Off the Page by Jodi Picoult & Samantha van Leer

Author:Jodi Picoult & Samantha van Leer [Leer, Jodi Picoult & Samantha van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2015-04-27T16:00:00+00:00

When you love someone, silence isn’t awkward. Delilah sits next to me, her arms wrapped tightly around me, and neither of us speaks. I was born in a sea of words, I lived and breathed language, but right now, this quiet is the most comfortable place in the world.

When Delilah’s mother comes home, she spends an hour outside at Frump’s grave with Dr. Ducharme’s arm around her. Seraphima retires just after supper, saying she has a headache, although I know it is just the day’s events that have overwhelmed her. For the first time since I came to the house this morning, I find myself alone with Delilah in her room, with a Herculean task ahead of me.

“Are you ready?” Delilah asks as she pulls the fairy tale from her shelf.

I take a deep breath and open the book to the final page.

The entire cast of characters stands in position on Everafter Beach, in an odd mash-up of fairy tale and science fiction. The mermaids swim in the shallows; Captain Crabbe steers a spacecraft; the trolls are shooting lasers from behind a barricade. Edgar stands with his sword raised high in victory. Beside him, Jules is pulling at the chafing neck of her princess gown. As soon as she sees our faces, she relaxes. “I told you guys it would be Delilah and Oliver,” she says. “Now can I get out of this corset?”

But I’m not focusing on her words. My eyes fall to the spot where Frump would have stood and where, instead, Humphrey now holds a laser gun in his jaw.

“Whoa, boy,” Edgar says, grabbing the gun as the dog swings it wildly back and forth. “That’s not a toy.” He glances up at me. “And before you ask, no, we haven’t found another portal yet. But maybe if you stopped interrupting us by opening the book, we could actually get some work—”

“That’s not why I called you here.” I swallow. “I don’t know how to say this. . . .”

Delilah covers my hand with hers where it rests on the edge of the page. “It’s Frump.”

“He . . . he’s dead,” I manage to say.

Queen Maureen blinks up at me. “For goodness’ sake, darling. That happens to Rapscullio every day. Just close the book.”

“I don’t live in a book anymore,” I reply. “And neither did Frump, when he died. It’s different here. There are no second chances. It’s . . . permanent.”

A cloud of shock settles over the cast. “What if we bring him back here?” Socks asks. “Maybe he just needs to be back in the book?”

“It doesn’t work that way, my boy,” Orville answers. “When you’re in a given world, you must play by its rules. Frump can’t die out there and be resurrected here.”

One of the mermaids starts to cry, and then another, and then the third, and the tide begins to rise. Pyro exhales a plume of white smoke. Socks sits down heavily on his rump. “But he was my friend,” the horse wails.

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