Eliza and Her Monsters Page 7

  “No, she took Davy for her quick 10K with her marathon students.”

  “What? Davy can’t run a 10K!”

  He holds his hands up in surrender. “They’re jogging, and the slow students always take care of him anyway. He’s fine.”

  Mom teaches classes for people who want to get in shape to run marathons, which means by definition everyone who signs up is out of their minds. The idea of them pulling my old dog around does not put me at ease.

  The front door opens behind him, and Church and Sully barge in, shoving each other over the threshold. They nearly crash into Dad, who steps out of the way just before they reach him.

  “Hi, boys,” he says genially, smiling again and following them into the kitchen. Their conversation floats up the stairs to me. “How was school today?”

  “Macy Garrison stole Church’s calculator and wouldn’t give it back until he promised to buy her a candy gram on Valentine’s Day,” Sully says. The refrigerator door bangs against the counter and the shelves rattle as they pull food out.

  “I’m not going to do it, though,” Church says, quieter.

  “Were you two going out for Halloween?” Dad asks. I creep down the stairs to hear them better.

  “No,” Sully says. “Halloween is for little kids.”

  “I thought we were . . . ,” Church says, his voice tapering off at the end.

  “Eliza wanted to know if she had to take you guys out again.”

  “Eliza hates doing stuff with us,” Sully says.

  It’s not true—I don’t hate doing stuff with them, it’s just that most of the stuff they like doing is stuff that makes me uncomfortable or angry. Like throwing balls, or moving faster than a quick walk.

  Sully yells, “NO, ELIZA, YOU DON’T HAVE TO TAKE US TRICK-OR-TREATING!”

  I slink back up the stairs and catch the tail end of Church muttering, “Geez, kill my eardrums.”

  Well, great. Now I don’t even have the excuse of having to take Sully and Church out for Halloween. I could lie, though, and say I do . . . Wallace wouldn’t be able to see through that, right? He doesn’t know where I live, or how old my brothers are, or even how serious we are about Halloween, which is not at all.

  But I don’t want to lie to him. I’m already lying to him about the LadyConstellation thing, though that’s more omission than anything else.

  Normally I don’t have any problem lying my way out of things. Of course, normally the only people I have to lie to are my parents and brothers, and all I have to say then is I’m sick, or have too much work. My family is easy like that. I don’t have friends from school who ask me to do things. Not until now.

  I return to my computer, sit, and scratch at the edge of my pen display for a moment. A Monstrous Sea page is still pulled up on its screen—Amity fending off hordes of enemies with the Watcher’s orange crystals. Amity wouldn’t lie to someone to get out of something. If she didn’t want to do it, she’d say it right to their face. And if she was unsure, she’d go do it anyway to test the waters. She’s a quiet, keeps-to-herself kind of person, but she’s not scared of doing things and going places.

  I’m not normally one to take advice from my own fictional characters, but there comes a point in every girl’s life where she reaches a crossroads: a night alone with her sweatpants and her favorite television show, or a party with real, live, breathing people.

  I know what I should do. Call it guilt, my parents’ voices permanently embedded in the back of my head. What are your plans this weekend, Eliza? Going out with anyone? Any friends from school? No hot parties? Hot parties. Only my parents would say “hot parties,” and they’re not even that old. I’m allowed to say no to their ideas for sports and physical exercise, but so far I haven’t found a good way to deflect their questions about my nonexistent school friends and social life. I say “social life” because anything that happens on a computer isn’t social to them. If I told them I was hanging out in a Halloween chat room with a bunch of people on the Monstrous Sea forums, they’d ask if I actually knew any of these people, and then they’d hover around my door, trying to peek inside all night.

  If nothing else, going to this party would get them off my back.

  I bring up Wallace’s message on my computer and fend off doubt with a gnawed-on lion tamer’s chair.

  2:47 p.m.

  rainmaker: So, how about that Halloween party? :D

  rainmaker: If you don’t have a costume, I bet you could just put a sign on your shirt that says “lurker.” I know my friends would think that was the best thing ever.

  rainmaker: btw they’re all huge MS fans. Don’t know if I mentioned that.

  rainmaker: Also I’m driving, so don’t worry about getting there.

  3:11 p.m.

  MirkerLurker: Okay, sure. :)

  CHAPTER 13

  I don’t need the lurker sign.

  Last year, a Monstrous Sea fan cosplayed one of the characters, Kite Waters, at a con, and posted pictures of it on the forums. When I said—as LadyConstellation, of course—that it was the best Kite Waters cosplay I’d ever seen, she mailed me the costume. Well, she mailed Emmy the costume, and Emmy mailed it to me. It’s Orcian Alliance military dress, a white suit with green trim and gold buttons, devoid of any markings of rank because Kite has none. It even includes Kite’s boots and her black saber (made of some kind of foam or packing material or something).

  The good news is, the costume looks so different on me, Wallace will never recognize where it’s from. Everything is too baggy. I slip the belt to its last hole and it’s still not enough. I pull the jacket tight to myself and feel my ribs hard against the material. I guess it’s fine—it wasn’t made for me, anyway.

  I stand in front of the mirror and feel only slightly ridiculous dressing up as one of my own characters, even though it doesn’t look half bad. It feels like real clothes and looks like real clothes. The girl (I should call her a genius, really, some kind of sewing savant) who made it and wore it first was an islander—Filipina, I think—like Kite, so it looked right on her, made her actually look like Kite, whereas on me it just looks like a costume.

  “YOUR BOYFRIEND IS HERE,” Sully yells from the foot of the stairs, and a minute later Dad’s voice follows, saying, “Eliza, your friend is in the driveway.”

  When I told them where I was going, Mom and Dad both lit up like the mini marathon had come early. I told them they were not allowed to ask questions, and somehow, magically, they resisted. I told them I was going with a kid from school. I was very careful not to say “boy from school,” but Sully has single-handedly rendered that a moot point.

  I grab the black saber, the pair of crisp twenties I pulled out of the bank earlier, and my phone, and creep out of my room. Mom and Dad are both standing at the door, looking outside and speaking quietly to each other. I make my way down the stairs.

  “What are you supposed to be?”

  Church stands in the doorway to the living room, munching on a granola bar, looking way too lanky in his basketball shorts and T-shirt. Sully appears behind him a minute later, wearing almost exactly the same thing, just a touch taller.

  “Is that something from your comic?” Sully says.

  Mom and Dad have turned around. Great, let’s just get the whole Mirk clan in on this Make Fun of Eliza fest. Bereft of my stealth, I stomp down the stairs, past my parents, and yank open the door.

  “I’ll be back later,” I grunt. “I have my phone.”

  I close the door behind me and hurry down the driveway. Wallace waits at the end in a swamp-green Taurus, but it’s dark and I can’t see his costume. My heart juts out a staccato rhythm in my chest and my stomach sloshes around like the great foaming tides of Orcus. I slide into the passenger seat.

  “Hi,” I say as I buckle my seat belt.

  “Hi,” he says back.

  I stop. His head is turned toward me, but he looks away, at the dashboard, out the windshield. His voice is so much softer than I expected. I imagined h
e’d be extra loud, maybe to compensate for all the time he spends quiet, but no. It’s deep and soft, like a fat fleece blanket in the middle of winter.

  “You only talk sometimes?” I say.

  He nods. “Alone in my car is okay. School is . . . too much. With my friends, yeah, and sometimes with strangers. Still not weird?”

  “No, not weird.”

  He looks me in the eye and smiles the little smile.

  “You make an awesome Kite Waters,” he says.

  My body heats up a few degrees. I remembered deodorant. “Thanks,” I say, then look him up and down. “I thought you were going as Dallas?”

  “I am,” he says. “The wig and the scarf are in the trunk. They’re kind of dangerous to wear while driving.”

  “Ah. Good point.”

  “You ready?”

  “Ready enough.”

  “So where did you move from?”

  We round the corner and continue down the long road that connects my neighborhood to the rest of Westcliff. Wallace’s headlights blink on in the growing darkness.

  “Illinois,” he says. His voice sits comfortably above a whisper.

  “Why?”

  “Family got new jobs.” He pauses. “And my mom likes it better here. I have a few friends here too, so it’s not so bad.”

  “To each their own, I guess.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  I shrug. “Maybe, maybe not. I’ve never been anywhere else, so I don’t know if I’d like it better somewhere else, but I’m tired of Westcliff. I’m tired of that high school. And small-town nonsense. Everyone knowing everything about everyone. Have you read the Westcliff Star?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s stuff like that. All the stories they run—you know how they’ve had the story about Wellhouse Turn for the past few weeks? That’s all they cover this time of year. So little goes on that they have to focus on the killer road. It’s kind of . . . disturbing.”

  “Disturbing?”

  “They just get so focused on one or two things. They should leave people alone.”

  He glances over at me. Smiles. “Got something to hide?”

  “No,” I shoot back. “I’m just saying, I’d rather be somewhere where no one looks twice at you, no matter what you are.”

  “I get that.”

  We climb a hill, drive through a patch of trees, and start over Wellhouse Bridge. On the far side of Wellhouse Bridge, illuminated by Wallace’s headlights and the fading sun, is Wellhouse Turn: a sharp jackknife in the road where the ground falls away.

  The flowers and other decorations from the picture in the Star are still there, some old and wilting, others fresh. There’s a bent and mangled metal barrier that gets put back up every time someone drives through it and goes over the side. The steep incline leads to the river below where, some say, you can find old car parts embedded in the ground.

  I wonder if death comes quickly for those who go off the turn, or if the long tumble to the bottom takes years.

  Wallace slows nearly to a stop at the turn. Most people slow down here, but never this slow. And never with unblinking rigidity. I get a glimpse of the drop. Even walking down the incline seems like a terrible idea. I bet it would hurt if you slipped, even a little.

  Wallace’s face looks pale while we’re in the turn, but then we pull out of it and beneath the next yellow streetlight, and he’s fine again. As if nothing was wrong to begin with.

  “Bet you don’t have places like that in Illinois,” I say.

  The used bookstore Wallace’s friends told him about is called Murphy’s. I’ve heard of it in passing but never been here; post-Children of Hypnos, I didn’t read much, and after that I bought all my books online. Wallace jokes that the store’s full name is Murphy’s Law. I pray it isn’t, because a lot of things could go wrong tonight, and it would be great if they didn’t.

  Murphy’s is a tiny little brick shop sandwiched between two other tiny little brick shops, with a big happy MURPHY’S BOOKS sign in the tall windows and lights on and bodies moving inside. The tiny parking lot is full when we get there, so Wallace squeezes his car into a spot on the street.

  Before we go in, he pops his trunk and uses his phone as a flashlight to get out what he needs, because the trunk light doesn’t work anymore. He pulls out a lump of what looks like seaweed and a long blue-and-white striped scarf. He winds the scarf around his neck twice, leaving one end hanging down his chest and the other down his back. Then he pulls the lump of seaweed on over his head and shakes it a little so the strands fall in the right places across his face.

  “How does it look?” He holds out his arms. Beneath the scarf he wears a ratty button-down shirt and a pair of pants that have been striped vertically, dark blue and green, with fabric paint. Strictly speaking, he’s not tall or narrow enough to be Dallas, but damn, he makes it look good.

  “Wow.”

  He spins for me, and the scarf even moves like it should, the ends swishing at his ankles. “Where did you get that?”

  “My sister crocheted it for me.”

  “Kind of sad you have to wear shoes, though.”

  “Yeah, had to ditch Dallas’s bare-feet-as-pacifism metaphor in favor of foot safety.”

  “You look awesome.”

  “We look awesome.”

  I strap the saber around my waist before we enter Murphy’s.

  I think if I had to pick a party to come to, it would be this one. The walls are lined with books, and short bookcases separate different sections of the room. A refreshments table is set up beside the checkout counter. “Monster Mash” plays over the store speakers. A flock of Hogwarts students in black robes and house scarves take up most of the middle of the room. A couple of faeries, a vampire, and a witch chill against the back wall. Fixing the pumpkin decorations around the cash register is a girl dressed as a sushi roll.

  “I would kill for sushi right now,” I say.

  Wallace pulls out his phone. I get a text.

  Oh, god, me too. We should get some after this.

  Leaving a party for sushi? Yes, please.

  Wallace leads me to a dark corner where probably the second-largest group of people has congregated. I almost trip over my feet. They’re all dressed in Monstrous Sea cosplay. Some have Amity’s white hair, or Damien’s silverware necklace. Some have the white lines of Nocturnian constellation tattoos drawn on their faces or arms. A large portion of them wear the high collars and red/gold/black color scheme of the Rishtians.

  When they see us, several cries of “Dallas!” and “Kite!” welcome us. Wallace smiles, his ears turning pink, and reaches back for my hand to pull me through the crowd. I let him take it. His palm is rougher than I expected from a writer, but warm. We hold on to each other tentatively, and when we reach the table at the heart of the group, Wallace lets my hand slip out of his.

  Seated at the small table is a young woman with a toddler in her lap, and a boy our age, smiling at the screen of a laptop. The woman is dressed up with the wild brown hair—wig—and layered desert clothing of Imi, another of the Angels; and the toddler, a little girl, is dressed in a tiny outfit to make her look like Imi’s daughter. The boy wears an Under Armour shirt with a high collar—no doubt supposed to be the precise, temperature-regulating thermatrol suits the Rishtians wear—and a jacket made to replicate the one worn by Rishtian aeronauts. Food from the refreshments table litters the space between them.

  The boy and the woman glance up at the same time and say, “Wallace!”

  The boy turns the laptop toward us, where two more girls sit in one video chatroom.

  Wallace starts texting again. Another message pops up on my phone; this time a group message with four numbers I don’t recognize.

  Hi, guys, Wallace writes. I brought a friend. He steps to the side so I can’t hide behind him. This is Eliza. Eliza, this is my friend Cole and his cousin Megan. He motions to the boy and the young woman. And Leece and Chandra. The girls on the computer. They eac
h say various versions of hello, giving me enough time to swallow past the knot in my throat and say it back.

  “Wallace said you’re on the forums,” says Cole. I’m glad he dressed like a Rishtian; he has the sharp, shrewd look many of them wear.

  “Um. Yeah. I just don’t talk much.” Only for Dog Days, which I am currently missing. I left a message on my LadyConstellation page saying I was sick and wouldn’t be able to watch, so hopefully no one gets upset. “Are all of you?”

  My phone pings.

  Oh, right. I forgot to tell you. They’re the other Angels. Sorry—I guess it wouldn’t be obvious that we’re friends in real life too.

  I look around at them. These are the Angels on my forums? The next rung down on the popularity ladder from me? And all in one place?

  My head feels light. One hand goes for my phone and the other searches at my side for something to hold on to, but there’s only open air.

  Wallace goes on. Cole is Fire Served Cold, Megan is Quake, Leece is Tree Chimes, and Chandra is Dark Switch.

  It doesn’t mean much until I put the formatting with the names. I see them all the time in different parts of the forums:

  Fire_Served_Cold, rainmaker’s friend, who hangs around the live chats.

  QUaKE, who supervises the roleplaying boards.

  ~*treechimes*~, who can be found fangirling over the Monstrous Sea custom merch threads.

  And darkSwitch, who draws probably the best fan art I’ve ever seen in my life.

  With Wallace as rainmaker, together they make the Angels, the guardian clans of Orcus. In the story, the Angels are the ones who keep the planet in balance. When something—like the corrupted hand of the Alliance—threatens that balance, they intervene. These Angels keep the balance on my forums, as moderators.

  I feel like I stepped into Power Rangers. They wait for me to say something.

  “Um” is all that comes out.

  “You make a great Kite Waters,” says Cole. “Too short, though.”

  “Cole,” Megan warns. She bounces the little girl on her lap, who giggles. “You look great, Eliza, don’t listen to him. Now sit down, both of you. Eat something!”