Page 70 of The Fangirl Project
The fact that I hesitate is all the answer he needs, because I hear a mirthless chuckle on the other side of the door. The wood creaks slightly, shifts behind me, as if he’s leaning farther into it. I hear a muffled, softthumplike he tips his head back against it.
“Is this the part where you try to tell me youhaven’tbeen judging the hell out of me since the first moment you met me?” I ask, even if my heart is a nervous hummingbird beating against my ribs, and my fingers preoccupy themselves by picking at the label on my bottle of cider.
“Can you blame me? You didn’t exactly do a good job of pretending like you cared about anything at the Worlds Beyond con except for Jake. You were obviously just there to hang out with him, not because you had any interest inOWAR.”
“Um, excuse you, but I’vewatched the show.I started listening to the audiobooks. I—I made fanart, and…and stuff. And you still—”
“Got defensive,” he interrupts me, but it’s matter-of-fact, not argumentative, and I’m shocked by both the evenness of his tone and how much his words remind me of what Jake said in our Discord chat the other week. No wonder they’re such good friends; they have so much in common. Max goes on, “I didn’t think you were serious about it, and…Of Wrath And Runemeans a lot tome.”
“It’s more than just ‘some stupid fantasy series,’ ” I say, echoing what Jake said online. What I said I was starting to understand. But I can’t resist biting back at Max. “I didn’t realize beingdeadly seriouswas a requirement for being a fan—even if you do a very good job of embodying that. People can like something in a different way than you do, you know.” Now I’m thinking of another Discord chat—and what Heather/@silversmithhh told me after I admitted I couldn’t bring myself to wear the cosplay.
“I think I just thought it was…” He sighs. “Kind ofperformative.You just seemed…”
I raise my eyebrows, even though he can’t see it, daring him to finish that sentence.
He does, saying, “Clearly, other people’s opinions of you matter a lot more than whatyouthink.”
“If this is your way of trying to convince me you’renota self-centered prick…”
“I don’t think it’s self-centered to want to live my life on my terms, not some…prescribed, conventional rubbish that I don’t care about, or doesn’t make me happy. Cosplaying and being into this nerdy fantasy series isn’t hurting anybody. I don’t see why I should have to push it aside or pretend it doesn’t matter to me just so other people accept me better.”
When he puts it like that…
“It—” he starts, and falters, and my ears perk up. I turn my face toward him—or toward the door, rather. Straining, I hear the stilted, ragged breath he draws. I imagine him running his hand over his hair.
I wonder if it feels as soft as it looks.
Finally, he says, “You were right. Itdoesget lonely sometimes. D’you think I didn’t get bullied for being such a nerd? For—I don’t know, foreverything.For wearing my hair too long, for reading too many books, daring to be a decent left wing and earn a place on the soccer team when I was supposed to fit this mold everyone else designated for me, for beinginterestedin stuff at school, for…And I…I tried, once. For a while. I cut my hair, I stopped trying in class so much, I did all the things everyone else told me I was supposed to be doing.”
Wore the right clothes. Got the right school bag.
Got off the bus at the right stop before school to bump into the right classmates.
Max must be finding it easier to talk without having tofullyconfront me, too, because this is more than I ever would’ve imagined him saying to me otherwise. Half the time, he talks around me and won’t even look at me. Normally, that would annoy the hell out of me, but right now, it feels…different.
Like we’re on level ground.
And I want him to keep talking.
“What happened?” I ask.
I imagine him shrugging. After a beat, Max lets out another of those curt, dry barks of laughter. “I was miserable as sin, what do you think happened?”
“Oh.”
“I still got bullied, but at some point I just thought, fuck it, why am I even bothering?” His voice rises, gets heated, but it’s still not angry. It’s something else, something that makes me wish the door wasn’t between us and I could see the look in his eyes. “Why should I make my life—makemyself—smaller for their sake, when it didn’t change anything anyway? If they were going to pick on me, I might as well enjoy myself. My dad would say, ‘They’re just jealous,’ or that they’re dissatisfied with their own lives, but I don’t know how true that really is. I just figured that I didn’t want to waste my life pretending I didn’t care about the things Idocare about.”
He falls quiet, and I’m too frozen to do what I really want to, which is reach for the handle and open the door. His words bounce around inside my head, and I remember the way he walked around the cons in full cosplay, how unbothered he was. I thought he was being superior and all up himself, but…maybe it’s not that afterall.
Defensive,he’d said, which checks out, but also maybe he’sjust…
Confident. Himself.
I wish I could be more like that.
“You’re right,” I tell Max. “That’s not so self-centered.”
“Sorry if I made a dick of myself by judging you.”
