The Pigeon

The world is kind of a shitty place.

Like, I think we can all agree on that to some extent. And there's nothing that makes a bad day worse than coming home and realizing that you're entirely alone. Okay, so technically I'm not "alone" alone, but I don't think that anyone would agree that spending time with your dad qualifies for a good time.

Let's get it straight.

I love my dad as a father. As a person, I like him well enough. But the part of him that isn't half-drunk all the time is half electronics repairman. And half shoemaker. Half stitch-seamer. Half plumber, half keymaker, half jeweler. Considering that I'm half him, that makes me like a fourth of all those other things. The other half of me comes from a woman that the judge declared, "unfit for custody on account of reckless behavior and a track record of public misdemeanors". She lives an hour and around 15 miles away by car, but she's a million miles out of her mind. She is also my dentist.

So don't get me wrong, it's not like I hate the part of me that's 1/24th shoemaker or ½ crazy or anything. I just wish I could escape it a little sometimes, y'know. Get away from it all. But with how much of a nerd I am, it's undeniable. I'm "plumb unfixable", as my dear old dad put it one time. And to make things worse, it's written all over my face—between the jagged, penny-sized soldering scar on my cheek and the fact that I’m the human equivalent of a plain bagel.

To put it mildly, things are kind of rough. Although my teachers think I "need to apply myself," and that, "spending so much time alone isn't good for a kid my age," my grades are good enough to get into the state's (admittedly mediocre) big college. My financial situation, on the other hand? Better not to think about it. In any case, there's no point in reinventing myself halfway through senior year of high school. And it's not like the teachers are right about me spending so much time alone. At least, not entirely.

I'm not alone. I'm a loner.

Just because I don't have any deep or meaningful friendships like the kind on corporate propaganda teen shows doesn't mean that I need them to survive. Sure, it'd be nice if the dudes I let copy my homework or played with 2 hours a night would be down to do anything after school other than get pizza. But I don't need them. Certainly not any more than they seem to need me. Between games, anime, and the books I used to love before school killed my enjoyment of reading, all my free time gets mercifully put down after school.

The world’s only saving grace is that tomorrow is Saturday. Not only that, but it's the first time that my backwater metro area is hosting Anicon: Midwest. And considering that I can name more members of the Joestar bloodline than U.S. presidents, you could say it's a bit of a big deal.

Who knew that having even a single thing to look forward to could turn someone into an optimist?

Evidently not whoever designed the school system, because I could hear the loud-ass horn of the morning bus go off from two states away. Twice. And when you’re walking out amid the morning crowd in front of my burgundy-brick prison of a school, you can tell who's who by the faces they're making.

Up in front, you have the socialites holding their pretty faces high as they charge ahead, knowing full well that they have weekend plans and that school is just a pretext to hang out with their friends. At the back, you have the pale skin and baggy eyes of the slackers and try-hards doing their signature shuffle of the undead. They couldn't be more different from each other, but they stay up until one in the morning and live off caffeine all the same. Square-chinned jocks at either flank perform cavalry charges as they split off to their morning practices, blissfully aware that they're being spared the dread of homeroom and wake-up classes. And, last but not least, you have the normals fleshing out the ranks in between, me included.

I know, I know. My crazy half is recessive, though.

As much as I and all of the losers I spend time with might want to claim otherwise, we're just as much automatons of our class schedule as anyone else. The primary difference between me and them being that I'm self aware, and that I try to stay away from incestuously counter-cultural internet forums that'll rot my misanthropic brain from overexposure even faster than our cloying pop culture would. To put it short, normals are the kind of people that would do what they're told for the most part, even if it's just to avoid any more of a headache from their parents or teachers.

On the topic of headaches, it's almost impossible not to get one when you have global history first period. Like, I get it. If everyone in society spent a little bit more time learning about the world and less about which singer was dating what actor, maybe we might be able to vote intelligently and pass a single piece of legislation that wasn't stuck in the 1800s. On the other hand, though, I can't blame my peers for hating the dry rasping sound our octogenarian teacher Mr. Cooper makes every 5 seconds between lip smacks. Nor can I blame them for texting each other memes all class long as he struggles to remember where he put his lecture notes. Truly, there is pretty much exactly one highlight to first period class, and it comes packaged with fantastic grades, black frizzy curls, and a winning smile:

Theodora Westbrook, the most popular, most prettiest, and most smartest girl in school.

“Teddy” is an untouchable darling that everyone has a unanimously positive opinion on. Sitting attentively in the front of the class right by the teacher’s desk, her perfectly-manicured pink nails are interwoven so carefully that you’d think she’d need effort to untangle them every time she went for her phone just like the rest of us. But she was always effortless. The same couldn’t be said for the group of vultures that encircled the three desks around her’s, though…

They were little more than pilotfish on a whale shark, so I never bothered to remember their names. But there’s the skinny one at the back whose crazy Catholic father stopped her from having a boyfriend, but couldn’t stop her from a successful career in thirst trap e-celebrity. To Teddy’s right sits the redhead, who’s like a rescue ranger for local shelter animals that incessantly spams her feed with hiking photos. And finally, least notably, and to the left, sits the third one—this dejected blonde that looks like she’s trying the hardest of them all as she copies their mannerisms and goes along with their topics. With the obvious fakeness of her laugh and the semi-obvious fakeness of her stylish clothing, one would think that she’d have been outed and torn to shreds eons ago.

But unlike the movies, the popular girls are popular because they’re easy to get along with and not just because they’re pretty. The cream of the crop on both counts, though, is undeniably Teddy herself. She's the kind of cute that makes you wonder what filters she's using until you realize that she’s walking by you in the hall. But for me, and people like me, being across the hall from her might as well mean a bird’s eye view across a ten-lane highway. That is, except for my one secret advantage:

When seats were open for the taking in first-period global history, I managed to snag a desk just a few rows down from Teddy and Co. Certainly not close enough to be noticed or to be able to do groupwork with them. But, just barely, and through the classroom buzz at the beginning and end of every lesson, I can make out their conversations.

I swear it’s not anything weird.

I try to think of it the same way that you overhear someone talking on the phone on the public bus. Sometimes it’s a tearful goodbye, an argument with parents, or a sappy love confession. And sometimes, just sometimes, maybe even once in the entire universe before and since, it’s a discussion about which outfits they’re wearing to the convention center this weekend.

My first instinct was to recoil.

All the popular girls doing cosplay together is an entirely different level of mainstream. I spent the rest of the day drifting between classes like a hallway ghost of school legend, with the aftershocks of the revelation subsiding only after I’d spent three hours straight misusing the might of my gaming computer to power through an English paper. By two in the morning, I was too exhausted to think, which was the only reason I was able to fall asleep.

The day of the convention dawned without any fanfare. For being the dead-middle of a midwest winter, it was a frighteningly warm 45 degrees following a temporary, inch-deep blanket of snow that had come down early in the morning. The house is frighteningly quiet, save for my father’s engine muffler snores from the garage across the hall. From home, it’s a roughly one hour bus for me from this satellite ‘burb to the city center. I had predicted that it would be awkward to board public transit wearing a bright blue cloak and a yellow wig.

And I was right.

I’m pretty sure my deltoids don’t un-cringe from the stares of passerby until I reach the human snake that coils around the convention center three times over. Every single one of its colorful scales is a red-cheeked, nerded-out con-goer shuffling in place and exhaling faint, white clouds.

The detestable human cobra before me isn't something that can be conquered with imperfect determination. I roll my neck, crack my knuckles, and meekly sidle into place.

The high-rises all around send a biting wind through the crowd. But like a penguin documentary, you’re warmer when you're standing in the line all huddled together. A few places ahead, a gaggle of scantily clad cosplay models take refuge beneath a single fur coat. A teen boy gives his hot tea to an old lady. There’s a lady handing out free sandwiches. Something about all of this reeks of the human condition. I can even feel a few empathetic stares directed at me.

But screw that noise, I'm genuinely too nervous to care what other people think.

Overhearing annoying take by annoying take, I crawl towards the massive arched doors of the convention hall. And when I get there, the deadpan door guard scans the ticket in my hand without even stopping me. Before I can even be super glad I spent all that money-

I’m in.

The atrium bears banners demarcating the first, second, and underground floors, indicating that Anicon takes up merely one-third of the hall’s capacity. Before I even finish reading the signs, the texts start coming in:

“Sorry dude, I just realized that’s kinda far for me.”

“I didn’t know we had to buy tickets. They’re like 70 dollars, what the hell?”

“My stomach’s feeling a bit off today, I don’t think I can make it.”

Excuses. It’s always excuses.

At one point, I had some noble idea of preferring the painful truth of an, “I don’t feel like it” over a pretentious lie like, “sorry my mom needs something”. But you’ll inevitably find yourself on the other side of dead-end invitations that you’ll make a habit of turning down. That’s just how it is. You let them down lightly, hoping desperately that they’ll get it without taking offense.

But I still resent it.

All of a sudden, I realize that I’m entirely alone in an overcrowded building with a capacity of more than forty-thousand people. Just a speck in a city in a building. I’d been waiting to come here since the leaves started falling. Every good test grade and every extra credit assignment was five more dollars I’d let myself spend during these two holy days.

And now, I don’t feel like being here at all.

My first instinct is like a cockroach’s—I find some secluded little corner in the shade where both my front and backside are safely out of sight. And yet, I can’t escape the chatter of thousands of people that can experience joy properly, underscored by the rhythming clunk-thunking of the escalator running above the janitorial cubby that boxes me in.

It’s okay.

I’m here because I want to be. No one made me do this. Sure, it’s a bit too big and a bit too crowded. But what other place has a chance of understanding me?

Even if my cosplay is an infuriatingly shitty imitation. Even if the hair is clearly plastic, the cape is already fraying, and any real fan would instantly out me as a faker. I have to try. No, I need to. For myself.

But what if nothing comes of putting myself out there?

Look at me. Already sucked back into the silly, mundane excuses that let me escape any feeling that’s real. Just like all my “friends”. I sigh. Like a long-suffering widow in a war movie. Like a parent who’s not mad but disappointed. Like a prickly, uninteresting loner who’s realizing that they don’t even have the courage to meaningfully engage with the one thing they’ve been looking forward to for months.

And then I hear it.

An unmistakable laugh, like a songbird’s sugar-coated cackle, followed by three notably more mistakable ones.