Eliza and Her Monsters(29)

emmersmacks: Ugh I wish I had your Thanksgiving

emmersmacks: Stuck at school right now finishing final projects

emmersmacks: Cant go home until winter break :(

MirkerLurker: I’ll trade you.

Apocalypse_Cow: all holidays are overrated anyway.

MirkerLurker: Even Christmas? Presents?

Apocalypse_Cow: a. i don’t celebrate christmas. b. i’m pretty sure most parents don’t get a lot of gifts for their twenty-two-year-old son anyway. c. yes, christmas is the most overrated of all holidays.

MirkerLurker: ?? I thought Heather celebrated Christmas? Or is she too busy with her sixth-grade-teacher modeling to deal with that this year?

Apocalypse_Cow: eh.

MirkerLurker: Is something wrong?

Apocalypse_Cow: nah. heather went home for the holidays.

Max being weird is . . . weird. I wait for more explanation, but none comes. Something must have happened between him and Heather, but if he won’t say it here, then he won’t say it anywhere. It would be nice, I guess, if he was sitting in front of me—then at least I’d have a facial expression or some body language or something to go off of. Max and Emmy once suggested we video chat, but I vetoed it. It felt wrong, somehow. Like we would ruin what we had by showing each other our faces. Now it seems like it might be helpful.

A text comes from Wallace.

An actual text too, not a message through the forum app. I gave him my number awhile back, before Halloween, but not because I wanted him to call me or anything. I wrote it on the edge of our conversation paper in homeroom and slid it over to him because sometimes I see something and think, Wallace would laugh at that, I should send him a picture of it, but the messaging app is terrible with pictures and texting is way better.

So he texts me now, and it’s a picture. A regular sweet potato pie. Beneath the picture, he says, I really like sweet potato pie.

I text back, Yeah, so do I.

Then he sends me a picture of his face, frowning, and says, No, you don’t understand.

Then another picture, closer, just his eyes. I REALLY like sweet potato pie.

A series of pictures comes in several-second intervals. The first is a triangular slice of pie in Wallace’s hand. Then Wallace holding that slice up to his face—it’s soft enough to start collapsing between his fingers. The next one has him stuffing the slice into his mouth, and in the final one it’s all the way in, his cheeks are puffed out like a chipmunk’s, and he’s letting his eyes roll back like it’s the best thing he’s ever eaten.

I purse my lips to keep my laugh in, but my parents are fine-tuned to the slightest hint of amusement from me, and they both look up.

“What’s so funny, Eggs?” Dad says.

“Nothing,” I reply. Nothing makes a joke less funny than someone wanting in on it, especially parents.

Wow, I say to Wallace. You really like sweet potato pie.

He sends one more picture, this one with him embracing the pie pan, gazing lovingly at it. We’re to be married in the spring.

An actual laugh escapes me. I really hope Wallace is having a better Thanksgiving than I am. It seems like he is. I take a picture of myself pouting and send it to him, saying, Aw, the cutest of cute couples.

“Stop taking selfies,” Sully says from the other side of the room.

“I wasn’t taking selfies,” I snap back.

“Why were you taking selfies?” Church asks.

“I wasn’t taking selfies!”

“Eggs, why don’t you go ahead and put that phone away so you can help me with the cranberry sauce?” Dad says, looking chipper. I clamp down on the immediate frustration that bubbles up in my chest, leave my phone on the table, and get up to help.

Dinner begins as it always does, with Mom joking that we’ll be spending all of tomorrow working to lose the calories we eat today. For the rest of them, that’s a challenge—see how much you can eat now so you get to do more fun exercise tomorrow. Personally, it makes me want to fast.

Then my parents move on to asking me, Sully, and Church the latest updates from school, and how well we think we’re going to end our semesters.

“Church is going to ask Macy Garrison out before Christmas,” Sully says. Beside him, Church’s face turns a mottled crimson.

“No I’m not!”

“You two sure have been talking about this Macy Garrison a lot,” Dad says. “When are we going to get to meet her?”

“You’re not going to meet her!”

Sully smiles through the mashed potatoes stuffed in his mouth. Swallows, and says, “And Eliza’s hanging out behind the middle school with her boyfriend every day. You guys haven’t met him, either.”

“He’s not my boyfriend!” I snap, my face heating. Sully looks between me and Church and laughs.

“Every day?” Mom says, glancing first at me, then at Dad. “Is that why you wanted to pick up Sully and Church from school, Eliza?”

“I—no! I just thought they wouldn’t want to ride the bus. Wallace has to pick up his sister from the middle school anyway, so—he’s not my boyfriend!”

Dad holds up his hands. “Whoa, whoa there, Eggs. Your mom and I think we should meet Wallace before this goes any further.”

I am burning in the deepest pits of familial humiliation. “Nothing is going to go further. There is nothing to go further. Can we stop talking about this?”