Eliza and Her Monsters(19)
Let me guess. You go as Dallas.
Very astute. Anyway, I was thinking, if you didn’t have anything else to do, maybe you’d want to go. It’s a bookstore, so it’s not like the party gets wild, and everyone there is nerdy book people. If you don’t want to, that’s fine.
He wants me to go to a party. I haven’t been to a party since Kenny Smith from next door invited me to his birthday when we were eight, and that ended with me getting pushed into his pool and laughed at all the way home.
Can I think about it?
Yeah, of course.
I’m not going. I like to tell myself I might go—I like to tell myself I might do a lot of things—but I and my brain and everyone else know that I’m going to chicken out in the end and barricade myself in my bedroom with a plate of pizza rolls and my Netflix subscription.
I feel bad writing it down on the paper, that I’m going to think about it.
Monstrous Sea Private Message
2:54 p.m. 28 - Oct -16
rainmaker: Hey, it’s Wallace. Please tell me I blew your mind again. You make the best face when your mind is being blown.
MirkerLurker: Whoa that sounded dirty.
rainmaker: Too much?
MirkerLurker: Ummmmmmmmmm
rainmaker: Too much. Noted.
MONSTROUS SEA FORUMS
USER PROFILE
rainmaker *
Fanfiction Moderator
AGE: Not telling you
LOCATION: NO
INTERESTS: MS. Writing things. Campfires. Sweaters. Sleeping in. Dogs.
Followers 1,350,199 | Following 54 | Posts 9,112
[Unique Works 144]
UPDATES
View earlier updates Oct 20 2016
The next chapter of the Auburn Blue fanfic will probably be a little late. Just started at the new school. So, that’s fun.
Oct 21 2016
Thanks to @joojooboogee for my new avatar! #DallasRainerForever
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Oct 23 2016
If math homework were a real person, I’d be doing 25 to life. #Mathslaughter
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Oct 24 2016
There might actually be other MS fans at this school. THANK JESUS I’M SAVED.
Oct 26 2016
Life is destroying me today. No time to write. Stupid math. #Mathslaughter
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Oct 27 2016
Definitely another MS fan at this school. Pros: Awesome; Not alone; Pretty girl. Cons: Pretty girl. #Fuuuuuuuuck
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Oct 28 2016
Heyyyy let’s not talk about the pretty girl anymore okay she’s probably looking at this.
CHAPTER 11
Wallace thinks I’m pretty.
Wallace thinks I’m pretty?
Did he put that there because he knew I’d see it later? Is he trying to lure me into some kind of trap? Wallace doesn’t seem that conniving, but I don’t know, I’m not a teenage boy.
Wallace thinks I’m pretty.
This is weird.
I have on a sweatshirt two sizes too big and jeans worn so often you can’t see the shape of my legs inside them. My hair’s okay, I guess, when it’s not covered in glitter. It’s not that I think I’m ugly, I just don’t think about what I look like. I don’t live out there. If I had my way, I wouldn’t look like anything at all. I would be a free-floating consciousness that can also somehow draw. I don’t care how I look. I don’t want to care.
It is weird for him to point it out. No one points out how I look. I am not a “point out how she looks” kind of girl.
I really want to bring this up with Emmy and Max to see what they think, but I can’t, because I don’t want them to know Wallace is rainmaker. Like telling them about the transcription, it seems like a betrayal of trust. I could say he said that to my face, but I know for a fact Emmy skims through the Angels’ update feeds at least once a week, and she’ll definitely see it on rainmaker’s page. It doesn’t take an engineering prodigy to put those two things together.
But Wallace gave me another chapter of Monstrous Sea, so he can’t be kidding. He put time and thought into this. He cares about Monstrous Sea—he wouldn’t use it to hurt someone. Right?
CHAPTER 12
On Wednesday, Wallace and I hang out at school like nothing different has happened. And by “hang out,” I mean we pass notes in homeroom and sit together at lunch. I try not to gush too much over the second chapter of his transcription of Monstrous Sea. When I pass him on the bench outside school at the end of the day, he looks up and waves good-bye, and I don’t feel the need to sprint to my car and lock myself inside.
Thursday’s the same, but when I get home that day and check my messages to see if Emmy and Max have gotten their packages yet, I find a new message thread from Wallace.
2:47 p.m.
rainmaker: So, how about that Halloween party? :D
rainmaker: If you don’t have a costume, I bet you could put a sign on your shirt that says “lurker.” I know my friends would think that was the best thing ever.