Between the Lines (18 page)

Oliver reaches beneath his tunic and pulls out a leather-bound book with gold lettering—an exact replica of the one I’m reading. “I found this on Rapscullio’s shelves. The author painted it into the illustration of his lair, along with hundreds of other book titles. You don’t even notice them when you’re paying attention to the story—but they’re there. And they
stay
there when the book is closed. And look”—he leafs through it so I can see—“it’s exactly the same, isn’t it?”

It seems that way. As Oliver flips the pages, I see Pyro breathing fireballs and Frump trotting through the Enchanted Forest as fairies dance in circles around him. I see a tiny illustration of Oliver too, standing at the helm of Captain Crabbe’s ship as the wind ruffles his hair.

I wonder if that very small fictional prince is, at that moment, wishing for someone to notice him and get him out of his own story.

“It makes perfect sense that I couldn’t paint myself
out of this story—because a book isn’t a painting. But you’ve already noticed things that I’ve drawn or written before on the pages—like that chessboard, and the message on the cliff. Perhaps rewriting the story in
my
copy will rewrite the story in
yours
as well.”

“I guess it’s worth a try,” I say.

“What’s worth a try?”

My mother’s voice sinks through the blanket I’m hiding beneath. I emerge from under the covers. “Nothing!” I say.

“What’s under there?”

I blush. “Nothing, Mom. Seriously!”

“Delilah,” my mother says, her face settling grimly. “Are you doing drugs?”

“What?”
I yelp. “No!”

She rips aside the covers and sees the fairy tale. “Why are you hiding this?”

“I’m not hiding it.”

“You were reading under the covers… even though there’s nobody in your room.”

I shrug. “I guess I just like my privacy.”

“Delilah.” My mother’s hands settle on her hips. “You’re fifteen. You’re way too old to be addicted to a fairy tale.”

I give her a weak smile. “Well… isn’t that better than drugs?”

She shakes her head sadly. “Come down for breakfast when you’re ready,” she murmurs.

“Delilah—” Oliver begins as soon as the door closes behind my mother.

“We’ll figure it all out later,” I promise. I shut the book and bury it inside my backpack, get dressed, and yank my hair into a ponytail. Downstairs, in the kitchen, my mother is cooking eggs. “I’m not really hungry,” I mutter.

“Then maybe you’d like this instead,” she says, and she passes me a plate that has no food on it—just a single young adult novel. “I haven’t read it, but the librarian says it’s all the rage with girls in your grade. Apparently, there’s a werewolf who falls in love with a mermaid. It’s supposed to be the new
Twilight.
”

I push it away. “Thanks, but I’m not interested.”

My mother sits down across from me. “Delilah, if I suddenly started eating baby food or watching
Sesame Street,
wouldn’t you think there was something wrong with me?”

“This isn’t
Goodnight Moon,
” I argue. “It’s… it’s…” But there’s nothing I can say without making things worse.

Her mouth flattens, and the light goes out of her eyes. “I know why you’re obsessed with a fairy tale, honey, even if you don’t want to admit it to yourself. But here’s the truth: no matter how much you might wish for it, princes don’t come around every day, and happy endings don’t
grow on trees. Take it from me: the sooner you grow up, the less you’ll be disappointed.”

Her words might as well be a slap in the face. She slides the eggs onto a plate and sets them in front of me before leaving the kitchen.

Sunny side up? Yeah, right.

No one ever asks a kid for her opinion, but it seems to me that growing up means you stop hoping for the best, and start expecting the worst. So how do you tell an adult that maybe everything wrong in the world stems from the fact that she’s stopped believing the impossible can happen?

*   *   *

I usually say I hate Biology, but it’s possible we just got off on the wrong foot. My teacher, Mrs. Brown, completely lives up to her name: she is addicted to self-tanner and Crest Whitestrips, and spends a lot of time talking about her favorite spots in the Caribbean instead of helping us prepare for the next day’s lab. I think it’s fair to say I’ll be teaching myself about cell division, but I’m totally set if I need to plan a vacation to the Bahamas.

I spent Sunday in my room, plotting Oliver’s escape with him. Sometimes we forgot the task at hand because we went off on a tangent. I told Oliver things I’ve never been brave enough to tell anyone else: how I worry about my mom; how I panic when someone asks me what I want
to be when I grow up; how I secretly wonder what it would be like, for an hour, to be popular. In return, Oliver confided his biggest fear: that he will pass through his lifetime—whatever that may be—without making a difference in the world. That he will be ordinary, instead of extraordinary.

I told him that—as far as I was concerned—he’s already been successful at that.

I told him I’d rather die than go to school on Monday and face Allie McAndrews. But here it is, third period, and she’s absent.

Maybe Oliver’s right; wishes
can
come true.

“Does everyone have a frog?” Mrs. Brown says. I glance down at the poor, dead amphibian in front of me. Usually my lab partner is Zach, but he’s taken a conscientious objector position on this lab, due to his veganism, and instead of doing a dissection he is writing an independent paper on growth hormones in dairy cows.

The door opens, and in walks Allie McAndrews, with two black eyes. She looks like a raccoon, and has a crisscrossed strip of tape over the bridge of her nose too. She hands Mrs. Brown a hall pass. “Sorry I’m late,” she says.

“Better late than never,” the teacher says. “Allie, why don’t you pair up with Delilah?”

Allie shoots me the look of death as she takes the stool beside me. “Touch me,” she whispers, “and I will make your life miserable.”

“Now, class, pick up your frog. I want you to measure the posterior appendages…”

I turn to Allie. “Do you… want to go first?”

She glares at me. “I’d rather join Chess Club.”

I joined Chess Club last year. “Okay, then,” I say.
Sorry, buddy,
I think as I lift the frog into my palm and pick up a ruler.

Allie’s boyfriend, Ryan, drags his stool toward our lab table, even though he is supposed to be working with someone else. “Hey, gorgeous,” he says, grinning at her. “So what do you say you and I get some takeout and download a movie and
not
watch it tonight?”

“I’m not in the mood,” she says, glancing at me. “I have to go home and
ice.
”

“It was an accident,” I tell her. “I didn’t purposely cross five lanes of the pool just to smack you in the face.” Although, I admit, I might have daydreamed about doing just that.

“You’re the only girl in the school who could make two black eyes look hot,” Ryan says.

Allie twines her fingers with his. “You’re just saying that.”

“Cross my heart,” Ryan answers.

“I love you, babe,” Allie says.

Ryan grins. “Love you more.”

I thought there was a good chance I would feel like throwing up during a dissection lab, but I figured it would be because of the frog, not the conversation.

Mrs. Brown winds past our lab table. If she notices that Ryan is now our third partner, she doesn’t comment. “Now, class, I want you to examine the chest area…. What skeletal feature is missing?”

I wait for Allie to pick up the frog to examine it. “You, um, want a turn?” I ask her.

“To smack
you
in the face? Break
your
knee?”

“Right, then,” I say, poking at the frog again.

“What kind of takeout should I get?” Ryan asks. “Chinese? Indian? Italian?”

“Ribs,” I announce.

They both look at me with disgust. “Who asked you?” Allie says.

“No… the frog. The skeletal part it’s missing… is ribs.”

She tosses her hair. “Who cares?”

“Gently,” Mrs. Brown warns a boy to my right, who is
squeezing his amphibian so tightly that its head is swelling. “Dissection is both an art
and
a science. Show your frog a little love.”

Suddenly, Ryan grabs the frog off our lab table in one hammy fist. “Yeah… show your frog a little love.” He shoves it so close to my face that I can breathe in the scent of chemicals and death. With all my might I push away from him, knocking over the lab stool and causing enough of a commotion that the entire class stops to watch.

“My bad,” Ryan says. “I thought it said it was a prince….”

The class bursts into laughter. I turn seven shades of red.

“That’s enough!” Mrs. Brown says. “Ryan, go to the principal’s office; you and I will be seeing each other at detention this afternoon. Delilah, take the bathroom pass and go clean yourself up.”

As I grab my backpack and stumble out of the classroom, the students are silent. And then, just before I cross the threshold, I hear it: “
Ribbit. Ribbit.
” It’s one of the kids in the back, and suddenly everyone is snickering and Mrs. Brown is trying (and failing) to get them to quiet down.

The girls’ bathroom is empty. I scrub my hands and face and blot them dry with paper towels. Jules used to be my go-to girl whenever something horrendous happened—the person I could count on to make me feel
better. But now I find myself searching through my backpack. Just like after my dream, the only person I really want to talk to right now is Oliver.

I rummage in my backpack, past my Biology textbook and my English binder and my lunch, but the book is missing.

“No,” I mutter, and I pull the textbooks out of the bag. All that’s left now is crumpled paper, nubby pencils, bits of crushed granola bars, and forty-two cents.

The fairy tale—which I had put in my backpack that morning with my own two hands—is gone.

It doesn’t take me long to decide that I’m not going back to Biology class. I’ll just tell Mrs. Brown I was so traumatized I was in desperate need of a guidance counselor. Instead, I hurry to the library, where I find Ms. Winx pasting bar codes into new books. “Ms. Winx,” I ask, “has anyone returned
Between the Lines
?”

“Aren’t you the one who has it checked out?”

“I’m pretty sure I left it by accident in the cafeteria before homeroom….”

“Well, if anyone turns it in, I’ll let you know.”

As I leave the library, in the pit of my stomach is a stone. What if I can’t find the book? What if it’s gone forever?

What will I do without him?

I’ve never been in love, but I’ve always imagined it—weirdly—like some sort of OxiClean commercial. The TV host shows a scene from an ordinary day, and then
takes a big old sponge soaked in love and swipes away the stains. Suddenly that same scene is missing all the mistakes, all the loneliness. The colors are like jewels, ten times richer than they were before. The music is louder and clearer.
Love,
the host will say,
makes life a little brighter.