He nods, shoves the paper in his pocket, and leans against the locker next to mine. His gaze settles somewhere on the other side of the hallway. I know he’s right, and I get too intense about mywork sometimes. I also know that I wasn’t wrong, even if I wasn’t very nice when I said he should be seeing someone. Apologizing seems right, but also like if I say I’m sorry that means I don’t think there’s something wrong and that he should go on never talking to anyone.
By the end of homeroom, he seems to have forgiven me at least a little bit, because he texts me a link to what he says is the best Children of Hypnos fifth-book fanfiction ever. By lunch, he hands over a new chapter of hisMonstrous Seatranscription. He says he’s getting close to the end of what would be the first book in the series, and he would’ve had it done sooner if so much school stuff hadn’t gotten in the way.
I inhale the new chapter. I never get enough of his writing, and I don’t know if it’s because he’s writing something I made or if he’s just that good. I like to think he’s just that good. He doesn’t volunteer to show me any of his original work, and I never ask to see it. I don’t know what I’d say to him if I didn’t like it.
He never asks to see any ofmyoriginal work, either. Sometimes I’m sure it’s for the same reason, but other times I wonder if he doesn’t care. If, like most of theMonstrous Seafans, he doesn’t care if I have anything else in me.
Production ofMonstrous Seais up. Five pages a week minimum, a whole chapter if I’m really on my game. Max, when he’s online, has plenty of trolls to keep him busy on the Forges_of_Risht account.Emmy has to hang around every Friday night to monitor the website and make sure it doesn’t crash. Mondays and Wednesdays at three are reserved for our biweekly mandatory chat sessions, where we don’t speak a word aboutMonstrous Seaand instead talk about how Emmy’s faring at the end of her freshman year (“Im not dead yet”), and how Max feels about his new boss (actual demon).
Weekends are for Wallace. We spend Saturdays with Cole and Megan, when she can join, and Leece and Chandra on the computer, if they’re around. Not always at Murphy’s. Sometimes we go to the Blue Lane for bowling. One week we go to the park behind the high school, where Wallace and Cole teach me how to throw a spiral, then take turns running around with Hazel on their shoulders while I show Megan how to sketch a landscape using the long field and the trees of the woods in the distance. After a while I hand over the paper and pencil and give pointers while she tries it.
“You’re really good at this,” she says, tucking a hair behind her ear and squinting at the tree line. “Teaching, I mean.”
“You think so? I tried teaching my brothers to draw a few years ago and they said I was mean.”
“No, not mean.” Megan laughed. “Just blunt. But that’s a good thing.”
Hazel squeals. Wallace has hoisted her over his head in an airplane, and Cole is pretending to be the enemy jet she has to shoot down.
I don’t call them “Wallace’s friends” anymore. They’reourfriends. His first, and still mostly his, but now also mine. I talk to them on the forums through my MirkerLurker account even when Wallace isn’t around. That may not seem like much to some people, but it’s a lot to me.
When I’m not with them or talking to Emmy and Max or hanging out with Wallace, I’m watching myself. Making sure I don’t get too focused on working. But with five pages a week, that’s easier said than done. Especially because the comic is so close to the end. If I space it out right,Monstrous Seawill end when I graduate. I may not even go to graduation. I’ll sit at my computer and post the finalMonstrous Seapages myself, no scheduling required.
I know how this ends. The story. The fan reactions.
It will be glorious.
Then the graduation issue of theWestcliff Starshows up at school.
TheWestcliff Starfocuses on only two stories every year. The first, obviously, is the Wellhouse Turn memorial. The second is the graduation of the seniors from Westcliff High. This is the issue where all the parents in the township write short blurbs about their graduating seniors and send them in, and the paper prints them with the ugliest student pictures they can find, and everyone in school reads through them and laughs at the humiliating thingseveryone else’s parents said about them.
My parents have been looking forward to this since we got back from the spring break camping trip. They said I’d love it. Absolutely love it.
There’s a whole stack ofWestcliff Stars in Mrs. Grier’s room when I arrive that morning, and everyone is reading. I grab one, dread flooding me, sweat building on my back. Yes, let’s see what traumatizing thing my parents said about me, and everyone can read about Creepy Eliza. I head to my seat.
Mrs. Grier’s gaze follows me across the room. She sits stick straight at her desk, eyes wide, the newspaper spread open in front of her. She doesn’t normally watch me like that, so either I have something on my face or my parents really said something they shouldn’t have. God, they put a baby picture of me in here. Or they told the story about the time I tried to kick the ball in soccer and missed so badly the momentum threw me on the ground.
I hurry to my desk, sit without taking my backpack off, and tear the paper open. My hands shake as I flip past picture after picture, paragraphs of stories about childhood, broken arms and baseball games, school plays and birthdays. It’s in alphabetical order, and I skip past my name and have to backtrack. There it is, a terrible school picture of me from seventh grade, with greasy hair and braces and an actual turtleneck, did-I-come-out-of-the-fucking-sixties aturtleneck. My parents have never been great writers, but they managed a full paragraph for this one.
Eliza Mirk
We’re so proud of our Eliza. She’s our firstborn, and she’s as stubborn and passionate now as she always has been. These eighteen years have been a long road, full of lots of twists and turns, but she’s taught us so much about being parents—and about being people. She loves hard-boiled eggs, thick socks, and listening to her music maybe a little too loud (but what teenager doesn’t?). Best of all, she’s an artist, and what she loves more than anything else is her webcomic,Monstrous Sea. She has spent so much of her time working on this story, poured so much of herself into it, and built something for herself from the ground up. We know that no matter where she goes or what she does after this, she’ll be successful. Eliza, we love you.
Peter and Anna Mirk
I look up and the room is silent. Not because everyone stopped talking, but because there is a ringing in my ears so loud nothing can penetrate it. The room expands and I shrink, the walls exploding away from me, the light dimming. My heart stutters in my chest.
Mrs. Grier walks down my row, newspaper in hand. She kneels next to my desk. Her voice comes out too slow.
“Eliza. Is this true?” She holds up the paper. It’s turned to my paragraph and my stupid face. “Did ... did you createMonstrous Sea?”
My stomach heaves violently. I clap a hand over my mouth.
“Because I—well, I probably shouldn’t show you this, but ...” Mrs. Grier pulls back her sleeve. She always wears long sleeves, cardigans over her sundresses, sweaters, even in the summer, and now I know why: in thick black ink up her arm are the wordsTHERE ARE MONSTERS IN THE SEA.
My most famous quote is tattooed on my homeroom teacher’s arm.
Behind Mrs. Grier, Wallace walks into the room. Big, lumbering Wallace. Normally he moves slow, but today, in this slow-motion world, he moves far too fast. He reaches the front table where the newspapers are stacked up. Takes one. Opens it. I know he’ll look for my name first because mine comes before his. He’ll see it. He reads slow, but not that slow.
