Normally I don’t have any problem lying my way out of things. Of course, normally the only people I have to lie to are my parents and brothers, and all I have to say then is I’m sick, or have too much work. My family is easy like that. I don’t have friends from school who ask me to do things. Not until now.
I return to my computer, sit, and scratch at the edge of my pen display for a moment. A Monstrous Sea page is still pulled up on its screen—Amity fending off hordes of enemies with the Watcher’s orange crystals. Amity wouldn’t lie to someone to get out of something. If she didn’t want to do it, she’d say it right to their face. And if she was unsure, she’d go do it anyway to test the waters. She’s a quiet, keeps-to-herself kind of person, but she’s not scared of doing things and going places.
I’m not normally one to take advice from my own fictional characters, but there comes a point in every girl’s life where she reaches a crossroads: a night alone with her sweatpants and her favorite television show, or a party with real, live, breathing people.
I know what I should do. Call it guilt, my parents’ voices permanently embedded in the back of my head. What are your plans this weekend, Eliza? Going out with anyone? Any friends from school? No hot parties? Hot parties. Only my parents would say “hot parties,” and they’re not even that old. I’m allowed to say no to their ideas for sports and physical exercise, but so far I haven’t found a good way to deflect their questions about my nonexistent school friends and social life. I say “social life” because anything that happens on a computer isn’t social to them. If I told them I was hanging out in a Halloween chat room with a bunch of people on the Monstrous Sea forums, they’d ask if I actually knew any of these people, and then they’d hover around my door, trying to peek inside all night.
If nothing else, going to this party would get them off my back.
I bring up Wallace’s message on my computer and fend off doubt with a gnawed-on lion tamer’s chair.
2:47 p.m.
rainmaker: So, how about that Halloween party? :D
rainmaker: If you don’t have a costume, I bet you could just put a sign on your shirt that says “lurker.” I know my friends would think that was the best thing ever.
rainmaker: btw they’re all huge MS fans. Don’t know if I mentioned that.
rainmaker: Also I’m driving, so don’t worry about getting there.
3:11 p.m.
MirkerLurker: Okay, sure. :)
CHAPTER 13
I don’t need the lurker sign.
Last year, a Monstrous Sea fan cosplayed one of the characters, Kite Waters, at a con, and posted pictures of it on the forums. When I said—as LadyConstellation, of course—that it was the best Kite Waters cosplay I’d ever seen, she mailed me the costume. Well, she mailed Emmy the costume, and Emmy mailed it to me. It’s Orcian Alliance military dress, a white suit with green trim and gold buttons, devoid of any markings of rank because Kite has none. It even includes Kite’s boots and her black saber (made of some kind of foam or packing material or something).
The good news is, the costume looks so different on me, Wallace will never recognize where it’s from. Everything is too baggy. I slip the belt to its last hole and it’s still not enough. I pull the jacket tight to myself and feel my ribs hard against the material. I guess it’s fine—it wasn’t made for me, anyway.
I stand in front of the mirror and feel only slightly ridiculous dressing up as one of my own characters, even though it doesn’t look half bad. It feels like real clothes and looks like real clothes. The girl (I should call her a genius, really, some kind of sewing savant) who made it and wore it first was an islander—Filipina, I think—like Kite, so it looked right on her, made her actually look like Kite, whereas on me it just looks like a costume.
“YOUR BOYFRIEND IS HERE,” Sully yells from the foot of the stairs, and a minute later Dad’s voice follows, saying, “Eliza, your friend is in the driveway.”
When I told them where I was going, Mom and Dad both lit up like the mini marathon had come early. I told them they were not allowed to ask questions, and somehow, magically, they resisted. I told them I was going with a kid from school. I was very careful not to say “boy from school,” but Sully has single-handedly rendered that a moot point.
I grab the black saber, the pair of crisp twenties I pulled out of the bank earlier, and my phone, and creep out of my room. Mom and Dad are both standing at the door, looking outside and speaking quietly to each other. I make my way down the stairs.
“What are you supposed to be?”
Church stands in the doorway to the living room, munching on a granola bar, looking way too lanky in his basketball shorts and T-shirt. Sully appears behind him a minute later, wearing almost exactly the same thing, just a touch taller.
“Is that something from your comic?” Sully says.
Mom and Dad have turned around. Great, let’s just get the whole Mirk clan in on this Make Fun of Eliza fest. Bereft of my stealth, I stomp down the stairs, past my parents, and yank open the door.
“I’ll be back later,” I grunt. “I have my phone.”
I close the door behind me and hurry down the driveway. Wallace waits at the end in a swamp-green Taurus, but it’s dark and I can’t see his costume. My heart juts out a staccato rhythm in my chest and my stomach sloshes around like the great foaming tides of Orcus. I slide into the passenger seat.
“Hi,” I say as I buckle my seat belt.
“Hi,” he says back.
I stop. His head is turned toward me, but he looks away, at the dashboard, out the windshield. His voice is so much softer than I expected. I imagined he’d be extra loud, maybe to compensate for all the time he spends quiet, but no. It’s deep and soft, like a fat fleece blanket in the middle of winter.
“You only talk sometimes?” I say.
He nods. “Alone in my car is okay. School is . . . too much. With my friends, yeah, and sometimes with strangers. Still not weird?”
“No, not weird.”
He looks me in the eye and smiles the little smile.
“You make an awesome Kite Waters,” he says.
My body heats up a few degrees. I remembered deodorant. “Thanks,” I say, then look him up and down. “I thought you were going as Dallas?”
“I am,” he says. “The wig and the scarf are in the trunk. They’re kind of dangerous to wear while driving.”
“Ah. Good point.”
“You ready?”
“Ready enough.”
“So where did you move from?”
We round the corner and continue down the long road that connects my neighborhood to the rest of Westcliff. Wallace’s headlights blink on in the growing darkness.
“Illinois,” he says. His voice sits comfortably above a whisper.
“Why?”
“Family got new jobs.” He pauses. “And my mom likes it better here. I have a few friends here too, so it’s not so bad.”
“To each their own, I guess.”
“You don’t like it?”
I shrug. “Maybe, maybe not. I’ve never been anywhere else, so I don’t know if I’d like it better somewhere else, but I’m tired of Westcliff. I’m tired of that high school. And small-town nonsense. Everyone knowing everything about everyone. Have you read the Westcliff Star?”