Eliza and Her Monsters(67)
I have to try.
I reach for the pencil again. Pick it up. A shock races up my arm, raising the hairs on my head, sending ripples of disgust through my muscles. I grip the pencil tighter only so I don’t toss it away. The first line I draw is lopsided. I don’t even know what it was supposed to be. The edge of a panel? A plane in a character’s face?
Where in the story am I? I don’t remember anymore.
I press my hands to my forehead. My chest tightens and tightens and tightens. This used to come so easily to me. Monstrous Sea has never been difficult. Even when I wasn’t sure where I wanted the story to go, I could just start drawing and it would eventually spill out. Now there’s nothing but aching panic. Panic because there’s nothing. Because even though I know it’s silly to think so, because I know everyone would call me ridiculous for it, I feel like something terrible is going to happen to Wallace if I don’t finish.
I don’t know exactly what, or how. All I know is dread rising in my throat.
I try to start again. Anything. Faces. Eyes. Clothing. Nothing comes out right. It’s too dark, then too light, then skewed to the left. The proportions are off. The lines are shaky. The weight is in all the wrong places.
The pencil ends its life in two halves, one behind my monitor, the other jammed into the space between the desk and the wall. I shove over to the other side of my desk, wake my computer, and Google “Olivia Kane disappearance.” The results are all speculation from online news, fan forums, and social media. Cole’s cave-and-shotgun theory is near the top. Other people think Olivia Kane went all-purpose insane, as if that’s really a thing. Some people say she tried to kill herself. A lot of people. The theory is everywhere. Have I really never seen that one before, or did I ignore it? Was I so naive I thought she’d just hidden somewhere?
Broken people don’t hide from their monsters. Broken people let themselves be eaten.
I curl into myself on my chair, head tucked between my knees and my arms banded over me as a barricade. I can’t cry anymore. I want the tears to come out because I might feel better if they did, but my parents would hear, or Sully and Church would hear, or someone on the omniscient internet would hear and find me and rip me apart. I can’t cry and I can’t draw and I can’t get online and I can’t talk to anyone, so what good am I?
What is the point of me?
CHAPTER 38
School is a terrifying beast.
You spend seven hours a day walking around inside it, and when the day ends it grows small so it can hitch a ride home with you. It burrows into your ear and whispers all the things you can expect for the next day. Your clothes won’t fit right. Your hair won’t behave. You’ll forget your homework. You’ll get more homework. You’ll have to fight for your lunch table.
Everyone everyone everyone will judge you.
There are only two more weeks until graduation. I have no options.
What I want: to stay home. In my room, specifically, with the shades drawn and the TV on, but the volume low so I can doze to the murmuring, mind-numbing voices of Dog Days. I want Davy around to hug, and I don’t want to talk to or see any people. Not in real life, and definitely not online. I don’t want to think about the pages I haven’t finished, and Wallace’s face, burned into my memory, when I told him I can’t.
What will happen if I get what I want: I stay home for the last two weeks of senior year and my parents make sure I visit that therapist until my brain is scrubbed squeaky-clean and I get popped back out like a plate from a dishwasher. That could take months. Or, heaven forbid, years. I don’t want to be this way for years. I don’t want to feel this way for years. Even going to college won’t make this better, because there will be people there too who know who I am. There’s no escaping it now.
So I go back to school.
This spring is too hot for sweatshirts. I make do with a technique for shrinking myself I perfected years ago when I got tired of being picked for activities during sport camps. Never make direct eye contact. Dress in drab colors. Move at the same pace as the rest of the crowd. Disappearing is an art form, and I am its queen. Or at least I used to be.
As soon as I step inside the doors, my knees lock and heat rushes in behind my eyes. I control my breathing. When I’m sure I can move again without falling over, I do. One foot in front of the other.
I will not trip and knock myself out.
I will not trip and knock myself out.
I will not trip and knock myself out.
I reach my locker. Forget the combination. Have to pull out my phone for the first time since Wallace came to my house so that I can find it in my notes.
The door swings open and folded papers spill out onto my feet. More perch precariously on the locker shelf below the slats in the door. I scoop one up and unfold it.
Hi, Eliza,
You don’t know me, but I’m a big fan of Monstrous Sea. Probably like the biggest fan. I’ve only been reading for six months, but it’s my absolute favorite thing. I love your art, and I hope I can draw like you one day. Get better soon!
Listria_Dreams
P.S. I know you like asking who our favorite characters are—mine’s Rory!
This person stuck a note in my fucking locker.
I drop it and bend to shovel the rest back inside before anyone sees. They burn my skin like they’re on fire and slip back out. There are too many of them.