School is a terrifying beast.
You spend seven hours a day walking around inside it, and when the day ends it grows small so it can hitch a ride home with you. It burrows into your ear and whispers all the things you can expect for the next day. Your clothes won’t fit right. Your hair won’t behave. You’ll forget your homework. You’ll get more homework. You’ll have to fight for your lunch table.
Everyone everyone everyone will judge you.
There are only two more weeks until graduation. I have no options.
What I want: to stay home. In my room, specifically, with the shades drawn and the TV on, but the volume low so I can doze to the murmuring, mind-numbing voices of Dog Days. I want Davy around to hug, and I don’t want to talk to or see any people. Not in real life, and definitely not online. I don’t want to think about the pages I haven’t finished, and Wallace’s face, burned into my memory, when I told him I can’t.
What will happen if I get what I want: I stay home for the last two weeks of senior year and my parents make sure I visit that therapist until my brain is scrubbed squeaky-clean and I get popped back out like a plate from a dishwasher. That could take months. Or, heaven forbid, years. I don’t want to be this way for years. I don’t want to feel this way for years. Even going to college won’t make this better, because there will be people there too who know who I am. There’s no escaping it now.
So I go back to school.
This spring is too hot for sweatshirts. I make do with a technique for shrinking myself I perfected years ago when I got tired of being picked for activities during sport camps. Never make direct eye contact. Dress in drab colors. Move at the same pace as the rest of the crowd. Disappearing is an art form, and I am its queen. Or at least I used to be.
As soon as I step inside the doors, my knees lock and heat rushes in behind my eyes. I control my breathing. When I’m sure I can move again without falling over, I do. One foot in front of the other.
I will not trip and knock myself out.
I will not trip and knock myself out.
I will not trip and knock myself out.
I reach my locker. Forget the combination. Have to pull out my phone for the first time since Wallace came to my house so that I can find it in my notes.
The door swings open and folded papers spill out onto my feet. More perch precariously on the locker shelf below the slats in the door. I scoop one up and unfold it.
Hi, Eliza,
You don’t know me, but I’m a big fan of Monstrous Sea. Probably like the biggest fan. I’ve only been reading for six months, but it’s my absolute favorite thing. I love your art, and I hope I can draw like you one day. Get better soon!
Listria_Dreams
P.S. I know you like asking who our favorite characters are—mine’s Rory!
This person stuck a note in my fucking locker.
I drop it and bend to shovel the rest back inside before anyone sees. They burn my skin like they’re on fire and slip back out. There are too many of them.
A finger taps my shoulder. I jump to get away from the person and slam my head and shoulder against the locker door.
It’s Wallace.
He bends down and starts loading notes into one big hand. He doesn’t try to put them back in the locker; instead he takes off his backpack and shoves them in there. I bottle my questions, my panic, and my tears, and go back to what I meant to do, which was get my textbooks for the first part of the day. Wallace slings his backpack over his shoulders and walks away, to homeroom.
I haven’t talked to him since he came to my house last week. What would I say to him? “I tried and I still can’t finish the comic and I’m sorry I ruined your life?”
I don’t know how my identity has impacted his involvement in the fandom, but it must’ve. People on the forums knew rainmaker had a thing with MirkerLurker, though we didn’t make it obvious. When it came out that LadyConstellation and MirkerLurker were the same person, did he have to convince them he had no idea who I was? Has anyone linked rainmaker with Wallace himself? My own anonymity stripped away is bad enough—I don’t know what I’ll do if I have Wallace’s on my conscience too.
I can’t begin to think about Cole, Leece, Chandra, and Megan. I missed their meet-up at Murphy’s last weekend. I couldn’t face them. I lied to them like I lied to Wallace, and they’re Wallace’s friends first. They’ll be as angry as he is—maybe angrier.
When I get to homeroom, Wallace’s expression is carved in stone. He doesn’t look at me.
A few heads do turn to look at me, but most mind their own business. Wallace pulls out a paper and starts writing. Mrs. Grier, at her desk, keeps her head down and her eyes focused on the book between her hands. The very tip of a tattoo pokes out of her right sleeve. If I didn’t know to look for it, I wouldn’t have seen it there.
I’d hoped it was a nightmare. The tattoo. Some messed-up vision I’d had because everything was so weird that day.
But no, it’s not. My homeroom teacher has the most popular phrase of Monstrous Sea tattooed on her arm in all capital letters, like a battle cry. THERE ARE MONSTERS IN THE SEA. Yes, Mrs. Grier. Yes, there are. You are one of them. You are one of the ones that was supposed to stay beneath the surface, but you didn’t. You came up to the top, and now I can never forget that I saw you. I can never forget that you exist.
I turn my attention to my desk and cup my hands around the back of my neck. Creators shouldn’t feel this way about their fans. I shouldn’t want them to disappear. They’re the reason I have . . . the reason I have anything. They’re the reason I can pay for college, for my pen display, the reason I can spend so much time doing what I love.
I hope Olivia Kane would never feel this way about me.
Olivia Kane.
I don’t know exactly what happened to her, but I know I don’t want it to happen to me.
I rip a notebook out of my backpack and open it to a blank page. Before all this I never would’ve attempted to contact Olivia Kane. My heart would’ve exploded with the effort, and I would’ve been too afraid of the answer I might have gotten.
But desperate times.
Mrs. Kane,
My name is Eliza Mirk. I’m not writing to you to talk about Children of Hypnos, though I am a fan of yours. I’m the creator of the webcomic Monstrous Sea, and recently my identity was revealed to my fans. The day this happened, I had a panic attack, tripped, and knocked myself out on a cafeteria table.
I’m pathetic, I know.
Since then, I have been contacted constantly and by any means possible, including online messages, emails, and even notes shoved into my locker at school. Some are very nice, and some are not. I feel like people are always watching me, always aware of me, even if I’m sitting alone in my bedroom. I haven’t been eating or sleeping well, and I don’t know what to do with myself.
After two weeks home, I’m back in school now, but my skin is constantly crawling and it feels like I’m teetering on the edge of breathless dizziness, like that panic could reach out and grab me at any second. I want to go home. I never want to leave my room.
I know this isn’t exactly the same as your situation, but the worst part of it all is I can’t finish Monstrous Sea. I was so close to the end, and now the motivation to do it is gone. Like a dried-up well. I don’t know how to refill it, and I don’t know if I want to, but I have to. There are so many reasons why I have to finish. I shouldn’t feel like this, should I? I shouldn’t feel so attacked. This is what public figures deal with. I’m afraid something’s wrong with me, and I don’t know how to fix it. I’m scared I’m going to be like this forever. I’m so scared, all the time.
I don’t know if you can help me, or if you even know what I’m talking about, but you were the only person I could think of who might understand.
Thank you for your time.
Eliza Mirk
P.S. Sorry, I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about Children of Hypnos. You don’t have to answer this, and I’m sure you get this question all the time, so if it makes you uncomfortable, please ignore it. Do you know how you would have ended the series? I don’t need specifics; I was just curious if you knew and couldn’t finish it, like me, or if there was no end.