Eliza and Her Monsters(74)

“You should have been home by now. You didn’t answer your phone.” His voice rasps with every harsh breath. Eyes wide, face flushed. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

“I turned it off. I’m going home now.” I don’t need to tell him the whole truth. He already knows it. I see it in his eyes as they fill with tears.

Then I’m crushed in his arms. He has forgotten how big he is; I bend backward to fit the curve of his torso, the breath squeezed out of me, tingles flushing from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet at how nice it is to be held.

I don’t move. I can’t, not yet.

“You were angry.” My voice doesn’t come out much louder than a whisper.

“Jesus, Eliza, no.” He doesn’t pull back to say it, but his arms tighten. His voice breaks over and over, rapid-fire. His whole body trembles. “No, I don’t care about any of that. Did you come here because of me? I was such an asshole. I should’ve seen—I did see what was going on, but I didn’t . . . I didn’t even try to help, I was so stupid and focused on what I wanted—” He sniffs, hard, his voice broken and high. “Please don’t. Please. I can’t lose anyone else to this stupid turn.”

Then I understand what I was going to do, and what it would have done to Wallace, and I start to cry too.

How terrible it would have been if I’d actually done what I thought about. How terrible it is that he found me here, thinking about it.

“I’m sorry.” The words hiccup out of me. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean to . . . I didn’t think. I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t have—not here.”

“No, no.” He grips the back of my neck. His fingers are hard and reassuring, keeping me from putting distance between us. “I’m just glad you’re alive. That’s all. You’re not a bad person. Please don’t think that.”

“But I lied to you. And the transcription is important.” My hands creep up his sides, around his back, to his shoulders. “Writing and college and doing what you love. That’s important.”

He squeezes me, hard. We fall against my car and sink to the ground.

“Not as important as your life.” He sniffs again, loud, then sits back and lets me go. I rock toward him, then force myself to sit back too. Wallace uses his shirt collar to wipe his face. “Dammit, I’m going to poke my eyes out, I’m shaking so hard.”

I laugh, just a little, because even though I still feel like a shitty person and an even shittier friend, I’m shaking too. It’s a constant tremor from nerves held taut for so long, and it radiates from the base of my skull out through the rest of my body.

“Were you really going home?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Please don’t come back here.”

I nod. I don’t want to. I won’t.

Wallace grabs my hand and holds it with both of his against his stomach. Closes his eyes. His palms are rough where he fell on the pavement. “I was so scared.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too.” Wallace hulks when he sits with his head bowed like this, and his hands dwarf mine. Thick hands, thick wrists, thick arms. Every part of him shivers with guilt, and so does every part of me. There are no rights and wrongs between us anymore. At least, I hope there aren’t.

“Wallace.”

He looks up.

“I want to be happy,” I say.

“Me too,” he says.

We sit in silence for several long minutes, until we both stop shaking. I stand and tug him with me, but with his weight it’s more like me leaning into air until he picks himself up. He hugs me again, softer this time.

He watches me get in my car and head toward home. I wake up to Sully tossing an envelope at my face.

Sunlight streams through my bedroom window. Davy lies on my feet. Sully leaves the door open, letting in the sounds of Mom and Dad and Church moving around downstairs. On the front of the envelope is my address, and a return address that’s just a P.O. Box with no name. The handwriting is flowing script in heavy ink. I pry open the flap and pull out a note written on thick parchment.

I know whose signature will be at the bottom before my eyes ever get there, but it doesn’t make it any less unbelievable.





Dear Eliza,

Thank you so much for your letter. I don’t often write letters, and it has been some time since I’ve corresponded with someone outside a five-mile radius of my home, so excuse me if any of this comes off as strange.

I should start by saying you are not pathetic. I don’t know you, yet I know that by no stretch of the imagination are you pathetic. Most people aren’t, and only think they are. Knocking yourself out on a cafeteria table does not make you pathetic. (Though I’m certain it couldn’t have made you feel very well.)

Being exposed to the public is certainly difficult enough without also being in high school. And being a teen girl, no less. I was a teen girl in high school once, and I do not remember it fondly. My sister loved high school. I didn’t have her knack for navigating schoolwork, extracurriculars, and social circles, often all at once. I never begrudged her this, though, because I was able to escape into my writing.

I feel this may not have been the case for you. My popularity didn’t come until later in life, when I was well settled and hadn’t thought about school for many years. Yours has been with you all this time; from what I’ve gathered in the few news articles I’ve had relayed to me, you’ve been working on this story for most of your time in high school. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to keep that secret while sharing this part of your heart with so many people.