Between the lines

“As I was saying,” she continues pointedly, “I really wish I could help you. But I’ve been thinking about you all day-believe me, you’re all I’ve thought about-”

At this, I grin.

“-and I don’t think I could ever forgive myself if I were the one who killed you.”

My head snaps up. “Killed me? Why the devil would you do that?”

“Oliver, have you listened to anything I’ve just said? I can’t risk having what happened to that spider happen to you.” She sits down, looking into her lap. “I only just found you,” Delilah says. “I can’t lose you now.”

In the fairy tale, I’ve never had to worry about death. I know the mermaids will not let me drown. I know I’ll always beat the dragon. I know I’ll always defeat Rapscullio.

But this Otherworld, it doesn’t work the same way. There are no second chances. Death, here, is for real.

It hits me with the force of a blow: the understanding that I’d rather die than know I might never have a chance to truly, finally, kiss Delilah McPhee.

Maybe the reason I’ve never died in this story is that I’ve never had something worth dying for before.

“We just need to think of a different escape method,” I suggest. “There has to be another way.”

I hear Delilah’s mother calling her name, and all of a sudden the book is slammed shut. I wait a few moments, in the hope that Delilah might come back.

When she does, it’s on page 43 once again. “Sorry,” she says. She is hurrying around her room, locating a rucksack and stuffing a towel inside. “I have to go to swim practice.”

“I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it quickly,” I reply. “I did.”

“I know how to swim,” Delilah says. “It’s a sport. I’m supposed to be doing it for fun. But when you come in last place every time in the individual medley, it’s hard to find the joy.”

“Then why do it?”

“My mother thinks it will help me fit in.”

“You should just tell her you’d prefer not to.”

She pauses and looks at me. “Why don’t you tell your mother off when she gives you a hard time?”

“That’s different. I was written that way.”

“Well, believe me,” Delilah says. “Being a teenager isn’t all that different from being part of someone else’s story, then. There’s always someone who thinks they know better than you do.”

I offer my most charming grin. “You could stay with me instead.”

“I wish.” Delilah sighs. “But that’s not going to happen.”

“Then take me with you.”

“Water and books don’t mix very well.”

“DELILAH!” Her mother’s voice booms in the background once again.

And so she closes the book, more gently this time, and abandons me.

I sit down on the edge of page 43, already missing her, as Queen Maureen wanders into the edge of the margin. It’s like that when the book is closed-any of us can wander anywhere; there’s no privacy. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she says, backing away. “I didn’t realize anyone was on this page!”

“No, no,” I say, getting to my feet. “It’s quite all right. Really.”

Queen Maureen isn’t really my mother, of course. Technically, the author of this story is the woman who gave life to all of us. But like two actors in any long-running play, Maureen and I have become so comfortable with each other and our roles that she is the closest thing I have to a parent inside the pages of this book. I like the way she always saves me one of her fresh-baked ginger cookies from the castle kitchen when she’s in a cooking mood. And from time to time, I’ve turned to her for advice when Frump and I have had a disagreement, or when Seraphima is so delusional that she’s chasing me nonstop during our time off. I respect Maureen’s opinions. In this way, I guess, my character has started to blend with the real me.

“Have you got a minute?” I ask.

“Of course.” She walks closer and sits beside me on a stubby boulder. “You look like you want to kick a wall.”

I exhale heavily. “I’m just so frustrated.”

“Who spit in your porridge?” she asks, raising a brow.

“If we’re all just make-believe, are the emotions we feel still real?”

“Well,” Maureen says. “Someone’s philosophical today-”

“I’m serious,” I interrupt. “How am I supposed to know what love really feels like?”

“Dear Lord, please tell me you haven’t suddenly become smitten with that ditzy princess-”

“Seraphima?” I shudder. “No.”

Maureen’s eyes light up. “It’s Ember, isn’t it? I’ve seen her looking at you from the corner of her little eye.”

“I’m not in love with a fairy-”

“It’s not Cook, is it?”

“Cook? She’s twice my age-”

Maureen frowns. “One of the mermaids? I should warn you that your dates would be impossibly soggy-”

“She’s not in the book,” I say.

Maureen just blinks. “Ah. Well, my boy, I don’t think I can help you there.”

“She’s not like anyone I’ve ever seen before. When I’m not with her, I want to be. And when she opens the book and I see her face, I can barely remember what I’m supposed to say, much less how to speak at all.” I test the words on my tongue. “I think I might be in love with her. But how can I really know, since the only love I’ve ever experienced was written for me?”

“Oh, darling, that’s what love is. It’s some power greater than you and me, that draws us to one special person.”

Maureen sounds like she knows exactly what she’s talking about. As if she’s felt the same way I feel right now.

“I guess you really loved Maurice,” I say.

She laughs. “Sweetheart, he’s just a flashback.”

I press my fingers to my temples. It’s all so confusing-what’s real, and what’s only make-believe. In the story, I fall in love with Seraphima, but the way I feel when I’m with her is far different from what I feel for Delilah. With Seraphima, I’m going through the motions. With Delilah, everything is brand-new, brightly colored, always changing. “Then how do you know what love is?”

“Because so many stories are all about love, written by people who’ve felt it before. Rapscullio’s lair is full of books about characters who aren’t in this story but who are mad about each other. Romeo and Juliet, Beauty and the Beast, Heathcliff and Cathy.”

“Who are they?”

Maureen shrugs. “I don’t know, but our author wrote them onto the shelves on the illustration of page thirty- six. I’ve read a few, myself, during our off time. You know that anything that was in the author’s mind might exist in the book, even if it doesn’t show up in the proper story.”

This is true. The world we live in is bigger than just the fairy tale; in fact, it’s as spacious as the imagination of the woman who created us. It’s why Frump and I know how to play chess, and Captain Crabbe has a passion for creating crosswords. It is as if whatever the author was thinking when she created the spaces we are in was richly imagined, three-dimensional. The castle kitchen, for example, is fully stocked with grains and flours and dishes and tableware, even though in the fairy tale, Cook is never actually seen baking. Because of this, during our off time, Maureen pores through recipe books and bakes cakes and pies and biscuits for the rest of us.

“Can I ask you something else?” I say, turning to Maureen. “I know he’s just a flashback to you. But Maurice, he rode off to save you, and wound up leaving you behind forever. Is it really worth dying for the person you love?”

She thinks about this for a moment. “That’s not the real question, Oliver. What you should be asking is, Can you live without her?”