Oliver
It’s been five whole minutes and my face still looks like I’ve been clobbered by a giant. I push aside Delilah, who’s holding a wet tissue to my nose. “The correct term,” she says, “is gay.”
“I didn’t mean to insult him,” I mutter. “I just didn’t know.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. This is all new to you.”
But the guilt aches more than my bruises.
I resolve to find James later and offer him a gentleman’s apology.
“If two people wish to be together, why is it anyone else’s business?
” I ask. “Bloody hell, my best friend was a basset hound, and he was in love with a princess, and no one ever batted an eye.”
Speaking of eyes, I wonder if mine will be black soon. I lean closer to the mirror. “I don’t understand this,” I say. I’ve literally jumped into the fiery mouth of a dragon and leaped off fifty-foot cliffs into the ocean and nearly drowned, yet I recovered faster than I have from this measly blow.
Plus, it hurts.
Suddenly it all makes sense. “Delilah,” I say, swallowing, “I fear I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying. You got sucker punched.”
“I should have healed already.”
“Only inside your book,” Delilah says. “In the real world, you can’t just turn a page and feel better.”
I gingerly touch the bridge of my nose and wince. “Pity,” I say.
I must admit, this is not quite the start I was expecting.
I’ve been rather excited about the idea of going to school, in spite of all that Delilah has told me about it.
She makes it sound like being chained in a dungeon, but to me, it’s anything but that.
I’ve been chained in a dungeon before. Over and over and over again, in fact.
Even getting walloped by a stranger is new and exciting and unexpected and different from the same sixty pages I’ve repeated my whole life.
“You have to get to class,” Delilah says. “You’re already late. Just say you got lost—no one will question a new student on the first day. You remember what we talked about?”
I begin ticking off the points on my fingers.
“Don’t bow when I meet someone. Don’t refer to myself as royalty.
Take notes in class as if I am interested, even when I am not.
The teacher’s the king of the classroom, and I am not allowed to get up and leave unless granted permission. Oh, and no knives, ever, in school.”
Delilah smiles. “Good. And one more…” She points to my face. “Don’t say or do anything that might make that happen again.”
She pokes her head out the door—we have ensconced ourselves in a privy that is only meant for the teachers to use. When Delilah sees that the hall is empty, she pulls me out beside her and pushes me in the direction of my potions class.
“Remember,” she says. “Just follow your schedule and I’ll meet you at lunch.”
I nod and turn but am called back by the sound of her voice.
“Oliver,” she says. “You can do this.”
I watch her walk away. When Delilah talks like that, it’s easy to remember why I gave up everything I knew in order to be with her. She believes in me, and if someone believes in you wholeheartedly, you start to believe in yourself as well.
I take a deep breath and forge ahead into the great unknown.
I’ve been performing all my life; this is just another role.
I have a sudden flash of Frump, my best friend in the fairy tale, his tail wagging as he yelled at all of us to take our places as a new Reader cracked open the spine of the book. I wonder if Frump is rounding up the cast even now.
I wonder if they miss me.
But. I have my own work to do, here.
Whatever butterflies are swarming in my stomach are not the result of fear. Just excitement.
I push open the door of the classroom and offer my most charming smile to the tutor standing in front of the seated pupils. “So sorry I’m late. My deepest apologies, Your Majesty.”
The students snicker. “Mr. Zhang will do,” the teacher says flatly. “Take a seat, Mr….”
“Jacobs. Edgar Jacobs. Formerly of Wellfleet.”
“Fantastic,” Mr. Zhang intones.
There is only one open seat, and to my delight, it’s next to someone I know: Chris, whose locker is adjacent to mine. He looks up and cringes. “What happened to you?”
“A miscommunication,” I say.
“Okay,” Mr. Zhang announces. “I’m going to hand out a little pop quiz to see how much you guys already know. Don’t panic, it’s not going to count toward your final grade.” He moves through the aisles, giving each of us a sheet of paper.
Chris hunkers down over the quiz, his pencil scratching vigorously. I glance at the page and frown.
“I beg your pardon,” I say, getting Mr. Zhang’s attention. “I think mine is written in the wrong tongue.”
“English isn’t your first language?”
Indeed it is. The Queen’s English, to be precise. But this writing is full of strange dashes and arrows and chains of Cs and Os that look like insects.
The teacher sighs. “Then just tell me three things you know about chemistry.”
I take a pencil from the leather satchel I’ve carried to school.
1. Eye of newt and dragon’s breath, combined in equal volume, can cure the common cold.
2. The juice of forget-me-nots, distilled, will restore a lost memory.
3. One should never lick the spoon.
By the time we pass in the quiz, I’m quite pleased with myself, and awfully grateful for the time I spent in the wizard Orville’s cabin, watching him craft his concoctions.
I manage to sit through class, nodding along and taking notes as Delilah instructed, although I really have no idea what the point of a table is if it’s periodic rather than constant.
As the teacher speaks, I let my attention drift, marveling as I look around the classroom.
With the exception of Chris, I don’t recognize anyone.
It’s as if this world keeps reproducing new people, as if they are coming out of the woodwork.
Having grown up with the same cast of thirty, I marvel at features and clothing and faces I’ve never seen before.
One girl, sitting in the front of the room, has a ring through the side of her nose, like the oxen in the fields behind our castle.
A boy carries a wheeled board strapped to his satchel, as if he must be ready to zip away at any instant.
I glance at the girl to my left; in place of notes, her tablet is filled with swirling images that stretch from corner to corner—she must be an artist of sorts.
The bell rings, startling me. It seems to serve as a cue; everyone stands up and starts packing away their books.
Chris glances at me as he zips up his satchel. “So what made your family move here?”
I don’t really have the answer to that. After I realized that Edgar was in the book and I was really, truly out of it, my first step toward becoming real was to masquerade as the boy whose life I stole.
That meant getting Jessamyn Jacobs, the author of the fairy tale and Edgar’s mother, to believe that I was her son—and I do not think there is anything more challenging than trying to fool the one person who knows a child best, namely, the mother, who’s been there from the very first moment of his life.
There were many near disasters when Jessamyn seemed on the verge of discovering that I was not Edgar.
She would stare at me for long moments, a curious expression on her face.
I caught her once going through the drawers of the furniture in Edgar’s chamber.
Each night at dinner, she’d ask me if I was feeling all right, because I didn’t seem quite like myself.
That was troubling enough, but even more devastating was the fact that this foreign world was so much bigger than the sixty pages to which I was accustomed: the girl I’d traded everything for lived four hours away.
I had to get Jessamyn to believe that it was necessary for us to move to Delilah’s hometown—and I had to do it in a way that Edgar might have.
After weeks of shooting down my creative excuses (Less air pollution!
Struck by Cupid’s arrow! Better school district!), Jessamyn suddenly announced one afternoon that moving to New Hampshire would indeed be a good idea.
I still don’t know what changed her mind.
I’m just incredibly relieved that it changed.
“My mom’s, um, a freelance editor. She was ready for a fresh start, and she can work anywhere.” I look at Chris. “How about you?”
“My dad got a job here, and my mom liked the idea of raising her kids in fresh air,” Chris says. “Detroit’s kind of the anti–New Hampshire. In lots of ways. I’ve never seen so many white people in my life.” He grins at me. “So how long have you and Delilah been together?”
“Technically, three months,” I reply.
“Ooh, serious, huh?”
“Well, I’m trying not to be. She wasn’t too thrilled when I proposed. She wants to do something called dating.”
Chris looks at me. “Where are you from, again?”
“Wellfleet,” I say. “Have you found true love?”
“It’s only second period,” Chris laughs. “You’re the closest relationship I have in this school so far.”
I follow him into the hallway, and we both turn toward the staircase. “I’ve got trig with Baird,” Chris says. “Apparently she only wears black and keeps rocks in her desk drawer. I hear she’s a total witch.”
“Really?” I say. “Then how come she isn’t the one teaching potions?”
Chris smiles. “Dude, you’re weird, but you’re entertaining. See you later.”
He heads downstairs and I turn to the staircase, nearly colliding with just the person I hoped to find. “James,” I say as his eyes slide away from mine and he starts up the steps. “Wait.”
“Honestly, I think you’ve said enough for today.”
“But I said the wrong things.” I wait for him to stop moving and face me. “I never meant to offend you. Where I come from, that word means something different.”
“And where is that? Never Land?”