“What happened?” I say. “It was real, wasn’t it?”
Oliver’s face falls. “Don’t you remember?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “But I want to make sure I didn’t make it all up.”
“Just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean it’s any less true,” Oliver replies. He squints at me. “You’re hurt?”
“Just a bruise,” I tell him. But that reminds me of the Pandemonium, and the devastation it caused. “What about you? Are you all right? And Orville? His poor home!”
“It’s all intact again,” Oliver says. “The minute you opened the book, everything went back to the way it used to be.” He looks away from me.
“Frump?” I ask.
Oliver nods. “Just a dog.”
“But it worked, Oliver. Exploding your copy of the fairy tale set me free.”
“And I’m still here,” he says sadly. “So we’re back to square one.”
“No, we’re not. Remember the vision? Your future? I know who that woman is. It’s Jessamyn Jacobs.”
“Who?”
“She’s the author,” I tell him. “The woman who created you.”
Oliver’s eyes light up. “So that vision,” he says. “I’m in her house?”
I hear footsteps on the stairs. “Soup!” my mother sings out.
I slam the book hard, stuffing it under a pillow and yanking the covers over me. The door creaks open. “Thanks,” I say. I take a sip of the soup to satisfy my mom.
She sits down on the edge of the bed and watches me take one spoonful, then another. I blot my mouth with a paper napkin. “You’re not going to watch me eat the whole thing, are you?”
My mother looks flustered. “Yes. I mean, of course not.” She hesitates. “I just don’t want you to fall asleep. Steve says that’s the worst thing possible after a concussion.”
Steve?“Mom,” I say, “when’s the last timeyouslept?”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” she says, squeezing my hand.
“I may nothaveto,” I tell her. “But Ido.”
She smiles, but she doesn’t move.
“Mom?” I say. “If I promise you I’m not going to conk out, can I eat in privacy?”
She’s reluctant, but she stands up. “Call me when you’re done,” she says.
The headache she promised is emerging. I know that Oliver expects me to open the book and finish our conversation, but there’s something I have to do first. I get out of bed and gingerly walk to my desk, where my laptop sits. Opening a search engine, I type inJessamyn Jacobs.All the websites connected to her are listed. I click the first one, and a photo of the woman in Oliver’s vision fills the screen. I start to read the text below it:
Jessamyn Jacobs was born in New York in 1965. After graduating from NYU, she got a job as an editor atHorrorFestmagazine. But she realized quickly that she didn’t want to correct other people’s words—she wanted to write her own. Her first thriller was published when she was only twenty-six years old, and she wrote ten consecutive bestsellers. However, after writing one children’s book, the author retreated into anonymity. She has not published since 2002, choosing to live quietly in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
After writing one children’s book, the author retreated into anonymity.
My whole life, and its current obsession, has been reduced to a throwaway sentence in the biography of a famous thriller writer, who hasn’t been writing for years.
But at least I know where to find her.
I unplug my cell phone from its charger and text Jules.
