Eliza and Her Monsters(28)
Monstrous Sea Private Message
9:36 p.m. 17 - Nov -16
MirkerLurker: Why is Dallas your favorite Monstrous Sea character?
rainmaker: Because he never gives up, even after all the bad things that have happened to him.
MirkerLurker: You don’t think he’s broken? Most people think he’s broken.
rainmaker: I think he’s strange, but anyone would be after years of torture and exile. He’s doing the best he can. People literally hunt him down, and he still tries to help Amity and Damien understand what the Scarecrow and the Watcher are, where they came from, and why they exist. He becomes Amity’s best friend, even though everyone thinks he’s incapable of friendship. He’s arguably the most powerful character in the series, but he would never use that for revenge or personal gain.
rainmaker: Plus he’s funny. He’s technically older than most of the other characters, but as soon as he gets to Risht he starts dismantling metal trees like a little kid with a new toy.
MirkerLurker: Aw, I like him for that too.
rainmaker: Izzy’s your favorite, right?
MirkerLurker: Yeah, most of the time.
rainmaker: Most of the time?
MirkerLurker: I like all the characters, but usually Izzy is the one I like the most.
rainmaker: Why?
MirkerLurker: Because he was a scaredy-cat. Or . . . because his character arc wasn’t that he stopped being a scaredy-cat, but that he learned to act in spite of his fear. He had to. He had to overcome his fear of being married to Ana, his fear of being a ruler, his fear of raising children, his fear of the Alliance, and the idea that he had no power. He never stops being scared, but he doesn’t let it stop him from doing what he has to do.
rainmaker: Very good, very good. However, I see you have forgotten to mention a silly reason for liking him.
MirkerLurker: Haha it’s his glasses, obviously! The irony that the king of the city of advanced technology won’t get ocular implants because he’s terrified to put things in his eyes.
rainmaker: Weird, I didn’t know you had such a thing for timid guys.
MirkerLurker: Really does it for me when a guy is paralyzed with fear on a regular basis.
rainmaker: Aw. Sad.
MirkerLurker: What’s sad?
rainmaker: That it would never work between us. I’m too courageous.
CHAPTER 16
If there’s one thing my parents like more than sports, it’s family togetherness. Board games, movie nights, vacations. The rest of the year is off-season training; the holidays are in-season, practice every day, games twice a week.
My parents are so into family togetherness that Thanksgiving is like the tournament playoffs. How much can Dad get Eliza and Church and Sully to help him cook? How great can our conversations be at dinner? How easy will it be to get Eliza and Church and Sully to wash the dishes afterward? How many board games can we play? How long can we keep Eliza away from her phone and computer?
Normally we spend Thanksgiving with Aunt Carol and the rest of the extended family. We get to Aunt Carol’s house; Uncle Frank calls Sully and Church “tykes” and ruffles their hair, even though last year they were as tall as he is; Mom and Dad plant themselves at the center of the party, helping with prep and food, flitting around to speak to all the aunts and uncles and cousins at least once; and I sit in the corner with my phone, dreading the moment some family member comes up and asks me what I’m “doing these days.” This means they want to know about school, and if I’ve decided to venture back into the heinous world of sports, and what I’m doing for college. I have my stock responses. “Fine.” “No, no sports.” “I applied to a few different places. Kind of weighing my options right now.” They give me some platitudes about how I’ll find my place, and how college is great and I’ll never want to leave, and how there are lots of places out there looking for smart girls like me to come make the big bucks. Only my immediate family knows about me and Monstrous Sea, and they think it’s a hobby. Most of my extended family doesn’t even know I like to draw.
I wonder what I look like to them. I must be this bland girl who stares at a blank cell-phone screen all day. Every year, by the end of the night, I want to scream. I want to throw my chair, knock over the table, tear down Aunt Carol’s dining-room chandelier. I want to rage.
In some ways I’ve accomplished more than any of them, and I can’t tell them. I don’t want them to know it, because that would be a catastrophe, but I do want them to know it, because then maybe they’ll stop treating me like I’m some empty-headed teenage drone off to serve my life sentence. Maybe then they’d leave me the fuck alone in the corner with my turkey and my mashed potatoes and my phone.
This year, though, Aunt Carol has the flu and the rest of the family is going to Florida, because I guess going to Florida for Thanksgiving is a thing people do. I don’t have to field questions from the rest of the family, a miracle tarnished only by the fact that my parents have decided that in exchange, this will be the most Mirk Thanksgiving that ever Mirked.
It’s just the five of us. Sully and Church help Mom roll out pie crust in exchange for the crust leftovers, while I hide at the far end of the kitchen table, awaiting whatever terrible job Dad can come up with next. I hold my phone under the table so none of them can see it, even though they’d know I was texting if they looked at me.