Two days later, I was still feeling rather warm and fuzzy about my Obligatory Awkward Finding a Date Process, which surprisingly, hadn’t been awkward at all. Well, except for that part in front of my apartment where she’d called me her best friend and patted my head like you might a dog’s. But as I lay in bed, going over the previous two days spent almost entirely with Jenny, and as the sunshine spilled through my open window, warming me beneath my covers, I tried not to think about that little blip. With the last of the OPTIMISM still coursing through me, I calmly reminded myself that any time with Jenny and the people I loved was to be treasured, as Gail would undoubtedly kill me any moment. That is, of course, unless I could figure out how to change the outcome of Christine’s story, and in order to do that, I needed to find the main character, and in order to find the main character, I needed . . .
“The character list!” I shouted, suddenly remembering what day it was. I sprang up out of bed, and—I’m not sure how this goes in the Real World, but in Fiction, it is quite literal—I ended up smacking my head on the ceiling before falling back to my not-so-cushiony wooden floor.
“Randy, Randy! Did you get the paper?” I shouted on my way out of my room, my own words tumbling around painfully in my skull and out of my ears like little marbles.
Randy was at the kitchen table, looking incongruously morose compared to the cheery spread of bacon, eggs, breakfast muffins, and delightful vase of little yellow flowers before him. He had taken to wearing a similar expression since the night of the exploding letter. He didn’t talk about it, but I knew he was struggling. For one, I could hear him in his sleep, mumbling and shouting his wife’s name, my name, and sometimes the names of his children, whom he almost never mentioned (as I’m sure you know). For another, he’d developed a large, fuzzy Burden that he carried around on his back. Carrying around a burden is no figure of speech here in Fiction. The thing looked like a small purple monkey with pointy teeth and a little fez atop his head. Some people speculated that they were distant relatives of the monkeys from Oz, minus the wings. Whatever they were, they were, well, a burden, and often told inappropriate jokes at meals. But we ignored the Burden, just as we ignored the renovated kitchen, the missing coffee table, the letter, and the ex-wife who was behind it all. And who was I to break tradition?
“Do you have the list?” I asked, as though simply curious.
“First, drink,” he said, nodding to the words clearly tumbling around my head. He handed me a glass of something thick and pink, and with his movement, the creepy little Burden jumped from his back to the window sill. Without a glance, it flung itself out into the open air, perhaps forgetting it couldn’t fly. Oh well. I raised the glass to my lips and downed the concoction in a few thick gulps. It tasted like milk, about a year past expiration.
“For a happy-adjective-hangover,” Randy explained. “I figure your OPTMISM is starting to fade, and from the sound of things, you hopped out of bed this morning,” he said, pointing to his temple. Even as he spoke, the pounding in my head subsided, and my nervousness disappeared, the heavy little words vanishing with it. “I added a pinch of wit, since you seemed dangerously euphoric when you came home from hanging out with Jenny yesterday . . .”
He cleared his throat and from beneath the table produced the morning paper, the Fiction Free for All. It didn’t take long to find the list. There was a whole article devoted to Christine’s new book on the front page. I promptly ignored this and scanned the short, numbered column.
1) Peter Able (Boy Wizard)
2) Jenny (Girl Wizard)
3) Bob (Ficus/Wizard)
4) Gail Potts (Assassin)
5) Randy Potts (Detective)
6) Pen the Penguin*
*This is Pen’s debut role as the main character. Pen has played minor roles in several children’s stories, most notably Christmas in the North Pole. She can also be seen as the logo for a certain popular publishing house.
“Pen . . . the Penguin?” I stammered, unable to find the words to express my bewilderment. “Pen the Penguin?!” I tried again, still dumbly inarticulate. I doubled over, shaking, and nearly threw up the pink tar I’d just forced down. The penguin who’d told me I was dead, all those chapters ago; the penguin whose publishing house had done the Peter Able series; the penguin who apparently hated me and would work with Gail in killing me. The penguin was the main character.
My emphasis was all over the place, I still felt queasy, and I couldn’t bring myself to formulate a sentence out loud. How could we convince the Penguin to let me live? Why did she hate me? Luckily my internal monologue was still crap, so Randy took me by the shoulders and guided me over to the living room couch.
“I don’t know, Peter. I don’t know,” he said soothingly as he put a fuzzy pillow underneath my knees. Once I was comfortably lying down, he dashed back to the kitchen. I could hear him rifling through the spice cabinet frantically.
“Damn. This wit has been expired for almost two years,” he said as he returned holding the newspaper and a cup of coffee in one hand and two little glass jars in the other. One held leafy sage and the other was full of brownish wit. It’s supposed to be blue. “I was hoping you’d have your wits about you when you read the article, but we’ll just have to make do.” He handed me the paper and sat down near my feet.
The article couldn’t give too much away, but Christine had revealed that the book would be a break from her usual blood-filled murder-mysteries set in dreary places in the Real World, and would instead be a blood-filled, murder-mystery set in cheery places in Fantasy! The idea for using characters from other books had come to her “mysteriously” one night:
“It was the strangest thing!” Christine says. “I was just drifting off to sleep, and all of a sudden, I had a burst of inspiration, and a very clear idea for a book: a murder-mystery with fantastic characters from other books! How fun is that?!”
Well, members of the Fiction Community might not think it is so fun. If Christine goes on killing off existing members of Fantasy, we might have a real murder series on our hands. Need we remind you of the nuns, anyone?
Let’s hope she doesn’t kill off that detective—we might need him!
I finished reading and made to throw the article onto the coffee table. It fell to the bare wooden floor.
“One week, Randy,” I groaned, placing my hands over my eyes. “One week until this book goes to editors . . . What’s holding her up?”
“I suspect it’s the fact that you’re still not dead,” Randy said wisely, mixing a pinch of sage into his coffee. He took a long sip, closing his eyes to savor it. “Whether her writing the scene causes your death here or whether your death here causes the scene to form out there does not matter. Either way, you are expendable, and the fates seem to have been set against you. If . . .” his voice trembled, “G-Gail is already written to kill you, we must take control of this story ourselves! We mustn’t let Christine kill Fiction! We must find . . . the Penguin!”
He stood up, spilling his coffee down the legs of his pajama-pants.
“Too much sage, I think,” he mumbled as he took his seat again despite the wet spot on the cushion. “Which reminds me, I wanted to go ahead and have that uncomfortable, coming-of-age, Father-Son talk before the dance tonight. I know there is a lot going on right now, but this is an obligatory dance. Of course I’m excused, as I’m just an old fuddy-duddy,” he smiled sadly. “But you have to go. In fact, I think you’ll be safer there than anywhere else. Gail wouldn’t dare walk onto that campus again, not now that everyone knows to look out for her. And I’ll work on finding Pen while you’re gone. If she won’t agree to change the ending, well, we’ll just have to make her, right?”
“Right!” I agreed. I stood up, feigning enthusiasm in hopes that he would forget all about—
“So we’ll do the Father-Son talk before Jenny comes by, right? My kids are still a bit too young, but I thought maybe you’d be willing to sit down . . .”
“Sure, Ra
ndy,” I said, reluctantly plopping myself back down onto the couch. Of course my life might be in peril, and of course eighteen was a bit too old for this kind of talk, which would undoubtedly include words like “birds” and “bees,” but I felt I owed him a good Father-Son moment after all we’d been through together, and considering what might lie ahead. No matter how uncomfortable.
“Great,” he said, brightening instantly. The grayness in his cheeks, perhaps from my neglecting him for scenes with Jenny, vanished at once. I could see his details—the stubble on his cheeks, the tired circles beneath his eyes, even the smudges on his glasses—transforming his features at the prospect of a good moment.
“I have this book,” he said, as he stood up. “Bees and Trees, or Birds and Bees, or Pollination Is a Metaphor for—”
“Bark!!!” said Dach-shund from the kitchen. How did she keep getting inside?!
“Whatever it’s called. I’ll go get it!” And Randy skipped from the room, leaving me on the couch wondering what in the world I’d gotten myself into.
The talk began with the words “When a man and a woman fall in love,” and ended, three hours later, with “and that’s how we got Molly, which is why you should never buy the generic brand.” By the time this last sentence was uttered, Dach-shund had started whimpering at the front door to be let out, and I felt like I needed to take a shower. The conversation had been so disturbing, I completely forgot about my imminent death, about finding the penguin, and even about my nerves over the Obligatory School Dance. Perhaps this change in mood had been the point, but it certainly didn’t last long.
As I tugged on my tuxedo—a dapper black number with a white bow tie that Randy had worn at his wedding—I could feel my stomach roiling. I tried desperately to smooth down my hair in the bathroom mirror, but I gave up when I heard Jenny knocking on the front door. Instead, I sat down on the toilet seat and tried some deep breathing as Jenny and Randy chatted amiably in the living room, their voices muffled by the door.
When I finally walked back into the living room, Randy was sitting on the couch and Jenny was sitting across from him, perched lightly on the arm of the tattered old chair. She looked . . . she simply . . . well, clearly, I didn’t have the words to describe her. I blamed the expired wit.
But I’ll tell you this much: she had never looked more vibrant, more detailed, more real. It wasn’t that she was perfect so much as perfectly clear, and it was beautiful. Her floor-length golden dress was dotted with tiny little crystals that glinted as she stood up to greet me. A few light freckles that I’d never noticed before dotted her cheekbones near her green eyes. Her hair was pulled up away from her face, making her neck look awfully inviting.
“Ahem,” Randy said from the couch as Jenny placed her hands in mine. “I hate to ruin the moment, but the OSD starts in twenty minutes, and you can’t really be late. It’s obligatory,” he murmured uncomfortably. I tore my eyes away from Jenny, and still holding her hand, I pulled her to the door.
“Remember what we talked about!” Randy called after me as we pounded down the steps.
Right. Like I would ever forget.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Peter Able and Jenny . . . uh, Girl Wizard, checking in,” I panted to the small boy handing out name tags. Luckily Jenny missed this part, as she was chatting with the faceless and always vague Joanne just out of earshot. You see, Jenny was written without a last name, and it was kind of a sensitive subject for her, so I tried to avoid it.
“Here you go,” the boy boomed, checking our names off a list. He handed me the name tags, and I looked up to see not a boy but the familiar face of the hobbit from my first day in Fantasy. In fact, the room was set up in much the same way as that first day, with the check-in table barring the entrance to the cafeteria, and inside, the long wooden tables all pulled up against the walls. This time, though, the room was packed with creatures, people, and several plants from all of the genres of Fiction. Jenny joined me, and I fastened her name tag to her dress like a broach, just over her chest, as I tried furiously to control my internal monologue. With a smirk, she led me past the long check-in table and into the cafeteria beyond.
We wound our way through the vague little clumps of people that had formed around the room. Since everybody had just arrived, nobody was really dancing yet—except, of course, a rather nondescript and dull-looking group from Romance, who were tangoing dramatically around the room, bowling over innocent bystanders. They came toward us like an old, sepia-colored train, and in our haste to avoid them, Jenny and I ended up right in the center of a group of vampires.
The dark-clad figures looked down at us, their eyes glowing crimson beneath their hooded cloaks. The group breathed us in, in one slow, raspy inhale, and several even groaned and smacked their lips, simply oozing the metallic scent of blood. These were not your run-of-the-mill YA vamps, like Eddy and the gang who’d been circling Jenny; these were classic vampires, and they were hungry.
Their red eyes grew brighter and bigger as they closed in on us. There was no telling how old they were beneath their shadowing cloaks, but they just felt ancient, like something that should have been forgotten hundreds of years ago. I could feel Jenny’s heart racing, her hand in mine, and then my instincts kicked in. I clamped my eyes shut and hoped for the best.
Hey, I never said I was a hero.
With my eyes closed, I felt the impact before I knew what was happening. One second I was standing rather like a ready-made meal, and the next, I was lying flat on my back, Jenny on top of me, unable to breathe.
“I said, ‘Conga, VAMPS!’” the Stereotypical Frat Boy shouted at the group of scattering vampires. Behind him, there was a line of other Frat Boys and, new to me, Sorority Girls. The Frat Boys were wearing their usual polo-shirt-and-khakis getup, but each had dressed up for the occasion with a small white rose pinned to his chest next to his name tag. The girls, on the other hand, had really outdone themselves. Rather than the short skirts, heels, and tops sized for infants that I would have expected, they were all wearing rather sparkly short skirts, heels, and baby-sized tops. They shuffled and swayed their hips to the beat of the music behind the leader of the line, dangerously close to popping all kinds of seems as they impatiently waited to move on.
The vampires backed away from them cautiously, as though watching a group of unpredictable dogs or life-size Barbie dolls. Slowly, the vampires disappeared into a shadowy corner of the room, the Greek Group resumed their dancing, and Jenny finally seemed to realize she was not just lying on squishy floor and rolled off my chest.
“My hero,” Jenny smirked as she pulled me to my feet.
My lack of heroism, bravery, or even basic survival skills had become somewhat of a running joke since Jenny and I had met. After all, it was usually Randy, Jenny, or plain dumb luck that had saved me thus far. And that, apparently, was just hilarious.
Ha. Ha.
I rubbed my head where I’d hit the ground, and wrapped my other arm around Jenny’s shoulders.
“Well, if I hadn’t closed my eyes and we hadn’t been barreled over by the Greek Group, you wouldn’t have gotten to lie down on top of this,” I said, pointing with my other arm at my chest.
I could almost feel the heat coming off her face as she blushed, but then she smacked me playfully (ouch) and leaned her head against my shoulder. Before I knew it, Jenny and I were dancing around the room, swirling and twirling amongst the rest of Fiction. Blurred images of creatures of all sorts zoomed past me: the thick legs of giants stretching up and out of sight, centaurs doing some sort of strange cantering shuffle, and trolls who seemed caught up in a weird bowing routine. There were wizards, warriors, heroes, and princes who were almost impossible to distinguish from one another in their formal wear. And every so often I caught a glimpse of a conga line, growing longer and more disorderly by the minute. After a few songs, the music slowed, and we decided to take a break. Jenny and I backed up to one of the dining tables propped against the wall to get our be
arings after the dizzying spin around the room. Apparently, Jenny was quite the dancer.
“Wow, is it just me or is this room spinning?” she asked, swaying slightly.
I agreed. Our dancing had left me lightheaded, wobbly, and maybe even a little delirious.
“Hey, Jenny, you weren’t wearing a tux when we got here, were you?” I asked, squinting at the blurry black-and-white figure before me.
“I am not wearing a tux!” a voice that was definitely not Jenny’s snapped from the black-and-white shape. The strange, squawky voice seemed to act as a tonic, and my head stopped spinning immediately. Jenny was still standing next to me against the wall, still wearing her long golden gown, and now also wearing a look of utter terror. Before us was a large, rather rotund penguin.
“Pen the Penguin?” I whispered. This was the penguin I’d seen in the coffee shop; this was the penguin who wanted me dead. Now was my only chance to convince her otherwise. Obligingly, the sights and sounds of the room around us faded away, leaving us to the dramatic unfolding uninterrupted. It was as though everything had been leading up to this very moment, and now, my conflict would be resolved once and for all, one way or the other.
“I’m not Pen the Penguin! What, you think we all look the same?!” the penguin snapped. She turned around and began to waddle away, the music, lights, and laughter of the room quickly regaining their sharpness.
“Wait!” I shouted and pulled her back into the moment. I lowered my voice dramatically again—I couldn’t afford to ruin this.
The Fantastic Fable of Peter Able Page 14