“I’m fine.” I have four more Monstrous Sea pages 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 how that goes!”
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! Go do something! Get into trouble, for heaven’s sake!”
“My friends are on here!” I hold up my phone, where Max and Emmy have been silent for days. “I talk to them all the time, and you 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 for this. And we’ll be talking on the computer. I don’t understand why it’s such a difficult concept to grasp.”
“Eliza, I can’t believe you right now.” She shook her head, hands on her hips. She still wears her yoga pants and jacket from her run around the neighborhood. “What is all this about? Do you feel okay? Is something going on at school?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
I turned away from her, ripping the glove off my right hand to wipe away the sweat. “It’s just Monstrous Sea stuff. You don’t have to worry about it.”
She goes quiet. I pull the glove back on and start working on the next panel. The hairs on my neck stand up.
“Your dad and I are really proud of you for that, you know,” she says. “I know we don’t really get it, but we’re proud of you. And we’re happy you love to make it. We only annoy you because we’re worried about you.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Will you come down and open your presents, at least?”
I swivel to look at her again. “Presents?”
“Yes, Eliza. It’s Christmas.”
I stare, sure she must be joking, then glance back at the computer screen and find that no, it really is December twenty-fifth. The realization almost jolts me out of my chair.
“It’s Christmas?” My own voice sounds like a dying goat bleat in my ears. I thought it was two days away. Or two days ago. Either way.
She nods. “We went ahead and let your brothers open their gifts, because we weren’t sure if you were coming down. Or when.”
“Oh.”
“So, are you?”
“I . . . yeah, I’ll be down in a minute. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. There are some hard-boiled eggs in the fridge for you when you’re ready for them too.”
She leaves.
I stare at the clock on my computer.
12/25.
I actually check the messages on my phone, and realize Emmy and Max have been talking to me. Both of them said Merry Christmas, and asked what’s been going on, and they’ve been talking to each other about their breaks. I send a few quick messages to them, then put the phone away and hurry downstairs. Mom and Dad wait for me in the living room, where the tree is set up. Dad has the video camera.
“Sorry,” I say again.
“That’s okay, Eggsy,” Dad says. “Why don’t you go open what Santa brought you, and then we can get your brothers back down here for some board games.”
I do open what Santa brought me. I know it’s from Santa because SANTA is printed on all the tags in my mom’s curly handwriting. Most of it is new clothes. Clothes that will actually fit me.
“You were complaining about not having anything to wear last month,” Mom says, “so I thought I’d get you some things. We can get some more in the spring, and then you’ll have a whole new wardrobe for college. Don’t worry, though—I saved the receipts, so if you don’t like them we can take them back.”
“Thank you,” I say, quietly enough so they can’t hear my voice break.
It’s the first time I’ve actually been happy to get clothes for Christmas. I didn’t ask for anything, because whatever I need I can buy for myself, except clothes. Clothes shopping does not work for me. Mom and I fold them all up in their boxes, and I take them upstairs to my room, where I grab the only Christmas present I could think to get anyone in my family: Monopoly. It takes so long to play, their family togetherness would never have to end.
Dad drags Church and Sully out of their room and forces them to play. They complain at first, until they realize they can bankrupt each other. Mom wins, because she’s the only one in the family with any money sense. It takes like four hours. We eat dinner. Then Dad makes cookies, and we all sit down and watch Miracle together.
I didn’t even know it was Christmas.
Faren turned the book over in his hands. Earthen Fairy Tales. The first book Amity had ever liberated from a shop, the one she’d used to learn to read. Faren let the book fall open on its strongest crease and there, on the middle of the right page, was her name.
“Amity and the Sea Monster.”
“Sometimes,” she said, tracing the letters with one finger, “I think the Earthens lied about this book. I don’t think these stories come from Earth at all.”
At the end of the story, the fairy-tale Amity killed the seacreeper by outsmarting it and crushing it with a large rock.
Amity’s second birth on the beach, years ago, had ended somewhat similarly, but it had been a sunset riser instead of a seacreeper, five times as big and five times as bloodthirsty; it had gone after Faren, not her, because he was closer to the edge of the cliff; and as she stood, horrified, watching the beast swallow him, the Watcher had found her and proposed its deal.
She had accepted, and massacred the monster with the Watcher’s help. Afterward, she had cut Faren, unconscious, out of its long throat.
As they sat and looked down at the book, Faren kissed her and said, “If this is what you feel you need to do, then do it. I know you’re strong enough. If anyone can stop him, you can.”
Then he left her to her reading, and to the feeling that it was not a matter of need at all.
She didn’t need to do it.
She had to do it.
CHAPTER 26