When I was in the fairy tale and miserable and Oliver came to check on us, I instinctively told him things were great, even though they weren’t. It was Frump who said, afterward, that we all hide things to make the people we love happy.
So I forced a smile onto my face, a square peg in a round hole, a shoe two sizes too small.
I told her we’d better start working on her bucket list.
When I was five, my mother and I went apple picking on Cape Cod. It was September, and the farm had a corn maze. The air smelled like cider and fresh-baked donuts, and families were dotted throughout the orchard, collecting apples in canvas sacks. It was sunny and cold all at once, and the sky was so blue it looked like a movie backdrop. A shaggy horse pulled a wagon to the parts of the orchard where the trees hadn’t been picked over yet. My mom and I walked as far as we could, to the edge of the field, where a bored teenager took our money to let us into the maze.
The stalks were taller than me. I ran down the straight edge of the corridor, high-fiving the fronds like they were my adoring fans. My mom chased after me, careful to make sure I didn’t get too far ahead.
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 wouldknow 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 schoollibrary. 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?Actuallyspoke 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.”
