Off the Page Read online

  Meet Oliver, a prince literally taken from the pages of a fairy tale and transported into the real world. Meet Delilah, the girl who wished Oliver into being. It's a miracle that seems perfect at first - but there are complications. To exist in Delilah's world, Oliver must take the place of a regular boy. Enter Edgar, who agrees to play Oliver's role in the pages of Delilah’s favourite book. But just when it seems that the plan will work, everything gets turned upside down.

  In this multilayered universe, the line between what is on the page and what is possible is blurred, but all must be resolved for the characters to live happily ever after.

  Off the Page is a tender and appealing romantic novel filled with humour, adventure and magical relationships.

  ALSO BY JODI PICOULT AND SAMANTHA VAN LEER

  Between the Lines

  NOVELS BY JODI PICOULT

  Leaving Time

  The Storyteller

  Lone Wolf

  Sing You Home

  House Rules

  Handle with Care

  Change of Heart

  Nineteen Minutes

  The Tenth Circle

  Vanishing Acts

  My Sister’s Keeper

  Second Glance

  Perfect Match

  Salem Falls

  Plain Truth

  Keeping Faith

  The Pact

  Mercy

  Picture Perfect

  Harvesting the Heart

  Songs of the Humpback Whale

  First published in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin in 2015

  First published in the United States in 2015 by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House

  Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Copyright © Text, Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer 2015

  Copyright © Cover art, Su Blackwell 2015; photograph by Christine Blackburne

  Copyright © Full-colour illustrations, Yvonne Gilbert 2015

  Copyright © Black-and-white illustrations, Scott M. Fischer 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74343 998 2

  eISBN 978 1 92526 743 3

  Cover design by Alison Impey

  Cover adaptation by Julia Eim

  Cover photo by Christine Blackburne

  Text design by Stephanie Moss

  TO KYLE AND JAKE:

  Mom says I’m her favorite. You’re okay.

  Love, Sammy

  TO KYLE AND JAKE:

  Sammy’s lying. You’re ALL my favorites.

  Love, Mom

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  DELILAH

  OLIVER

  EDGAR

  OLIVER

  DELILAH

  EDGAR

  OLIVER

  EDGAR

  PART TWO

  DELILAH

  OLIVER

  EDGAR

  OLIVER

  DELILAH

  EDGAR

  OLIVER

  DELILAH

  EDGAR

  OLIVER

  DELILAH

  EDGAR

  DELILAH

  OLIVER

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  PART ONE

  Just because you’ve picked up this book, you know, doesn’t mean it belongs to you.

  Quite a lot went on before you even arrived. There was a spark of an idea one day, which ignited into a fire of imagination. Each lick of flame burned a line of text, spreading from chapter to chapter.

  And where were you? Probably in some other book, not even aware that this was happening someplace in the universe.

  From this blaze came smoke, and from that smoke came silhouettes, marching across the pages, each with a voice to be heard. As they spoke, their edges grew sharper and more defined. Their features rose to the surface. And soon they were characters in their own right.

  They picked up the lines that had been laid across the page and carried them on their shoulders, wrapped them around their waists, tugged and twisted, and became the story.

  And still you weren’t here.

  Then one day you reached onto a shelf, and out of all the books in the world, you chose this one.

  Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not as if you’re not important. For the moment you opened this tale, your mind awakened the characters. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it really fall? If a character sits in a book and no one reads it, is he truly alive? As your eyes moved across the pages, as you heard the story in your head, the characters moved for you, spoke for you, felt for you.

  So you see, it’s quite difficult to know who owns a story. Is it the writer, who crafted it? The characters, who carry the plot forward? Or you, the reader, who breathes life into them?

  Or perhaps none of the three can exist without the other.

  Perhaps without this magical combination, a story would be nothing more than words on a page.

  DELILAH

  I’ve been waiting my whole life for Oliver, so you’d think another fifteen minutes wouldn’t matter. But it’s fifteen minutes that Oliver is alone on a bus, unmonitored, for the first time, with the most ruthless, malicious, soul-sucking creatures on earth: high school students.

  Going to high school is a little like being told you have to get up each morning and run headlong at sixty miles an hour into the same brick wall. Every day, you’re forced to watch Darwin’s principle of survival of the fittest play out: evolutionary advantages, like perfect white teeth and gravity-defying boobs, or a football team jacket keep you from falling prey to the demons that grow to three times their size when they feed on the fear of a hapless freshman and bully him to a pulp. After years of public school, I’ve gotten pretty good at being invisible. That way, you’re less likely to become a target.

  But Oliver knows none of this. He has always been the center of attention. He’s even more undeveloped socially than the boy who enrolled last year after nine years of being homeschooled in a yurt. Which is why I’m actually breaking a sweat, imagining everything Oliver could be doing wrong.

  At this point, he’s probably ten minutes into a story about the first dragon he ever encountered—and while he might think it’s a great icebreaker, the rest of the bus will either peg him as the new druggie in town, who puts ’shrooms in his breakfast omelet, or as one of those kids who run around speaking Elvish, wearing homemade cloaks, with foam swords tucked into their belts. Either way, that kind of first impression is one that sticks for the rest of your life.

  Believe me, I know.

  I’ve spent my entire school career as that girl. The one who wrote VD Rocks! on all her second-grade valentines and who literally walked into a wall once while reading a book. The one who recently reaffirmed her subterranean spo