holding my head in my hands. It’s fine. It was only a few hours. As long as I get the pages in on time from now on, everything is fine.
Don’t look at the comments. Never look at the comments.
“You feeling okay, Eggs?”
“Yeah, Dad, I’m fine.”
“You haven’t come out of your room yet this morning. Your mom and I were getting worried.”
“I was asleep.”
“Well, Wallace is here. He says you’re supposed to go to Murphy’s.”
“Oh. Um.”
“Is it that time of the month? Do you want me to tell him you can’t go?”
“I—God, no! I’ll be down in a second. Jesus.”
Wallace sits in the living room playing video games with my brothers. He’s wedged between them, silent and focused on the TV, while Sully and Church yell at each other over his head. Then something happens, and they both groan, and Wallace smiles.
“How long have you been here?” I ask. He looks over and sees me there for the first time and drops the controller.
“A few minutes,” he says, coming toward me.
“Play another round!” Sully motions to the TV and then to Wallace with long arcs of his arm, like he can pull Wallace back.
“We have to go,” I say. Sully glares at me. I drag Wallace out of the house and to his car.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah. Stressed.”
“Why?”
I shrug. “Stuff.”
We get in the car, lapse into silence. Wallace frowns as he backs out of the driveway and starts toward Murphy’s. When we pass over Wellhouse Bridge, he slows nearly to a stop so he can take Wellhouse Turn. Slow and steady, just like always. Too slow. Too steady. He’s more afraid he’s going to go over the edge than anyone else I’ve ever met. I look over the side, like I always do, and face the drop below.
It’s calm down there. Even if death doesn’t come quickly, I bet it’s almost worth it for the peace and quiet.
Cole and Megan are already at Murphy’s when we arrive, and already talking about the missing pages. The missing pages—page, because there was only one—that went up this morning, but that apparently people are calling the Missing Pages because it’s such a fucking fiasco.
“It’s the first time it happened since the comic started,” Cole says, scrolling through the forums for more posts about it. “Everyone’s talking about it. It’s an event. Look, there’s even fanfiction about the characters temporarily entering a void of no escape between the time the pages were supposed to go up and when they actually did. It’s hilarious.”
He shows it to us. The fanfiction, the forums, the everything. I keep my eyes averted. Wallace scans over it for a second, then shrugs. “I mean, it’s funny, but it seems kind of silly for just one missed day of pages.”
“Page,” Megan corrects, handing toddler Hazel a new picture book to flip through. “Only one page. At least it had some action on it, but those single pages are hard to look past. Nothing happens. I love this comic as much as anyone, but I work fifteen hours a day and take care of this monster”—she grips the top of Hazel’s head—“and when I get to the end of the week all I want to do is sit down with some tea and some Monstrous Sea pages. Preferably a whole chapter.”
Yes, Megan, let me whip up a few dozen pages for you. It’s not like LadyConstellation has other things on her mind, either. I don’t read the comments, but I know a lot of the fans are like this. I don’t blame them. I was like that for a while too, with Children of Hypnos. I was angry at Olivia Kane as much as anyone else.
I don’t blame them, but that doesn’t stop it from being exhausting.
They talk—and eventually get ahold of Leece and Chandra on Cole’s computer, which starts up a whole new round of discussion about the pages—and I rest my head on the table, pretending to sleep. They leave me alone.
A few times Wallace’s fingers brush my knee. I let them. I don’t move.
I get out my phone to text Emmy and Max and find I don’t have the willpower. I put the phone down again.
When Leece and Chandra both have to go, Megan suggests a change of scenery. She’s got three free games of bowling at the Blue Lane, thanks to her second job there. Cole jumps on the chance right away, but before he accepts Wallace asks if I want to go.
I start to say no,