Laura
So, these next few from me will probably be more character studies than solid stories. I’m trying to develop a group of nerd ladies with the same embracement of their nerd-dom that nerd guys in fiction receive (without having to sexualize them or make them appealing to nerd guys). Eventually, I’ll want a proper story for them, but right now I’m just trying to flesh out who they are as people.
...Alex
The distressed Captain America shield shirt was the only sign that the woman behind the counter meant to be in a comic book store. Over the shirt was a worn brown blazer, and with her long, swishy skirt, waist-length frizzy red hair and horn rimmed glasses, she might have looked more fitting in some New Age self-help music store or a women’s studies class. Her complexion was blotchy, her face too long and tired looking to be considered attractive. She looked bored, in fact, but watchful enough of the new customer that entered the cramped but clean store.
“Hi, can I help you find anything?” she asked as he thumbed through the shelves on the left.
“Yeah,” he said, picking up a few from the same comic. “Do you have anything past issue three of Descendants of Ancients?”
“Issue three is the most recent issue,” she said plainly. “The next one should be out next month.”
“That can’t be right,” he half-chuckled. “This has been around since I was in high school.”
“Well.” She shrugged. She took out her phone and started typing.
He scoffed. “Look, can I talk to the manager or whoever? They’ll know what I’m talking about”
The woman looked up with her hazel eyes narrowed and he realized too late his mistake. “I’m the owner here. And the manager for that matter. So you can talk to me.” She looked at her phone again. “The Chronicles of the Descendants of Ancients had twenty-six issues from the nineties through the early two thousands.”
“See…”
“The Descendants of Ancients is a reboot of the cult classic,” she continued in a slightly louder voice, “first released in 2015 with a new storyline and a gender flip of the original narrator. The fourth issue will be released on June 7, 2017.” She held the phone out. He leaned forward to read, and sure enough, it said just that. His face flushed with embarrassment.
“I can hold a copy for you when they come in if you’d like to pre-order it,” she offered.
“No, that’s…fine. I was looking for the old one, anyway.”
“I can order that, too. It can be here next Wednesday.”
But by then, there was no point. “Forget it,” he muttered and louder, he said, “I’ll just go to Heroes. I think they have it.”
If he expected her to negotiate, she failed. He swung out the door, and the owner of POW! Comics on Powell Street smacks her lips. “Yep.”
The day had nearly ended when the new woman opened the door, looked around the otherwise empty room, and immediately started rambling, “Am I late? Sorry, I had to finish something and I thought about texting you, but then I thought that would take more time. How long have you been waiting?” She was tall and gangly, with wide eyes and a high pitched voice that made her seem perpetually stuck in the awkwardness of high school, even though she was professionally dressed and must have been in her late twenties, at least.
The shopkeeper shook her head. “Nope. I was just getting ready to close, but it’s been like this all day.”
“Still?” Her friend frowned with concern.
“It’s only been two months, Gracie.”
“Exactly. It’s been two months, Laur. Have you checked your website? How far down the google search you are and all that?”
Laur, considerably rounder and shorter by comparison, shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just go.”
On paper, Laura Nicholson was the perfect person to open a comic book store. She had used comics to create her own custom world all through her childhood. She had written her graduate thesis about the importance of comic books. She had drafts in sketchbooks hidden in her closet that she would probably never finish. She could and had spent hours divulging little known trivia about her favorite series, which she had learned was only a decent party trick around other people who enjoyed comics. And she felt so strongly about the need for a female-owned comic book store where women wouldn’t have to deal with condescending gatekeepers that she decided to open her own.
What she didn’t feel strongly about was interacting with people outside of her close group of friends. Laura was irritable, and even when she wasn’t, she had been known to come across as disinterested and cold. The problem was social skills turned out to be a bigger part of owning a small business than she had anticipated, despite warnings from her friends and family. She knew Grace was just concerned and trying to be helpful, but right then, Laura wasn’t interested in hearing any, “I told you so.”
Gracie pursed her lips while Laura grabbed her things from the back, turned out the lights and flipped the sign. On the way to the car, she handed a thin plastic bag to her ride. “This is for you.”
Gracie pulled the contents out of the bag and read, “Descendants of Ancients, Issue 4: Into the Depths of Drossnet.” She looked at Laura. “You got it? Already?”
Laura grinned proudly. “Signed ARC and everything.” Gracie flipped open the first page eagerly to check. “There are some perks to owning even a failing comic book shop.”
She beamed and wrapped an arm around her. “Have I told you lately you’re my favorite person?” And Laura smiled as she thought it was much easier to be a people person with the right sort of people.
