He shrugs.I really loveMonstrous Sea.And it seems like a challenge.
I bite my lip to keep in this wash of emotion bubbling up in my chest. He doesn’t even realize he’s praising me. This is weird. And probably wrong, right? Like, I should tell him who I am. But what if that ruins this? I don’t want him to know who I am because it’s not who I am all the time. I’m not LadyConstellation right now. I can’t be.
When I don’t immediately answer, he carefully touches the tips of his fingers to the edge of the paper and reclaims it. He writes more and slides it back.
I actually need a new beta reader for it—would you want to read it? I saw some of your pictures the other day, and it seems like you know a lot about the world.
My hand hesitates before I answer.
I’m not much of a fanfiction reader. I don’t know how much help I would be.
This is true; I try to stay away from the fanfiction because Idon’t want it to accidentally bleed into the story, and then have one of the fans say I plagiarized off them. I would be interested in seeing a prose transcription of the comic, but I don’t actually know how good of a writer Wallace is, and I don’t want to read it and have it be horrible and then I have to pretend to like it so I don’t hurt his feelings. Though Wallace doesn’t look like the type of person to have his feelings hurt easily—or at least he might not show it when he does.
He reads my note, then holds up a finger and puts down the second hamburger to reach into his bag. He pulls out a sheet of paper, covered in writing on both sides. Then he adds to our conversation, and hands both papers back to me.
Read the first page. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to read the rest.
I’m not sure if he understands that readinganyof it will make it hard to say no to reading the rest, but I take the page from him anyway and flatten it out on the table in front of me. The breeze nips at the corner of the paper. Spelled out across the top of the page is the titleMonstrous Sea: A Transcription of the Comic by LadyConstellation.
And below that, in his printer-precise handwriting:
Amity had two birth days.
This is my story. This is my story in words, something I could never do.
I don’t need to finish the page. I already know I want to read the rest.
Wallace writes,Is it that bad?
“No!” My voice shocks both of us, a sudden sound in the quiet courtyard. Wallace stops with his Drumstick halfway unwrapped. I scramble for the paper and write down,No, it’s really good! How much of this have you done so far?
Just one chapter, he writes.
Are you sure you want to let me read it?
I already typed this chapter up, so it isn’t my only copy. You can mark on it too, if you want.
That wasn’t really what I was asking him, but whatever. He fishes a sheaf of papers out of his bag and hands them over. They’re covered front and back with his handwriting, and small, neat page numbers decorate the top right-hand corners. I slide them inside the front cover of my sketchbook, the safest place I know.
I can have them back to you tomorrow, I write.Is that okay?
He reads that and nods, smiling again.
Just a little.
CHAPTER 7
How I look has never seemed that important. Not the clothes I wear or the poor hairstyle choices I make, but my actual body. I’m not especially tall or short. No rampant acne or unfortunate placement of facial features. I’m not fat—Mom says my BMI is probably below what it should be, whatever that means. People don’t point out how I look, but I’ve never been more aware of it than when I’m next to Wallace.
We walk back to the cafeteria together at the end of lunch. His legs are longer than mine, but he moves so slow we walk at the same speed. It’s a weird kind of slowness; a lot of people move slow because they meander, like they don’t know where they’re going, or don’t want to get there. Wallace moves slow the waythose giant mechas move slow: there’s so much to move it takes a while to get it going. But he knows exactly where he wants to be.
We walk, and I am acutely aware of my arms and legs, and what direction my feet point on the floor, and all the hair on my body. I wish there was something strange about the way I look so I could focus on that, assumehe’sfocused on that, but there’s just me.
We don’t speak. Wallace folded up our conversation paper and put it in the pocket of his jeans, along with his pencil. We get a few looks from the tables we pass as we go to dump the trash from our trays. I imagine the looks are more for him than me, but maybe new-kid strangeness has worn off already. When he turns around, I notice for the first time the words in neat handwritten Sharpie along the bottom of his backpack:
THERE ARE MONSTERS IN THE SEA.
It’s a fan-favoriteMonstrous Seaquote. Dallas Rainer. He did say Dallas was his favorite character, but I always find it interesting when fans send me pictures of which quotes or pictures they put on their walls or their clothes, or even what they get tattooed on their skin. Though usually people do it because they think it sounds cool, sometimes it means something.
