“We have to go,” I say. Sully glares at me. I drag Wallace out of the house and to his car.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah. Stressed.”
“Why?”
I shrug. “Stuff.”
We get in the car, lapse into silence. Wallace frowns as he backs out of the driveway and starts toward Murphy’s. When we pass over Wellhouse Bridge, he slows nearly to a stop so he can take Wellhouse Turn. Slow and steady, just like always. Too slow. Too steady. He’s more afraid he’s going to go over the edge than anyone else I’ve ever met. I look over the side, like I always do, and face the drop below.
It’s calm down there. Even if death doesn’t come quickly, I bet it’s almost worth it for the peace and quiet.
Cole and Megan are already at Murphy’s when we arrive, and already talking about the missing pages. The missing pages—page, because there was only one—that went up this morning, but that apparently people are calling the Missing Pages because it’s such a fucking fiasco.
“It’s the first time it happened since the comic started,” Cole says, scrolling through the forums for more posts about it. “Everyone’s talking about it. It’s an event. Look, there’s even fanfiction about the characters temporarily entering a void of no escape between the time the pages were supposed to go up and when they actually did. It’s hilarious.”
He shows it to us. The fanfiction, the forums, the everything. I keep my eyes averted. Wallace scans over it for a second, then shrugs. “I mean, it’s funny, but it seems kind of silly for just one missed day of pages.”
“Page,” Megan corrects, handing toddler Hazel a new picture book to flip through. “Only one page. At least it had some action on it, but those single pages are hard to look past. Nothing happens. I love this comic as much as anyone, but I work fifteen hours a day and take care of this monster”—she grips the top of Hazel’s head—“and when I get to the end of the week all I want to do is sit down with some tea and some Monstrous Sea pages. Preferably a whole chapter.”
Yes, Megan, let me whip up a few dozen pages for you. It’s not like LadyConstellation has other things on her mind, either. I don’t read the comments, but I know a lot of the fans are like this. I don’t blame them. I was like that for a while too, with Children of Hypnos. I was angry at Olivia Kane as much as anyone else.
I don’t blame them, but that doesn’t stop it from being exhausting.
They talk—and eventually get ahold of Leece and Chandra on Cole’s computer, which starts up a whole new round of discussion about the pages—and I rest my head on the table, pretending to sleep. They leave me alone.
A few times Wallace’s fingers brush my knee. I let them. I don’t move.
I get out my phone to text Emmy and Max and find I don’t have the willpower. I put the phone down again.
When Leece and Chandra both have to go, Megan suggests a change of scenery. She’s got three free games of bowling at the Blue Lane, thanks to her second job there. Cole jumps on the chance right away, but before he accepts Wallace asks if I want to go.
I start to say no, then stop myself. I have to try. I have to try, because I’m doing it again—I’m shutting everything out because I’m frustrated and tired and because the real world is difficult and I’d rather live in one of my own making. But I can’t. I am here, and I have to try.
Half an hour later I’m standing at the end of a bowling lane, trying to line myself up with the pins. Wallace is at the snack bar. Megan sits at the table behind me, bouncing Hazel in her lap. Cole stands next to me, arms folded over his chest, a look on his face far too intense for a bowling alley.
“Bowling is like any sport,” he says, and I think he’s mostly talking to himself. “Pros make it look easy, so anyone thinks they can do it. But it’s not easy. You think too much and suddenly the ball is shooting out of the gutter and flying three lanes down and you’re kicked out of the alley for recklessness.”
I press my lips together to hold in my laugh. “I’m not great at bowling, but I don’t think I’ve ever thrown the ball so hard it jumped three lanes over.”
Cole stares stoically down the lane. “Well, it happens.”
“Have you done that before?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
I roll the ball. It heads straight for the right gutter, but halfway down the lane it curves back and strikes the first pin. They fall until only the two in the back left are still standing.
“It worked!” I crane my neck to watch a little eight go up next to my name on the screen above our lane.
“Don’t sound so shocked,” Cole says.
“I’ve never knocked that many down at once before! At least not with a real throw.” I stopped going bowling with my family as soon as Sully and Church got old enough to make fun of me for my granny rolls. Maybe now I can actually compete with them.
I throw my second ball. It grazes one of the pins, but they both stay standing.
“Watch out.” Cole grabs his ball and shoulders past me. “It’s time to blow some small fries out of the water.”
I return to the table with Megan and Hazel. Wallace returns from the snack bar with three orders of nachos, two hot dogs, a pretzel, and two large sodas. He hands me one of the sodas, sets one of the nachos between me and Megan, one of the hot dogs in front of Cole’s empty seat, then arranges the rest of it in front of himself. Then he presses his hands together, looking around at his feast like he isn’t sure where he wants to start.
“You better start playing football again soon,” Megan says, “or you’re going to wake up one day and weigh six hundred pounds.”
Wallace smiles at her through a mouthful of pretzel.
We’ve been here half an hour, and I’m no longer sure why I wanted to say no to coming here. No one’s said a word about the missing pages since we left Murphy’s, and I feel light, like bubbles fill my limbs.
It’s so much better than it would be sitting at home alone, mired in anxiety.
CHAPTER 25
“Eliza, you need to stop sitting at the computer. You’ll hurt your eyes.”
Mom has her head and shoulders through the doorway. I should have shut and locked the door before I started drawing. I straighten up and look away from the screen. My lower back screams. My eyes water.
“I’m fine.” I have four more Monstrous Sea pages to finish before this chapter is done. I planned it all out; if I do at least four pages a week, I can finish by graduation. It will keep me sane through this last godforsaken semester of high school, and it’ll keep the fans happy after the Missing Pages debacle. I’ve spent the last three days doing nothing but drawing. “Can you please shut the door?”
“No. You need to get off the computer now.” She uses her mom voice. The one that gives me instant heartburn.
“I’m working,” I say without looking at her.
“Even hard workers need to take a break sometimes.”
“I can’t take a break. I have to get this done.”
“Eliza.”
“Mom, what do you think I’m doing here?” I swivel to face her. “Does it look like I’m taking a jaunty ride through the park? Like I’m having fun? Because I’m not having fun. I have to get this finished. People are expecting it. People who buy merchandise. Those people are going to pay for my college education.”
“Eliza Mary Mirk!”
“What do you want me to do once I get off the computer? Go play sports with Sully and Church, even though they hate it when I play because I have no coordination? Watch TV, even though that’s about a hundred times more mind-numbing than what I’m doing right now? Play some board games with you and Dad? You know how that goes!”
I always end up angry. And if I start it angry, like now, that can’t bode well for the rest of the game.
Never one to back down from a challenge, my mother stands her ground. “I want you to go outside! Talk to your friends! Go do something! Get into trouble, for heaven’s sake!”
“My friends are o
n here!” I hold up my phone, where Max and Emmy have been silent for days. “I talk to them all the time, and you always tell me to stop!”
“What about Wallace? What’s he doing?”
“Right now he’s working! And later on, guess what—he’ll be at his computer, writing something. Probably his transcription of this, which a lot of people are waiting for, just like they’re waiting for this. And we’ll be talking on the computer. I don’t understand why it’s such a difficult concept to grasp.”
“Eliza, I can’t believe you right now.” She shook her head, hands on her hips. She still wears her yoga pants and jacket from her run around the neighborhood. “What is all this about? Do you feel okay? Is something going on at school?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
I turned away from her, ripping the glove off my right hand to wipe away the sweat. “It’s just Monstrous Sea stuff. You don’t have to worry about it.”
She goes quiet. I pull the glove back on and start working on the next panel. The hairs on my neck stand up.
“Your dad and I are really proud of you for that, you know,” she says. “I know we don’t really get it, but we’re proud of you. And we’re happy you love to make it. We only annoy you because we’re worried about you.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Will you come down and open your presents, at least?”
I swivel to look at her again. “Presents?”
“Yes, Eliza. It’s Christmas.”
I stare, sure she must be joking, then glance back at the computer screen and find that no, it really is December twenty-fifth. The realization almost jolts me out of my chair.
“It’s Christmas?” My own voice sounds like a dying goat bleat in my ears. I thought it was two days away. Or two days ago. Either way.
She nods. “We went ahead and let your brothers open their gifts, because we weren’t sure if you were coming down. Or when.”
“Oh.”
“So, are you?”
“I . . . yeah, I’ll be down in a minute. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. There are some hard-boiled eggs in the fridge for you when you’re ready for them too.”
She leaves.
I stare at the clock on my computer.
12/25.
I actually check the messages on my phone, and realize Emmy and Max have been talking to me. Both of them said Merry Christmas, and asked what’s been going on, and they’ve been talking to each other about their breaks. I send a few quick messages to them, then put the phone away and hurry downstairs. Mom and Dad wait for me in the living room, where the tree is set up. Dad has the video camera.
“Sorry,” I say again.
“That’s okay, Eggsy,” Dad says. “Why don’t you go open what Santa brought you, and then we can get your brothers back down here for some board games.”
I do open what Santa brought me. I know it’s from Santa because SANTA is printed on all the tags in my mom’s curly handwriting. Most of it is new clothes. Clothes that will actually fit me.
“You were complaining about not having anything to wear last month,” Mom says, “so I thought I’d get you some things. We can get some more in the spring, and then you’ll have a whole new wardrobe for college. Don’t worry, though—I saved the receipts, so if you don’t like them we can take them back.”
“Thank you,” I say, quietly enough so they can’t hear my voice break.
It’s the first time I’ve actually been happy to get clothes for Christmas. I didn’t ask for anything, because whatever I need I can buy for myself, except clothes. Clothes shopping does not work for me. Mom and I fold them all up in their boxes, and I take them upstairs to my room, where I grab the only Christmas present I could think to get anyone in my family: Monopoly. It takes so long to play, their family togetherness would never have to end.
Dad drags Church and Sully out of their room and forces them to play. They complain at first, until they realize they can bankrupt each other. Mom wins, because she’s the only one in the family with any money sense. It takes like four hours. We eat dinner. Then Dad makes cookies, and we all sit down and watch Miracle together.
I didn’t even know it was Christmas.
Faren turned the book over in his hands. Earthen Fairy Tales. The first book Amity had ever liberated from a shop, the one she’d used to learn to read. Faren let the book fall open on its strongest crease and there, on the middle of the right page, was her name.
“Amity and the Sea Monster.”
“Sometimes,” she said, tracing the letters with one finger, “I think the Earthens lied about this book. I don’t think these stories come from Earth at all.”
At the end of the story, the fairy-tale Amity killed the seacreeper by outsmarting it and crushing it with a large rock.
Amity’s second birth on the beach, years ago, had ended somewhat similarly, but it had been a sunset riser instead of a seacreeper, five times as big and five times as bloodthirsty; it had gone after Faren, not her, because he was closer to the edge of the cliff; and as she stood, horrified, watching the beast swallow him, the Watcher had found her and proposed its deal.
She had accepted, and massacred the monster with the Watcher’s help. Afterward, she had cut Faren, unconscious, out of its long throat.
As they sat and looked down at the book, Faren kissed her and said, “If this is what you feel you need to do, then do it. I know you’re strong enough. If anyone can stop him, you can.”
Then he left her to her reading, and to the feeling that it was not a matter of need at all.
She didn’t need to do it.
She had to do it.
CHAPTER 26
Before I go to bed that night, I get an email from Wallace. Not a text or a forum message. An actual email. He doesn’t forward things. He doesn’t do chain messages. If he wants to tell me something, he either sends it to me live or tells me in person.
But I see his name come up, and I click on it without hesitation.
12/25/16, 11:21 p.m.
To: Eliza Mirk
From: Wallace Warland
Subject: You found me in a constellation
I know it’s weird for me to email you. I know we’re both at our computers, and you’re reading this, and I’m sitting in a pool of my own mortification, wishing I could delete emails after I send them. I couldn’t give this to you in person, because then you might read it in front of me. I couldn’t write it out by hand, because we’d be fifty by the time I finished, and that’s not going to work for me.
Normally when I write something, I know how I should begin. I don’t know how I should begin this. There are a lot of things I want to tell you, but I don’t want to scare you. I cannot explain in words how much I don’t want to scare you, and how afraid I am that I will.
So let’s start with this: I never lived in Illinois. I’ve always lived here, in Westcliff. I went to school on the other side of town, with Cole. I’m sorry I lied to you about it. It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you the truth, but if I told you where I was from, I was worried you would figure out the rest of what I’m going to tell you here, and I wasn’t sure I wanted you to know all that.
A while back, you said I looked like a football player. I said I played when I was little. That was only a half lie; I did play when I was little, but I didn’t stop until halfway through sophomore year of high school. I was pretty good at it too. Made varsity. I still have that letter somewhere. My teammates called me Warfield Wallace ’cause I fucked shit up.
No, sorry, that’s a lie too. They called me Warfield Wallace because it was alliterative, a play on my last name, and more intimidating than Wallace alone. And also because I FUCKED SHIT UP.
Sorry. I am not at the top of my game today.
I loved playing football. I loved hitting people, working in a team, and being with my friends. I loved winning. I loved how proud I made my dad. Not Tim, but my dad Dad, my
biological dad. He loved football. He was a big guy, liked grilling out, Fourth of July fireworks, and throwing his kids into swimming pools. You could hear his laugh a mile away. Pretty much an all-around American. He wasn’t religious, but he read the Westcliff Star at breakfast every morning like he’d go to hell if he didn’t.
A little background about my dad: he never finished college. His family didn’t have the money. He got a job in a corporate cubicle, trying to sell things to people over the phone. Long hours, little pay. He was already married to my mom—not Vee—and she was pregnant with me. I don’t know if they got married because she was pregnant, or if she got pregnant after they were married. I guess it doesn’t matter. Dad didn’t like talking about that time, so I don’t know much about it. Mom left him before I turned a year old. I don’t remember her, so I was never upset about it, but my dad was sometimes.
A year or two later, he met Vee and they had Lucy, and things were good. Dad was the reason Lucy likes sports so much. He always wanted us to challenge ourselves. If something seemed too difficult for us, it was all the more reason to try. Lucy skipped a grade in school because of it. Dad challenged himself too—when he came home from work, he was louder and more colorful, full of energy. Wanted to help us with school projects or practice. Always put himself in the middle of everything.
There were dark parts too. He didn’t let us see those, but a few times I walked into the kitchen late at night and found him hunched over the table, head in his hands. When he thought he was alone in the house in the middle of the day, he stared out the front door like the street was some unreachable promised land. When we grilled out, he made extra food for everyone else and ate nothing himself. If he and I were the only ones around, he ranted about his job and forbade me from ever doing anything that made me unhappy, even if that meant going without food or clothes or a roof.
Have you seen it in your parents? That moment when they become people? I think you have. It sneaks up on you, doesn’t it? One day they’re parents, and the next they say something racist, or get a cut that takes too long to heal, or make a simple mistake driving, and a facade falls away and they become mortals like the rest of us. After the facade is gone, it can never come back.