Wow, I say to Wallace.You really like sweet potato pie.
He sends one more picture, this one with him embracing the pie pan, gazing lovingly at it.We’re to be married in the spring.
An actual laugh escapes me. I really hope Wallace is having a better Thanksgiving than I am. It seems like he is. I take a picture of myself pouting and send it to him, saying,Aw, the cutest of cute couples.
“Stop taking selfies,” Sully says from the other side of the room.
“I wasn’t taking selfies,” I snap back.
“Why were you taking selfies?” Church asks.
“I wasn’t taking selfies!”
“Eggs, why don’t you go ahead and put that phone away so you can help me with the cranberry sauce?” Dad says, looking chipper. I clamp down on the immediate frustration that bubbles up in my chest, leave my phone on the table, and get up to help.
Dinner begins as it always does, with Mom joking that we’ll be spending all of tomorrow working to lose the calories we eat today. For the rest of them, that’s a challenge—see how much you can eat now so you get to do more fun exercise tomorrow. Personally, it makes me want to fast.
Then my parents move on to asking me, Sully, and Church the latest updates from school, and how well we think we’re going to end our semesters.
“Church is going to ask Macy Garrison out before Christmas,” Sully says. Beside him, Church’s face turns a mottled crimson.
“No I’m not!”
“You two sure have been talking about this Macy Garrison a lot,” Dad says. “When are we going to get to meet her?”
“You’re not going to meet her!”
Sully smiles through the mashed potatoes stuffed in his mouth. Swallows, and says, “And Eliza’s hanging out behind the middle school with her boyfriend every day. You guys haven’t met him, either.”
“He’s not my boyfriend!” I snap, my face heating. Sully looks between me and Church and laughs.
“Every day?” Mom says, glancing first at me, then at Dad. “Is that why you wanted to pick up Sully and Church from school, Eliza?”
“I—no! I just thought they wouldn’t want to ride the bus. Wallace has to pick up his sister from the middle school anyway, so—he’s not my boyfriend!”
Dad holds up his hands. “Whoa, whoa there, Eggs. Your mom and I think we should meet Wallace before this goes any further.”
I am burning in the deepest pits of familial humiliation. “Nothing is going to go further. Thereis nothingto go further. Can we stop talking about this?”
Now Mom’s holding up her hands too. “Honey, your father’s just saying that, you know, this is the first time you’ve really hungout with a boy, and we should think about scheduling a few doctors’ appointments—”
“STOP.”
Sully has his hands clapped over his mouth to keep in his laughter. Church’s forehead rests on the table beside his plate, his ears and the back of his neck bright red. I sink against my chair. My hands and feet have gone numb. I stuff a green bean into my mouth, chew, swallow, nearly barf it up, then stand from the table.
“May I be excused?”
I don’t wait for an answer before I march out of the room.
I have never been so happy to spend an hour immersed inMonstrous Sea. I’m on the Great Continent, sketching clouds in a pale blue sky and a ravaged battlefield circled by carrion feeders. Hywolves, raptors, the fanged KiriKiri battlefield mice that spring from the earth to rip rotting flesh from corpses and drag it to their underground nests as food for their young. Fans often ask where I get ideas for the monsters of Orcus. I tell them I don’t know, but it’s easier to come up with monsters when you’re angry or upset.
I only stop when I hear Church and Sully pound up the stairs and into their room. It must not be board-game time yet. I check my phone.
Another picture from Wallace waits for me. In this one, an empty pie pan littered with crumbs sits on the floor beside a large knife. Wallace kneels next to it with more crumbs on his sweater, expression horrified.
NOOOO
WHAT HAVE I DONE
