Eliza and Her Monsters(53)

“I thought we said no phones?”

“You must have only said it to Church and Sully. I didn’t hear it.”

“Eggs.”

I climb up the trail past him. “I was talking to my friends.”

“But this is family time. I’m sure your friends will understand when we get back in a few days.” He catches up to me like he was walking beside me the whole time, and holds out his hand.

I still don’t hand it over. “It was important stuff.”

“I’m sure it was.” His voice is light, appeasing. My skin crawls. The outstretched hand grabs my arm. “Eliza.”

I spin on him. He never uses my real name. “It’s just a phone! I’m probably going to get crappy reception up there anyway! Why do you guys have to take everything away from me?”

“I think you can survive without your phone for two days,” he says in official Dad Voice. “And your mother will agree with me. Now hand it over.”

I tear my phone out of my pocket, shove it at him, then start up the trail following the echoes of my brothers’ voices. Dad stays behind me, probably to make sure I don’t stop again.

I don’t plan on stopping. I’m angry enough to walk for days.

Mom, Church, and Sully are already at the campsite. Church and Sully fight over our tent. Mom already has the other one set up.

“Aw, I thought you died back there,” Sully said. He looked at Church. “Guess we have to share the tent.”

I throw my pack into the dirt. “Shut up, Sully.”

Dad’s talking to Mom in undertones, holding my phone out for her. Her eyebrows press together. She slides my phone into her pocket.

I scrub my face with my hands. My hair sticks to my cheeks and my skin itches. Hives threaten. I took my allergy medication before we came up here, and I have one EpiPen in my bag and Mom has the other, but if I have an allergic reaction out here and have to be rushed to a hospital, it will be a welcome relief.

I won’t have an allergic reaction. I haven’t had one since I was ten.

Unfortunately.

The sun’s below the trees when the tents are up and Dad’s starting on the campfire. I toss my stuff inside the smaller tent and climb in after it.

“Thanks for helping set up, Rotten Eggs,” Sully calls from the fireside, flipping me the bird.

“Sullivan!” Mom swats his hand down.

He sticks his tongue out at me instead. I ignore him as I lower the tent flap and spread out my sleeping bag in the middle of the tent. Polyester does nothing to keep out the sounds of the woods, and I don’t plan on sleeping near one of the flimsy walls if anything decides to attack us. Probably nothing will attack us, but I’m not taking the chance.

As I’m sliding inside the sleeping bag, Mom sticks her head into the tent.

“Aren’t you coming to eat s’mores?”

“No,” I say.

“Do you feel okay?”

“Fine.”

She pauses. “Is this about your phone?”

“I’m tired.”

“We want you to spend more time here, in the real world. Your dad didn’t mean to make you angry, but we . . .”

Her voice trails off when I turn away from her and pull the sleeping bag up to cover most of my head. She sighs.

“We know you don’t want to be here. And maybe . . . maybe we just don’t understand it well enough. Any of it. The online friends, the webcomic, even the drawing itself. We’ve tried to figure it out. We want to understand it, to know why it means so much to you. It scares us, how intense you get, and how little we know about it. We can’t get you to explain it, so we’re navigating in the dark.”

There’s a beat of silence where she waits for me to turn over. I don’t. Then she sighs again and stands. Her boots crunch across dirt and twigs back to the fireside.

The four of them talk and laugh for another hour or two. My stomach rumbles. They ate dinner too, not just s’mores. Mom finally sends them all to bed. I pretend to be asleep when Church and Sully climb into the tent and spread out on either side of me.

“How is she already asleep?” Sully whispers. “At home she stays up until like two a.m.”

“She probably was tired,” Church whispers back.

“What, from climbing a hill?”

Church doesn’t respond. They get into their sleeping bags and whisper for half an hour about the outdoor soccer season about to start. I hadn’t even realized the indoor season was over—Mom and Dad just told me when I needed to take them to practice or pick them up. I didn’t know how they’d done. Were there any tournaments? Trophies?

After a long stretch of silence, Sully says, “So did you really try out for the spring musical?”

Church doesn’t respond for a second. “Yes. Why?”

“Just wondering. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you would have made it about Macy Garrison.”

“It—it’s not?”

“No.”

“Oh. But you’re not going to try out for choir?”

“Maybe.”

“Why?” Just the smallest bit of mocking enters Sully’s tone.

“Because I like it,” Church snaps back. “We don’t have to do all the same things. Try out for mathletes or something. You like math. You’d be good at it.”