OLIVER
THIS IS WHAT I KNOW ABOUT DELILAH MCPHEE:
She bites her nails when she’s nervous.
She sings off-key.
She mispronounces the wordschedulein her flat, odd accent, yet insists that I’m the one who can’t speak correctly.
She has the most mesmerizing eyes. It’s as if she needn’t speak at all, since everything she’s feeling is written within them.
“You’re not listening,” Delilah says.
After my spending hours without her, we are finally together again. It is a little difficult to hear her, because she’s blasting music from that magical boxcalled a radio, in the hopes that it will keep her mother from hearing her talk out loud to me. Behind Delilah’s shoulders I can see the familiar bits of what I know is her bedroom—pink walls, pink lampshades, pink everything. At the edge of my vision is a fringed, furry throw pillow. And yes, it’s pink.
“You keep distracting me,” I tell her.
“All I’m doing is sitting here talking to you!”
“Exactly,” I say, and I smile at her.
I like knowing that when I smile that way, it makes her cheeks go red. It’s interesting that the same thing happens when I smile at Seraphima, but I don’t find that nearly as charming.
I am looking at the way Delilah’s eyelashes cast shadows on her cheeks and trying to decide if her hair is the color of milk chocolate or polished teak as she natters on and on. “I completely understand why you feel trapped,” Delilah says. “But it’s better to be trapped and alive—whatever that means inside a book—than free and dead.”
Teakwood, definitely. Or maybe walnut.
“If something as simple as a spider didn’t make it out of this book, how do you think a human being is going to fare? What if I pull you out of the book and you’re only… a word?”
She gets up from where she is lying on her bed, talking to me, and starts pacing back and forth. From this perspective, I can see more of the room behind her: a mirror with pictures affixed around its edge, of Delilah and the girl she was speaking with earlier today; of Delilah with her arms spread wide at the top of a mountain; of Delilah and her mother making funny faces. I think that if I were to get out of this book, one of my first orders of business would be to steal one of those photos, so that I could always have her with me.
The other thing I can see from this angle is the way every inch of her figure is quite visible in the odd clothing she wears—some sort of blue hose with several rips and tears. They’re so tight it’s as if she’s practically wearing nothing.
“Why aren’t you wearing a dress?” I blurt out.
Delilah stops moving and faces me. “What? What does that have to do with anything?”
“What you’re wearing is indecent!”
She snorts. “It’s a whole lot more decent than what some of the girls in my school wear,” she says. “Relax, Oliver. They’re just jeans.”
I realize that although I’ve seen Readers in strange garb before, they are usually so close to the page that I haven’t marked the differences between their clothing and mine. On Delilah, though, I can’t help but notice.
“As I was saying,” she continues pointedly, “I really wish I could help you. But I’ve been thinking about you all day—believe me, you’reallI’ve thought about—”
At this, I grin.
“—and I don’t think I could ever forgive myself if I were the one who killed you.”
My head snaps up. “Killedme? Why the devil would you do that?”
“Oliver, have you listened toanythingI’ve just said? I can’t risk having what happened to that spider happen to you.” She sits down, looking into her lap. “I only just found you,” Delilah says. “I can’t lose you now.”
In the fairy tale, I’ve never had to worry about death. I know the mermaids will not let me drown. I know I’ll always beat the dragon. I know I’ll always defeat Rapscullio.
But this Otherworld, it doesn’t work the same way. There are no second chances. Death, here, is for real.
It hits me with the force of a blow: the understanding that I’d rather die than know I might never have a chance to truly, finally, kiss Delilah McPhee.
