MirkerLurker:Oh. Yeah, wow, I never realized. Is that a bad thing? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to recommend a bunch of books about depression to you.
rainmaker:I like them a lot, actually. All the other books I’ve read about depression take place in present day, and they end with the main character deciding whether or not to commit suicide. I like these. It’s like with Monstrous Sea. That’s about feeling like you’re in the wrong place, and fighting forces you can’t stop, and how there are monsters out in the world, but usuallythe worst monsters live inside us. I like stories like that because they’re not so obvious. There’s more to like about them than what they have to teach you. You know?
rainmaker:Sorry. I didn’t mean to get all deep right there.
MirkerLurker:No, it’s okay! You think way harder about stories than I do.
rainmaker:What do you read them for?
MirkerLurker:The characters, I guess. I thought the characters were the reason anyone read Monstrous Sea.
rainmaker:You mean like, shipping?
MirkerLurker:No, not shipping—shipping’s great, and I do it all the time, but I mean ... the characters themselves. The struggles they have to go through, and when you really love them, how much they affect you. When the characters are good, they make you care about everything else. That’s why I draw them. It probably sounds dumb, but they’re like real people to me. And this will probably sound worse, but sometimes I like them better than real people. I can empathize with characters. Real people are harder.
rainmaker:Real people don’t have concise character arcs.
MirkerLurker:Yes, exactly.
rainmaker:I like the characters, but I like what thestory means too. I like how everything comes together. Characters and meaning.
MirkerLurker:You must be a pretty big fan of endings, then. Everything getting wrapped up together.
rainmaker:Haha, good ones, sure. Please tell me Children of Hypnos has a good ending.
MirkerLurker:Um.
CHAPTER 19
Wallace finishes reading the Children of Hypnos series on the second day of winter break. I know, because I get this text:
I NEED TO SPEAK TO YOU RIGHT AWAY ARE YOU BUSY
I am lying on my bed holding Davy like a body pillow and watching reruns ofDog Days. So I say no, I’m not doing anything right now, but wow, it’s too cold to go outside and my bedroom is too warm. Wallace says that’s fine, he’ll come to me.
Which means he’s coming to my house.
He’s coming to my house right now.
I fall off my bed, startling Davy bad enough that he falls off too. Then I scramble up to begin detaching my pen display from my computer. It’s too expensive for a normal high-school student,and way too advanced a piece of technology for someone who supposedly just does fan art she never posts online. Unfortunately, it’s also too big to hide in a drawer, and beneath my bed is a war zone of childhood toys. I put it carefully in the corner of my closet and toss some old sweatshirts over the top of it.
Then I scan through my desktop and make sure there aren’t anyMonstrous Seacomic pages sitting out in the open. I sign out of my LadyConstellation account on the forums and into the MirkerLurker account. Tear down all the sticky notes on my monitor relating to what pages I need to get done and what plot points I need to work into the story, and I throw those in the closet with the pen display. Davy climbs back up on the bed and watches me like when am I going to come back and hold him like a stuffed animal again?
I throw the door open and hurry downstairs.
“Mom.”
“What, honey?” Mom asks. She’s in the living room, simultaneously planking and looking at a catalog of carpet swatches. She calls this “home decor calisthenics,” and she is a champion. She once redid the entire kitchen while doing pull-ups on the bar across the door to the front hallway.
“We don’t have anything to do today, right?”
“Sully and Church have practice later. Are you still available to take them?”
She says it like I have a choice. “I ... well ... what time is that at?”
“Four. Why?” She finally looks up. “Is something else happening today?”
“Um. Is it okay if Wallace comes over?”
