Delilah
THE FIRST THING I SEE WHEN I OPEN MY EYESis the book, peeking out from beneath my bed, wide open.
I roll from my stomach onto my back and blink at a purple ceiling, with little glow-in-the-dark stars. “My room,” I breathe.
It worked. Our plan worked.
“Well, of course it’s your room,” my mother’s voice floats to me.
I try to sit up, but a hand eases me down. “Take it slow, Delilah,” says a voice that I cannot quite place but that seems familiar.
I look to my left to find Dr. Ducharme standing beside my mother.
My mother sits down on the edge of the bed. “You’ve got a nasty bump on your head,” she says. “You must have fallen when you were trying to reach the box of videos in your closet.”
Wincing, I touch my forehead; it’s tender. “How long have I been gone?”
“Gone?” Dr. Ducharme grins. “Well, you’ve been asleep—but you haven’t gone anywhere. Your mom even got a doctor to make a house call last night to make sure you were all right. And she calledmewhen you started talking in your sleep.”
I struggle to a sitting position. “What was I talking about?”
They exchange a look. “That’s not important,” my mother says. “You need to rest. And you’re going to have a nasty headache.”
I glance over her shoulder and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. On my forehead is a giant goose egg and an impressive bruise.
But I couldn’t have just hit my head. I was in that book with Oliver. IknowI was.
I think back to what might have happened. The last I remember, we were at Orville’s cottage, and I’d managed to recapture the Pandemonium. Almost as quickly, my arms had begun to fracture, sprouting fine cracks, like a disintegrating marble statue. Gasping, I grab for my right arm with my left hand.
It’s perfectly intact.
Whatis going on?
“What day is it?” I ask.
“Tuesday,” my mother replies. “It’s nearly three o’clock.”
“I’m, um, starving….”
“Then we’ll get you something to eat.” She gives me a quick embrace first. “I was so worried you weren’t coming back,” she whispers.
My arms close around her. “Me too,” I murmur.
She stands up, and as she leaves the room, Dr. Ducharme puts his hand on her shoulder.
There’s something about that casual gesture that makes me relieved. While I was in the book, I worried about my mother being left alone. But maybe, one day, she won’t be.
As soon as I hear the door click shut, I scramble under the bed and grab the book. Sitting up, I see my reflection in the mirror. There is something sticking out of the collar of my T-shirt that looks remarkably—and terrifyingly—like a tattoo.
I pull down the collar, afraid to peek.
Strung around my neck is a line of backward cursive. I slip a fingernail under one edge and peel it off my skin like a Band-Aid. Then I drape the letters over the edge of my bedsheet.
Just like the spider I pulled from the book days ago, the mermaid’s necklace—on the outside—has transformed into words. But I saw a vision of Oliver in Orville’s cottage—a vision where he was in the future, inthisoutside world, and he wasn’t just letters on a page.
Focus, Delilah,I tell myself. I grab the book and open it to page 43, where Oliver looks up at me with obvious relief.
“You’re alive!” he cries.
