“She said he was really upset.”
“And that we should try to get you to talk to him,” Church adds.
I want to say it’s not my job to make him happy, but I owe him a better apology than the one I squeezed out in Mrs. Grier’s room. Still, every time I think about texting him—just texting him, the two words—I imagine him ignoring me, spitting in my face, taking all the pictures I drew for him and burning them.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
I’ll think about it. If I can even force myself to go back to school on Monday.
CHAPTER 33
I don’t go back to school on Monday. I drive to the parking lot of the nearest grocery store, park in the back forty, and climb into my back seat to nap until the car gets too stuffy and I have to roll the windows down. When school would normally let out, I drive home. The next day, I do the same thing.
When I get home, Mom says, “School called today. They said you’ve missed two days in a row, unexcused.”
I hesitate at the bottom of the stairs. “Oh. Yeah. I just . . . I got there, and I didn’t feel good.”
“If you need a little more time off, I’ll call in for you.” She wrings an old pair of jogging shorts in her hands. A pile of exercise clothes bound for Goodwill sits on the living-room floor behind her.
“Okay,” I say, and start up the stairs.
“Eliza, wait.” She moves after me. “If I call you in sick, will you go see the therapist Dr. Harris recommended? Not tomorrow, but maybe next week? We talked to her already, and she said she’d have some time open to see you.”
“Why?” I say, but the word feels hollow.
“Because you’re not acting like yourself, and your dad and I are worried.”
“I don’t really want to.”
“Please, will you go? For us?”
I shrug. That seems to be enough answer for her, because she lets me go upstairs.
After a week of no school, of lying in bed all day and watching Dog Days until I forget why I ever tried to make anything of my own, everything feels terrible. My stomach, my head, my back. My neck aches. My hair is greasy. That’s the only thing that makes me get up and take a shower: when I can feel the oil oozing from my scalp. I’m so tired of being gross. So tired of feeling like my body is this thing I have to lug around with me all day. After the shower I collapse on my bed again. The bare walls make my room feel like a cell, but I don’t have the energy to decorate them with anything else.
There will be no Monstrous Sea pages at the end of this week. I didn’t get online to see what the fandom thought of the last ones. My will is gone. My will to draw, my will to talk, my will to do anything. Where Monstrous Sea once wrapped around my heart, there is nothing anymore.
Maybe that’s normal. The things you care most about are the ones that leave the biggest holes.
There was something distinctly un-Orcian about General White that Amity couldn’t place. Everything about him was sharp, like shards of metal fused into the shape of a man, dressed in an Orcian Alliance military uniform.
“If you kill Faust,” he said, “you will be regarded as a hero. Maybe even a legend. It won’t end our enemies’ attacks, but it will even the odds, and that’s a greater advantage than we’ve hoped for in these long decades.”
“Even the odds . . . ,” Faren said, his stilted cadence melting away. “If she kills Faust, but she’s still alive, wouldn’t the odds be tipped severely in your favor? As far as they’re stacked against you now?”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” White said.
“What happens after?” Faren stared White down. “What happens after she defeats Faust? I assume you won’t be able to remove the Watcher from her. She’ll still be here, and she’ll still feel like she has to save the innocent. What enemies will you send her after then? The Rishtians? The Angels? Those are the enemies you’re speaking of, aren’t they? The clockwork kings and the demons of Orcus?”
His voice rose on the last word. Amity’s skin prickled; she had never considered she might have to fight Orcus’s Angels. White, unperturbed, stared back at Faren. “No one said anything about further enemies, Mr. Nox.”
“Nox-eys,” Faren corrected coldly. He’d never demanded—or even asked—to be addressed with Nocturnian honorifics, and that, more than his attitude toward the general, gave Amity pause. The pretense of his poor Colaarin fled completely. “I don’t for a moment believe you’ll let her come back here to live in peace once Faust is gone. Your people have spent the last half year turning her into a weapon, and years before that studying her. You know what she’s capable of. You’ve convinced her Faust is her responsibility—where does it end?”
CHAPTER 34
“This is stupid.”
Sully stands in the doorway to my bedroom, arms crossed over his chest. I lie on the bed and stare unblinking at my TV.
“No it’s not,” I say. “It’s my favorite episode.”
“I’m not talking about Dog Days.”
I turn my head to look at him.
“I’m talking about you lying here, not telling Mom and Dad exactly what they did.”
“They know what they did.”
Sully rolls his eyes. “Bullshit. They think they know but they don’t, because you won’t tell them.”
I turn back to the TV. “It doesn’t matter. It’s done.”
He growls. “If you won’t tell them, I will.” He storms off. I ignore him until I hear the door to Mom and Dad’s office downstairs bang open, and Sully yelling out to ask if he can use their laptop.
I spring out of bed and rush downstairs. Church and Sully’s homework is spread over the kitchen table, but both of them stand across from Mom and Dad at the island counter, bringing up something on the laptop.
The post on the Masterminds site. The one I used to look at every day.
“What is this?” Mom asks, setting aside her fitness magazine. Neither she nor Dad has noticed I’m in the room.
“This is the post that made Monstrous Sea popular,” Sully says. “This website, Masterminds, is where people share things. There are a lot of people here, and for a post to get to the top of a forum like this one and to stay at the top for as long as it has is really hard.”
“And look at all the comments on it. And the likes,” says Church. “Those are all real people, and most of them are people who read and liked Monstrous Sea.”