“I’ve got something better than a tape,” I say. I look at the two geeks sitting across from us. They are completely enraptured by their matrices and graphing calculators; Jules and I might as well be on the moon as far as they’re concerned. So I take the book from my backpack and open it up to page 43. “I need to show you something,” I say. “Watch carefully.”
I crack the spine a little bit, so that the book lies open. “What is this?” Jules says, laughing a little. “Did you swipe it from the last kids you babysat for?”
“Just read it,” I say.
Jules raises her brows but starts to read out loud: “Oliver grasped a root sticking out of the rock wall and hoisted himself a little farther up the cliff. With his dagger clenched between his teeth, he swung one arm up, and then the other, climbing the sheer granite, driven by the force of his determination.Seraphima,he thought.I’m coming for you.”
“Fat chance,” I said.
“Did you say something?” Jules asks.
“Just keep watching,” I tell her.
We both stare at the illustration. Then Jules nudges my shoulder. “Delilah? What exactly am I looking for?”
Although the book has been open for thirty seconds, Oliver hasn’t budged, or spoken, or in any way indicated that he is more than just an illustration on the page.
“Say something,” I mutter.
Jules looks at me, baffled. “Um, it’s a nice paragraph?”
The fact that Oliver isn’t talking to us both makes me feel sick to my stomach. For all I know, I’ve only been kidding myself. If I tell her now that I’ve been chatting with a prince in a fairy tale who wants my help getting out of his story, Jules is going to march me to the nurse or call a guidance counselor. Jules, who understands everything about me, just wouldn’t understandthis… and I can’t risk losing the only real friend I have.
“I’m still waiting. Is he going to jump out of the page and attack me with that knife?”
If you only knew,I think. I pretend Jules has made the funniest of jokes. “Now, that would beabsolutelyridiculous. I just wanted to show you… the description. This writer’s something else, isn’t she? It’s like, when you read the words, it’s actually… happening!”
I laugh again, a big fake laugh, for good measure. Jules looks at me like I’ve grown three horns out of my forehead. “Have you been sniffing Sharpies again?” she asks.
I stuff the book into my backpack. “Totally forgot—I have to go take a makeup test with Madame Borgnoigne.” I silently curse Oliver for making me look like an even bigger fool than usual. “I’ll call you after school,” I say, and I run out of the cafeteria.
***
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.”
