Off the Page

by Jodi Picoult

  I have enough time to drop Oliver off at his chemistry classroom before I have to head to French. As we turn the corner, Jules slips up behind us and links her arm through mine. “Guess who broke up,” she says.

  Oliver smiles. “This must be the famous Jules.”

  “Reports of my awesomeness are usually underrated,” Jules answers. She gives Oliver a once-over and then nods and turns to me. “Well done.”

  “I’m kind of in a rush—I’m trying to get him to Zhang’s room before the bell rings,” I explain.

  “Trust me, you want to hear this. . . . Allie McAndrews and Ryan Douglas?”

  Oliver looks at me, questioning.

  “Prom queen and king,” I explain quickly.

  He looks impressed. “Royalty.”

  “They think they are,” Jules agrees. “Anyway, they broke up. Apparently being faithful comes as easily to Ryan as Shakespeare.”

  Having been in Ryan’s English class last year, I know that’s saying a lot.

  “Speak of the devil,” says Jules.

  As if we’re watching a soap opera, Allie turns the corner, flanked by her posse. From the opposite direction, simultaneously, Ryan swaggers down the hall. We bystanders freeze, holding our breath, waiting for the inevitable train wreck.

  “Oh, look! What a rare sighting,” Allie says loudly. “A man-slut in the wild!” Her girls giggle in response.

  Ryan looks her up and down. “Did you eat all your feelings, Allie?”

  At that, Allie propels herself at him, claws out. Just in time, a kid steps between them—James, the president of the LGBT Alliance, who has his own bow tie business and runs conflict-resolution training for student mentors. “Walk it off, girlfriend,” James says to Ryan, who shoves him into the wall.

  “Back off, fairy,” Ryan growls.

  Before I realize what’s happening, Oliver is no longer standing next to me. He’s heading straight for Ryan.

  “Oh crap,” Jules says. “You had to date a hero?”

  But Oliver rushes past Ryan, moving toward James, who’s now sprawled on the ground. He extends a hand and helps James up. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” James replies, brushing himself off.

  This is good, this is really good. Oliver has created the best reputation possible. Everyone is looking at him as if he is a champion.

  Including Allie McAndrews.

  Oliver puts a hand on James’s shoulder. “Fairies here are much bigger than I expected,” he says, delighted.

  For a moment, time stops. Something flickers across James’s face—disappointment. Resignation. Pain.

  What happens next is so fast I can barely see it: James pulls back his arm and socks Oliver hard so that he falls backward, knocked out cold.

  Oh yeah. This is gonna be a great year.

  I fly to Oliver’s side, crouching down. By now the crowd has scattered, afraid of repercussions. I help him sit up; he winces as he leans against the wall.

  “Let me guess,” Oliver mutters. “Fairy means something different here?”

  But I can’t answer, because when I look at him I see it: the trickle of black from his nose, the stains on his white shirt.

  “Oliver,” I whisper. “You’re inking.”

  OLIVER

  It’s been five whole minutes and my face still looks like I’ve been clobbered by a giant. I push aside Delilah, who’s holding a wet tissue to my nose. “The correct term,” she says, “is gay.”

  “I didn’t mean to insult him,” I mutter. “I just didn’t know.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. This is all new to you.”

  But the guilt aches more than my bruises. I resolve to find James later and offer him a gentleman’s apology. “If two people wish to be together, why is it anyone else’s business?” I ask. “Bloody hell, my best friend was a basset hound, and he was in love with a princess, and no one ever batted an eye.”

  Speaking of eyes, I wonder if mine will be black soon. I lean closer to the mirror. “I don’t understand this,” I say. I’ve literally jumped into the fiery mouth of a dragon and leaped off fifty-foot cliffs into the ocean and nearly drowned, yet I recovered faster than I have from this measly blow.

  Plus, it hurts.

  Suddenly it all makes sense. “Delilah,” I say, swallowing, “I fear I’m dying.”

  “You’re not dying. You got sucker punched.”

  “I should have healed already.”

  “Only inside your book,” Delilah says. “In the real world, you can’t just turn a page and feel better.”

  I gingerly touch the bridge of my nose and wince. “Pity,” I say.

  I must admit, this is not quite the start I was expecting. I’ve been rather excited about the idea of going to school, in spite of all that Delilah has told me about it. She makes it sound like being chained in a dungeon, but to me, it’s anything but that. I’ve been chained in a dungeon before. Over and over and over again, in fact. Even getting walloped by a stranger is new and exciting and unexpected and different from the same sixty pages I’ve repeated my whole life.

  “You have to get to class,” Delilah says. “You’re already late. Just say you got lost—no one will question a new student on the first day. You remember what we talked about?”

  I begin ticking off the points on my fingers. “Don’t bow when I meet someone. Don’t refer to myself as royalty. Take notes in class as if I am interested, even when I am not. The teacher’s the king of the classroom, and I am not allowed to get up and leave unless granted permission. Oh, and no knives, ever, in school.”

  Delilah smiles. “Good. And one more . . .” She points to my face. “Don’t say or do anything that might make that happen again.”

  She pokes her head out the door—we have ensconced ourselves in a privy that is only meant for the teachers to use. When Delilah sees that the hall is empty, she pulls me out beside her and pushes me in the direction of my potions class.

  “Remember,” she says. “Just follow your schedule and I’ll meet you at lunch.”

  I nod and turn but am called back by the sound of her voice.

  “Oliver,” she says. “You can do this.”

  I watch her walk away. When Delilah talks like that, it’s easy to remember why I gave up everything I knew in order to be with her. She believes in me, and if someone believes in you wholeheartedly, you start to believe in yourself as well.

  I take a deep breath and forge ahead into the great unknown.

  I’ve been performing all my life; this is just another role.

  I have a sudden flash of Frump, my best friend in the fairy tale, his tail wagging as he yelled at all of us to take our places as a new Reader cracked open the spine of the book. I wonder if Frump is rounding up the cast even now.

  I wonder if they miss me.

  But. I have my own work to do, here.

  Whatever butterflies are swarming in my stomach are not the result of fear. Just excitement.

  I push open the door of the classroom and offer my most charming smile to the tutor standing in front of the seated pupils. “So sorry I’m late. My deepest apologies, Your Majesty.”

  The students snicker. “Mr. Zhang will do,” the teacher says flatly. “Take a seat, Mr. . . .”

  “Jacobs. Edgar Jacobs. Formerly of Wellfleet.”

  “Fantastic,” Mr. Zhang intones.

  There is only one open seat, and to my delight, it’s next to someone I know: Chris, whose locker is adjacent to mine. He looks up and cringes. “What happened to you?”

  “A miscommunication,” I say.

  “Okay,” Mr. Zhang announces. “I’m going to hand out a little pop quiz to see how much you guys already know. Don’t panic, it’s not going to count toward your final grade.” He moves through the aisles, giving each of us a sheet of paper.

  Chris hunkers down over the quiz, his pencil scratching vigorously. I glance at the page and frown.

  “I beg your pardon,” I say, getting Mr. Zhang�
��s attention. “I think mine is written in the wrong tongue.”

  “English isn’t your first language?”

  Indeed it is. The Queen’s English, to be precise. But this writing is full of strange dashes and arrows and chains of Cs and Os that look like insects.

  The teacher sighs. “Then just tell me three things you know about chemistry.”

  I take a pencil from the leather satchel I’ve carried to school.

  1. Eye of newt and dragon’s breath, combined in equal volume, can cure the common cold.

  2. The juice of forget-me-nots, distilled, will restore a lost memory.

  3. One should never lick the spoon.

  By the time we pass in the quiz, I’m quite pleased with myself, and awfully grateful for the time I spent in the wizard Orville’s cabin, watching him craft his concoctions.

  I manage to sit through class, nodding along and taking notes as Delilah instructed, although I really have no idea what the point of a table is if it’s periodic rather than constant. As the teacher speaks, I let my attention drift, marveling as I look around the classroom. With the exception of Chris, I don’t recognize anyone. It’s as if this world keeps reproducing new people, as if they are coming out of the woodwork. Having grown up with the same cast of thirty, I marvel at features and clothing and faces I’ve never seen before. One girl, sitting in the front of the room, has a ring through the side of her nose, like the oxen in the fields behind our castle. A boy carries a wheeled board strapped to his satchel, as if he must be ready to zip away at any instant. I glance at the girl to my left; in place of notes, her tablet is filled with swirling images that stretch from corner to corner—she must be an artist of sorts.

  The bell rings, startling me. It seems to serve as a cue; everyone stands up and starts packing away their books.

  Chris glances at me as he zips up his satchel. “So what made your family move here?”

  I don’t really have the answer to that. After I realized that Edgar was in the book and I was really, truly out of it, my first step toward becoming real was to masquerade as the boy whose life I stole. That meant getting Jessamyn Jacobs, the author of the fairy tale and Edgar’s mother, to believe that I was her son—and I do not think there is anything more challenging than trying to fool the one person who knows a child best, namely, the mother, who’s been there from the very first moment of his life. There were many near disasters when Jessamyn seemed on the verge of discovering that I was not Edgar. She would stare at me for long moments, a curious expression on her face. I caught her once going through the drawers of the furniture in Edgar’s chamber. Each night at dinner, she’d ask me if I was feeling all right, because I didn’t seem quite like myself. That was troubling enough, but even more devastating was the fact that this foreign world was so much bigger than the sixty pages to which I was accustomed: the girl I’d traded everything for lived four hours away. I had to get Jessamyn to believe that it was necessary for us to move to Delilah’s hometown—and I had to do it in a way that Edgar might have. After weeks of shooting down my creative excuses (Less air pollution! Struck by Cupid’s arrow! Better school district!), Jessamyn suddenly announced one afternoon that moving to New Hampshire would indeed be a good idea. I still don’t know what changed her mind. I’m just incredibly relieved that it changed.

  “My mom’s, um, a freelance editor. She was ready for a fresh start, and she can work anywhere.” I look at Chris. “How about you?”

  “My dad got a job here, and my mom liked the idea of raising her kids in fresh air,” Chris says. “Detroit’s kind of the anti–New Hampshire. In lots of ways. I’ve never seen so many white people in my life.” He grins at me. “So how long have you and Delilah been together?”

  “Technically, three months,” I reply.

  “Ooh, serious, huh?”

  “Well, I’m trying not to be. She wasn’t too thrilled when I proposed. She wants to do something called dating.”

  Chris looks at me. “Where are you from, again?”

  “Wellfleet,” I say. “Have you found true love?”

  “It’s only second period,” Chris laughs. “You’re the closest relationship I have in this school so far.”

  I follow him into the hallway, and we both turn toward the staircase. “I’ve got trig with Baird,” Chris says. “Apparently she only wears black and keeps rocks in her desk drawer. I hear she’s a total witch.”

  “Really?” I say. “Then how come she isn’t the one teaching potions?”

  Chris smiles. “Dude, you’re weird, but you’re entertaining. See you later.”

  He heads downstairs and I turn to the staircase, nearly colliding with just the person I hoped to find. “James,” I say as his eyes slide away from mine and he starts up the steps. “Wait.”

  “Honestly, I think you’ve said enough for today.”

  “But I said the wrong things.” I wait for him to stop moving and face me. “I never meant to offend you. Where I come from, that word means something different.”

  “And where is that? Never Land?”

  “Something like that.” The sea of students parts around us, as if we are stones in a river. I think about how I would have done anything to be with Delilah, how there was no point being in any world unless she was with me. “The very reason I moved here is because I believe that everyone should have the right to be with the person they love.”

  James stares at me for a long moment, as if he is trying to gauge my sincerity. Finally he nods. “You should think about joining the LGBT Alliance,” he says. “We could use more allies like you.” He fiddles with a pin on the strap of his pack and affixes it to my chest like a knight’s medal.

  I glance down and see the rainbow fastened on my shirt.

  James glances over his shoulder as he walks off. “Sorry I messed up your face.” He grins. “It was pretty.”

  Inside room 322, a woman with frizzy gray hair stands facing the whiteboard, scrawling Ms. Pingree in perfect cursive. She turns around as the bell rings again and surveys the class, her eyes lighting on each of our faces. “ ‘What’s in a name?’ ” she asks. “ ‘That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet; / so Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d / Retain that dear perfection which he owes / Without that title. . . .’ ”

  The other pupils in the class are fidgeting and yawning, ignoring this impromptu performance. But I recognize a great actress when I see one . . . and I even know the script from which she is quoting. It was one of the books on Rapscullio’s shelves that Queen Maureen read over and over—the most classic of classic love stories.

  Ms. Pingree finishes her recitation and I jump to my feet, strolling up the central aisle until I stand only a few feet away from her. I fall to one knee, professing my undying love. “ ‘I take thee at thy word,’ ” I say, letting loose the reins on my British accent. “ ‘Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptiz’d; / Henceforth I never will be Romeo.’ ”

  Her jaw drops; two bright spots of color appear on her cheeks. For a moment, she’s speechless, no doubt swooning at my excellent thespian chops. “Well, well,” she says, recovering. “I see the gods have granted my wishes and finally given me a student worth teaching. Are you a fan of Shakespeare?”

  “Am I a fan of Shakespeare?” I repeat. “Is Hamlet indecisive? Is Lady Macbeth mad? Is Falstaff . . . portly?” I realize, midsentence, that I am still speaking in my British accent, and clear my throat. “I’m Edgar,” I say, mimicking the flat American sounds of everyone else’s speech. “New kid in town.”

  “And one I hope to see in the drama club this year. Thank you, Edgar, for joining me in a rousing performance from our first reading assignment this semester: Romeo and Juliet. Mark, Helen, Allie, come help me pass out books.”

  I take my seat again, feeling awfully chuffed. Wait until Delilah hears about this. And she thought I wouldn’t fit in. I have a sense that English is going to be my strong suit. Perhaps I will even advance a grade level, or be asked t
o proctor a course. . . .

  Suddenly a book is slipped onto my desk, pushed closer by a slender hand with red polish. I look up to find the very girl who precipitated the fight that led to my morning beating. Delilah’s nemesis, Allie McAndrews, stands before me. Her sleek blond hair is shoulder length, and she has so much makeup on her eyes that when she flutters her lashes, all I can think of are spiders. Her lips turn up in a half smile, as if she knows a secret and I don’t.

  “Maybe for once,” she says, “English will be interesting.”

  At midday, when I enter the cafeteria, I see that Delilah is pacing. “You made it,” she says, grabbing my arm, as if she needs to convince herself I’m still really here. I understand; I feel the same way about her. “I thought maybe you’d end up in the principal’s office.” She scrutinizes my face. “You don’t have a black eye.” In truth, I’ve forgotten about the fight—so much has happened.

  “Delilah, this place is spectacular!” I say, beaming.

  She looks up at me, quizzical. “Maybe you got hit harder than I thought.”

  “No, truly—there must be hundreds of students in this school, and each one is a mystery! And in chemistry, I get to choose who my scene partner is, instead of being told with whom I have to work—”

  “Lab partner?”

  “Yes, right, that’s what it’s called. And the best part is that nothing about my day has anything to do with saving a princess.”

  “Congratulations,” Delilah says. “But trust me, the novelty wears off.”

  She pulls me into a line and hands me a lime-green tray. Behind a plastic shield, what appears to be a troll in a hairnet is glumping slop onto a plate. “What is that?” I ask Delilah.

  “Lunch.”

  “But it’s . . . alive.”

  “It’s not quite a royal banquet, but it meets the federal nutrition standards, apparently.”

  Reluctantly I take the plate as it is offered to me. “I’ll go get us water,” Delilah says. I wander toward students clustered in small groups at tables. This, according to my schedule, is Lunch Period. The freedom is almost unbearable: imagine a half hour every day when you are able to do whatever you want, without worrying that someone is going to open the book and force you back into place on page one. I take stock of the scene, marveling at how lucky I am to live this charmed life.