Four-year-old Eliza would be so disappointed in me.
Four-year-old Eliza would be disappointed in me for a lot of things. For hiding, for making it most of the way through high school without anyone to sit with at lunch, for letting myself sink to this place. Four-year-old Eliza tried, at least. She wanted to be good at things. She did things because she wanted to do them, not because other people made her. She had no masters. I don’t think any four-year-olds do.
But I’m not four anymore. I can’t be her. I can’t be my four-year-old self, I can’t be LadyConstellation, I can’t even be Wallace’s girlfriend. Right now I can only be Eliza Mirk, human being.
I tangle my fingers in the grass. A bat flits by overhead, making stars wink off and on again.
Wallace’s dad died here. It seems too calm for a car careening toward a fatal crash. I bet Wellhouse Turn was serene while it was happening too. Wellhouse Turn doesn’t kill people; bad weather, poor decisions, and unfortunate accidents kill people. Wellhouse Turn doesn’t advertise that people die here; the Westcliff Star does that. Because Wellhouse Turn, this little clearing, is nature, and nature doesn’t care. Nature doesn’t care if we throw ourselves against it and break a few bones. Nature doesn’t care if we feel so heavy we might sink into the ground and never be able to pull ourselves out again.
Nature doesn’t care who I am, online or off, and it doesn’t mind if I need to lie here for a while.
CHAPTER 36
Wednesday, two weeks after my unfortunate incident in the cafeteria, I am lying on the floor of my bedroom, staring at the ceiling and letting my wet hair soak the carpet, when the doorbell rings.
I listen to Dad’s steps march down the hallway. The soft crack of the door swinging away from its frame. His muffled voice saying hello, then more I can’t make out.
Then footsteps up the stairs. Dad’s. My heart picks up. Why’s he coming up? I’m the only one upstairs right now.
A knock on my door.
“Eggs? Wallace is here.”
Wallace is here.
Why is Wallace here?
“I don’t want to talk to him.” The answer is immediate and strong. There is no doubt in my mind. I cannot talk to Wallace. I can’t see him.
“Are you sure?” Dad still doesn’t open the door.
“Yes.”
“Okay then.” He goes back down the stairs, back to the door. His muffled voice says something that sounds regretful. I don’t hear a response, but if Wallace is talking, it might be too soft to hear.
The door closes.
I scramble to my window. It looks down on the front lawn and the driveway where Wallace’s car is parked.
Wallace tromps down the front walk. From up here he’s a head of dark hair and a Colts jersey. I press my forehead to the screen. How can he not feel me here? How can he not feel how much I want him not to hate me, how sorry I am? I don’t care if I never look at Monstrous Sea again, but I do care if I never see Wallace again. Right now, I care a lot.
He fumbles with his keys, then stops, like he remembered something. He walks to the end of the driveway and turns to look up at the house.
He finds me right away. I fall back from the window, breath caught in my throat. Of course he knew I was here—he had to know I was here. I peek over the windowsill again. He’s pacing. Every time he passes back, he glances up at my window. One pass, two passes, three passes.
He’s psyching himself up.
Psyching himself up? What does he need to psych himself up for? Is he going to charge the front door?
Finally he stops and reaches into his pocket for his phone. Types something. Looks up at my window again.
I grab my phone from my desk, where it has been collecting dust. Message upon message appears when I turn it on, but Wallace’s text is at the top.
We need to talk.
He doesn’t wait for me to respond before he starts typing again.
We really need to talk and I don’t want to text outside your house.
And again:
If you don’t let me in today, I’ll just come back tomorrow.
My stomach clenches. He wants in here so he can yell at me. So he can tell me how wrong I am, how awful, how badly I’ve treated him. Maybe then I can yell back at him that I know, that I feel it in the marrow of my bones like someone pumped me full of guilt.
I sit and hold myself for a moment, arms wrapped around my legs, forehead against my knees. Then I force myself off the floor, out of my room, and down the stairs one stiff step at a time. I throw the front door open and fly back upstairs, into my room—leaving that door open too—and curl up on the bed with my back in the corner and my pillow locked between my arms as a shield.
The front door clicks shut. I drop the pillow. Fling it across the room.
Heavy feet climb the stairs. I stand and put my back to the window. Close my eyes and press my phone into my stomach until I can feel his gaze on me, and I look up to find him framed by the doorway.
He’s angry. He’s so angry. I’ve never seen his face like that before, not even the times he’s gotten mad about Tim telling him he can’t write if it doesn’t make him good money. This is more than anger, it’s anger and betrayal and confusion all fused together.
“How could you n—” His jaw flexes. He looks at the ceiling. “How could you not—” His teeth clamp together. “How could you not tell me . . .” His voice tapers off to a whisper. He growls and clenches his fists. Tears gather in my eyes. He’s so angry.
He pulls out his phone again, exhaling hard through his nose, like an enraged bull. I wipe my eyes so I can see my screen. His texts come in rapid fire.
How could you not tell me? That whole time?
Were you messing with me?
Was I a guinea pig or something?
Were you bored?
I let you read my stuff! I let you read everything!
I brought you to my house!
You met my family!
How could you not tell me who you are?
Did you not want to?
Did you even think about it?
The tears are so thick I can’t see through them. Wallace takes a step into the room. I move my thumbs over my phone but can’t make them work. I’m sniffling too loud, anyway. Hiccuping. Hiccuping through my sobs.
I curl my phone in one hand and ball the other in my shirt when I really want to hide my face. I can’t hide myself from him, not now. There are no words I can say to him to make him understand how sorry I am, and that only makes me cry harder.
His weight makes my bed creak. When I bring myself to look, he sits there, his elbows braced on his knees and his head in his hands. Without him watching, I can bring my phone up again.
No, I type. I wasn’t messing with you.
I didn’t want to tell you at first.
I lower the phone and say, “And then I saw how much Monstrous Sea meant to you and I couldn’t tell you.”
We sit in silence for several long minutes until he says, quietly, “I kind of thought it might be something like that. I hoped it was.”
I lift my head.
“I thought, If this was me, what would I have done? I think I would have told you, but who knows? Maybe not. Maybe I would have done the same thing.”
He runs his hands through his hair, making it stick up.
“I don’t understand. How can you be her? How did I not notice?”
He pauses like he wants me to answer, but I don’t know how, so I keep my mouth shut.
He looks up again. His gaze roams over my desk, my computer, the pen display that wasn’t there before. Then at my blank walls.
“What happened to your room?” he asks.
“I couldn’t look at it anymore,” I say.
He frowns at me.
“And at school?”
I explain it to him. I don’t know if he understands, but he listens.
“I don’t want to go back,” I say. “I know it’ll happen again. Even when I’m alo
ne, I don’t feel alone, because it’s like people on the internet are watching me. At school it’s worse because I can see them.”
“They don’t hate you,” he says. “Most of them are fans, actually. Or people who think it’s cool that you’re kind of famous.”
“It doesn’t make a difference. I’ve read all the messages. It’s like I can’t hold it all inside me at once. Good or bad.”
“Have you been on the forums?”
“Not since last week. I don’t really want to go near my computer anymore.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Neither would I.”
That confirms it, then. Things have been as awful since I stopped looking at them. Big news tends to blow itself out quickly on the internet; everyone’s up in arms about it for a day or three, and then it’s on to the next thing. So if the LadyConstellation reveal is still news a week after it became public knowledge, they’re not going to let it go.
“What do you think they’ll do when the pages don’t go up this week?” I ask. “Or next week?”
“You’re not putting pages up?”
I shake my head. “I have a few in reserve, but I haven’t drawn since last week. Since before. I don’t want to anymore. I don’t even want to hold a pencil.”
“Are you going to put them up eventually?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
There’s a hitch in his breathing. He looks at me, at his hands, back at me. There’s something about his stillness. A nervousness, an uncertainty. “I have to tell you something.” His voice is louder than usual, like he’s forcing the words out. “A day before this happened, before the graduation issue, I got an email from a publisher. They found the transcription. They’re excited about how big Monstrous Sea is, and they want to be the ones to publish it in novel form.”
“They want to publish yours?”
He nods. I swipe my sleeve over my eyes. “That’s great. That’s awesome. That’s a book deal.”
“They said they would need permission to publish it, though. From the creator.”
“Of course,” I say, scrambling over myself to get the words out. This is the very least I can do for him after all of this garbage. It doesn’t matter anymore if my name gets out. “Of course you can have permission. Always. Just tell me where to sign.”
But he doesn’t look happy. He stares at me like I’ve missed some great point. “They don’t want it until they know how it ends.”
“So write the ending,” I say.
“They don’t want my ending, Eliza. They want yours. It won’t be right if it’s not yours.”
“I could tell you how it ends and you could—”
“They. Want. Yours.”
“They aren’t going to take it if the comic isn’t finished?”
He keeps staring at me. My stomach goes cold. “That’s ridiculous,” I say. “It’s still a good story—people will buy it—”
“You have to finish.” There’s a sternness to his voice I’ve never heard before.
“I can’t.”
“You have to finish, Eliza.”
“I can’t even touch a pencil right now. You’ve had that before, haven’t you? Where you can’t do anything because nothing’s flowing, nothing’s coming out, like your head is empty—”
“You have to finish.” His voice is hard. I wish I’d kept my pillow as a shield. “I’m never going to get a chance like this again. If this doesn’t happen, it’s going to be four more years of doing what other people tell me to do. Maybe longer than that. I can’t anymore. Please, Eliza. It’s only a few chapters, just push through and finish it.”
He doesn’t get it. Or he doesn’t want to.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
“Why not?”
“There’s . . . there’s nothing there.”
“Why not? There doesn’t have to be anything there. Artists create when they have no motivation all the time. If I could do it for you, I would—I would kill to write something without motivation if it meant I got to make what I wanted later.”
I have never had that problem. I have never been forced to make anything. I don’t understand how that works.
“I can’t.”
He pushes himself off the bed. His hands scrape through his hair, then ball into thick fists at his sides. A muscle jumps in his jaw. He looks around, scanning the empty walls, the empty desk, the silent computer. “You have a perfect life,” he says, “and you can’t draw a couple of chapters.”
“My life isn’t perfect,” I say.
“You made this awesome thing that millions of people love and adore you for. Everyone knows what you’ve done. They recognize your talent. You don’t have to worry about how you’re going to pay for college, or get a real job, or figure out what you’re supposed to be doing with your life. You don’t have anyone telling you what to do or who to be. All you have to do is draw a few more pages. That’s it. It’ll take you, what, a week or two at most? So please, Eliza, draw the pages.”
When I can’t come up with any words, I shake my head.
Wallace turns and leaves. His footsteps clomp back down the stairs. The front door shuts gently, with a little whoosh of air.
It would’ve been better if he’d slammed it.
CHAPTER 37
I sit at my desk with a sheet of blank paper and my pencil. The pencil is next to the paper, aligned parallel with the short bottom edge. I stare at the pencil. The pencil stares back.
A few chapters. The end. I don’t know the details, but I have a vague idea of what’s going to happen. It can’t be that hard.
Blank pages are supposed to be an invitation. A challenge, even. Here is your canvas—how creative can you be? What limits can you stretch to bring to life that creature in your head? A blank piece of paper is infinite possibilities.
Now when I look at it, all I see is an abyss. Where ideas and excitement used to spring up inside me, now there’s a granite block. Huge, immovable, and so cold it makes my limbs go numb. Looking at paper only reminds me that I’m not strong enough to shift it.
I have to try. For Wallace, I have to try.
I reach for the pencil. My hand stalls, my fingers curling in, my wrist dropping until it rests on the edge of the desk. It’s not going to look right, though. The characters. The scenery.
People will know. They’ll know it’s wrong. I’ll have to put the pages up online because the publisher won’t take Wallace’s transcription until the story is complete, and all the readers who have been circling the boards all this time will know that the panels aren’t as good as they could be. The art isn’t as good, and the characters aren’t as good, and the story isn’t as good.
And when they know that, they’ll know where to find me and how to find me and they’ll be able to question me directly. Some of them probably at school.
What if they send me mail?
What if they come to my house?
What if they start talking about me the way they talk about Olivia Kane? Hermit Eliza ran to a cave in the mountains and chases people off her property with a shotgun. Sets booby traps for her own fans. She drew so many monsters that she became a monster herself.
I realize I’m gripping the edge of the desk so hard my nails have left shallow grooves in the wood, and I let go. I force myself to breathe, to shove all other thoughts to the back of my mind, and think of Wallace. Wallace will have a book deal. Wallace will be able to use that money to pay for college, and he’ll be able to major in what he really likes. Wallace won’t have to worry about appeasing Tim, or falling into a job that makes him hate himself.
I have to try.
I reach for the pencil again. Pick it up. A shock races up my arm, raising the hairs on my head, sending ripples of disgust through my muscles. I grip the pencil tighter only so I don’t toss it away. The first line I draw is lopsided. I don’t even know what it was supposed to be. The edge of a panel? A plane in a character’s face?
Where in the story am I? I don’t remember any
more.
I press my hands to my forehead. My chest tightens and tightens and tightens. This used to come so easily to me. Monstrous Sea has never been difficult. Even when I wasn’t sure where I wanted the story to go, I could just start drawing and it would eventually spill out. Now there’s nothing but aching panic. Panic because there’s nothing. Because even though I know it’s silly to think so, because I know everyone would call me ridiculous for it, I feel like something terrible is going to happen to Wallace if I don’t finish.
I don’t know exactly what, or how. All I know is dread rising in my throat.
I try to start again. Anything. Faces. Eyes. Clothing. Nothing comes out right. It’s too dark, then too light, then skewed to the left. The proportions are off. The lines are shaky. The weight is in all the wrong places.
The pencil ends its life in two halves, one behind my monitor, the other jammed into the space between the desk and the wall. I shove over to the other side of my desk, wake my computer, and Google “Olivia Kane disappearance.” The results are all speculation from online news, fan forums, and social media. Cole’s cave-and-shotgun theory is near the top. Other people think Olivia Kane went all-purpose insane, as if that’s really a thing. Some people say she tried to kill herself. A lot of people. The theory is everywhere. Have I really never seen that one before, or did I ignore it? Was I so naive I thought she’d just hidden somewhere?
Broken people don’t hide from their monsters. Broken people let themselves be eaten.
I curl into myself on my chair, head tucked between my knees and my arms banded over me as a barricade. I can’t cry anymore. I want the tears to come out because I might feel better if they did, but my parents would hear, or Sully and Church would hear, or someone on the omniscient internet would hear and find me and rip me apart. I can’t cry and I can’t draw and I can’t get online and I can’t talk to anyone, so what good am I?
Eliza and Her Monsters Page 20