Off the Page Read online

  Frump whimpers.

  “What should you do with Seraphima?” Orville repeats.

  Oliver frowns. “Am I the only one here who doesn’t speak Dog?”

  “I suppose I’d just try to keep her from getting into too much trouble,” Orville continues, and he grins at Oliver. “I believe you have a bit of experience doing just that, Ollie, don’t you?”

  Oliver gently closes the book as Frump scratches at the door to get out, no doubt so that he can take up guard duty outside the bathroom. “Oliver,” I say, “we can’t do this. A strange girl—emphasis on the strange—can’t just show up in my room without raising some suspicions. And what am I supposed to tell Jules’s mom?”

  Oliver reaches for Jules’s iPhone, plugged in and charging. “Why can’t Jules tell her?” he asks. “Do that thing you do, with this.”

  “You’re brilliant.” I grab the phone from his hands and text Jules’s mom.

  Can I stay over at Delilah’s for the whole weekend?

  I hold my breath, waiting for a response. A moment later, there’s a ding.

  Did you finish all your hw?

  YUP, I type. J

  DON’T STAY UP TOO LATE.

  “There,” Oliver says. “One problem solved.”

  “Only temporarily. I bought us two days. But what if Jules isn’t back by then?”

  “She will be,” he says, reassuring me.

  “And Seraphima? How am I supposed to explain to my mother why Jules and some delusional princess have exchanged places?”

  Suddenly an idea dawns. It’s a long shot, but maybe I can convince my mother—and everyone else—that Seraphima is a visiting exchange student. It would go a long way toward explaining her lack of knowledge about, well, everything in an American household.

  I turn to Oliver. “We’re going to tell everyone she’s from another country.”

  “Which one?”

  I think for a moment. What language would people be least likely to know? The last thing I want is someone attempting to communicate with Seraphima in her so-called mother tongue. “Iceland,” I decide.

  Oliver nods. “That almost sounds real.”

  “That’s because it is.”

  From the hallway comes a bark, and then, “Yoo-hoo! Delilah! I’m ready to be toweled dry!”

  I glance at Oliver. “I’m not doing it. I absolutely, categorically refuse.”

  He bites his lower lip. “Of course. Well, I suppose I could help her—”

  I shove him so hard he staggers backward. “Not on your life,” I answer. At the threshold, I turn around. “She’d better be gone by Monday.”

  When Oliver leaves for the night to go home, my mother is still out on her date with Dr. Ducharme, buying me a little more time to perfect my story before I have to introduce Seraphima to her. I’ve let Seraphima borrow my robe to wear over her thin shift, and I’ve had the dubious pleasure of brushing her hair one hundred strokes with what I insisted was definitely a 100 percent boar-bristle brush like the one she has in her tower, and not a one-dollar comb from a drugstore.

  “All right,” I announce. “It’s time to go to bed.” I lift the sleeping bag Jules brought over and hand it to her, but it falls right through her arms. With a sigh, I unroll the sleeping bag perpendicular to my bed. “There you go,” I say, gesturing to the makeshift mattress.

  Seraphima delicately lifts her cotton gown, stepping gingerly onto the purple sleeping bag as if it’s a red carpet. She walks the length of it and then promptly crawls into my bed. “This is lovely,” she says, pulling the covers to her chin.

  “Lovely,” I mutter. I slip into the sleeping bag just in time for Frump to use me as a springboard to jump onto the bed beside Seraphima.

  “Try to get a good night’s rest,” I say.

  “Oh, I always do,” Seraphima replies earnestly. “Beauty sleep is critical. You sleep well too,” she says, glancing at me. “It looks like you’ve missed a few hours.”

  Frump yowls, curling at her feet.

  “You’re so sweet,” Seraphima says to him. “But I’m sure I could be more beautiful if I tried.”

  There’s another yelp, and a soft bark. Seraphima giggles.

  “Of course I remember. You had the fairies spell my name in the sky. And you had Queen Maureen make my favorite apple tart, but you didn’t tell her you’d stolen the apples from Rapscullio’s orchard.” She reaches down and absently starts patting Frump’s head. “What about the time I made you that biscuit for your birthday but I overcooked it into a pile of ash, and you still ate the whole thing because you didn’t want me to feel bad?”

  He waddles up the mattress until he is closer to Seraphima’s face and licks her cheek. She blushes fiercely.

  “You’ve always been so good to me, Frump,” Seraphima whispers. “How come I didn’t see it until you were gone?”

  Frump whimpers softly, and she shakes her head.

  “The way you looked never mattered to me. I always knew, you know. That it was you who lined my slippers up at the edge of my bed, and who made me breakfast, and who tidied my closet and washed my linens. So you’re a dog. So what. You make me feel like the princess I always wanted to be.”

  Although I probably shouldn’t be eavesdropping, I can’t help but smile. They sound the way Oliver and I did, when he was still trapped in the book, and I would talk to him for hours beneath my covers. To anyone else listening it might have sounded like a one-sided conversation, but we knew better.

  I fall asleep to the thump of Frump’s tail, the sound of pure happiness.

  The sun has barely broken over the horizon when I’m awakened by the sound of someone singing in an earsplitting soprano.

  “Welcome, welcome, big bright sun. . . . Oh, this day will be such fun. . . . Come to sing me their hellos . . . little birds with little toes!”

  I crack open an eye to see Seraphima dancing—literally dancing—around my bedroom. “What are you doing? It’s six-thirty freaking a.m. On a Sunday.”

  “Oh, good morning, serf. I was just greeting the new day!” She flutters to the window and presses her palms to the glass. “It’s the loveliest morning!”

  I put a pillow over my head. “It’s still night. Go back to bed, Seraphima. Let’s do this all over again in four hours.”

  “You are wrong. A lady rises with the sun. . . .” Seraphima sits down at my desk, trilling her lips in rising and falling scales. It is quite possibly the most annoying sound on the face of the earth.

  “What. Are. You. Doing,” I grit out.

  “If I don’t warm up, how do you expect me to sing all day?”

  “I don’t expect you to sing all day!” I yell.

  When I raise my voice, Frump growls, and Seraphima nods. “I know. She is being excessively loud.”

  “I’m being loud,” I repeat.

  She puts her hands under the curtain of her pale blond hair and fans it out over her shoulders. “So I’m thinking I’d like a bun, wrapped in a braid. Maybe accented with a few flowers.”

  I slip out of the sleeping bag and gather her hair in my hands. “Ponytail it is,” I say.

  “This is completely unacceptable,” Seraphima says. “I’m telling Oliver you’re poorly suited as a housemaid. You’d do much better in a stable.”

  That’s it. I lunge for Seraphima, and for a second I think I might get a slug in, but Frump grabs the back of my T-shirt with his teeth and hauls me back.

  Seraphima throws the window sash up and leans halfway out. “Welcome, welcome, big bright sun—”

  I slam the window shut. “No! You might have grown up in a tower, but us peasants? We have neighbors.” I sigh. “Let’s get you dressed.”

  Frump is suddenly alert. I exchange a look with Seraphima and then drag Frump by his collar out the bedroom door, leaving him in the hall. I open my dresser and pull out a bra and underwear. “Try these on,” I suggest.

  Seraphima looks at me and then reaches for the bra, draping it over her ponytail and latchi