Off the Page

  It was dusty and dry, and after about fifteen minutes my eyes and my throat began to itch. My mother scooped me up and put me on her shoulders so I could be her periscope, but even with that vantage point we weren’t tall enough. I was pretty sure we were going in circles.

  After a while the sun lit the tips of the cornstalks, as if they were candles. I was hungry and tired, deadweight in my mother’s arms. Edgar, she said, desperate times call for desperate measures.

  Instead of turning at the next fork in the maze, my mother kicked at the stalks with her boots, creating a small passage. Like ghosts, we began to walk through the walls. Finally we got spit out on the far edge of the farmland, in a field we had never seen before. It was like someone had pulled the rip cord, and night floated down over us.

  “Where are we?” I asked. Everything looked unfamiliar, and I was starting to get that weird feeling in my stomach that came when I was scared.

  My mother took my hand. Let’s find out, she said, and just like that, I wasn’t afraid. I was on an adventure.

  Jules is right.

  My mother is going to die if she stays here.

  But what if she didn’t have to?

  Given the number of times characters have traded places with ordinary people, there’s got to be a way. And no one would know that way better than the author of the fairy tale. But that means coming clean with my mother and explaining everything that’s happened.

  When my mother’s eyes open, they are foggy for a moment, and then they fix on me.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer; she just nods.

  “Mom, there’s something I have to talk to you about. And it’s going to be hard for you to believe, so I have witnesses.” I motion for Delilah and Jules to come inside. Delilah is cradling the book in her arms. “You know Delilah already, and this is her best friend, Jules.”

  They step into the room gently, as if the floor is made of lava. “Jules, hello. And, Delilah,” my mother says. “It’s good to see you.”

  “I’m really, um, sorry…to hear that you’re sick,” Delilah says. “If there’s anything I can do—”

  “You already have. You’ve made my son very happy.” She smiles at me.

  “That’s kind of what I need to talk to you about,” I tell her. “Delilah isn’t really my girlfriend.” I pull up a chair beside the bed and sit down so I can take my mother’s hand. “And when you thought I was an imposter, living in your house? You weren’t really all that far off.”

  My mother frowns and tries to sit up in the bed. “I don’t understand.”

  Delilah takes a step forward. “It all started with me,” she says, gesturing to the book. “I found your story in my school library. And I fell in love with it. I read that fairy tale ten times a day. I knew every word, forward and backward. Then one of the characters spoke to me.”

  “It’s always nice to hear when a reader feels a connection to a character,” my mother says.

  “No,” Delilah explains. “This character? Actually spoke to me.”

  “It was Oliver,” I jump in. “The prince you wrote.”

  “Except he didn’t want to be a prince,” Delilah says. “He wanted to be real. And he wanted my help escaping the book. So I did everything I could think of to help him—including coming to your house and asking you to rewrite the ending.”

  “But I wouldn’t,” my mother says, remembering.

  “No,” I agree. “And to be honest, I thought she was nuts. Until I opened the book, and Oliver spoke to me too.”

  “But that’s impossible,” my mother says, and then she relaxes against her pillow, as if it suddenly all makes sense. “This conversation isn’t happening. It’s the medication.”

  “We figured out a way to get Oliver out of the book,” I tell my mother. “But it meant that someone else had to take his place: me.”

  “Edgar, honey, I know this has been a really difficult day for you. There are people here you can talk to who can help—”

  “He’s not crazy,” Jules interrupts. “I was inside the book with him. And Delilah’s been there too. I know it sounds insane. And I know every fiber of your being is telling you not to believe this. But you have to, because it’s true.”

  My mother turns to me. “All right,” she says, in the tone you’d use to placate someone who’s nuts.

  “I know it doesn’t make sense. Somehow we edited the story so that the book would think it needed me instead. Would think that I was the main character, and not Oliver. And it worked, for a little while. But the book has a mind of its own. When something’s not right, it corrects itself.”

  “Well, of course,” my mother says, as if I have finally begun to speak English. “What you’re describing…that’s what writing is. Characters get up and walk away with a plot all the time.”

  She’s not getting it. “For a few months, Oliver was pretending to be me,” I tell her, remembering what she had said earlier: I saw a boy who looked like my son…but who I just knew wasn’t. That was what made her go to the doctor in the first place, and even if she hadn’t been delusional—just really observant—it was also what made the doctors do the tests that found the tumor.

  What if they hadn’t? Would she not even know she was sick?

  Would that be better?

  I push aside the thought. “Oliver is Delilah’s boyfriend,” I continue. “Me…I was hidden inside your story.”

  My mother looks from me to Delilah to Jules, as if she can’t understand our strange conspiracy. “Edgar,” she says quietly, sadly, “there’s no such thing as fairy tales.”

  A long time ago, when my mother first wrote that book, she thought otherwise. I guess life can take you to a place where you are completely different from the person you used to be.

  Before I know what’s happening, Jules yanks the book out of Delilah’s arms. She flips it open to the page where Oliver is climbing the tower wall. He looks up, sees a familiar face, and smiles. “Oliver,” she says, “there’s someone who wants to say hello.”

  She turns the book so it’s facing my mother. Oliver’s eyes dart up, and when he sees my mother’s face, he looks shocked but recovers quickly. He grimaces and hangs on more tightly to the rock wall, doing his job, assuming that he isn’t supposed to speak.

  I lean closer to my mother so that he can see my face too. “Oliver,” I tell him, “it’s okay to talk to her.”

  Very slowly, his face turns toward us. “Hello,” he says shyly. “It’s quite a pleasure to officially meet you.”

  My mother’s face goes white. “This is not happening.”

  “I’m sorry, should I perhaps go back to hanging on the wall?” Oliver asks. “But before I do that—might I just say, I loved playing your son, for a little while. You are an excellent mother.”

  After a long silence, my mother begins to speak. “When I was still a writer, I felt like the characters were speaking to me. I could hear them so clearly in my head.”

  “Maybe they were,” Delilah says. “Maybe you just never answered.”

  Once, when I was little, I came home from kindergarten and my mother wasn’t waiting for the bus at the end of the driveway. Hunching over, wearing my backpack like a turtle shell, I called her name. I wanted to show her the finger painting I’d done that day and give her the macaroni necklace I’d made. But she wasn’t in the kitchen making me lunch either. I began to walk through the house, opening doors, getting more and more panicked. What if something bad had happened to her? What if something bad was about to happen to me?

  The last door I opened was the door to her office. On the walls were sketches of a pirate ship, of princesses, of castles. There was a painting on her easel of a fire-breathing dragon, and a prince staring him down, all reds and oranges that looked like the coils on the stove I wasn’t supposed to touch. My mother was sitting in her chair. Her eyes were closed, and her head was tilted back so that her face was lifted to the ceiling.

  “Mom,??
? I said, and when she didn’t answer, I repeated it a little louder.

  “Shhhh,” she whispered. “They’re talking to me.”

  I looked around the room, but we were completely alone. “Who?”

  At that, her eyes popped open. “The characters,” she said, and she smiled.

  My mother looks at me blankly when I try to explain the concept of Easter eggs in games and videos. “It’s like when you’re watching The Phantom Menace and you realize that E.T. is in the Senate with the Palpatine supporters—”

  Jules interrupts. “It’s like when you put your winter coat on for the first time in months and you find twenty bucks in your pocket.”

  “So, something unexpected?” my mother says.

  “Yeah,” I add, “but in video games, when you find one, you can sometimes skip a whole level of play. Or wind up at the end of the game. Or even just automatically win.”

  “A shortcut,” Delilah says, simplifying. “We found the ones you put into the book: the lip-gloss compact on the copyright page, and the star cookie.”

  I meet my mother’s gaze. “Every time someone reads your fairy tale, Rapscullio falls out a tower window and dies. But not really, because the next time the book is opened, there he is again, conning Oliver into helping him.” I take a deep breath. “There is no death. There’s no sickness. The book won’t allow it. If you can tell us where you’ve hidden just one more of those gateways, we can go inside. And once we’re there, we get to live forever.”

  She is silent for a long moment.

  “Edgar,” she says finally, “you have some imagination.”

  “So did you. Which is why I think this might work.” I reach for her hand. “You just had a conversation with Oliver, right? So you know that it’s possible to exist—no, not exist, live—inside the book…and in spite of what you want to tell yourself, it has nothing to do with the meds you’re on. If Oliver and Maureen are willing to trade places, and if you and I follow the plot instead of messing with it, there’s no reason the book wouldn’t take us. Sure, I’ll have to wear tights for the rest of my life, but that’s okay, if it means you’re with me. And there are worse things than having the day job of being a queen, right?” I hesitate. “Mom, really, what have you got to lose?”

  My mother’s been awake for an hour now, and I can see she’s exhausted. “Even if this were true, which it can’t possibly be, I couldn’t tell you where to find a portal.” She sighs. “I didn’t create them.”

  I look at Delilah and Jules. “If you didn’t, who did?”

  “I don’t know. Students write papers about themes and symbolism in books…and half the time, the author never planned any of it. It just happens.”

  “You mean, like, subconsciously?” Jules asks.

  “Maybe,” my mother admits.

  “Then who’s to say there’s not another subconscious secret passage somewhere? We just have to find it,” I say.

  “But they’re not what you think they are. They’re not bonuses, or extra points. They were wishes. The only reason they worked when they did was because the person who stumbled across them believed wholeheartedly. A wish is just words. Belief is the catalyst. It’s what sets that wish into motion. When two people want the same exact thing and that wish is caught between them, there’s nothing more powerful.”

  “Then why don’t wishes come true every day?” I ask her. “If we both want you to get better, how come it’s not that simple?”

  She looks at me, her eyes wide and sad. “This world isn’t filled with magic,” my mother says. “Why do you think so many people escape through fiction?” She sinks into the pillow, her voice fading. “Edgar, I think I need to close my eyes for a little while.”

  I slip out of the room, followed by Delilah and Jules. “Do you think she’s right?” Jules asks. “That they weren’t portals or escape hatches—they were just two people believing in something at once?”

  “Then why did you get sucked into Seraphima’s wish?” Delilah asks her. “You clearly didn’t want to go into the book, but you wound up there anyway. And for the record, Oliver and I did plenty of simultaneous wishing for him to get out of the book, and it did nothing.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, my mind buzzing. I don’t have the answers. I just know I have to find them, quickly.

  And I think I know who might be able to help.

  OLIVER

  I know something is wrong. I knew it the moment Edgar told me to say hello to Jessamyn and I saw the wires and tubes hooked up behind her, as if she were one of Orville’s experiments. I knew from the look on Delilah’s face before she closed the book, telling me she would explain everything as soon as she got a chance.

  I have been pacing the bottom of page 43, waiting for her, but she hasn’t opened the book.

  Love isn’t what you expect it to be. You imagine being drunk on happiness, but the truth is, you worry all the time. Is she ill? Hurt? Might she meet someone else? There’s a moment when you realize that you’ve gotten everything you wished for. And right on its heels is the understanding that this means you have so much more to lose.

  By the time I feel the ground shift under my feet and the book beginning to open, I’ve worked myself into a frenzy, imagining all manner of horrors.

  To my surprise, however, Delilah doesn’t open the book to our usual page. I find myself springing through the story, until I am flung hard into Orville’s copper cauldron. He winces in empathy. I sit up gingerly, only to have Humphrey smack into my face and send me sprawling on my back.

  Socks trots onto the page, panting. “Mmm. Feeling that cardio,” he says.

  The scene swims before settling into place, and I glance up surreptitiously to find Delilah—in the company of Jules and Edgar.

  “Are you all right?” I ask Delilah. “What’s going on? And don’t bloody close the book on me this time.”

  “I’m fine,” Delilah assures me. “But Jessamyn—she’s not. She’s very sick, Oliver. She’s not going to live much longer.”

  I watch Socks and Orville process this information. “Like Frump?” Socks asks after a minute.

  “Not exactly,” Delilah says. “Because this time we know it’s coming.”

  I look up at her. “And you think you can stop it?”

  Edgar is the one who answers. “I think we can,” he replies.

  I know what he is going to say before he even says it. And I am holding my breath, hoping that if Edgar plans to bring his mother into the book permanently, he also means to join her.

  Because then I get to leave.

  We listen as Edgar outlines his plan: if Jessamyn enters the book, she will automatically heal. Just like it made Jules’s hair begin to turn blond and Frump become a dog again, the story will do what it has to do to make her fit the role of Queen Maureen—who is blissfully, absolutely healthy.

  “But you scoured the pages,” Orville points out, “and you only found that single star biscuit when you were looking for an escape.”

  “We may not need another portal,” Edgar explains. “My mother swears she didn’t write that intentionally into the book. She said it was just a wish that happened to be in the right place at the right time, basically.”

  “It’s a puzzle,” Delilah says. “We only have to figure out what all the swaps had in common.”

  “The first was Edgar and I. We didn’t have any special shortcut, unless one counts the revised plot.” I glance at Delilah. “And since you and I were never able to get me free using Rapscullio’s easel or ripping the pages or writing me out of the plot, we know there must have been some key point that made the difference.”

  “An equal trade,” Orville says. “A body for a body. Oliver, you couldn’t leave the story no matter how badly Delilah wanted you to—because there was no one to take your place.”

  “Right. But both Edgar and Oliver were willing to make the switch. When Seraphima came out of the book,” Delilah points out, “Jules got dragged in unwillingly.”

&n
bsp; “Maybe the wishing doesn’t have to be two-sided,” Orville suggests.

  “Then why wouldn’t I have been able to get out on my own?” I ask. “Why didn’t a stranger get sucked in?”

  “I was the only one reading the book,” Delilah points out. “And I did it in secret, because I was so embarrassed to be reading a kids’ story.”

  “Which meant that there wasn’t any male near you who could be pulled into the story in my place,” I finish.

  Socks whinnies faintly. “I don’t mean to be a bother,” he asks, “but why did Humphrey wind up here?”

  “He was with us when the book was open,” I say. “We were all watching Orville cast the wishing spell on Frump.”

  Orville nods. “What this tells us is that for permanence’s sake, the story wants a replacement similar enough to the original character to be able to mold them in the same image.”

  “Then how come when I wished to be with Oliver all those times, I didn’t accidentally switch places with Seraphima?” Delilah asks.

  Before any of us can respond, Humphrey wanders to the far corner of the page and begins to lift his leg. “No!” I shout. “For heaven’s sake, Humphrey, we don’t do that here! There are rules in this world.”

  Humphrey’s ears droop. “I’m so sorry. I’ll pack my things and go. Actually, I don’t have any things. I’ll just go….”

  “Wait,” Orville says, his eyes gleaming. “You’re on to something there, my boy. There are rules in this world. And we must play by them, as I’ve said before. Yet in a story, anything is possible. So the wish must originate here.”

  I try to make a mental list of everything we’ve covered so far: If two people switch and only one of them has consented, there has to be an aid involved—a cookie, a portal, a spell, a magic lip gloss. If, on the other hand, two people want to switch, having given mutual consent, that can happen without any physical shortcut. All it takes is the power of the wish.