Off the Page

  I try to wrestle the panty hose off my legs, wondering how on earth women do this.

  “What’s taking you so long?” Jules calls, and I glance over my shoulder to see her treading water, her hair slicked back.

  I decide I’m going to impress her with my best backflip. I manage to peel one leg free of the tights. But when I’m trying to strip off the other side, I lose my balance, and instead of executing an Olympics-worthy flip, I wind up flailing in the air and smacking into the surf with a thundering belly flop.

  Sputtering, I make my way to the surface. Jules is laughing. “That was so sexy,” she says.

  We are quickly surrounded by a whirlpool fashioned from the strong tails of Marina, Ondine, and Kyrie. “You have to kiss one of them,” I tell Jules.

  “What? This is not spin the bottle.”

  “No, it’s so you can breathe underwater.” Ondine pops through the surface. “She’s all yours,” I say.

  “I don’t think we’ve officially met. I’m Ondine,” the mermaid says, and she kisses Jules, dragging her underwater.

  A moment later, Kyrie puts her webbed hands on my shoulders. “Ready, handsome?” she asks.

  “Shouldn’t you at least buy me dinner first?” I joke, and she seals her lips over mine and pulls me below the surface.

  It’s the strangest sensation I’ve had while in this book: breathing water. At first you fight it, certain you’re drowning, as your lungs fill. But then, just when you’re sure you’re a goner, your chest seems to burst, and the water rushes in and out of your nose like oxygen. I keep an eye on Jules, who is struggling in Ondine’s grasp as she gives herself over to the feeling.

  Her eyes open, and her hair snakes out around her face, tendrils of indigo with silver stripes. “This,” she says, “is wicked awesome!”

  “I know, right? Just wait.” I turn to the mermaids. “Hey, guys, can we get a fin?”

  They link their arms in ours and swim us to the very bottom of the ocean floor in a matter of seconds. Jules can’t stop smiling like a kid on her first roller coaster. I watch her reach out toward a sea horse, which tickles its way up her arm. Finally the mermaids release us at the entrance to their underwater cave. Jules looks appreciatively at Ondine. “You would so totally kick butt on our school swim team.”

  “I’m pretty sure that having a tail counts as cheating,” I point out. I glance around the cavern. Stalactites and stalagmites form the ceiling and the floor, like the jaws of a giant beast. Bright orange brain coral colors the walls, and in the center of the cave is a slab of granite—their dining room table.

  “What are we looking for?” Marina asks.

  “A way out,” I explain.

  Kyrie snorts. “You’ve come to the wrong place,” she says, and she unlocks a small wooden door. Half a dozen skeletons drift toward us, still draped in bits of ribbon and velvet and clinging to their swords. “If these guys didn’t find an escape hatch, I doubt you will either.”

  I expect Jules to be terrified by this, but instead she breast-strokes closer to one and shakes its hand. “Cool,” she breathes.

  Marina nods, impressed. “I like this girl.”

  I begin shucking oysters, hoping to find something other than an ordinary pearl. Marina swims into the depths of the skeleton closet, strip-searching the inhabitants. Ondine sifts through kelp and Kyrie flips over flounder and starfish on the ocean floor. Meanwhile, Jules sits cross-legged on the granite table, elbow-deep in a giant pink clam filled with keys. “What about one of these?” she asks. “These all have to open something.”

  “At one time, yes. They were the keys to kingdoms, to shackles, to diaries. Most of them are long past their use,” Kyrie says.

  Jules starts examining them one by one and sorting them into piles. Some are rusted, some are shiny. Some have seaweed tangled around them, some are ornate, some are plain. Nothing stands out as extraordinary; nothing screams, This is your escape. “This one has writing on it,” she says, holding the key up to the crackling light of an electric eel. “I can’t make it out.”

  I take it out of her hand and read the Latin inscription out loud: “ ‘Carcere aqua,’ ” I say.

  “Water prison,” Jules translates.

  “You speak Latin?”

  “SAT prep, man. I’m a vocabulary beast.” She frowns. “Do you have any idea what it means?”

  I glance at the skeleton closet. “That’s the only water prison I can think of in this book.” Taking the key, I close the door and try to lock it, but the bolt won’t turn.

  Marina purses her lips. “Isn’t there a jail cell on Captain Crabbe’s pirate ship? He locked me in there once when I didn’t floss.”

  I stuff the key into my pocket and turn to Jules. “Time to surface,” I say.

  With the aid of the mermaids, we rise to the top of the ocean, breaking into the air about five miles from the shore of Everafter Beach. Looming nearby, like a great gray whale, is Captain Crabbe’s ship. I start flailing my arms, shouting, to grab the attention of the hands on deck.

  Suddenly I hear the pirate’s gruff voice. “Edgar, laddie, is that you?” he cries. “Man overboard!”

  Captain Crabbe’s ship slices through the waves like a knife cutting through butter. The salty spray splashes over the gunwale, soaking the rough blanket the first mate gave me after hauling me up to safety. Sitting on an overturned crate is Jules, wrapped in her own blanket, holding a mug of hot grog. Her hair is starting to dry, and by now there’s more silver in it than blue. I keep thinking it’s like a ticking time bomb, that we’d better figure out how to get Jules back to the real world before she’s fully blond and singing to birds and bugs on her windowsill.

  Captain Crabbe stands in front of me, his feet planted wide to keep him steady as the deck rocks back and forth in the surf. “Tell me again, mate, why a landlubber like yerself was swimmin’ in these parts? Is there a cavity botherin’ you?”

  “No, my teeth are fine.” I unclench my fist to reveal the key. “We found this in the mermaids’ cave, and we’re looking for the lock that it fits,” I say. “I think it could be on your ship.”

  “I didna misplace any keys,” the captain says thoughtfully, “but ye’re welcome to take a look around.” He extends a hand to Jules, helping her to her feet, and she smiles. As soon as she does, he leans in a little closer. “Ye have a twisted eyetooth,” he murmurs. “I could get ye a retainer that would fix that….”

  “Thanks,” Jules says, “but I’ve done my time in braces.”

  Captain Crabbe sniffs. “Well. Whoever ye went to clearly wasna a perfectionist.”

  I wander around the top deck, trying the key in various padlocks, but nothing works. I glance around for Jules, but she seems to have gone AWOL. Then I hear her cry: “Look, Edgar: I’m king of the world!”

  She straddles the bowsprit, her arms extended wide in a T, doing her best Leonardo DiCaprio impression. “Great. When you’re done playing Titanic, can you get down here and help?”

  “You’re no fun,” Jules says, but she scrambles down and walks over to Walleye, one of the hands, who’s mopping on the starboard side of the ship. “Is there another floor?”

  Walleye glances down at the wood beneath his mop. “This is the only one we got.”

  “She means a lower deck,” I explain.

  “Oh. Why didn’t you say so?” Walleye grunts, leading us down a ladder to the two tiny cells in the belly of the ship.

  “Okay, this is creepy,” Jules says. “Why is there a prison in a fairy tale?”

  Captain Crabbe shrugs. “It came with the boat.”

  I pull on the iron bars of one locked door. “Where are the keys?”

  The captain looks at Walleye, who lets his gaze slide to the floor. “Dunno,” he admits. “Scuttle was the last one who had ’em.”

  “Scuttle!” Captain Crabbe yells.

  The second mate comes out of the galley, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “Ye called?”

  “Where are the
keys to the cells?”

  “I keep ’em in the cookie jar,” he says. “Just wait here a minute.” Scuttle disappears into the kitchen again, and we hear banging and rattling and a gigantic crash. “I’m fine!” he yells, and a moment later he comes back with a small ceramic container. He empties the contents on a rough wooden table: a dozen stale hardtack crackers filled with mealworms that I can actually see moving, and a single brass key.

  Scuttle presents the key to the captain, who hands it to me. I open the cell on the left and Jules and I crowd inside. It’s barely big enough for one person, much less two, and we have to dance around each other as we pull loose boards and kick at the dirt on the floor. Jules turns to me, and I can feel her breath on my neck. I can’t help but think of how close we are, even though that’s the last thing I’m supposed to be focusing on.

  “Looks like there’s nothing here,” Jules says. “Should we try the other one?”

  I grab the key with the Latin inscription and wiggle it into the lock. When the tumblers turn, all the hair stands up on the back of my neck.

  This is it.

  For a moment, I hesitate. What if, the minute I open this door, Jules disappears just as suddenly as she arrived? What if the best thing that’s happened to me since I’ve been here vanishes before I get a chance to really know her?

  “What are you waiting for?” Jules asks, and she shoves past me and pushes open the barred iron door.

  I draw in my breath, expecting the worst to happen.

  Except, it doesn’t.

  Jules stands in the middle of the cell, rattling the bars. “Looks like this one’s a dud too.”

  Captain Crabbe draws himself up. Just one glance and his two crewmates scatter above deck. We follow and stand at a distance below the sail, watching the fireworks between them ignite.

  “Do either of ye two numbskulls care to tell me how our key wound up on the bottom of the ocean floor?” the captain yells.

  Scuttle and Walleye exchange a glance—well, as best they can, since Walleye’s gaze goes in two different directions. “Well, Cap’n, it’s like this….” Scuttle swallows hard. “We dropped it in the ocean.”

  Captain Crabbe sighs. “Do ye ken how hard it is to find decent help around here?” he mutters. “Now that we have the key, perhaps we should test it by lockin’ the both of ye up for a few hours.”

  “We didn’t mean to,” Scuttle says.

  “Aye,” Walleye agrees. “We just wanted to see if it would float.”

  As they bicker, I spot Everafter Beach gleaming in the moonlight a few hundred yards away. I nudge Jules with my shoulder. “Feel like a swim?” I murmur, crawling onto the ship’s gunwale and holding out my hand.

  She grabs it so I can pull her up beside me. “I thought you’d never ask,” Jules says, and together, we jump.

  It is a longer swim than I thought. By the time we reach the beach, we’re both out of breath. Jules rolls onto her back, letting the surf wash around her, too tired to inch her way to a drier spot. I lie with my cheek pressed into a scallop shell.

  “Why didn’t you just ask that pirate to drop us off?” Jules pants.

  “Mmmmpht thkkkng,” I say, my mouth full of sand.

  It takes me a few minutes to catch my breath, and when I do, I get to my feet and walk to higher ground, sinking down on the beach. I grab a chunk of coral curved like a candy cane. “A perfect J.”

  “Huh?” Jules has come to sit beside me.

  “My mom and I used to walk the beach on Cape Cod, looking for coral shaped like Es and Js.” I toss it to her. “J for Jules.”

  She turns it over in her hands, like a small glowing bone.

  “I’m worried about my mom.” I look away. “I miss her. I mean, I see little bits of her everywhere. Queen Maureen uses her scone recipe. Her favorite flowers—daisies—are the only ones that grow in the unicorn meadow. And…” I point to the coral in Jules’s hand. “Well. That. But it’s not the same, you know?”

  Jules hugs her knees to her chest. “It’s kind of like that with my sister.”

  “You have a sister?”

  “Had,” Jules says. “Her name was Sofia. I’m an expert at death.” She rolls the coral between her palms. “I was six when my mom got pregnant, and I was so excited about having a sister that I asked, like, a hundred times a day when she was going to get here. Finally my dream came true. Sofia came—four months early. She only lived a couple of hours. I know it wasn’t my fault, but sometimes I still think…if I hadn’t wanted her here so badly…if I hadn’t wished quite so hard…would she be alive?” Jules dashes her hand across her eyes. “This is so stupid. I don’t even know why I’m telling you.”

  “No…I’m glad you did,” I say. “It’s kind of nice to know I’m not the only one who’s messed up.”

  Jules laughs. “You’re more messed up than I am.”

  “You’re right,” I agree. “Because I’m actually kind of psyched that we didn’t find a portal in the pirate ship.”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah.” I turn, meeting her gaze. Her eyes are as dark as the night. “All I could think, when the key turned in that lock, was that you were about to go…and I wasn’t ready to give you up yet.”

  Gathering every shred of courage I have, I reach for Jules’s hand.

  Just like the last time I touched her, in the unicorn meadow, she instantly pulls away. “No!” she yelps. “Edgar—I’m sorry…. I just…can’t.”

  I feel my cheeks burn. Jeez, how repulsive am I?

  “I mean, you’re really hot and everything…but it seems so weird and wrong. I mean, you look identical to my best friend’s boyfriend.”

  My jaw drops. “You think I’m hot?”

  Her mouth tips up in a half smile. “Don’t be getting all cocky, now.”

  “So the problem here is that I look like Oliver?” She nods. “Then close your eyes.”

  Her lashes drift shut, and I lean forward.

  I am pretty sure I am about to throw up. My heart is literally rattling my rib cage, it’s beating so hard. What if I do this wrong? What if my nose winds up in the wrong place? What if I miss her mouth? Why didn’t I think about Googling this, or steal my mom’s Cosmopolitan magazine when I had the chance?

  Enough, Edgar, I tell myself, an internal pep talk. Don’t think. Just do.

  And then wonderfully, miraculously, I’m kissing her.

  Jules melts against me and my arms go around her. I’m afraid to move, because if I do, I’m going to wake up. So instead I just keep my lips on hers until I start to see stars in the corners of my eyes, because I’m running out of air.

  She breaks away from me, gasping. “It’s always the quiet ones,” she murmurs.

  I wonder if I ever would have met Jules if I’d stayed in the real world. If the magic between us has to do with fiction, or if it would have happened no matter where we were introduced.

  I wonder if she’s wondering the same thing.

  I lie down on the sand, looking up at the stars, Jules’s head pillowed on my arm, smiling so hard I think my skin is going to crack.

  This has been a good day.

  “I used to be able to find the Big Dipper,” I say, “but I’m pretty sure my mom knew nothing about astronomy, since these stars look totally random. Do you know any constellations?”

  Jules freezes. “I, um…someone recently tried to show me a few, but I can’t remember them exactly.”

  I shrug. “Then let’s make up our own.” I point to the sky. “That one there? It’s called the Rocker. See how it looks like a chair?”

  She grins. “Oh yeah, I totally see it. And over to the left, with the two eyes and the jagged mouth? That’s the Joker.” Suddenly she sits up. “Edgar,” Jules says. “Do you see what I see? There’s something wrong with that star. It looks…flat.”

  I peer into the sky. Against the velvet of the night, one of the Joker’s eyes is twinkling. The other, though, is not shining back at us. It’s lifeless, dull.
>
  It looks more like a hole punched through the sky than a star.

  Or in other words: a portal.

  The hammering is deafening. The trolls are nailing together the tallest ladder I’ve ever seen, but it starts in the middle of the ocean, because this particular star—of course—is not directly over the beach. As a result, this is an engineering marvel requiring the coordination of the trolls, who are designing the mechanism; Captain Crabbe, whose boat serves as the platform for the ladder; and the mermaids, who are frantically swimming against the current to control the wave patterns buffeting the ship.

  Jules and I swung by the castle for a change of clothes before gathering our building committee. To my shock, in my bedroom wardrobe, there were no spacesuits anymore—just rows of tunics and tights. It took ten minutes for Jules to convince me to walk outside, and even now I can’t believe I’m dressed like freaking Robin Hood.

  “How much longer?” I ask Biggle as he moves past me with a claw hammer in hand. Dawn is practically clawing at the edge of the night. What if the stars fade before we have a chance to reach this portal? What if we wait till tonight and it’s gone?

  Biggle snorts at me. “We’re on the last plank,” he says. “We’ve used up all the wood that’s available. Any more and we have to start cutting down the Enchanted Forest.”

  I can’t even imagine how pissed off the book would get at us if we started to raze the trees.

  Trogg calls down the all clear. Captain Crabbe gives the base of the ladder a hard jerk. “Looks sturdy,” he says.

  “Hope you’re not afraid of heights,” Jules says with a laugh, lifting up the edge of her gown. Her combat boots have vanished, and she’s wearing these ridiculous little slippers that look like they have all the protection of a sock. “Because I’m not climbing in these.”

  “I’ll be just fine,” I lie.

  I put my foot on the bottom rung, feeling my boot slip, and hoist myself up, starting to climb. The ship rocks beneath my feet, and the ladder lurches from side to side. I’m climbing in total darkness, which is actually a blessing, because if I could see below me, I’d never make it. The splashes of the mermaids’ tails and the voices of the trolls fade as I get closer and closer to the top edge of the book. And yet it seems like no matter how far I climb, I never arrive.