“Yeah, and we need a heat gun. Or a hair dryer.”
“I figured as much.” Sage gives a grim nod. Beside her, Frank the Tank sits happily on his little mat on the counter, wagging his tail at all the tourists. A little kid comes up and pets him under the chin, and he gives her a big lick. She runs away screaming.
Sage just keeps chopping. I retie my apron, bunching it into knots. “Or we could skip the crown. I mean, people take cosplay super seriously. They’ve been doing this for years and we’re…”
“We’re what?” Sage stops chopping and puts her hands on her hips. “Rookies? Because last I heard, Carmindor was a total rookie before he survived the Brinx Devastation.”
“You can’t compare a cosplay competition to the destruction of an entire colony.”
She rolls her eyes, pulling the plastic gloves higher on her hands. “Look, don’t you want to win?”
I hesitate, scrubbing Franco behind the ears. “We’ll be posers.”
“Why, because we’re new? So everyone who tries something for the first time’s a poser? Come on, Elle, that’s crazy.”
“But what if…” I bite my cheek as I dump a batch of fritters into the fryer beside the sweet potato fries. They hiss and spit like vipers. “What if we are posers?”
“Impossible. You’re the most Starfield person I know,” Sage says. “And besides, you’re allowed to try new things, Elle. You’re allowed to test the waters. Don’t you want to try?”
Try. I want to try a lot of things. I want to go to the convention. I want to cosplay. I want to pretend that I have some modicum of courage in me, like Carmindor. What if Car is at the convention? What if he’s in the competition too?
And then I realize I’m not thinking about cosplay anymore.
“Well then, what do you want?
I half-shrug, half-wince. “I want something…I don’t think I can have.”
“Like what?”
Maybe we should start looking up together, ah’blena.
I don’t know how to answer, so I just shrug, shaking the fries to loosen them out of the basket. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Sage shrugs and flaps a tired hand at me. “Fine, whatever.” Chopping done, she pulls out the costume from underneath the counter, along with a pincushion and thread that matches the deep blue of Carmindor’s jacket, and threads the string through the needle. “It’s that guy, isn’t it? The one you’re texting.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I repeat.
“You never want to talk about anything!” she says. “Come on, if you can’t talk to me, who can you talk to? Why don’t can’t you just confide in me? Just rant! Tell me things!”
I clench my phone. “I just…”
“Am I not a good enough fan or something?” she asks, throwing the jacket onto the counter. “Is that what this is about? Do I not meet your fangirl expectations? Why won’t you just let me be your fri—”
“Because it won’t change anything!” I say, whirling around to her. “It won’t change anything if I complain. If I tell you what I want, if I tell you that I hate my family and my life sucks and I’m falling for someone I don’t even know and that wish—oh how I wish—I was in any other universe, what difference would it make?”
My voice is so loud, the tourists across the street turn to watch. Sage opens her mouth, closes it again, opens—like a fish gobbling for water—before her eyes drift to the counter and the empty pumpkin-orange dog bed. “Where’s the fleabag?”
“What?” I blink. Glance over at Franco. Who isn’t there. Neither is the jacket.
We lean over the counter just in time to watch a fat brown wiener dog race between a family of tourists’ legs, blue fabric fluttering in his wake.
“I’m going to fry him!” Sage cries, ripping off her apron. She dodges past me and swings open the back doors to the truck with a running leap, calling for Franco.
I don’t even take off my apron as I dart after her. Franco has my costume—and who knows what he’s going to do with it. “Franco!”
Tourists line the streets both ways, cars bump by on the cobblestones, horse-drawn carriages stopping frequently to marvel at rainbow-colored houses. So many people—but no Franco. How could I have let him out of my sight?
We shout his name, dodging and weaving through tourists who loiter too long in front of the big houses with steepled roofs and grand verandas. They turn to stare like we’re some kind of weird show: two girls—one in an orange EAT ME apron, the other in a tulle tutu and checkered ribbons—tearing down the sidewalk like the Nox are on their heels.
But when we reach Rainbow Row, he’s gone. My chest constricts. “Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.”
“Hey mutt! Fleabag!” Sage adds. “Rolly-Polly Olley! Fatso!”
“That’s not helping,” I hiss.
She shrugs. “He came when I called him Frankzilla last night—oh! There!” She nudges her head toward a side street and what might be Franco’s chubbiness rounding the corner. At least we hope it is. How can a fat dog run so fast? She grabs my arm and pulls me into a gallop again, but she trips on a stroller, stumbling. I pull ahead and turn into the cobblestoned alley—and suddenly my worst nightmare is realized.
Franco is sitting, tail wagging happily, as his ears are scratched by none other than Calliope Wittimer. And she has my dad’s jacket in her grip.
“Oh!” She glances up through her loosely braided hair and quickly stands. “Elle.”
“Cal? What are you…” I chance a look at my jacket, which she knows is mine. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the country club? For lessons?”
“I skipped today. Sometimes I do that. Chloe doesn’t tell as long as I don’t tell Mom what she does behind the pool house with that linebacker from school.” She pets Franco’s little head. “I was wondering where this little guy went, you know, when he disappeared.”
“Here.” I hurry over and scoop up Franco, hugging him tight, eyeing the jacket, wondering if I should go for it too. Calliope frowns, looking hurt. I shouldn’t care. But I can’t get the image of her in my mom’s dress out of my head, and now she has my dad’s jacket?
I shift from one foot to the other. Maybe I can fake her out—toss Franco at her as a distraction. He’ll come at her, claws bared, and kung-fu her while I wrestle the jacket out of her grip and then—
Frank whines, wiggling in my grasp as Sage rounds into the side street beside me.
“Case solved, I guess,” Calliope says. The buttons on the jacket glint in the sunlight. She glances over at Sage. “Um, hi. I’m—”
“Calliope,” Sage replies for her.
“Cal. Elle’s stepsister.”
Sage glances between us and I can see the thought crossing her face. Cal really doesn’t look evil or conniving, with her purple glasses and braided hair. But evil rarely looks like evil should.
Hesitantly, Cal holds out the jacket to us. “Is this yours too?”
Sage takes it. “Yeah, mine. The mutt got away with it.”