“I’m not going to do anything with it.”
“Put it up online.”
I ball my hands in my sleeves. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to. It makes me nervous.”
“You shouldn’t have anything to be nervous about—they’re amazing. Everyone will love them.”
I shake my head. He can’t know, of course, that I’m not nervous about people rejecting them, but about someone linking anything I post as MirkerLurker to LadyConstellation. Plus, I don’t know, these pictures are for me. They’re concepts, half-formed thoughts. They’re not polished and ready for the world, and I don’t want anyone to see them. I’m half convinced the only reasonMonstrous Seahas done so well is because I’m a stickler for perfect pages. Plot, lines, colors, characters. My fans deserve the best-quality work I can give them. I know that’s not the whole reason, but it’s got to be at least part.
“Okay.” He hands the other pictures back to me and keeps the one of Kite Waters. Smiles at it again. “Thank you. Do you mind if I show this to Cole and Megan and the others? They won’t share it if I ask them not to, but this is justsocool—I have to show it to someone who gets it.”
“Sure, I guess.” If Wallace says they won’t share it, then Ibelieve him. They’re nice people, anyway. Even I can tell that much.
The buses begin pulling around the middle school to line up for the end of the day.
“Guess I should go back to my car so my brothers can find me.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
We head toward my car, parked at the far end of the tennis courts.
“Doesn’t your sister usually pick you up?”
“Yeah, my stepsister,” he says. “But I have a younger sister who goes here, and my stepsister picks her up too. So Bren said she’d get me when she gets Lucy.”
“Bren and Lucy?”
“Yeah. Yours?”
“Sully and Church.”
“Those are short for ... ?”
“Sullivan and Churchill. Ed Sullivan, Winston Churchill. Never asked my parents why, never going to ask them why. Just glad I got a normal name.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
“I never asked why my parents named me Wallace.”
“Why don’t you ask them when you get home?”
He looks down, picks at his ear. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
His voice gets quieter. “Both my parents are, uh ... are gone.”
Gone? Does that mean dead? Or absent? Not knowing exactly what “gone” means makes a strange hollow in my stomach, reminding me I don’t know as much about him as I thought.
“Oh.” Heat floods my face. “Oh, sorry.”
He shakes his head. “It’s okay. My family is kind of weird. Two stepparents, one stepsister, one half sister. They’re all really nice, though. I guess I shouldn’t call Vee my stepmom anymore; she was technically my legal guardian. But I’m eighteen, so maybe it doesn’t matter....”
