All of sudden, I can feel the blood rushing back to my chest and my arm. It’s like they are on fire, like I am about to burst out of my skin. Groaning, I fall to my knees on the sand, crippled by pain.
“I just came to say good night. Delilah, do you need anything?”
“I’m fine….” She smiles. “Thanks. For everything.”
Although I am kneeling now, I feel myself being dragged closer to Seraphima again. Yanked upward by some kind of reverse, perverse antigravity. My hand smacks against hers, glues itself tight in a clasp.
I know what’s happening. Just like every other attempt to release me from the book, this one has failed. The story always wins.
Jessamyn comes closer, another Reader. I watch her peer down at the page. “I used to love this final scene….”
Edgar grabs the book, making my head spin. “Whatever,” he says, and he slams the cover shut, so that I collapse to the ground.
There is an immediate buzz as the other characters discuss the odd incident that has just unfolded before their eyes. Seraphima bursts into tears, covers her face with her hands, and runs off the beach. Orville rushes toward me, feeling the length of my arm. “My boy,” hesays, “what sort of black magic was that?”
“I’m fine,” I tell him, and then I address the others. “It was a freak accident or something. Everything’s back to normal.”
At my reassurance, the little group begins to disband, still talking about what they’ve witnessed. Only Frump remains, sitting beside me. “Ollie,” he says, “we’ve been friends too long for you to lie to me.”
I scuff my boot in the sand. This is how it all began, with a chessboard we’d drawn between us. “I want out, Frump,” I admit. “I don’t belong here any more than you belong in the body of a hound.”
“But that’s not for us to decide,” Frump says.
“How come I’m the only one who gets the happy ending?” I say. “Didn’t that ever seem wrong to you?”
“I guess I just assumed you were the lucky one.”
“We could all be lucky,” I say. “We could all be who we want to be, instead of who someone else told us to be.”
Frump shakes his head. “You’re making things up, Ollie.”
“Isn’t that how we all got here in the first place?” I say gently.
Frump’s eyes light up as he imagines the possibility of a future different from the one he expected. And then he remembers what happened to me minutes ago. “Youwere trying to leave,” he states slowly, understanding.
“Yes. I can’t stay here.”
Frump sits a little taller. “Then I’ll go with you.”
I nod my chin toward the distance, where Seraphima is sitting on a rock near the edge of the sea, still delicately wiping away her tears. “That’s not really what you want, is it?” I smile faintly at him. “If I get out of here, you have my word: I will do everything in my power to make sure you’re a human again.”
He scratches behind his ear, lost in thought. “Ollie? Could I ask you for something else? If you do get out of here… could you make… her… notice me?”
“I think she alreadyhas,” I say, elbowing him gently. “Go on.”
He shuffles down the beach to the rock where Seraphima is sitting. Absently, the princess begins to pat him on the head. Frump glances back at me, just once, his tail wagging.
I raise my right arm, a wave goodbye. My right arm, which is just where it always has been and always will be—drawn attached to me, on a page I may never escape.
