Between the Lines

  “The characters used to talk to me too,” Jessamyn agrees. “I think any writer would say the same thing. But Delilah, even if I changed the ending, the story already exists in the world in the memories of all of its readers. Once a story is told to someone, it can’t be erased.”

  What she’s telling me is that I’ve hit a dead end. And I can’t let that be true. “But you have to try!” I burst out.

  She hesitates. “How would you have ended the book?”

  Embarrassed, I mumble, “Oliver gets to leave the story.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “Ah. I think I’m starting to understand. He is quite good-looking. I used to develop crushes on characters. There was one detective in my murder series who had the dreamiest smile—”

  Tears fill my eyes. “It’s not a crush,” I tell her. “He’s alive, to me.”

  “And he always will be,” Jessamyn says kindly. “Every time you open the book. That’s the beauty of reading, isn’t it?”

  If I can’t make the author understand, then surely I have run out of options. I’m certain she thinks I’m nuts—some delusional girl who shows up unannounced, talking about a fictional character as if he might be sitting in the room sipping tea.

  But how will I break this news to Oliver?

  Suddenly, it’s just too much. I thought if anyone was ever going to understand the things I felt for this story, it would be the author herself, and yet here she is telling me—like everyone else—that I’m wrong. That what’s between me and Oliver is impossible.

  I start sobbing. I get to my feet, embarrassed, suddenly intent on leaving as quickly as possible. I’ve been an idiot to think that real life could have a happy ending.

  “Delilah! Are you all right?” Concerned (and who wouldn’t be if a crazy girl was hysterical in the living room?), Jessamyn puts her hand on my arm. “Is there someone I can call for you? Your mother, maybe?”

  This makes me cry even harder, as I think about how frantic my mom must be by now. During our car ride I had checked the messages on my cell phone; I stopped listening at number twenty-three.

  Jessamyn leads me to a couch. “I’m going to go get a glass of water for you,” she says. “And then we’ll figure out what to do next.”

  She leaves the room, and I take deep breaths, trying to calm myself down enough to at least be capable of opening the book and telling Oliver it’s over.

  I hear footsteps and look up, but it’s not Jessamyn returning from the kitchen. Instead, standing in the doorway that leads to the front hall, is Oliver.

  At first I think I am hallucinating. But then he glances at me. I would know those eyes anywhere. “Hey,” he says.

  Leaping up, I throw my arms around him. “Oliver! How did you get here?”

  He shoves me backward, looking at me as if he’s never seen me in his life. “I walked downstairs,” he says. “And the name’s Edgar.”

  My jaw drops just as Jessamyn enters, carrying a tall glass of water. She glances from Oliver to me. “Delilah,” she says, “I see you’ve met my son.”

  And at that moment, everything goes black.

  * * *

  I’m not a fainter. I’m unfazed by the sight of blood, and I can watch horror movies without wincing. And granted, I apparently took a massive conk to my head when I fell yesterday—and then traveled 230 miles without eating anything but Cheetos. But all the same, I’m pretty embarrassed to find myself lying on a stranger’s couch with a cold, wet washcloth on my head and a boy who looks just like Oliver but isn’t, staring down at me with absolute revulsion. “You’re drooling,” he says.

  Mortified, I wipe my hand across my mouth.

  “She’s awake,” Not-Oliver says. “Can I go now?”

  He is speaking to Jessamyn, who carries a bowl of soup from the kitchen. Why does everyone keep feeding me soup?

  “Thanks for watching her, Edgar,” Jessamyn says.

  “Whatever,” Edgar replies. He rolls his eyes and trudges out of the room.

  “All right.” Jessamyn sits on the edge of the couch. “It’s time to tell me the truth. Are you in trouble, Delilah? Did you run away from home?”

  “No!” I answer. “I mean, I did run away, but only temporarily. Only to find you.” I take the bowl she offers me. Broccoli cheddar. It smells delicious.

  “And I’m guessing you have a mother somewhere who has no idea where you are right now?”

  I can feel my cell phone vibrate in my pocket with yet another message. “Um,” I say. “Yeah.”

  Jessamyn hands me the phone. “Call her.”

  Reluctantly, I dial the numbers. It hasn’t even rung once when my mother picks up.

  “Hi, Mom!” I say, as cheerful as possible.

  I have to hold the phone away from my ear as she shouts at me in reply. Wincing, I wait till there’s a break in the wall of sound and speak again. “I’m really sorry—”

  “Delilah Eve, do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? Where are you? What were you thinking?!”

  “I just had to do something and I knew you wouldn’t let me leave if I asked first.”

  “Tell me where you are. I’m going to come get you. And then I’m going to ground you for life.”

  “I’m kind of in Massachusetts. On Cape Cod.”

  There is another torrent of angry sound as my mother yells her response. Again, I hold the phone away from my ear.

  “Maybe I can help,” Jessamyn says, and she reaches out her hand for the phone. “Hello? Is this Delilah’s mother? I’m Jessamyn Jacobs.” She hesitates. “Yes. Well, I used to be an author, anyway. Oh, that’s very kind. I’m so glad you were a fan.” Another pause. “Believe me, it was quite a surprise for me too…. No, no. It’s far too late for you to make that kind of trip. Why don’t you just let me host Delilah overnight, and you can be here bright and early in the morning. She can stay in our guest room.”

  I hear the buzzy warble of my mother’s voice in return, and then Jessamyn gives her an address. She holds the phone out to me when she’s through. “She’d like to speak to you again.”

  “Just so we’re on the same page, you are still grounded until you hit menopause,” my mother repeats. “But at least I know you’re not wandering around on a street somewhere at night. You’ve caused this woman a great deal of disruption, so you’d better be the best guest she’s ever had in her home. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, Mom,” I mutter. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Delilah?” my mother says.

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you, you know.”

  I look down into my lap. I’ve created so much trouble—for my mother and for Jessamyn Jacobs, all in the hope that I can make the impossible possible and turn a fictional character real. Suddenly, I’m ashamed for being so selfish. “I love you too,” I whisper.

  I hang up the phone and hand it back to Jessamyn. “Thank you. For letting me stay here.”

  “It’s no problem. It’s nice for Edgar to have someone his age around. He doesn’t make friends very easily.”

  I sit up. “Can I ask you a question? How come Oliver looks just like your son?”

  “Because he is my son.” Jessamyn looks up at me. “After Edgar’s father died, he was so afraid of everything. I wanted to create a role model for him—someone who maybe wasn’t the bravest or strongest boy in the kingdom but who managed to always triumph by using his brain. Edgar was younger then—I had to imagine the boy I thought he’d grow up to look like—and that was how I painted Oliver.”

  “Well, they’re identical.”

  “Not really,” Jessamyn says. “Edgar never became the Oliver I hoped he would.” She smiles, a little sadly. “I wasn’t very good at helping Edgar with his grief. I didn’t know how to do that, but I knew how to write books. So I figured I’d try to help him, through what I do best. But when that wasn’t enough, I stopped writing. Instead, I concentrated on learning how to be a better mother.” She shakes her head, as if she’s clearing it, and then pats my
shoulder. “Why don’t we get you settled upstairs?”

  * * *

  The guest room is painted the color of a sunset. There is a small wooden bureau and a double bed. Jessamyn leaves me with a stack of fresh towels and a promise to check in on me after I’ve rested for a while.

  It’s weird, having no luggage to unpack. I sit on the edge of the bed and look around the room. There are framed photos on the walls of a baby who keeps getting progressively older. This, I realize, is Edgar—but I find myself drawn to the walls, touching the glass on the photos, thinking that this is what Oliver would have looked like when he was two, when he was four, when he rode his first horse, when he learned how to swim.

  Suddenly, I really miss Oliver. I unzip my backpack and pull out the book. It falls open to page 43.

  “It’s her, it’s really her! Delilah, you amazing girl, you did it!” He is so happy that it hurts me to look at him.

  “Oliver,” I whisper. “She won’t change the ending.”

  His face falls. “Maybe there’s a way for me to talk to her.”

  “Even if she could hear you, she wouldn’t do it. She wrote this book for her son. She’s not going to make any changes. It means too much to her personally.”

  “She has a son?” Oliver says. “Have you met him? Maybe he can convince her.”

  “Yeah, I’ve met him.”

  “Well, what’s he like?”

  “He could be your twin,” I say.

  For a moment, Oliver gets very quiet. “So you’re in a house,” he sums up, “with a guy who looks just like me, but who’s real?”

  I think of what Jessamyn said about Edgar. “He’s not you,” I state simply.

  Whatever Oliver says in reply is drowned out by the strangest sounds coming from the room next door to mine. There are high-pitched screams and whistles and weird sirens.

  “Well?” Oliver says. “What do you think?”

  “I didn’t hear what you said….” Now, in addition to all the crazy noises, I hear a voice: “I’m going to get you, you bloodsucking, boneheaded monster!”

  “What the—?” I look down at the book, careful this time not to slam it shut. “Wait here,” I tell Oliver. I get up and walk into the hall, then knock on the door beside mine.

  There’s no answer. This isn’t a surprise, because who could hear with that racket going on? So I turn the doorknob and peek inside.

  Edgar is sitting in a strange reclining chair at floor level, holding a game controller in his hand. On a computer screen in front of him, there’s an asteroid explosion in a galaxy. “Take that, Zorg!” Edgar hollers, and he punches a fist in the air. Letters roll over the screen:

  HIGH SCORES

  EDGAR ….….….. 349,880

  EDGAR ….….….. 310,900

  EDGAR ….….….. 298,700

  EDGAR ….….….. 233,100

  I wonder if Edgar’s ever even played his video game against another person.

  I remember what Jessamyn said about him being a loner. “Hey,” I say. “You want company?”

  He whirls in his seat. “Who told you I was in here?”

  “I could pretty much hear everything through the wall….”

  Edgar narrows his eyes. “Have you ever played Battle Zorg 2000 before?”

  “I can’t say that I have.”

  He digs around in his desk for a second controller. “Then I suppose I’ll have to teach you.”

  He fumbles through the opening screens of the game to set it up for two players instead of one. “I usually play solo,” he says casually. “I’m actually sort of legendary, in terms of scoring.”

  I let Edgar explain to me about the Galactoids from Planet Zugon who are coming to take over Earth. “Our job,” he says, “is to kill them before they plant a mind-control ozone bomb in the San Andreas Fault, or create a force field of incineration that burns everyone to ash the minute they come in contact with it.”

  It makes me think of the Pandemonium.

  “If you can get past the foot soldier Galactoids,” Edgar continues, “you can be admitted into the Astrochamber, where you have to complete fourteen tasks in order to face Zorg.”

  “Who’s Zorg?” I ask.

  He snorts. “Only the biggest, baddest robot-android hybrid in the Aphelion galaxy!”

  I gingerly take the controller and press a button. “No!” he shouts. “Not until we’ve set up your avatar!”

  With a few clicks, I become Aurora Axis, a geophysicist from Washington, DC. I follow Edgar’s avatar through the levels of the game, getting knocked out almost immediately by a low-flying asteroid. “Shoot!” I say, angry at myself. “I should have been able to see that.”

  Edgar grins. “It takes a little bit of practice.”

  For three-quarters of an hour, we battle aliens with an array of weapons. I get killed more times than I can count. Finally, just when I think it’s virtually impossible, Edgar and I double-team an Amazon made of starlight who is shooting electromagnetic radiation from her fingers, and we manage to drown her in a micrometeorite lake. Just like that, we are admitted into the Astrochamber.

  “Yes!” we both scream as the door to Edgar’s bedroom opens.

  “Edgar!” Jessamyn cries, “have you seen—Oh!” She looks at me, and then at Edgar, and then back at me. “You’re here.”

  Edgar pivots in his chair. “She wanted to learn how to play.”

  I grin. “Turns out I’m a natural with a neutrino ray.”

  Jessamyn seems surprised—by my comment, and maybe by the fact that her son has made a friend. “Good!” she says. “Can I get you two anything? Cookies? Milk?”

  “Privacy?” Edgar suggests.

  Jessamyn backs out of the room, and Edgar lifts his controller again. “Awkward,” he says. “Now, where were we…”

  “About to kick some Zorgian butt,” I reply.

  Edgar lifts his controller and points to the screen, but the computer blinks a steady neon green. “Shoot,” he mutters. “Not again.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Stupid old computer. It freezes up all the time. I just hope our game saved….” He starts pushing buttons and rebooting the system. “My mom won’t let me load my games on her new computer because she says they take up too much of the memory, so I have to work on this total dinosaur.”

  “It doesn’t look that old to me—”

  “That’s because it was state-of-the-art when my mom was still using it to type her books. But believe me, I had to upgrade this puppy with major video cards and speakers just to get it compatible with Zorg 2000.”

  I sit up, alert. “This used to be your mom’s computer?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Do you know if her old files are still on it?”

  “They’re there,” Edgar says. “She won’t let me delete them.” He rolls his eyes. “Every time I go to start a new game, I see that dumb fairy tale. Between the Lines. It’s listed right below Battle Zorg 2000, alphabetically.”

  I lean forward. “You don’t like that story?”

  “Hate it,” Edgar says. “How would you feel if the whole world knew your mother thought you were a loser?”

  “I’m sure she doesn’t think—”

  “She wrote that idiotic prince character wishing I could be more like him. But me, I’m not going to catch a dragon and talk it into getting its teeth cleaned. I’m not quite the fairy-tale type.”

  “The reason I came here is because your mom wrote that book,” I tell Edgar. Taking a deep breath, I blurt out, “Can I ask you something that’s going to sound a little strange?”

  “Okay.”

  “When you play Battle Zorg 2000, does it sometimes feel like you’re a part of it?”

  Edgar nods. “Well, sure. Otherwise I couldn’t score as high as I do.”

  “No…. I mean, do you ever wish you were inside the game?”

  At first I am afraid to look him in the eye, but when I do, I find Edgar staring at me intently. “Sometim
es,” he admits quietly, “it’s like I can hear the commanders talking to me, telling me what to do next.”

  I put my hand on his arm. “Edgar, can I show you something?”

  I run to the room next door and crawl onto the guest bed. The book is still open to page 43, and Oliver is lying on his back, snoring. “Oliver,” I whisper, leaning close to the binding, and then I shout, “Get up!”

  He startles, smacking his head on a low branch jutting out of the cliff. Rubbing it, he winces and looks up at me. “Just for clarification, when you say you’ll be right back, then you mean sometime in the next millennium?”

  “I got distracted. But Oliver, listen, there’s someone I want you to meet.” I grab the book and carry it toward Edgar’s bedroom.

  “What? Do you really think this is a good idea? No one ever sees me, and it just makes you look even more insane.”

  “Thanks,” I say sarcastically. I turn the corner and enter Edgar’s room again. “I have a gut feeling about this.”

  “About what?” Edgar asks.

  I set the book on the desk. “I wasn’t talking to you,” I explain. “I was talking to him.” I point to Oliver, who smiles.

  Edgar glances at the book, and then up at me. “Seriously? You think my mom’s fairy tale is talking to you?”

  “Just wait a second,” I urge. “No one ever hears him talk—but that’s because no one ever listens hard enough. But based on what you told me about your video game, I think you might be different. Please? Can’t you try?”

  “He’s not very attractive,” Oliver says, miffed.

  “Oliver, he looks identical to you,” I murmur.

  Edgar folds his arms. “Look, pretty boy, my mother drew you based off of me—”

  I gasp. “You heard him? You heard Oliver speak?”

  Edgar’s eyes widen, and he steps away from the book as if he doesn’t want to get too close to it. He hits the side of his head with the flat of his hand, as if he’s gotten water in his ear and is trying to shake it out. “No no no no no,” he says, under his breath. “That didn’t just happen.”