Off the Page Read online

  I used to be, that’s for sure. The old Edgar would have looked at competition like Chris and given up, assuming that he had no chance with Jules.

  But I’m not the old Edgar.

  I pull Delilah into my arms. “Have I told you how beautiful you are today?”

  Delilah looks at me, puzzled. Are you on crack? she mouths.

  Chris laughs. “Get a room, you two.”

  I can feel the heat of Jules’s gaze as if she could set me on fire through sheer force of will. She turns, faking a stumble so that Chris will catch her. “Wow,” she says, feeling his biceps. “How many push-ups can you do, again?”

  “How many do you want me to do?” Chris replies, grinning.

  “Are you going to take your turn?” I snap at Jules.

  “I don’t know,” she says testily. “Chris, I need your help. . . .”

  As soon as she bends over, taking her stance, Chris spoons himself around her. “Ready? One . . . two . . .”

  As he counts down, I pull Delilah close. On three, I start to kiss her. Deeply. Passionately. Wishing every second that she were Jules—who swings at the ball and sends it flying over the fence into traffic.

  Delilah stumbles backward. “What the hell—” She breaks off, realizing that Jules and Chris are staring at us. “—did you stop for?” she finishes feebly.

  Chris grins at Jules. “Maybe for your next turn you don’t have to go full Hulk,” he says.

  After Delilah smashes the ball—almost as angrily as Jules did—we move on to the next hole.

  “You know what I never asked?” Chris muses. “How did you two meet?”

  Delilah and I look at each other, briefly panicked. She opens her mouth to explain, but I cut her off. “Babe, let me.” I meet Jules’s gaze. “She was helping me find something I’d lost,” I begin. “We were searching everywhere. Through a field, in the ocean, on a boat. Finally we gave up and just lay on the beach, stargazing.”

  Jules’s cheeks turn pink.

  “So did you find it?” Chris asks.

  “Find what?”

  “The thing you lost?”

  “Oh, yeah. My, um, car keys. They were in my pocket the whole time.”

  “Sounds like fate kicking in,” Chris says.

  “Doesn’t it?” I ask pointedly.

  For a long moment, Jules glares at me. Then she announces, “I’m going to go to the bathroom,” and stalks off.

  “And I’ll help you find it,” I say, hot on her heels.

  I follow Jules into the ladies’ room and lock the door behind me.

  “What are you doing?” she cries. “You’re screwing everything up.”

  “I’m screwing everything up? ‘How many push-ups can you do, Chris? Your biceps are so big I can barely wrap my hands around them!’ ”

  “I’m surprised you noticed, since you were so busy making out with my best friend!” Jules yells. “You can’t just walk into my life and assume I’m going to drop everything that came before you.”

  “You think it’s easy watching the girl I’m crazy about flirting with another guy?”

  Jules shoves me. “You’re the one who agreed to this date.”

  I shove her back, pinning her against the wall. “Yeah—so I could spend time with you.”

  “Then you’re a moron!” Jules shouts.

  “So are you!” I shout back.

  There is one breathless, furious beat of silence between us, and then suddenly her hands are all over me and mine are tangled in her hair, and I’m kissing her in a frenzy of lips and teeth and heat, like I could devour her.

  When we come up for air, my arms are still on either side of Jules, as if I’ve caged her. She smooths her hair into place and straightens her shirt. “We’d better be getting back,” she says, and she pushes me aside, opening the bathroom door.

  Maybe this day isn’t a total wash.

  I give her a few moments before I walk out of the bathroom too. I’ve only just turned the corner when I see Chris at the counter, picking up a replacement ball for the one Jules sent into the stratosphere. “Hey,” he says, smiling. “This date is totally working.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I reply.

  Delilah drives me home after minigolf. For five whole minutes she doesn’t speak. Then, at a red light, she turns to me. “Do not ever, ever do that again.”

  “You’re giving me really mixed signals here,” I point out. “Am I or am I not supposed to act like your boyfriend?”

  “Oh please. You and I both know that act wasn’t for me.”

  My face falls. “It’s really hard to finally find someone who totally gets me and then have her ripped away from me.”

  Delilah sighs. “You’re preaching to the choir, Edgar.”

  “If sending them back into the book was the right thing, how come we’re all so miserable?”

  “I guess doing the right thing sometimes means not getting what you want,” Delilah says. “At least you’re in the same world. You get to see her, face to face. You and Jules, you’re still possible.”

  I think about this for a moment. “Have you talked to him?”

  She takes a deep breath and nods, looking pained. “I can’t not talk to him. But when I do, it feels like I’m tearing out my heart.”

  I glance at Delilah. I haven’t really considered how much worse this must be for her.

  She pulls up to the curb near my driveway.

  “Sorry I kissed you,” I say.

  “Sorry I’m not Jules.”

  I open the passenger door and step outside but then lean back down. “Hey, Delilah?” I say. “I know you’re not really my girlfriend. But I’m awfully glad you’re my friend.”

  She smiles a little. “See you tomorrow, Edgar.”

  My mother’s car is in the driveway, but the house is empty. She’s not in the kitchen getting dinner ready. She’s not in the living room watching the five o’clock news. “Mom?” I call, heading upstairs to her bedroom, and I knock on the door, but there’s no answer. Gently I turn the knob to find her bed impeccably made.

  She’s not in the bathroom or in my room either. Walking down the hall, I peek inside her office.

  Papers are strewn across my mother’s desk, some highlighted, some with red circles, and some with sticky notes along their sides. Since she’s not there, I’m about to close the door behind me, when I notice the spines on a stack of books:

  Brain Tumors in Adults

  The Last Walk: A Practical Approach to Preparing for the End of Life

  Hope Is Where the Heart Is: A Guide to Beating Cancer

  Tucked into the top one, like a bookmark, is a brochure: ST. BRIGID MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, NEW ENGLAND’S LEADER IN CANCER RESEARCH & NEUROLOGY.

  I break into a sweat, and my knees start to shake. My mom said she’s editing a time-travel novel; why would she need any of these?

  I walk toward the desk as if a live grenade might be inside it. Scattered across the top are printouts of the kind of articles only doctors can read, filled with jargon. I pick up the one on top.

  CAPGRAS SYNDROME WITH RIGHT FRONTAL MENINGIOMA, I read.

  Abstract: A forty-seven-year-old woman with a right frontal parasagittal meningioma who developed the delusion that her husband had been replaced by a look-alike pretending to be her spouse. This type of delusion involves a compromise of the fusiform gyrus, the mechanism in the brain that allows facial recognition. Although historically patients with such delusions have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, we suggest that the cause may be biological and part of the tumor’s pathology, as evidenced by the fact that postsurgery, the patient experienced a termination of the delusion.

  I squint, as if that might make me understand the jumble of words better. Imagine what would happen if you woke up one morning and the son you knew better than anyone else looked exactly the same—but acted like a British prince. You’d look for an explanation, and the thought that your son switched places with a character in a fairy tale would clearly no