Eliza and Her Monsters

Eliza wakes up and goes to her computer, like usual. She doesn’t read the comments on her latest Monstrous Sea pages, because she knows they can affect her mental health, even when they’re mostly positive.

She has a family breakfast with her younger middle-school brothers, Sully and Church. Her father calls her “Eggs,” because she has hard-boiled eggs every morning. While she eats, Eliza reads a local newspaper article about Wellhouse Turn, a notoriously dangerous—and deadly—portion of a nearby road. She goes back to her room and resists turning on her computer because her online life is a “rabbit hole” and she knows that she doesn’t have time to get lost in it right now.

Eliza reflects on how others call Monstrous Sea a “phenomenon,” but for her it’s the story she always wished existed, so she created it. What came as a surprise was the fact that other people read it and started to care about it. The story is set on a distant planet called Orcus, where the planet’s original inhabitants are engaged in an ongoing war with a group of colonizers. The chapter ends with Eliza’s LadyConstellation account on the Monstrous Sea forums page, where she posts about merchandise and new pages.

School feels like “punishment” to Eliza, and she struggles to care about it. She has seven months left and looks forward to college. In the meantime, Eliza prefers to stay silent and invisible.

Today, her homeroom teacher, Mrs. Grier, asks her to help the new kid, Wallace. Eliza agrees but then doesn’t engage with him. Wallace stays silent too. She’s happy he’s shy like her and draws in her sketchbook. When she’s working on Monstrous Sea, Eliza is able to forget about how difficult it is for her to make friends offline; her classmates have decided that she’s the “weird” one, and they treat her accordingly.

At the end of the day, Eliza sees Wallace writing in his notebook on a bench outside the school. She contemplates giving him a ride home but decides that would be too “strange.”

Eliza (using her “MirkerLurker” handle) chats online with her best friends Emmy (“emmersmacks”) and Max (“Apocalypse_Cow”) on the way to her brothers’ soccer match and at the gym. They discuss her latest pages and mailing each other care packages. She brushes off her brothers’ and parents’ attempts to get her to talk with them or watch the game. This conflict has been going on for years, as Eliza has long rebuffed her parents’ suggestions that she take up a sport or another hobby.

At home, Eliza logs in to her LadyConstellation account to participate in a live chat about the teen drama show Dog Days. She enjoys the chance to participate in a fandom not related to Monstrous Sea, though she works on the comics during the commercials. However, the worlds are not entirely separate, as Eliza is reminded when rainmaker, the writer of the most popular fanfiction for Monstrous Sea, enters the Dog Days chat. Rainmaker is one of the “Angels” in the Monstrous Sea fandom who have named themselves after a group of celestial characters. In the forums, the Angels are nearly as popular as LadyConstellation herself. Eliza giggles at rainmaker’s witty remarks in the Dog Days chat, and he sends a winky face, the “most provocative” emoticon, in response to one of her comments. Eliza feels strangely giddy at rainmaker’s flirting, even though she has no idea who he is in real life.

As the Dog Days episode—and the accompanying chat—rolls on, Eliza continues to draw, knowing that Max will ban any trolls who appear. Of all the people who participate in the chat forums, Max and Emmy are the only ones who know that Eliza is LadyConstellation. They met in the forums of another fandom, and now Max helps monitor the forums and Emmy runs the website and sells merchandise, leaving Eliza to focus on the story. Although they live far away, Eliza considers them her best—if not her only—friends.

As she leaves school that Friday, doing her best to ignore the homecoming game energy, Eliza sees Wallace again. This time, he is being bullied by Travis and Deshawn, two of her classmates who have turned into jerks in high school. They steal Wallace’s notebook and ridicule him even more when they realize he is writing fanfiction for Monstrous Sea. Eliza briefly channels LadyConstellation to defend Wallace—she can’t leave a fan to fight on his own. However, the boys steal her sketchbook next, ridiculing her for being into the “sea thing” as well. Even though thousands of people see her drawings online each week, she is horrified that the bullies are looking at them now. They toss the sketchbook around until Wallace—who turns out to be much bigger than either one of them—catches it and gives it back to a tearful Eliza. Eliza and Wallace stand in awkward silence. After he walks away, Eliza realizes that Wallace left her a note inside her sketchbook thanking her and complimenting her drawings.

Later, Eliza messages Max and Emmy for advice. They tease her about her possible crush on Wallace, but her anxiety is real. She doesn’t know how to interact with him. They tell her that she can wait for him to make a move.

During homeroom on Monday, Wallace writes her a note asking if she likes Monstrous Sea. Eliza is taken aback, but she writes back that she does. She could elaborate that the comic is her purpose and obsession—not to mention her creation—but she doesn’t. They keep writing back and forth in his notebook, discussing their favorite parts of Monstrous Sea.

Eliza is sitting alone at lunch, working on her drawings as usual, when Wallace appears. They continue writing notes to each other, and Wallace tells her that he is working on a transcription of Monstrous Sea into prose novels. Eliza is touched and amazed that someone would like her work enough to devote that much time and energy to it. She considers telling him she’s LadyConstellation, but she wants to keep her identity a secret. He asks if she’d like to read his transcription, and she hesitates but agrees. Even just reading the first lines, Eliza loves how he’s captured her story in prose form. She thinks his words are magical. Wallace plans to give her more pages for feedback.

Eliza and Wallace walk back to class together. She feels aware of her body for the first time and wonders if he thinks she’s pretty. At the end of the school day, Wallace is writing on the bench again. Eliza summons courage and offers him a ride, but his sister is picking him up. She thinks how surreal it is to meet a fan in her offline life. She wishes she could be as bold as LadyConstellation, the creator of the world in her comic, but has to settle for being herself with Wallace.

At home, Eliza has a care package from Emmy filled with inside jokes, candies, and other goodies. Eliza’s mother asks how she knows Emmy is even a girl and expresses concern about Eliza giving out her home address to “internet people.” Eliza retreats to her room, but her mother follows, admonishing her to focus on her schoolwork. Eliza is not particularly worried about getting into college at this point, and she makes enough money from Monstrous Sea to pay her tuition anyway. Her parents know in a general sense that she makes money from her “hobby,” but they have no idea about the extent of her financial success.

Eliza reads Wallace’s chapter as she cuddles with the family dog. She is stunned—and moved—by the experience of seeing her story remade into a different form by someone who understands it deeply. She suddenly realizes that she’s been crying and reflects, “He has divined the things I thought while drawing this comic and put them down on paper. […] But Wallace Warland can do magic. […] With words” (76). She entertains the idea that he might know the world of Monstrous Sea as well as she does—perhaps even better.