Eliza and Her Monsters(35)

“Davy?” Wallace lets Davy lick his face. “Like Dallas’s sea monster Davy?”

Crap. “Hah, yes, like that. I got to name him.” Lies. I named the sea monster Davy after the dog Davy, not the other way around. The dog Davy is big and white and happy. The sea monster Davy could crush most cities, sheds clumps of fur that get mistaken for icebergs, and has a long neck and a tiny head with two little round eyes and a perpetual vacant smile. Sea monster Davy came to life when I was very little, and dog Davy dwarfed me.

Wallace looks around the room at the decorations on my walls. “What is that?”

He motions to Mr. Greatbody, who has made his rounds across the walls of my room and now sits above my computer. One of his paper eyes has fallen off, lost forever to the vent in the floor. “Something one of my online friends made for me. It’s her kind of joke.”

“I won’t ask, then.”

“So. Children of Hypnos. I’m guessing this means you finished?”

Wallace levels a stare at me the likes of which I’ve never seen before. Except in the mirror, every freaking time I read through Children of Hypnos. Here’s a big football-looking dude sitting on my bed with a very large, happy dog wiggling into his lap, getting angry about a series of novels.

“How is there no fifth book?” he asks. “How can it end there? How does no one know the real reason she quit writing?”

I settle in my desk chair. “Welcome to the pain of the Children of Hypnos fandom.”

“But what happens to all of them? Emery? Wes? Will Klaus and Marcia ever be together again? Does Trevor van der Gelt lose himself to his doppelg?nger? Does Ridley come back? Do they ever find Hypnos?”

I shrug.

“What about the author, though?” He opens up one of the books to the back flap, the picture of Olivia Kane. “Doesn’t she know? Even though she never wrote it, couldn’t she tell the fans what happened? She must have said something.”

“Trust me, I’ve loved these books since I was like twelve. I’ve looked. Olivia Kane is one hundred percent hermit, she doesn’t talk to anyone. She hasn’t made a public appearance in four years.”

“But—”

“You heard what Cole and Chandra said. Most people think she’s a lunatic. She might be, for all anyone knows. Stress does strange things to people.”

Wallace slumps against the wall in defeat. “This is the biggest disappointment I’ve suffered in my entire life as a fan. Can we, like . . . write her a letter, or something?”

“You’re really hung up on this, aren’t you?”

Wallace runs his hands over Davy’s fur. A deep furrow appears between his eyebrows. “I don’t know, I just . . . how can she leave it like that? The fifth book was supposed to explain so many things. Do they all die? Does Hypnos wake up and reset the world? Emery was dealing with all that guilt and her depression—what happens to her?”

I pull my knees up to my chest and watch him. He pets Davy, and Davy happily rolls over onto his back. Wallace glances at the stack of books, then focuses somewhere around my feet.

“There’s lots of fanfiction about it,” I say. “Or there used to be, before the fans scattered to the winds. People have written their own interpretations of the last book. Some of them are really good.”

He shakes his head. “It won’t be right. Why did she stop writing them?”

“No one knows. I think it was the pressure.”

“I guess I can’t really be mad about it, then.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “How can you be mad that something doesn’t happen, when it would hurt another person? If she had to quit for her health, then I’m glad she did. You shouldn’t have to kill yourself for your art. No matter how many fans you have.”

I get the very intense desire to hug him then. And possibly kiss him. Still debating the kissing, though. “I’m not sure how many people would agree with you on that.”

“Unfortunately,” he says. Then he looks toward my headboard shelves, filled with all my different copies of the Children of Hypnos books, and smiles. “I like your house,” he says. “It’s bigger and quieter than mine.”

“It’s not quiet when Church and Sully are home, trust me. Speaking of which—do you have to be home at a certain time? I have to take them to soccer practice at four, if you want to come and hang out.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Now we’re both smiling.

Mom calls us down for lunch. I expect to have to pull Davy off Wallace’s lap, but Wallace picks him up and sets him on the floor. Davy’s tail wags the whole time. I stare.

“What?” Wallace says.

“Do you play football?You seem like you should play football.”

“I like watching football. Does that count?”

“You just lifted a hundred-and-forty-pound Great Pyrenees like he was filled with Styrofoam.”

Wallace holds out his arms. “Wanna try?”

“Um. Rain check.” Despite being almost thirty pounds lighter than Davy, I haven’t let anyone try to lift me since some boys at school made a joke out of it in gym class and pretended like they couldn’t get me off the ground. That was freshman year, when I was just Creepy Too-Thin Eliza, not Creepy Don’t-Touch-Her-You’ll-Get-Rabies Eliza.