Eliza and Her Monsters

by Francesca Zappia

  It’s half invitation and half demand. I slide onto the seat next to Wallace. The saber gets stuck in the chair legs.

  “Turn me toward, Wallace!” cries the girl on the computer, Chandra. Cole swivels the laptop around until Wallace and I appear in the webcam. I sink down farther, face hot. “Wallace,” Chandra says, “what is this nonsense about the new Auburn Blue chapters not going up soon? Izzy and Ana are the only canon ship I like, you cannot disappoint me with this.”

  Sorry. Wallace shrugs. Soon. I have the rest of the story outlined, I just have to find time to write it. School’s been killing me lately. And with the transcription . . .

  “Oh, yes, the transcription you won’t let anyone see yet.”

  You can see it when more is finished!

  “Don’t worry about it, Wally,” says the other girl, Leece. Leece and Chandra sit in two very different rooms; Chandra’s walls are blank and dark brown, while Leece’s are bright and covered in Monstrous Sea posters. A huge stuffed seacreeper rests beside a pillow behind her. “If you have the inspiration to work on the transcription, do that. Besides, Chan doesn’t know what relationships are good for her.”

  “Excuse you!” Chandra barks. “Were you there when Izzy and Ana were forced into their arranged marriage? Were you there when they formed a relationship of mutual trust over the inner workings of airship engines? What about all the times they saved each other while fighting the Alliance? They never even knew if they romantically loved each other—they just grew together. And that is perfect and beautiful and no one can take it from me!”

  “Excuse me, everyone?” A voice comes over the speakers. The girl dressed as a sushi roll at the cash register holds a microphone. “It’s almost time for the costume contest. If you’d like to be entered, please come fill out an entry card and put it in here.” She holds up a jar shaped like a grinning skull.

  “Oh, yes.” Cole pushes himself out of his seat. “Anyone else entering? Wallace and Eliza, don’t answer. I’m putting your names in anyway.”

  Before I can say no, Cole is gone.

  Wallace’s shoulder bumps mine. He’s always like this, he texts only to me. We won’t do it if you don’t want to.

  I dig my fingers into the edge of the seat and stare at the tabletop, deepening my breaths so it doesn’t feel so much like my lungs are being crushed. Stand in front of all these people, in this costume that isn’t even mine, and expect them to, what, applaud? I’ll fall on my face.

  “Eliza?”

  I look up. Wallace, Megan, Leece, and Chandra all stare at me.

  “Um, what? Sorry?”

  “Oh, honey, don’t look so worried!” Megan says. “I just asked how long you’ve liked Monstrous Sea.”

  “Maybe three years?” I say.

  “Wow, so you liked it pre-Masterminds,” Leece says.

  I liked it pre-everything.

  “Is Kite your favorite character?” Chandra asks.

  “Uh, no . . . Izzy is.”

  “Mine too!” Chandra jumps in her seat, her squeal loud enough to crackle the computer speakers. “No one understands the greatness that is Izarian Silas! That idiot Cole dresses up like Rory as if he’s the best Silas, but the only reason Rory Silas is any good is because Izzy is his father!”

  On the other side of the screen, Leece gasps.

  “Take that back, you whore!”

  Chandra cackles. Megan belatedly covers the toddler’s ears, but the toddler isn’t paying attention anyway. Wallace shakes his head and smiles.

  CHAPTER 14

  Cole marches back, chest puffed out in pride, with three cups of punch for him, me, and Wallace. Megan has a no-spill water bottle that the toddler knocks over every ten seconds. I nurse the punch close against my chest and hunker down in my seat while the five of them talk. I am better this way, unseen and unheard, hidden in Wallace’s bulky shadow. Some of the other Monstrous Sea fans have migrated away from our table, so I turn my face to the empty space beside me whenever I need to breathe.

  I learned years ago that it’s okay to do this. To seek out small spaces for myself, to stop and imagine myself alone. People are too much sometimes. Friends, acquaintances, enemies, strangers. It doesn’t matter; they all crowd. Even if they’re all the way across the room, they crowd. I take a moment of silence and think:

  I am here. I am okay.

  Then I let myself listen in on the conversation again, and slowly slip back into it.

  It is amazing how much you can learn when you keep your mouth shut. In half an hour, I know that Cole is a high-school sophomore, a rising baseball star who keeps his love of Monstrous Sea a secret to ward off any unwanted questions about his potency on the diamond; Leece is the biggest collector of Monstrous Sea merchandise probably anywhere, and is a world-class gymnast living in Colorado who uses the comic as her go-to relaxation therapy; Chandra’s across the Atlantic, in India, and though her parents don’t entirely approve of the subject matter of her drawings—most of which involve different Monstrous Sea characters embracing in one fashion or another—she sees it as a way of life; and Megan lives a few towns away and is a single mother to the toddler, Hazel, and she works one job as an office assistant during the day and the graveyard shift at the Blue Lane Bowling Alley at night.

  Megan was into Monstrous Sea first, Wallace tells me, and she got Cole into it, and that was how he and I met. Then we found Leece and Chandra and took our Angel personas, and the rest is history.

  Every once in a while they ask something about me. Friendly questions. How old am I? How did I meet Wallace? What do I do for fun besides read Monstrous Sea? I do my best to answer them, not just for Wallace’s sake, but a little bit for my own too.

  These are not enemies. They’re not going to make fun of me for what I like or how I spend my time. They may not be my friends, but they are my people, and just because they’re not behind a screen doesn’t mean they’re not worth talking to.

  Still. I miss my quiet bedroom and Davy and my computer. What’s going on with Dog Days right now? Are people missing LadyConstellation in the chat?

  When sushi-suit girl calls up entrants to show off their costumes, Cole manages to pull Wallace out of his seat to stand awkwardly out there, but I refuse when my name is called.

  “It’s just for a second,” Cole says, motioning me out with his hands. “Come on. Just a second.”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t really want to.”

  Wallace gently pushes Cole out of the way so he can get back to his seat and grab his phone.

  If she doesn’t want to, don’t make her do it.

  Cole sighs so overdramatically he must be joking, then turns to tell sushi girl I won’t be participating after all. A few more people from other groups around the room go up. There’s a panel of teenaged judges stationed behind one short bookcase like it’s a desk, and at the very end they get together to deliberate before they announce one of the Hogwarts students as the winner.

  “Oh, come on!” Cole cries. “The Harry Potter people always win! They’ve had like twelve years to put their costumes together!”

  “I’ve done my waiting,” Megan says to Hazel, pulling up the little girl’s arms. “Twelve years of it! In Azkaban!”

  Cole and Wallace tear through most of the food on the table, which I guess means we’re not going to get sushi after all. By nine thirty, Leece and Chandra have both signed off and Cole has packed up his computer, and Hazel is fast asleep against Megan’s shoulder.

  “Time for us to go, I think,” Megan says. “It was nice seeing all of you again. We’ll have to get together soon. We could plan a Monstrous Sea meet-up.”

  Wallace gives Megan an awkward side-armed hug good-bye. When she pushes her way through the bookshop doors, she lets in a blast of chilly October air.

  “I should probably go too,” Cole says, scrubbing at his hair and disheveling it even more.

  I thought your curfew was eleven? Wallace texts.

  “Nah, Mom moved it back to ten
when I broke it two weeks ago. What’s that look for? I just forgot how late I was out! You know how it is when you’re at a girl’s house!”

  Wallace rolls his eyes.

  “Look,” Cole says, leaning on the edge of the table so he can stare Wallace in the eye. “That new school has got to be better than the old one. It has to be. Right? Things have died down, but you’re better off there.”

  Wallace shrugs. Cole claps him on the shoulder. Then it’s me and Wallace in a rapidly emptying bookstore. Why would Westcliff be better than his last school? I don’t dare ask, at least not right now. All I want right now is to get out of here.

  You up for that sushi?

  “You still want to get it?” I ask. “You just ate all this food.”

  He smiles. You obviously haven’t been paying attention to my lunches. If you say eat, I shall eat. And I can eat a ton right now. So, sushi?

  “Yes, please sushi.”

  We push through the door, and the cold air tears through my costume. We hurry to Wallace’s car; I jump into the passenger seat while he throws his wig and scarf in the back, cranks the heater, and sets off for the sushi place he knows.

  “Why do you know so many more places to go around here than I do?” I say. “You haven’t been here that long.”

  He shrugs, still smiling. When we get to the restaurant, the glowing sign above the door says SUSHI.

  “Is this minimalist, or could they not think of a name?”

  “I . . . don’t know,” Wallace admits. It’s nice to hear his voice again. “Honestly, it could be either one.”

  It’s late enough that the dinner crowd is dying down, and the post-trick-or-treating stoner crowd hasn’t shown up yet. The inside of this vaguely named place is actually very clean and chic. The hostess seats Wallace and me in a booth, and the walls behind the seats rise up to hide us from our neighbors.

  “Fridays are half-price night too,” he says, looking eagerly through the menu. “What do you usually get?”

  “Um.” I hate telling things like this to people. “Just California and Philadelphia rolls.” I know exactly what people think about stuff like this: “Do you even like sushi?” “You just get the boring rolls. You’re not even eating the good stuff.” “Wow, you’re boring. What is even the point of you?” “Be more interesting.”

  “Oh, that’s an awesome idea,” Wallace says, still looking at the menu. “Keep it simple. I could eat a whole table of Philly rolls right now.”

  We order as soon as the waiter brings our hot towels. I wrap mine around my cold hands and melt into my seat. My family always says I have cold hands, but I don’t notice until something warms them up.

  “Was the party okay?” Wallace asks. “I’m glad you were able to go.”

  “Able to go,” meaning “barely beat doubt back into its corner,” so I guess he’s right with that.

  “Yeah. It was . . . it was fun.”

  Wallace, who has been staring at his hands, glances up. “Really? You didn’t say much.”

  “I usually don’t.”

  “You talk a lot at school.”

  I smile. “I write a lot at school. And I didn’t do that, either, before you showed up.”

  He hesitates. “How come?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t like it.”

  “You’re not super into school, are you?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “I’m not, either.” He looks down at the table again. “It feels like I already know what I want to do, and school is wasting my time. Like they assume we don’t know what we want to do, so they make us keep doing everything. I can’t wait to leave.”

  “Right?” The force of my voice shocks even me. Wallace looks up again. “I . . . I mean—yes, it’s exhausting. I keep telling my parents that. I just want to focus on art, and I’ll probably get into college, so why does the rest of senior year even matter?”

  “It’s stupid, right?”

  “So stupid.”

  He leans back in his seat. “Thank god. I thought I had cabin fever or something.”

  “High school fever.”

  “High school fever: like The Shining, but with teenagers.”

  I laugh. Wallace smiles. The waiter brings us our sushi, and happiness trickles from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. Part of me knows it’s silly to be happy that someone finally gets it. My parents get it. They know I don’t like school and I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m sure most of my teachers know that too. They know I care about my art more than any homework, or sporting event, or dance. They might even get that it’s easier to be online, though I doubt that one.

  But Wallace is the first person I’ve met who gets all of it.

  Sometimes, when Amity woke from her rebirth dreams, in the long minutes she spent watching Faren sleep, she imagined what it would be like if she had never accepted the Watcher’s offer.

  Faren would be dead.

  Maybe she would be too.

  The Watcher would have no host, and the Nocturnians would wait patiently until it did.

  CHAPTER 15

  Wallace gets a lot of things.

  He gets that the stuffed crust pizza at lunch should be eaten up to the crust, then the crust should be peeled back and eaten, and the cheese inside should be balled up and consumed last as the crowning jewel of the meal. He gets that sweatpants and sweatshirts are infinitely better than any other types of clothing. He gets that talking is easier when there’s a screen or even a piece of paper between you and the person you’re talking to.

  The first half of November has passed before I notice it going. Every day I wake up and experience the strange sensation of wanting to go to school. Now I linger at my locker in the mornings, not because it’s too difficult to get my feet to move and start the day, but because Wallace waits for me there, and I like standing in the hallway with him better than sitting in homeroom. Sometimes I go to his locker instead, and we linger there for a while. We don’t talk, because there are too many people around and Wallace doesn’t like writing on vertical surfaces.

  In my classes I throw myself into Monstrous Sea sketch pages, cranking them out in the hours before and after lunch, hiding them in the bottom of my backpack so Wallace won’t find them. Not that I think he’d look through my stuff. I don’t. But my sketchbook might fall open, or a wayward Travis Stone might show up and take them and spread them around for the whole school to see. At lunch, Wallace and I sit together—in the courtyard, if it’s warm enough, but usually at one of the tables in the cafeteria—and he forks over new transcribed Monstrous Sea chapters when he finishes them, and I devour them like the hungry beast I am, and he kind of smiles. Wallace gets it.

  Wallace gets the feeling of creating things.

  “Do you ever have an idea for a story, or a character, or even a line of dialogue or something, and suddenly it seems like the whole world is brighter? Like everything opens up, and everything makes sense?” He looks down at his sheaf of papers—the latest Monstrous Sea transcribed chapter—as he says it. We sit outside the tennis courts behind the middle school. Leaves dance over the empty courts in the chilled breeze. I told Mom I’d pick up Sully and Church after school so I had an excuse to hang out with Wallace. We’re on opposite sides of our bench, turned to face each other.

  “I think that’s why they call it a breakthrough. It cracks you open and lets light in.”

  He looks up and smiles. “Yeah. Exactly.”

  He has dimples. Sweet Jesus, dimples. I want to stick my fingers in them. He looks very cozy in his sweater and coat and knitted hat with the strings hanging down and the little puffball on top. I’m not cold, but I could be warmer.

  “Do you ever write your own stuff?” I ask. “Instead of fanfiction?”

  “Sometimes,” he says, “but I don’t think it’s as good as my fanfiction. It’s easier with fanfiction. Fanfiction is just playing with someone else’s characters and settings and themes. I don’t worry if it’s any good becau
se it’s fun. But when I try to write something of my own, it’s just . . . constant worry. It never seems good enough.” He picks at his papers. “Do you ever draw anything besides MS fan-art?”

  “Sometimes,” I say, and we share another small smile. “Monstrous Sea is all I’m really interested in right now.”

  “Could I see some of your pictures? The Monstrous Sea ones, I mean. I glanced at them that one day, but I didn’t get a chance to look.”

  I’ve read his fanfiction; it seems unfair not to let him see some of my drawings. The front of my sketchbook, held safely under my hands on my lap, is stuffed with loose-leaf sketches of Monstrous Sea characters and places. It’s concept art, but to Wallace it would look like practice and interpretations. I slide a few of them out, check to make sure none of them are sketches for actual comic pages, and hand them over.

  Wallace takes his time. Like everything, his examination is slow and methodical. He scans the picture, lingering on some spots; he slides a finger between that page and the next to separate them, then lifts the top one off; he replaces it carefully on the bottom of the stack, and when all the papers are lined up again, looks at the next one.

  “I’m thinking about putting the transcription up on the forums,” he says. “To see what people think.”

  “They’d love it.” It won’t be just for me anymore if he does that, but maybe that’s good. Maybe I’ll stop feeling so guilty for not telling him who I am.

  He glances up. “You should post these online. You’ve gotten closer to LadyConstellation’s style than anyone I’ve ever seen before. These are amazing.” He turns to the next page. “Oh, wow. I really like this one.”

  I sit up on my knees to see over the edge of the paper. It’s a sketch of Kite Waters I did in class the other day because I couldn’t stop thinking about Halloween. Kite wears a torn Alliance uniform, bloodied from battle, holding her saber defiantly at her side.

  “You can keep it, if you want,” I say.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m not going to do anything with it.”