Oliver #3
Those first few weeks were terrifying. Not only was I missing Delilah, but I had to impersonate a boy I had only just met, and do such a cracking job that his own mother would be fooled. It was exhausting being someone other than myself.
I wasn’t expecting to be released from a book in which I spent every moment pretending to be a person I’m not only to wind up doing it all over again.
In my favor, Edgar had been somewhat less than chatty.
He spent a great deal of time in his room with his video games, which gave me time for Delilah’s daily lessons on how to act like a teenager.
For example, in this world, an adolescent is supposed to do the opposite of what his parents ask him to do.
Grunting is an appropriate form of communication before noon, and eye-rolling is acceptable at all times.
Also, thinking before acting is a sure way to be sussed out as an imposter.
It was the little things, though, that were the hardest—a lifetime of moments Edgar had with Jessamyn Jacobs that I did not.
Until she mentioned it, I did not remember the vacation she and Edgar took to Belize, where they both got so sunburned that they had to sleep sitting up; I didn’t know that Edgar used to roam the beach with her, looking for coral shaped like the first letters of their names.
I didn’t know Edgar’s favorite color or food or book.
I had to re-create a life I’d never lived.
“And how is Delilah?” Jessamyn asks.
“She was the perfect welcoming committee,” I say diplomatically.
Jessamyn laughs. “Oh, to be young and in love.”
I grimace and turn away. Even when I was a prince, I didn’t want to hear about my faux parents’ love affair.
“I didn’t just create you out of thin air, you know.”
“Go figure,” I murmur.
She follows me into the kitchen. One thing I’ve noticed is that in this world, I seem to want to be either sleeping or eating all the time.
I take a box of cereal out of the cabinet and stick my hand inside, pulling out a fistful of small yellow puffs.
I stare at the insane cartoon on the box.
Cap’n Crunch. Honestly, it’s as if whoever drew this has never met a real pirate.
“So,” Jessamyn says, sitting on a stool at the counter. “What are your classes like? Who’s your favorite teacher so far?”
Every time we have a conversation, I get flustered.
I feel as if I’m being interrogated. As if there are right and wrong answers and I am bound to fail.
I take a deep breath and paste a smile on my face.
“I was gobsmacked by my English teacher,” I tell her, pulling a carton of milk from the refrigerator and nearly drinking from the spout before remembering that seems to be one of Jessamyn’s pet peeves. “She was brilliant.”
“Gobsmacked,” she repeats. “Brilliant. You know, you’ve been picking up a lot of slang lately that seems a little out of character for you.”
You have no idea, I think. “I’ve been reading Dickens….”
“How interesting, since I couldn’t even get you to read Shel Silverstein.”
“Delilah gave it to me,” I say quickly.
“Of course. Delilah.” Jessamyn nods. “I suppose she’s responsible for your new look as well.”
I glance down at my jeans and sweatshirt, which—yes—Delilah chose for me so that I would better fit in on my first day.
“People reinvent themselves all the time,” I say.
“Look at that picture of you and Dad on the mantel. Your hair was a different color and the size of a hot-air balloon…and you were wearing leather pants. Clearly you’ve improved. ”
Jessamyn laughs. “What happened in the nineties stays in the nineties,” she says, and then she grows more sober. “It might be fun to change it up, Edgar, but don’t forget who you are.”
I think of what Delilah told me—how to respond to your parents when they start giving you life lessons. “Relax, Mom,” I say, unzipping my sweatshirt and tossing it over a chair. “I just got better-fitting jeans. It’s not the end of the world.”
An odd expression ghosts across her face. “Of course not,” Jessamyn says. Then her eyes widen. “Edgar! What did you get all over your shirt?”
I look down. Until now I’ve actually put this morning’s debacle out of my mind. “My pen exploded?”
She sighs. “Do you know how hard it is to get ink stains out?”
“Somewhat,” I say under my breath. Replacing the milk in the refrigerator, I begin to rummage through the contents, looking for something else to satisfy my perpetual hunger. I take a small container and pop off its lid, reaching in with my fingers to grab what’s inside.
“No!” Jessamyn cries, and I look up, alarmed, the fruit halfway to my open mouth. “Don’t you know what that is?”
“Pineapple?” I reply, wondering if this is yet another trick question.
“Which gives you hives,” Jessamyn points out.
“Right,” I say, dropping the spear back into the container. “Forgot.”
“You forgot the week you spent in the hospital when your throat closed up and you couldn’t breathe?”
I hesitate. “It’s been a long day,” I say, and I grab my satchel and sweatshirt, hoping to flee before I do anything else wrong.
I’m in my room absorbed in my studies, trying to understand why all of these chemicals have two-letter nicknames that make absolutely no sense, when I hear a chime on the computer.
Delilah’s face fills the screen. I wonder if this is the way she saw me when I was inside the book—close enough to touch, but two-dimensional. “What are you up to?”
“Chemistry,” I say. “Tell me: in what part of the word Iron do you find the Fe?”
“Ferrous. It means ‘iron.’ ”
“Then why isn’t it called that?”
“Because chemistry’s a whole special circle of hell,” Delilah says. “Why don’t you come over here and we can figure it out together?”
“Something tells me we wouldn’t get very much accomplished.” I grin. “Which actually sounds rather perfect.”
After Delilah’s overreaction to Allie McAndrews’s writing her phone number on my arm, I’m relieved to know that she still wishes to see me.
But all the same, I scrub those numbers off my skin before I leave home.
I don’t want to remind her of why she grew angry.
I tell Jessamyn that Delilah’s mother has invited me for dinner and take Edgar’s bike from the garage.
Delilah’s home is a short ride away, but it’s all uphill.
As I huff my way to her house, I think longingly of Socks, my stallion, who used to be the one doing all the work when we traveled.
When I ring the McPhee doorbell, a dog starts barking.
Humphrey is a rescue, a gift from Mrs. McPhee’s boyfriend, Dr. Ducharme.
He looks enough like Frump to make me homesick every time I see him, and I can’t help talking to him the way I would address my best friend—as if he might actually answer me back.
“Good day, Humphrey,” I say as Delilah’s mother answers the door and pulls him away by the collar.
I offer my most winning smile. Mrs. McPhee has softened toward me in the months since Delilah fled to Wellfleet, but I get the feeling she doesn’t truly trust me.
“Hello,” I say. “So good to see you again. You’re looking radiant. ”
She raises one eyebrow, dubious, but I am being honest. Delilah’s mother cleans other people’s houses, and she reminds me a bit of another story from Rapscullio’s shelves, about a young scullery maid who possesses both glass footwear and inner beauty, which makes a prince fall head over heels for her.
“Aren’t you the charmer,” Mrs. McPhee replies, opening the door so I can step inside. “How was your first day of school, Edgar?”
“It’s everything I’d hoped it would be,” I say. “I can’t wait for tomorrow.”
“Maybe some of that joy will rub off on Delilah. I think the last time she enthused about school was when her second-grade class had Willy Wonka Day and they ate candy for eight straight hours.”
Delilah’s feet pound down the stairs, and she gives Humphrey an absent pat on the head. “Okay, thanks, Mom. If you’re done totally humiliating me, Edgar and I have to study.”
“Oh, is that what they’re calling it these days?”
Delilah rolls her eyes and pulls me up to her room. She leaves the door open a crack—that’s her mother’s rule, and the only way I am even allowed upstairs. When I asked her why I couldn’t be trusted, she said it’s because chivalry really is dead.
I know every inch of her bedroom, because I had to draw it in excruciating detail during one of our failed attempts to get me out of the book.
In the fairy tale, Rapscullio had a magic easel, on which he’d painted an exact replica of his lair.
When he sketched a butterfly onto the background scene, it would pop off the canvas, suddenly alive.
I tricked him into painting Delilah’s chamber, in the hopes that I could then draw myself onto the easel and reappear, alive, in her world instead of mine.
But sadly, even though I materialized in her three-dimensional bedroom, I remained in two dimensions, and we had to start back at square one.
Because my life literally depended on my knowing it so well, Delilah’s bedroom is more familiar to me than anywhere else.
Every other object is pink, and she has so many stuffed animals piled on her bed I have no idea where she sleeps.
The tops of her bureaus are cluttered with mismatched earrings and hair ties and spare change.
Portraits of Delilah—some alone, some with Jules or her mother—are arranged in a mural on the wall behind her headboard.
I flop onto her bed, crushing a stuffed panda beneath me. Delilah stretches out beside me, propping her head on one hand. There are six inches of space between us, and it’s excruciating.
I slip my arm into the curve of her waist and pull her closer, tracing a trail of kisses from her collarbone to her jaw. I bury my face in her hair; she smells of vanilla and cinnamon. “Aren’t we supposed to be working on your chemistry?” Delilah whispers.
“We are,” I say, rolling her on top of me. She flattens her hands on my chest and settles her mouth over mine. Her heart beats against mine, keeping time.
Once, Orville told me that when stars collide, universes are born; galaxies expand. That’s how it feels when I kiss Delilah—like the whole world just doubled in size.
Inside the book, I could run and leap and fall without resistance, and it is still taking a bit of getting used to, to simply exist here with gravity.
But in this moment, I’m thankful for it.
I can feel her pressing against me from collarbone to toes, a weight that sinks into my bones and grounds me in this brand-new world.
It’s not just a physical gravity I’m still adjusting to—it’s the serious reality of having my dreams come true. Of being free to do what I wish. Of feeling as if I have everything—everyone—that I need.
It’s odd—love in the fairy tale always felt so fast, skipping over the details to get to the happy ending.
With Delilah, I’m moving just as quickly, but I don’t miss a single moment.
I notice how she chews her pencil when she’s nervous; how when I touch her hand, she jumps a little as if there’s been an electric shock; how when she says my name, it’s softer than any other word in the sentence.
Suddenly Delilah pushes herself away from me and leaps off the bed, her jaw dropping. I sit up quickly, expecting to see Mrs. McPhee in the doorway, but there’s nobody there. “What’s wrong?”
Delilah points behind me, and I turn around.
Hanging in midair are two words I hoped I’d never see:
COME HOME.