It’s weird being back. I was getting used 2 it.
My thumbs fly over the keys. U + Edgar???
. . .
+ Chris? I type.
Can I have them both?
I grin. Only if ur a Mormon fundamentalist.
K, Jules writes. Good to know.
I hesitate, knowing I have to start a conversation with her I don’t really want to have. U no I have to pretend Edgar’s still my bf.
Just don’t 4get I’m ur BEST friend.
Never, I reply. How did things get so messed up?
U fell 4 a guy in a book, Jules types.
I sigh. Nobody’s perfect.
C u 2morrow? Jules writes.
Yup. Get ready 4 a Tony-winning performance from me.
LOL, Jules says. Oh—1 last thing . . .
??? I ask.
Don’t use tongue.
I’m lost in a nightmare, but I’m still awake.
It’s three a.m. and all I can think about is the fact that Oliver told me to move on. As if everything we’ve shared up till this moment meant nothing, as if he’s so easily replaceable. Or did he tell me not to open the book because he knows, like I do, how hard it will be, now that we have lived the alternative?
I take the fairy tale from my shelf and pull it into bed with me. I run my hand over the gilded cover. I’m just going to do it: open the book. Whatever Oliver said was probably his way of being chivalrous—trying to keep me from slipping back into my sad little life as a loner, obsessed with a fictional story.
I fan through the pages, about to skim directly to page 43, the illustration where Oliver is alone on the cliff. It’s where we had most of our conversations, before he escaped the fairy tale. But at the last minute, I hesitate: while Oliver is safe in the book—protected from runaway cars and illness and death—I’m not. Inside the pages, he gets to live in a bubble, forever sixteen. And maybe that’s all right, for now. But what about when, one day, I open the book and my hair is gray? When I have wrinkles? When I’m not the girl he fell in love with anymore?
What will happen to him when I die?
To open this book is to give him hope: that I will be with him forever, that I am willing to put my real life on hold for a character in a book. But that’s not fair to Oliver, is it?
I take the fairy tale and put it back on the shelf.
But.
I’m 100 percent sure that no matter who I meet in the future, no one will be like him.
I reach for the book again.
What is a relationship if you can’t go on a date? If you can’t hold hands? If you can’t ever kiss him again? How long is it going to be before I can’t remember what he tastes like, what he smells like, what it feels like to be in the circle of his arms?
I toss the book onto the floor.
The thing is, without Oliver, I can’t even remember who I am anymore.
