Eliza and Her Monsters

  “Put it up online.”

  I ball my hands in my sleeves. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to. It makes me nervous.”

  “You shouldn’t have anything to be nervous about—they’re amazing. Everyone will love them.”

  I shake my head. He can’t know, of course, that I’m not nervous about people rejecting them, but about someone linking anything I post as MirkerLurker to LadyConstellation. Plus, I don’t know, these pictures are for me. They’re concepts, half-formed thoughts. They’re not polished and ready for the world, and I don’t want anyone to see them. I’m half convinced the only reason Monstrous Sea has done so well is because I’m a stickler for perfect pages. Plot, lines, colors, characters. My fans deserve the best-quality work I can give them. I know that’s not the whole reason, but it’s got to be at least part.

  “Okay.” He hands the other pictures back to me and keeps the one of Kite Waters. Smiles at it again. “Thank you. Do you mind if I show this to Cole and Megan and the others? They won’t share it if I ask them not to, but this is just so cool—I have to show it to someone who gets it.”

  “Sure, I guess.” If Wallace says they won’t share it, then I believe him. They’re nice people, anyway. Even I can tell that much.

  The buses begin pulling around the middle school to line up for the end of the day.

  “Guess I should go back to my car so my brothers can find me.”

  “I’ll walk with you.”

  We head toward my car, parked at the far end of the tennis courts.

  “Doesn’t your sister usually pick you up?”

  “Yeah, my stepsister,” he says. “But I have a younger sister who goes here, and my stepsister picks her up too. So Bren said she’d get me when she gets Lucy.”

  “Bren and Lucy?”

  “Yeah. Yours?”

  “Sully and Church.”

  “Those are short for . . . ?”

  “Sullivan and Churchill. Ed Sullivan, Winston Churchill. Never asked my parents why, never going to ask them why. Just glad I got a normal name.”

  “Huh.”

  “What?”

  “I never asked why my parents named me Wallace.”

  “Why don’t you ask them when you get home?”

  He looks down, picks at his ear. “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  His voice gets quieter. “Both my parents are, uh . . . are gone.”

  Gone? Does that mean dead? Or absent? Not knowing exactly what “gone” means makes a strange hollow in my stomach, reminding me I don’t know as much about him as I thought.

  “Oh.” Heat floods my face. “Oh, sorry.”

  He shakes his head. “It’s okay. My family is kind of weird. Two stepparents, one stepsister, one half sister. They’re all really nice, though. I guess I shouldn’t call Vee my stepmom anymore; she was technically my legal guardian. But I’m eighteen, so maybe it doesn’t matter. . . .”

  I’ve never known anyone in real life with stepparents. The fact hits me after several seconds’ delay, followed immediately by a hot wash of shame. I complain about my family all the time—in my head, to Max and Emmy, even a few times to Wallace, in little messages through the forums, or in quick, throwaway sentences in our paper conversations at school. I assumed his family was the same way. I never thought about the fact that while my family bugs the shit out of me, they are my family, my flesh and blood, still working as a whole unit.

  Not that his isn’t. He could love his family as much as I love mine. Maybe more, because he never complains about them.

  God, I don’t know anything.

  We reach my car. The doors of the school fly open and thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds spill out, speed-walking to their buses. Wallace waits by my car with me in semi-awkward silence until we see the brown-haired heads of my two brothers charging toward us.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says.

  “See you,” I say.

  He heads off toward the front of the school, where his younger sister no doubt waits. Sully and Church reach me, backs bent with the weight of their bags, their sports gear already in hand. They’re talking about some fight that broke out in the cafeteria today, not paying attention to me as they jump into the car and buckle themselves in. I wait at least a full minute to see if they notice they’re not moving, then get into the driver’s seat.

  “What took you so long?” Sully says.

  I shrug, and turn on the car.

  Monstrous Sea Private Message

  9:36 p.m. 17 - Nov -16

  MirkerLurker: Why is Dallas your favorite Monstrous Sea character?

  rainmaker: Because he never gives up, even after all the bad things that have happened to him.

  MirkerLurker: You don’t think he’s broken? Most people think he’s broken.

  rainmaker: I think he’s strange, but anyone would be after years of torture and exile. He’s doing the best he can. People literally hunt him down, and he still tries to help Amity and Damien understand what the Scarecrow and the Watcher are, where they came from, and why they exist. He becomes Amity’s best friend, even though everyone thinks he’s incapable of friendship. He’s arguably the most powerful character in the series, but he would never use that for revenge or personal gain.

  rainmaker: Plus he’s funny. He’s technically older than most of the other characters, but as soon as he gets to Risht he starts dismantling metal trees like a little kid with a new toy.

  MirkerLurker: Aw, I like him for that too.

  rainmaker: Izzy’s your favorite, right?

  MirkerLurker: Yeah, most of the time.

  rainmaker: Most of the time?

  MirkerLurker: I like all the characters, but usually Izzy is the one I like the most.

  rainmaker: Why?

  MirkerLurker: Because he was a scaredy-cat. Or . . . because his character arc wasn’t that he stopped being a scaredy-cat, but that he learned to act in spite of his fear. He had to. He had to overcome his fear of being married to Ana, his fear of being a ruler, his fear of raising children, his fear of the Alliance, and the idea that he had no power. He never stops being scared, but he doesn’t let it stop him from doing what he has to do.

  rainmaker: Very good, very good. However, I see you have forgotten to mention a silly reason for liking him.

  MirkerLurker: Haha it’s his glasses, obviously! The irony that the king of the city of advanced technology won’t get ocular implants because he’s terrified to put things in his eyes.

  rainmaker: Weird, I didn’t know you had such a thing for timid guys.

  MirkerLurker: Really does it for me when a guy is paralyzed with fear on a regular basis.

  rainmaker: Aw. Sad.

  MirkerLurker: What’s sad?

  rainmaker: That it would never work between us. I’m too courageous.

  CHAPTER 16

  If there’s one thing my parents like more than sports, it’s family togetherness. Board games, movie nights, vacations. The rest of the year is off-season training; the holidays are in-season, practice every day, games twice a week.

  My parents are so into family togetherness that Thanksgiving is like the tournament playoffs. How much can Dad get Eliza and Church and Sully to help him cook? How great can our conversations be at dinner? How easy will it be to get Eliza and Church and Sully to wash the dishes afterward? How many board games can we play? How long can we keep Eliza away from her phone and computer?

  Normally we spend Thanksgiving with Aunt Carol and the rest of the extended family. We get to Aunt Carol’s house; Uncle Frank calls Sully and Church “tykes” and ruffles their hair, even though last year they were as tall as he is; Mom and Dad plant themselves at the center of the party, helping with prep and food, flitting around to speak to all the aunts and uncles and cousins at least once; and I sit in the corner with my phone, dreading the moment some family member comes up and asks me what I’m “doing these days.” This m
eans they want to know about school, and if I’ve decided to venture back into the heinous world of sports, and what I’m doing for college. I have my stock responses. “Fine.” “No, no sports.” “I applied to a few different places. Kind of weighing my options right now.” They give me some platitudes about how I’ll find my place, and how college is great and I’ll never want to leave, and how there are lots of places out there looking for smart girls like me to come make the big bucks. Only my immediate family knows about me and Monstrous Sea, and they think it’s a hobby. Most of my extended family doesn’t even know I like to draw.

  I wonder what I look like to them. I must be this bland girl who stares at a blank cell-phone screen all day. Every year, by the end of the night, I want to scream. I want to throw my chair, knock over the table, tear down Aunt Carol’s dining-room chandelier. I want to rage.

  In some ways I’ve accomplished more than any of them, and I can’t tell them. I don’t want them to know it, because that would be a catastrophe, but I do want them to know it, because then maybe they’ll stop treating me like I’m some empty-headed teenage drone off to serve my life sentence. Maybe then they’d leave me the fuck alone in the corner with my turkey and my mashed potatoes and my phone.

  This year, though, Aunt Carol has the flu and the rest of the family is going to Florida, because I guess going to Florida for Thanksgiving is a thing people do. I don’t have to field questions from the rest of the family, a miracle tarnished only by the fact that my parents have decided that in exchange, this will be the most Mirk Thanksgiving that ever Mirked.

  It’s just the five of us. Sully and Church help Mom roll out pie crust in exchange for the crust leftovers, while I hide at the far end of the kitchen table, awaiting whatever terrible job Dad can come up with next. I hold my phone under the table so none of them can see it, even though they’d know I was texting if they looked at me.

  emmersmacks: Ugh I wish I had your Thanksgiving

  emmersmacks: Stuck at school right now finishing final projects

  emmersmacks: Cant go home until winter break :(

  MirkerLurker: I’ll trade you.

  Apocalypse_Cow: all holidays are overrated anyway.

  MirkerLurker: Even Christmas? Presents?

  Apocalypse_Cow: a. i don’t celebrate christmas. b. i’m pretty sure most parents don’t get a lot of gifts for their twenty-two-year-old son anyway. c. yes, christmas is the most overrated of all holidays.

  MirkerLurker: ?? I thought Heather celebrated Christmas? Or is she too busy with her sixth-grade-teacher modeling to deal with that this year?

  Apocalypse_Cow: eh.

  MirkerLurker: Is something wrong?

  Apocalypse_Cow: nah. heather went home for the holidays.

  Max being weird is . . . weird. I wait for more explanation, but none comes. Something must have happened between him and Heather, but if he won’t say it here, then he won’t say it anywhere. It would be nice, I guess, if he was sitting in front of me—then at least I’d have a facial expression or some body language or something to go off of. Max and Emmy once suggested we video chat, but I vetoed it. It felt wrong, somehow. Like we would ruin what we had by showing each other our faces. Now it seems like it might be helpful.

  A text comes from Wallace.

  An actual text too, not a message through the forum app. I gave him my number awhile back, before Halloween, but not because I wanted him to call me or anything. I wrote it on the edge of our conversation paper in homeroom and slid it over to him because sometimes I see something and think, Wallace would laugh at that, I should send him a picture of it, but the messaging app is terrible with pictures and texting is way better.

  So he texts me now, and it’s a picture. A regular sweet potato pie. Beneath the picture, he says, I really like sweet potato pie.

  I text back, Yeah, so do I.

  Then he sends me a picture of his face, frowning, and says, No, you don’t understand.

  Then another picture, closer, just his eyes. I REALLY like sweet potato pie.

  A series of pictures comes in several-second intervals. The first is a triangular slice of pie in Wallace’s hand. Then Wallace holding that slice up to his face—it’s soft enough to start collapsing between his fingers. The next one has him stuffing the slice into his mouth, and in the final one it’s all the way in, his cheeks are puffed out like a chipmunk’s, and he’s letting his eyes roll back like it’s the best thing he’s ever eaten.

  I purse my lips to keep my laugh in, but my parents are fine-tuned to the slightest hint of amusement from me, and they both look up.

  “What’s so funny, Eggs?” Dad says.

  “Nothing,” I reply. Nothing makes a joke less funny than someone wanting in on it, especially parents.

  Wow, I say to Wallace. You really like sweet potato pie.

  He sends one more picture, this one with him embracing the pie pan, gazing lovingly at it. We’re to be married in the spring.

  An actual laugh escapes me. I really hope Wallace is having a better Thanksgiving than I am. It seems like he is. I take a picture of myself pouting and send it to him, saying, Aw, the cutest of cute couples.

  “Stop taking selfies,” Sully says from the other side of the room.

  “I wasn’t taking selfies,” I snap back.

  “Why were you taking selfies?” Church asks.

  “I wasn’t taking selfies!”

  “Eggs, why don’t you go ahead and put that phone away so you can help me with the cranberry sauce?” Dad says, looking chipper. I clamp down on the immediate frustration that bubbles up in my chest, leave my phone on the table, and get up to help.

  Dinner begins as it always does, with Mom joking that we’ll be spending all of tomorrow working to lose the calories we eat today. For the rest of them, that’s a challenge—see how much you can eat now so you get to do more fun exercise tomorrow. Personally, it makes me want to fast.

  Then my parents move on to asking me, Sully, and Church the latest updates from school, and how well we think we’re going to end our semesters.

  “Church is going to ask Macy Garrison out before Christmas,” Sully says. Beside him, Church’s face turns a mottled crimson.

  “No I’m not!”

  “You two sure have been talking about this Macy Garrison a lot,” Dad says. “When are we going to get to meet her?”

  “You’re not going to meet her!”

  Sully smiles through the mashed potatoes stuffed in his mouth. Swallows, and says, “And Eliza’s hanging out behind the middle school with her boyfriend every day. You guys haven’t met him, either.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend!” I snap, my face heating. Sully looks between me and Church and laughs.

  “Every day?” Mom says, glancing first at me, then at Dad. “Is that why you wanted to pick up Sully and Church from school, Eliza?”

  “I—no! I just thought they wouldn’t want to ride the bus. Wallace has to pick up his sister from the middle school anyway, so—he’s not my boyfriend!”

  Dad holds up his hands. “Whoa, whoa there, Eggs. Your mom and I think we should meet Wallace before this goes any further.”

  I am burning in the deepest pits of familial humiliation. “Nothing is going to go further. There is nothing to go further. Can we stop talking about this?”

  Now Mom’s holding up her hands too. “Honey, your father’s just saying that, you know, this is the first time you’ve really hung out with a boy, and we should think about scheduling a few doctors’ appointments—”

  “STOP.”

  Sully has his hands clapped over his mouth to keep in his laughter. Church’s forehead rests on the table beside his plate, his ears and the back of his neck bright red. I sink against my chair. My hands and feet have gone numb. I stuff a green bean into my mouth, chew, swallow, nearly barf it up, then stand from the table.

  “May I be excused?”

  I don’t wait for an answer before I march out of the room.

  I have never
been so happy to spend an hour immersed in Monstrous Sea. I’m on the Great Continent, sketching clouds in a pale blue sky and a ravaged battlefield circled by carrion feeders. Hywolves, raptors, the fanged KiriKiri battlefield mice that spring from the earth to rip rotting flesh from corpses and drag it to their underground nests as food for their young. Fans often ask where I get ideas for the monsters of Orcus. I tell them I don’t know, but it’s easier to come up with monsters when you’re angry or upset.

  I only stop when I hear Church and Sully pound up the stairs and into their room. It must not be board-game time yet. I check my phone.

  Another picture from Wallace waits for me. In this one, an empty pie pan littered with crumbs sits on the floor beside a large knife. Wallace kneels next to it with more crumbs on his sweater, expression horrified.

  NOOOO

  WHAT HAVE I DONE

  MY LOVE

  OUR MARRIAGE

  ’TIS ALL FOR NAUGHT

  I text back: Oh no!! Not sweet potato bride!

  Another picture comes: Wallace sprawled on the floor beside the pie pan, one arm thrown over his eyes.

  Let me only be accused of loving her too much.

  Wallace is definitely having a better Thanksgiving than me. I wonder if his family asks if he has a girlfriend, and how much further things are going to go. I wonder if he says yes. I wonder how much further he wants to go.

  I could ask him.

  I probably won’t.

  The Watcher had to have a host.

  The pilgrims who visited for Amity’s blessing told her so, each and every one of them. The Watcher had to have a host, because its counterpart already had one, and that threw the world out of balance.

  “Its counterpart?”

  The old woman who had come to see her—the first of many pilgrims to come—nodded slowly. For the Nocturnians, who defied aging, the deep creases in the woman’s face spoke of long decades, perhaps even centuries, of life. A cluster of stars was tattooed over her right cheekbone, the same constellation she was named after. Like all the name tattoos, it was white and nearly camouflaged against her skin.

  “Across the sea, they call it the Scarecrow. Its host has been gone from the island for many years. He has abandoned his guardianship. If he ever returns here, you must bring him back to order.”