Between the lines

I’m not in the habit of sneaking into faculty restrooms. In fact, this is something I’ve never even thought of doing, but then again nothing I’ve done today is something I’ve ever thought of doing. The bottom line is I need to be alone with this book, and in a faculty restroom I can lock the door and not have to worry about any gossiping girls who might run to a teacher to snitch on the insane student who’s conversing with a fairy tale.

I crack open the book once again to page 43, lean into the story, and whisper, “Hello?”

When Oliver smiles, I catch my breath. “You came back. You said you would… and you did.”

Get a grip, Delilah, I tell myself. “What was that all about?”

“What was what all about?”

“Why didn’t you talk when I asked you to?”

“I thought you didn’t want me talking when strangers were around!”

“I don’t!” I argue.

“I’m having a little trouble keeping up, here… You’re angry because I did what you asked me to do?”

“I’m angry because Jules isn’t a stranger.”

“She might as well be, to me,” Oliver says. “She wouldn’t have heard me even if I were yelling at the top of my lungs.”

“How do you know that? You didn’t even try.”

“I’ve been trying for years-you’re the first person who has ever noticed me.”

I sigh. “But if you’d talked to Jules-if she could hear you…” My voice trails off.

“Then you wouldn’t feel quite so crazy?” Oliver asks gently. “Can’t you believe in me, if I believe in you?”

“I don’t know what to believe,” I say, completely honest. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me.”

Oliver sits down on the ground. “And nothing at all has ever happened to me.”

I look at him, resigning himself to an endless life trapped inside someone else’s plot. I know what that feels like. If I’d written my own story, my father would never have left us, and my mother wouldn’t have to work till she was so tired she fell into bed each night before dinner. If I’d written my own story, I wouldn’t have broken a cheerleader’s kneecap and single-handedly turned the entire school against me. If I’d written my own story, I’d have someone like Oliver here who loved me.

Then again, maybe I can change my own story. Or at least try. “I think we need to do a test,” I say.

“I don’t understand.”

“What if I cut you out of the book and you stop breathing? What if the only oxygen that works for you is in the pages?”

“Cutting? Who said anything about cutting-”

“And what if you do make it into this world but you’re small enough to fit in my pocket?” My voice rises as I think of everything that could possibly go wrong.

“So by test,” Oliver says slowly-hopefully, “you mean you’re going to help me get out of here?”

“Yes. And we’re going to start with a trial run. I’ll meet you on page twenty-one.” I hesitate. “You can see the numbers on the pages too, right?”

“If I squint,” Oliver says. “They’re so far up in the corners.”

“It’s the part where you and Frump are walking through the forest… Yes! We’ll try the dog first!” I say.

Oliver shakes his head. “Frump? You can’t do that!”

“He’s just a dog, Oliver. He’ll probably never even know.”

“Just a dog!” Oliver stands, angry. “That ‘dog’ speaks three languages and is brilliant at chess and happens to be my best friend. Or did you forget that he used to be a human too?”

“I guess I maybe skimmed that part,” I confess, although I’d rather die than admit that I often skipped over the pages without Oliver in them. “If we can’t experiment on Frump, then what do you recommend? Or does even the bacteria in your book do rocket science on the side?”

“I could give you my tunic,” Oliver suggests.

“Keep your clothes on, buster. I think we’d be better off seeing what happens with something that’s alive and breathing, don’t you?”

“Give me a moment.” He paces from one end of the page to the other, briefly disappearing into the spine for a moment before reappearing with a smile on his face. “I could get you a fish from page forty-two.”

“I don’t know… Shouldn’t you try something that doesn’t belong in the ocean? That way, if it doesn’t survive intact… we can’t blame the problem on a lack of lungs.”

“You’re quite right.” Oliver sighs. He swats at the back of his neck, then waves his hand in front of his face. “Blasted spider.”

I start to ask him where it came from, fascinated by the mechanics of what appears and disappears in his world-but then I realize there might be any number of microscopic things that readers overlook-chessboards in the sand, spiders, even princes. “Wait!” I lean closer. “Oliver, did you kill that spider?”

“It bit me!”

“It’s the perfect sample for a trial run,” I tell him.

He brightens. “Of course. And if it doesn’t live, I’ll actually have something to celebrate.” He falls to his hands and knees and begins to search for the bug. “Got it,” Oliver says, and he extends his palm. In its center is a writhing, fat spider.

“Now what?” I ask.

Oliver blinks up at me. “Well. I guess you just take it.”

I gently reach down, trying to pinch the spider off the page, but nothing happens. There is a barrier between us, thinner than silk and incredibly solid. “It’s not working.”

“I forgot about the wall,” he says. He sits down, lost in thought.

“The wall?” I ask.

“It’s what keeps us safe, I suppose, if a Reader handles the pages without much care, or folds one down right in the center of an illustration. It’s like a bubble. Soft, but you can’t push through it no matter how hard you try.” He glances up. “Believe me, I have.”

“So you need something that can poke a hole in it…”

Oliver reaches for the dagger in his belt and takes a running leap directly toward me, so forceful that I find myself covering my face with my hands, as if he might burst through the pages and land right in front of me. But when I peek between my fingers, I find him flat on his back, staring up at the sky.

“Ouch,” he murmurs.

“Scientific discovery number one,” I say. “You can’t break the barrier between us.”

He sits up, rubbing his forehead. “No,” he replies, “but maybe you can.”

“You want me to poke the book with a knife?”

“No,” Oliver says. “You have to rip the book.”

I gasp. “No way! This is a library book!”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Oliver mutters. “Come on, Delilah. Just a little tear, so that I can sneak the spider out to you.”

When he offers up that smile again-the one that makes me feel like I’m the only person in his universe (although in this case that’s probably true)-I am utterly lost. “Okay,” I say with a sigh.

Gingerly, I take the page between my fingers and make the tiniest, most minute, infinitesimal tear.

“Delilah,” Oliver says, “I couldn’t squeeze protozoa through that, much less a spider. Could you try again? A little less imaginary this time?”

“Fine.” I pinch the top of the page between my fingers and give a good, solid tug. The paper tears.

“It had to be up at the top of the page, didn’t it…” Oliver rolls his eyes and wearily looks at the sheer cliff of rock before him.

“You do it for Seraphima,” I point out.

“Very funny.” Clenching the spider in his fist, he looks up. “How am I supposed to hold on to this thing and climb?” With a grimace, Oliver opens his mouth and pops the spider onto his tongue.

“That is so gross!” I cry out.