Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,8
community of fans. Everyone here loves the same thing.
Pop music blares from the radio station van parked on the side of the convention center. The local reporter stands interviewing people in the line. She pulls over a rowdy group who roar just like football fans in a stadium when the camera sweeps over them.
Now I can see the doors and more importantly the security checkpoint in front of them that’s slowing everyone down. A bag check area, a metal detector, and a pat-down station. Beyond them is the main entrance to the convention center: a three-story, semicircular glass wall arcing out toward the street, with five sets of double doors set at regular intervals along its round edge.
“We could just go in and meet up with Siggy inside,” Imani says, twisting her ZombieCon! badge on the shoestring-style lanyard around her neck.
I glance at my phone. Still no texts.
“No, we need to wait,” I say.
“We have phones, June,” Imani says. “We could just meet up inside.”
I can feel it, too. The open doors, so close now, are pulling at me like they have hands, gently tugging. I can smell the slightly chemical newness of the inside—the walls, the carpet, the air conditioner, urging so many wonders within.
“Imani, we have to wait. Yes, she screwed up, and yes, we’re going to kill her, a little, when she gets here, but we can’t just go in without her. No friend left behind! Fight together or end alone! We have to decide right now who we are. Do we leave people behind? I say nay! We wait! All together or none at all!”
“Sweet lord,” Imani groans, laughing. “Juuuuuuuuuuune. We have phoooooones.”
But no, I will not be swayed. This is how a day gets ruined. These little compromises and I’ll-meet-you-laters that turn into meeting-you-not-at-alls. The next thing you know you spent the whole day apart, planning to meet up “sometime.”
Besides I can feel the oratory loading up in my brain, almost like there’s a swell of inspirational music underneath it. So, I lean into it, tenting a hand on my collar bones in affront.
“Do we leave her behind? Our time-challenged friend? Who, need I remind you, we have known since Mrs. Raspberry’s class? Do we abandon her to the chaos of this line alone?”
We edge forward. Now only two groups of people stand between us and the security point.
My hand lifts into a rallying fist.
“Or do we wait? Yes, wait! For waiting for a friend is the most noble thing one can do! Do we wait, though we will be pissed off at the waiting, or do we abandon our posts?! Nay, we do not!”
“Go inside!” some rando in the line behind us yells, and people laugh.
“You, sir, will be the first to go when the zombie apocalypse comes,” I yell back.
“Nah, I’m a survivor!” the guy yells. His skin is dark brown and his eyes are warm with a we’re all here to have fun light. He’s wearing a T-shirt with a zombie chasing people that reads ZOMBIES HATE FAST FOOD.
“Okay, see you at the end, then!” I yell back, because if he’s a survivor then I’m a survivor, too.
Everyone chuckles along, and we all turn back to the front of the building as the line moves up again. We’re next.
“Seriously,” Imani says, still chuckling. “What are we gonna do? Siggy has her badge, she can meet us inside.”
I turn to the bored-looking guard standing to the side of the checkpoint.
“Excuse me, we’re waiting for our friend. Is it okay if we just wait here? Then when she gets here we can go in?”
“Knock yourself out,” he says.
Imani and I shuffle off to the side a little, and I wave a hand in front of us. It takes only a few repetitions of “Go ahead” and “We’re waiting for a friend” before the crowd gets it and we can just stand there grimly, smiling these pained smiles, and nodding as people give us generally sympathetic looks, as if we’re orphans asking for more gruel.