Six Months Later
This bookstore is packed.
I didn’t expect anything less for the release of the fifth and final Children of Hypnos book.
The front windows of the store are papered with Children of Hypnos posters.
I thought there’d be a midnight release party, but over the summer it was announced out that Olivia Kane was doing an international tour that included a huge swath of the US, and by some miracle, she came to Indiana too.
And her fans have shown up. It’s standing room only.
Ash and I got here early, and all the seats were taken, so we’re pressed up against a bookshelf near the horror section.
We still have a good view, though. I haven’t seen any sign of Olivia Kane yet, but I don’t actually know what she looks like.
Her picture isn’t in the books, and photos of her online are almost a decade old.
Tables around the store are stacked with copies of the fifth book.
On the cover is a beautiful illustration of an upthrust sword, the symbol of the dreamhunters.
The title, Dreamwaker, glitters in gold-and-silver foil script.
I hold a copy in my hands. It’s a brick.
I won’t open it yet, not here, not around all these people. This will be something just for me.
Ash is a bundle of nervous energy.
“You spotted her yet?” I ask. He’s been scanning the crowd since we got here, but his gaze has finally settled on the signing table, where a group of bookstore employees gathers, getting things ready.
“Yeah, I think that’s her, there.”
He nods toward the employees. There’s a woman standing with them, her back to us, and my heart leaps, because I think I recognize that raven-black hair. I’m able to catch myself much faster than I could six months ago, or even a month ago. I know it’s not Alissa even before she turns to face us.
It’s not Olivia Kane, either. Ash is excited for the new CoH book, but he’s even more excited that the creator of Monstrous Sea, who is apparently a huge CoH fan, was asked to introduce Olivia Kane. She’s there now, with the booksellers, getting ready for the event to start.
In Ash’s backpack are all his Monstrous Sea graphic novels. “Do you think she’ll sign all of them?” he asks.
“You’ll have to ask her and find out,” I say.
“Fuck,” he says quietly.
I smile at him, at his happy nervousness, his obvious excitement, this opportunity he has. “It’s because it means so much to you,” I say. “It probably means a lot to her, the person who made it, too. I’m sure she’ll be happy to talk to you about it.”
“Yeah.” He nods like he’s trying to convince himself.
I keep scanning the room. I wonder if the receptionist is here too, but I don’t see her.
One of the booksellers calls the crowd to order. Everyone quiets immediately and focuses their attention on her. They want to be here. They care about what’s happening. The excitement in the air is palpable.
We are not thinking about our lack of purpose, or futility, or desolation. We are thinking about these things we love, and the people we share them with.
The bookseller hands the mic to the Monstrous Sea creator. She smiles nervously and moves in front of the crowd. She’s tall, clear-eyed, with a timid smile and long, delicate hands. It’s obvious she isn’t completely comfortable up there, but when she speaks, her voice is loud and clear.
“Hi, everyone. My name’s Eliza Mirk; you might know me as the creator of Monstrous Sea.
I’m here with Wallace Warland, who writes the novelizations of my comic.
” She motions to a broad-shouldered man sitting in the front row, who turns and waves to the crowd, keeping his head down.
Eliza goes on. “I’m still not great at talking to crowds, but when I was asked to do this event, there was no way I could say no.
I’m not talking to you as an author—I’m talking to you as a fellow fan, and I know how to talk to other fans.
“I love the Children of Hypnos. I have loved it for years. Like probably a lot of you, it has helped me through some really rough times. And yeah, I was sad that it wasn’t complete.
Honestly, I never expected it to be. It was going to be one of those immutable facts of life.
” She lists them off on her fingers. “The dishwasher pods will never be edible, we’re all going to die one day, and we’ll never read the fifth Children of Hypnos book.
” The crowd laughs. That seems to relax her; her timid smile grows.
“I’m so happy I get to be wrong about one of those, and I’m so happy it’s the one it is.
After a long hiatus, please help me in welcoming the author of the Children of Hypnos . . . Olivia Kane.”
We cheer as another woman appears from around the bookcases.
She’s younger than I expected—I thought Olivia Kane would have to be an older woman, to have been a hermit for so many years.
But she’s only in her late forties. She has a couple of gray streaks in her brown hair.
She’s not a small woman, but she seems to only take up a small sliver of the floor, and I wonder if that compression of her presence comes from the same feelings that made her hide away.
I wonder if she’s trying to grow out of it.
She’s very normal. Just a person.
Eliza hands the mic to her and takes the seat next to Wallace in the front row. Instead of sitting at the chair behind the signing table, Olivia Kane sits on the table itself, placing her free hand in her lap.
“Thank you for that introduction, Eliza,” she says. Her voice is soft, but doesn’t waver. “I have to say, I agree. I’m glad you got to be wrong about this one too.”
She tells us a story then. It’s a story about a book series she loved, but one she couldn’t finish. It’s about years of recovery from crippling fear. It’s about hope lost and hope found. It’s about starting again, one step at a time.
The audience has plenty of questions. I try to think of something Alissa would have asked her, something Alissa would have wanted to know, but nothing comes to me. It’s been long enough now that I no longer know what Alissa would have wanted.
The bookseller cuts the questions short so Olivia Kane can start signing.
The line wraps around the bookshelves and throughout the entire building.
Publicists walk down the line with pens and sticky notes, asking us how we’d like the books personalized.
When they get to me, I say, “To Alissa,” without hesitation.
He writes it on the note and has me stick it on the title page.
Ash asks if he can have Eliza sign books and they give him four sticky notes, one for each Monstrous Sea book. He’s practically bouncing now.
We aren’t back together again really, but we are something. We’re friends, at least. There’s no one else I would have wanted to come to this event with. No one else who would have understood.
Except, I guess, all these people around me.
They have a second signing table set up for Eliza and Wallace. Many people have both Children of Hypnos and Monstrous Sea books. They have to stop at Eliza’s table to get Monstrous Sea signed, but everyone is nice and lets them jump back into line to move on to Olivia next.
Ash shifts behind me like he wants to run. I laugh and grab him, pushing him in front of me. “Go, or you’ll regret it forever!”
“But what if—” he starts.
“Stop! You have a reputation to keep,” I hiss, and push him again.
At least his stumbling to the table is graceful. I follow him; it would be mean to make him go alone. He smiles his awkward smile and holds out his books, and Eliza smiles back at him as she takes them.
“Hi,” she says. “Oh, Ash—that’s a cool name.” She signs the title page for him in green Sharpie. “Do you have a favorite character?”
“Damien,” he says. “Definitely Damien.”
She draws a little figure below her signature, one with black hair and fog swirling around him. Ash watches her with rapt attention. When she finishes, she slides the book over the table to Wallace who adds his own signature opposite the title page in big looping script.
Beneath that, he scrawls a quote:
Forget happiness: I would rather be sad than incomplete.
Ash beams. “That’s one of my favorites.”
“You play sports?” Wallace asks, motioning to Ash’s college sweatshirt.
“Yeah. Soccer.”
“Right on.”
The interaction is so short, but it seems like all Ash ever wanted in the world. They both sign his other three books, adding drawings and quotes from the other main characters.
“Thank you so much,” Ash says as he takes his books back.
Eliza hesitates for a moment, then smiles at him and says, “Thank you.”
We’re let back into the main signing line and shuffle forward.
Ash is next to me, but he’s really on a different planet, looking at the little drawings and the quotes in his books.
It gets harder to breathe as we close in on Olivia Kane’s table.
I sort through scripts in my head, trying to figure out what to say.
How do I explain what these books mean to me? What they meant to Alissa?
Then I’m there, in front of her, setting the book down. Nothing feels right, so I wing it.
“My friend died this past spring,” I say. Way to go, Evie, hit her with the dead friend missile right out of the gate. “I mean . . . well, she was the one who got me to read your books. She loved them.”
Olivia Kane’s expression remains clear. Her head is cocked, listening without judgment. “I’m so sorry she won’t get to read this one,” she says. “And how are you doing?”
“I’m better now,” I say after thinking about it for a moment. “I miss her, but . . . well, you live with it, right?”
“We do,” she says. She picks up her Sharpie and opens the book to the title page, to my sticky note. Then she stops, frowns at me. “You seem like you want to ask me something.”
“I do?”
“You keep opening and closing your mouth, like you’re about to speak.”
“Oh. Yeah. Well . . .” It didn’t seem like something Alissa would ask, so I hadn’t said it out loud, maybe hadn’t even put it into words.
But now I realize how much I need the answer.
“I don’t want to know what happens exactly, but this last book .
. . does it have a happy ending?” Embarrassed, I add quickly, “Not that I think every book needs to have a happy ending, but this one, this series . . .”
It’s about depression. It’s about fear. It’s about fighting the lies we tell ourselves.
“I don’t know if I can read it if the ending isn’t happy.” My shoulders slump as I say it. I feel like I’ve let her down. Like I’m not strong enough to handle the story she wants to tell.
There is another short pause as she looks at me, her expression changing subtly. I wouldn’t have recognized that shift a year ago. She understands what I mean. She has dealt with this before.
She leans across the table, reaches out, and very gently touches the back of my hand with her fingertips.
“It is happy,” she says.
“Thank you,” I say. I start to cry, but unlike six months ago, it is not in fear, and I don’t mind that she sees it.
She picks up her Sharpie again.
“Wait.” I grab the sticky note with Alissa’s name on it, crumpling it in my fist. “Can you sign it to Evie, please?”