Eliza and Her Monsters

  “Eliza, would you like to share?”

  “Oh. Um.” What have I done today? I lay in bed and watched Netflix. I opened up yesterday’s Westcliff Star and read the wrap-up story about the Wellhouse Turn deaths about twelve times. Then I scheduled the single Monstrous Sea page going up tonight—the only one I could finish, considering the damage Wallace had done to my productivity. After that, I spent a few hours sweating. Then I showered. And now I’m here.

  “Why don’t I go?” Wallace says. “I’m done eating.” He inhaled his food.

  Tim turns to him instead.

  “I helped Bren get that retriever that’s had the trust issues to let me give it a bath today,” Wallace says. Then the corners of his lips creep upward. “And, uh . . . I sold two more commissioned stories.”

  “Two more?” Vee chirps. “Wally, that’s great!”

  “You didn’t tell me that!” Bren says.

  Lucy throws her napkin at him. “Are you going to let me read them?”

  Tim smiles. “That’s great, Wallace. Are these your fanfiction stories?”

  “Yeah. Not Monstrous Sea, but something else.”

  “Have you tried selling any of your own?”

  Wallace scratches the back of his neck. “That’s not really how it works. People request the stories because they already know the characters, and what they want.”

  “Hmm.” Tim goes back to his eggs. “So is this what you’d be doing with your major next year? Writing fanfiction?”

  All amusement has left Wallace’s face. “No, they don’t do fanfiction in any creative writing major.”

  “So you’d be writing your own work.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What is that going to get for you, if you can’t make money off your own work?”

  “Timothy,” Vee warns. “Not while we have a guest.”

  I shrink into Wallace’s side, but Tim’s laser gaze finds me anyway. “Eliza,” he says. “You plan on going to college next year, don’t you? What do you want to major in?”

  Art seems like the obvious answer, but I haven’t settled on anything yet because there’s no major for drawing Monstrous Sea. But saying “art” doesn’t seem like it’ll get me many points in Tim’s book. “Graphic design,” I say. “For, like, marketing. And stuff.” Way to stick the landing, Mirk.

  “Graphic design,” Tim repeated. “See, Wallace, even that has business appeal. Graphic designers can make good money. I’m not saying you can’t do writing, just do some writing that you can build a career on. Creative writing isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

  Wallace clamps his mouth shut and stares at his plate. Lucy shoves a piece of bacon into her mouth, and Bren covers her face with a hand, slowly shaking her head.

  “This fanfiction thing is for fun. Your mother and I won’t be paying for a college education that supports a hobby. We want you to do something meaningful.”

  Tim keeps going. Wallace’s fist tightens against his thigh. I brush my finger against it, and he grabs my hand. Squeezes hard, like he’s in pain. I squeeze back.

  “I know you don’t like listening to this,” Tim says, “but it’s the way the world is.”

  A beat of silence falls over the table as Tim goes back to his eggs. Then Wallace says, “May we be excused?”

  Tim looks ready to say no, but his mouth is full. Vee shoots him a venomous look from the other end of the table and says, “Yes, hon, you and Eliza are excused. I’ll get your plates.”

  Wallace stands and pulls me out of the kitchen.

  CHAPTER 22

  Down the back hallway is a set of stairs that lead to the basement. The basement is brick walled, carpeted, and chillier than the rest of the house. Wallace flicks a light switch at the bottom of the stairs that turns on soft, ambient sconces. The room is divided in half by a wall with a large opening. On this side is a moth-eaten couch and a large, old television. Wallace leads me to the other side of the room, through the opening. The darker side. There’s a mattress here on the floor covered with rumpled bedsheets, a lamp plugged into a power strip, and books and papers piled around it, including the Children of Hypnos series and chapters of Wallace’s Monstrous Sea transcription. A pool table takes up a lot of the space. Just to the left of the lamp on the floor is an old recliner. Behind that is a large poster of Dallas Rainer standing on a beach, looking over the ocean, and the words THERE ARE MONSTERS IN THE SEA sketched into the shadow he casts on the sand. Pinned beside the poster is an old football jersey that says WARLAND and the number 73.

  From the opening in the wall, Wallace pulls a heavy, sliding wood door and locks it on the other side of the doorframe. It cuts off any residual noise from upstairs, and even from the rest of the basement. He presses his forehead to the door and closes his eyes.

  “I am so sorry,” he says. “I didn’t think he would do that.”

  I shift from foot to foot. The room is cold, and my jacket is upstairs. “Does he usually?”

  “Sometimes. He’s—he’s a great guy, and he’s a good person, but I hate it when he starts saying things are meaningless.” He pulls his head away from the door and starts to pace. “Sorry. Sorry, I don’t mean to freak you out. I didn’t think he would be like that if you were here.”

  “It’s fine. I get it.” I’m just glad I can breathe again.

  Wallace balls his hands together at his sides. I’ve never seen him so angry. Not like this. He looks like he could break something. Maybe the pool table. “What’s the point of being alive if you don’t do what makes you happy? What good is a career that makes you money if you hate yourself every day you do it? I don’t have a family to support, I don’t have bills to pay, at least not right now. Sure, I’ll have to pay student loans, but we only have enough money for me to go to community college anyway, so I’ll pay it off with whatever job I get after that. I don’t need to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or whatever important job he wants me to get. I just want to write.”

  I watch him pace and feel myself growing to the floor, feet rooted in place, uncertainty creeping its way through my veins. I’ve never seen him like this—I don’t know what to do with him, so I stand there and stare until he finally looks up at me and says, “I’m really sorry” again.

  “Do you need something to scream into?” I ask.

  He considers. “That would be nice.”

  I pluck the pillow off the mattress and toss it to him. He presses it to his face and lets out a muffled scream. Probably the loudest sound that’s ever come out of him in my presence, and the pillow makes it no louder than his usual speaking volume.

  He throws the pillow back to the bed and follows it. He is much less intimidating while supine. I sit on the edge of the mattress and turn toward him.

  “I’m sorry he has to be like that,” I say.

  Wallace covers his eyes with his hands. How easy it would be to lean over and kiss him now, but it doesn’t feel like the time. Maybe it will never be the time. It will never be the time because I’m Eliza Mirk, great avoider of life and all its consequences. How can I want something so badly but become so paralyzed every time I even think about taking it?

  “I’ve already spent twelve years of school doing what other people have told me I have to do,” he says. “And I know what happens when someone’s forced to do something they hate. Is it too much to ask for a few years of what I want? Do your parents do this to you? Are you really going to major in graphic design?”

  “Oh, no. I said that so Tim wouldn’t throw me out of the house.”

  Wallace snorts.

  “I don’t know what I want to major in. I just don’t want to be . . . here. My parents like to remind me that I still have to finish high school to know if I get to go to college, and they think once I go I’ll become some dorm hermit who never leaves her room and stares at her computer screen all day. But no, they don’t tell me what I should do—not all the time, anyway—and I guess that’s better.”

  But the only reason they aren’t trying t
o whip me into shape anymore is because I’ve raged against it for so long that I wore them out. They still mention it sometimes, in Mom’s little jabs about doing better in school, and Dad’s mentions of scholarships, but it’s not the same issue. Mom and Dad don’t know how much money I make, but I do, and I have at least that peace of mind. Wallace only has fanfiction, and that can’t help him.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again. He lowers his hands, stares at the ceiling, and shrugs. Then he looks at me.

  “Are you cold?”

  My hands are clamped around my upper arms, my torso curled into my legs to keep the heat in.

  “Um.”

  “Here.” Wallace sits up and pulls a thick knitted blanket from beneath the other sheets on his bed. “Insulation layer. Hope it doesn’t smell bad.” He wraps it around me. It’s already warm. Probably warm from him, considering he sleeps with it touching him every freaking night.

  “Smells like Irish Spring and spicy boy shampoo,” I say.

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “It’s great.”

  I have never been so close to something that smells like Irish Spring and spicy boy shampoo, unless you count anything my dad goes near, and I do not. I’m not entirely sure my brothers shower. I curl up in his blanket but stay turned away from him.

  “You didn’t correct Bren when she said I was your girlfriend.”

  Wallace shifts behind me. “Oh. Yeah. Well, I thought—you know, it would bring up more questions than it answered . . . and she’s kind of persistent . . . and I didn’t want to make the situation awkward. . . .”

  “Oh.”

  “Hmm.”

  Someone flushes a toilet upstairs; water rushes through the basement pipes. I bury my face in Wallace’s blanket. Wallace shifts again behind me.

  “Unless you want to be,” he says.

  I look over my shoulder. “What?”

  He sits against the wall with his arms wrapped around his knees, his eyes wide. When I look at him, he looks down at his feet. His voice drops, and his words come out in terse little bunches. “I didn’t know if—if you wanted to be my girlfriend, so I didn’t want to get into a big thing about it at dinner.”

  “Do you want me to be?” I choke out.

  He glances up. “I mean, yes.”

  Ball in your court, Mirk.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Yes?” He frowns.

  Aghh. Wrong word.

  “I mean, okay.”

  The little smile appears. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  It becomes the big smile. He lowers his head and drags both hands through his hair. I throw my arms up over me and hide myself in his blanket. Too much, too much, out of control. A moment later his chest presses against my back and his arms wrap around me and his legs box me in on either side. The weight of his head falls on my shoulder.

  A moment of silence passes. The world doesn’t fall apart. I lower the blanket and twist in his arms, and he lets me, and then we’re facing.

  I don’t want to be the girl who freezes when confronted with new friends, or the outside world, or the smallest shred of intimacy. I don’t want to be alone in a room all the time. I don’t want to feel alone in a room all the time, even when there are other people around.

  I lift the blanket open so Wallace can come inside, and when he’s holding me again, I lay my arms over his shoulders and trap us both in the warmth. He lets out a contented sigh.

  I become acutely aware of my limbs, how quickly I breathe, and every twitch of my lips and my fingers. It helps me stop thinking about what I’m doing wrong. It’s not too much. I’m not out of control.

  I’m here. He’s here.

  CHAPTER 23

  I say good-bye to the Keelers—and Lucy, who is technically a Warland—before I leave. They’re all grouped in the living room, Lucy tucked under Tim’s arm on the couch next to Bren, Vee with reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, squinting at the television as she looks for a channel they can all watch. Wallace walks me out to my car. I think he might pull the surprise kiss then, but he doesn’t.

  “I’m glad you came,” he says, squeezing my hand. Then he tugs me closer, into a hug.

  “I’m glad you asked me,” I say, locking my arms around him. The muscles along his ribs expand and contract with his breathing. My nose brushes his neck, and he shivers. “I should probably go,” I say.

  “Okay.”

  I get in my car. As I pull out of the driveway, Wallace leans against the back bumper of his car with his hands in his pockets, his breath puffing fog in the air, and watches me drive away.

  When I get home that night, I try to skirt past the living room where Mom and Dad are bundled up and watching their number one favorite movie of all time, Miracle. It’s the movie they watch on every date night, birthday, holiday, and anniversary. If it hadn’t come out six years after I was born, I would’ve thought they were watching it while I was conceived. Still, their dedication to this crowning jewel of sports cinema does nothing to hamper their parent senses. The minute I pass the doorframe, Mom whips around.

  “How was it?”

  “Good,” I snap. “Fine. I’m going upstairs.”

  “Why don’t you come in here and tell us about it? We’d like to know about his family. And you can watch Miracle!”

  “No thanks.” I start up the stairs.

  “Oh, Eliza, please don’t go get on that computer! Stay down here and talk to us.”

  “I have work to do.” I reach the top of the stairs and hurry into my room before either of them can punch holes in my happy bubble. I don’t want to watch Miracle for the billionth time—spoiler alert, we beat the Russians—and I don’t want to talk to them about Wallace. It’s bad enough that Mom made me go to that doctor’s appointment; who knows what she’ll do if I tell her we’re actually going out now.

  I shut myself in my room, ignoring the music blasting from Church and Sully’s bedroom, and check my phone. Neither Emmy nor Max have responded to my texts yet, but that’s fine. It’s a Friday night—they’ll see them in the morning. I pull out my sketchbook and flip through my Monstrous Sea drawings. I scan three of them into the computer. One of a sunset riser bursting out of a dark ocean, water pinwheeling off its sharp spines; one of Damien looking up at the sky with stars reflected in his eyes; and one of Amity balancing atop a sharp crystal pillar, framed by the sun. I log in to the forums with my MirkerLurker account, find the fan art subforums, and start a new thread.

  All three pictures go up. I close the browser before anyone can respond, and throw myself into bed with my clothes still on.

  CHAPTER 24

  The next morning, I wake to twenty-two messages from Emmy and Max. Separately. And none of them are about me being nervous over eating dinner at Wallace’s house last night.

  emmersmacks: Are you feeling okay??

  emmersmacks: None of the pages went up

  emmersmacks: E???

  emmersmacks: Did you just forget or . . . ??

  Apocalypse_Cow: hey so i know you’re having fun with sweet cheeks mcdimples, but people are kinda getting antsy.

  Apocalypse_Cow: no pages.

  Apocalypse_Cow: you feeling okay?

  They go on. I throw off my covers and fall over to the computer. Type my password wrong twice for the computer and once for the forums.

  LadyConstellation has thirty new private messages from forum admins asking where the new pages are. And the forums themselves—the top post in almost every subforum is someone asking if there’s an issue with the website, or something wrong with LadyConstellation, or if the pages are late.

  I skip over to the website itself, where the pages go up. The latest post is still the last page from last week.

  But I scheduled the post to go up. I know I did. I check the settings and there it is—in the drafts. Unpublished. I click the post button so hard my mouse flies out from beneath my hand and hits the wall.

  In three years, I have never poste
d late. Reliability is what I sell to my fans, and they are happy to buy it.

  I bring up a new forum post.

  LadyConstellation:

  Hey everyone—sorry about the missing post last night. Something went wrong and it didn’t get scheduled. It’s up now!

  Replies flood in.

  Yay!

  Only one page?

  Whoo!! Finally!!

  How much can go wrong with post scheduling?

  Just glad you’re not dead.

  Fuckin’ about time. Man, a lot of work to post one page, huh?

  I close the browser and swivel away from the computer, curling up in my chair and holding my head in my hands. It’s fine. It was only a few hours. As long as I get the pages in on time from now on, everything is fine.

  Don’t look at the comments. Never look at the comments.

  “You feeling okay, Eggs?”

  “Yeah, Dad, I’m fine.”

  “You haven’t come out of your room yet this morning. Your mom and I were getting worried.”

  “I was asleep.”

  “Well, Wallace is here. He says you’re supposed to go to Murphy’s.”

  “Oh. Um.”

  “Is it that time of the month? Do you want me to tell him you can’t go?”

  “I—God, no! I’ll be down in a second. Jesus.”

  Wallace sits in the living room playing video games with my brothers. He’s wedged between them, silent and focused on the TV, while Sully and Church yell at each other over his head. Then something happens, and they both groan, and Wallace smiles.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask. He looks over and sees me there for the first time and drops the controller.

  “A few minutes,” he says, coming toward me.

  “Play another round!” Sully motions to the TV and then to Wallace with long arcs of his arm, like he can pull Wallace back.