Eliza and Her Monsters(79)
“Like four thirty. Your parents are making dinner.”
“Oh.”
“You rereading Children of Hypnos?”
“I . . . yeah, I guess.” I didn’t mean to, but now I really want to move on to the second book. “I’m almost done.”
Wallace sits on the floor near the foot of my bed and pets Davy while I finish reading.
That night after dinner, I go back upstairs, get the second book, and start reading again. Then the third. I’ve read them so many times I breeze right through, and by five the next morning I’m halfway through the fourth book. When my parents get up, I’m done, and my emotions have been wrung out like a wet washcloth. Like someone cut me open, scrubbed my insides with a stiff brush, and sewed me back up again.
My brain is in high gear. My blood pumps hard through my veins, and my fingers twitch, and I need something. I need it, I need it, I need it. I need it right now, I need it worse than I’ve ever needed anything before.
I need my pencil.
CHAPTER 44
Monstrous Sea is mine.
I made it, not the other way around.
It’s not a parasite, or an obligation, or a destiny.
It’s a monster.
It’s mine.
And I have a battle axe waiting for it.
MONSTROUS SEA FORUMS
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LadyConstellation **
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AGE: 18
LOCATION: Indiana
INTERESTS: Drawing. Walking my dog. Eggs. (Also, still riding sea monsters.)
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Aug 25 2017
Go here. Read this. Thank me later.
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EPILOGUE
I show Max and Emmy the pages before I put them up, of course. I’m not a completely terrible friend. Max demands I put them all up right away. Emmy is freaking out too hard about the ending to tell me to do much of anything besides fly out to California with a gallon of ice cream and hold her.
I don’t look at the comments. I don’t go to the forums. I don’t want to see what people are saying about me or my story. I’m not ready for that yet, but I am ready for this to be finished.
Max and Emmy watch the boards, and Wallace reports back to me on the status of the fans.
“They’re going fucking nuts,” he tells me the night the pages go up. I have his webcam feed in one window and Minesweeper open in another. He looks off to the side, clicking through the Monstrous Sea forums. Behind him is a small dorm room, a bed lofted with his roommate’s desk beneath it, and a TV perched precariously atop a dresser strewn with ramen noodles and open cereal boxes. I’d like to blame the mess on his roommate, but if it’s food, it’s probably Wallace’s.
“More people are reading it every day. Way more than were ever in the fandom before. And the people who wrote articles about your identity back in May—they’re talking about this now. That the comic’s coming back, that it’s ending. It’s a thing, Eliza. Reading Monstrous Sea is a thing people do. Not just people who like comics but—but everyone. It’s all over the internet.”
I clear out a corner of the Minesweeper board. “Imagine what they’re going to do when they hear about your transcription.”
Wallace beams.
“My editor says we’re in really good shape to have advance copies of the first book ready before the con.” He starts clicking through something on his screen. “Here she said, ‘Your chapters were already so clean, the line edits will be pretty light.’ And she keeps asking if I think I’m going to have time to do my edits with all my homework.” His smile grows. “Like my professors could even assign me enough homework to keep me away from this.”
“If they do, I know some people who might be willing to help with that.”
“I hope you’re not talking about outsourcing my homework.”
“Didn’t you hear? I’m famous. I can do what I want.”
Wallace laughs.
“Who’s famous?” Wallace’s roommate, Tyler, walks into the room behind Wallace carrying a hamper of laundry. Wallace explains the conversation quickly; when he mentions Monstrous Sea, Tyler bends into the webcam’s sight.
“You made Monstrous Sea?” Then he looks back at Wallace. “Your girlfriend made Monstrous Sea?”
“Her name’s Eliza,” Wallace says.
“You have to be kidding.” Tyler drops his laundry basket and hustles out of the room. A minute later, he returns with a flock of college students chattering about Monstrous Sea.
Wallace handles them well. He blocks them from the computer at first, letting them work through their preliminary questions, then lets them see me. Lets me see them.
They’re not monsters. They’re people. We greet each other, and they’re polite, and they want to know how it feels to be me.
“A lot better than it used to,” I say.
I think this will be okay. I think it will be strange, and probably scary, and I think there will still be times where I think I am the worst person on the planet. But I think I will also love myself and what I’ve made, and I’ll know without doubt that those two things are separate.