Page 8 of She’s a Doll

In the caption: I didn’t tell her to dress up like that !!!! Love the creativity @LucyMMcQuinn !!!!

In the comments:

OMG WTF

Who’s he?

WHERE THE OOMPA LOOMPAS AT?!?!?!?!?!

Hello Lucy . . . . . It’s your Auntie Dawn here . . . . . . I’m glad you’re having fun . . . . . Love that you don’t care what people think of you . . . . . . Be well . . . . .

OMFG!!!! THIS IS TOO FUNNY!!!

@LucyMMcQuinn Are you drunk?

lololololololololololol

I noticed several of the others who were tagged in the post were laugh-reacting to the comments. I wondered what they’d said about me after I left the party. I wondered why Ginger had invited me in the first place. Was it just to make fun of me?

The God of War soundtrack filled the air, all thumping drums and blaring brass.

It wasn’t that bad. I knew it wasn’t. I should’ve just untagged myself from the photos. Or, actually, I should’ve laughed along. That way everyone would’ve known it was a joke, and I was in on it. Sure, I looked tacky and cheap and geeky and queer . . . but that didn’t mean I was. It was just a funny costume. That was all. It was fine. Totally fine.

Except it wasn’t. Not really.

It was my graduation day, my grandma was probably hours away by now, and I’d blown off cheap Thai food with my best friend to be the butt of the joke in Ginger Béliveau’s latest aesthetic Instagram post.

Another comment popped up.

It was from Krissy.

Wow.

That lump of emotion I’d swallowed down earlier came back, sharper and more jagged than before. I wanted to block Ginger. I wanted to listen to loud, crashing music and have a really, really long shower. I wanted to call the woman with the freckles who’d called her fifty-dollar dress basic a rich bitch, even though that’d be really fucking hypocritical, because the materials of my cosplay had cost me several hundred dollars.

Grandma had helped me with the sewing, and I’d spent hours supergluing all the details onto it. It was my first cosplay.

And, yes, it wasn’t really that great. I only got second in the regional novice division, and it wasn’t exactly a big convention, but I’d liked it. I’d liked it so much that I’d wanted to wear it again.

I’d thought it fit the theme.

Cookie whined and dropped his massive head onto my lap.

I took a long, shaky breath and scratched him behind his big, floppy ears. I was overreacting. I knew I was. It wasn’t even that bad. I couldn’t tell from the flat black text on the screen if Ginger was being sincere or shitty, and as for the rest? Normal comments. The sorts of comments every post probably got. I wasn’t used to it, because I only had fifty-one followers on Instagram.

But knowing that didn’t stop the sting.

I felt small. I felt humiliated. I felt . . . tacky.

Just like my certificate and its off-center logo.

Cookie huffed unhappily.

“It’s OK,” I said, as much to myself as to him. “It’s OK. I’m OK.”

Except I wasn’t. I needed to talk to someone. Someone who’d get it. Someone who wouldn’t judge me if I wanted to use mean words. Someone who would snort and roll her eyes at all the right times. Someone who wouldn’t sound like an NPC stuck on a loop.

Krissy.