The worst part is, it’s true. I wouldn’t know what true love feels like if it hit me between the eyes. Given my mother’s experience with romance, I shouldn’t even care—but there’s a part of me that wonders what it would be like to be the most important person to someone else, to always feel like you were missing a piece of yourself when he wasn’t near you.
There is a crash on the metal of the locker beside mine, and I look up to see Jules smacking her hand against it to get my attention. “Hey,” Jules says. “Earth to Delilah?” Today she is dressed in a black veil and a miniskirt over leggings that seem like they’ve been hacked with a razor. She looks like a corpse bride. “Where’d you go last night?” she says. “I sent you a thousand texts.”
I hesitate. I’ve hidden my fairy-tale obsession from Jules, but if anyone is going to believe me when I say that a book changed before my eyes, it’s going to be my best friend.
“Sorry,” I say. “I went to bed early.”
“Well, the texts were all about Soy Boy.”
I blush. At 3:00 A.M. during our last sleepover, I confessed to her that I thought Zach from my Earth Science class was possible future boyfriend material.
“I heard that he hooked up with Mallory Wegman last weekend.”
Mallory Wegman had hooked up with so many guys in our class that her nickname was the Fisherman. I let this news sink in, and the fact that I had thought about Zach this morning before reading my book, which seemed a thousand years ago.
“He’s telling everyone she slipped him a real burger instead of a veggie one and it overloaded his system. That he has no recollection of doing anything with her.”
“Must have been some really good beef,” I murmur. For a second, I try to mourn Zach, my potential crush, who now has someone real, but all I’m thinking of is Oliver.
“I have to tell you something,” I confess.
Jules looks at me, suddenly serious.
“I was reading this book and it… it sort of changed.”
“I totally understand,” Jules says. “The first time I saw Attack of the Killer Tomatoes I knew my life was never going to be the same.”
“No, it’s not that I’ve changed—it’s the book that changed.” I reach into my backpack and grab the fairy tale, flipping directly to the last page. “Look.”
Prince? Yup, standing right where he usually is.
Princess? Ditto.
Frump? Wagging happily.
Chessboard?
It’s missing.
It was there less than a half hour ago, and suddenly it’s gone.
“Delilah?” Jules asks. “Are you okay?”
I can feel myself breaking out in a cold sweat. I close the book and then open it again; I blink fast to clear my eyes.
Nothing.
I stuff the book into my backpack again and close my locker. “I, um, have to go,” I say to Jules, shoving past her as the bell rings.
Just so you know, I never lie. I never steal. I never cut class. I am, in short, the perfect student.
Which makes what I am about to do even more shocking. I turn in the opposite direction and walk toward the gymnasium, although I am supposed to be in homeroom.
Me, Delilah McPhee.
“Delilah?” I look up to see the principal standing in front of me. “Shouldn’t you be in homeroom?”
He smiles at me. He doesn’t expect me to be cutting class either.
“Um… Ms. Winx asked me to get a book from the gym teacher.”
“Oh,” the principal says. “Excellent!” He waves me on.
For a moment I just stare at him. Is it really this easy to become someone I’m not? Then I break into a run.
I don’t stop until I have reached the locker room. I know it will be empty this early in the morning. Sitting down on a bench, I take the book from my backpack and open it again.
Real fairy tales are not for the fainthearted. In them, children get eaten by witches and chased by wolves; women fall into comas and are tortured by evil relatives. Somehow, all that pain and suffering is worthwhile, though, when it leads to the ending: happily ever after. Suddenly it no longer matters if you got a B– on your midterm in French or if you’re the only girl in the school who doesn’t have a date for the spring formal. Happily ever after trumps everything. But what if ever after could change?
It did for my mom. At one point, she loved my dad, or they wouldn’t have gotten married—but now she doesn’t even want to speak to him when he calls me on my birthday and Christmas. Likewise, maybe the fairy tale isn’t accurate. Maybe the last line should read something like What you see isn’t always what you get.
There is still no chessboard on the sand.
I start flipping through the pages furiously. In most of them, Prince Oliver is in the company of someone or something—his dog, the villain Rapscullio, Princess Seraphima. But there is one illustration where he is all alone.
Actually, it’s my favorite.
It comes toward the end of the story, after he’s outsmarted the dragon Pyro and left the beast in the care of Captain Crabbe and the pirates. Afterward, as the pirates load the dragon onto the ship, Oliver is left alone on the shore looking up the cliff wall at the tower where Seraphima is being imprisoned. In the picture on page 43, he starts to climb.
I lift the book closer so that I can see Oliver more clearly. He is drawn in color, his jet-black hair ruffled by the breeze, his arms straining as he scales the sheer rock face. His bottle green velvet tunic is tattered: singed from Pyro’s fiery breath and torn from his escape from shackles on the pirate ship. His dagger is clenched between his teeth so that he can grasp the next ledge. His face is turned toward the ocean, where the ship slips into the distance.
I think the reason I love this illustration so much is the expression on his face. You’d expect, at that moment, he’d be overcome by fierce determination. Or maybe shining love for his nearby princess. But instead, he looks… well… like something’s missing.
Like he’d almost rather be on that pirate ship. Or anywhere but where he is, on the face of the rocky cliff.
Like there’s something he’s hiding.
I lean forward, until my nose is nearly touching the page. The image blurs as I get close, but for a moment, I’m positive that Oliver’s eyes have flickered away from the ocean, and toward me.
“I wish you were real,” I whisper.
On the loudspeaker in the locker room, the bell rings. That means homeroom is over, and I have to go to Algebra. With a sigh, I set the fairy tale down on the bench, still cracked open. I unzip my backpack and then pick the book up again.
And gasp.
Oliver is still climbing the sheer rock wall. But the dagger clenched between his teeth is now in his right hand. Steel to stone, its sharp tip scratches the faintest of white lines into the dark granite, and then another, and a third.
H
I rub my eyes. This is not a Nook, a Kindle Fire, or an iPad, just a very ordinary old book. No animation, no bells and whistles. Drawing in my breath, I touch the paper, that very spot, and lift my finger again.
Two words slowly appear on the surface of the rock wall.
HELP ME.
page 11
On the bright side, Oliver realized, odds were in his favor that his intended bride was not in a coma, nor did she have a rope of hair for him to climb in order to rescue her. However, he was going into this endeavor blindly—knowing nothing about where this girl might be.
He had saddled his stallion, Socks, and now hesitated outside the castle walls. Glancing down at Frump, who trotted beside his master, he spoke aloud. “Which way, boy?” Oliver asked. It was extremely difficult to rescue a princess, he realized, when one had precious few clues to begin with.
Frump barked, jerking his snout in the direction of the Enchanted Forest.
Oliver cringed. Although that was the quickest route to the cottage of the wizard Orville—the person in the kingdom who was most likely to be able to conjure clues for Oliver’s q
uest—it was also riddled with hazards. There were roots your stallion might trip over while galloping; there were low-hanging branches. Some bits of the forest were so thick that you could not see a foot before you. And because the woods were enchanted, the paths through them were mazes that changed constantly; the route you took the last time was never one you’d take twice.
He closed his eyes, imagining Princess Seraphima, who would be consigned to a lifetime of misery with a villain if he didn’t manage to save her.
Then again, it wasn’t like she was counting on Oliver’s arrival….
He reached for the compass around his neck, thinking of home, which was just a few steps behind him. Maybe his mother was right; maybe it was better to be safe than sorry. Before he could convince himself to retrace his steps into the safety of the castle walls, however, a tiny light zoomed before his face. Squinting, he could just make out the body of a fairy. Nasty little creatures, they fed on lies and gossip. They’d been known to put a grown man to sleep, and to steal all the secrets from his mind. Oliver waved his hand before his face, the way you might try to get an insect away from you, but the fairy rose, glowing, and then dove, biting Socks firmly on the hindquarter.
The stallion reared and bolted into the Enchanted Forest. It was all Oliver could do to hold on for dear life, and he hoped that Frump was able to keep up.
Sawing at the reins, Prince Oliver finally managed to stop the horse. “It’s all right, boy,” he soothed, looking around to get his bearings.
It was too dark to see. And then suddenly, there was a pinprick of light. And another. A third. If he squinted, he could see the long, thin legs of the fairies illuminated against the halos of their beating wings.
One fairy hovered in front of his face, mesmerizing him. Her hair was a constantly shifting mane of sparks that crackled as she moved. Nearly translucent, her skin glowed in the dark like the face of the moon. Her teeth, when she smiled, were perfect tiny dagger points. In the blink of an eye, she darted toward his neck, and bit his skin.
“Ouch!” Oliver cried, swatting her away as she licked his blood from her lips.
“He tastes like royalty,” said the fairy. “Like wine and wealth.”
“I’m a prince,” Oliver replied. “I’m on my way to rescue a princess.”
The second fairy landed on his hand and sank her razor teeth into his thumb, making Oliver yelp. “He’s lying,” replied the second fairy. “I taste fear.”
The third fairy landed delicately on the tip of Oliver’s nose. “Fear? I know who this boy is.” She looked directly into Oliver’s eyes. “This is the queen’s son. I’m Sparks. The one who gave you wisdom.”
The first fairy came to hover beside her. “I’m Ember. I gave you loyalty.”
“And I am Glint,” said the second fairy. “I gave you life.”
“Thank you for all of that,” Oliver said politely, because a prince is nothing if not polite. “But I’d really like it if you allowed me to pass through the forest.”
“You can’t,” said Sparks. “It’s too dangerous.”
Ember nodded. “A boy without bravery shouldn’t take chances.”
“Glint,” said the first fairy, “bite the horse again so he’ll gallop home.”
“No!” Oliver cried out. “What if I challenged you?”
He knew very little about fairies—no one knew much about them, really. They somehow managed to learn the secrets of humans without ever letting a secret of their own slip out. But Oliver had seen the strongest of knights carried back to the castle by his peers after a hungry swarm of fairies had pulled every hidden memory from his mind. They were destructive and impulsive, and they never had any regrets.
“If I beat you at your own game,” Oliver said, thinking on his feet, “wouldn’t that be proof enough of my bravery?”
“A game?” said Sparks, her hair flickering with excitement.
Ember landed on his shoulder and whispered in his ear. “But we make the rules.”
Glint settled on a branch in front of him, calling her sisters close. As they leaned in, their hair brightened, like combined flames. Finally Glint broke away. “You must try to cast a glow farther than any of us.”
Oliver didn’t miss a beat. “Done,” he accepted.
The fairies looked at each other. “Stupid humans,” said Ember. “They can’t shine.”
“What do we get if we win?” Sparks asked.
Oliver thought. “All my secrets,” he said soberly. “Every last one.”
The fairies clapped, creating a rain of glitter. “Me first,” Glint sang, and she shimmied so that a halo of silver light rose from around her body. The forest lit, six tree trunks deep, before fading into darkness again.
“Amateur,” Ember scoffed. She spun in a tight circle, holding her wings out like helicopter blades, and a warm bronze glow enveloped the area where Oliver was standing. Like that of the fairy before her, the circle of light grew and grew, this time ten trees deep, before snuffing itself out.
“Watch and learn, girls,” Sparks said. She curled tightly into a ball, growing so small she was only a pinprick, and then with a sudden pop let loose a corona of golden light.
The glow was fiercer, hotter, wider—but quicker to fade to black.
“Your turn,” Glint said, raising one arched silver brow.
“Wait. If I win,” Oliver replied, “I want safe passage.”
The fairies, blinking intermittently now, whispered to each other. “Safe passage,” they agreed.
Oliver reached into Socks’s saddlebags and took out the packed lunch that the royal cook had given him before he left. Inside were two hard-boiled eggs, some cheese, and a hunk of bread. There was also a tiny drawstring bag of seasoning.
Loosening the string, Oliver gently blew across the small heap of pepper, so that it created a cloud around the fairies.
Glint, Sparks, and Ember sneezed in unison, and as they did, flashes of light burst like fireworks to illuminate the whole of the Enchanted Forest.
“Well,” Oliver said, swinging himself back into the saddle. “I think it’s clear that I—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Socks let out an enormous sneeze too. He reared on his hind legs, inadvertently pawing at Glint, who then nipped him in self-defense.
Once again, Oliver held on for dear life as his runaway stallion bolted into the Enchanted Forest. Finally, they broke through the thick foliage, just in time for Oliver to notice that they were approaching a cliff. At an alarming pace.
“Whoa!” he cried, yanking on the reins.
There was six feet of ground remaining before the cliff edge. Three feet. One. Miraculously, Socks halted abruptly at the edge. “Thank goodness,” Oliver said.
Apparently, he spoke too soon.
Because although Socks stopped, Oliver didn’t. He tumbled over the horse’s head, past the edge of the cliff, and into the roiling ocean below.
OLIVER
THERE IS ONLY ONE PAGE IN THE BOOK WHERE I’M alone, where there’s no other character whose dialogue I have to prompt, or whose motion I need to follow.
Because of that, I sometimes test my boundaries in the moment before a Reader starts reading.
I might sing at the top of my lungs.
Or push the limits of the story, by sitting on the ground and waiting until the book pulls me up the cliff.
Sometimes I try to get to the edge of the cliff, to the spot where the rock has a crease in it from someone who dog-eared the page years ago.
Occasionally I climb to the highest point to see past the blurry edge of the illustration.
None of it matters, because no one ever notices what I’m doing anyway, and I’m pulled back into the flow of the fairy tale.
Until today.
As soon as I realized that Delilah had noticed the chessboard in the sand—something that has nothing at all to do with the story—I started to wonder if maybe she might be the one. The one who was able to notice other things that aren’t p
art of the story.
Mainly, me.
At the very least, I couldn’t let the moment pass without trying. So I scratched the words “HELP ME,” and she saw. I just know she saw.
I’m clinging onto the rock wall, and I’m holding my breath, because I’m so scared she is going to turn the page, just like everyone else.
Except she doesn’t.
“How?” she says, and very slowly, I turn so that I am looking right at her.
I clear my throat, trying to speak out loud. It’s been a long time since my voice was projected anywhere but inside a Reader’s head, and speaking takes great concentration for someone who’s not used to doing it. “Can you… can you hear me?” I ask.
She gasps. “You’re British?”
“Excuse me?”
“You have an accent,” she says. “When I was reading you, I never heard an accent…” Suddenly her eyes widen. “Oh my God, I’ve gone crazy. The book isn’t just changing, it’s talking back to me—”
“No—I’m the one talking…” My heart is racing, and my thoughts are coming fast and furious. This girl, this Delilah, just answered my question. She heard me.
She takes a deep breath. “Okay, Delilah, pull yourself together. Maybe you have a fever. This will all go away with a couple of Tylenol—” She starts to close the book, and with all of my strength I yell.
“No! Don’t!”
“You don’t understand,” she says. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are wild. “Characters in books aren’t real.” She smacks her forehead. “Why I am even explaining this out loud?”
“Because I am real,” I plead. “I’m just as real as you are.” I stare at her. “And you’re the only Reader who’s ever noticed.”
At that, Delilah’s lips part. I find myself thinking about those lips, which look soft and sweet and infinitely more interesting to kiss than Seraphima’s. She pulls away, so that instead of seeing just an up-close view of her face, I am able to see her dark hair, her pink shirt, her fear.
“Please,” I say softly. “Just give me a chance.”