Unconventional Page 2

  Obviously not.

  The revolving door finally lets us out and Sam waves across the hotel lobby to her parents, unpacking a crate full of books onto a table: conventions don’t just run in my family. I pick at a hangnail on my left thumb.

  “Well, anyway… Dad and Bea are actually, really, seriously and most definitively getting married.”

  Sam cocks her head at me. “You okay?”

  “Mmm. Yes. I’m fine. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.” It’s not quite a lie, but it’s not quite true either. “Still processing, maybe?”

  “What does your mum say?”

  “I haven’t had the chance to talk to her about it yet – he literally just dropped this on me.”

  “But he told you months ago…?”

  “He only told me they’d picked a date this morning. This morning!” I say stubbornly.

  “Lexi…” She rolls her eyes theatrically, and I know what she’s thinking: she’s picturing me running up and down a hillside in the sunshine, picking flowers and wearing a dress called DENIAL. But she doesn’t punch me on the shoulder and tell me to get a grip, which is her usual support tactic, and I can see there’s something which might actually count as concern in her eyes – despite the rolling.

  “I know, I know. You’re right. I’ve been pretending it wasn’t going to happen. It’s fine, I’m fine. Fine fine fine. I just need more time to get my head round it. Really,” I add, watching her watching me.

  But I don’t have time – not right now, anyway. Because, date or no date, this convention’s happening first.

  And what I do have now is plenty of work.

  I give Sam a smile and poke her arm. “So, are you checked in already?”

  “Of course. Checked in, unpacked and everything.” She says this like it’s a Herculean achievement. I suppose it is – Sam doesn’t exactly travel light. Last time, she had so much stuff that I ended up carrying half of it for her. It’s the costumes. Sam’s cosplaying is legendary; last year, she dressed up as Spider-Man, Black Widow, something inexplicable from an anime that seemed to involve a lot of neon, and Draco Malfoy – which involved slightly less neon. The costumes are how we became friends, back when I started helping Dad. Sam had managed to glue her hand to the one she was making, and came to the convention operations centre to ask for help getting unstuck. She was hoping to find her parents, but instead she found me. The rest is history…and a lot of messages and online chats I never want to fall into the wrong hands.

  “What room are you in?” I ask as we walk towards the hotel reception desk.

  “406.” She lounges back against the desk beside me. “Did you hear about Nadiya?”

  “What did I miss?”

  “She broke up with Ajay.”

  “Seriously?”

  On the other side of the lobby, a couple of traders I recognize are rolling three racks of comic book T-shirts through to a massive room full of stalls. They give me a wave and point at the racks. “Last lot!”

  I wave back. They already look knackered and we’re not even open yet; they’ve probably been unloading stock from their van since the crack of dawn. For anyone selling merchandise at a convention, it’s very definitely a marathon, not a sprint. Sam watches them get caught in the fire door, then carries on as though nothing happened to break her flow.

  “She messaged me this morning. It happened last night.”

  “Is she still coming?”

  “Alexandra Angelo! One of your friends is in serious emotional pain – and all you’re worried about is whether she’s still coming to work?” Sam wags her finger at me.

  “You think Ajay is as much of a dick as I do. And anyway, we’re already one staff member down from ops, and the art team had a last-minute dropout.”

  “Really? Who bailed?”

  “Not now.”

  “I say again, really? I smell scandal.”

  I give her a mock-serious glare. “Samira, are you fishing for gossip? After the ‘serious emotional pain’ thing?”

  “Shut up.” She rolls her eyes, trying not to laugh.

  “You shut up.”

  The hotel receptionist who has just appeared behind the desk blinks at me. I think I might have offended her.

  “Sorry. Not you, obviously. Hi. Hello. Checking in? My name’s Lexi Angelo. You should have a reservation for me under the convention booking?”

  At the word “convention”, the receptionist raises a perfectly-plucked eyebrow at me, then starts tapping on the keyboard of her computer.

  Sam leans over the desk and switches on her brightest smile. “And if she could have the room that interconnects with 406, that would be magic.”

  Just like every convention hotel has the same entrance (with or without inflatable palm trees) and the same lobby and – weirdly – the same carpet in the upstairs hallways, every con’s operational office is always the same. It’s the nerve centre, the room where everything happens, containing several laptops, a printer that won’t connect to any of them, the biggest Wi-Fi black spot in the entire hotel, a first-aid kit, a corkscrew and enough paper to make it a serious fire hazard. Which is why there’s always a fire extinguisher in there too – often being used as either a doorstop or a paperweight. Or occasionally both at once. Somewhere, there’ll be a clock. It’s almost always wrong – not by much, but just by enough to lull anyone keeping half an eye on it into a false sense of security. There will be a trail of discarded plastic cups, crisp packets and other detritus.

  Above all, there will be people; none of them sticking around for long, but all of them passing through regularly and at high speed. And – at an Angelo convention – there will be me. This is where I live. Has been ever since I can remember; from just following my dad round, or stuffing the tote bags everyone gets when they sign in and pick up their membership badge (all those flyers and bookmarks and freebies don’t get in there by magic) right up to now – when I’m actually part of the crew. Running the crew, in fact. We’re what Sam cheerfully calls the “cannon fodder”: the ones who run around keeping the plates spinning and making sure the show goes the way it’s supposed to – and that everybody comes out in more or less the same state they went in. We’re the first in the firing line when there are problems, so we’re the fixers and the make-it-work-somehow-ers. My crew are my friends, my tribe, my band of brothers (and sisters, obviously) and I’d be lost without them. So would Dad. And so would any of the general membership who keep insisting on asking us where the toilets are instead of looking at an actual map.

  I push the door open. Someone, almost certainly Sam, has already stuck a Post-it note on the laminated Convention Operations sign taped to the outside – it’s bright pink and reads Abandon hope all ye who enter here. My crew are sitting on folding chairs dotted around the room – all except Sam, who left me to lug my bags alone once I’d checked in and is now lying on the floor with her hands behind her head. Bede is on the chair closest to her, throwing Smarties at her face, which Sam’s trying to catch in her mouth. Right at the back of the room, Nadiya is furiously typing on her phone, occasionally stopping to scowl at it and shake her head, then smooth the folds of her hijab with a sigh. Still, at least she’s here.

  “MORNING!” I shout cheerfully at the room.

  A Smartie bounces off Sam’s nose. “It’s quarter past one, babe.”

  “Eat your Smarties.”

  Dad has obviously unpacked the car while I was taking my bag up to my room; several boxes’ worth of paperwork sit stacked on the table. Maps, programme scheduling, staff rotas, lists of guests and attending members, extracurricular events, contact numbers: everything we need to keep the show running. It has taken me weeks to pull this stuff together…and I know that within fifteen minutes everything will change and the whole lot will need updating, and I might as well have written it in peach crayon for all the good it’s going to do.

  But that’s life. That’s conventions. Kind of the same thing to me, I guess.

  I look at t
he to-do list Dad has stuck to the front of my clipboard, already propped on the table. Forty-two items. And at the bottom of the page he’s written Continues… alongside an annoying little arrow. Like I don’t know him well enough to always, always check the next sheet.

  I consider the clipboard. I pause. “He’s already been in, hasn’t he?” I ask the room.

  Nadiya swears at her phone.

  “Missed him by five minutes,” says Bede, aiming another Smartie at Sam.

  “So why are you all still here?”

  “Wanted to make you feel special.” Bede shrugs, lobbing the empty sweet packet at the bin. It misses. I stare at him pointedly until he gives in and picks it up. “Nice to see you, Lexi,” he mutters.

  “Yeah, yeah. Missed you too. Now shift your arse. We’ve got to set the registration desk up.” I swipe at him with my clipboard as he slouches past me out of the room. He dodges, and blows me a kiss before strolling out into the corridor and sticking his hands in his pockets. I can hear him whistling the theme from Game of Thrones as he goes.

  Sam rolls over and pushes herself up off the floor, throwing me a salute and a “Sir! Yes, sir!” before running off after Bede, laughing. Nadiya keeps tapping on her phone, then finally looks up.

  “Hey, Lexi. Heard your dad and Bea have set the date. Big news,” she says, coming over and giving me a hug.

  “I only found out this morning! How do you know already?”

  “You know convention staff. And this is your father we’re talking about.”

  “Don’t remind me.” I stare at the clipboard. Hard.

  Obviously realizing we could do with a change of subject, Nadiya clears her throat and whistles. “So where do you need me to go?”

  “Didn’t my dad…?”

  “Assign me already? Yeah, but that’ll only take me half an hour.”

  “Uh, hold on.” I scan down the list of Impossible Tasks I’m Supposed to Accomplish Before 5.30. “Do you want to go over to the traders’ room and the art show and see how they’re doing with set-up? Make sure they’ve got everything they need, and all the stalls are ready?”

  She nods. The art show and the traders’ room set-up are the two real headaches: they’re so big that they have their own teams and their own staff, but they always need backup if it’s available. With so many different stalls in the trading space selling everything from collector cards to toys via superhero costumes and board games, and a load of original artwork to display on the specially-constructed art show walls, there’s plenty of work to go round.

  “Nadiya? Before you go…”

  Talking to Nadiya isn’t quite the same as talking to Sam. How could it be? Sam’s Sam, and that makes her one of a kind (luckily for the rest of us – I’m not sure the world’s ready for two of her yet). With Nadiya it’s a little more awkward. Even though she only lives on the other side of London to me, I haven’t seen her since the end of the last convention six months ago. She’s never really seemed fussed about meeting up in the real world, and that’s okay with me. Besides, at home, the people I know from sixth-form college – the ones I occasionally hang out with when I don’t have coursework or Dad-work – they don’t really get conventions, and while I’m with them I guess I’m slightly less…conventiony. So being able to turn up here and be me – really me – with everyone I love, it’s a relief. College friends are fine, but these are my people. “How are you doing?”

  She knows exactly what I mean. “Sam told you?”

  “About Ajay? Yeah. Sorry.” I try a shrug. “Convention staff, you know?”

  “He keeps messaging me. Saying he’s sorry, saying I’ve made a mistake, saying…a load of shit.” She shakes her head.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Uh-uh.” Another head shake. “He’s a dick. Better off without him.”

  “Want me to block his number for you?”

  “No. Yes. Maybe? Ask me tomorrow.” Her phone buzzes again and she rolls her eyes. “Scrap that. Ask me in an hour.”

  “Any time. You just say the word and he’s gone.”

  “Thanks. Sam offered to throw my phone in the fountain for me.”

  “That should worry me. But I’d actually be more worried if she’d been anything other than incredibly dramatic.”

  Nadiya tries to cover her laugh with a cough.

  I smile back at her. “I mean it, though – you need anything, you tell me.”

  She nods – and then mutters “Dick” again, slipping her phone back into her bag without even looking at the latest message.

  “Where did Daddy Dearest put you first then?” I hold the door open, then lock it behind us.

  “Signage,” she says, holding up a stack of laminated signs with directions, room names and arrows printed on them. I wince. Hotels hate convention signage. “Wish me luck?”

  When she’s gone I look at my clipboard.

  Item 1: unpack books for membership bags. Priority.

  The next twenty-two items all have Priority written after them.

  Don’t they always?

  Thanks, Dad.

  The relative quiet of the early registration period is over in a flash, and Saturday morning comes round far too fast – like it always does. We’re well into the first full day, with breakfast already a distant and fading memory, when Bede raises an eyebrow at me from his spot behind the registration desk. “You have jam on your lanyard.”

  “I know. I’m saving it for later.” I surreptitiously give the Access All Areas pass hanging around my neck a wipe, and he almost falls off his chair laughing.

  Naturally, this is the moment my dad chooses to appear round the corner, having just walked the length of the registration queue. He narrows his eyes briefly at Bede, who takes the hint and gets on with flicking through the rack of membership badges for “Sands, J”, while beside him Nadiya hands over one of the canvas membership bags we were stuffing with freebies till gone midnight. I try really hard not to notice the smudge of what looks like pizza sauce on the back of the bag as it crosses the table.

  Dad surveys the queue. He’s rocking back and forth on his heels, the way he always does when he’s nervous. “How’s everything going so far?”

  “Seems okay. We opened registration at 9.30 this morning, and we’re at about a hundred an hour.”

  I can see him doing the maths in his head, so I add: “Faster than last time, yes.”

  “Do you…?”

  “No. I don’t have the figures from last time. I was there. Do you trust me or not?”

  “You know I do.” He squeezes my shoulder. This is barely a step up from the kiss-on-the-top-of-the-head. In front of a queue full of people who have literally nothing better to do than stare at me. Awesome. “I’m just wondering whether the queue might move a little faster with someone else helping?”

  “You mean me.”

  “Not necessarily. But what are you doing at the moment?”

  “I’m standing here. Talking to you, Dad.”

  “Right. Yes.”

  “Would you like me to get behind the reg desk for a bit?”

  “If you think that’s the best thing to do…”

  I’ve already lost him. He’s craning his neck, peering down the queue towards the main entrance. And he’s spotted someone, I can tell.

  “Lexi, could you ask…”

  “Sam? She’s already on it,” I say, clambering over the pile of tote bags – it’s a lot smaller than it was last time I looked. Sam is, as usual, on guest liaison duty. Her job is to prowl the lobby keeping an eye out for any of our convention guests – anyone who’s due to be on a stage over the weekend. When she spots one, she sweeps them off to a separate registration area to give them their pass and schedule. Her wig today is bright green and matches her outfit, so it’s fair to say that seeing her striding across the lobby towards them, some of our guests may well assume she’s cosplaying as broccoli. (Who knows? She might be. I didn’t dare ask when she stuck her head round the connectin
g door between our rooms.)

  This satisfies my father – in as much as he ever can be satisfied with the way a convention is going on the first morning. He nods and wanders off, smiling at people in the queue and stopping here and there to chat. I notice he gives the guys dressed as space marines – already getting excited about the Interstellar Terror Q&A and apparently rating Hollywood aliens on a sliding scale of scariness while they wait – a wide berth though.

  “Lex? We’re running low on bags.” Nadiya pokes me in the side. “Where are the rest?”

  “Down in the cargo bay. We only brought half of them from the storage locker this morning. I can radio through and get some brought up – how many do we need?”

  She looks up and down the queue, then up at the ceiling as she rolls through the numbers in her head. “Another two hundred? But quickly, yeah?”

  I grab my walkie-talkie from the desk – and promptly drop it straight into Bede’s lap. He yelps.

  “Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry…” I lean forward to grab it – and then stop. “I think you’d better pass that to me, don’t you?”

  He hands it back over his shoulder without even looking up from the names he’s ticking off on the membership list.

  “Lexi?” A voice I don’t know is saying my name.

  “Hmmm?” I look up from the walkie-talkie, trying to match the voice to a face. On the other side of the table, just to the left of the rapidly-diminishing bag mountain, is a woman with a friendly smile and neat blonde hair. She’s wearing a beige trench coat, a white T-shirt and skinny jeans with ballet pumps. On the floor beside her is a huge leather shoulder bag, and in her hand is a phone.

  Publicist! hisses a tiny voice in the back of my head. First rule of conventions: always be nice to the publicists. However tired, stressed or pissed off you – the convention staff – might be, the publicist has got it worse.

  (Actually, that’s a lie. The first rule of conventions is: always make sure the hotel knows you’re coming. Because sometimes they don’t. True story. A story I’ve heard many, many times from my father, usually late at night and in the immediate run-up to another convention…)