating in that bag was your germs.” He laughs.
“Does that mean you’re joining the challenge?” I seal up the bag. “Top-quality stuff in here.”
He shrugs. “All the cool kids are doing it.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” I toss the bag at him, and he catches it just in time. “Where are all the guys?”
“What am I? Chop suey?” He makes a face, though whether it’s at my question or the bag of edible bugs he’s holding, I can’t tell.
“Chop suey?”
“Well, I’m obviously not chopped liver. I mean, look at how handsome I am!” He gives an impish grin as he gestures at himself. His hair seems to have grown two inches since this morning and added at least ten new angles to the directions it sticks up.
“You’re right,” I say. “You’re at least a Polish composer.”
“A . . . composer? What?”
“Yeah. Chopin. You know, it’s spelled C-h-o-p, like chopped—never mind, it was funnier in my head.”
He stares blankly for a moment, then lets out a burst of laughter. “Shadow, you’ve got the same sense of humor as me.”
“You mean finding things that make absolutely no sense hilarious?”
“Exactly!” He steps toward me and sets the bug bag back on the counter, and as he does, his arm grazes mine, and heat flushes right up my arm, across my neck, and into my face. I turn away before he can see, pulling on the kitchen tap to rinse the invisible bug guck off my hands.
You’re here to see Code, I remind myself. “So, Code and the guys?” I ask again. The wink at the panel was great, but still, the buzz could die off just as quickly as last time if I don’t secure something more with Code. And, you know, maybe we’d actually be good together and all that.
“Should be here soon,” Z says. “They stopped for more beer. Where are Legs and Lainey?”
“Around.” I try to gesture toward the backyard and upstairs in a single sweep but probably look instead like I’m about to take a sweeping bow.
Back at the convention center, I could have gone with the guys to their autograph signing, but I don’t want to scare Code off by following him around like a lost puppy, so I decided to go with Legs and Lainey back to the rental place. It felt weird to have such an epic LotSCON pass, then be leaving so early, but then again, I was walking down the streets of Toronto and then on a long detour down by the water with one of my idols, talking about all the words that are different in Canada versus the US—toque versus beanie, keener versus brown-noser—and that’s an experience more valuable than all the money in my bank account. (Plus a lot more than that, because even with the new income that’s been coming in from all the subs I’ve gained, I’m still pretty darn broke.)
But then I wanted to stop at a corner store and pick up a few things, so they went back without me, and when I got in, Legs was in the backyard on the phone and Lainey was upstairs showering, so I chilled by myself in the kitchen, putting things away and considering what I’ve gotten myself into with these bugs.
If I want to be memorable, I’m going to need to eat one of the big ones. And if I’m going to eat one of the big ones, I’m going to need to psych myself up.
Lainey wanders into the room then, holding the small camera she was using earlier in the VIP room. She’s got on a new T-shirt—one with the cast of Hamilton cartooned fabulously across the front—and her brown hair has that light, fluffy-bodied look of having recently been blow-dried without a straightener. “Is Cody back yet?” She bites the black elastic off her wrist, then pulls her hair into a ponytail without looking into a mirror, which is possibly the most badass thing I’ve ever seen. If I tried to do that, I’d end up with huge loops of hair sticking out in random places.
“What’s Z? Chop suey?” I say.
“Hey! Joke stealer!” Z says, but he’s grinning. “Better be careful or I’m going to engineer a way to make you eat this entire bag of bugs!”
“Oh, good. I could use some more protein in my diet.” I grin back at him, and the warmth of the grin travels all the way to my toes, as it strikes me for approximately the ten millionth time today that I am here, at this convention, with Team Meister, making my YouTube career dreams come true
. Hopefully.
“So . . . Cody?” Lainey says, and we both swivel our heads to look at her.
“He died,” Z says. “Sorry.”
“Oh, gosh,” I say. “Shipping his body back over the border’s going to be rough. I bet you have to sign a lot of forms and stuff.”
“It’s fine. There’s no body. He was consumed by shadowdragon fire.”
I scrunch my eyebrows, then shrug. “All in all, not the worst way to go.”
“I hate you both,” Lainey says. She turns to leave, but Legs strides in the door she’s about to exit through. LumberLegs! Again! Every time I see him, my giddiness intensifies.
“Wolf just texted me that the guys are on their way.”
“Mais sans Code, qui est mort, obviously,” I add.
“May what?” Z asks.
“It’s French. I said, ‘But without Code, who’s dead.’”
“Ah. Your country’s weird. Like look at this.” He swings open the fridge and pulls out a jar of ketchup. “There’s French on it! And on this!” He holds up a package of sliced ham.
“That’s how we do things.”
“Hey Z, you beat the rest of the guys back?” Legs cuts in.
He shoves the food back in the fridge. “Yeah, they stopped for beer.”
“More?” Legs eyes the arrangement of beer cans on the counter.
“Yeah, Noog’s very excited that he’s legal drinking age here. Not that it stops him back home. They’ll probably try to get you to drink a ton too, since even you’re legal here, apparently. Drinking age is nineteen, right?”
Legs only shrugs, so I jump in. “Yeah, it is.” Which I know even though I don’t drink a lot, either. I’ve got more important things to do with my time.
“Joy,” Legs says, voice thick with sarcasm.
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