Between the lines

After my father left, my mom and I got hooked on Disney movies, the ones adapted from darker, creepier fairy tales. In the Disney version, the Little Mermaid doesn’t commit suicide and become foam-she winds up having a gorgeous wedding on a boat and sails away forever with her prince. The original Cinderella had stepsisters slicing off parts of their feet to try to fit into the glass slipper. My mother and I needed the whitewash that Disney provided. We’d sit with a big bowl of popcorn, wrapped together in a queen-size blanket, and would escape to a place where magic was ours for the taking, where men rescued the people they loved, instead of abandoning them. A place where, no matter how bad things looked at that moment, there would always be a happy ending.

It’s silly, I know, but I sort of imagined my mother as the Disney Cinderella. She cleaned houses all day long and then came home and helped me with my school-work or cooked dinner or did our laundry. When I was younger, every time the doorbell rang and a UPS truck driver or the mailman or the pizza delivery guy was standing on the other side, I’d wonder if this was the prince who’d sweep her off her feet and give her a completely different life.

It never happened.

I don’t think often about my father. He lives in Australia now with his new wife and two twin girls, who look like little princesses, with yellow curls and baby-blue eyes. It’s as if he started his own fairy tale, half a world away, without me in it. Although my mother swears I had nothing to do with my father leaving, I have my doubts. I wonder if I wasn’t smart enough, pretty enough, just… enough to be the daughter he wanted.

Once or twice a year, though, I dream about him. It’s always the same dream, where he’s teaching me to ice-skate. He’s holding on to my outstretched hands, skating backward in front of me so I can balance. You’ve got it, Lila, he says, because that’s what he always called me. He lets go of my hands, and to my surprise, I don’t fall. I just glide forward, one foot in front of the other, as if I’m flying. Look, I cry out, I’m doing it! But when I look up, he’s gone; I’m all by myself in the freezing cold.

When I have this dream, I always wake up shivering, and lonely.

This time, when it happens, I stare at the ceiling for a moment, and then I roll onto my side and pick up the book where I left it last night. I open it to page 43.

“Thank goodness!” Oliver shouts. “Where have you been?”

“Sleeping,” I say.

He looks up, doing a double take when he sees my face. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I seem to be saying that a lot lately.

“Then how come you’re crying?”

Surprised, I touch my cheeks and realize they’re wet. I must have been crying while I was asleep. “I was dreaming about my dad.”

Oliver tilts his head. “What’s he like?”

“I haven’t seen him in five years. He’s someone else now, with a whole new family. A whole new story.” I shake my head. “It’s sort of stupid. The reason your book even appealed to me was that one line in the beginning, about you growing up without a father. But Maurice wasn’t really ever your father, I guess. He’s just another actor.”

“I still know what it feels like,” Oliver says quietly. “To be overlooked. You have no idea how many times I shouted, in my mind, trying to get a Reader to see me for more than just what she needed me to be: some stupid character in a book.”

“Until me,” I say.

He nods. “Yes, Delilah. Until you.” Even my name on his lips sounds softer than it does on anyone else’s. “I do understand you,” Oliver says. “If I didn’t, you never would have heard me.”

“Well, nobody else does. My father ditched me, and now my mother thinks I’m crazy.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Because instead of joining the debate club or going out on Friday nights with guys who watch Lord of the Rings marathons and speak Elvish, I spend all my time lost in a book that isn’t age-appropriate for me.”

“Well, I’m not crazy, and I spend all my time lost in a book that isn’t age-appropriate for me…”

I smile at that. “Maybe we can be crazy together.”

“Maybe we can,” Oliver says, grinning widely. “I found another way out.”

My eyes widen. “What are you talking about?” I whisper. “Why didn’t you tell me right away?”

“Because you were crying,” he says, truly surprised. “That mattered more.”

Zach, the vegan lab partner I was recently crushing on, couldn’t even remember to hold the door open for me when we were heading into class. This chivalry thing Oliver’s got going on-I could get used to it.

Oliver reaches beneath his tunic and pulls out a leather-bound book with gold lettering-an exact replica of the one I’m reading. “I found this on Rapscullio’s shelves. The author painted it into the illustration of his lair, along with hundreds of other book titles. You don’t even notice them when you’re paying attention to the story-but they’re there. And they stay there when the book is closed. And look”-he leafs through it so I can see-“it’s exactly the same, isn’t it?”

It seems that way. As Oliver flips the pages, I see Pyro breathing fireballs and Frump trotting through the Enchanted Forest as fairies dance in circles around him. I see a tiny illustration of Oliver too, standing at the helm of Captain Crabbe’s ship as the wind ruffles his hair.

I wonder if that very small fictional prince is, at that moment, wishing for someone to notice him and get him out of his own story.

“It makes perfect sense that I couldn’t paint myself out of this story-because a book isn’t a painting. But you’ve already noticed things that I’ve drawn or written before on the pages-like that chessboard, and the message on the cliff. Perhaps rewriting the story in my copy will rewrite the story in yours as well.”

“I guess it’s worth a try,” I say.

“What’s worth a try?”

My mother’s voice sinks through the blanket I’m hiding beneath. I emerge from under the covers. “Nothing!” I say.

“What’s under there?”

I blush. “Nothing, Mom. Seriously!”

“Delilah,” my mother says, her face settling grimly. “Are you doing drugs?”

“What?” I yelp. “No!”

She rips aside the covers and sees the fairy tale. “Why are you hiding this?”

“I’m not hiding it.”

“You were reading under the covers… even though there’s nobody in your room.”

I shrug. “I guess I just like my privacy.”

“Delilah.” My mother’s hands settle on her hips. “You’re fifteen. You’re way too old to be addicted to a fairy tale.”

I give her a weak smile. “Well… isn’t that better than drugs?”

She shakes her head sadly. “Come down for breakfast when you’re ready,” she murmurs.

“Delilah-” Oliver begins as soon as the door closes behind my mother.

“We’ll figure it all out later,” I promise. I shut the book and bury it inside my backpack, get dressed, and yank my hair into a ponytail. Downstairs, in the kitchen, my mother is cooking eggs. “I’m not really hungry,” I mutter.

“Then maybe you’d like this instead,” she says, and she passes me a plate that has no food on it-just a single young adult novel. “I haven’t read it, but the librarian says it’s all the rage with girls in your grade. Apparently, there’s a werewolf who falls in love with a mermaid. It’s supposed to be the new Twilight.”