Between the Lines (32 page)

My arms close around her. “Me too,” I murmur.

She stands up, and as she leaves the room, Dr. Ducharme puts his hand on her shoulder.

There’s something about that casual gesture that makes me relieved. While I was in the book, I worried about my mother being left alone. But maybe, one day, she won’t be.

As soon as I hear the door click shut, I scramble under the bed and grab the book. Sitting up, I see my reflection in the mirror. There is something sticking out of the collar of my T-shirt that looks remarkably—and terrifyingly—like a tattoo.

I pull down the collar, afraid to peek.

Strung around my neck is a line of backward cursive. I slip a fingernail under one edge and peel it off my skin like a Band-Aid. Then I drape the letters over the edge of my bedsheet.

Just like the spider I pulled from the book days ago, the mermaid’s necklace—on the outside—has transformed into words. But I saw a vision of Oliver in Orville’s cottage—a vision where he was in the future, in
this
outside world, and he wasn’t just letters on a page.

Focus, Delilah,
I tell myself. I grab the book and open it to page 43, where Oliver looks up at me with obvious relief.

“You’re alive!” he cries.

“What happened?” I say. “It was real, wasn’t it?”

Oliver’s face falls. “Don’t you remember?”

“Yes,” I whisper. “But I want to make sure I didn’t make it all up.”

“Just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean it’s any less true,” Oliver replies. He squints at me. “You’re hurt?”

“Just a bruise,” I tell him. But that reminds me of the Pandemonium, and the devastation it caused. “What about you? Are you all right? And Orville? His poor home!”

“It’s all intact again,” Oliver says. “The minute you opened the book, everything went back to the way it used to be.” He looks away from me.

“Frump?” I ask.

Oliver nods. “Just a dog.”

“But it worked, Oliver. Exploding your copy of the fairy tale set me free.”

“And I’m still here,” he says sadly. “So we’re back to square one.”

“No, we’re not. Remember the vision? Your future? I know who that woman is. It’s Jessamyn Jacobs.”

“Who?”

“She’s the author,” I tell him. “The woman who created you.”

Oliver’s eyes light up. “So that vision,” he says. “I’m in her house?”

I hear footsteps on the stairs. “Soup!” my mother sings out.

I slam the book hard, stuffing it under a pillow and yanking the covers over me. The door creaks open. “Thanks,” I say. I take a sip of the soup to satisfy my mom.

She sits down on the edge of the bed and watches me take one spoonful, then another. I blot my mouth with a paper napkin. “You’re not going to watch me eat the whole thing, are you?”

My mother looks flustered. “Yes. I mean, of course not.” She hesitates. “I just don’t want you to fall asleep. Steve says that’s the worst thing possible after a concussion.”

Steve?
“Mom,” I say, “when’s the last time
you
slept?”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” she says, squeezing my hand.

“I may not
have
to,” I tell her. “But I
do.
”

She smiles, but she doesn’t move.

“Mom?” I say. “If I promise you I’m not going to conk out, can I eat in privacy?”

She’s reluctant, but she stands up. “Call me when you’re done,” she says.

The headache she promised is emerging. I know that Oliver expects me to open the book and finish our conversation, but there’s something I have to do first. I get out of bed and gingerly walk to my desk, where my laptop sits. Opening a search engine, I type in
Jessamyn Jacobs.
All the websites connected to her are listed. I click the first one, and a photo of the woman in Oliver’s vision fills the screen. I start to read the text below it:

Jessamyn Jacobs was born in New York in 1965. After graduating from NYU, she got a job as an editor at
HorrorFest
magazine. But she realized quickly that she didn’t want to correct other people’s words—she wanted to write her own. Her first thriller was published when she was only twenty-six years old, and she wrote ten consecutive bestsellers. However, after writing one children’s book, the author retreated into anonymity. She has not published since 2002, choosing to live quietly in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

After writing one children’s book, the author retreated into anonymity.

My whole life, and its current obsession, has been reduced to a throwaway sentence in the biography of a famous thriller writer, who hasn’t been writing for years.

But at least I know where to find her.

I unplug my cell phone from its charger and text Jules.

I’m a jerk,
I write.

I count all the way to sixty-two before there is an answering beep.

I know,
Jules has replied.

My thumbs work furiously over the tiny keyboard.
Ur Aunt Agnes is Voldemort in drag. If I could I would hide u in my closet 4 the summer. In fact, why don’t we try? Might work.

Another beep:
I’m closetrophobic.

I grin.
Jules,
I text.
I know I have no right 2 ask, and you can tell me 2 go jump in a lake if u want, but I need ur help. Have 2 get to MA ASAP.
I hesitate.
Will explain when I see u.

This time it takes Jules even longer to respond.
I can be at ur house in 5 mins. Dad’s car is in the garage.

You don’t have a license, I text back.

There is another beep.
That doesn’t mean I can’t drive,
Jules writes.

*   *   *

The hardest part is leaving my mother again—just moments after I’ve returned. I consider reasoning with her, but what excuse can I make that would convince her to take an impromptu trip to Cape Cod, particularly when
I am still fresh from a concussion? If I insist, she’ll probably take me for a neurological exam. No, the only way to do this is to leave her out of it.

The one immediate challenge to that strategy is that in order to leave the house, I have to walk downstairs, right past her.

I’m not the most graceful person—okay, I’m a bona fide klutz—but again, desperate times call for desperate measures. If I think it’s unlikely that my mother will agree to a four-hour car ride, it’s even more unlikely that she’d let me go with the unlicensed Jules as my chauffeur. So I throw open the sash of my bedroom window, eyeing a tree with branches close enough for me to reach.

I used to have romantic fantasies about a guy throwing pebbles at the window, climbing up to my room, kissing me in the moonlight, stealing me away.

Wrong fairy tale,
I think wryly.
I’m
the one who’s going to save the prince.

I grab the notepad on my desk and rip off a sheet of paper. I write:

Be back soon. Don’t worry.
I’m fine.
Really.
Love,
Delilah. xoxo

My mother is going to worry anyway—but at least when she finds me missing, Dr. Ducharme will be there. And maybe he can keep her calm long enough for me to explain why I had to do this. After all, if it works, Oliver will be here—alive and three-dimensional and very, very real—and he’ll confirm this whole crazy story.

I dig around in my underwear drawer for the small jewelry box I use to store my allowance and the money I have from babysitting: three hundred and twenty-two dollars. It’s not a fortune, but I tuck it into my backpack, then grab the book and stuff it inside too. I look around my room to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything and catch sight of myself in the mirror. I look like I’ve lost a fight. If I show up at Jessamyn Jacobs’s house like this, she will probably run away screaming. In my closet, I find a knit winter hat that covers my forehead perfectly. It’s a little warm for the season, but maybe I can pull it off as a new fashion trend.

I open the window and stretch a leg out. I swear the tree has moved. Like, three feet away.

Taking a deep breath, I jump from the windowsill, and to my great shock wind up hugging the trunk tightly. I shimmy down, thinking of Oliver, who has to climb a cliff wall every day.

With a thump I hit the ground and tiptoe down the block, to the cul-de-sac where Jules is parked and waiting, just like we’d arranged. She looks weird sitting behind the steering wheel of a car. When she sees me, she grins and lowers the power window. “You owe me big-time,” she says.

I never would have guessed it based on her personality, but Jules drives like an old lady. She putts along ten miles
below
the speed limit and puts on her turn signal miles before she actually veers off the exit. “So,” she says, when we have been driving for ten minutes on the highway, “when are you going to tell me where we’re going?”