She nods. “And we’re proud of you for that. But . . . is that it?”
I shrug.
“There’s more to life than stories, Eliza.”
She says it like it’s simple. She says it like I have a choice.
There’s the frustration again, hot and ready, and there’s frustration’s best friend, anger, and there are my hands balling into fists and my stomach twisting in a knot and my jaw clenching so hard my molars squeal in protest. Mom takes a step back and then a step forward. She might try to hug me. I don’t want anyone touching me right now.
“I’m going to the lake,” I say, and turn again.
This time she doesn’t stop me.
Sully and Church and Dad are already at the edge of the lake with the fishing supplies. It’s got to be too cold for fish. They’re fishing anyway. Mom goes to join them.
I sit on an outcropping of rock above the lake and try to be angry, but I can’t hold the feeling. I need erupting volcanoes, hurricanes, massive earthquakes. Were I working on Monstrous Sea right now, Orcus’s monsters would bleed from the page in the search for flesh. I need vindication. I do not need little birds twittering over a wide expanse of shimmering lake and a light wind ruffling my hair.
Nature defies my anger. Nature defies every emotion I have. I can’t complain to nature, or appeal to it, or rage at it.
Nature doesn’t care about me.
Monstrous Sea Private Message
6:43 p.m. 21 - Mar -17
MirkerLurker: Finally crawled my way out of hell.
rainmaker: Haha come on, camping’s not that bad. Dirt! Fresh air! CAMPFIRES!
MirkerLurker: I’m convinced there’s something wrong with you. No one should love campfires this much.
rainmaker: Campfires are crackly happiness. So how was it?
MirkerLurker: My parents found out I had my phone and took it away. Wouldn’t let me bring my sketchbook or anything. How big of an issue is it if I have a freaking sketchbook with me?
MirkerLurker: Sorry. I know I shouldn’t be complaining about this. It was only a few days. But they do this kind of stuff constantly, and I don’t understand why they can’t let up.
rainmaker: I think they want to spend time with you. You do have a tendency to zone out when you’re working.
MirkerLurker: So? So do you.
rainmaker: When I say “zone out” I mean I have to shove you out of your seat to get your attention. It’s not exactly normal. I get where they’re coming from—didn’t you say you almost missed Christmas because you were working on something?
MirkerLurker: Well, yeah, but I had to get stuff done. It was really important.
rainmaker: Maybe they have a point. It’s not good to get so intense about things so often. Maybe you should see someone about it.
MirkerLurker: That’s cute. You’re telling me I should see someone.
rainmaker: Real nice, Eliza. I’m trying to help.
MirkerLurker: I didn’t ask for help.
rainmaker: You didn’t have to.
6:55 p.m. 21 - Mar -15
rainmaker: Are you ignoring me now?
7:03 p.m. 21 - Mar - 15
rainmaker: Fine.
CHAPTER 30
On Monday, I stand at my locker and imagine the floor shaking as Wallace stalks down the hallway toward me, parting a sea of students who scramble to get out of his way. He doesn’t look angry. He never looks angry at school. He just looks impassive. Irish Spring wafts over me when he stops two feet away and thrusts a piece of paper under my nose. On it is a single line of his machine-print handwriting.
Are you done?
“Yes, I’m done,” I say.
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 my work 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 his Monstrous Sea transcription. 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 of my original 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 the Monstrous Sea fans, he doesn’t care if I have anything else in me.
Production of Monstrous Sea is 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 about Monstrous Sea and 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.