Fi kept frantically scrolling through her feed and groaned. “Why are they on this ridiculous quest—?”
“Quest?” Rowan repeated. “Look here.” Rowan grabbed Fi’s chin between two of her fingers and lifted her face away from her phone. Fi’s heart beat a little faster, and her neck felt hot where Rowan’s thumb rested. Fi jerked her chin out from between Rowan’s fingers. She barely even knew this girl. Why was she acting like they were anywhere near friendly enough to touch like that? “I’ll help you find your sister and brother, and in return you can introduce me to your super-cool mom. Okay? I wanna work in animation one day.”
Fi paused for a second. She stared into Rowan’s dorky but totally earnest face. The sooner she found the twins, Fi reasoned, the sooner she could leave this place and get back to planning her trip. And Rowan did seem to know her way around the con …
“Okay.” Fi nodded as Rowan’s hand dropped away. “You help me, I’ll help you, and this day can end. And I can get back to Ethan.”
“You got it, Leoparda,” Rowan cracked. “Who’s Ethan?”
“Who’s Leoparda?” Cat countered.
“She was on this cartoon in the eighties—” Rowan stopped herself. “It doesn’t matter. Give me your phone; let’s get looking.”
21. How many people can you get to sing your favorite TV show theme song at once? (39 points)
10
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Cat
If there was such a thing as a torture chamber in the middle of GeekiCon, this would have been it. Cat and her brother were hanging out at the LEGO pit. Alex knelt next to it, but Cat was knee-deep in the tiny little bricks, laying low for the time being. Her brother was happier than she’d probably ever seen him in their entire lives—she could have disappeared and he wouldn’t have noticed for hours, for sure. Alex loooooved LEGOs. But every time Cat took a step in the LEGO pit, at least three of the little bricks got wedged into her hand-decorated shoes, and under her feet, and oh my gosh, it hurt so much.
“Cat!” Alex yelled over the din of the crowd and of clinking LEGOs. “Check it out!”
Cat looked over. They’d been hiding out in the pit, trying to avoid attention from James M. and from Fi and from their parents and from Team Dangermaker and from online trolls … There was a lot going on. Still, Cat smiled when she saw that Alex had come across someone making a life-sized replica of the Wormhole device.
“Now—ow!—that’s pretty—ouch, shoot—cool!” Cat said, her words punctuated by LEGO pain as she shuffled gingerly over to her brother.
“I know,” said Alex, still staring at the guy’s sculpture in progress. “Look at the way his pattern with the orange bricks is so detailed and realistic—”
Cat wasn’t really listening—she yanked her phone out of her purse and was opening the Quest app again to scroll through their remaining items.
“We still have a lot left,” she interrupted Alex mid-thought. “We gotta get going.”
“In a minute.” Alex waved Cat off, still focused on the LEGOs.
“Or now?” Cat urged him. Didn’t he realize they had a ton more Quest items to get through? Cat was getting more and more hyped up the longer she looked at the list. They had a long way to go before the end of the day, and some of these items were hard. Like ridiculously, epically hard. The longer they waited, the worse things were going to get! Cat could feel their potential future win slipping through her fingers—right into Team Dangermaker’s lap!
“It was your idea to come here,” Alex reminded her, still distracted.
“Yeah—and now it’s my idea to leave here and do more Questing—”
“Are you hungry?” Alex mused, peering closer at the LEGO creation.
“Hungry?!” Cat repeated incredulously. The LEGO pit had served its purpose—it was time to move on! Immediately! Instantaneously! Big things awaited and et cetera and such! “How can you think of food at a time like this? You didn’t stand up for us at all during the filming fiasco, and I’m feeling like the only person who actually cares about the Quest right now and—” Cat threw her hands in the air dramatically. “Actually, you know what, Alex? I am hungry! I’m hungry for a win! So let’s go—”
That got Alex to turn around. Finally. “You don’t have to get all Miss Paradigm on me.”
“Excuse me—”
Alex sighed and moved to help Cat out of the LEGO pit. Cat could tell he was bummed about it. “Fine, fine. Let’s go. Sorry I stopped to enjoy something for five minutes.”
Cat clambered out of the pit. Finally. Freedom! “This is GeekiCon, Alex,” she said, taking off one of her shoes. “This is the Quest.” Hopping up and down on one foot, she shook several LEGOs loose from her decoupaged loafer. “The Quest! The most important thing we’ve ever done! The key to, like, our whole future! It’s not supposed to be fun, it’s supposed to be—”
Cat stopped herself, one leg in the air, balanced precariously on the edge of the LEGO pit. Alex had crossed his arms and was giving her one of those looks. You know, those classic Alex looks that only Alex could give that made her feel like a total space case for, like, no reason except usually because she was being a total space case.
Cat thought for two seconds about what she’d just been saying and realized why Alex was giving her the Look. She dropped her shoe onto the ground, and Alex lifted out an arm for support, raising one of his eyebrows at the same time. The final stage of the Look.