Off the Page Read online

  “Then how come when I wished to be with Oliver all those times, I didn’t accidentally switch places with Seraphima?” Delilah asks.

  Before any of us can respond, Humphrey wanders to the far corner of the page and begins to lift his leg. “No!” I shout. “For heaven’s sake, Humphrey, we don’t do that here! There are rules in this world.”

  Humphrey’s ears droop. “I’m so sorry. I’ll pack my things and go. Actually, I don’t have any things. I’ll just go. . . .”

  “Wait,” Orville says, his eyes gleaming. “You’re on to something there, my boy. There are rules in this world. And we must play by them, as I’ve said before. Yet in a story, anything is possible. So the wish must originate here.”

  I try to make a mental list of everything we’ve covered so far: If two people switch and only one of them has consented, there has to be an aid involved—a cookie, a portal, a spell, a magic lip gloss. If, on the other hand, two people want to switch, having given mutual consent, that can happen without any physical shortcut. All it takes is the power of the wish.

  I look up at Edgar. “Your mother talked to me. But did she believe you when you told her you lived inside this book for four months?”

  “I don’t think so,” Edgar admits. “She thought I was making it all up. She thought you were a hallucination.”

  “If she could be convinced, then from what Orville’s saying, all it would take for us to swap places would be for you, me, your mother, and Queen Maureen to want it desperately.”

  Edgar shakes his head. “That’s not going to happen. She already thinks her mind is playing tricks on her.”

  “Then you must find another one of your special tricks,” Orville says.

  We all fall silent, because we know how much harder that is than it seems. I glance up at Edgar and see the defeat written across his features. I think of Frump and how many times each day I wish he were still here: to laugh with me when Socks gets stuck in a mud bog, to marvel as the sunset paints the beach, to help me finish off one of Queen Maureen’s lemon tarts. Edgar has already given up, I realize. He has already started to say goodbye.

  “Right,” I say briskly, stiffening my spine. “We’d best get moving, then. We have a lot of pages to cover if we’re going to find something that will work to save Jessamyn.”

  Edgar shakes his head. “It’s useless.”

  “No it’s not. Even if she’s doubtful, as long as three of us are wishing for the trade, and we have a boost of magic like Seraphima and Frump and Socks had before, when they made a wish, it might work.”

  “But we don’t have time to find that boost of magic,” Edgar says. “Believe me. Jules and I scoured every inch of this narrative.”

  Suddenly it hits me: what if we’re looking not for a what . . . but rather a when?

  “Delilah,” I begin. “When does magic happen in your world?”

  “When you use Photoshop?” she answers.

  “No. I mean, you make wishes all the time. You wished on stars, and on eyelashes, and even once on that strangely shaped bone in the chicken your mother cooked. Does one of those feel a little more lucky than the others?”

  Jules and Delilah glance at each other. “Birthday,” they say simultaneously.

  “When you blow out your candle,” Delilah tells me, “that’s the one wish people believe will come true. There’s this huge buildup, because everyone’s watching you make your wish, and you keep it hidden inside and never say it out loud. Eyelashes and shooting stars are for the little things—the wishes that don’t really matter. Like when you yell out, ‘Wish me good luck!’ You know it won’t make a difference, but you say it anyway. Your birthday wish, though—that’s the one you think actually might happen.”

  “What did you wish for on your last birthday?” I ask.

  Delilah blushes. “A prince, to sweep me off my feet.”

  “Wow,” Socks breathes, impressed. “That’s pretty close.”

  “It’s my birthday next week,” I announce.

  “It was my birthday first,” Edgar mutters.

  “I may be eternally sixteen, chronologically younger than Edgar, but I still celebrate the occasion. We all do, in here. We just never grow older.

  “Don’t you see?” I tell him. “It’s perfect. If we both ask at the same time, on the same birthday, for the same thing, surely that will be a big enough wish to bring both you and Jessamyn here.”

  I’m quite chuffed to have figured this out—in the presence of a wizard, no less—but Edgar doesn’t seem enthusiastic.

  “And if it isn’t,” he says quietly, “it will be the last birthday I have with my mom.”

  I straighten, looking Edgar in the eye. “Then we’d best make sure it works,” I tell him.

  Queen Maureen is pruning the roses in the royal garden when I find her. I snap a rose from its stem and hand it to her gallantly. “A beauty for a beauty,” I say, turning on the full force of my charm.

  If I’m going to convince this woman to give up everything she’s ever known, I’d better be at the top of my game.

  “Let me guess,” Maureen says. “You broke another dish?”

  “Do you truly think that’s the only reason I might come to see your lovely face today? It might be a surprise for you to hear, but I actually enjoy being in your company.”

  She smirks. “I’m betting on the broken plate.”

  I sink down on a marble bench. “Then you’ll lose your wager,” I say. “Although I do want to talk to you about something.”

  “Ah, you see,” she replies, snipping a dead branch. “I knew it. Mother’s intuition.”

  “About that . . .” I take a deep breath. “You’ve said you consider me to be a son. And I’ve always thought of you as my mother. I don’t think family has to be related by blood, do you? Don’t you think family is the people who love you the most?”

  “Of course,” Maureen says.

  “And . . . well . . . if your son was going to move away, you’d want to go with him, wouldn’t you?”

  Maureen rolls her eyes. “I’ve told you before, you can’t live above the cobbler’s shop on page three. It’s not seemly for a prince, and it doesn’t make sense to haul a bed out there when you have a perfectly grand one in the castle.”

  “I don’t want to move to page three. I want to live in the real world.” I pause. “With you.”

  “Me? In the real world?” Queen Maureen chokes on a laugh. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to live there.”

  “That’s why you’ll have me.”

  Her eyes find mine. “Is this about your Delilah?”

  “Not this time,” I confess. “It’s about a boy who’s going to lose his mother. And if we switch with them, well, I believe he won’t have to.”

  “That’s tragic,” Maureen says. She sinks down beside me on the marble bench. “But why would you think that some ordinary woman and her son might be able to come inside here? You’ve seen how the other strangers were forced out.”

  “This isn’t an ordinary woman,” I explain. “This is Jessamyn Jacobs. She wrote this story.”

  Queen Maureen is silent for a moment. She plucks the petals from the rose in her hand, one by one, letting them float to the ground. She stops before she picks the final petal, and places the stem between us. “She gave me life,” Maureen says softly. “It’s the least I can do for her.”

  So much has happened today that I’m not sure I will get a chance to speak to Delilah alone tonight. But then, shortly after the last star appears in the sky, there is a seam of light along the spine of the book and I feel myself being drawn toward our usual page.

  “Hi,” she says softly.

  “Hello.” I can’t stop smiling at her. It’s as if all the awful truth I’ve learned today has only served to remind me of how lucky I am to have found her. “So, you’d best have a spectacular birthday gift for me.”

  “You don’t know it’s going to work,” Delilah says.

  “You don’