Chapter Delilah
When Jules disappears, there’s a bracing gust of wind that rattles my bureau, strips my sheets, and rips the posters from my walls.
Something strikes me in the face and tumbles to the ground.
I reach out to grab it: a jeweled tiara.
And in the next breath, sprawled on the floor in a cloud of silk and tulle and long blond hair, is Seraphima.
I grab her shoulders and haul her upright. “What did you do with my friend?”
She stares back at me, wide-eyed. “I—I don’t know.
I was putting on some lip gloss. And then all of a sudden I was here.
” Her gaze travels past me to fall on Frump, and she bursts into tears.
“It’s been so awful! Without your command, everything’s out of control.
And the servants have left the castle. No one’s taken care of me!
” Her voice drops to an embarrassed whisper. “I had to brush my own hair.”
Frump yelps in response and Seraphima nods. “That’s so very kind of you to say, but I know I don’t look as flawless as I usually do.”
“Wait,” Oliver says, stepping forward. “You can understand him?”
Seraphima hurls herself into Oliver’s embrace, and both Frump and I stiffen.
“Ollie!” she cries. “You’re here too? This is just the best surprise ever!
” She clasps her hands and smiles. “I want to thank you all for being here. I had no idea you were planning this. It’s not even my birthday for another month—” She beams. “I will be accepting presents now.”
“This isn’t a party for you,” Oliver says.
Frump barks, and Seraphima blushes. “He said I don’t look a day over sixteen,” she translates.
“How can you talk to him?”
“Oh, Ollie, what did you think princesses do in finishing school? I live in a tower. My best friend for four years was a bird. I’m fluent in Animal. Except Fish. They always sound a little muddled to me.” She glances at me. “Peasant? Might you draw me a bath? It’s been a very trying travel day.”
“No, Seraphima. This is Delilah.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She smiles at me. “Delilah? Might you draw me a bath? It’s been a very trying travel day.”
I fold my arms. “I am not her slave.”
Frump trots out of the bedroom, and a moment later I hear running water in the bathroom. He returns, his tail wagging. “Thank you so much, Frump.” She raises her brows at Oliver. “You really should train your servants better, Oliver.”
She sweeps out of the room. “Delilah, come attend to me.”
I glance at Oliver, furious.
“Please,” he begs. “Just this once.”
I follow Seraphima into the bathroom. She stands with her arms extended. I grit my teeth and unlace the back of her gown. “Are we good?”
Seraphima clears her throat. She is now wearing nothing but a thin cotton shift, which is apparently too heavy for her to remove by herself.
I pull it up over her head, and she turns around, buck naked.
“You’re a peach,” she simpers, and before I can step away, she throws her arms around me for a hug of gratitude.
Honestly, the last thing I need to know is that underneath all her clothes, my boyfriend’s ex is just as perfect as her face looks on any given day.
I leave Seraphima to her own devices in the bath (knowing her, she’ll probably drown) and head into my bedroom.
Oliver has located the fairy tale, which exploded out of Jules’s hands the moment before she vanished.
The book is already open. “I don’t understand,” he says. “What do you mean they’re missing?”
I peer over Oliver’s shoulder to see Orville shaking his head. “We’ve got a search party out for them now. But the fairies and Socks have already canvassed every page and every margin of this book, and we can’t locate them anywhere.”
“The book isn’t long,” I chime in. “And seriously, how hard could it be to find a punk-rock chick in a fairy tale?”
“Rapscullio’s painting LOST posters; the mermaids are doing a dive-and-rescue search. I promise you, as soon as we know anything, we’ll send a message.”
“How?” Oliver points out, exasperated. “The magic easel is broken.”
“Good point,” Orville muses.
“We’ll keep checking in,” I suggest.
Frump whimpers.
“What should you do with Seraphima?” Orville repeats.
Oliver frowns. “Am I the only one here who doesn’t speak Dog?”
“I suppose I’d just try to keep her from getting into too much trouble,” Orville continues, and he grins at Oliver. “I believe you have a bit of experience doing just that, Ollie, don’t you?”
Oliver gently closes the book as Frump scratches at the door to get out, no doubt so that he can take up guard duty outside the bathroom.
“Oliver,” I say, “we can’t do this. A strange girl—emphasis on the strange—can’t just show up in my room without raising some suspicions.
And what am I supposed to tell Jules’s mom? ”
Oliver reaches for Jules’s iPhone, plugged in and charging. “Why can’t Jules tell her?” he asks. “Do that thing you do, with this.”
“You’re brilliant.” I grab the phone from his hands and text Jules’s mom.
Can I stay over at Delilah’s for the whole weekend?
I hold my breath, waiting for a response. A moment later, there’s a ding.
Did you finish all your hw?
YUP, I type.
DON’T STAY UP TOO LATE.
“There,” Oliver says. “One problem solved.”
“Only temporarily. I bought us two days. But what if Jules isn’t back by then?”
“She will be,” he says, reassuring me.
“And Seraphima? How am I supposed to explain to my mother why Jules and some delusional princess have exchanged places?”
Suddenly an idea dawns. It’s a long shot, but maybe I can convince my mother—and everyone else—that Seraphima is a visiting exchange student. It would go a long way toward explaining her lack of knowledge about, well, everything in an American household.
I turn to Oliver. “We’re going to tell everyone she’s from another country.”
“Which one?”
I think for a moment. What language would people be least likely to know? The last thing I want is someone attempting to communicate with Seraphima in her so-called mother tongue. “Iceland,” I decide.
Oliver nods. “That almost sounds real.”
“That’s because it is.”
From the hallway comes a bark, and then, “Yoo-hoo! Delilah! I’m ready to be toweled dry!”
I glance at Oliver. “I’m not doing it. I absolutely, categorically refuse.”
He bites his lower lip. “Of course. Well, I suppose I could help her—”
I shove him so hard he staggers backward. “Not on your life,” I answer. At the threshold, I turn around. “She’d better be gone by Monday.”
When Oliver leaves for the night to go home, my mother is still out on her date with Dr. Ducharme, buying me a little more time to perfect my story before I have to introduce Seraphima to her.
I’ve let Seraphima borrow my robe to wear over her thin shift, and I’ve had the dubious pleasure of brushing her hair one hundred strokes with what I insisted was definitely a 100 percent boar-bristle brush like the one she has in her tower, and not a one-dollar comb from a drugstore.
“All right,” I announce. “It’s time to go to bed.” I lift the sleeping bag Jules brought over and hand it to her, but it falls right through her arms. With a sigh, I unroll the sleeping bag perpendicular to my bed. “There you go,” I say, gesturing to the makeshift mattress.
Seraphima delicately lifts her cotton gown, stepping gingerly onto the purple sleeping bag as if it’s a red carpet. She walks the length of it and then promptly crawls into my bed. “This is lovely,” she says, pulling the covers to her chin.
“Lovely,” I mutter. I slip into the sleeping bag just in time for Frump to use me as a springboard to jump onto the bed beside Seraphima.
“Try to get a good night’s rest,” I say.
“Oh, I always do,” Seraphima replies earnestly. “Beauty sleep is critical. You sleep well too,” she says, glancing at me. “It looks like you’ve missed a few hours.”
Frump yowls, curling at her feet.
“You’re so sweet,” Seraphima says to him. “But I’m sure I could be more beautiful if I tried.”
There’s another yelp, and a soft bark. Seraphima giggles.
“Of course I remember. You had the fairies spell my name in the sky. And you had Queen Maureen make my favorite apple tart, but you didn’t tell her you’d stolen the apples from Rapscullio’s orchard.
” She reaches down and absently starts patting Frump’s head.
“What about the time I made you that biscuit for your birthday but I overcooked it into a pile of ash, and you still ate the whole thing because you didn’t want me to feel bad? ”
He waddles up the mattress until he is closer to Seraphima’s face and licks her cheek. She blushes fiercely.
“You’ve always been so good to me, Frump,” Seraphima whispers. “How come I didn’t see it until you were gone?”
Frump whimpers softly, and she shakes her head.
“The way you looked never mattered to me. I always knew, you know. That it was you who lined my slippers up at the edge of my bed, and who made me breakfast, and who tidied my closet and washed my linens. So you’re a dog. So what. You make me feel like the princess I always wanted to be.”
Although I probably shouldn’t be eavesdropping, I can’t help but smile. They sound the way Oliver and I did, when he was still trapped in the book, and I would talk to him for hours beneath my covers. To anyone else listening it might have sounded like a one-sided conversation, but we knew better.
I fall asleep to the thump of Frump’s tail, the sound of pure happiness.
The sun has barely broken over the horizon when I’m awakened by the sound of someone singing in an earsplitting soprano. “Welcome, welcome, big bright sun….Oh, this day will be such fun….Come to sing me their hellos…little birds with little toes!”
I crack open an eye to see Seraphima dancing—literally dancing—around my bedroom. “What are you doing? It’s six-thirty freaking a.m. On a Sunday.”
“Oh, good morning, serf. I was just greeting the new day!” She flutters to the window and presses her palms to the glass. “It’s the loveliest morning!”