I push myself off the bed to stand, expecting him to move with me or at least let go of my hand. He does neither. His grip jerks me back. He slouches against the wall, smiling that little smile, refusing to let go.
“Come on.” I laugh, trying to pull him up. “We have to go.”
He lets me use all my body weight to tug on him. I end up almost sitting on the floor, and he hasn’t budged. He flexes his arm and yanks me up, back to the bed. Laughing.
“Seriously, though!”
“Okay, okay.” He lets go.
“I need to change too.”
“I’ll wait outside.”
He does. I change into my best-fitting pair of jeans and an actual non-logoed shirt. Sweatshirt over the top, of course. Sully and Church are already waiting by the front door with their practice bags in tow. Wallace has ambled to the bottom of the stairs, and they’ve struck up some kind of conversation. When I head down, Sully raises his arms and glares at me. “Come on, Eggs Benedict! We don’t have all day!”
“Shut up.”
Sully and Church stuff their gangly selves in the backseat of my car so Wallace can sit in the passenger seat.
“No hanky panky up there,” Sully says.
“Yeah,” Church adds. “If I see a hand cross those seats, it will get smacked.”
“Smacked?” Sully says. “If I see a hand cross those seats, I’ll chop it off and burn it.”
“Shut up.” I pray my hair covers the heat in my cheeks. I am not going to get into an argument with my brothers over their stupid inappropriate mouths while Wallace is in my car. I turn the radio to some of the garbage alt-rock they like so much, and pretty soon they forget about us.
Wallace and I walk the perimeter of the sports complex during the two hours of Sully and Church’s practice. It’s empty enough that Wallace doesn’t have an issue talking, though he does speak softer. We don’t hold hands, but his knuckles tap the back of mine like he’s trying to send me a message in Morse code.
“My sister comes to this place,” he says. “For tennis.”
“Younger or older sister?”
“Oh, definitely younger. The only exercise Bren gets is playing with the dogs in her obedience classes. Lucy loves tennis, though. And basketball. And most sports.”
“Your family seems nice.”
“I like them. They want to meet you.”
“Is that a thing we’re doing now? Meeting each other’s families?”
He shrugs. “Only if you want.”
“I don’t know. I guess that would be fair. You’ve been subjected to mine.”
“You don’t like them?”
Now I shrug. “It’s weird. Like, I know they love me, and I know I have nothing to complain about, but they’re always trying to get me to do things I don’t want to do. Every time we come here, my mom and dad try to convince me to sign up for a new club sport or intramural team. If I have my phone out talking to you or my online friends, they think I’m ignoring them, or being disrespectful, or whatever. And it’s like, no, I’m in the middle of a conversation. If you saw two people talking to each other face-to-face, you wouldn’t interrupt them and call it disrespectful, would you?”
“No, of course not.”
“No. I understand that it’s a teenage thing to say parents don’t get it, but they don’t get it. It’s not their fault they were born two and a half decades before me, but would it kill them to ask me what I’m doing on the phone before they assume it’s something pointless?”
“Maybe they’re worried you’ll snap at them if they ask what you’re doing,” Wallace says.
I open my mouth to argue but remember that I have actually done that to my parents before.
“Do yours ever do that to you?” I ask.
“Sometimes. Not as often as they used to. We’ve . . . moved past that, and into other issues.”
Before I can ask what issues, he says, “Why did your brother call you Eggs Benedict?”
“Because I eat hard-boiled eggs for breakfast. Dad calls me Eggs, and Sully and Church just kind of tack on whatever egg type they can think of that day.”
“Cute.”
“I think my brothers hate me.”
It must sound too real, because Wallace actually looks concerned. “Why?”
My gaze fixes on my feet, Mom’s worn Nikes scuffing the ground. “I don’t know. Because I don’t try to hang out with them more, or get invested in what they like doing. According to Dad, they’re really good at soccer, but I wouldn’t know because I never pay attention when we go to their games.”
“So hang out with them more.”
“But I don’t like doing what they do, because all they do is play soccer. Or video games. I don’t like sports. They make fun of me for being bad at them anyway, so what’s the point?”
“Of course they’re going to make fun of you. They’re middle-school boys raised in a highly competitive, testosterone-fueled environment. That’s how they psych each other up.”
“And you know this how?”
“I watch the sportball on the television. Also I played peewee football when I was younger.”
“You did play football!”
He laughs. “Yeah, when I was like a quarter the size I am now. They had me as a running back.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means I ran real fast.”
“You? Move fast?”
“I know. One of life’s great mysteries.” His knuckles rap the back of my hand. My resistance meets its end, and I grab his fingers, holding them in mine. He smiles and says, “I don’t think your brothers hate you. I think you don’t like the same things. It’s not a bad thing, it just is what it is. They do sports. You do art.”
I do Monstrous Sea. That is what I do, and all I need from Sully and Church is their silence about it to their friends at school. We don’t have to get along. They just have to keep their mouths shut. They’ve stayed quiet this long; they must have some idea how important it is. So maybe Wallace is right. Maybe they don’t hate me.
“So where’s your house at?” I ask, swinging our hands between us. “I want to properly Google Maps creeper-stalk you before agreeing to meet your family.”
He laughs again.
The walk home that Amity normally found meditative now teemed with her own unquenchable thoughts. Her guilt. If she was the only one who could stop Faust, didn’t that mean she had to? Even if it meant danger to her? It was easy to think of him in the abstract when he was only terrorizing faraway places, but what if he came to Nocturne Island?
What if, instead of strangers, he attacked Faren?
MONSTROUS SEA FORUMS
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[Unique Works - 144]
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Nov 24 2016
SWEET POTATO PIE DAY.
Nov 28 2016
I have begun reading the work of human genius that is the Children of Hypnos. Why did no one ever tell me how great this series is? I’m holding you all responsible.
Dec 02 2016
So glad everyone’s loving the transcription! More chapters on the way. Will try to get some of Auburn Blue up in the meantime, but can’t promise anything. Also STOP ASKING ABOUT CUTE GIRL FROM SCHOOL. Gosh.
Dec 13 2016
Going silent for a while. Midterms to study for. Will be around the boards, though. #Mathslaughter
Dec 19 2016
As a reward for surviving midterms, the fourth CoH book. No, I don’t care if the author is a nutjob. This had better end well.
Dec 19 2016
Yes, I was introduced to CoH by Cute Girl from School. NO THANKS TO ANY OF YOU.
&nb
sp; Dec 21 2016
I am an absolute wreck of a human being, and right now I am completely okay with it.
CHAPTER 21
I agree to meet Wallace’s family on the Friday before Christmas. For dinner.
I wash my nice pair of jeans again so they’ll start at their tightest fit and stretch out as the night goes on, and I steal one of Mom’s lacy shirts. I don’t even pretend to care what people at school think of my clothes, but if Wallace is going to look nice coming over to my house, then I’m going to look nice at his.
Before I leave, Mom hands me a bunch of flyers for her exercise group (“If any of his family is looking for a new workout, I’d be happy to have them. Let them know! Or if they work somewhere with a bulletin board, have them put those up!”) and Dad reminds me with a smile that whatever they eat for dinner is my cheat food for the week. My parents like to assume that anyone who isn’t our family eats terrible, unhealthy food. They also forget that I attend public school and therefore eat French fries five days out of seven.
Sully and Church, thankfully, are attempting to give each other black eyes over a first-person shooter in the living room, and don’t notice me leave.
Wallace lives on the other side of town in a one-story ranch home with a light-up Santa in the yard and a driveway that’s more mud than gravel. Two cars sit in a row, probably neither of them made after the year 2007; the one in the back is Wallace’s, or at least the one he drives everywhere, the same one his sister drives to pick him up from school. I pull in behind it. A warm light comes through the curtains behind the window in the front door.
I take out my phone.
MirkerLurker: So I’m here.
MirkerLurker: At his house.
MirkerLurker: About to go inside.
MirkerLurker: Wanting to puke.
Emmy and Max don’t respond. Emmy’s home for the holidays and Max is off work, so we’re in that relaxed lull where they spend the least time online. I haven’t actually talked to them in the past few days—at least I remembered to send their care packages out. Maybe they’ll see the message while I’m in there.
I rest my head on the steering wheel, pretend I’m doing something in case anyone is watching from the house, count to twenty, then force myself out of the car—leaving my mom’s flyers on the passenger seat—and march up to the front door.
Wallace answers on the first knock. He’s wearing sweatpants and one of his sweaters.
“That is so unfair,” I say.
He smiles. “I thought you’d say that.”
The inside of his house looks straight out of the seventies. Wood-paneled walls, yellow carpet. But it’s warm and cozy as hell, and the smell of sizzling fat drifts out of the kitchen to our right. To our left is a wall that divides the entryway from a living room with a TV on, and a back hallway that must lead to bedrooms.
“So this is La Casa Warland, huh?” I say.
“More like La Casa Keeler,” he replies. His voice is louder than I’ve ever heard it before, almost as loud as Sully and Church, who still haven’t learned the term “inside voice.” He takes my coat and hangs it on the rack beside the door. I stand awkwardly by the door to the living room until someone behind me says, “Oh, you must be Eliza!”
I jump. A middle-aged black woman strides across the living room toward me, arms outstretched. She’s short, plump, and has a smile that looks like it could bludgeon the devil to tears. She gathers me up in a hug. I stare at Wallace.
“Eliza, this is my mom, Vee.”
“Oh, hon, really I’m his stepmother. Don’t want you to get too confused.” Vee releases me and takes my hand instead, pulling me toward the kitchen. Movement in the living room blurs behind us, and then there’s a girl Sully and Church’s age following Wallace, with skin a few shades lighter than Vee’s and about a million thin braids scooped into a thick ponytail that hangs past her shoulders.
“I’m Lucy,” the girl says. “You’re shorter than I thought you’d be.”
Vee sits me down at a small rectangular kitchen table. Wallace sits beside me, and Lucy sits opposite me. Her legs are so long she has to whip her feet back when they accidentally touch mine. The table’s set for six. On the other side of the room, something that smells and sounds suspiciously like bacon cooks in a skillet on the stove.
“I hope you like breakfast for dinner, Eliza,” Vee says, “because it’s Friday night, and you know what Friday night means!”
I don’t, but Lucy shouts, “Eggs and bacon!” and whoops a few times for good measure.
“I don’t understand how anyone is supposed to get any beauty sleep in this house.” Another woman steps into the kitchen, hands on her hips. She has to be in her early twenties, and a thick headband holds a magnificent mane of hair away from her angular face. I think she might burn me alive when her eyes land on me, but after a moment, her features soften and she points at Wallace. “Are you Wally’s girlfriend?”
Wallace’s face flares red. He glances sideways at me. He’s not correcting her.
He’s not correcting her.
“Um,” I say. “I’m Eliza.”
She holds out her hand. Grips like a titan. “I’m Bren. I feel like I’ve seen you around before—do you have a dog?”
“Yeah. Davy. He’s a Great Pyrenees.”
She nods sagely. “I work for the Happy Friends Dog Day Care. We have Davy in there every once in a while.”
“He was there in October for the week-long pack run!”
“Yes, he was!” Bren moves around the table and sits next to Lucy, who immediately tries to stick her finger in Bren’s ear. Bren swats the hand away absentmindedly. “I love those dogs. So does Wally—we pay him to clean the kennels and plays with the dogs at the end of the day.” She huffs. “You know, when I’m in charge of that place, I’m going to feed them in the morning and in the evening, because once a day isn’t enough. Especially not when they’re running around playing. I wish we could have a dog here, but Luce is allergic.” She tugs on Lucy’s braids.
“How do you like your eggs, Eliza?” Vee asks.
“Uh . . . any way. Sunny-side up is fine.”
“Sunny-side up it is.” She finishes with the bacon and starts cracking eggs in the skillet.
Bren and Lucy—but mostly Bren—go through the usual gamut of questions about me. Where I come from, how old I am, how Wallace and I met. Wallace jumps in for that one, talking so loud it doesn’t sound like him at all.
“She had those Monstrous Sea pictures. I told you about that, remember?” He doesn’t mention Travis Stone or Deshawn Johnson, thankfully. I don’t want to have to explain to his sisters how magnificently I failed trying to stand up for him, and I get the feeling he doesn’t want to tell them he kind of sat there and took it until I showed up. But they probably already know how nonconfrontational he is.
“Right, right.” Bren waves a hand in the air. “So you’re into it too, huh? Monstrous Sea?”
I shrug. “Yeah.”
“Do you write fanfiction too?”
“Oh . . . no.”
“She does fan art,” Wallace says. “I keep trying to get her to post it online.”
“Why don’t you?” Lucy asks.
I shrug again. “Never feels right, I guess.”
Wallace runs a finger along the outside edge of his plate, smiling a little. “They’re really great,” he says, voice soft again. “You should post some of them. One or two.”
Every time he talks like this, voice quiet and eyes cast down, smiling, I want to do it. I want to get on my computer right now and upload a few drawings, just to see how he reacts. I know he wants me to be in it with everyone else. A contributor. I know he wants to show off my art, because he told me so behind the middle school one day, and whenever I think about it my stomach flips over and my heart shoots into my throat and I want to kiss him all over his beautiful, dimpled face.
Every time he talks like this, my resolve gets a little weaker.
No one will be
able to tell I’m LadyConstellation from a few drawings.
“I was . . . I was thinking about it,” I say finally, and that draws Wallace’s eyes up to mine.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Maybe later.”
“Really?”
I laugh. “Yes. What’s wrong with you? Do you feel okay?”
He sits straight in his seat like a two-hundred-pound ball of energy. Before he can say anything else, the front door opens again. “Tim’s home!” Lucy shouts. A laugh comes from the entryway, and a moment later a tall bald man steps into the kitchen.
“Breakfast for dinner, my favorite!” Tim sweeps by the stove to plant a kiss on the top of Vee’s head, then moves around to the table to plant one on Lucy and Bren too. Then he takes the seat at the end of the table, on Wallace’s right side, and gives me a genial smile. “And you’re Eliza.” He reaches across the table to shake my hand; he has Bren’s titan grip. “We’re so glad to have you for dinner, Eliza.”
“Thank you.” He is very loud, and very confident, and I am shrinking in my seat every second he focuses on me.
“Lucy, hon,” Vee calls, “come help me with the food.”
Lucy gets up to bring the bacon, sausage, and toast to the table. Vee brings the eggs—all sunny-side up—and begins sliding them onto our plates. My stomach rumbles. Wallace nudges me with his elbow, and I can’t tell if it’s on purpose or if it’s because his shoulders are so wide he takes up all my arm space.
“So, Keelers and Warlands,” Tim says, after Vee sits down at the other end of the table. “What’d we accomplish today?”
Vee shares a story about an old high-school friend she ran into at the grocery store while she looked for ingredients to a new recipe she wanted to try. Lucy regales us with the research she did on tennis racquets, and spends five minutes trying to convince Tim to let her buy a restringing machine, which he declines. Bren complains about a young couple who abandoned a puppy at the day care because they got it as an early Christmas gift but didn’t want to keep it. The rest of us eat while the other person talks. Then Tim turns his sights on me.