When spring break hits at the beginning of March, my parents decide I’ve had enough of my bedroom and decline my request to be omitted from this year’s family camping trip. Sully and Church find this hilarious. Lazy hermit Eliza trekking through the wilderness with a pack of supplies, reeking of bug repellent.
It’s not that I don’t like the outdoors. It’s that I don’t see the point of the outdoors when there’s so much I could be doing indoors.
My parents also deny me my sketchbook for this venture, an act that would have had me boiling over in a fit of apoplectic rage had I any less self-control. They’ve never taken my sketchbook away before, and I don’t think Dad felt the shock wave of pure surprise and anger that came off me when he told me to turn around and take the thing back to my room.
Mom and Dad don’t say anything about my phone, though. Either they don’t think I’ll get service, or they didn’t realize I had it. I keep it tucked in my pocket.
It burns a hole there the whole way to the Happy Friends Dog Day Care to drop off Davy, then as we drive down a long dirt road between two thick swaths of forest. The camping gear rattles around in the back of the SUV. Sully and Church, on either side of me, sing along with the pop music vibrating from the radio. Mom and Dad politely ignore them. Sully screams all the lyrics correctly but slightly off-key. Church is actually kind of good.
“You should try out for choir,” I say when the song ends.
Church’s entire head-neck region flares red. “No,” he snaps. “Choir is stupid.”
I shut my mouth. So much for trying.
“Aw, little Churchy in choir.” Sully laughs. “You could hang out with Macy Garrison all day if you were in choir.”
“I thought you were going to ask Macy Garrison out before Christmas?” Dad looks at us in the rearview mirror with a twinkle in his eye. “What happened with that?”
“I never said I would,” Church grumbles. Then he shoots me a dirty look. “Thanks a lot. Why didn’t you stay home with your boyfriend?”
“Mom and Dad wouldn’t let her,” Sully says, still laughing. “They think she’s going to invite him over for sex.”
I am a volcano.
“Oh, Eliza, that’s not why we did this,” Mom takes her eyes off the road for a second to look back at me. “If you and Wallace decide you want to take that step, it’s completely up to you—that’s why we had that doctor’s appointment.”
“Mom, stop.” My voice drops.
“It’s completely healthy for kids your age to be, you know, getting together.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t yet,” Dad chimes in. “Junior year of high school was the first time your mother and I—”
“STOP!” Sully, Church, and I yell it at the same time, clapping our hands over our ears. Mom and Dad look nonplussed and stop speaking.
We drive in silence for three more minutes before Mom pipes up again.
“Just saying. It’s how we made all three of you.”
“Jesus,” Sully groans.
We park at the campgrounds and have to hike like two miles uphill to get to where we’re setting up the tents. I knew before coming out here that this would be no walk in the park. My parents and brothers load themselves up with gear and start out with a spring in their steps. I’m carrying my own stuff—two days’ worth of clothes, snacks, bug spray, and sunblock—and wearing my old baggy clothes and the hiking shoes Mom got me because she didn’t want me twisting my ankles.
Almost as soon as we begin up the path, sweat starts running between my shoulder blades. The sun beats down through the trees. It’s chilly late March and yet still terrible. I fall behind instantly. Huffing, puffing, wiping sweat from my eyes. My back is already killing me. My parents soldier on, followed by Sully and Church, whose voices scare birds out of the trees. They don’t even look back to see where I am. It’s not as if it matters; we’re following a defined dirt trail laid out between the trees to a cleared-out campsite up in the woods. I used to come when I was younger, but in recent years I’ve been able to wriggle out of it by feigning sickness. I tried again this morning, but Dad said I’d feel better once I was out in the fresh air. I know exactly where they’re going and how to get there, so I stop to sit on a fallen log by the path and pull out my phone.
My signal’s not great out here, but I’m still getting it. I go to my messages. There’s nothing from Wallace, but I told him I was going to be out in the woods for two days, so he probably won’t send anything until he knows I can read it. There are a few new things from Emmy and Max, though. I open the chat window.
Apocalypse_Cow: you should tell that professor to go stick his head up his ass.
Apocalypse_Cow: but with better words. obviously. can’t have a twelve-year-old saying things like that.
emmersmacks: Im fourteen
emmersmacks: I totally could say that if I wanted
emmersmacks: But I wont cause I need a good grade on this test
Apocalypse_Cow: are you going to have him again next semester?
emmersmacks: No this is the last class with him
emmersmacks: But hes the only one who teaches it so if I dont pass I have to take it with him again
Apocalypse_Cow: that’s bullshit. you should go to the department head and say he’s discriminating against you because of your age.
4:31 p.m. (MirkerLurker has joined the message)
MirkerLurker: What’s going on?
Apocalypse_Cow: em’s shitty calc teacher keeps singling her out and making fun of her in class because of how young she is.
emmersmacks: Hes not making fun of me
emmersmacks: He calls me a baby every time I point out something wrong with his equations
emmersmacks: Like I was the one who got the answer wrong and Im just upset about it or something
I love that about Max and Emmy. Weeks without a long conversation, and they let me back into the fold like nothing has changed.
MirkerLurker: That sounds like he’s making fun of you.
MirkerLurker: Actually, it sounds like he’s an asshole. Teachers who call their students babies are assholes, no matter what the ages of the parties involved. You should tell the department head.
emmersmacks: Yeah
emmersmacks: Maybe
emmersmacks: Like I said, I just have to get through the rest of this semester and pass and then I dont have to see him again
Apocalypse_Cow: we’re serious, em. this is not okay. he shouldn’t be doing things like that.
emmersmacks: Can we change the topic now??
“Got a little winded, Eggs?”
I jump and look up. Dad trots back down the trail, smiling until he sees the phone in my hands. I try to stuff it back in my pocket, but it’s too late.
“I told you I wasn’t feeling good,” I say, picking myself up and brushing my pants off.
“I thought we said no phones?”
“You must have only said it to Church and Sully. I didn’t hear it.”
“Eggs.”
I climb up the trail past him. “I was talking to my friends.”
“But this is family time. I’m sure your friends will understand when we get back in a few days.” He catches up to me like he was walking beside me the whole time, and holds out his hand.
I still don’t hand it over. “It was important stuff.”
“I’m sure it was.” His voice is light, appeasing. My skin crawls. The outstretched hand grabs my arm. “Eliza.”
I spin on him. He never uses my real name. “It’s just a phone! I’m probably going to get crappy reception up there anyway! Why do you guys have to take everything away from me?”
“I think you can survive without your phone for two days,” he says in official Dad Voice. “And your mother will agree with me. Now hand it over.”
I tear my phone out of my pocket, shove it at him, then start up the trail following the echoes of my brothers’ voices. Dad stays behind me, probably to make sure I don’t stop again.
I don’t plan on stopping. I’m angry enough to walk for days.
Mom, Church, and Sully are already at the campsite. Church and Sully fight over our tent. Mom already has the other one set up.
“Aw, I thought you died back there,” Sully said. He looked at Church. “Guess we have to share the tent.”
I throw my pack into the dirt. “Shut up, Sully.”
Dad’s talking to Mom in undertones, holding my phone out for her. Her eyebrows press together. She slides my phone into her pocket.
I scrub my face with my hands. My hair sticks to my cheeks and my skin itches. Hives threaten. I took my allergy medication before we came up here, and I have one EpiPen in my bag and Mom has the other, but if I have an allergic reaction out here and have to be rushed to a hospital, it will be a welcome relief.
I won’t have an allergic reaction. I haven’t had one since I was ten.
Unfortunately.
The sun’s below the trees when the tents are up and Dad’s starting on the campfire. I toss my stuff inside the smaller tent and climb in after it.
“Thanks for helping set up, Rotten Eggs,” Sully calls from the fireside, flipping me the bird.
“Sullivan!” Mom swats his hand down.
He sticks his tongue out at me instead. I ignore him as I lower the tent flap and spread out my sleeping bag in the middle of the tent. Polyester does nothing to keep out the sounds of the woods, and I don’t plan on sleeping near one of the flimsy walls if anything decides to attack us. Probably nothing will attack us, but I’m not taking the chance.
As I’m sliding inside the sleeping bag, Mom sticks her head into the tent.
“Aren’t you coming to eat s’mores?”
“No,” I say.
“Do you feel okay?”
“Fine.”
She pauses. “Is this about your phone?”
“I’m tired.”
“We want you to spend more time here, in the real world. Your dad didn’t mean to make you angry, but we . . .”
Her voice trails off when I turn away from her and pull the sleeping bag up to cover most of my head. She sighs.
“We know you don’t want to be here. And maybe . . . maybe we just don’t understand it well enough. Any of it. The online friends, the webcomic, even the drawing itself. We’ve tried to figure it out. We want to understand it, to know why it means so much to you. It scares us, how intense you get, and how little we know about it. We can’t get you to explain it, so we’re navigating in the dark.”
There’s a beat of silence where she waits for me to turn over. I don’t. Then she sighs again and stands. Her boots crunch across dirt and twigs back to the fireside.
The four of them talk and laugh for another hour or two. My stomach rumbles. They ate dinner too, not just s’mores. Mom finally sends them all to bed. I pretend to be asleep when Church and Sully climb into the tent and spread out on either side of me.
“How is she already asleep?” Sully whispers. “At home she stays up until like two a.m.”
“She probably was tired,” Church whispers back.
“What, from climbing a hill?”
Church doesn’t respond. They get into their sleeping bags and whisper for half an hour about the outdoor soccer season about to start. I hadn’t even realized the indoor season was over—Mom and Dad just told me when I needed to take them to practice or pick them up. I didn’t know how they’d done. Were there any tournaments? Trophies?
After a long stretch of silence, Sully says, “So did you really try out for the spring musical?”
Church doesn’t respond for a second. “Yes. Why?”
“Just wondering. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you would have made it about Macy Garrison.”
“It—it’s not?”
“No.”
“Oh. But you’re not going to try out for choir?”
“Maybe.”
“Why?” Just the smallest bit of mocking enters Sully’s tone.
“Because I like it,” Church snaps back. “We don’t have to do all the same things. Try out for mathletes or something. You like math. You’d be good at it.”
“Mathletes is for nerds.”
“Sull, there’s something you should know.”
“Don’t say it.”
“You are a nerd.”
“I’m not a nerd. Eliza’s a nerd.”
“Actually, I think Eliza’s a geek. I’ve seen her grades. Compared to us, she’s horrible at school.”
“You’re a nerd for knowing the difference.”
“That’s fine.”
Sully makes no sound, but I can feel him fuming in the darkness. I didn’t know Church could get under Sully’s skin so easily. I didn’t know Sully liked math. I didn’t know either of them were that good at school. I didn’t know Church already knew he was good at singing . . . or that he was interested in musical theater.
I’ve been living with them their whole lives, but until right now, they’ve felt like strangers.
I let my eyes flutter open for only a moment. I lie facing Church; he stares back at me. I close my eyes again. Pretend I saw nothing. Pretend I’m still asleep.
Sully brings up soccer again, trying to revive the conversation, but Church stops responding. Then Sully stops too, and rolls over with a grunt. The tent goes quiet. I wish I had a bowl of hard-boiled eggs. My fingers long for my phone, my computer, my pen, my something. There is so much nothing out here I can’t fathom it. Nothing but dirt and campfire smell and s’mores made with stale graham crackers. Nothing but my brothers, who suddenly look much less like twins.
I don’t sleep well that night.
In all likelihood, my phone would’ve died before the end of the camping trip. That doesn’t make tromping through the backwoods any easier. On the first day we hike over some fairly impressive hills, because Indiana couldn’t manage a mountain or two. I nearly choke on my own spasming lung. Sully and Church make fun of me. On the morning of the second day we visit a few caves, and at least Mom and Dad let me opt out of those—no way will you get me inside somewhere so tight and dark and confined. I don’t care if they’re not actually going spelunking, I’ve seen enough horror movies to know what kind of backward urban legends hang out in caves.
I sit outside the cave and draw Amity and Damien in the dirt with a stick. Neither of them had parents around to tell them what to do or where to go. Someone asked me that once, actually, why so many of the characters don’t have parents. Amity was separated from her family. Faren was an orphan of Nocturne Island. Damien’s and Rory’s parents both died in their early teens. Not all of them were horrible people, either—it wasn’t like I was taking out some subconscious aggression on my own parents. They were just absent.
I don’t know why. Maybe it was something subconscious.
Of course it was. All art is subconscious.
I dig the end of the stick too hard into the dirt, and the tip breaks off. I chuck it across the clearing and find a new one.
I wonder what the fandom is doing. I wonder what Emmy and Max are doing. Emmy’s probably dealing with that asshole calculus professor, and Max is no doubt trying to get his girlfriend back. Or maybe they’re not—maybe Emmy is eating Starburst and watching Dog Days reruns, and Max has dealt with the girlfriend situation and has moved on to more exciting ventures, like rearranging his Power Rangers action figure collection. I’ll be able to find out tomorrow, when Mom and Dad give me my freaking phone back.
Amity and Damien face the same direction, attacking some unknown enemy, so across from them I draw a long-necked sunset riser rearing up, jaw open and fangs extended. The scale is wrong at first, so I wipe it out with my shoe and stand up to draw the sea monster to its true size.
I miss Wallace. I miss Max and Emmy and the fandom too, but I would miss Wallace even if I had my phone and could talk to him. I miss sitting next to him at Murphy’s, boxed against the wall by his big body. I miss the way he dips both ends of his sushi rolls in soy sauce when we go out to eat. I miss how he brushes hair off his forehead with the end of his pen when he’s in the middle of writing—because it’s grown out since October, and he actually has to do that now.
God, it hasn’t even been four days since I last saw him. This is ridiculous. I go to bed thinking about him; I wake up thinking about him. I want to draw him, but I haven’t tried it yet. I used to only feel this way about Monstrous Sea. It’s not like he’s taken that away, either—I still love Monstrous Sea. I’m still obsessed with it. And that makes sense, right? Because I created it. Who isn’t obsessed with the things they create, they love? Ideas are the asexual reproduction of the mind. You don’t have to share them with anyone else.
But Wallace . . . I share Wallace with a lot of people. Wallace isn’t mine any more than I’m his, but I want him. I want to hold him, I want to be near him, I want to crawl inside his mind and live there until I understand the way he works. I want him to be happy.
I wonder what he’d think of this picture I drew in the dirt. He’d probably say it’s good, but I forgot the sunset riser’s horns.
I add in the sunset riser’s horns.
My family exits the cave. Church and Sully charge into the trees, yelling something about the lake. Dad hurries after them, calling at them not to run in the woods. Mom comes last, and her gaze passes over my drawing before I manage to swipe my foot through the middle. Big, arcing foot swipe. Damn giant sea monster.
“Are you still upset with us for taking your phone?” Mom asks. Softly, like I might bite her face off.
I shrug. I’m not allowed to say no to her, and I’m not going to lie to make her feel better.
“We don’t do things like that to punish you, you know.”
I’ve already turned to the trees to follow Dad.
“Eliza, I’m trying to talk to you.”
I stop and turn back to face her. She puts her hands on her hips.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she says.
“Like what?” I say.
“Like I’m wasting your time. I brought you into this world, the least you can do is listen to me for two minutes.”
“Fine, I’m listening.”
She covers her face with her hands. Smooths back the flyaway strands of her hair. A smear of dirt arcs over her left temple.
“Sometimes . . .” She sighs. Sighing means she wants to launch into what she believes to be a long, heartfelt conversation, and at the end of it, if I don’t agree with her, then I’m an ungrateful child.
“Sometimes,” she says again, “we don’t know what to do with you. Your brothers are easy. They want to play sports and video games and eat a lot of food. They tell us about school and their friends. They’re like your dad and I used to be when we were younger. We never had the internet in high school. We didn’t have smartphones. Even if we did, I don’t think we’d use them as much as you do. Oh—sorry, that sounded terrible. You just spend so much time online, we never know if you’re okay or not. We don’t know what’s going on with you. You’re so quiet, and you spend so much time on your own—when Wallace started coming over, it was a real relief.
“What I’m trying to say is that we don’t feel like we know you anymore. We don’t know what you want.”
She stops and stares and waits.
I say, “Monstrous Sea,” because no other words come to me.
She nods. “And we’re proud of you for that. But . . . is that it?”
I shrug.
“There’s more to life than stories, Eliza.”
She says it like it’s simple. She says it like I have a choice.
There’s the frustration again, hot and ready, and there’s frustration’s best friend, anger, and there are my hands balling into fists and my stomach twisting in a knot and my jaw clenching so hard my molars squeal in protest. Mom takes a step back and then a step forward. She might try to hug me. I don’t want anyone touching me right now.
“I’m going to the lake,” I say, and turn again.
This time she doesn’t stop me.
Sully and Church and Dad are already at the edge of the lake with the fishing supplies. It’s got to be too cold for fish. They’re fishing anyway. Mom goes to join them.
I sit on an outcropping of rock above the lake and try to be angry, but I can’t hold the feeling. I need erupting volcanoes, hurricanes, massive earthquakes. Were I working on Monstrous Sea right now, Orcus’s monsters would bleed from the page in the search for flesh. I need vindication. I do not need little birds twittering over a wide expanse of shimmering lake and a light wind ruffling my hair.
Nature defies my anger. Nature defies every emotion I have. I can’t complain to nature, or appeal to it, or rage at it.
Nature doesn’t care about me.