Eliza and Her Monsters(50)
I don’t look at him and see Wellhouse Turn, like I thought I might. I only see Wallace. If he says he’s happy, I trust him. The first time we go by Wellhouse Turn on the way to Murphy’s, I glance over at him and he shakes his head, smiling a little.
“Don’t look at me,” he says.
When I look at Wellhouse Turn, all I see is the drop and the wonder.
We dwell on that email as little as possible. When we hang out, we do homework together to try to buffer each other’s grades. Wallace checks history, English (of course), and about ninety percent of the elective courses; I cover math, the science courses, and the other ten percent of the electives, which means art class. Wallace only takes art because he hates the prompts in the creative writing class; I don’t take art because the art teacher is a notorious snoop who would definitely find the Monstrous Sea panels in my sketchbook.
Because of that time around Christmas and the week of New Year’s when we didn’t hang out in person and I had time to catch up on Monstrous Sea, I have a surplus of pages and the momentum to keep going. Reader numbers climb. I post a few more drawings as MirkerLurker, and Wallace tells me how much people love them. I refuse to look at comments. I compile the next graphic novel for the shop, and almost choke at the sheer number of people who buy it in the first three hours after it goes up. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised with the views the pages get online, and the meteoric popularity of Wallace’s transcription chapters—which have almost matched the page views of the comic itself—but it still gets me. Just like my alarm clock every morning.
I see Max around the forums every once in a while, banning someone or closing old threads under the Forges_of_Risht account, and Emmy stops by for the Dog Days watches, but our messages are few and far between. Usually whenever Emmy has time between classes, and when Max lets himself get online. Sometimes it feels like I see Cole, Megan, Leece, and Chandra more than I talk to Max and Emmy. I like Wallace’s friends, but they still feel like his friends. I want my friends back.
By the time February hits—with some delightful below-zero weather cold enough to give you brain freeze from breathing through your mouth—it feels like I’ve known Wallace for five years instead of only five months. Neither of us ever brings up his email again, and I hope it’s okay, but sometimes trying to read him is like trying to read a brick wall. His neutral expression is flat; when it changes it changes fast, and the change never lasts long.
He said we didn’t need to talk about the email, what he said, his dad. We did, kind of, but not out loud. And now I feel like we should. We are both adept at the internet, at molding our text to mean what we want it to mean and what we think it should mean. I can lie on the internet, where people can’t hear my voice. But with him, alone, I can’t lie—I’m not a good enough actress. I hope he knows that.
“That email,” I say one afternoon, while we lie on the mattress in Wallace’s basement room. I’m tucked in the curve of his arm. His cheek is pressed to my hair. We both wear sweatpants. Our textbooks are scattered around our legs, and Wallace holds my latest English essay in one hand and a red pen in the other. I am now certain that the old football jersey pinned to his wall, the one that says WARLAND and the number 73, once belonged to his father.
I say nothing else, and after a moment he shifts his head. The essay and the pen sink to rest against my leg.
“That email,” he repeats.
“We never really talked about it.”
“I didn’t know if you wanted to.” His voice dwindles away. He can talk about grammatical errors, but not this.
“I wanted to say . . . I’m sorry about your dad. Everything that happened. But I’m happy you’re happy. And I’m glad—I’m really glad—you felt like you could tell me all that. I am too. Happy, I mean.”
His arm tightens around me.
“I thought it might have been . . . too much.”
“It wasn’t. What I said—wrote—in class was true. I mean, I’m . . .” I tap a finger on his rib cage without really thinking about where I’m touching. “I’m still here.”
The essay disappears first, then the thick arm I was using as a pillow. Wallace pushes me onto my back and buries his head in the crook of my neck. I giggle because I can’t help it. My hands find his shoulders. He does this sometimes: one slow, careful kiss gets pressed to my collarbone; another against my neck. The neck one wrecks me. Instant ball of nerves. He can’t know how that one feels, or else he wouldn’t stop. He pushes himself up so we’re eye to eye. Our noses nearly touch. His eyes are downcast. I snap my mouth shut. His fingers run up my sides and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe at all.
“Good,” he says.
I lock my arms around his neck and pull him down so the weight of his torso rests on mine and his forehead presses to the pillow. His breath hitches. Before I can stop myself I run a hand up through his hair. The short, sharp bristles along the base of his skull and the back of his head. The smoother, longer strands on the top. He turns his face toward me, and I trace a finger along the hair that’s fallen over his forehead.
Water rushes through the pipes overhead. A clock ticks in the darkness. One of Wallace’s eyes turns amber in the yellow light of his lamp. Want rises up in me, sharp and fast, and I know in that instant that I can’t hold myself back anymore. I don’t want to be the frozen girl, but I can’t wait for someone else to thaw me.