noah krajnik’s piece is made up of?

i. We’ve begun calling David Tennant the waffle. Why? Who knows. We’re four teenagers in a pizza parlor, Kai’s photoshopped a waffle onto the face of Tennant’s Tenth Doctor, and we’re laughing so hard we’re dying, collapsing on the booth table. Of all the inside jokes to come—from an apocalypse of cows to mounting Teen Wolf’s Derek on the wall as an art installation—this is what sticks the most. The Fellowship of the Waffle! We’ve christened our quartet, our fangirl squad, our oasis against outside troubles. There’s Linnea in her vintage-style bandana headband, her smirk I love so well. She’s the eldest, and far more popular than the rest of us. Kai has a brilliant smile and long curly braids, a bedroom filled with books: my surrogate little sister. Aspen often wears her shiny dark hair in a “Katniss braid” while she rhapsodizes about Jennifer Lawrence’s humor and Brendon Urie’s vocal range on Tumblr and at our sleepovers. In another booth, there’s an all-too-familiar face, trench coat, shirt and tie, spiky hair. Ten, I whisper. The Waffle. Nobody notices. They’re too busy chaotically singing “Radioactive.” He gives me his signature smile, but sadness lurks behind it. “A very good friend told me something once. Whether it's a world, or a relationship... everything has its time. And everything ends.” He looks at the girls beside me, as if these words are targeting them, us. Coldness seeps into me. A melancholy I’ve felt more and more this summer. The Tenth Doctor is always right—but here, he has to be wrong. I’ve never had a friend group like this. by Andrea Grabowski Five Times The Fellowship of the Waffle Stayed Together And one time they didn’t ii. Doctor Who isn’t our only fandom. We’ve devoured every book featuring sarcastic son of Poseidon, Percy Jackson, and we wait impatiently for the next in the series. Percy has a thing for blue food, so we do too, eating blue jelly beans to celebrate his birthday on August 18th. And Mockingjay, Part 1 is coming out this fall: we’ll go together, holding hands through the saddest parts. Pizza is our prime nourishment, eaten with cucumber slices on top. We are good Whovians, so we must have fish fingers and custard, but we can’t find pre-made custard, so we substitute vanilla pudding. We aren’t sure if the combination actually tastes good, but piled onto the couch together, with Amy and Rory and the Eleventh Doctor saving the day on the screen, it doesn’t matter. One of the aliens in this episode is Madame Vastra—her species, Silurian, her residence, Victorian London, her lover, Jenny, a human woman. I’ve never seen girls kiss before.

My chest tightens, and I resist the instinct to look at Linnea. There’s a shadow flickering in the corner, and it distracts me. But it’s not just a shadow. It’s a whole person. And I recognize him: Nico di Angelo, son of Hades. I want to hug him, but I’m stuck to the couch. His fleece-trimmed aviator jacket, skull t-shirt, shaggy black hair, shadowed eyes.

“I was crushing on Percy for so long,” Nico murmurs, twisting his silver skull ring. He’s the first gay character I’ve ever spent time with in a story. But I don’t know why he’s talking about this. Why is he even here?

Kai and Aspen coo at the ship of Vastra and Jenny. But there’s no sign of Linnea’s smirk.