Home > Eliza and Her Monsters(14)

Eliza and Her Monsters(14)
Author: Francesca Zappia

If nothing else, going to this party would get them off my back.

I bring up Wallace’s message on my computer and fend off doubt with a gnawed-on lion tamer’s chair.

2:47 p.m.

rainmaker: So, how about that Halloween party? :D

rainmaker: If you don’t have a costume, I bet you could just put a sign on your shirt that says “lurker.” I know my friends would think that was the best thing ever.

rainmaker: btw they’re all huge MS fans. Don’t know if I mentioned that.

rainmaker: Also I’m driving, so don’t worry about getting there.

3:11 p.m.

MirkerLurker: Okay, sure. :)

CHAPTER 13

I don’t need the lurker sign.

Last year, a Monstrous Sea fan cosplayed one of the characters, Kite Waters, at a con, and posted pictures of it on the forums. When I said—as LadyConstellation, of course—that it was the best Kite Waters cosplay I’d ever seen, she mailed me the costume. Well, she mailed Emmy the costume, and Emmy mailed it to me. It’s Orcian Alliance military dress, a white suit with green trim and gold buttons, devoid of any markings of rank because Kite has none. It even includes Kite’s boots and her black saber (made of some kind of foam or packing material or something).

The good news is, the costume looks so different on me, Wallace will never recognize where it’s from. Everything is too baggy. I slip the belt to its last hole and it’s still not enough. I pull the jacket tight to myself and feel my ribs hard against the material. I guess it’s fine—it wasn’t made for me, anyway.

I stand in front of the mirror and feel only slightly ridiculous dressing up as one of my own characters, even though it doesn’t look half bad. It feels like real clothes and looks like real clothes. The girl (I should call her a genius, really, some kind of sewing savant) who made it and wore it first was an islander—Filipina, I think—like Kite, so it looked right on her, made her actually look like Kite, whereas on me it just looks like a costume.

“YOUR BOYFRIEND IS HERE,” Sully yells from the foot of the stairs, and a minute later Dad’s voice follows, saying, “Eliza, your friend is in the driveway.”

When I told them where I was going, Mom and Dad both lit up like the mini marathon had come early. I told them they were not allowed to ask questions, and somehow, magically, they resisted. I told them I was going with a kid from school. I was very careful not to say “boy from school,” but Sully has single-handedly rendered that a moot point.

I grab the black saber, the pair of crisp twenties I pulled out of the bank earlier, and my phone, and creep out of my room. Mom and Dad are both standing at the door, looking outside and speaking quietly to each other. I make my way down the stairs.

“What are you supposed to be?”

Church stands in the doorway to the living room, munching on a granola bar, looking way too lanky in his basketball shorts and T-shirt. Sully appears behind him a minute later, wearing almost exactly the same thing, just a touch taller.

“Is that something from your comic?” Sully says.

Mom and Dad have turned around. Great, let’s just get the whole Mirk clan in on this Make Fun of Eliza fest. Bereft of my stealth, I stomp down the stairs, past my parents, and yank open the door.

“I’ll be back later,” I grunt. “I have my phone.”

I close the door behind me and hurry down the driveway. Wallace waits at the end in a swamp-green Taurus, but it’s dark and I can’t see his costume. My heart juts out a staccato rhythm in my chest and my stomach sloshes around like the great foaming tides of Orcus. I slide into the passenger seat.

“Hi,” I say as I buckle my seat belt.

“Hi,” he says back.

I stop. His head is turned toward me, but he looks away, at the dashboard, out the windshield. His voice is so much softer than I expected. I imagined he’d be extra loud, maybe to compensate for all the time he spends quiet, but no. It’s deep and soft, like a fat fleece blanket in the middle of winter.

“You only talk sometimes?” I say.

He nods. “Alone in my car is okay. School is . . . too much. With my friends, yeah, and sometimes with strangers. Still not weird?”

“No, not weird.”

He looks me in the eye and smiles the little smile.

“You make an awesome Kite Waters,” he says.

My body heats up a few degrees. I remembered deodorant. “Thanks,” I say, then look him up and down. “I thought you were going as Dallas?”

“I am,” he says. “The wig and the scarf are in the trunk. They’re kind of dangerous to wear while driving.”

“Ah. Good point.”

“You ready?”

“Ready enough.”

“So where did you move from?”

We round the corner and continue down the long road that connects my neighborhood to the rest of Westcliff. Wallace’s headlights blink on in the growing darkness.

“Illinois,” he says. His voice sits comfortably above a whisper.

“Why?”

“Family got new jobs.” He pauses. “And my mom likes it better here. I have a few friends here too, so it’s not so bad.”

“To each their own, I guess.”

“You don’t like it?”

I shrug. “Maybe, maybe not. I’ve never been anywhere else, so I don’t know if I’d like it better somewhere else, but I’m tired of Westcliff. I’m tired of that high school. And small-town nonsense. Everyone knowing everything about everyone. Have you read the Westcliff Star?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s stuff like that. All the stories they run—you know how they’ve had the story about Wellhouse Turn for the past few weeks? That’s all they cover this time of year. So little goes on that they have to focus on the killer road. It’s kind of . . . disturbing.”

“Disturbing?”

“They just get so focused on one or two things. They should leave people alone.”

He glances over at me. Smiles. “Got something to hide?”

“No,” I shoot back. “I’m just saying, I’d rather be somewhere where no one looks twice at you, no matter what you are.”

“I get that.”

We climb a hill, drive through a patch of trees, and start over Wellhouse Bridge. On the far side of Wellhouse Bridge, illuminated by Wallace’s headlights and the fading sun, is Wellhouse Turn: a sharp jackknife in the road where the ground falls away.

The flowers and other decorations from the picture in the Star are still there, some old and wilting, others fresh. There’s a bent and mangled metal barrier that gets put back up every time someone drives through it and goes over the side. The steep incline leads to the river below where, some say, you can find old car parts embedded in the ground.

I wonder if death comes quickly for those who go off the turn, or if the long tumble to the bottom takes years.

Wallace slows nearly to a stop at the turn. Most people slow down here, but never this slow. And never with unblinking rigidity. I get a glimpse of the drop. Even walking down the incline seems like a terrible idea. I bet it would hurt if you slipped, even a little.

Wallace’s face looks pale while we’re in the turn, but then we pull out of it and beneath the next yellow streetlight, and he’s fine again. As if nothing was wrong to begin with.

“Bet you don’t have places like that in Illinois,” I say.

The used bookstore Wallace’s friends told him about is called Murphy’s. I’ve heard of it in passing but never been here; post-Children of Hypnos, I didn’t read much, and after that I bought all my books online. Wallace jokes that the store’s full name is Murphy’s Law. I pray it isn’t, because a lot of things could go wrong tonight, and it would be great if they didn’t.

Murphy’s is a tiny little brick shop sandwiched between two other tiny little brick shops, with a big happy MURPHY’S BOOKS sign in the tall windows and lights on and bodies moving inside. The tiny parking lot is full when we get there, so Wallace squeezes his car into a spot on the street.

Before we go in, he pops his trunk and uses his phone as a flashlight to get out what he needs, because the trunk light doesn’t work anymore. He pulls out a lump of what looks like seaweed and a long blue-and-white striped scarf. He winds the scarf around his neck twice, leaving one end hanging down his chest and the other down his back. Then he pulls the lump of seaweed on over his head and shakes it a little so the strands fall in the right places across his face.

   
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