Free The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love by Sarvenaz Tash Page B

Fantasy, Video Games, and a catch-all Miscellaneous line, where I see that the winged creature we were originally following has ended up.
    As I get in line next to her, I can’t help but be reminded of the years Roxy and I spent trick-or-treating together. Our costumes ranged fromthe store-bought and sort of lazy (there were definitely Hogwarts robes for at least a couple of years) to obscure sources of pride. In seventh grade, the last year we took to the streets to score some candy, we dressed as Charlie and Althena—though with less attention to detail than we’ve paid today. It was the year we both discovered Zinc. No one except for Casey really figured out who were supposed to be, but we didn’t care. We were totally smitten with our new obsession, and we spent more time trying to remember lines of dialogue from Charlie and Althena’s Halloween meeting than knocking on doors.
    â€œUncanny,” Charlie keeps saying as he stares and stares at Althena’s Pris costume.
    â€œDoes that word mean something different every time you say it?” Althena asks, genuinely curious about how human language works.
    But Charlie assumes she’s just teasing him. “Sorry,” he replies. “It’s just . . . are you sure you’re not actually Daryl Hannah?”
    And now Roxana stands beside me again, dressed specifically as Althena-as-Pris, and I know, in a way that twelve-year-old me could never have imagined, exactly how Charlie felt: a whirlpool of unbidden emotions, of excitement and fear and novelty churning just beneath the surface of my skin. Only, instead of meeting someone new, it’s been like having a switch turned on, shedding light on something—and someone—that’s actually been there the whole time but is just now being revealed for all that it is.
    At the front of our line, a short girl with a cloud of curly hair, wearing an NYCC staff T-shirt, explains the rules of the costume contest in a mumbled monotone. “You will go up in groups of ten and you will each stand in front of the judges for ten seconds. At this point, feel free to strike whatever poses you feel show your costumes to best advantage,” she says . . . I think. It’s not super easy to hear her above the din of six other staffers giving the same speech. Especially since her hair seems to catch most of her consonants.
    Then I hear something about being rated, something about adding up scores . . . mumble, mumble, mumble . . . “and that’s how we announce the winner!” She says this last part in the loudest and most enthusiastic tone I’ve heard from her yet. Probably because her speech is over.
    â€œWhat?” I ask Roxana.
    â€œI seriously have no idea,” Roxana replies. “I think I caught four words of that.”
    A guy in front of us who’s dressed in a lovingly made Predator costume helpfully chimes in. “She said we go up in groups of ten, then get rated from one to ten in each group by each judge. The numbers get added up, and the top three from each group make it to the next round. It goes on like that until there’s only one winner from each group, and then those group winners go into the finals. But there are prizes for winning your group as well as the final.”
    â€œWow,” I say as I stare up at his imposing figure, unable to tell if he’s on stilts or really just that tall. “You heard all that through your mask?”
    He lightly taps his steel-gray face covering, which actually does sound like it’s made of metal, and shrugs. “I’ve worn this thing so much, I think it’s heightened my senses.”
    â€œApropos,” I say, thinking of the technologically evolved alien he’s portraying.
    â€œIndeed,” he agrees. “Ah, I thought you were Mad Max for a second,” he adds. “But now I see the ear. Oh, both of you. Good ones.” He