Chapter 23 #3
Jack sat rigidly in his chair. “And if they’re not in the library when it’s time for them to return?”
Silence stretched between them for a few moments.
Arnie sighed. “I wasn’t sure at first. Ruby Lou and Pearl went missing years ago, and their book completely disappeared. I
thought the same would happen with Maria’s.”
Stella slapped her palm flat against the table, and the men flinched. “My mother is from a book? My mother is fictional?”
Arnie lowered his gaze. “You know firsthand that characters are very real when they’re here.”
Stella covered her mouth with her hand. Nearly a lifetime of unanswered questions about her mother swirled within her. She
lowered her hand. “If Ruby Lou and Pearl’s book went missing, why is hers still here? Why didn’t you bring her back out? Why
didn’t you make her stay and be our mother?” Furious tears stung Stella’s eyes.
“Don’t you think I thought of that?” Arnie said, raising his voice again. “Don’t you think I tried to bring her back out?
Nothing happened, Stella, because she’s not in her book. Even the date stamps I applied immediately disappeared.”
“Why didn’t her book vanish?” Jack asked.
“Because she’s not dead,” Stella said and shoved back from the table and stomped into the living room, her curls dancing wild
around her head.
“Are you sure?” Jack asked.
Arnie got up from the table and walked into his room. The sound of rustling followed and then he returned with a postcard.
He handed it to Stella.
The front photo was of the Statue of Liberty, and the date stamp was from twenty-four years ago. The cursive writing was sloppy and hurried, written in fading blue ink. The message had been addressed to Arnie.
Tell them I’m sorry. Forgive me for leaving, Arnie, but I must pursue my dreams to find my true self. My family has been a
great joy, and I hope they understand my journey one day.
Love, Maria
The postcard trembled in Stella’s hand, and the words blurred with her tears.
“If she’d died, the book would have disappeared,” Arnie said, looking at Jack. “Every last copy of her story would be gone,
like with Ruby Lou and Pearl. That’s how I know Maria’s still alive and they aren’t.”
Stella’s arm fell to her side, dangling the postcard from her hand. Nausea swept through her. “All these years she’s been
alive? She just never wanted to come back.” Stella’s dad had lived the rest of his life thinking he’d somehow failed at marriage, never knowing his troubled
wife was from a fictional story. Never knowing Maria had escaped a miserable marriage. Never knowing her dreams, whether fictional
or real, were always taking her to Broadway.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” Arnie said.
Stella wiped at her tears. “I wouldn’t have believed you.” She wrapped her arms around her middle and doubled over with an ache so deep it seemed entangled with her very core. Then a rogue thought popped into her head, and she straightened. “Is that why I can see words?”
“What words?” Arnie asked.
Jack stood from the table and walked closer. “Because you’re—”
“Half fictional?” Stella’s laugh sounded cynical, tempestuous.
“What words?” Arnie asked again.
“Don’t you remember years ago when I asked you about Stella and the words around her?”
Stella waved her hands through the air as though sprinkling fairy dust. “I see words everywhere,” she said. “And I don’t mean on a page or printed in books. I mean, alive and three-dimensional. Jack can see them, and
Maria knew about them. In fact, she encouraged me to write them down, saying it would guide me to my dreams.” She placed her
palm against her forehead. “She wasn’t wrong, but this is too much.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Arnie asked.
“Seriously?” Stella asked. “Are you the pot or the kettle?” Another wild thought bolted into her mind. “What if when it’s
time for Jack to go back, we’re not in the library?”
Jack reached for her hand and swung his gaze toward Arnie. “Is that possible?”
“Of course it is,” Stella answered. “We’d just need to keep you away from the library. We can move. Anywhere!” She squeezed
Jack’s hand. “If Maria can stay away and survive all this time, then why can’t you?”
“There’s something else you don’t know,” Arnie said. He grabbed Maria’s book off the table and carried it to Stella. “Flip
through it.”
Stella took the offered book and thumbed through the pages. Three-quarters of them were blank.
“At first, nothing happened to the book,” Arnie said.
“Then a few years after she left, pages started going blank, starting in the back. Just one or two every couple years. But in the last few months, they’ve been disappearing faster.
I worry the entire story will be gone in a matter of weeks, maybe less. ”
Stella squeezed the book. “What does that mean? Is she . . . dying?”
Arnie shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Anxiety clenched Stella’s body. “But you have a guess.”
Arnie nodded. “I assume she’s been away from the magic too long, and now it’s reclaiming her.”
Stella reopened the book and flipped through the pages. “But her story is disappearing.”
“Which means she can never come back, even if she wants to,” Jack said.
“That’s my belief too,” Arnie said.
“Is the magic reclaiming her? Is she dying?” Stella asked.
Arnie shook his head. “Could be either. Or both.”
Jack shook his head. “Then I can’t stay away from the library.”
Stella’s head jerked up and she gaped at Jack. “Why not?”
He pointed at Maria’s book. “Because I’ll disappear. Forever.”
Stella knew he was right, but she refused to agree. “Not right away. Maria’s been gone twenty-four years.”
“There’s no way to know how fast I’d go,” Jack argued. “I don’t want to lose you forever. Coming out once a year is safer.”
“But even if I bring you out once a year, I’ll grow older and you won’t!” Stella yelled. Then she threw Maria’s book across
the room, and it slammed into the lower kitchen cabinets. “This isn’t fair! My awful fictional mother gets to spend the last
twenty-four years chasing her ridiculous dream in New York, but I can’t have mine?”
“Stella,” Jack said, reaching for her hand.
Stella jerked away. “I need some air.”
Arnie pulled her into a quick hug, and she stiffened in his arms. Stella released him and flung open the front door, then slammed it behind her.
She stomped across the library grounds, trapped between the urge to cry and the desire to rip something to shreds.
She walked, sweating profusely in the heat, until her erratic emotions settled to something almost tamable.
If Jack refused to leave the library, to move anywhere else with her, what were their other options? She imagined all sorts of ridiculous scenarios: holding on to Jack when he started
to disappear, sprinkling the glittering potion over her head like a baptism, even stamping Arnie’s copy of Beyond the Southern Horizon again with the magic ink just to see if it would extend Jack’s stay. None of her ideas seemed plausible, but she was willing
to give any—or all—of them a try.
A half hour later Jack found Stella on the library grounds. At first they walked in silence while Jack held her hand and led
her into the shade scattered around the wide lawn. Still her mind labored over harebrained ideas that might allow Jack to
stay—or could she go with him? Could she mix the potion into milk and cocoa powder like an enchanted hot chocolate or drink
it straight like Alice did in Wonderland? The ideas grew increasingly absurd in her rising desperation.
Stella sensed the awareness of time so profoundly that it felt like another person following her around all day, reminding
her, whispering in her ear, counting down the hours, minutes, seconds until Jack would be gone.
Finally, after they’d walked the day away, the sun dipped low, turning the sky the color of pink cotton candy.
Stella stood at the long windows inside the library with Jack as they stared at the sunset.
He reached over and grabbed her hand, and she stepped closer to him, leaning her head against his arm.
She tried to etch every second with him into her mind—the way it felt to be near him, his warmth, the way his cheek dimpled when he smiled at her.
He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “I wish I could bring you with me to my Blue Sky Valley,” he said.
She closed her eyes and nodded against his arm. A bolt of electricity exploded from her heart, traveling all the way to her
feet. She gasped and dropped Jack’s hand.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Tangled midnight-blue words floated all around Jack before circling him, faster and faster, until she and Jack were enclosed
in a tornado of phrases. Stella couldn’t read all of them, and when she opened her mouth to speak, nothing would come out.
It was as if all the words she wanted to say were flying around them. She reached out her hand and four words crashed into
her palm. This is your life. She and Jack both looked at the crumpled words in her hand. Stella closed her fingers, and the words melted into her skin.
“I need to talk to Arnie,” she said, grabbing Jack’s hand and pulling him behind her while she ran toward the back entrance
of the library.
Stella shoved both hands against the door, slamming it open, and jumped down the stairs. Then she ran across the lawn toward
Arnie’s cottage with Jack close behind. She knocked on the back door and waited a few seconds before calling Arnie’s name
and knocking again.
Arnie opened the door, looking slightly disheveled and sleepy. He gazed at her with a confused expression marred with worry.
“What’s wrong?”
“The extra magical potion,” Stella said, sucking in gulps of air. She squeezed a cramp in her side. “Where is it? You said it was in the archives somewhere. But where?”
Arnie pushed his glasses up on his nose. He glanced between her and Jack. “Why?”
Stella bounced on her toes. “Where is it?”