Page 20 of My Cosplay Escape
I’m a social media ghost who badly needs someone else to haunt.
I do a search for #SDCC #Catstrike and feel my face glow red. My picture is everywhere. Adam was right. I was popular. The details in my costume translate in the photos, but damn, so does my runner’s body.
After everything that happened with Daniel, I did my best to avoid mirrors. I took to hoodies the same way I took to running. No one says,OMG, are you pregnant, or did you just get fat?when you are wearing a hoodie. No one pays any attention to your shape in a hoodie. It is the ultimate camouflage. But good gracious—my shape has changed. I don’t even recognize me in the pictures. And it isn’t just the figure-hugging costume. My face, my expressions—I never look that confident or sexy IRL.
I fish Adam’s business card out of the pocket of my hoodie, punch in the number for his Fem Fantastic cosplayer, and compose a text:
Hi Stacey aka Fem Fantastic. Sorry to be random, but Adam gave me your number. I have some questions about his business, which frankly seems too good to be true. Would you be willing to meet me for a coffee and chat off the record? Sincerely…
Signing my real name seems way too risky, but signing as Catstrike feels like a commitment to the cosplay that I’m not ready to make in broad daylight. I need a step removed. So I use her alter ego:
Sincerely, Not Sabine Kennedy
* * *
And so here I am a few days later, in my favorite old Padres hoodie at the student union Starbucks on the SDSU campus, waiting with a venti licoricey tea.
“Sabine?”
I look up, and a tall, athletic brunette in jeans and a perfect gray tee smiles down benevolently at me. I’d told her to look for a girl in a Padres hoodie. “Sorry, are you Sabine Kennedy?”
I wince. Goldfish, this is embarrassing. “Yeah.”
“Hey. I’m Stacey Frances.” She shakes my hand and gives me a wink. “Or should I say Agatha King?” She sets her coffee on the table and takes a seat. “Are you a student here?”
“Um, well, I applied.” Once upon a time, when I was still in high school. I tug the strings of my hoodie. The location was Stacey’s idea. Something about study sessions and a looming philosophy final. “How about you?”
“Yeah. I’m a civics major. Captain of the swim team.” This chick may look like Fem Fantastic’s alter ego, Agatha King, but she’s serving me AJ Comics’ vintage Mary Sue heroine—confident, open, no-nonsense. I immediately respect her.
“That makes sense,” I say. Stacey is warrior princess levels of #goals.
“How about you?” She sizes me up.
“I like to run,” I say quietly.
“Of course.” She smiles wide, and her teeth rival Brent and Jen’s best work. “And you like to cosplay.”
I duck my head, checking to see if anyone in the Starbucks is eavesdropping. Man-Bun in the back corner is tied up with his phone. The baristas are bickering over the lyrics of the latest Taylor Swift single.
“Girl, it’s nothing to be that shy about,” Stacey says.
“It’s not like some sleazy sex ring, is it?” I ask.
Stacey Frances, aka Agatha King, aka Fem Fantastic laughs. Loud. Hard. “No. Everything is completely aboveboard, even down to the character licensing. It really is just photo ops and typical escape room operation.”
I’m a dork, but I had to get that one out of the way. Fudge goes down in college. I can’t be stupid about it. On to my next burning question. “Do people recognize you? I mean, you don’t wear a mask.”
“Not really. I mean, sometimes you get that vague, I-think-I’ve-seen-you-somewhere-before look, but that’s happened only a handful of times.” Stacey blows on her coffee and smiles. “It was honestly a lot of fun when it did.”
Fun? Maybe if you’re a goddess secure in your captain-of-the-swim-team status. Or maybe the security came from a happy, healthy relationship. The image of Adam and Stacey as a couple flashes in my mind. I don’t know what my reasoning is—maybe I’m trying to drown out the image—but I swallow way too much hot tea and spit half of it back in my cup.
“You okay?” Stacey asks.
“Yeah.” My tongue is pulsing with its own heartbeat, and from now on, everything will taste like hot licorice. “Does your boyfriend—”
“Girlfriend,” Stacey corrects.
I apologize. I can and will do better with my assumptions.
