EVIE AND HER NIGHTMARES

Before Alissa walked into the river, she gave her beloved copies of the Children of Hypnos book series to her best friend.

Between her autism and her fury at Alissa for the suicide, Evie knows she’s not expressing grief in the ways everyone around her expects. Only Alissa’s brother, Ash, seems to understand what Evie needs. He doesn’t mind that she’s skipping track practices and checking out at school. When Ash talks to her about Alissa’s favorite game, the media tie-in Children of Hypnos Online, Evie decides to give it a try. “I get to be somewhere else. I get to be someone else,” Ash says, and to grieving Evie, that sounds perfect. Yet Evie is still very much herself when she plays CoH: studious, determined, and competitive as hell. Classwork and track can wait, because Evie cares only about going on raids with a high-level CoH clan. Between gaming with Ash and sharing his weed gummies, plus their developing romance, Evie’s got all she needs in this post-Alissa world where nothing matters anyway. She rapidly becomes a star player, and Zappia’s illustrations of the CoH characters help make the players’ online world feel real. Evie’s disassociation and carefully cultivated apathy ring painfully true as she recovers from being left behind, coping with a senseless world by burying herself in the video game. Evie, Ash, and Alissa present white.

A raw, beautiful account of moving forward after your world is reshaped by loss.