Eliza and Her Monsters(46)

She leaves.

I stare at the clock on my computer.

12/25.

I actually check the messages on my phone, and realize Emmy and Max have been talking to me. Both of them said Merry Christmas, and asked what’s been going on, and they’ve been talking to each other about their breaks. I send a few quick messages to them, then put the phone away and hurry downstairs. Mom and Dad wait for me in the living room, where the tree is set up. Dad has the video camera.

“Sorry,” I say again.

“That’s okay, Eggsy,” Dad says. “Why don’t you go open what Santa brought you, and then we can get your brothers back down here for some board games.”

I do open what Santa brought me. I know it’s from Santa because SANTA is printed on all the tags in my mom’s curly handwriting. Most of it is new clothes. Clothes that will actually fit me.

“You were complaining about not having anything to wear last month,” Mom says, “so I thought I’d get you some things. We can get some more in the spring, and then you’ll have a whole new wardrobe for college. Don’t worry, though—I saved the receipts, so if you don’t like them we can take them back.”

“Thank you,” I say, quietly enough so they can’t hear my voice break.

It’s the first time I’ve actually been happy to get clothes for Christmas. I didn’t ask for anything, because whatever I need I can buy for myself, except clothes. Clothes shopping does not work for me. Mom and I fold them all up in their boxes, and I take them upstairs to my room, where I grab the only Christmas present I could think to get anyone in my family: Monopoly. It takes so long to play, their family togetherness would never have to end.

Dad drags Church and Sully out of their room and forces them to play. They complain at first, until they realize they can bankrupt each other. Mom wins, because she’s the only one in the family with any money sense. It takes like four hours. We eat dinner. Then Dad makes cookies, and we all sit down and watch Miracle together.

I didn’t even know it was Christmas.



Faren turned the book over in his hands. Earthen Fairy Tales. The first book Amity had ever liberated from a shop, the one she’d used to learn to read. Faren let the book fall open on its strongest crease and there, on the middle of the right page, was her name.

“Amity and the Sea Monster.”

“Sometimes,” she said, tracing the letters with one finger, “I think the Earthens lied about this book. I don’t think these stories come from Earth at all.”

At the end of the story, the fairy-tale Amity killed the seacreeper by outsmarting it and crushing it with a large rock.

Amity’s second birth on the beach, years ago, had ended somewhat similarly, but it had been a sunset riser instead of a seacreeper, five times as big and five times as bloodthirsty; it had gone after Faren, not her, because he was closer to the edge of the cliff; and as she stood, horrified, watching the beast swallow him, the Watcher had found her and proposed its deal.

She had accepted, and massacred the monster with the Watcher’s help. Afterward, she had cut Faren, unconscious, out of its long throat.

As they sat and looked down at the book, Faren kissed her and said, “If this is what you feel you need to do, then do it. I know you’re strong enough. If anyone can stop him, you can.”

Then he left her to her reading, and to the feeling that it was not a matter of need at all.

She didn’t need to do it.

She had to do it.





CHAPTER 26


Before I go to bed that night, I get an email from Wallace. Not a text or a forum message. An actual email. He doesn’t forward things. He doesn’t do chain messages. If he wants to tell me something, he either sends it to me live or tells me in person.

But I see his name come up, and I click on it without hesitation.





12/25/16, 11:21 p.m.

To: Eliza Mirk <[email protected]>

From: Wallace Warland <[email protected]>

Subject: You found me in a constellation

I know it’s weird for me to email you. I know we’re both at our computers, and you’re reading this, and I’m sitting in a pool of my own mortification, wishing I could delete emails after I send them. I couldn’t give this to you in person, because then you might read it in front of me. I couldn’t write it out by hand, because we’d be fifty by the time I finished, and that’s not going to work for me.

Normally when I write something, I know how I should begin. I don’t know how I should begin this. There are a lot of things I want to tell you, but I don’t want to scare you. I cannot explain in words how much I don’t want to scare you, and how afraid I am that I will.

So let’s start with this: I never lived in Illinois. I’ve always lived here, in Westcliff. I went to school on the other side of town, with Cole. I’m sorry I lied to you about it. It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you the truth, but if I told you where I was from, I was worried you would figure out the rest of what I’m going to tell you here, and I wasn’t sure I wanted you to know all that.

A while back, you said I looked like a football player. I said I played when I was little. That was only a half lie; I did play when I was little, but I didn’t stop until halfway through sophomore year of high school. I was pretty good at it too. Made varsity. I still have that letter somewhere. My teammates called me Warfield Wallace ’cause I fucked shit up.