“Why don’t you?” Lucy asks.
I shrug again. “Never feels right, I guess.”
Wallace runs a finger along the outside edge of his plate, smiling a little. “They’re really great,” he says, voice soft again. “You should post some of them. One or two.”
Every time he talks like this, voice quiet and eyes cast down, smiling, I want to do it. I want to get on my computer right now and upload a few drawings, just to see how he reacts. I know he wants me to be in it with everyone else. A contributor. I know he wants to show off my art, because he told me so behind the middle school one day, and whenever I think about it my stomach flips over and my heart shoots into my throat and I want to kiss him all over his beautiful, dimpled face.
Every time he talks like this, my resolve gets a little weaker.
No one will be able to tell I’m LadyConstellation from a few drawings.
“I was . . . I was thinking about it,” I say finally, and that draws Wallace’s eyes up to mine.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Maybe later.”
“Really?”
I laugh. “Yes. What’s wrong with you? Do you feel okay?”
He sits straight in his seat like a two-hundred-pound ball of energy. Before he can say anything else, the front door opens again. “Tim’s home!” Lucy shouts. A laugh comes from the entryway, and a moment later a tall bald man steps into the kitchen.
“Breakfast for dinner, my favorite!” Tim sweeps by the stove to plant a kiss on the top of Vee’s head, then moves around to the table to plant one on Lucy and Bren too. Then he takes the seat at the end of the table, on Wallace’s right side, and gives me a genial smile. “And you’re Eliza.” He reaches across the table to shake my hand; he has Bren’s titan grip. “We’re so glad to have you for dinner, Eliza.”
“Thank you.” He is very loud, and very confident, and I am shrinking in my seat every second he focuses on me.
“Lucy, hon,” Vee calls, “come help me with the food.”
Lucy gets up to bring the bacon, sausage, and toast to the table. Vee brings the eggs—all sunny-side up—and begins sliding them onto our plates. My stomach rumbles. Wallace nudges me with his elbow, and I can’t tell if it’s on purpose or if it’s because his shoulders are so wide he takes up all my arm space.
“So, Keelers and Warlands,” Tim says, after Vee sits down at the other end of the table. “What’d we accomplish today?”
Vee shares a story about an old high-school friend she ran into at the grocery store while she looked for ingredients to a new recipe she wanted to try. Lucy regales us with the research she did on tennis racquets, and spends five minutes trying to convince Tim to let her buy a restringing machine, which he declines. Bren complains about a young couple who abandoned a puppy at the day care because they got it as an early Christmas gift but didn’t want to keep it. The rest of us eat while the other person talks. Then Tim turns his sights on me.
“Eliza, would you like to share?”
“Oh. Um.” What have I done today? I lay in bed and watched Netflix. I opened up yesterday’s Westcliff Star and read the wrap-up story about the Wellhouse Turn deaths about twelve times. Then I scheduled the single Monstrous Sea page going up tonight—the only one I could finish, considering the damage Wallace had done to my productivity. After that, I spent a few hours sweating. Then I showered. And now I’m here.
“Why don’t I go?” Wallace says. “I’m done eating.” He inhaled his food.
Tim turns to him instead.
“I helped Bren get that retriever that’s had the trust issues to let me give it a bath today,” Wallace says. Then the corners of his lips creep upward. “And, uh . . . I sold two more commissioned stories.”
“Two more?” Vee chirps. “Wally, that’s great!”
“You didn’t tell me that!” Bren says.
Lucy throws her napkin at him. “Are you going to let me read them?”
Tim smiles. “That’s great, Wallace. Are these your fanfiction stories?”
“Yeah. Not Monstrous Sea, but something else.”
“Have you tried selling any of your own?”
Wallace scratches the back of his neck. “That’s not really how it works. People request the stories because they already know the characters, and what they want.”
“Hmm.” Tim goes back to his eggs. “So is this what you’d be doing with your major next year? Writing fanfiction?”
All amusement has left Wallace’s face. “No, they don’t do fanfiction in any creative writing major.”
“So you’d be writing your own work.”
“Yeah.”
“What is that going to get for you, if you can’t make money off your own work?”
“Timothy,” Vee warns. “Not while we have a guest.”
I shrink into Wallace’s side, but Tim’s laser gaze finds me anyway. “Eliza,” he says. “You plan on going to college next year, don’t you? What do you want to major in?”
Art seems like the obvious answer, but I haven’t settled on anything yet because there’s no major for drawing Monstrous Sea. But saying “art” doesn’t seem like it’ll get me many points in Tim’s book. “Graphic design,” I say. “For, like, marketing. And stuff.” Way to stick the landing, Mirk.
“Graphic design,” Tim repeated. “See, Wallace, even that has business appeal. Graphic designers can make good money. I’m not saying you can’t do writing, just do some writing that you can build a career on. Creative writing isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
Wallace clamps his mouth shut and stares at his plate. Lucy shoves a piece of bacon into her mouth, and Bren covers her face with a hand, slowly shaking her head.
“This fanfiction thing is for fun. Your mother and I won’t be paying for a college education that supports a hobby. We want you to do something meaningful.”
Tim keeps going. Wallace’s fist tightens against his thigh. I brush my finger against it, and he grabs my hand. Squeezes hard, like he’s in pain. I squeeze back.
“I know you don’t like listening to this,” Tim says, “but it’s the way the world is.”
A beat of silence falls over the table as Tim goes back to his eggs. Then Wallace says, “May we be excused?”
Tim looks ready to say no, but his mouth is full. Vee shoots him a venomous look from the other end of the table and says, “Yes, hon, you and Eliza are excused. I’ll get your plates.”
Wallace stands and pulls me out of the kitchen.
CHAPTER 22