I can see that she’s wavering, considering whether she should slam the book shut or actually listen. So I jump down from the cliff ledge.
“How did you do that?” she gasps. “Where are the batteries?”
“Battery? I can assure you, no one is getting a beating,” I say, crawling upright again.
“You moved,” she accuses, pointing a finger at me.
“So did you,” I say. I decide to test things a bit, and race to the side of the page so that I can run up its edge and do a standing flip. “Did you see that?”
“Yes, but—”
“How about this?” I grab on to the cliff wall and climb it like a monkey. When I reach the top, I take a flying leap and loop my arm around the tail of a letter g, swinging back and forth.
“Now you’re just showing off,” Delilah says.
I laugh. “Do me a favor,” I ask. “Turn the book sideways?”
She does, and I let go so that I drop lightly on the long edge of the page and slide down it to the illustration at the bottom.
“That’s amazing,” Delilah whispers, setting the book upright again. “How do you move?”
“The same way you do, I guess.”
Tentatively, she holds up her hand in front of the book. “How many fingers?”
“Three.”
“So you can see me too?”
“I’ve always been able to see you,” I say. “It’s a rather lovely view.”
I watch her face flood with heat. “I’ve read hundreds of books. How come this hasn’t happened before?”
“I’m not like most characters, I guess,” I say slowly. “Everyone else in here seems to be happy having their lives already planned out for them, and doing what they’re told to do. But I’ve never really fit in. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be someone… different.”
Delilah’s eyes widen. “I’ve always wondered that too.”
Brightening, I smile at her. “Look at how much we already have in common.”
She smirks. “Yeah. Like, for example, I’m talking to a book, and you think you’re alive. We’re both insane.”
“Or very, very evolved….”
“Maybe it was something I ate,” Delilah says, standing up and pacing in a circle. “Maybe the milk in my cereal was bad or I took an accidental overdose of vitamins and now I’m hallucinating—”
“Not this again.” I sigh. “Haven’t we established that I am not a figment of your imagination?”
“You can’t be real,” Delilah murmurs.
“Says who?” I ask. “Did you really think that a story exists only when you’re reading it?”
“Um,” Delilah says. “Well, yeah.”
I settle my hands on my hips. “When you go to sleep at night, do you cease existing?”
“Obviously not….”
“And how do you know that you’re not part of a book? That someone’s not reading your story right now?”
She looks at me, narrowing her eyes as the implication sets in. “But you’re part of a fairy tale.”
“Exactly. Part of a fairy tale. Which suggests that there’s more to me than meets the average Reader’s eye. Did you ever think that maybe what you see isn’t really what’s true? Take Socks, for example. Actually, please, do take Socks. He’s not a fearless steed—he’s a hopeless one. And Rapscullio—he’s actually a rather nice guy! He collects butterflies and is quite the pastry chef in his time off! And Seraphima—”
Delilah sighs. “I always wanted to be Seraphima….”
I snort. “You might want to revise your life goals, then. She has the brain capacity of a sea cucumber.”
I realize that I quite like this girl. It’s not just that she’s so pretty the words fly out of my mind before they can leave my mouth—it’s that when we’re chatting, I feel like I’ve known her all my life. It’s as easy to speak to her as it is to talk to Frump. It’s been a long time, I realize, since I made a good friend.
“Can I ask you something?” I say. “Why do you keep reading this story?”
“I—I don’t really know,” Delilah admits. “Because of that one line, I guess. About growing up without a father.” She looks away. “I liked the idea of someone else knowing what that’s like.”
I feel a twinge as I realize that whatever I’ve experienced in the story pales in comparison to what she’s had to suffer through in real life. After all, I’ve never even met King Maurice; he is just words on a page to me.
Delilah swipes a hand across her eyes. “I mean, I have nothing to complain about. A lot of kids have no one who cares about them. And my mom, she’s great. She loves me like crazy. She’d do anything for me.”
I frown. “But she doesn’t want you to read this book, even though it makes you happy.”
Delilah looks at me, confused. “Oh, no,” she says, shrugging. “She just thinks I read too much, in general. She wants me to get out more.”
“May I ask you something?” I say. “Why do you read books, when you could be outside, living a million different adventures every day?”
“Because you can always count on a book to stay the same. Everything else changes when you least expect it,” she replies, bitter. “Families split apart, and nothing’s forever. In books, you always know what’s coming next. There are no surprises.”
“Why is that a good thing?”
“You of all people ought to understand why I wouldn’t want to take a risk—”
I scowl. “That’s just a role I have to play in the story. If I had the chance, I’d do anything to not know what tomorrow’s going to bring.”
“People in the real world would kill for a happily ever after, and you’re willing to just throw it away?”
I look away from her. “It’s hardly a happily ever after when you wind up right back at the beginning. I’ve never experienced ‘after’ at all.”
Suddenly, I hear another voice in the Otherworld.
Delilah McPhee, what are you doing out of homeroom?
“What is a ‘homeroom’?” I ask.
“Shut up!” she grits out.
Excuse me, Ms. McPhee, did I just hear you tell me to shut up?
“No, Coach Farnsworth. I would never say something like that, Coach Farnsworth….”
“You just did,” I point out, grinning.
Immediately, she slams the book closed.
The dark is complete. It rather catches me off guard this time. Although I hear other characters climbing down from their scenes to mingle with each other and carry on their off-time pursuits, I narrow my eyes and wait.
Sure enough, she opens the book again.
“Now see here,” I command. “It’s downright rude to end a conversation without a proper goodbye. You may apologize. Now.”
She snorts. “You can apologize first! What were you trying to do, get me detention?”
I have no idea what detention is. But I do know that never in the course of the story has anyone ever talked back to me like this. After all, I’m a prince. Which doesn’t seem to matter in the least to this girl.
And instead of being angry, I’m intrigued. “What’s detention?”
“It’s… not important,” she says. “Look, I can’t have you speaking when other people are around.”
“Believe me—they won’t hear me. No one ever does.”
“Well, they’re going to hear me, and normal people don’t talk out loud to books.”
I grin. “In that case, I’m glad you’re not normal.”
“You have no idea. Talking out loud to fictional characters is just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Fictional character?”
“Well,” she says. “You may be real, but you’re still stuck in a book.”
“That’s why I need your help.”
“I don’t understand….”
I stare very soberly into her pale brown eyes. “I want you to get me out.”
Delilah
OKAY, FIRST OF ALL, THIS IS NOT HAPPENING.
My mother is right. I need more sleep. It’s bad enough that I’m talking to a book, much less entertaining the thought of how to get a character out of it.
“I don’t think it works that way,” I say. “It’s not like springing someone out of jail—”
“I’m hardly a felon!”
“No, you’re a two-dimensional, inch-high illustration,” I point out. “If you were to get out, what would you do? Live in a shoe box? Be Flat Stanley?”
“Who’s Flat Stanley?”
“Another fictional character,” I say. I have a sudden flash of second grade, when my teacher had us take our cutouts of Flat Stanley all around the world during spring break. My mother and I took pictures of him in Boston, eating clam chowder and waving at the seals in the aquarium.
So maybe Oliver isn’t the first fictional character with a hankering to travel.
“You don’t know that I’d stay this size. Perhaps I’d be scaled to fit your world, if I were lucky enough to reach it.”
“Why are we even discussing this?” I explode. “You can’t take a character out of a book!”
“How do you know? Have you ever tried?”
“No, but it’s not like Cinderella is working at Starbucks—”
“Cinderella? Starbucks?” Oliver says.
“Exactly. You wouldn’t survive ten seconds in this world,” I tell him. “There’s so much out here you don’t know.”
“I know you,” Oliver insists.
The way he looks at me, I almost forget that this is all in my imagination.
“You hardly know me. We’ve been talking for, like, twenty minutes.”
“You’re wrong,” Oliver says. “I know that your bedroom is painted pink. And that you bite your lip at the part where Rapscullio and I fight. And that you say good night to your goldfish without fail. And sometimes when you get dressed in the morning you dance to the music that comes out of that odd little box—”
“You’ve watched me getting dressed in the morning?”
He flashes me a grin. “You’re the one who left the book wide open.”
“We don’t even know if this is a one-time thing,” I say. “I could close the book and you could be gone, forever.”
Oliver takes a step forward. “Try it.”
“Try what?”
“Closing the book.”
“But what if—” I realize that I don’t want him to disappear. I may not fully believe he’s real; I may not understand why I can hear him speaking to me—but I sort of like it. I like knowing that of all the people in the world, I’m the only one listening to what he has to say. It makes me feel like we’ve been destined for each other. Which is the way things work in fairy tales, not in my ordinary, boring life. “Are you sure?” I whisper.
Oliver nods. I start to close the book, but then I hear him shout, and I yank it wide open again. “Just in case,” he says, his eyes locked on mine. “Just in case it… doesn’t work. I want you to know, Delilah. You’ve already been the biggest adventure of my life.”
I gently touch my finger to the blank space beside Oliver. He reaches toward my hand and spreads his own, pressing it against the filmy barrier between us. I can feel the pressure of his touch, the temperature of his skin.
Before I can lose my nerve, I close the book.
I take a deep breath. Then another one. I spell M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I. Then I riffle through the book until I am on page 43 again.
There’s the cliff, and the sea in the distance. There’s the gravel that was beneath Oliver’s feet. But Oliver is missing.
It feels like a punch. Tears fill my eyes, and I wonder how I could be upset over losing something I never had.
Just then, Oliver pokes his head out from behind a boulder. “It was only a jest,” he says, laughing.
“Not funny.” I start to slam the book shut.
“Wait! Wait, I’m sorry. Truly!”
I let the pages fall open again. “You owe me,” I mutter.
“I promise to make it up to you,” Oliver vows. “The very minute I get out of this book.”
“I really do have to leave, though,” I tell him. “If I don’t go to Algebra, I’m going to get into trouble.”
Oliver nods his head. “Of course,” he says, and then hesitates. “Is Algebra quite a distance away?”
I stifle a grin. “Light-years,” I say. “I’ll come back later.”
“And help me get out of here?”
“I don’t know—”
“Promise?” Oliver asks.
I can’t remember anyone else who’s ever been desperate for me to return. Most of the kids in school are desperate for me to leave, and the ones who aren’t are totally indifferent. There’s Jules, of course, but she doesn’t need me. Not the way Oliver does, anyway.
“Yes,” I say. “I promise.”
* * *
I suffer through Math and English and an embarrassing moment in Social Studies when Mr. Uwenga calls on me, asking for the name of the secretary of state, and I say “Oliver.” Then, finally, it’s my free period. Jules and I always meet at the same table in the cafeteria. It’s the one where the geeks congregate. Jules could probably announce she was the love child of President Obama and a cat and they wouldn’t look up from their Calculus textbooks.
She slides into a seat beside me with her hot lunch tray, sighing. “Four hours, thirty-six minutes, and twelve seconds till we’re out of purgatory for the weekend.”
“Maybe later,” I murmur, still distracted by the day’s previous events.
“So, let me show you how a conversation works. I say something, and then you say something back that actually relates to what I was talking about, as if you were even the least bit interested.”
“Huh?” I say, turning to her. I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I’m kind of out of it today.”
“What’s up?” She pops a grape into her mouth. “Did Uwenga spring another pop quiz on you guys? And if so, can you tell me what’s on it so I don’t fail?”
I desperately want to tell Jules the truth about what happened. I want her to see it for herself, because if she believes it too, then I’m not crazy. After all, if anyone’s going to hear me out and not judge me or call me a freak, it’s my best friend. So I turn to her. “Did you ever wonder what happens when you close a book?”
Jules stops chewing. “Um. It stays closed?”
“No. I mean, what about the characters inside?”
She tilts her head. “They’re just words.” She peers at me. “Is this an English major kind of thing?”
“No. They’re words, but they’re more than words. They come to life in your head, right? So how do you know that doesn’t keep going when you stop reading?”
“Like how little kids think their stuffed animals wake up and party when they fall asleep?”
“Yes—exactly!”
Jules laughs. “Once, I took my dad’s video camera and let it run all night long while I was sleeping because I thought I could catch my toys in the act. I was convinced my Tickle Me Elmo was a closet ax murderer.” She shrugs. “If he was, it never showed up on tape.”
“I’ve got something better than a tape,” I say. I look at the two geeks sitting across from us. They are completely enraptured by their matrices and graphing calculators; Jules and I might as well be on the moon as far as they’re concerned. So I take the book from my backpack and open it up to page 43. “I need to show you something,” I say. “Watch carefully.”
I crack the spine a little bit, so that the book lies open. “What is this?” Jules says, laughing a little. “Did you swipe it from the last kids you babysat for?”
“Just read it,” I say.
Jules raises her brows but starts to read out loud: “Oliver grasped a root sticking out of the rock wall and hoisted himself a little farther up the cliff. With his dagger clenched between his teeth, he swung one arm up, and then the other, climbing the sheer granite, driven by the force of his determination. Seraphima, h
e thought. I’m coming for you.”
“Fat chance,” I said.
“Did you say something?” Jules asks.
“Just keep watching,” I tell her.
We both stare at the illustration. Then Jules nudges my shoulder. “Delilah? What exactly am I looking for?”
Although the book has been open for thirty seconds, Oliver hasn’t budged, or spoken, or in any way indicated that he is more than just an illustration on the page.
“Say something,” I mutter.
Jules looks at me, baffled. “Um, it’s a nice paragraph?”
The fact that Oliver isn’t talking to us both makes me feel sick to my stomach. For all I know, I’ve only been kidding myself. If I tell her now that I’ve been chatting with a prince in a fairy tale who wants my help getting out of his story, Jules is going to march me to the nurse or call a guidance counselor. Jules, who understands everything about me, just wouldn’t understand this… and I can’t risk losing the only real friend I have.
“I’m still waiting. Is he going to jump out of the page and attack me with that knife?”
If you only knew, I think. I pretend Jules has made the funniest of jokes. “Now, that would be absolutely ridiculous. I just wanted to show you… the description. This writer’s something else, isn’t she? It’s like, when you read the words, it’s actually… happening!”
I laugh again, a big fake laugh, for good measure. Jules looks at me like I’ve grown three horns out of my forehead. “Have you been sniffing Sharpies again?” she asks.
I stuff the book into my backpack. “Totally forgot—I have to go take a makeup test with Madame Borgnoigne.” I silently curse Oliver for making me look like an even bigger fool than usual. “I’ll call you after school,” I say, and I run out of the cafeteria.
* * *
I’m not in the habit of sneaking into faculty restrooms. In fact, this is something I’ve never even thought of doing, but then again nothing I’ve done today is something I’ve ever thought of doing. The bottom line is I need to be alone with this book, and in a faculty restroom I can lock the door and not have to worry about any gossiping girls who might run to a teacher to snitch on the insane student who’s conversing with a fairy tale.