I turn back to my line art. My shaking hands go still against the screen of the pen display, and the lines come out smooth and bold. Drawing gives me something to do as I think about that winky face, and the winky face I sent back.
Amity, with her cloud of white hair and her sharp orange eyes, comes into being against the blank background one line at a time. There’s no color on her yet, but I see it in her every time I draw her. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be the person whose color comes through even when standing still. To be someone so vibrant, others can’t help but notice you. It’s not Amity’s eyes or her hair or even her skin that do that. It’s just her.
I save the mass of knifelike orange crystals growing along Amity’s right arm—pulled back, ready to strike down her foes—for later. The show is back on.
Rainmaker hasn’t said anything else in the chat. I pop in every now and then to comment on the show, but for the most part I sit back, stop thinking, and enjoy a group of pretty twenty-somethings pretending to be teenagers, making astronomically bad decisions and learning from their mistakes. Every once in a while, a troll account will take over the chat window with screaming caps or strings of emoticons, and the account Forges_ of_Risht appears to block them.
A message from Max appears on my phone.
Apocalypse_Cow: forges, reporting for duty with the banhammer.
MirkerLurker: Excellent work, soldier.
Apocalypse_Cow: see, there’s a reason you hired me for this job.
MirkerLurker: Yeah, so Emmy doesn’t have to do that and take care of the website.
Apocalypse_Cow: har har.
MirkerLurker: But really, great job. No one wields the banhammer quite as well as you.
Max sends more emojis. A lady dancing the salsa. Nail painting. A lightning bolt. He routinely pesters Emmy to make emojis part of Monstrous Sea forum chat capability, and she refuses because she thinks it’s funny.
Emmy says something in the Dog Days chat that sets off a flood of replies so fast I can’t scroll back up to see what the original comment was.
Max and Emmy aren’t the only two people who help run the forums, but they are the best. And they’re the only ones who know me not as LadyConstellation but as Eliza. Before Max was my bouncer, even before he shared the link to Monstrous Sea on Masterminds that drew in the fans, he was an anal-retentive plot theorist on the Children of Hypnos forums. And Emmy—before Emmy built monstroussea.com and the forums and the shop where I sell my merchandise, she was the life of the Children of Hypnos party, an eleven-year-old with enough fangirl energy to power a small city.
If it weren’t for them finding my fan art, none of this would have happened. It was both of them separately who found my dead art thread on the Children of Hypnos forums, and it was in that thread where we carved out a little space just for us.
I do have friends. Maybe they live hundreds of miles away from me, and maybe I can only talk to them through a screen, but they’re still my friends. They don’t just hold Monstrous Sea together. They hold me together.
Max and Emmy are the reason any of this exists.
After the second birth, she had felt the Watcher sitting in her mind, its eyes turned on her. Inside her, of course, it had no eyes but her own, yet that was how it felt. A lump of burning coal in the back of her head. Sometimes it clung to her shoulders, though she could turn to her reflection and see nothing there. She didn’t know now if those had been hallucinations left over from post-rebirth sickness, or if she’d simply grown used to the sensation. Either way, she no longer felt it. And the Watcher hadn’t spoken to her since that first day, when it had made the bargain with her.
Her body for its power.
CHAPTER 5
Over the next few days, I finish two more pages. I could go faster—I can finish a page in a day if I try—but the quality will start to deteriorate, and that’s the last thing I want at this point. We’ve already gone through so much of the comic, it should only be getting better from here, not worse. I sketch out the pages in school, doing as much of the line work foundation as I can before it ever gets on the computer. I do these in class when no one is watching, or at lunch while I sit by myself in the drafty courtyard outside the cafeteria. Soon it’ll be too cold to sit out here at all, and I’ll have to find a table inside, which should be fun considering all of the tables are taken every day I walk in.
On Friday, the day of our homecoming game, everyone is dressed in typical Westcliff gold, adorned with football jerseys and face paint and gold ribbons tied in ponytails. In the main hallway, there are five different homecoming banners encouraging the football team to GO FIGHT WIN. On my walk to fourth period, it is banner number three that detaches from the wall as I walk beneath it. The world goes dark. I smack at the banner to get it off, and snickers erupt in the hallway behind me. The banner falls to the floor.
Travis Stone and Deshawn Johnson, the only two students in this school who scare me even on a good day, lean against the lockers nearby and watch me struggle. Travis Stone looks like a vulture in sagging jeans and a buzz cut, and Deshawn Johnson is a kid who half the time is too cool to hang out with Travis and the other half the time not very cool at all. Ten years ago they were two sweet little boys at my grade school who played tag with me on the playground, and they would’ve helped me with this banner instead of watching.
“Nice hair,” Travis says. I brush a hand over my head and find an ungodly amount of glitter trapped there. The look on my face sends Travis and Deshawn into new rounds of laughter.
In the bathroom, attempts to remove the glitter fail. All I manage to do is fill a sink with gold glitter dandruff and get a few other girls to give me strange looks, like I did it to myself. All hope of happiness and a bright future dies.
I walk outside at the end of the day to a gloomy sky, a sharp breeze, and lines of cars vying to leave the parking lot. In a few hours everyone will be back here for the football game, crammed together in the stadium behind the school, shouting their support to the chilled night air and huddled together with their friends. There will be class floats paraded around the perimeter of the football field. There will be a moment of silence and a short memorial for the band members who went off Wellhouse Turn last summer. There will be football jerseys and parties and revelry deep into the night.
I rearrange my backpack on my shoulders and hold my sketchbook in both hands. There are too many cars. I bet college doesn’t have parking issues like this. I bet college is great.
I turn and find Wallace sitting on that same bench again. He has sat there every day this week. I found out yesterday that his last name is Warland, which seems appropriate for someone of his size and stature. Capable of inflicting destruction wherever he goes.
Today, Wallace Warland is not alone. Flanking him are Travis Stone and Deshawn Johnson, forever and always the bane of my existence. Running into my long-forgotten friends once a day is bad enough—twice is asking for trouble. Deshawn stands by the bench with his arms crossed, and Travis lounges beside Wallace like they’re old buddies. Wallace sits stiffly, with his hands covering the papers he’s always writing on, his eyes stuck on the sidewalk somewhere to the left of Deshawn’s shoes.
Wallace did not strike me as the kind of person to begin a friendship with the likes of Travis Stone, at least not High-School-Dickbag Travis Stone. Curiosity makes my feet inch a little closer, pretending I’m debating going to my car. I pull out my phone and stare at the black screen.
“. . . must have typed this. No one can write that good. What is this again?”
Travis tries to take one of the papers. Wallace clamps his hand down.
“What’d you call it? Fan . . . fan . . .”
“Fanfiction,” Deshawn says.
No way in the nine circles of hell. No way is Wallace Warland writing fanfiction. Fanfiction of what? What does Wallace Warland enjoy so much he writes fanfiction about it? Can you have fanfiction about professional sports teams?
“Lemme see.” Travis
tries to take the paper again, which makes Wallace lock down tighter.
“I think it’s for that online thing,” Deshawn says, peering down at the paper. “That sea thing.”
All the hair on the back of my neck prickles. My heart rate ratchets upward. They are not talking about Monstrous Sea.
Wallace Warland cannot write Monstrous Sea fanfiction.
“Leave him alone.” I’ve spun and headed toward them before I can stop myself. My voice comes up from some black reserve of courage inside me, a place usually saved for speech class, or going to the dentist on my own. My face crumples in on itself; my legs shake. My heart beats like I just sprinted a mile.
Travis and Deshawn both turn to me and smile—well, Deshawn doesn’t really smile, and all of Travis’s smiles look like leers. God, I remember when those smiles used to be nice. Wallace stares at me, expression unreadable. Does he realize how futile this is? Maybe I can at least give him a few seconds to run. The only thing I can’t do is stand idly by while a fan—if not a fan of Monstrous Sea, then definitely a fan of something—gets ridiculed for what he likes. LadyConstellation wouldn’t stand for that, and for this exact moment now, neither do I.
Travis fakes surprise. “Oh my god, Murky can actually speak.”
We’ve been in school together since the second grade. He knows I can speak fine, unlike some of our other classmates, who believe I am an actual mute.
“Leave him alone, Travis.” My voice is already too weak for this. Emergency courage reserves depleted.
“Why’re you standing up for him, Murky? Does someone have a crush?”
My face flames instantly. I press the edge of my sketchbook into my thighs. I know this is his go-to to make a girl either stop talking or get so flustered she can’t make a rational argument. He started using it in middle school, when I became too weird for anyone to hang out with. If I can push through it, maybe I’ll knock him off his game.
“No. Shut up,” I warble. “I just—you . . . let him write what he wants. Whatever it is, it’s none of your business.”
“None of my business? I’m not trying to hate on him for it, Murky, I just want to read it! What’s your problem?”
“He obviously doesn’t want you to read it!”
Wallace stares at me the whole time I’m saying this, and heat seeps into my ears too. So I’m distracted when Deshawn slips my sketchbook out of my hands.
“Hey!”
I reach for it, but he backpedals away, opening it up to look at the pictures. Some of the loose pages flutter in the cold breeze but don’t come free of the pages.
“Whoa, these are really good,” Deshawn says. “Trav, I think she’s into the sea thing too.”
He snaps the book closed and Frisbees it over my head, out of the reach of my fingers when I jump for it, to Travis, who has stood up off the bench. Travis grabs it out of the air, sending a few of the loose pages sailing off into the wind, and opens it up.
“Oh, this is why you stood up for him. You guys like the same thing!”
“Give it back!” No one is supposed to look in that sketchbook. It’s the one I bring to school, so it’s safer than some of the others I have, but there are still Monstrous Sea things in there—like unfinished comic pages—and it might give away who I am. Plus I just don’t like the idea of Travis Stone’s goopy eyes on the things I’ve drawn. I didn’t let him see my drawings even when we were friends, and I’m not going to start now. I rush at Travis to get it back, but he tosses it to Deshawn.
I won’t be caught in a game of monkey in the middle. Not as a senior in high school. I won’t. But Deshawn stands there holding it, rifling through the pages, and he won’t move until I do. Tears blur my vision. Great. Now I’m crying too. Let’s make the situation worse. I ball my hands into fists and move toward Deshawn. As soon as I get close enough, he laughs and throws the sketchbook back.
I turn again, ready to scream in frustration, only to find Wallace standing between me and Travis, the sketchbook in one hand. He must have caught it out of the air. I didn’t think he could move that fast. Travis looks both stunned and vaguely impressed. Wallace turns and stares him down. Travis is about my height, so when they’re both standing Wallace is half a head taller than him, and a hell of a lot wider. Travis looks like a sapling standing next to an oak.
Wallace steps toward him, whole body tense, and Travis holds up his hands and backs away. “Yo. Okay. Chill, dude. Damn.” He looks at Deshawn, jerks his head toward the parking lot, and the two go loping off. On the way, Travis scoops up one of my fallen pictures, then stares me in the face as he folds it and slips it in his pocket.
Wallace is already walking across the front sidewalk to pick up the other loose sheets. I scramble for the few near me—Amity using her crystals to launch herself into the sky, Damien surrounded by a cloud of fog and a flock of dread crows—and wipe my eyes.
Wallace lumbers back, holding my sketchbook as a hard surface so he can scribble on one of his loose papers. He stuffs that inside the sketchbook along with all the pictures he grabbed, then holds it out for me. Instead of looking at me like I should be invisible, he doesn’t look at me at all; his eyes rove left, then right, then down, until I take the sketchbook from him. I almost drop it and have to catch it against my leg.
He stands there. Am I supposed to say something? Does he want me to say something? He scratches the back of his head, lets his hand fall to his neck, and takes a deep breath.
I dig in my pocket for my phone, but Emmy and Max probably aren’t even around right now. Emmy’s in class and Max is at work. My fingers hover over the keys with nowhere to go. Wallace is still standing there, but now he has his phone out too.
He has his phone out. He’s not paying attention.
I turn and march away before he has the chance to look up again. I’m pretty sure he does, but it doesn’t matter because I’m already halfway across the parking lot and I don’t care if he thinks I’m weird, because I’m never ever going to speak in front of him again. When I reach my car, I dive inside and slam the door shut behind me. The parking lot is still too full to leave. I should probably take off my backpack before I try to drive, anyway.
I move my backpack into the passenger seat, buckle my seat belt, and rest my forehead on the steering wheel. Breathe in. Breathe out. I’m light-headed. This isn’t good. The heat in my face fills the car, and I bathe in gross sweaty embarrassment. Why did Travis and Deshawn have to pick today to mess with Wallace? Why couldn’t Wallace take care of them himself? Why did he have to maybe be writing Monstrous Sea fanfiction?
I lift my head and glance at my sketchbook. If not Monstrous Sea fanfiction, he was definitely writing something. I reach over, flip the sketchbook open, and grab the paper he stuffed inside.
A normal piece of college-ruled notebook paper. On it, in handwriting surprisingly precise and neat for how quickly he wrote them, the words:
Thanks.
The drawings are really good.
emmersmacks: Hold on
emmersmacks: Wait
emmersmacks: So you stood up for him?
MirkerLurker: Yeah.
emmersmacks: . . . Im failing to see the issue here E
emmersmacks: Did they hurt you??
MirkerLurker: No . . . not really. Just took my sketchbook and threw it around a little.
MirkerLurker: Okay look I know it doesn’t sound that bad
MirkerLurker: But, like, you don’t understand the way this guy looks at me. He’s one of those where it’s like, “Why are you even standing in front of me, you’re uglier than the stuff I crap out after eating too much Chipotle.”
3:19 p.m. (Apocalypse_Cow has joined the message)
Apocalypse_Cow: i feel like i came in at a bad time. i’ll go.
emmersmacks: E is having a crisis
Apocalypse_Cow: crisis over what?
MirkerLurker: Just this stupid new kid at school who may or may not be a fanfic writer for Monstrous Sea and who definitely thinks I
am the scum of the earth.
emmersmacks: Why would he think that?? You stood up for him
MirkerLurker: I don’t know! Because I emasculated him, probably. Or something. Max, I need advice from someone who’s felt emasculated.
Apocalypse_Cow: why would you immediately assume i’ve felt emasculated before?
MirkerLurker: Because you’re the only male here.
Apocalypse_Cow: if you want to know if some guys feel emasculated when a girl stands up to a bully for them, then unfortunately i must say that yes, that does happen.
Apocalypse_Cow: BUT NOT ME.
Apocalypse_Cow: LET IT BE KNOWN THAT MAX CHOPRA HAS NEVER FELT EMASCULATED.
Apocalypse_Cow: but really, did this guy say something to you? why feel so bad about it?
MirkerLurker: He didn’t say ANYTHING. That’s the problem!
MirkerLurker: He just stood there and wouldn’t even look at me.
emmersmacks: Did you say anything
MirkerLurker: . . . No.
emmersmacks: Well
emmersmacks: E
emmersmacks: There you might have a problem
Apocalypse_Cow: you’re getting schooled in social skills by a twelve-year-old in college. how does that feel
emmersmacks: Im fourteen not twelve
emmersmacks: Asshole
Apocalypse_Cow: wait, he left a note in your sketchbook? what did it say?
MirkerLurker: It said thanks, and that the pictures were good.
emmersmacks: OH MY GOD
emmersmacks: THATS WHY HE DIDNT TALK
MirkerLurker: What?
emmersmacks: HE WAS TOO NERVOUS
emmersmacks: AW HE LIKES YOU E
MirkerLurker: I really really doubt that.
MirkerLurker: Like, I mean, REALLY doubt it.
MirkerLurker: He’s not exactly the kind of guy that’s usually interested in me.
Apocalypse_Cow: what kind of guy is usually interested in you?
MirkerLurker: The kind I make up in my head.
Apocalypse_Cow: wooooooooooooooooooooooow
Apocalypse_Cow: woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow