Eliza and Her Monsters(27)

He glances up. “You should post these online. You’ve gotten closer to LadyConstellation’s style than anyone I’ve ever seen before. These are amazing.” He turns to the next page. “Oh, wow. I really like this one.”

I sit up on my knees to see over the edge of the paper. It’s a sketch of Kite Waters I did in class the other day because I couldn’t stop thinking about Halloween. Kite wears a torn Alliance uniform, bloodied from battle, holding her saber defiantly at her side.

“You can keep it, if you want,” I say.



“Are you sure?”

“I’m not going to do anything with it.”

“Put it up online.”

I ball my hands in my sleeves. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to. It makes me nervous.”

“You shouldn’t have anything to be nervous about—they’re amazing. Everyone will love them.”

I shake my head. He can’t know, of course, that I’m not nervous about people rejecting them, but about someone linking anything I post as MirkerLurker to LadyConstellation. Plus, I don’t know, these pictures are for me. They’re concepts, half-formed thoughts. They’re not polished and ready for the world, and I don’t want anyone to see them. I’m half convinced the only reason Monstrous Sea has done so well is because I’m a stickler for perfect pages. Plot, lines, colors, characters. My fans deserve the best-quality work I can give them. I know that’s not the whole reason, but it’s got to be at least part.

“Okay.” He hands the other pictures back to me and keeps the one of Kite Waters. Smiles at it again. “Thank you. Do you mind if I show this to Cole and Megan and the others? They won’t share it if I ask them not to, but this is just so cool—I have to show it to someone who gets it.”

“Sure, I guess.” If Wallace says they won’t share it, then I believe him. They’re nice people, anyway. Even I can tell that much.

The buses begin pulling around the middle school to line up for the end of the day.

“Guess I should go back to my car so my brothers can find me.”

“I’ll walk with you.”

We head toward my car, parked at the far end of the tennis courts.

“Doesn’t your sister usually pick you up?”

“Yeah, my stepsister,” he says. “But I have a younger sister who goes here, and my stepsister picks her up too. So Bren said she’d get me when she gets Lucy.”

“Bren and Lucy?”

“Yeah. Yours?”

“Sully and Church.”

“Those are short for . . . ?”

“Sullivan and Churchill. Ed Sullivan, Winston Churchill. Never asked my parents why, never going to ask them why. Just glad I got a normal name.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“I never asked why my parents named me Wallace.”

“Why don’t you ask them when you get home?”

He looks down, picks at his ear. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

His voice gets quieter. “Both my parents are, uh . . . are gone.”

Gone? Does that mean dead? Or absent? Not knowing exactly what “gone” means makes a strange hollow in my stomach, reminding me I don’t know as much about him as I thought.

“Oh.” Heat floods my face. “Oh, sorry.”

He shakes his head. “It’s okay. My family is kind of weird. Two stepparents, one stepsister, one half sister. They’re all really nice, though. I guess I shouldn’t call Vee my stepmom anymore; she was technically my legal guardian. But I’m eighteen, so maybe it doesn’t matter. . . .”

I’ve never known anyone in real life with stepparents. The fact hits me after several seconds’ delay, followed immediately by a hot wash of shame. I complain about my family all the time—in my head, to Max and Emmy, even a few times to Wallace, in little messages through the forums, or in quick, throwaway sentences in our paper conversations at school. I assumed his family was the same way. I never thought about the fact that while my family bugs the shit out of me, they are my family, my flesh and blood, still working as a whole unit.

Not that his isn’t. He could love his family as much as I love mine. Maybe more, because he never complains about them.

God, I don’t know anything.

We reach my car. The doors of the school fly open and thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds spill out, speed-walking to their buses. Wallace waits by my car with me in semi-awkward silence until we see the brown-haired heads of my two brothers charging toward us.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says.

“See you,” I say.

He heads off toward the front of the school, where his younger sister no doubt waits. Sully and Church reach me, backs bent with the weight of their bags, their sports gear already in hand. They’re talking about some fight that broke out in the cafeteria today, not paying attention to me as they jump into the car and buckle themselves in. I wait at least a full minute to see if they notice they’re not moving, then get into the driver’s seat.

“What took you so long?” Sully says.

I shrug, and turn on the car.