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.”