Excerpt: The Backlash Girls

The Lamest Powervillain EVAR

“I have a bad feeling about this,” I said at the mirror. My Han impression wasn't stellar, since for one, I have a definite girl voice (I envy those altos) and for two, I was looking at myself in the mirror. Not the best context for sounding cocky, if nervous.
My Zombie Boyfriend T-shirt (brains over beauty, yesh) is a little too stretched over significant areas, since I had gained a little more weight, and I didn't like my face without the frames Ena gave me. Stupid Carter had stepped on them. Even my gamer-chick look wasn't at its best.
Also, I had calculated that since Teddy hadn't been at the gamer coven last time, it wasn't basketball season, and the newest Halo had hit the Game-Stop shelves he was sure to be there tonight. Doesn't that sound dangerously neat? “What could go wrong?” says the heroine.
But no matter what Ena and Chelsea would be there, so it would be fun.
See how you jinx yourself?

Ena, Chelsea, Freedom. At school we were the Anti-Cool. Sneering from the Geek Table, we mocked what was too popular. Loved what wasn't. If everyone was in love with Robert Pattinson (plays Edward Cullen, those of you lucky enough to not remember or know this) we were so onto that poser. If big pants were in, we had an arsenal of phrases to describe how ridiculous people looked.
No, we weren't that lovable. And we were okay with that. We had our own crowd, and our own sense of humor—what more could we want?
(I'll mention later the part where this rhetorical question was answered. Unpleasantly, of course.)

So it was Friday—the pizza buffet place stayed open late every other week just for gamers. This included the school chess clubs, Halo fanatics and a hard-core D&D club.
Chelsea was picking me up, which is why the statistical probability of my crush's appearance at the meeting had the opportunity to trouble my mind. Just as I was checking that it was not the 13th, there was the blatant honking of a car horn from across the house. I grabbed my backpack with its ballast of manga under my cards and old Nintendo tapes and went running through the living room, down the cinder-block steps from my house and to the side of my bosom friend.
“You better buy me my pizza, Freedom. This gas money is gonna kill my anime funds.”
“What is it, a whole mile from your house to mine, and back onto the highway? That's not far enough to bankrupt anybody.”
“If I didn't have a deal to take you, I'd probably miss more often.”
“And do what, rewatch episodes of Skip-Beat on YouTube?”
“Lame! Would not. Anyway, on YouTube everything is cut up into itty-bitty pieces. One of the Pride and Prejudice movies takes up the whole alphabet instead of being numbered, and-- Shut up.”
I only laughed a little.
We walked up to the pizza place after the proper mental preparation—a fresh application of goth-toned lip-gloss, that is.