Off the Page

by Jodi Picoult

  Then I notice someone waving. It’s Allie, from my English class, seated with her ladies-in-waiting, who all look unnervingly similar.

  “Edgar,” she says as I walk over with my tray. “You can sit with us.”

  I glance over my shoulder to see Delilah standing on the periphery, looking for me. “I’m so sorry, I already have plans for Lunch Period.”

  Allie’s gaze follows mine to light on Delilah. Her hand touches my arm. “Just so you know,” she says coolly, “I’m kind of a big deal at this school. So when you’re done geeking out with the village loser, text me.” She pulls out a sparkly pink pen and writes a series of numbers on my forearm, punctuating it with a fat heart.

  I walk back to Delilah and tap her on her shoulder. “Looking for me?”

  She grins. “Always.” Delilah leads me to a table where Jules sits, trying to sculpt her mound of food with her utensils.

  “Nice artwork,” I say.

  “Does it look like those Easter Island heads to you? ’Cause that’s what I’m going for,” Jules says.

  I try to pull Delilah’s chair out for her, because that’s what princes do, but the chair is oddly attached to the table and doesn’t budge. “It was a nice gesture, Oliver,” she murmurs, putting her hand on my arm—and then her fingers slide down to my wrist, pulling my hand up so she can read what’s written on my skin. “What’s this?”

  “Allie requested a text from me,” I say. “I’m thinking she might enjoy Beowulf.”

  Jules spits her chocolate milk across the table as Delilah’s eyes fly to mine. “Why do you even know her?”

  “She’s in my English class. Which, by the way, I stoned.”

  “You mean rocked?” Jules corrects me.

  “Were you flirting with her?” Delilah says.

  “It was nothing more than a conversation,” I explain. “Why would I be interested in Allie McAndrews?” I wait for her to meet my gaze. “I’ve got you.”

  Jules puts down her fork. “I’m barfing rainbows.”

  “Do you know Snow White?” Delilah asks.

  “Not personally . . .”

  “Well, that apple might look pretty on the outside, but just remember, she’s poison at the core.”

  “Mind if I sit down?” a voice says, and I turn to find Chris standing behind us.

  “Please do! You already know Delilah. And this is Jules. Jules, Chris. He just moved here from Detroit.”

  “Welcome to hell,” Jules says. “I hope you got your complimentary brimstone cocktail when you checked in.”

  “And my free hundred dollars in chips,” Chris replies smoothly. “Or is the casino on the fourth floor just a prank they play on the new kids?”

  “There’s no casino,” Jules laughs. “But don’t miss the Olympic-sized pool up there.”

  I nudge Delilah’s shoulder. “There’s no fourth floor,” I whisper.

  “It’s a joke,” she answers.

  I reach for her hand, and as I do, I notice the numbers crawling up my forearm. Twisting it so that they can’t be seen, I thread my fingers through Delilah’s. I’ve held her hand enough times now that it shouldn’t feel like electricity running up and down my skin, but just touching her, there are still sparks. “So,” I say quietly. “You and I . . . are we okay?”

  She looks away. “Sure,” she says, but her smile doesn’t quite light up her eyes.

  I smile back. Or try to, anyway. Because if there’s anything I know, it’s when someone’s acting.

  When I get home from my first day of high school, the woman who is not my mother—yet who created me—is waiting. “How did it go?” Jessamyn asks. “Scale of one to ten?”

  “Five hundred,” I reply. “It was spectacular.”

  She seems surprised. “Is it that much better than school on Cape Cod?”

  “Infinitely.”

  She folds her arms. “You’ve never been such a big fan of school before.”

  “I never had a girlfriend there before.” As the words escape, I hope they’re true.

  Jessamyn purses her lips. Delilah didn’t make the strongest of first impressions on her. In fact, she came off as a little insane—a crazed sycophant who’d run away from home and traveled four hours to beg a reclusive ex-author to change the ending of her book. When Mrs. McPhee arrived to pick Delilah up, she was not amused. It took weeks of apologies before her mother even let her out of the house. Luckily, in the brief hours between our realization that I was really, truly, wholly free from the book and her mother’s arrival to drag her home, Delilah created a magical portal for us, so that we could communicate even from afar.

  She calls it Skype.

  Those first few weeks were terrifying. Not only was I missing Delilah, but I had to impersonate a boy I had only just met, and do such a cracking job that his own mother would be fooled. It was exhausting being someone other than myself.

  I wasn’t expecting to be released from a book in which I spent every moment pretending to be a person I’m not only to wind up doing it all over again.

  In my favor, Edgar had been somewhat less than chatty. He spent a great deal of time in his room with his video games, which gave me time for Delilah’s daily lessons on how to act like a teenager. For example, in this world, an adolescent is supposed to do the opposite of what his parents ask him to do. Grunting is an appropriate form of communication before noon, and eye-rolling is acceptable at all times. Also, thinking before acting is a sure way to be sussed out as an imposter.

  It was the little things, though, that were the hardest—a lifetime of moments Edgar had with Jessamyn Jacobs that I did not. Until she mentioned it, I did not remember the vacation she and Edgar took to Belize, where they both got so sunburned that they had to sleep sitting up; I didn’t know that Edgar used to roam the beach with her, looking for coral shaped like the first letters of their names. I didn’t know Edgar’s favorite color or food or book. I had to re-create a life I’d never lived.

  “And how is Delilah?” Jessamyn asks.

  “She was the perfect welcoming committee,” I say diplomatically.

  Jessamyn laughs. “Oh, to be young and in love.”

  I grimace and turn away. Even when I was a prince, I didn’t want to hear about my faux parents’ love affair.

  “I didn’t just create you out of thin air, you know.”

  “Go figure,” I murmur.

  She follows me into the kitchen. One thing I’ve noticed is that in this world, I seem to want to be either sleeping or eating all the time. I take a box of cereal out of the cabinet and stick my hand inside, pulling out a fistful of small yellow puffs. I stare at the insane cartoon on the box. Cap’n Crunch. Honestly, it’s as if whoever drew this has never met a real pirate.

  “So,” Jessamyn says, sitting on a stool at the counter. “What are your classes like? Who’s your favorite teacher so far?”

  Every time we have a conversation, I get flustered. I feel as if I’m being interrogated. As if there are right and wrong answers and I am bound to fail. I take a deep breath and paste a smile on my face. “I was gobsmacked by my English teacher,” I tell her, pulling a carton of milk from the refrigerator and nearly drinking from the spout before remembering that seems to be one of Jessamyn’s pet peeves. “She was brilliant.”

  “Gobsmacked,” she repeats. “Brilliant. You know, you’ve been picking up a lot of slang lately that seems a little out of character for you.”

  You have no idea, I think. “I’ve been reading Dickens. . . .”

  “How interesting, since I couldn’t even get you to read Shel Silverstein.”

  “Delilah gave it to me,” I say quickly.

  “Of course. Delilah.” Jessamyn nods. “I suppose she’s responsible for your new look as well.”

  I glance down at my jeans and sweatshirt, which—yes—Delilah chose for me so that I would better fit in on my first day. “People reinvent themselves all the time,” I say. “Look at that picture of you and Dad on the mantel. Your hair was
a different color and the size of a hot-air balloon . . . and you were wearing leather pants. Clearly you’ve improved.”

  Jessamyn laughs. “What happened in the nineties stays in the nineties,” she says, and then she grows more sober. “It might be fun to change it up, Edgar, but don’t forget who you are.”

  I think of what Delilah told me—how to respond to your parents when they start giving you life lessons. “Relax, Mom,” I say, unzipping my sweatshirt and tossing it over a chair. “I just got better-fitting jeans. It’s not the end of the world.”

  An odd expression ghosts across her face. “Of course not,” Jessamyn says. Then her eyes widen. “Edgar! What did you get all over your shirt?”

  I look down. Until now I’ve actually put this morning’s debacle out of my mind. “My pen exploded?”

  She sighs. “Do you know how hard it is to get ink stains out?”

  “Somewhat,” I say under my breath. Replacing the milk in the refrigerator, I begin to rummage through the contents, looking for something else to satisfy my perpetual hunger. I take a small container and pop off its lid, reaching in with my fingers to grab what’s inside.

  “No!” Jessamyn cries, and I look up, alarmed, the fruit halfway to my open mouth. “Don’t you know what that is?”

  “Pineapple?” I reply, wondering if this is yet another trick question.

  “Which gives you hives,” Jessamyn points out.

  “Right,” I say, dropping the spear back into the container. “Forgot.”

  “You forgot the week you spent in the hospital when your throat closed up and you couldn’t breathe?”

  I hesitate. “It’s been a long day,” I say, and I grab my satchel and sweatshirt, hoping to flee before I do anything else wrong.

  I’m in my room absorbed in my studies, trying to understand why all of these chemicals have two-letter nicknames that make absolutely no sense, when I hear a chime on the computer.

  Delilah’s face fills the screen. I wonder if this is the way she saw me when I was inside the book—close enough to touch, but two-dimensional. “What are you up to?”

  “Chemistry,” I say. “Tell me: in what part of the word Iron do you find the Fe?”

  “Ferrous. It means ‘iron.’ ”

  “Then why isn’t it called that?”

  “Because chemistry’s a whole special circle of hell,” Delilah says. “Why don’t you come over here and we can figure it out together?”

  “Something tells me we wouldn’t get very much accomplished.” I grin. “Which actually sounds rather perfect.”

  After Delilah’s overreaction to Allie McAndrews’s writing her phone number on my arm, I’m relieved to know that she still wishes to see me. But all the same, I scrub those numbers off my skin before I leave home. I don’t want to remind her of why she grew angry. I tell Jessamyn that Delilah’s mother has invited me for dinner and take Edgar’s bike from the garage. Delilah’s home is a short ride away, but it’s all uphill. As I huff my way to her house, I think longingly of Socks, my stallion, who used to be the one doing all the work when we traveled.

  When I ring the McPhee doorbell, a dog starts barking. Humphrey is a rescue, a gift from Mrs. McPhee’s boyfriend, Dr. Ducharme. He looks enough like Frump to make me homesick every time I see him, and I can’t help talking to him the way I would address my best friend—as if he might actually answer me back. “Good day, Humphrey,” I say as Delilah’s mother answers the door and pulls him away by the collar. I offer my most winning smile. Mrs. McPhee has softened toward me in the months since Delilah fled to Wellfleet, but I get the feeling she doesn’t truly trust me. “Hello,” I say. “So good to see you again. You’re looking radiant.”

  She raises one eyebrow, dubious, but I am being honest. Delilah’s mother cleans other people’s houses, and she reminds me a bit of another story from Rapscullio’s shelves, about a young scullery maid who possesses both glass footwear and inner beauty, which makes a prince fall head over heels for her.

  “Aren’t you the charmer,” Mrs. McPhee replies, opening the door so I can step inside. “How was your first day of school, Edgar?”

  “It’s everything I’d hoped it would be,” I say. “I can’t wait for tomorrow.”

  “Maybe some of that joy will rub off on Delilah. I think the last time she enthused about school was when her second-grade class had Willy Wonka Day and they ate candy for eight straight hours.”

  Delilah’s feet pound down the stairs, and she gives Humphrey an absent pat on the head. “Okay, thanks, Mom. If you’re done totally humiliating me, Edgar and I have to study.”

  “Oh, is that what they’re calling it these days?”

  Delilah rolls her eyes and pulls me up to her room. She leaves the door open a crack—that’s her mother’s rule, and the only way I am even allowed upstairs. When I asked her why I couldn’t be trusted, she said it’s because chivalry really is dead.

  I know every inch of her bedroom, because I had to draw it in excruciating detail during one of our failed attempts to get me out of the book. In the fairy tale, Rapscullio had a magic easel, on which he’d painted an exact replica of his lair. When he sketched a butterfly onto the background scene, it would pop off the canvas, suddenly alive. I tricked him into painting Delilah’s chamber, in the hopes that I could then draw myself onto the easel and reappear, alive, in her world instead of mine. But sadly, even though I materialized in her three-dimensional bedroom, I remained in two dimensions, and we had to start back at square one.

  Because my life literally depended on my knowing it so well, Delilah’s bedroom is more familiar to me than anywhere else. Every other object is pink, and she has so many stuffed animals piled on her bed I have no idea where she sleeps. The tops of her bureaus are cluttered with mismatched earrings and hair ties and spare change. Portraits of Delilah—some alone, some with Jules or her mother—are arranged in a mural on the wall behind her headboard.

  I flop onto her bed, crushing a stuffed panda beneath me. Delilah stretches out beside me, propping her head on one hand. There are six inches of space between us, and it’s excruciating.

  I slip my arm into the curve of her waist and pull her closer, tracing a trail of kisses from her collarbone to her jaw. I bury my face in her hair; she smells of vanilla and cinnamon. “Aren’t we supposed to be working on your chemistry?” Delilah whispers.

  “We are,” I say, rolling her on top of me. She flattens her hands on my chest and settles her mouth over mine. Her heart beats against mine, keeping time.

  Once, Orville told me that when stars collide, universes are born; galaxies expand. That’s how it feels when I kiss Delilah—like the whole world just doubled in size.

  Inside the book, I could run and leap and fall without resistance, and it is still taking a bit of getting used to, to simply exist here with gravity. But in this moment, I’m thankful for it. I can feel her pressing against me from collarbone to toes, a weight that sinks into my bones and grounds me in this brand-new world.

  It’s not just a physical gravity I’m still adjusting to—it’s the serious reality of having my dreams come true. Of being free to do what I wish. Of feeling as if I have everything—everyone—that I need.

  It’s odd—love in the fairy tale always felt so fast, skipping over the details to get to the happy ending. With Delilah, I’m moving just as quickly, but I don’t miss a single moment. I notice how she chews her pencil when she’s nervous; how when I touch her hand, she jumps a little as if there’s been an electric shock; how when she says my name, it’s softer than any other word in the sentence.

  Suddenly Delilah pushes herself away from me and leaps off the bed, her jaw dropping. I sit up quickly, expecting to see Mrs. McPhee in the doorway, but there’s nobody there. “What’s wrong?”

  Delilah points behind me, and I turn around.

  Hanging in midair are two words I hoped I’d never see:

  COME HOME.

  EDGAR

  How come things are never
as awesome as you want them to be?

  The first day of kindergarten, my mom told me it would be amazing. I’d have so much fun riding the bus and making new friends, and I’d get to spend the whole day doing exciting things with other kids my age. This was the reality: on the bus, a kid threw up in the seat next to me. We spent two hours tracing the letter A over and over and over. And at recess, a girl tossed sand in my face, nearly blinding me. Oh yeah, those were totally going to be the best days of my life.

  I figured that here, it would be different. After all, this was all my idea. This was kindergarten all over again, except I was teaching the class. I made all the decisions, and nothing could happen unless I wanted it to. And yet . . .

  Well. I can’t say I’m not disappointed.

  Don’t get me wrong. It’s still cool to get to wield a laser gun and meet an actual live dragon. It’s great to be the center of attention for once, instead of the kid whose name everyone forgets. And I genuinely like the people I’m with. Frump is always at my side, which rocks, considering that the only pet I’ve ever been allowed to have is a hermit crab that slowly lost all its limbs and was just depressing. Seraphima looks especially hot in a spandex intergalactic space-fighter suit. Captain Crabbe is nice, but he’s kind of obsessed with teeth, and every time I try to strike up a conversation with him, I catch him checking out my overbite. As for Socks, I’ve never met someone with even less self-esteem than me, but he’s always the first one to ask me how my day is going or to invite me to go for a trot on the beach.

  The thing is, although I’ve rewritten the plot so that Oliver can live outside the book and I can take his place inside it, although every character in here with me knows the new story and has practiced it endlessly, we’re the only ones who know anything has changed. Delilah has the only copy of Between the Lines, and she hasn’t cracked it open once since the switch. Which I guess I understand, since she was reading it because Oliver was inside. And now it’s just me in here.