“Have you done that before?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
I roll the ball. It heads straight for the right gutter, but halfway down the lane it curves back and strikes the first pin. They fall until only the two in the back left are still standing.
“It worked!” I crane my neck to watch a little eight go up next to my name on the screen above our lane.
“Don’t sound so shocked,” Cole says.
“I’ve never knocked that many down at once before! At leastnot with a real throw.” I stopped going bowling with my family as soon as Sully and Church got old enough to make fun of me for my granny rolls. Maybe now I can actually compete with them.
I throw my second ball. It grazes one of the pins, but they both stay standing.
“Watch out.” Cole grabs his ball and shoulders past me. “It’s time to blow some small fries out of the water.”
I return to the table with Megan and Hazel. Wallace returns from the snack bar with three orders of nachos, two hot dogs, a pretzel, and two large sodas. He hands me one of the sodas, sets one of the nachos between me and Megan, one of the hot dogs in front of Cole’s empty seat, then arranges the rest of it in front of himself. Then he presses his hands together, looking around at his feast like he isn’t sure where he wants to start.
“You better start playing football again soon,” Megan says, “or you’re going to wake up one day and weigh six hundred pounds.”
Wallace smiles at her through a mouthful of pretzel.
We’ve been here half an hour, and I’m no longer sure why I wanted to say no to coming here. No one’s said a word about the missing pages since we left Murphy’s, and I feel light, like bubbles fill my limbs.
It’s so much better than it would be sitting at home alone, mired in anxiety.
CHAPTER 25
“Eliza, you need to stop sitting at the computer. You’ll hurt your eyes.”
Mom has her head and shoulders through the doorway. I should have shut and locked the door before I started drawing. I straighten up and look away from the screen. My lower back screams. My eyes water.
“I’m fine.” I have four moreMonstrous Seapages to finish before this chapter is done. I planned it all out; if I do at least four pages a week, I can finish by graduation. It will keep me sane through this last godforsaken semester of high school, and it’ll keep the fans happy after the Missing Pages debacle. I’ve spent the last three days doing nothing but drawing. “Can you please shut the door?”
“No. You need to get off the computer now.” She uses her mom voice. The one that gives me instant heartburn.
“I’m working,” I say without looking at her.
“Even hard workers need to take a break sometimes.”
“I can’t take a break. I have to get this done.”
“Eliza.”
“Mom, what do you think I’m doing here?” I swivel to face her. “Does it look like I’m taking a jaunty ride through the park? Like I’m having fun? Because I’m not having fun. I have to get this finished. People are expecting it. People who buy merchandise. Those people are going to pay for my college education.”
“Eliza Mary Mirk!”
“What do you want me to do once I get off the computer? Go play sports with Sully and Church, even though they hate it when I play because I have no coordination? Watch TV, even though that’s about a hundred times more mind-numbing than what I’m doing right now? Play some board games with you and Dad? You know howthatgoes!”
I always end up angry. And if I start it angry, like now, that can’t bode well for the rest of the game.
Never one to back down from a challenge, my mother stands her ground. “I want you to go outside! Talk to your friends! Godosomething! Get into trouble, for heaven’s sake!”
“My friends areon here!” I hold up my phone, where Max and Emmy have been silent for days. “I talk to them all the time, andyou always tell me to stop!”
“What about Wallace? What’s he doing?”
“Right now he’s working! And later on, guess what—he’ll be at his computer, writing something. Probably his transcription of this, which a lot of people are waiting for, just like they’re waiting forthis. And we’ll be talkingon the computer. I don’t understand why it’s such a difficult concept to grasp.”
