Between the Lines (14 page)

“Owwwww!”

Sputtering, I pivot and rip off my goggles to find Allie McAndrews holding her nose, which is now streaming with blood in the deep end. “Are you
kidding
?” she screams.

I look at her, horrified, and then at some of the other girls on the swim team who are dragging her out of the pool. “Everybody out,” my coach yells. “Bodily fluid in the water!”

“I… I’m sorry,” I stammer, wondering what Allie McAndrews was doing in my lane. But then I glance around.

Somehow, I’ve managed to cross five pool lanes, to the far left one Allie had been swimming in. And with my killer backstroke, I’ve probably broken her nose.

*   *   *

“How was swimming?” my mother asks as soon as I slide into the passenger seat of her car.

“I’m quitting. Swim team, high school, life in general.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” My phone beeps. There’s a new text from Jules, but I don’t even feel like telling
her
about my latest catastrophe. Besides, I’m sure she’ll figure it out at school on Monday when I become an even bigger pariah than I already am.

My mother glances at me. “Well, whatever it was, it’s nothing a double chocolate milk shake from Ridgeley’s Diner can’t fix. Let’s stop there for dinner.”

I know, for my mom, this is a big deal. We aren’t the kind of people who eat out a lot. We can’t afford to. “Thanks,” I mutter. “But I really just want to go home.”

“Delilah,” my mother says, frowning at me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, Mom. I just have… a lot of homework.”

I successfully manage to avoid conversation for the rest of the ride home. When we pull into the driveway, I rush into the house and upstairs to my room. The book is lying on my bed, just where I left it.

I open to page 43 without even trying—the spine is developing a natural split there, I think—and find Oliver at the bottom of the rock cliff. He offers me a brilliant smile. “Did you enjoy swim practice?”

I’ve managed to hold it together through the end of practice; through the locker room, where everyone was whispering and giving me dirty glares; through the ten-minute car ride home. But now, in front of Oliver, I let go and burst into tears. As I do, droplets splash on the page. One lands on Oliver and bursts over his head like a water balloon, leaving him soaking wet.

“Sorry,” I say, and sniffle. “I had a pretty lousy afternoon.”

“Maybe I can cheer you up, then,” he says.

Just being here cheers me up,
I think, and I realize
that at swim practice, when my whole life was falling apart, the one person I really wanted to see was Oliver.

Who, technically, isn’t really a person.

I wipe my eyes. “I just practically drowned the most popular girl in my school—the same one I crippled last year. Monday morning when I go to school every single student in the building is going to hate me.”

“
I
won’t hate you,” Oliver says loyally.

I smile a little. “Thanks. But unfortunately, you don’t go to my school.”

“Ah, but maybe I could—sooner than you think….”

My eyes widen as I realize what he’s talking about. “You found another way out?” I would much rather talk about Oliver’s problems than my own.

“Well, I found some kind of portal, at the very least! I met with Rapscullio, and he’s a brilliant painter!”

“
Painter?
I thought he was a villain!”

“No,” Oliver says. “Remember, I told you, that’s just his role in the story. Anyway, he’s figured out how to paint an object onto a special canvas that’s an identical portrait of his lair… and have that object magically appear.”

“That’s how he creates Pyro, the dragon—”

“Exactly. But apparently the mechanism works even when the story isn’t in play.”

I shake my head. “How will that help? It’s not like
Rapscullio lives
here.
He can’t just paint you into this world.”

“Yes, but I think I might be able to paint myself
out
of my own.”

I ponder this for a moment. “That won’t work. You’d just wind up repainted somewhere else in your story. Like a clone.”

“A scone?”

“No, a cl—Never mind.” I get up from the bed and start pacing in front of it. “If there was a way, though, to get a painting of
my
world into Rapscullio’s lair, then maybe—”

“I thought you might need some comfort food….” At the sound of a voice, I whirl around to find my mother standing in the doorway with a dinner tray. There’s a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. She peers around the room. “Who on earth are you talking to, Delilah?”

“My… a friend.”

My mother glances around again. “But there’s no one here….”

“Oliver’s on the phone,” I say quickly. “Speaker phone. Isn’t that right, Oliver?” He doesn’t answer, of course, and I feel myself blushing furiously. “It’s a pretty bad connection.”

My mother’s eyebrows raise.
It’s a boy?
she mouths silently.

I nod.

She gives me a thumbs-up and—leaving the tray—backs out of my room. “That was close,” I tell him, and sigh.

He grins. “What’s for dinner?”

“Can we be serious here?” I say. “I don’t suppose you’ve taken any art classes?”

Oliver laughs. “Those,” he replies, “are for
princesses.
”

“Oh yeah? Tell that to Michelangelo. Let’s say that someone painted over that magic canvas so it
isn’t
a portrait of Rapscullio’s lair… but instead a painting of my bedroom. And then you happen to start to paint yourself onto it. Logic says that—”

“I’ll wind up in your bedroom!” Oliver’s eyes shine. “Delilah, you are amazing!”

When he says those words, a shiver runs the length of my spine. What if he
did
show up right now, sitting on my bed? Would he high-five me? Hug me?

Kiss me?

At the thought of that, my cheeks burn like they’re on fire. I hold my palms up against them, hoping Oliver hasn’t noticed.

“Ah, now I’ve embarrassed you,” he says. “All right, then. You are not amazing. You’re perfectly ordinary. Run-of-the-mill. Completely dismissible.”

“Shut up,” I say, but I’m smiling. “I want to try an experiment. Have you got your dagger?”

“Of course,” Oliver replies. He draws it from its sheath. “Why?”

“Draw a picture of me. On the rock wall.”

He blinks. “Right now?”

“No, next Thursday.”

“Oh, good.” Oliver starts to put the dagger away.

“I was joking! Of
course
right now!”

Is it my imagination, or does he look a little green? “Right,” Oliver mutters. “A portrait.” He poises the tip of the knife over the granite. “Of you.” He steps forward, blocking my view as he begins to etch on the rock. Twice, he looks over his shoulder to peer at my face.

I think of all the beautiful paintings hanging in museums around the world—muses captured on canvas: the Mona Lisa, the birth of Venus, the girl with a pearl earring. “Voilà,” Oliver declares, and he steps aside.

Carved onto the rock wall is a disproportionate figure with bug eyes, snake hair, and a flat line of a mouth. Apparently, to Oliver, I look like a Muppet.

“Not bad, eh?” he says. “Although, I don’t think I
quite
captured your nose….”

No wonder; he’s drawn it as a triangle.

I hesitate. “No offense, Oliver, but you might not be the ideal choice to paint a picture of my room.”

He frowns at the portrait he’s drawn of me, and then smiles. “Perhaps not,” Oliver says, “but I know just the fellow who is.”

page 31

P
rince Oliver dreamed that one of the mermaids was still kissing him. He was fighting to pull away from her, struggling to breathe—and then he opened his eyes. No mermaid was kissing him, just Frump, licking his face as Socks whinnied and stamped his foot a few feet away. Oliver sat up, damp and bedraggled, on the ocean shore. He had no recollection of the mermaids bringing him to the surface, and he might have considered it all a nightmare, except for the fact that in one hand he was clutching his compass, and in the other he was holding a sack that contained the flotsam and jetsam the mermaids had claimed to be treasures.