I’m a jerk,I write.
I count all the way to sixty-two before there is an answering beep.
I know,Jules has replied.
My thumbs work furiously over the tiny keyboard.Ur Aunt Agnes is Voldemort in drag. If I could I would hide u in my closet 4 the summer. In fact, why don’t we try? Might work.
Another beep:I’m closetrophobic.
I grin.Jules,I text.I know I have no right 2 ask, and you can tell me 2 go jump in a lake if u want, but I need ur help. Have 2 get to MA ASAP.I hesitate.Will explain when I see u.
This time it takes Jules even longer to respond.I can be at ur house in 5 mins. Dad’s car is in the garage.
You don’t have a license, I text back.
There is another beep.That doesn’t mean I can’t drive,Jules writes.
***
The hardest part is leaving my mother again—just moments after I’ve returned. I consider reasoning with her, but what excuse can I make that would convince her to take an impromptu trip to Cape Cod, particularly whenI am still fresh from a concussion? If I insist, she’ll probably take me for a neurological exam. No, the only way to do this is to leave her out of it.
The one immediate challenge to that strategy is that in order to leave the house, I have to walk downstairs, right past her.
I’m not the most graceful person—okay, I’m a bona fide klutz—but again, desperate times call for desperate measures. If I think it’s unlikely that my mother will agree to a four-hour car ride, it’s even more unlikely that she’d let me go with the unlicensed Jules as my chauffeur. So I throw open the sash of my bedroom window, eyeing a tree with branches close enough for me to reach.
I used to have romantic fantasies about a guy throwing pebbles at the window, climbing up to my room, kissing me in the moonlight, stealing me away.
Wrong fairy tale,I think wryly.I’mthe one who’s going to save the prince.
I grab the notepad on my desk and rip off a sheet of paper. I write:
Be back soon. Don’t worry.
I’m fine.
Really.
Love,
Delilah. xoxo
My mother is going to worry anyway—but at least when she finds me missing, Dr. Ducharme will be there. And maybe he can keep her calm long enough for me to explain why I had to do this. After all, if it works, Oliver will be here—alive and three-dimensional and very, very real—and he’ll confirm this whole crazy story.
I dig around in my underwear drawer for the small jewelry box I use to store my allowance and the money I have from babysitting: three hundred and twenty-two dollars. It’s not a fortune, but I tuck it into my backpack, then grab the book and stuff it inside too. I look around my room to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything and catch sight of myself in the mirror. I look like I’ve lost a fight. If I show up at Jessamyn Jacobs’s house like this, she will probably run away screaming. In my closet, I find a knit winter hat that covers my forehead perfectly. It’s a little warm for the season, but maybe I can pull it off as a new fashion trend.
I open the window and stretch a leg out. I swear the tree has moved. Like, three feet away.
Taking a deep breath, I jump from the windowsill, and to my great shock wind up hugging the trunk tightly. I shimmy down, thinking of Oliver, who has to climb a cliff wall every day.
With a thump I hit the ground and tiptoe down the block, to the cul-de-sac where Jules is parked and waiting, just like we’d arranged. She looks weird sitting behind the steering wheel of a car. When she sees me, she grins and lowers the power window. “You owe me big-time,” she says.
I never would have guessed it based on her personality, but Jules drives like an old lady. She putts along ten milesbelowthe speed limit and puts on her turn signal miles before she actually veers off the exit. “So,” she says, when we have been driving for ten minutes on the highway, “when are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“Wellfleet,” I say. “On Cape Cod.”
Jules nods, flexing her hands on the steering wheel. “Okay,” she says. “Whyare we going?”
I take a deep breath. “What I’m about to tell you isn’t going to make a lot of sense,” I say. “But I need you to listen to the whole story and not judge me, okay?”
