Eliza and Her Monsters - Francesca Zappia Page 0,3

at my locker this fine October morning and stare down the hallway. A homecoming banner decorates the mouth of the hallway, reminding students to buy tickets for the football game this Friday night. Someone put that banner up there. God, someone made that banner. Someone painted it and everything. Students pass me wearing outfits for this particular day of homecoming spirit week, which happens to be hippie day. Lots of peace signs and tie-dye floating around. So much school spirit.

I barely finish my homework every night; how does anyone else have the willpower to care like this? The people having the most fun, dressed in the most ridiculous costumes, are seniors like me. How? Why? These are legitimate questions: I feel like someone told a joke and I missed the punchline, and now everyone’s laughing without me.

I stand by my locker in stretched-out jeans and a baggy sweatshirt, counting the minutes until I have to give up and go to homeroom. A group of boys wearing tie-dye headbands and rose-colored glasses crowd up to the locker beside mine; one of them throws it open so hard it smacks me between the shoulder blades. The boy who did it starts to apologize, then sees that it’s me and loses his voice to a badly concealed snort. I turn away and ignore them until they leave again, when one of the others pulls his hood up and acts like a cave creature, his back hunched and his hands held out in gnarled claws. The other boys laugh, as if they aren’t still within my sight. I yank my own hood down.

I don’t understand this place, but I only have to survive it for seven more months—seven months until graduation, until college. And college, as I have heard it from several respectable sources in the Monstrous Sea fandom, is so much better than high school it’s laughable.

I want to be there. I want to be in the place where high school is the joke, and I don’t have to be near people if I don’t want to, and nobody cares what I wear or look like or do.

When the boys disappear around the corner and all attention fades away from me, I turn back to my locker. Freshman year, I festooned it in graphics and fanmade art for Children of Hypnos, my favorite book series. A few early Monstrous Sea sketches hid in the corners, but that was before Monstrous Sea was even a thing. Now my locker is empty aside from my school stuff. I stuff my stats and history books in my backpack. Wedge my sketchbook under my arm. The backpack gets slung over my shoulders, and my dignity tucked safely away.

On to homeroom.

“Eliza. I need to borrow you for a little while.” Mrs. Grier has a bad habit of grabbing the first student who walks through her door when she needs something, and today I’m the unlucky plebe she gets her happy teacher hands on. She beams at me, looking the picture of joy in an unseasonal yellow sundress and earrings shaped like bananas.

I ease my arm out of her hand so it doesn’t seem like I don’t want her to touch me. I don’t mind Mrs. Grier. Most days I like her. I wish I had her for an actual class instead of just homeroom, because she doesn’t make me talk if I don’t want to, and she counts showing up to class as your entire participation grade.

“We have a transfer student new to the school today,” she says, smiling, and steps sideways. Behind her is a boy a little taller than me, football-player big, wearing jeans and a Westcliff High T-shirt. He hasn’t even been here a day, and he’s already got the school spirit. He scrubs a hand through his short dark hair and glances at me, expression blank, like he doesn’t quite see me there. My stomach turns. He is exactly the kind of person I try to avoid—I like being invisible, not having someone look at me like I should be.

“This is Wallace,” Mrs. Grier says. “I thought you could give him a few tips about the school and help him with his schedule before we leave homeroom.”

I shrug. I’m not going to say no to her. “No” usually makes more problems than it solves. Mrs. Grier smiles.

“Great! Wallace, this is Eliza. You can go ahead and sit next to her.”

Wallace follows me to my seat in the back of the room. He moves slow,