Off the Page

by Jodi Picoult

  It’s her mother.

  We are rusty. But we are professionals. I feel the words pulled from my throat, as if they are a ribbon. Save who? I say, scowling.

  Surreptitiously I glance at Mrs. McPhee and I see her eyes widen as she squints at my face. Oh God. She’s going to recognize me as Delilah’s boyfriend.

  It takes all the effort I can muster to angle my head against the illustration’s will so that she can only make out my profile instead of my full features.

  “What is inside this book that you can’t live without, Delilah?” Mrs. McPhee murmurs absently. She finishes the page and turns to the next. Suddenly I stand with Queen Maureen, trying to explain to her why I am about to embark on a mission to save this princess. Maureen’s lips tremble as I speak; I can register the fear on her face as she channels what it must be like as a mother to say goodbye to her son. She is doing an acting job better than I’ve ever seen, but then, so is everyone else. They are all bristling with energy, delighted to be read for the first time in months.

  All but me, that is.

  I am reliving a nightmare.

  I gallop through the Enchanted Forest and outwit the fairies, I nearly drown in the ocean, I cheat the trolls to ensure a safe passage, and all this I do while managing to keep my face turned away from the Reader. By the time I am on page 43, scaling the cliff wall, my body is shaking from exertion.

  When Rapscullio locks me in the dungeon, it’s almost a relief, because my face is drawn in shadow.

  Finally I am pulled to the white sand of Everafter Beach. Humphrey is trying to eat the wedding rings attached to his collar. The mermaids wave from the breakers; the trolls hold the poles of the bridal canopy; the fairies have twined ribbons around them. And Seraphima, as always, is in my embrace, wearing her silver wedding gown.

  And a pair of jeans underneath.

  As Mrs. McPhee’s eyes skim the last words of the fairy tale, I am drawn inexorably toward Seraphima.

  I think of Delilah, kissing Edgar.

  And just as Delilah said about that kiss, all I can think about is how Seraphima is the wrong size, the wrong shape, the wrong everything. How she isn’t Delilah.

  But my lips stay pressed to hers, glued by a happily-ever-after, until the back cover is closed.

  Around me, the other characters start to cheer.

  Well done! Bravo!

  That was excellent.

  Did you see the part where I—

  Oh, how I’ve missed performing. . . .

  I fall to my knees as if I’ve been punched, gasping for breath. Rapscullio claps me on the shoulder. “Just like old times, right, Oliver?” he says, smiling widely.

  His words are the match that ignites the fire within me. Staggering to my feet, I start to run as fast as I can. I move across the pages so quickly that the scenes blur behind me; I don’t stop to see where I am. I run until I pass my first scene, and the one before it, through the dedications, skittering past the copyright, until I skid into the great white morass of the title page. There, I hesitate, momentarily dizzied by the empty expanse.

  There’s nowhere else to go.

  But that isn’t going to stop me.

  I hurl myself headlong into the margin, bouncing back. I beat myself against the cardboard cover, over and over, until my hands come away bruised. And still I force myself upright again, launching my body against the boundaries of this book.

  Finally, battered, I fall backward on the frontispiece.

  My fists leave smudges of blood on the vast white surface.

  I stare up at the sky, at nothing.

  After a moment I come up on my elbows, still panting. I flex my aching fingers. I watch the bruises fade. I watch my blood vanish, as if it never existed.

  As if I never existed.

  All the world’s a stage, but actors aren’t the only ones who play roles.

  Even when you’re not following a script, you might as well be. You don’t behave the same way in front of everyone. You know what makes your friends laugh, and what makes your parents proud, and what makes your teachers respect you—and you have a different persona for each of them.

  Given all these performances . . . how do you ever know who you really are?

  Well, you have to find that rare someone for whom you’re not putting on a show. Someone who shines a spotlight in your direction—not because you’re who they need you to be, or who they want you to be . . . just because you’re you.

  DELILAH

  The really crappy thing about being a teenager is that even if you have a legitimate, monumental problem—the sky is falling or the zombie apocalypse has begun or you’ve contracted the plague—you still have to do your geometry homework. So in spite of the fact that I am having possibly the worst Tuesday of my life, and my boyfriend is trapped in a fairy tale, and my best friend is hooking up with his clone, I have to prove that two triangles are congruent.

  The way I am selling this to myself is a promise: if I finish this proof, I will let myself take an hour to talk to Oliver before I have to drag myself away to write an essay about the fall of Troy.

  Suddenly the door of my bedroom slams open. I turn, scowling, ready to lace into my mom again about privacy—but it’s Jules. “I can’t find him,” she says, completely on edge. “He’s not at home; he’s not answering his phone or his texts; it’s like he’s totally vanished.”

  “Who?”

  She blinks at me. “Edgar? Oh my God. Did you not even notice he wasn’t in school today? Seriously? You’re supposed to be his fake girlfriend.”

  “Maybe he’s just sick. He’s literally been in a bubble for the past three months.”

  “Or,” Jules says, her eyes flicking to the fairy tale on my dresser, “maybe he’s back in the bubble.”

  “What? No he’s not.”

  “Did you check?”

  “I don’t have to. Oliver’s in there, which means Edgar’s out here.”

  “When was the last time you talked to Oliver?” Jules asks.

  A cold panic settles over me. If Oliver had sprung from the book again, he’d come straight to me. I know he would.

  Wouldn’t he?

  Jules and I both scramble for the book at the same time. I fling it open to a random page—one where Oliver is riding Socks to Orville’s cottage, with his trusty dog trotting along beside them. But I do it so fast that the saddle is facing backward with Oliver in it, and Humphrey has a turkey leg clamped in his jaws that Socks is hissing at him to hide. As soon as they all see my face, however, they relax.

  “Thank goodness it’s you,” Oliver says.

  “Who else would it be?”

  “You’d be sur—”

  “Is Edgar in there?” Jules interrupts.

  “Unfortunately not,” Oliver mutters. “Why?”

  “Ughhh,” Jules groans. “You’re useless.”

  “I beg your pardon. . . .”

  “Sorry,” I murmur. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I lower my voice to a whisper. “She’s having boy problems.”

  I gently close the book, hugging it to my chest. “You seem awfully obsessed with Edgar, given the fact that less than twenty-four hours ago you were on a date with a different guy.”

  “That’s kind of why I need to find him.” Jules flops down on my bed. “I broke things off with Chris today.”

  My eyes widen. “Really?”

  “Chris is great. He’s smart, and funny, and cute. But Edgar told me that if you soak a body in pineapple juice for a week, all the skin will fall off it.”

  “Wow, he sounds dreamy,” I say.

  “He gets me. And he’s wicked hot. Well. You know.” She glances up. “How long till you can break up with him?”

  “How long till the gossip spreads that we’re sister wives?”

  I’m smiling, but I’m also thinking about how it’s going to feel when I watch Jules and Edgar walking down the hallways at school, holding hands. Whispering to each other. Existing in their own little world. As ha
ppy as I am for Jules, I have to admit that it’s going to be hard to see her get everything she’s wanted while I lose everything I had.

  All of a sudden Jules’s phone buzzes. “It’s him,” she breathes. “Finally.” But as she reads the text, her face goes white. She passes me the phone.

  I know we don’t really know WHAT we are, but you’re the closest thing I have to a friend here, and I need you.

  My mom’s in the hospital . . . and I just don’t know what to do.

  Jules leaps off the bed. “Come on,” she says. “We have to go.”

  I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Jules so rattled before; very little shakes her. But her eyes are dark with worry, and she has a death grip on my arm. I want to be there for my best friend, but I don’t know if it’s my place to show up uninvited in a hospital room. “I . . . don’t know if Edgar would want me there. . . .”

  “You’re his fake girlfriend. You have to be.”

  It’s not until I get in the car that I realize I’m still holding the book.

  Hospitals creep me out. They smell like cleaning fluid and bleach, which you eerily know is just to cover the smell of puke and blood. The lights always flicker. People walk through the halls crying sometimes, and it’s like a scene straight out of a horror movie. I think the reason sick people recover is just so they can get the hell out of there.

  Edgar texted Jules the floor where we’re supposed to meet him. When we get off the elevator, there’s a nurses’ station straight ahead. Jules gets us visitors’ passes, and we walk in silence down the hallway. Just before we reach Jessamyn’s room, Jules turns to me. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to him.”

  “Then don’t say anything,” I tell her. “Just be here so he has someone to talk to.”

  We peer through the open doorway, and both of us abruptly stop.

  Jessamyn is lying in the bed, asleep. She looks tiny, ethereal, like the fairies in Oliver’s book. Like she’s already halfway disappeared.

  The thing about a mom is that she’s always there. She’s the one who rubs your back when you have the flu, who manages to notice you have no clean underwear and does your wash for you, who stocks the refrigerator with all the foods you love without you even having to ask. The thing about a mom is that you never imagine taking care of her, instead of the other way around.

  My mom has worked two jobs most of my life, just to keep us afloat. When she’s not cleaning her clients’ houses, she’s . . . well . . . doing the same thing in our house. I can’t picture her taking a sick day, much less being in a hospital. To be sitting at her bedside, the way Edgar is at his mother’s now, would be like waking up one morning to find that the sky was green and the grass was blue.

  I try to remember the last time I thanked my mom for everything she does for me, and I can’t. With a pang, I resolve to do it as soon as I get home. I guess we all assume that tomorrow we’ll say those words, or hug her just because. I bet Edgar thought that too.

  His arms are folded on the mattress, and his head is pillowed against them. “Edgar,” Jules says, and he looks up.

  He glances at his mom, making sure she’s still sleeping. Then, holding a finger to his lips, he steps into the hall and closes the door gently behind him, leading us into an empty lounge. On the television, SpongeBob is playing, muted, with subtitles.

  Jules throws herself into his arms. “You came,” he says, relieved.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “She fainted,” Edgar says. “Again. And I know you thought she was all better now, and that it was probably nothing.” To my shock, his eyes fill with tears. “But the thing is . . . it wasn’t nothing.”

  The explanation tumbles out in a rush of syllables and grief: Glioblastoma. Neural subtype. Fatal.

  I stare at him. I don’t think there are any words in the English language to express how I feel right now. Edgar’s mother was dying of a brain tumor, and Oliver and I were too selfish to bring him back here to spend time with her.

  “I’m sorry,” I manage to say. “I’m so sorry.”

  “How long?” Jules whispers.

  “Months.” Edgar wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “It could be a little longer if she got chemo and radiation, but it’s only like a stay of execution—it means she gets fifteen months of puking and baldness, and wishing she were dead, before she really is. When my dad died, it took years. It was a living hell. My mom doesn’t want to go through that. She doesn’t want me to go through that.” He buries his face in his hands. “I can’t lose her too,” he whispers. “I’ll be completely alone.”

  What happens to you, if you don’t have parents? Are there even orphanages anymore? Oliver never mentioned any grandparents or uncles or cousins visiting. I think of Edgar rattling around in his house, all by himself, suddenly having to be the grown-up.

  Edgar sinks into a chair. “I can’t stop thinking of all those stupid video games I used to play. My mom would say, ‘Hey, let’s take a walk,’ or, ‘Want to run errands with me?’ I blew her off, every single time. And instead I’d pick up that stupid controller.” He looks up at me. “In a video game, when you die, you get a reboot. You start over. How come real life isn’t like that?”

  I watch Jules fumble for something in her pocket. She takes out a small piece of coral, curved like a J, and rubs her thumb over the edge. Then she looks at me.

  When you’re best friends with someone, you don’t have to speak to know what she’s thinking. You don’t have to hear her cry to know that she’s breaking into a thousand pieces inside. Jules presses the coral into the palm of Edgar’s hand. “Life can be like that,” she says. “Go to the place where you’re invincible.”

  EDGAR

  The conversation about her death was the worst conversation of my life.

  Sit next to me, she said, patting the hospital bed beside her. I’m not going to break.

  It started with a headache that wouldn’t go away. And then, one day, I couldn’t make sense of things. I thought I was hallucinating. I saw a boy who looked like my son . . . but who I just knew wasn’t. The doctors call it Capgras syndrome—when you believe that a close family member has been replaced by an imposter. I went to a psychiatrist first, but he referred me to a neurologist. Someone who could take a look at my brain.

  The MRI found the brain tumor. It’s in the glial cells—they’re sort of the glue of the nervous system. They hold neurons in place, and they supply nutrients and oxygen to the brain. They insulate one neuron from another. And they destroy toxins. Finding out that you have a glioblastoma is kind of like finding out that you have termites eating the structure of your house. They don’t eat the aluminum siding, your plumbing, or your appliances . . . but good luck living in that house.

  As she spoke, I felt like I should have been kicking. I should have been screaming. Turning over tables. Yelling at the top of my lungs. But instead I just felt numb.

  As she spoke, I felt like my mother should have been sobbing, shouting, cursing. Instead she was relating the details in an even voice, as if she had practiced.

  It was like we were having a discussion about something horrific that was happening to two people who were not us.

  The reason we moved from Wellfleet was because the best neurologist in New England happens to be here, at St. Brigid’s. When you were at school, I was at appointments. And I was trying very hard to get the courage to tell you what was happening to me.

  I don’t get it. Why can’t you have surgery? I asked. What about chemo?

  This type of tumor is so similar to normal brain cells that it’s impossible to treat without destroying a lot of healthy cells too. So any medicine or operation is only going to prolong the inevitable. I’m going to die, Edgar. The question is whether I want to spend fifteen months suffering through a treatment that isn’t going to cure me, or if I’d rather have four perfect months with you.

  I swallowed hard.

  Does it hurt? I asked.

  Only when I think
about what I’m missing, my mother said. Cheering for you on your graduation day. Dancing with you at your wedding. Holding my first grandchild. Watching you grow up into a magnificent man.

  But I couldn’t imagine growing up without her there to witness it. I took a deep breath and tried and could only see a great, big blank. I felt like I was going to be sick.

  What happens to me? What am I supposed to do without you?

  Your birthday’s in a week. You’ll be eighteen—which means legally, you’re an adult. You have cousins in California you can live with. You can go to college—your father and I set enough money aside to make sure of it. You’ll go on, and you’ll live a spectacular life.

  What I wanted, in the middle of that conversation, was a do-over. Like when I used to go to the town pool with my mom and practice my somersaults off the diving board and wound up doing belly flops instead. That one doesn’t count! I would yell from the edge of the pool, and she would nod, and I’d start again. I wanted this—this hospital room, this conversation, this reality—to not count. I wanted to go back in time, to before we were in this hospital. Before I went into her office at home. Before I found out her secret.

  I tried to tell her this, but what came out instead was I should have said I love you more.

  I’m your mom, she said. Don’t you think I know?

  I started to cry then. After my dad died, I thought I was safe—that the world could never get that bad again. I figured the worst had already happened and things could only get better from there. But I’d managed to win the suckiest lottery twice: two parents with terminal illnesses. I thought of how I willingly left my mother to go into a stupid book, giving up months I could have spent with her. I thought of how she would tell me to clean my room or take my dirty dishes to the sink and I would tune out, when now I wanted her to keep speaking so I would never forget her voice.

  It’s not fair, I whispered.