I lift my head.
“I thought, If this was me, what would I have done? I think I would have told you, but who knows? Maybe not. Maybe I would have done the same thing.”
He runs his hands through his hair, making it stick up.
“I don’t understand. How can you be her? How did I not notice?”
He pauses like he wants me to answer, but I don’t know how, so I keep my mouth shut.
He looks up again. His gaze roams over my desk, my computer, the pen display that wasn’t there before. Then at my blank walls.
“What happened to your room?” he asks.
“I couldn’t look at it anymore,” I say.
He frowns at me.
“And at school?”
I explain it to him. I don’t know if he understands, but he listens.
“I don’t want to go back,” I say. “I know it’ll happen again. Even when I’m alone, I don’t feel alone, because it’s like people on the internet are watching me. At school it’s worse because I can see them.”
“They don’t hate you,” he says. “Most of them are fans, actually. Or people who think it’s cool that you’re kind of famous.”
“It doesn’t make a difference. I’ve read all the messages. It’s like I can’t hold it all inside me at once. Good or bad.”
“Have you been on the forums?”
“Not since last week. I don’t really want to go near my computer anymore.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Neither would I.”
That confirms it, then. Things have been as awful since I stopped looking at them. Big news tends to blow itself out quickly on the internet; everyone’s up in arms about it for a day or three, and then it’s on to the next thing. So if the LadyConstellation reveal is still news a week after it became public knowledge, they’re not going to let it go.
“What do you think they’ll do when the pages don’t go up this week?” I ask. “Or next week?”
“You’re not putting pages up?”
I shake my head. “I have a few in reserve, but I haven’t drawn since last week. Since before. I don’t want to anymore. I don’t even want to hold a pencil.”
“Are you going to put them up eventually?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
There’s a hitch in his breathing. He looks at me, at his hands, back at me. There’s something about his stillness. A nervousness, an uncertainty. “I have to tell you something.” His voice is louder than usual, like he’s forcing the words out. “A day before this happened, before the graduation issue, I got an email from a publisher. They found the transcription. They’re excited about how big Monstrous Sea is, and they want to be the ones to publish it in novel form.”
“They want to publish yours?”
He nods. I swipe my sleeve over my eyes. “That’s great. That’s awesome. That’s a book deal.”
“They said they would need permission to publish it, though. From the creator.”
“Of course,” I say, scrambling over myself to get the words out. This is the very least I can do for him after all of this garbage. It doesn’t matter anymore if my name gets out. “Of course you can have permission. Always. Just tell me where to sign.”
But he doesn’t look happy. He stares at me like I’ve missed some great point. “They don’t want it until they know how it ends.”
“So write the ending,” I say.
“They don’t want my ending, Eliza. They want yours. It won’t be right if it’s not yours.”
“I could tell you how it ends and you could—”
“They. Want. Yours.”
“They aren’t going to take it if the comic isn’t finished?”
He keeps staring at me. My stomach goes cold. “That’s ridiculous,” I say. “It’s still a good story—people will buy it—”
“You have to finish.” There’s a sternness to his voice I’ve never heard before.
“I can’t.”
“You have to finish, Eliza.”
“I can’t even touch a pencil right now. You’ve had that before, haven’t you? Where you can’t do anything because nothing’s flowing, nothing’s coming out, like your head is empty—”
“You have to finish.” His voice is hard. I wish I’d kept my pillow as a shield. “I’m never going to get a chance like this again. If this doesn’t happen, it’s going to be four more years of doing what other people tell me to do. Maybe longer than that. I can’t anymore. Please, Eliza. It’s only a few chapters, just push through and finish it.”
He doesn’t get it. Or he doesn’t want to.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
“Why not?”
“There’s . . . there’s nothing there.”
“Why not? There doesn’t have to be anything there. Artists create when they have no motivation all the time. If I could do it for you, I would—I would kill to write something without motivation if it meant I got to make what I wanted later.”
I have never had that problem. I have never been forced to make anything. I don’t understand how that works.
“I can’t.”
He pushes himself off the bed. His hands scrape through his hair, then ball into thick fists at his sides. A muscle jumps in his jaw. He looks around, scanning the empty walls, the empty desk, the silent computer. “You have a perfect life,” he says, “and you can’t draw a couple of chapters.”
“My life isn’t perfect,” I say.
“You made this awesome thing that millions of people love and adore you for. Everyone knows what you’ve done. They recognize your talent. You don’t have to worry about how you’re going to pay for college, or get a real job, or figure out what you’re supposed to be doing with your life. You don’t have anyone telling you what to do or who to be. All you have to do is draw a few more pages. That’s it. It’ll take you, what, a week or two at most? So please, Eliza, draw the pages.”
When I can’t come up with any words, I shake my head.
Wallace turns and leaves. His footsteps clomp back down the stairs. The front door shuts gently, with a little whoosh of air.
It would’ve been better if he’d slammed it.
CHAPTER 37
I sit at my desk with a sheet of blank paper and my pencil. The pencil is next to the paper, aligned parallel with the short bottom edge. I stare at the pencil. The pencil stares back.
A few chapters. The end. I don’t know the details, but I have a vague idea of what’s going to happen. It can’t be that hard.
Blank pages are supposed to be an invitation. A challenge, even. Here is your canvas—how creative can you be? What limits can you stretch to bring to life that creature in your head? A blank piece of paper is infinite possibilities.
Now when I look at it, all I see is an abyss. Where ideas and excitement used to spring up inside me, now there’s a granite block. Huge, immovable, and so cold it makes my limbs go numb. Looking at paper only reminds me that I’m not strong enough to shift it.
I have to try. For Wallace, I have to try.