“Able to go,” meaning “barely beat doubt back into its corner,” so I guess he’s right with that.
“Yeah. It was . . . it was fun.”
Wallace, who has been staring at his hands, glances up. “Really? You didn’t say much.”
“I usually don’t.”
“You talk a lot at school.”
I smile. “I write a lot at school. And I didn’t do that, either, before you showed up.”
He hesitates. “How come?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t like it.”
“You’re not super into school, are you?”
“Not really, no.”
“I’m not, either.” He looks down at the table again. “It feels like I already know what I want to do, and school is wasting my time. Like they assume we don’t know what we want to do, so they make us keep doing everything. I can’t wait to leave.”
“Right?” The force of my voice shocks even me. Wallace looks up again. “I . . . I mean—yes, it’s exhausting. I keep telling my parents that. I just want to focus on art, and I’ll probably get into college, so why does the rest of senior year even matter?”
“It’s stupid, right?”
“So stupid.”
He leans back in his seat. “Thank god. I thought I had cabin fever or something.”
“High school fever.”
“High school fever: like The Shining, but with teenagers.”
I laugh. Wallace smiles. The waiter brings us our sushi, and happiness trickles from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. Part of me knows it’s silly to be happy that someone finally gets it. My parents get it. They know I don’t like school and I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m sure most of my teachers know that too. They know I care about my art more than any homework, or sporting event, or dance. They might even get that it’s easier to be online, though I doubt that one.
But Wallace is the first person I’ve met who gets all of it.
Sometimes, when Amity woke from her rebirth dreams, in the long minutes she spent watching Faren sleep, she imagined what it would be like if she had never accepted the Watcher’s offer.
Faren would be dead.
Maybe she would be too.
The Watcher would have no host, and the Nocturnians would wait patiently until it did.
CHAPTER 15
Wallace gets a lot of things.
He gets that the stuffed crust pizza at lunch should be eaten up to the crust, then the crust should be peeled back and eaten, and the cheese inside should be balled up and consumed last as the crowning jewel of the meal. He gets that sweatpants and sweatshirts are infinitely better than any other types of clothing. He gets that talking is easier when there’s a screen or even a piece of paper between you and the person you’re talking to.
The first half of November has passed before I notice it going. Every day I wake up and experience the strange sensation of wanting to go to school. Now I linger at my locker in the mornings, not because it’s too difficult to get my feet to move and start the day, but because Wallace waits for me there, and I like standing in the hallway with him better than sitting in homeroom. Sometimes I go to his locker instead, and we linger there for a while. We don’t talk, because there are too many people around and Wallace doesn’t like writing on vertical surfaces.
In my classes I throw myself into Monstrous Sea sketch pages, cranking them out in the hours before and after lunch, hiding them in the bottom of my backpack so Wallace won’t find them. Not that I think he’d look through my stuff. I don’t. But my sketchbook might fall open, or a wayward Travis Stone might show up and take them and spread them around for the whole school to see. At lunch, Wallace and I sit together—in the courtyard, if it’s warm enough, but usually at one of the tables in the cafeteria—and he forks over new transcribed Monstrous Sea chapters when he finishes them, and I devour them like the hungry beast I am, and he kind of smiles. Wallace gets it.
Wallace gets the feeling of creating things.
“Do you ever have an idea for a story, or a character, or even a line of dialogue or something, and suddenly it seems like the whole world is brighter? Like everything opens up, and everything makes sense?” He looks down at his sheaf of papers—the latest Monstrous Sea transcribed chapter—as he says it. We sit outside the tennis courts behind the middle school. Leaves dance over the empty courts in the chilled breeze. I told Mom I’d pick up Sully and Church after school so I had an excuse to hang out with Wallace. We’re on opposite sides of our bench, turned to face each other.
“I think that’s why they call it a breakthrough. It cracks you open and lets light in.”
He looks up and smiles. “Yeah. Exactly.”
He has dimples. Sweet Jesus, dimples. I want to stick my fingers in them. He looks very cozy in his sweater and coat and knitted hat with the strings hanging down and the little puffball on top. I’m not cold, but I could be warmer.
“Do you ever write your own stuff?” I ask. “Instead of fanfiction?”
“Sometimes,” he says, “but I don’t think it’s as good as my fanfiction. It’s easier with fanfiction. Fanfiction is just playing with someone else’s characters and settings and themes. I don’t worry if it’s any good because it’s fun. But when I try to write something of my own, it’s just . . . constant worry. It never seems good enough.” He picks at his papers. “Do you ever draw anything besides MS fan-art?”
“Sometimes,” I say, and we share another small smile. “Monstrous Sea is all I’m really interested in right now.”
“Could I see some of your pictures? The Monstrous Sea ones, I mean. I glanced at them that one day, but I didn’t get a chance to look.”
I’ve read his fanfiction; it seems unfair not to let him see some of my drawings. The front of my sketchbook, held safely under my hands on my lap, is stuffed with loose-leaf sketches of Monstrous Sea characters and places. It’s concept art, but to Wallace it would look like practice and interpretations. I slide a few of them out, check to make sure none of them are sketches for actual comic pages, and hand them over.
Wallace takes his time. Like everything, his examination is slow and methodical. He scans the picture, lingering on some spots; he slides a finger between that page and the next to separate them, then lifts the top one off; he replaces it carefully on the bottom of the stack, and when all the papers are lined up again, looks at the next one.
“I’m thinking about putting the transcription up on the forums,” he says. “To see what people think.”
“They’d love it.” It won’t be just for me anymore if he does that, but maybe that’s good. Maybe I’ll stop feeling so guilty for not telling him who I am.
He glances up. “You should post these online. You’ve gotten closer to LadyConstellation’s style than anyone I’ve ever seen before. These are amazing.” He turns to the next page. “Oh, wow. I really like this one.”
I sit up on my knees to see over the edge of the paper. It’s a sketch of Kite Waters I did in class the other day because I couldn’t stop thinking about Halloween. Kite wears a torn Alliance uniform, bloodied from battle, holding her saber defiantly at her side.
“You can keep it, if you want,” I say.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not going to do anything with it.”
“Put it up online.”
I ball my hands in my sleeves. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to. It makes me nervous.”
“You shouldn’t have anything to be nervous about—they’re amazing. Everyone will love them.”
I shake my head. He can’t know, of course, that I’m not nervous about people rejecting them, but about someone linking anything I post as MirkerLurker to LadyConstellation. Plus, I don’t know, these pictures are for me. They’re concepts, half-formed thoughts. They’re not polished and ready for the world, and I don’t want anyone to see them. I’m half convinced the only reason Monstrous Sea has done so well is because I’m a stickler for perfect pages. Plot, lines, colors, characters. My fans deserve the best-quality work I can give them. I know that’s not the whole reason, but it’s got to be at least part.