The Timeless Tale of Peter Able

by Natalie Grigson

  “It doesn’t matter,” Randy sighed. “Just go get ready. And wear something nice.”

  “Why?”

  “No reason,” he said, turning away immediately. His face had lost a bit of its color; clearly he was hiding something.

  “Welcome, students, parents, and characters of Fiction, Nonfiction, and even beyond,” Long John boomed into the microphone. He was standing behind a podium in the middle of a stage set up at the front of the school’s cafeteria. Randy and I sat in the center of the front row; to Randy’s left sat all of the named and unnamed characters from Detective who’d worked on finding?. To my right were Bob, Bonnie, Merlin, Mattie, Bateman, Professor S, and several other characters who, with a jolt, I realized must be from Nonfiction. They seemed oddly detailed, not necessarily shinier than any of the rest of the written characters but just more lined, blotchier, less perfect. Most of them were people; a few were animals; and at the very end was a group of three aliens. Yes, that’s right.

  In the three rows of folding chairs behind us, I saw all of the family members and friends of the characters who’d vanished. Immediately I recognized the Lost Boys, Wendy, and Hook. I saw the puppet maker Geppetto with Jiminy Cricket sitting forlornly on his shoulder; several far-too-pretty people from Romance and YA; and a few seats away, a group of small fairies sat two per chair, chatting quietly among themselves. Nearly the entire character list from Aladdin was there, as were more than a greenhouse full of potted plants and, in the fourth row back, two very blurry characters, probably in their late fifties, holding indistinct hands and looking around shyly. They were both pale and had clearly never been described in more than passing, but I knew without a doubt that these were Jenny’s parents.

  Behind the first four rows, mismatched chairs of all sizes, shapes, and colors were filled with characters to the very back of the huge room. The spaces around the chairs were packed with standing characters—giants, centaurs, ghosts floating several inches above the ground and often right through their neighbors. Fairies and pixies hovered near the walls all the way up to the high wooden arches of the ceiling. Like Long John had said, it seemed everyone from Fiction, Nonfiction, and beyond—including Mr. Tumnus and Aslan himself—had crammed into the room for the assembly.

  Long John cleared his throat loudly into the microphone.

  “Yeah, as I was saying—welcome, everyone, to the closing assembly.

  “We’ve decided to end . . . uh, things, this way, as a commemoration, not only to the fall semester at Fiction Academy but to the year, to this chapter [of our lives], and of course, to the characters we lost along the way.” At this, Long John looked up from the cue card in his hand and nodded his head solemnly toward the characters behind me. I heard Genie let out a choked sob.

  “But I think anyone who knew the characters we lost would also know that they’d have wanted Fiction to be safe. Not saying they wanted to disappear”—Long John’s eyes darted toward me, directly below and in front of him—“just saying that they wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to either.

  “So let’s take a moment of silence to remember our lost characters. And then if anyone wants to come up on stage and say anything, well, you can,” Long John finished rather lamely. The room echoed with the sounds of his wooden leg clunking along the stage, down the steps to the left, and into an empty chair in the front row.

  After a minute of silence, a low murmur spread through the crowded room, like the buzzing of bees. I was reminded, uncomfortably, of the way?’s skin seemed to crawl like insects, how it hummed with energy. Luckily, silence fell once again, as one character, then two, then three, and then nearly the entire first four rows trouped up onto the stage, and where they couldn’t fit, into a line down the steps. One by one, each character walked, flew, or pivoted up to the podium to acknowledge their loved one. Even as they finished talking and made their way back to their seats, more characters moved toward the stage, forming long lines down both sides of the seating area.

  Pixies darted down from their places near the ceiling to remember the fairies; giants attempted to lumber toward the front but then just settled for recounting stories from where they stood; centaurs and unicorns and fawns all wanted to pay their respects to Daphne the Wizard (she was big in the ungulate crowd). I watched as the Gingerbread Man, who’d nearly disappeared himself, simply stood and cried into the microphone for a solid minute. Then came Ms. Wilkinson, Frog, and, barely audible, the mouse from The Wind in the Willows, all thanking Detective for tracking down their backstories (at least I think; the mouse really was hard to hear).

  And finally, to my surprise, Randy was standing at the podium. I’d been so distracted watching everyone else before him, I hadn’t even noticed him leave his seat. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed underneath his glasses.

  “Everyone, thank you for coming up and sharing your stories. As Long John said, this is a terrible time of loss for many of us—knowing that we can’t simply write our loved ones back into our lives, like we might have hoped.” He glanced down at me. “But it is also a time of celebration—for the lives that they did lead and for the lives that we’ve managed to save.”

  At this, several people began to clap, but Randy held up his hands and they quieted.

  “Thank you. Detective did an outstanding job tracking down these backstories . . .” He gave a small bow to the front row. “But the true hero, as you might have known from the outset”—he looked meaningfully at that other audience he so often addressed—“is Peter Able.

  “Peter was the one who found out about our villain in the first place. He struggled with changing his own backstory—and when he realized what that might do to the rest of us, he did not. He gave it up. Not many characters that I know would be able to turn away from such power.

  “Peter was also the one who tracked down?. He nearly vanished himself, trying to defeat?. But defeat him he did—at a greater personal cost than many of you might know.”

  Vaguely, I was aware of a soft whisper roiling through the crowd.

  “Peter, can you come up here, please?” Randy asked, already stepping aside and gesturing toward the podium. I got up shakily. As I made my way up the steps, a few people started to clap. I walked toward the center. More clapping. By the time I got to the podium (it was a very large stage), everyone in the room was on their feet. The space was a roar of sounds—clapping, shouting, singing (mostly characters from Ballad), and stomping. I heard Brett shout something about partying afterward, I saw Ed the YA vamp crying flagrantly and smiling up at me. But as the cacophony finally died down, and everyone regained their seats, I had eyes for only two people: Jenny’s parents. They were some of the last to sit, and even as I watched them, they became clearer. Jenny’s mother was her spitting image—petite with long, light brown hair pulled away from her face; her dad had graying brown hair, glasses, and light eyes. But most noticeable was the way they were looking at me. Not with hate, as, honestly, I’d kind of expected, but with gratitude. And in that moment, I knew. I hadn’t done everything in my power to help their daughter. Not quite yet.

  “Peter, you know, when I invited you up to the podium, I kind of thought you’d be making a speech,” Randy was saying as the crowd milled about the room and began to filter outside. “Or at least say something.”

  “Ah, give him a break. Speeches aren’t for everyone. Besides, you said enough for him,” Long John said, patting me roughly on the back and nearly sending me toppling off the stage. I was perched on its edge, legs dangling, just watching everybody say their good-byes. Jenny’s parents were keeping to themselves, talking in low voices and looking around the room a bit nervously. I caught her dad’s eye and slid down from the stage.

  “I’ll see you guys later,” I muttered, starting off toward her parents.

  “Hold it,” Randy said, catching me by the back of my shirt. “This could very well be the last scene we all have together in this one. Do you really want to end it with ‘see you guys later,’
Peter?”

  Long John raised his eyebrows at me. Randy seemed to be looking out, once again, at an invisible audience. I shrugged and walked away.

  “Mr. and Mrs., uh, Jenny’s parents!” I called, catching up to them. They’d just started making their way toward the exit at the back of the emptying room.

  “Hello, Peter,” Jenny’s dad said, sticking out a hand. They were by no means as detailed as main characters, but they certainly weren’t just passing mentions anymore either. Yes, in fact, his hand even felt callused and strong, as though he worked with them often.

  “Hi, Peter,” Jenny’s mother said, shaking my hand next.

  “Listen, I just wanted to let you know how sorry I am,” I sputtered before I could help myself. “I loved Jenny and—”

  “We know you did everything you could, Peter, for Jenny and for the rest of the characters,” Jenny’s mother said, waving her hand dismissively. Jenny’s dad nodded as she spoke.

  “Well, that’s the thing. I think there is one more thing I can try to bring her back. It will be dangerous, and it’ll probably take nearly a whole book—”

  “What do you mean?”

  “—a book filled with twists and turns and conflicts you’ve never even dreamed about—”

  “What is he talking about?” Jenny’s mother muttered to her husband. He shrugged.

  “—but I’m going to do whatever it takes to try and save Jenny, and, if I can, everyone else.

  “And no, I won’t be messing around with time anymore—I think we all learned a lesson there,” I added, trying out Randy’s audience thing. “This will be more of a real story, an actual account, if you will.”

  And with that, I smiled at Jenny’s now utterly bewildered parents and walked away, past the empty chairs, past the lagging characters, and out into the cold air beyond. I walked home, feeling more nervous and excited than I had in pages, and on my way stopped at a new little café called Foreshadowing.