The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love by Sarvenaz Tash

indicates Roxy.
    I nod and smile. It’s usually good to meet fellow Althenians. You know, when they’re not cutting in front of you in a highly important line and destroying your life in the process.
    We’re getting herded onstage now, and Predator turns back around to see where he’s walking.
    â€œLet’s do this!” Roxana says before putting up her hand for a high five. I give her one.
    Our group of ten gets evenly dispersed onstage and told again that we can do whatever poses we like. Predator lifts his claws and roars. He definitely has practiced that before. I kind of just stand there. Althena doesn’t really have any poses, per se. But then I see what Roxana is doing and I laugh.
    She’s aerobicizing—what Althena’s subpar Homo Sapiens Studies class assured her all humans do for both recreation and exercise. She’s alternating between performing high knee kicks and throwing her hands out rhythmically.
    â€œCome on, Graham!” she yells.
    God help me, I cannot resist anything this girl asks of me. And so I fall into rhythm beside her, following her moves like she’s Richard Simmons and I’m the Prancercise lady trapped in a gangly teenager’s body.
    â€œThank you! Please step off the stage and we’ll notify the three of you who made it to the next round,” a staffer on a microphone says.
    â€œI can’t believe you made me aerobicize in front of Emmett Shah!” I try to chide Roxy, but I know she can hear the laughter in my voice.
    â€œYou cannot half-ass a Comic Con costume contest,” she responds.
    â€œOne, two . . .” An NYCC staffer pulls us out of the line and then goes down a few people to get someone in a very elaborate half-HAL, half-Dave costume (astronaut helmet and a wide-eyed stare from the front, and a sinister-looking large red dot attached to the back of his head). “Three,” the staffer said. “You guys have made it to the next round. Please go line up on that side of the room.”
    Predator congratulates us before sauntering off with the rest of our line.
    â€œWow, really?” I’m kind of stunned as I walk over with our 2001 companion.
    â€œWhy are you surprised?” Roxana asks. “We look pretty amazing.” She winks at me.
    I look over and see that Felicia is also miraculously standing over by the wall of winners from her group. I can’t help but shake my head.Even a Comic Con costume contest can become a beauty pageant in the end.
    We go through the whole process again, and I actually make it to round three before I’m eliminated. Roxana goes on to the next round. I find Felicia on the reject side and she tells me she only made it to round two.
    We cheer as Roxana continues to Flashdance -jog her way into the judges’ hearts. She gets eliminated in the fifth round, one to go before the final.
    â€œYou were robbed!” I yell when she walks over to us.
    She shrugs good-naturedly. “I can’t beat that guy’s HAL impression. I’m not entirely sure that’s not the actual guy who plays him in there!”
    I consider the costume again. The kid’s face behind the astronaut helmet doesn’t look any older than twenty. “If HAL has found the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
    â€œA robot with the power of eternal youth?” Roxana asks. “Seems kind of redundant.”
    I shake my head. “A robot with the power to dangle eternal youth in front of the lowly humans he seeks to control.”
    â€œAh!” she says, and nods. “Got it. Terrifying.”
    As it turns out, HAL/Dave is not the final winner from our group either. That honor goes to someone dressed as Serenity , the ship from Firefly , complete with a working gangway.
    In the final group are a really detailed Groot; a character with elaborate purple hair I don’t recognize; Serenity ; two people dressed together as the Batman Slap meme; a White Walker;