Eliza and Her Monsters(44)

“How long have you been here?” I ask. He looks over and sees me there for the first time and drops the controller.

“A few minutes,” he says, coming toward me.

“Play another round!” Sully motions to the TV and then to Wallace with long arcs of his arm, like he can pull Wallace back.

“We have to go,” I say. Sully glares at me. I drag Wallace out of the house and to his car.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah. Stressed.”

“Why?”

I shrug. “Stuff.”

We get in the car, lapse into silence. Wallace frowns as he backs out of the driveway and starts toward Murphy’s. When we pass over Wellhouse Bridge, he slows nearly to a stop so he can take Wellhouse Turn. Slow and steady, just like always. Too slow. Too steady. He’s more afraid he’s going to go over the edge than anyone else I’ve ever met. I look over the side, like I always do, and face the drop below.

It’s calm down there. Even if death doesn’t come quickly, I bet it’s almost worth it for the peace and quiet.

Cole and Megan are already at Murphy’s when we arrive, and already talking about the missing pages. The missing pages—page, because there was only one—that went up this morning, but that apparently people are calling the Missing Pages because it’s such a fucking fiasco.

“It’s the first time it happened since the comic started,” Cole says, scrolling through the forums for more posts about it. “Everyone’s talking about it. It’s an event. Look, there’s even fanfiction about the characters temporarily entering a void of no escape between the time the pages were supposed to go up and when they actually did. It’s hilarious.”

He shows it to us. The fanfiction, the forums, the everything. I keep my eyes averted. Wallace scans over it for a second, then shrugs. “I mean, it’s funny, but it seems kind of silly for just one missed day of pages.”

“Page,” Megan corrects, handing toddler Hazel a new picture book to flip through. “Only one page. At least it had some action on it, but those single pages are hard to look past. Nothing happens. I love this comic as much as anyone, but I work fifteen hours a day and take care of this monster”—she grips the top of Hazel’s head—“and when I get to the end of the week all I want to do is sit down with some tea and some Monstrous Sea pages. Preferably a whole chapter.”

Yes, Megan, let me whip up a few dozen pages for you. It’s not like LadyConstellation has other things on her mind, either. I don’t read the comments, but I know a lot of the fans are like this. I don’t blame them. I was like that for a while too, with Children of Hypnos. I was angry at Olivia Kane as much as anyone else.

I don’t blame them, but that doesn’t stop it from being exhausting.

They talk—and eventually get ahold of Leece and Chandra on Cole’s computer, which starts up a whole new round of discussion about the pages—and I rest my head on the table, pretending to sleep. They leave me alone.

A few times Wallace’s fingers brush my knee. I let them. I don’t move.

I get out my phone to text Emmy and Max and find I don’t have the willpower. I put the phone down again.

When Leece and Chandra both have to go, Megan suggests a change of scenery. She’s got three free games of bowling at the Blue Lane, thanks to her second job there. Cole jumps on the chance right away, but before he accepts Wallace asks if I want to go.

I start to say no, then stop myself. I have to try. I have to try, because I’m doing it again—I’m shutting everything out because I’m frustrated and tired and because the real world is difficult and I’d rather live in one of my own making. But I can’t. I am here, and I have to try.

Half an hour later I’m standing at the end of a bowling lane, trying to line myself up with the pins. Wallace is at the snack bar. Megan sits at the table behind me, bouncing Hazel in her lap. Cole stands next to me, arms folded over his chest, a look on his face far too intense for a bowling alley.

“Bowling is like any sport,” he says, and I think he’s mostly talking to himself. “Pros make it look easy, so anyone thinks they can do it. But it’s not easy. You think too much and suddenly the ball is shooting out of the gutter and flying three lanes down and you’re kicked out of the alley for recklessness.”

I press my lips together to hold in my laugh. “I’m not great at bowling, but I don’t think I’ve ever thrown the ball so hard it jumped three lanes over.”

Cole stares stoically down the lane. “Well, it happens.”

“Have you done that before?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

I roll the ball. It heads straight for the right gutter, but halfway down the lane it curves back and strikes the first pin. They fall until only the two in the back left are still standing.

“It worked!” I crane my neck to watch a little eight go up next to my name on the screen above our lane.

“Don’t sound so shocked,” Cole says.

“I’ve never knocked that many down at once before! At least not with a real throw.” I stopped going bowling with my family as soon as Sully and Church got old enough to make fun of me for my granny rolls. Maybe now I can actually compete with them.

I throw my second ball. It grazes one of the pins, but they both stay standing.