hashtag for the piece titled, “baron Vladimir harkonnen”

Nico melts into the shadows, but Ten whips out his sonic screwdriver and falls into step beside me. “There’s a lot of things you need to know to get across the universe.” He shines the blue light of his device onto the road.

The four of us, plus the Waffle, turn back down Aspen’s driveway and rush to the freezer to bring ice cream and spoons to the yard. Ten sits on the deck railing. “Warp drive… wormhole refractors…” He brandishes a spoon of his own. “And so much more.”

i. It’s not like Kai and Aspen and I haven’t had a group chat without Linnea for a while. Hey, Kai texts. What if we just had the three of us at my birthday this year? I look around for Nico. But I don’t need him to tell me to welcome change. Yeah, I reply. Let’s do that.

Now, I’ve long since stopped cosplaying as a good straight girl. I’ve long since understood queerness isn’t the only thing I share with Nico—I’m learning to make friends with the shadows in my head. I haven’t seen Linnea in years. Sometimes Aspen will text the group chat. Kai lives seven hours away, but we talk nearly every day. And when she visits me, we always eat waffles.