Delilah
I’d rather be in Siberia right now, losing all my extremities to frostbite. Or talking to my pet cockroach in a maximum-security prison. Or sweating buckets in hell. I’d rather be anywhere but in the school cafeteria with everyone laughing at me.
I feel my face catching fire. If only it were a real fire, so I could disappear into ash.
Jules, my volunteer personal bodyguard, stands with her hands on her hips, ready to body-check any soul who dares to come close to me. Not that anyone is trying. They’re all applauding for Oliver as he and his ridiculous knight’s getup slink away.
“All he’s ever done is act,” Jules points out. “Maybe he wasn’t expressly trying to humiliate you.”
“Aren’t you my best friend?” I ask. “Whose side are you on?”
“Obviously yours. All I’m saying is maybe you should cut him a little slack. He’s been in high school for what, a week? It takes freshmen two whole years before they know what the hell is going on.”
I look at her. “He kissed the one girl in this school who would dance on my grave. No, actually, she would plan a schoolwide dance on my grave.”
“Well, you’ve at least gotta give him points for creativity,” Jules says.
Oliver used to be creative, back when he was in the book. He had a new idea every time I opened the fairy tale, some crazy scheme about how to get off the page to be with me. But things were different back then.
He was different back then.
I thought, when Oliver was in the fairy tale, that he understood me better than anyone else.
I got used to him being pages away. But having him physically and wholly with me is something I was not prepared for.
Sensing that he’s come into a room before I even turned around to see him.
The way his skin always smells like the inky freshness of a new book.
The heat of his breath falling into my ear when he whispers my name.
If Oliver in the book was captivating, then Oliver in 3-D is completely overwhelming.
Who would have thought that having your dreams come true would suck so much?
I mean, I should be happier than I’ve ever been.
For the first time in my life, the guy I like actually likes me back, and he isn’t imaginary.
Yet that perfect prince, who used to be all mine, now has to be shared with the entire world.
And I guess it should be no surprise that everyone adores Oliver, just like I did.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt me to see it happen.
In the few weeks Oliver’s been in school, I’ve actually noticed a couple of freshmen starting to imitate his style—classic jeans, solid T-shirt, leather satchel.
In the hallways, kids hang on his every word.
Girls go out of their way to “accidentally” bump into him.
I know he didn’t mean to be popular—to have everyone string along behind him like the tail of a kite.
In fact, I thought that the quirks of being a fairy-tale character dumped into reality would kind of make him an automatic outsider, like me.
But that would be okay, because we would have each other.
Instead, he’s the Zac Efron of our school, and I’m still absolutely nobody.
Oliver doesn’t understand, because he hasn’t been in public school as long as I have. He thinks life is like Disney World, with magic around every corner. He doesn’t realize that the longer he hangs out with the cool kids, the harder it’s going to be to stay with me.
Not that I’ve really encouraged him to do that, lately.
I’d heard before that love can turn you into someone else…but I never imagined that this is who I’d be: a jealous monster. I don’t like who I’ve become. So why should he?
It’s hard enough watching other people want a piece of him—a smile, a conversation, a high five—when he used to be just mine.
I can’t shake the feeling that if he keeps giving away these pieces, eventually there will be nothing left for me.
And then, when I walked into the auditorium and saw him kissing Allie McAndrews, terror flooded me in a way I’ve never experienced before.
It was like being in a car, the moment you realized the crash is happening.
Like being tossed off a boat into shark-infested water, only to discover you’re paralyzed.
No matter how much he assures me that the kiss meant nothing, that he was only acting, how can I trust him?
How can I know that he wasn’t also acting when he said that to me?
Oliver comes from a place where there is only one person he was meant to be with.
Literally, there is only one human girl his age in the book—Seraphima.
He has only loved one girl because there was never an alternative.
But I can’t help feeling that this kiss made him realize I’m not his only option.
Because if you hold me up against Allie McAndrews, I lose. Every time.
I am doing my best to only make eye contact with the condiments on the table, but from the corner of my eye, I see Allie walking toward me, her entourage in tow.
They hang off her like ornaments, the decorations that turn a plain old spruce into a Christmas tree.
I square my shoulders, trying to remind myself that without her followers, a mean girl is just a mean girl.
She sidles up to my table in a cloud of Chanel perfume and confidence. “Oh no, Allie,” Jules says. “Did someone leave your cage open?”
She slices a look toward Jules that could cut steel, then turns to me. “Hey, Deborah,” she says.
“It’s Delilah.” Really? She doesn’t know my name, after I broke her knee and her nose? I honestly can’t tell if Allie’s being intentionally mean or if she’s truly just that stupid.
She smiles, revealing a row of perfect teeth. She probably chews Crest Whitestrips like gum. “So I totally had a nightmare last night,” Allie says. “I dreamed I was you.” She laughs, and the sound echoes through her posse.
Jules looks at her with pity. “It’s scary to think people like you are allowed to breed.”
Allie ignores her. Her gaze is a laser on my face. “Your boyfriend’s a great kisser,” she says sweetly.
“That’s it,” Jules says, getting to her feet. “Piss off, Allie.”
Allie glances around, looking at everything but Jules. “Do you hear that?” she replies. “It’s the sound of no one caring.”
She and her army strut out of the cafeteria as if their exit has been choreographed.
“Don’t listen to her,” Jules says, hunkering down beside me again. “She’s irrelevant.”
I nod and try to smile at her. But deep down, I’m afraid that Allie is right. No one cares.
Not even Oliver.
I will never forget the morning Oliver first got out of the book—when we realized that we were together but not two-dimensional or trapped in a fairy tale.
We sat on Jessamyn Jacobs’s porch steps in Wellfleet, and Oliver held on to my hand like a child grabs the string of a balloon, afraid that letting go meant I might just float away.
We truly believed that we had been through the worst—that the struggle of getting Oliver out of the book was no match for any obstacle we would face in the future.
It didn’t matter that Jessamyn lived in Wellfleet and I lived two hundred miles away in New Hampshire.
It didn’t matter that Oliver had to pretend that he had been Edgar Jacobs for his entire life.
It didn’t matter that my mother was going to ground me for eternity, because I ran away.
None of it mattered, as long as we could sit on that porch step and hold tight to each other.
He felt the same way, back then.
One of the first snafus we discovered when Oliver moved here was realizing that Edgar had his driver’s license and Oliver didn’t even know what a car was.
We couldn’t very well stick Oliver behind a wheel without it ending catastrophically—but we also couldn’t have Jessamyn ask him to drive to the grocery store and wonder why he refused.
So we decided he would tell Jessamyn that he was now a tree-hugger out to single-handedly save the planet, intent on reducing his own personal carbon emissions.
It was left to me to teach him how to ride a bike.
First I lowered the seat so that Oliver’s feet could brush the ground. “Sit,” I told him. “Don’t put your feet on the pedals. Just push around a little bit.”
Oliver wouldn’t take his eyes off the pavement. “You know, horses are easier,” he muttered. “They balance themselves.”
“I would have started with a tricycle, but unfortunately they don’t make them in your size.” I waited until he met my gaze. “Just trust me, okay?”
Eventually Oliver began to push off the ground a little harder, gliding for moments in between. I ran alongside him, but he wouldn’t let me step away, and we couldn’t go more than ten feet before he tipped off the bicycle, falling into my arms.
“I don’t get it,” I said, laughing, after this happened fifteen times in a row. “You climbed towers. You leaped through pages. Why can’t you do this?”
He shook his head, his eyes sliding away from mine. “I don’t know….”
“Try again,” I urged. “But this time, I’m going to let go.”
He climbed on the bike, took a few wobbly pedals forward, and, seemingly defying gravity, tumbled off the bike. Oliver knocked me flat on the ground, landing heavily on top of me. His shoulders were shaking, his face buried in my neck.
I pushed him off me, trying to see if he was hurt. “Are you all right?”
But when Oliver rolled over, he was laughing so hard he couldn’t catch his breath. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist. I figured it out the first time. But you’re so cute when you’re frustrated.”
Back then, it seemed like I could never be mad at him. When did we fall out of the honeymoon phase?
I lie on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, with Humphrey snuggled against my side. My mom says that even though the dog was a gift for her, he might as well belong to me. He stays on my bed most of the day when I’m at school, loving me unconditionally.