Between the Lines (6 page)

“Delilah!” my mother yells. “I told you
twice
already… we’re going to be late!”

I stare at the page, my eyes narrowed. What
is
it that’s off? “Just let me finish—”

“You’ve read that book a thousand times—you know how it ends.
Now
means
now
!”

I flip through the book to the final page. When I see it, I can’t believe I haven’t noticed it before. Just to the left of Princess Seraphima’s glittering gown, drawn into the sand, is a grid. Sort of like a bingo chart. Or a chessboard.

“How strange,” I say softly. “That was never here before.”

“DELILAH EVE!”

When my mother uses my middle name, it means she’s
really
angry. I close the book and tuck it into my backpack, then hurry downstairs to scarf down breakfast before I am dropped off at school.

My mother is already rinsing her coffee cup as I grab a slice of toast and butter it. “Mom,” I ask, “have you ever read a book and had it… change?”

She looks over her shoulder. “Well, sure. The first time I read
Gone with the Wind
and Rhett walked out on Scarlett, I was fifteen and thought all that unrequited love was wildly romantic. The second time I read it, last
summer, I thought she was silly and he was a selfish pig.”

“That’s not what I mean…. That’s
you
changing—not the book.” I take a bite of the toast and wash it down with orange juice. “Imagine that you’ve read a story a hundred times and it always takes place on a ship. And then one day, you read it, and it’s set in the Wild West instead.”

“That’s ridiculous,” my mother replies. “Books don’t change in front of your eyes.”

“Mine did,” I say.

She turns and looks at me, head tilted as if she is trying to figure out if I am lying or crazy or both. “You need to get more sleep, Delilah,” she announces.

“Mom, I’m serious—”

“You simply saw something you overlooked before,” my mother says, and she puts on her jacket. “Let’s go.”

But it’s not something I overlooked. I know it.

The whole way to school, my backpack sits on my lap. My mother and I talk about things that don’t matter—what time she is coming home from work; if I’m ready for my Algebra test; if it’s going to snow—when all I can focus on is that faint little chessboard scratched into the sand of the beach on the last page of the fairy tale.

Our car pulls up in front of the building. “Have a good day,” my mother says, and I kiss her goodbye. I hurry past a kid plugged into his earphones, and the popular girls,
who cluster together like grapes. (Honestly, do you ever see just
one
of them?)

The school’s current “it” couple, Brianna and Angelo—or BrAngelo, as they’re known—are wrapped in each other’s arms across my locker.

“I’m gonna miss you,” Brianna says.

“I’m gonna miss you too, baby,” Angelo murmurs.

For Pete’s sake. It’s not like she’s leaving on a trip around the world. She’s only headed to homeroom.

I don’t realize I’ve said that out loud until I see them both staring at me. “Get a life,” Brianna says.

Angelo laughs. “Or at least a boyfriend.”

They leave with their arms around each other, hands tucked into each other’s rear jeans pockets.

The worst part is, it’s true. I wouldn’t know what true love feels like if it hit me between the eyes. Given my mother’s experience with romance, I shouldn’t even care—but there’s a part of me that wonders what it would be like to be the most important person to someone else, to always feel like you were missing a piece of yourself when he wasn’t near you.

There is a crash on the metal of the locker beside mine, and I look up to see Jules smacking her hand against it to get my attention. “Hey,” Jules says. “Earth to Delilah?” Today she is dressed in a black veil and a miniskirt over leggings that seem like they’ve been hacked with a razor. She looks like a corpse bride. “Where’d you
go last night?” she says. “I sent you a thousand texts.”

I hesitate. I’ve hidden my fairy-tale obsession from Jules, but if anyone is going to believe me when I say that a book changed before my eyes, it’s going to be my best friend.

“Sorry,” I say. “I went to bed early.”

“Well, the texts were all about Soy Boy.”

I blush. At 3:00
A.M.
during our last sleepover, I confessed to her that I thought Zach from my Earth Science class was possible future boyfriend material.

“I heard that he hooked up with Mallory Wegman last weekend.”

Mallory Wegman had hooked up with so many guys in our class that her nickname was the Fisherman. I let this news sink in, and the fact that I had thought about Zach this morning before reading my book, which seemed a thousand years ago.

“He’s telling everyone she slipped him a real burger instead of a veggie one and it overloaded his system. That he has no recollection of doing anything with her.”

“Must have been some really good beef,” I murmur. For a second, I try to mourn Zach, my potential crush, who now has someone real, but all I’m thinking of is Oliver.

“I have to tell you something,” I confess.

Jules looks at me, suddenly serious.

“I was reading this book and it… it sort of changed.”

“I totally understand,” Jules says. “The first time I saw
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
I knew my life was never going to be the same.”

“No, it’s not that
I’ve
changed—it’s the book that changed.” I reach into my backpack and grab the fairy tale, flipping directly to the last page. “Look.”

Prince? Yup, standing right where he usually is.

Princess? Ditto.

Frump? Wagging happily.

Chessboard?

It’s missing.

It was there less than a half hour ago, and suddenly it’s gone.

“Delilah?” Jules asks. “Are you okay?”

I can feel myself breaking out in a cold sweat. I close the book and then open it again; I blink fast to clear my eyes.

Nothing.

I stuff the book into my backpack again and close my locker. “I, um, have to go,” I say to Jules, shoving past her as the bell rings.

Just so you know, I never lie. I never steal. I never cut class. I am, in short, the perfect student.

Which makes what I am about to do even more shocking. I turn in the opposite direction and walk toward the gymnasium, although I am supposed to be in homeroom.

Me, Delilah McPhee.

“Delilah?” I look up to see the principal standing in front of me. “Shouldn’t you be in homeroom?”

He smiles at me. He doesn’t expect me to be cutting class either.

“Um… Ms. Winx asked me to get a book from the gym teacher.”

“Oh,” the principal says. “Excellent!” He waves me on.

For a moment I just stare at him. Is it really this easy to become someone I’m not? Then I break into a run.

I don’t stop until I have reached the locker room. I know it will be empty this early in the morning. Sitting down on a bench, I take the book from my backpack and open it again.

Real fairy tales are not for the fainthearted. In them, children get eaten by witches and chased by wolves; women fall into comas and are tortured by evil relatives. Somehow, all that pain and suffering is worthwhile, though, when it leads to the ending: happily ever after. Suddenly it no longer matters if you got a B– on your midterm in French or if you’re the only girl in the school who doesn’t have a date for the spring formal. Happily ever after trumps everything. But what if
ever after
could change?

It did for my mom. At one point, she loved my dad, or they wouldn’t have gotten married—but now she doesn’t even want to speak to him when he calls me on my birthday and Christmas. Likewise, maybe the fairy tale isn’t
accurate. Maybe the last line should read something like
What you see isn’t always what you get.

There is still no chessboard on the sand.

I start flipping through the pages furiously. In most of them, Prince Oliver is in the company of someone or something—his dog, the villain Rapscullio, Princess Seraphima. But there is one illustration where he is all alone.

Actually, it’s my favorite.

It comes toward the end of the story, after he’s outsmarted the dragon Pyro and left the beast in the care of Captain Crabbe and the pirates. Afterward, as the pirates load the dragon onto the ship, Oliver is left alone on the shore looking up the cliff wall at the tower where Seraphima is being imprisoned. In the picture on page 43, he starts to climb.

I lift the book closer so that I can see Oliver more clearly. He is drawn in color, his jet-black hair ruffled by the breeze, his arms straining as he scales the sheer rock face. His bottle green velvet tunic is tattered: singed from Pyro’s fiery breath and torn from his escape from shackles on the pirate ship. His dagger is clenched between his teeth so that he can grasp the next ledge. His face is turned toward the ocean, where the ship slips into the distance.

I think the reason I love this illustration so much is the expression on his face. You’d expect, at that moment, he’d be overcome by fierce determination. Or maybe shining love for his nearby princess. But instead,
he looks… well… like something’s missing.

Like he’d almost rather be on that pirate ship. Or anywhere but where he is, on the face of the rocky cliff.

Like there’s something he’s hiding.

I lean forward, until my nose is nearly touching the page. The image blurs as I get close, but for a moment, I’m positive that Oliver’s eyes have flickered away from the ocean, and toward me.

“I wish you were real,” I whisper.

On the loudspeaker in the locker room, the bell rings. That means homeroom is over, and I have to go to Algebra. With a sigh, I set the fairy tale down on the bench, still cracked open. I unzip my backpack and then pick the book up again.

And gasp.

Oliver is still climbing the sheer rock wall. But the dagger clenched between his teeth is now in his right hand. Steel to stone, its sharp tip scratches the faintest of white lines into the dark granite, and then another, and a third.

H

I rub my eyes. This is not a Nook, a Kindle Fire, or an iPad, just a very ordinary old book. No animation, no bells and whistles. Drawing in my breath, I touch the paper, that very spot, and lift my finger again.

Two words slowly appear on the surface of the rock wall.

HELP ME
.

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