Eliza and Her Monsters

by Francesca Zappia

  “Do you . . . do you need a ride?”

  He shakes his head and scribbles quickly on the top of his paper. My sister is coming to get me.

  “Oh. Okay.” Of course he didn’t need my help, stupid to ask. Not like he wasn’t sitting here every day last week and managed to get home fine. “Well . . . see you.”

  I don’t wait to see if he says anything back. I hurry to my Nissan and barricade myself inside. Then, finally, I smile.

  I’ve never met a real live fan before. I didn’t think about it until now, and it’s a strange thing. All these people who love Monstrous Sea—they’re numbers on a screen. Comments, views, likes. The bigger the numbers get, the less like people they seem. It’s easy to forget they’re humans like Wallace. Like me. Finding someone who likes it—who loves it—enough to make their own art about it and actually hand it to me themselves, instead of sending it to a P.O. box or emailing it, is surreal to the highest degree.

  But he doesn’t know I’m me. He doesn’t know he handed his fanfiction to LadyConstellation. That is definitely wrong. It feels wrong. But it’s not like I’m going to use it to hurt him. And what was I supposed to do? Maybe if he knew who I was, he’d have shoved it at me and forced me to read it. I’ve never met fans in real life, I don’t know what they’ll do if they meet me.

  I know, if I had ever met Olivia Kane, author of Children of Hypnos, I would have probably burst into tears and collapsed on the floor at her feet. I doubt Wallace will do that, but I don’t want to take the risk.

  Interacting with Wallace would be so much easier if he knew who I was. I would control every conversation. Every meeting. Every action and word that passed between us. LadyConstellation is a god who creates currents in her own world. Eliza is a guppy getting tugged along by those currents, unable to even see where they take her.

  LadyConstellation will have to wait. For now—with Wallace, at least—I’ll have to make do with Eliza Mirk.

  CHAPTER 8

  Two things wait for me at home.

  The first is Emmy’s care package, a neat little box taped with hearts and frosted with glitter.

  The second is Davy. When I step through the door, his big white body careens around the corner and slams into my legs and hips, knocking me off balance. He never jumps, but stands there, tail wagging, waiting for me to pet him. Which of course I do, because who can resist petting their dog when he offers himself up like that?

  I fall on him. Davy holds me up, panting and shedding and being adorable.

  “Somebody’s back from doggy camp!” Mom comes around the corner after him, wearing her baby-talk face and making pouty lips at Davy. “You had a fun time with your friends, didn’t you, Davy-Dave?”

  “You don’t have to talk to him like he’s a child,” I mutter into Davy’s fur.

  “What was that?” Mom says.

  I straighten up. “Nothing.”

  “He got a nice long week running with the pack, and now he’s back with us in time for Halloween. Aren’t you, bud? Oh, Eliza, you got a package. I put it on the kitchen counter.”

  The way she says it, you’d think it had a bomb inside. She only puts things on the kitchen counter when she isn’t sure if she wants to keep them or take them out to the garbage cans in the garage.

  “It’s from Emmy, Mom,” I say.

  She frowns. “From Emmy. What is it?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  I release Davy; he follows me into the kitchen, Mom trailing not far behind him. I grab a pair of scissors and tear open the box.

  Inside is a note from Emmy and a pile of assorted goodies one might expect to receive from a fourteen-year-old college student: hard-lead drawing pencils she probably got at a steep discount from the campus bookstore, or charmed out of some art student; a picture of a man made from a collage of body parts she must’ve found in magazines and online, who somehow manages to be anatomically correct; and of course a few packages of ramen. Mom makes a face at the man picture and the ramen. I ignore her and open the letter. It’s handwritten; Emmy likes to dot her I’s with hearts. Ironically, she says.

  E!!!

  You better like your care package! I know you said you needed some new hard pencils, so I hope you haven’t bought any yourself yet. The ramen is for eating, because I know you forget to do that sometimes. But of course we both know the best part of this is the Mr. Greatbody. Yes, he has a name. I have taken everything you’ve told me about your perfect man over the years and I have created him for you. Marvel at my masterpiece. Feast your eyes on my fantastical creation.

  Speaking of eyes . . . if his eyes fall off, it’s because I ran out of glue. I’m a civil engineering major, not a craft supply store.

  Love you lots!

  Emmy

  I look at Mr. Greatbody again. Strong jaw, striking eyes, lean muscle—honestly, it’s the sort of thing anyone could find attractive. I’ve never been picky about what guys look like, and I think Emmy buried a joke about that in here somewhere. I laugh anyway.

  “What is that?” Mom asks. I taste the disdain in her voice.

  “Nothing,” I say, gathering up the box and its contents. “Inside joke.”

  “Is Emmy . . . Emmy’s a girl, right?” Mom follows me again as I leave the kitchen and head up the stairs.

  “Yes, Emmy’s a girl. When have you heard of someone named Emmy not being a girl?”

  “I don’t know, but with these internet people, I thought I’d ask. . . .”

  I clench my teeth to keep my mouth shut. I don’t think she means to offend me anymore—she probably never did—but whenever we get into this conversation, one of us ends up too angry to continue. I jog up the stairs, Davy on my heels, and turn down the hall for my room.

  “I’m not sure I like that they have our address, either,” Mom starts.

  “They’re my friends. I don’t give our address to people who aren’t my friends.” I step inside my room. Davy scoots in after me, and I close and lock the door. Mom’s footsteps stop outside. Then comes her huff at the closed door.

  “You should take Davy for a walk later!” she calls.

  “Sully and Church take him for walks,” I yell back. “They love it.”

  “What kind of homework do you have?”

  “I don’t know. Math. Physics.”

  “Make sure you get it done. We got a call from your homeroom teacher again, she’s worried you aren’t doing as much as you should be—”

  “It’s not like I’m applying to Ivy League colleges, I’m going to get in. Why does it matter?”

  She doesn’t answer, but I know what she’d say. First, that I should aim higher and not settle for any school less than the best—but right now, I don’t care about learning, I care about drawing. And second, even non-Ivy League schools can be hard to get into, or I could lose scholarships, or whatever. It can’t be that hard to get into college, because all kinds of people do it all the time. And I already don’t have anything in the way of scholarships, and I plan on paying for college with the money I’m making off my Monstrous Sea merchandise. When Emmy made monstroussea.com, she also set up a store page where we could sell official gear—bags, notebooks, binders, pencils, shirts, buttons, wallets, phone cases, anything we could brand with designs and logos from MS. It’s how I bought my computer, and the newest version of Photoshop, and most importantly, my pen display.

  My parents don’t know the extent of this. They know I bought the stuff, but when this all started, they helped me set up a bank account and gave me their tax man’s phone number and told me if I wanted to make a little money off my hobby, I’d have to learn how to take care of that money myself, that it would be educational for me.

  The comic didn’t really start making me money until earlier this year, and as soon as I realized what was happening, I plucked up my meager reserve of courage and marched down to the bank to set up my own account, one they couldn’t see online. I funnel money from it into my other account sometimes, so when Mom looks a
t it she still sees that I have income, but she and Dad don’t know the actual amount. They don’t know I could pay for college and make a living off of it.

  I don’t want them to know. I don’t want them to become as involved in my online life as they try to be in my offline one.

  Mom stomps away from the door. I’ll hear about this when Dad gets back from . . . wherever he is today. Probably at some meeting about high-tech sporting gear. He’ll say I should do my homework because it’ll make me a well-rounded person regardless of what it does for my college options; he’ll also say I should go walk Davy because it’s good exercise. “Good exercise,” aka the actual worst phrase in the English language next to “wake up” and “all the eggs are gone.”

  I drop my backpack on the floor, put Emmy’s box on the desk—removing Mr. Greatbody to tack him up on the wall between two Monstrous Sea posters—and flop over on the bed with my sketchbook. The books in the headboard bookcase slump over on themselves. They’re all different editions of the four published Children of Hypnos books, the series forever incomplete. Davy climbs up beside me.

  For a minute, I lie on my side and bury my face in his ruff of white fur. The world becomes the quiet hum of the heater kicking on and the smell of dog dandruff. No one is watching me, or judging me, or even thinking about me. No one else is in the room. Davy sighs and lays his head across my arm.

  After a minute I sit up and reach for my sketchbook. First my sidewalk-dirtied drawings fall out, then Wallace’s papers. He actually gave me these to critique. To write on. And we only talked for the first time today. I don’t know many writers, but I don’t think that happens very often. Maybe he was just happy to have another Monstrous Sea fan to talk to. I hold the papers out to Davy; he sniffs them, nudges them with his nose, then lays his head on his paws and stares at me with big dark eyes.

  “Good?” I ask. “I’ll say that’s good.”

  I flip through the pages. They have such a nice crinkly feeling, and they don’t sit quite flat on each other because Wallace’s pen strokes have warped the paper. I trace my fingers over the words without reading them. So clean and precise—one benefit of moving slowly, I guess. He could be an artist with this kind of dexterity.

  I hold my excitement in check.

  Amity had two birth days.

  I read fast, flipping through pages like it’s my job. It is kind of my job. Whatever. The story unfolds slowly but smoothly, moving through parts of the narrative I wasn’t able to explore until later in the comic. I didn’t expect Wallace to get the feelings right—Amity’s feelings about Faren, the atmosphere of their home island, the scope of the story—but he did.

  There were pictures of all this in the comic, one or two panels for atmosphere and sense of place, but he brings it alive in words. Maybe this is only because I know what it looks like. It’s too good. This is like eating cake you didn’t know you could have.

  I made Monstrous Sea because it’s the story I wanted. I wanted a story like it, and I couldn’t find one, so I created it myself. And now someone else has remade it for me in a different medium—a medium I couldn’t do myself—and he’s letting me experience it. I am finally seeing the story I wanted, and even though I know how it unfolds, and I know exactly how all of these things look, it is new again.

  This is more than I deserve. It’s perfect.

  Chills course the length of my spine. Too late I realize I’m crying, and a few tears drip on the paper. I curse, push the papers away from me, and pull my sweatshirt up to quickly wipe my eyes. Davy moves his head to rest it on my thigh.

  “I’m okay,” I say, but my voice shakes. I dab my sleeve on the page to try to dry the tears. Wallace will probably see those tomorrow.

  I am laugh-crying alone in my bedroom. Wonderful.

  Wallace has read my mind. He has divined the things I thought while drawing this comic and put them down on paper. I don’t understand it, and I don’t know how this chain of events happened. But Wallace Warland can do magic. Actual, real magic. With words.

  And it’s not just that he read my mind. It’s that he knows the material. Wallace knows the constellation Faren drew on the ceiling above their bed is called Gyurhei. He knows its mythology—or close, anyway. I could correct him on the page, but it seems like a shame to mark up such careful writing when I can’t find anything else wrong, so I’ll tell him tomorrow. None of that—the name, the mythology—was laid out in the comics. It was one of those things I had to explain when someone asked on the forums.

  There’s more. I flip the last page over.

  It’s a quote from Doctor Faustus.

  “This word ‘damnation’ terrifies not me,

  For I confound Hell in Elysium.”

  He remembers. Once, and I don’t know if this was on the forums or in chat, I said Monstrous Sea was a combination of the Final Fantasy video games and the Faust legend. Most of the fans didn’t know what Faust even was, they just knew it was Damien’s last name. That was so long ago. Back at the beginning of the website, the forums. That post is long buried now.

  But Wallace remembers.

  CHAPTER 9

  I spend a careful ten minutes sketching a stylized Orcus and its three moons around Wallace’s Doctor Faustus quote. Then a serpentine sunset riser lifting out of the ocean on one side and a dread crow with wings spread on the other. I hope he doesn’t mind.

  I grab the gifts I’ve been meaning to send Max and Emmy—a copy each of the newest Monstrous Sea graphic novel compilation and a pack of Twizzlers for Max and Starburst for Emmy—and pack them up. Max lives in Canada; Emmy goes to school in California. Max’s shipping is usually a killer, but whatever, I can write it off as business expense.

  Then it’s on to finishing a page of Monstrous Sea and starting another. I know the colors are on a computer and they’re the same colors I always use, but today they seem brighter. The lines are darker, stronger. I already drew the character expressions in detail, but they look better too.

  The forums are alive tonight. Rainmaker has posted another chapter of his latest Monstrous Sea fanfiction, Auburn Blue. I only know this because ninety percent of the people on the boards are looking at his fanfiction thread, and he’s nowhere in sight. I don’t think he ever sticks around to see what people say about his writing. A man after my own heart.

  I ignore the thread. The only fanfiction I ever plan to read is what Wallace gives me. There’s a purity to it, in knowing that it’s so good and that I’m the only one who’s seen it, that I’ll never get from something published online. This is just for me. At least for now.

  I stop and reread the chapter he wrote two more times. Then I check my messages.

  Emmy and Max have advised. To put it lightly.

  2:00 p.m. (emmersmacks has joined the message)

  emmersmacks: Wait

  emmersmacks: So what happened with New Kid

  2:30 p.m.

  emmersmacks: But seriously

  3:01 p.m.

  emmersmacks: E!!

  3:33 p.m.

  emmersmacks: E I swear to God

  3:59 p.m. (Apocalypse_Cow has joined the message)

  Apocalypse_Cow: e’s dealing with new kid again?

  emmersmacks: Well I think so

  emmersmacks: She isnt responding

  emmersmacks: And Ive only been texting her every HALF-HOUR

  emmersmacks: EEEEEEEE

  Apocalypse_Cow: somehow I don’t think yelling will make her look at her phone faster.

  Apocalypse_Cow: why were you messaging her at 2:30? Isn’t that like 11:30 your time? I thought you had that architecture class.

  emmersmacks: Dropped it

  emmersmacks: Architecture is stupid

  Apocalypse_Cow: but you’re a civil engineering major . . .

  emmersmacks: Whats your point

  Apocalypse_Cow: never mind.

  Apocalypse_Cow: ELIZA. WHAT IS UP WITH NEW KID.

  4:12 p.m.

  emmersmacks: Let me just go die and r
ot in my dorm room

  4:40 p.m.

  emmersmacks: ughhhh

  Apocalypse_Cow: *prepares funeral rites*

  4:46 p.m. (MirkerLurker has joined the message )

  MirkerLurker: Whoa, okay.

  MirkerLurker: Obviously I should have checked this sooner.

  emmersmacks: -_-

  MirkerLurker: I got your package! I really like Mr. Greatbody.

  emmersmacks: NEW KID

  emmersmacks: NOW

  MirkerLurker: What if it had gone horribly and I didn’t want to talk about it? What if I found out he was a serial killer?

  emmersmacks: For godsakes at least tell me what he looks like

  MirkerLurker: Max probably doesn’t want to hear about this stuff.

  Apocalypse_Cow: actually, emmy built it up a lot and now i kind of want to know too.

  MirkerLurker: Fine! Fine.

  MirkerLurker: Dark hair, dark eyes. Taller than me. Built like a football player.

  Apocalypse_Cow: a football player is writing fanfiction? remind me what world we live in.

  emmersmacks: Im sure there are plenty of football players who also partake of the occasional fanfiction

  emmersmacks: Go on E

  MirkerLurker: He found me in the courtyard during lunch and came out to eat with me. It’s kind of weird though—he only talks sometimes, I guess, so we wrote everything down.

  MirkerLurker: He showed me this thing he’s working on.

  I stop. I could tell them exactly what it is, but Wallace didn’t give it to me so I could go blab about it to people. Especially not Emmy and Max—I love them, but if they know someone is trying to transcribe Monstrous Sea, and if they know I think it’s really good, they’re going to want to read it too.

  I don’t want them to read it. Not only would it be without Wallace’s knowledge or permission, it would kind of ruin this happy little bubble I’m in right now. It’s a secret between me and Wallace, and I like it. I like being the only one who knows.