Church and Sully come into my room that night—at the exact time theMonstrous Seapages are supposed to go up, coincidentally—and sit on either side of me on the bed to watch reruns ofDog Days. That, at least, I’ve managed to start doing again. A constantlynumbed mind doesn’t sound so bad at all. Sully and Church bring a bowl of hard-boiled eggs bigger than Church’s head as an offering. We eat. They make fun of the stupid characters. I agree that the characters are stupid.
“Have you talked to Wallace?” Church asks when the third episode is over.
“No,” I say, picking at an eggshell.
“We saw his sister at school today,” Sully says. “Um, Lucy.”
“Okay.”
I drop the shell in the extra bowl they brought and bite into the egg carefully, trying not to nick the hardened yolk with my teeth.
“So what’d she say?” I ask.
“She said he was really upset.”
“And that we should try to get you to talk to him,” Church adds.
I want to say it’s not my job to make him happy, but I owe him a better apology than the one I squeezed out in Mrs. Grier’s room. Still, every time I think about texting him—just texting him, the two words—I imagine him ignoring me, spitting in my face, taking all the pictures I drew for him and burning them.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
I’ll think about it. If I can even force myself to go back to school on Monday.
CHAPTER 33
Idon’t go back to school on Monday. I drive to the parking lot of the nearest grocery store, park in the back forty, and climb into my back seat to nap until the car gets too stuffy and I have to roll the windows down. When school would normally let out, I drive home. The next day, I do the same thing.
When I get home, Mom says, “School called today. They said you’ve missed two days in a row, unexcused.”
I hesitate at the bottom of the stairs. “Oh. Yeah. I just ... I got there, and I didn’t feel good.”
“If you need a little more time off, I’ll call in for you.” She wrings an old pair of jogging shorts in her hands. A pile of exercise clothes bound for Goodwill sits on the living-room floor behind her.
“Okay,” I say, and start up the stairs.
“Eliza, wait.” She moves after me. “If I call you in sick, will you go see the therapist Dr. Harris recommended? Not tomorrow, but maybe next week? We talked to her already, and she said she’d have some time open to see you.”
“Why?” I say, but the word feels hollow.
“Because you’re not acting like yourself, and your dad and I are worried.”
“I don’t really want to.”
“Please, will you go? For us?”
I shrug. That seems to be enough answer for her, because she lets me go upstairs.
After a week of no school, of lying in bed all day and watchingDog Daysuntil I forget why I ever tried to make anything of my own, everything feels terrible. My stomach, my head, my back. My neck aches. My hair is greasy. That’s the only thing that makes me get up and take a shower: when I can feel the oil oozing from my scalp. I’m so tired of being gross. So tired of feeling like my body is thisthingI have to lug around with me all day. After the shower I collapse on my bed again. The bare walls make my room feel like a cell, but I don’t have the energy to decorate them with anything else.
There will be noMonstrous Seapages at the end of this week. I didn’t get online to see what the fandom thought of the lastones. My will is gone. My will to draw, my will to talk, my will to do anything. WhereMonstrous Seaonce wrapped around my heart, there is nothing anymore.
Maybe that’s normal. The things you care most about are the ones that leave the biggest holes.
There was something distinctly un-Orcian about General White that Amity couldn’t place. Everything about him was sharp, like shards of metal fused into the shape of a man, dressed in an Orcian Alliance military uniform.
“If you kill Faust,” he said, “you will be regarded as a hero. Maybe even a legend. It won’t end our enemies’ attacks, but itwilleven the odds, and that’s a greater advantage than we’ve hoped for in these long decades.”
“Even the odds ... ,” Faren said, his stilted cadence melting away. “If she kills Faust, but she’s still alive, wouldn’t the odds be tipped severely in your favor? As far as they’re stacked against you now?”
