The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love (3 page)

“Um . . . so you need tickets to get into Comic Con . . . ,” I start.

Felicia looks at me with a pitying expression. “Duh. I don't know if you know this, Graham, but other people know how to use the Internet too. Anyway, I think it'll be fun to see Roxana all in her element. Plus hot guys in spandex, right? That might happen too?”

“Um, right.” I shift uncomfortably on my bench. Not for one second have I expected that it would be anyone other than me and Roxana and occasionally Casey roaming the NYCC floor together. I don't know how having Felicia hanging around is going to work into my plans. I mean, I don't have a problem with her or anything. Felicia's just always been the mysterious wild-card element of Roxy's life for me. They've been stand partners in orchestra since the fourth grade, but she's always seemed one step ahead of Roxy socially and at least ten steps ahead of me. I know she's had several boyfriends already; I think she's gone to prom as both a freshman and a sophomore. There's a part of me that's always known that Roxana must confide stuff in her that she wouldn't tell me, as a guy. It never bothered me before this summer, though—when I realized that I didn't want to be just
a
guy, but I wanted to be
her
guy. Felicia must have some insight into that. The question is, would it be insight I want? Or is Roxana hopelessly in love with some jocky senior football player I could never be?

“Just don't forget,” Roxana tells Felicia with a gleam in her eye, “there are also plenty of regular guys in spandex too. In fact, the ratio of hot to nonhot bodies in tight clothing might not be what the superhero movie industry has led you to believe.” She plops the rest of her feta and cucumber pita sandwich in her mouth and grins at me.

“True,” I say, smiling back at her. “Think more Chris Pratt and Seth Rogen before the personal trainers.” I'm being paranoid. There's no way this girl is crushing on a high school cliché. I
know
this girl. And now a tiny piece of feta cheese is stuck at the corner of her mouth and I desperately want to reach over and brush it off.

But Felicia beats me to it by indicating the corner of her own mouth to Roxy. “Fair enough,” she says. “But one thing's for sure, I am not missing out on Roxana Afsari's Day Off.”

Roxana looks nervous but retorts with, “Well, now I know not to take my father's 1961 Ferrari, then.”

“What are you talking about? We'll just run it in reverse to get the speedometer to turn back,” I say.

“And hijinks will be sure to ensue.” She crumples up her sandwich's tin foil and stares at it before looking back up at us. “Seriously, though, guys. Getting caught cutting and lying is not an option.”

Felicia rolls her eyes. “We know. Relax.” She elegantly places a cherry
tomato into her mouth, chewing and swallowing it before continuing. “Graham would never let you get in trouble, so if he's planning it out, you know you're good.”

Huh.

Felicia isn't looking at me, and she doesn't act like what she said means anything earth-shattering. But I'd be lying if I said I'm not a little flattered that she thinks that highly of me. Maybe she
does
know something that Roxy told her in confidence . . . and maybe it's something in my favor after all.

THE GOOD THING ABOUT HAVING
an OG for a dad is that not only will he allow you to take a day off from school to attend NYCC, but he'll even drop you off at the train station the day before to go spend your night standing on a line. Lauren may raise an eyebrow as she sees me and my enormous backpack standing in the front hallway at 7 p.m., but even she doesn't say anything except to “be careful.” Callie tells me to try and avoid being trampled by a nerd stampede, but I doubt she'd be too concerned were that to actually happen. Drew just blinks blankly at me and then dismisses me from his mind as he goes back
to texting what is likely some grammatical atrocity to his girlfriend.

Casey's parents are pretty hands-off when it comes to this sort of stuff, probably because they know their son is way more anal about his schoolwork than even they would be. I know he's prepared as much as possible for his day off from school by speaking to all of his teachers and getting his homework done ahead of time. Which is why I can't figure out why he seems so distracted on the car ride to the station. He barely says two words to me or to my dad, even after Dad asks him if he'd mind getting Peter Mayhew's autograph on his behalf. Dad ends up giving me the cash for the autograph, along with the photo he wants signed: a two-shot of Chewbacca and Han Solo.

We buy our tickets, board the LIRR, and sit at the end of the car where the red and blue seats face each other. We're going against the rush-hour crowd, most of whom are heading home from their city jobs, so the train is pretty empty. I wait until we've passed a few stops before I hand the Mayhew photo over to Casey and finally break the silence. “So, what's up, Case?”

“What?” Casey responds, barely even looking at me.

“Oh, nothing,” I say. “Just that you've been planning this weekend for the past six months and you look as excited as you would going to a pep rally. So what's up? What happened?”

He sighs into his window, his breath depositing a small blotch of condensation. “I had an appointment with my guidance counselor today,” he mutters.

“Yeah?” I'm confused. I can't imagine Casey ever having the bad kind of guidance counselor appointment. It's not like he's ever been in trouble. Seriously, not ever. Not even a mistaken cut slip or attendance snafu.

“You know . . . where they told us our class ranking.”

“Oh, right,” I say. I had mine yesterday, and so did Roxana. Mrs. Buchanan told me I'm currently sitting at number eleven in our junior class. Roxana is at number nine. She had a grand old time teasing me about being two places ahead of me on our bus ride home, mostly by repeating “Number nine, number nine, number nine” in a loop à la the Beatles. Casey has to be at number one . . . wait, doesn't he? I look over at him, and suddenly everything clicks into place. “You're not . . .”

He shakes his head, then takes his finger and writes the number two in the fog on his window.

“Whoa,” I say, stunned. “So then who's number one?”

“No idea.” Casey turns to me, his thick eyebrows fixed into a scowl. “Benji Conners? Ethan Kramer? I don't even know how it's possible. My average is 102.1.”

I whistle. Casey takes so many honors and AP classes, one even in his sophomore year, that they get weighted to give him an above-perfect average. Ironically, I know having over a 100 percent average is something that bothers his math-wired brain, especially since any expression that involves someone giving, for example, 110 percent will really get him riled up.

I don't even attempt to tell Casey that this means he's still the salutatorian, or that he'll still probably get into any Ivy League school he wants. Casey Zucker is nothing if not a perfectionist. The things he cares about, namely academics, he's deeply interested in being the best at. One time he even told me he thought it was a shame that he didn't have an athletic bone in his body: that kind of fierce competitiveness could only come in handy on a field. It certainly doesn't hurt him during our Friday-night Magic tournaments.

“There's still time to change your ranking,” I say, knowing it's the only thing he'll want to hear.

He nods ferociously. “Oh, yes. But first I have to find out who's number one so that I can strategize properly. Buchanan wouldn't tell me,” he adds darkly.

After a few more minutes of brooding, I mention that I've talked Casey up to Callie over the whole week. What I neglect to mention is that this has mostly involved me bringing his name up once or twice during dinner, with no reaction from her. But no reaction is better than a negative reaction, right? Plus I think baby steps is definitely the way to go here. Or at least, that's what I tell myself, as my plans to make this date happen have yet to materialize beyond such infantile, minuscule, microscopic steps.

Still, Casey seems to be in slightly better spirits by the time we get to Penn Station, maybe because his mind has already started churning with a solution for the valedictorian problem. Once we've elbowed
our way outside, we double-check Google maps to make sure we're headed in the right direction and then start the long, straight walk from Seventh Avenue to Eleventh Avenue.

We see lots of tourists with cameras and shopping bags, and some harried-looking New Yorkers in suits and ties. A group of college-age girls in tiny skirts and high, high heels wait with us at the corner of Eighth Avenue while the light changes.

At Ninth Avenue, we see our first Spider-Man and then, like he's heralded the cavalry, a steady stream of costumed people with badges around their necks are following him, heading in the opposite direction from us. By the time we get to Tenth Avenue, there are flushed faces and spandex as far as the eye can see, accompanied by excited chatter about the day's experiences. I can see Casey visibly relax. These are our people.

“Next year, we definitely have to try to be here for Thursday,” I say.

“Especially if I've gotten in early decision,” Casey agrees. “Senioritis, here I come.”

I snort. Senioritis for Casey will probably mean exactly that: cutting one extra day to attend New York Comic Con.

As we get closer to the Javits Center, I start to see that more and more of our spandexed brethren haven't come here alone. In fact, a lot are coupled up, holding hands with significant others, laughing together, secure and happy in a geektastic world all their own. I want that to be Roxana and me so badly. I pull on the straps of my backpack and stand
up a little straighter. This is my shot to make it happen, and I'll have to rise to the occasion to the best of my powers.
My sadly human powers,
I think as I spot a Wolverine and Jean Grey play-fighting each other, each with one set of Wolverine's claws.

The organizers will be giving out the Robert Zinc wristbands from this building at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. Tucked away to the side of the front door, I start to see a snake of people who've made themselves comfortable there. Some have chairs, blankets, and even tents, and most are sitting down. I take a deep breath. There was a small part of me that thought maybe we'd be two of the first people in line, but if this is the Zinc line, and I'm growing more and more certain it is, based on the costumes I'm seeing, we aren't. Not by a long shot.

“Robert Zinc?” I ask a boy clad in a holey black shirt and wearing a faded mustard-yellow leather jacket, even though I already know the answer. He's dressed as Charlie Noth, the down-and-out sci-fi writer who meets the mysterious alien Althena in
The Chronicles of Althena
.

“Yes indeed,” he tells me. I nod and then start the trek past the line that's winding its way around the building, my heartbeat pounding louder with every person we pass. What if we camp out here all night . . . and still miss out on getting a wristband?

“A HUNDRED AND TWO,” CASEY
says as he comes back to join me at the square foot of brick wall that will be our companion for the night. He just went ahead and counted how many people are in front of us on line.

I breathe a sigh of relief. “I'm sure the hall holds at least two hundred and fifty.”

“Definitely,” Casey agrees.

I've taken out my sleeping bag, but it's still folded up and currently acting as a cushion beneath me. Casey takes his out of his backpack and places it next to me, making himself as comfortable as possible on the concrete.
It's cold here on the edge of Manhattan, where a wind that holds promises of a New York winter is blowing off the Hudson River. I've already put my extra sweatshirt on. Casey, who rarely gets cold himself, probably due to the insulating dark body hair that covers about 95 percent of his body, is still in a T-shirt.

He takes out a deck of cards and I'm surprised to see that they're regular playing cards, instead of his usual Magic deck. “Poker?” he asks.

I eye him warily. “Really?”

“I'm trying to broaden our horizons. See how the other half lives,” he responds as he shuffles.

I shrug my assent and he deals. A few minutes in, I've flipped over a queen of spades in the river and I have to point out, “It's kind of boring without some epic backstory for her, isn't it?”

Casey squints at the card. “Maybe she's really a sorceress disguised as a queen?”

I look at her pointy staff and complicated cloak. “No disguise. Her subjects know she's a sorceress.” I consider her again. “What they don't know is that the king and jack of spades are merely her puppets, created by her to give the illusion of a monarchy instead of a totalitarian state.”

“Not bad,” Casey says as he ups the ante by throwing in a couple more quarters.

We each win one hand but quickly get bored with the straightforward game, moving on to a diversion that's much more our speed.

“Who would win in a fight,” I start out, “a polar bear or a shark?”

“What's the playing field? Are they on land?” Casey responds, munching on a banana as his midnight snack.

“Well, no, the shark can't be on land.”

“And the polar bear can't be underwater for that long.”

“But he can be swimming. So they're both in the water.”

Casey thinks for a second. “Polar bear. He has the sheer mass.”

“Ah!” I retort. “But the shark can attack from underneath and move much quicker.”

“Well, that's why I asked if they were on land! What if the polar bear was on an ice cap and the shark was circling it? Then the bear would have the upper ground and be able to swat at the shark with his massive paws.”