I didn't mean to stare, but it was the first time I'd ever seen the two of them—the Red Queen and the White Queen—together. I didn't mean to stare, but I haven't been this close to her before, and I had to see if it's really as bad as everyone says.
It is. It has to be. It's impossible that it isn't. She had to have done that to herself … She had to have done that to herself on purpose.
It was ten years before I finally saw her after that first time. She was the first cosplayer I'd ever seen. All the other cosplayers had those leather dresses and stilettos, but she threw me some Pokémon shoes and a Power Ranger mask, and her costume was like a nightmare.
I was five when she came in, but I stood there just as slack-jawed as everyone else.
She didn't notice me, of course. She only looked at the White Queen, who was dressed as an airship pilot. She kneeled down, and a few of the other cosplayers caught the story from a distance.
I never knew what they were saying, since I was too young to understand.
I remember every word, though. I think I knew how important those words were to her. Maybe I was already smarter than any five year old should have been. And then, the Red Queen stood back up, and she said: "Who did you say you were? The White Queen held up her badge, and the mood changed. I've seen her act out her badge a thousand times, where it has passed from victim to victim in the cafeteria. "I heard that you had a problem …
And that's all I recall. The Red Queen turns around, she walks out of the convention, and she never came back again. Not to that convention … Not to any convention
In the summer, she buys me a gravitas model. She says that it was designed by a pilot who was secretly a magician. She told me that the blue lights in the wings were fairy dust, and that I could use it to fly whenever I wanted to.
They were the same fairy dust lights found in my shoe. I didn't know that then, but I was just a little boy at the time.
I used the gravitas model to try and make a friend, but it didn't work. I used it again to try and play soccer with a lot of other kids, but one kid kicked the ball at my face. I think I was seven by then.
I used the gravitas model in my garage, flying around but always coming back to the door. It almost always was the same place. I was twelve.
I grew up and I lost contact with her. I got more interested in things like history and politics, but I always kept that gravitas model on my shelf. Over the years, I've gotten letters from her saying that she was proud of me for what I'm doing with my life. She said that she had never been too good with words but she wished me the best.
It's funny to see a letter from her that isn't filled with mistakes. I haven't seen a letter from her in decades, but she still tells me what she's done with her life, what she's done with the gravitas model, her regret at not being able to meet me, and how she is for the first time ever homeschooled.
That gift of a gravitas model was meant to be with me always, whenever I had to get somewhere in hurry. It's always been with me.
That's when I began to understand why she never came back to any convention. That's when I began to understand what she'd done to herself. That's when I understood why she was never able to find any friends because I was the only one in the world who ever saw her.
That's when I knew she was a lot like me .
I'm an art history major at a small college. A friend of mine was going to the Labor Day convention with his family and asked the only person in our group that could afford to join along. She said we could make an art project out of it. I felt like I was getting paid to dig through the bins of a flea market.
It was supposed to be fun, but I felt miserable. It was hot, and I was surrounded by crowds. Everyone around me was sweating, wearing clothes three sizes too small. Everyone was complaining about how it was too hot for costumes, but I never saw them demure. Not once. In fact, I think I heard a few people make jokes about how the convention was turning them into space aliens.
I walked around the convention and talked to a few cosplayers. I was confused because everyone had cosplay outfits except me. Some of them were pretty good. Others were just totally busted. Some people were wearing a cape made out of rope. Others had hair clips on the side of their heads, or in the front.
I wanted to make friends before it was too late, but something was different about them. While everyone else was running off to the more popular booths, I stopped to talk to the cosplayers in the back of the convention.
One of them, one who was wearing a Wystian suit, looked right at me, and she knew. She had a little look of respect in her eyes—maybe a bit of fear? More than that, she was staring at me, like she was trying to read me. I thought that was a bit weird, actually.
They were just colorfully dressed people who put on costumes to have fun. They weren't any more real than a model airplane or an animatronic dinosaur.
She didn't understand, though. She said that she did. I stood there and watched as she boldly put a rifle in the pocket of her jacket and said something about being an imposter. As she did that, I felt as if I saw her face morph as she put on the mask. I could see the Red Queen's face. It was way too funny.
It was like everything she'd done before. She was playing dress up again. I felt like a little kid peeking through the window of her room. She's trying to be someone else; even though it was to look cool, it was still a game to her.
I eavesdropped on her for a bit as she talked about her brother and her father, and she seemed happy. Almost normal. But I could see that she was still that person.