Why would he? I lied to him for months. For the whole time I knew him. I could say it wasn’t really lying, it was leaving out details, but that itself is a lie. If I was him, I’d hate me.
Footsteps start up the stairs. I flip my phone over, turn off thecomputer monitor, and curl up on the bed beside Davy, who lies still and lets me use him as a body pillow. My legs shake. Mom knocks softly on the door—I know it’s her because Dad never knocks softly—and comes in with a tray of soup, crackers, and ginger ale.
“Are you feeling any better?” she asks.
“A little.”
She smiles and smooths the hair away from my forehead, being careful of the bandage there. “Good. Try to get some sleep.”
I don’t. I stare at my computer across the room, silent and unmoving, and I wonder what storms brew over the all-knowing internet.
It was only a matter of time. Since that first day I met Wallace in class. Since I hung out with his friends. Since I told myself I would try.
I forgot there’s no air this far down.
CHAPTER 32
It doesn’t even take a day for internet gossip to grab the story and run with it. By the following morning, even people far outside theMonstrous Seafandom know who I am and where I’m from. They know I’m in high school. They know I have a dog and two younger brothers. I’m not sure if they have my address and phone number, and if they don’t yet, they will soon.
The fact that I was anonymous for so long became the fuel for this fire. My anonymity was like a game, a riddle for people to solve. Anonymity on the internet never lasts, and they all knew it.
LadyConstellation was a pretty piñata that they beat down with sticks, and I was the prize that fell out.
I read the messages. All of them. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’thelp myself, and I don’t want to draw or read or even watchDog Days, so the hours drag by. Most of the messages are short. I could chart a timeline with them—they start off questioning, some probing to see if the rumor is true and others outright asking. Then they accept my name and question the details. They get hung up on the fact that I’m a girl, then a teenager. The teenage part I at least kind of understand—but why it should surprise them that I’m female, I have no clue. LadyConstellation was female. It’s not as if that changed.
Then there are fans. Some of them say how I inspired them. Some say how alike we are, and how they think we’d be friends. Others just want to thank me. They like having a face to the name. They like having anameto the name. They like that I’m visible now.
Of course, there are crude messages. Vile ones. Ones that don’t seem like they came from a real human being at all, but some computer program designed to say things no person should say to another person. I read all of those too, like Pringles—they might be terrible for you, but once you pop, you can’t stop. This is a roller coaster that only goes down. Near the end I feel like a hollow shell clicking a mouse, scanning words with aching eyes.
“Eliza?” The door opens. A dark-haired head pops in. “Mom said to tell you dinner is ready. I yelled it up the stairs, but she said you wouldn’t hear.”
“Yeah,” I say, not turning away from the computer.
“What are you looking at?” Heavy footsteps pad up behindme. The smell of unshowered boy fills the air. Sully’s a fast little shit—I don’t have time to click away from theMonstrous Seamessages and the myriad news stories I pulled up in other tabs before his hand comes down on the mouse and he closes out of them for me.
“Don’t look at that garbage.” He actually sounds angry. “People are stupid, and you don’t need to read that stuff. Come on, dinner’s ready.”
It’s too late, but he doesn’t know that. I already read them all, and was reading the new ones as they poured in. Both on the LadyConstellation and the MirkerLurker accounts. The comments on the news articles. The replies to the Masterminds thread and on theMonstrous Seaforums themselves. Good, bad, ugly.
I get up and shuffle downstairs after Sully.
I plead ill and skip school the next day, too. Friday. TheMonstrous Seapages are already scheduled to go up. I can hardly handle touching my keyboard, much less returning to the website to put up pages. I can’t be near my pen display, either. Or a pencil and paper. I can’t even think about drawing.
I can’t even think aboutMonstrous Sea.
A crow’s wing, a seacreeper fin, a long scarf, a saber, large bodies of water, clocks, planets, stars. They make me sick to my stomach. I have no interest in plotting out pages and panels. None at all in tying up character threads. The end of the story, so close,flits out of my loosened grip and flies away.
I can’t do it. Whatever force kept me going has vanished.
I tear theMonstrous Seaposters off the walls. I shove the compendium graphic novels under my bed. All the fan art comes down, everything anyone ever sent me, all the little stuffed toys and stickers and especially the Kite Waters costume. Even Mr. Greatbody and his missing eyes. Anything that can get stuffed in the trash can does.
When Mom comes up to check on me later, I’m lying on my bed hugging Davy again, and she sees the blank walls and the overflowing garbage and asks me if I feel okay. I lie. She leaves.
That afternoon, a reporter from theWestcliff Starcalls the house and asks if she can interview me for a story. Sully, who answered the phone, tells her to fuck off.
Dad scolds him halfheartedly. That’s the first time. When more calls come in—and no one tells me who—Dad stops scolding and starts telling the callers to lose our number.
Mom and Dad move around me like I’m electrified. Few words. Distance unless they want to check the stitches beneath my bandage. I’d like to think they feel bad, but I don’t think they fully understand what they’ve done.
