Jodi Picoult - Between the lines

“Delilah,” I cry, scrambling toward her. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she mutters, standing up. There are wet splotches on her dress. “But I smell like feet.”

Orville peers down at the mess. “Looks like troll snot. Nasty stuff.”

“For God’s sake, Frump, have you contracted rabies? What’s gotten into you?” I yell.

Suddenly, Orville’s eyes dart upward. “Move!” he bellows. “Take cover!” He dives beneath his workbench, and I shield Delilah with my body as a box teeters on the uppermost shelf. It’s made of cast iron and is wrapped in chains and padlocked. “Don’t let it-”

The box shudders and tumbles to the floor, landing directly between Delilah and Frump and breaking open.

“-fall…” Orville finishes weakly.

Rays of light begin to squeeze through the cracks in the iron box. They form an iridescent hovering ball. Slowly, the sphere begins to shake, and then it violently vibrates, before shooting like a firecracker into the ceiling. Plaster falls on our heads, but the ball of light bounces, ricocheting off the walls and the floor. The more it moves, the more energy it seems to gain.

“What is that thing?” Delilah cries.

“Pandemonium,” Orville says. “You have to stop it before it destroys this place.”

The light whizzes past Seraphima’s cheek, and she shrieks, swatting at it. But she misses, hitting Orville across the face. He falls backward, knocking me to the ground as the light zooms in a spiral over the shelves, shattering every last standing bottle and slicing the hanging herbs off at their stems. It dips into the birdbath, sending up a spray of purple sparks before corkscrewing into the dirt floor, creating a deep black burrow.

For a moment, we all gather our senses, wondering if it’s finished. Orville and I creep closer to the tunnel, peering down.

It explodes like a volcano, zipping past Frump-

Frump?

My trusty, loyal hound is gone. Lying on the floor, quite naked, is a human.

“Frump?” I say, stunned. “Is that you?”

“I didn’t mean to go after you like that, Ollie,” he says, sheepish. “I just got so angry when Seraphima came to me all upset…”

Frump’s voice is the same. His mannerisms are even a bit hangdog. But he’s clearly not who he used to be. “Buddy,” I murmur. “Erm…” I point to his bare bottom.

He looks down, yelps, and grabs the nearest covering he can-a tablecloth sewn with silver stars-which he wraps around his midsection. He’s about my age, wiry and muscular, with shaggy hair the same color his fur had been. “What’s happened?” he whispers, grinning widely as he feels his arms, his hands, his nose.

“Frump?” Seraphima repeats. I see her eyes lock on his the way they’ve always locked on mine, like she cannot bear to turn away.

Behind me I am dimly aware of the Pandemonium still wreaking havoc everywhere it touches down-creating a giant fissure in the center of Orville’s work-table and singeing the tip of his hat.

The curse. The one that turned Frump into a dog must have been reversed, but how?

I turn to Delilah, but it’s too late to warn her as the Pandemonium skitters beneath her feet. As she falls to the ground, I notice the splotches on her dress.

Some combination of the potions and herbs Delilah had squirreled away must have seeped onto Frump when they went tumbling backward. I daresay she couldn’t replicate that accidental spell if she tried. But the end result is that Frump is once again the boy he used to be.

“Oliver!” I turn my attention away from my friend in time to see the Pandemonium rocketing directly toward Delilah.

“Shield yourself!” Orville cries.

It is moving too fast for her to roll out of the way. Delilah looks frantically around for something to block the impact. At the last moment, she grabs an object that is lying within arm’s reach away on the floor. It isn’t until she holds it splayed wide open in front of her face that I realize what it is.

The copy of Between the Lines that I stole from Rapscullio, which must have fallen from my tunic during the scuffle with Frump.

The Pandemonium drives itself full force into the pages of the book, with the spine absorbing its impact. Delilah slams the book shut, trapping the light inside. “Gotcha, sucker,” she says triumphantly, holding the tome against her chest.

The book begins to shudder so hard that Delilah is having trouble keeping it closed. I take a step toward her, hoping to wrest it from her grasp, but before I can, the fairy tale leaps out of her arms and bursts wide. The Pandemonium whooshes upward, rupturing a hole in the roof of Orville’s cottage, so that mud and branches and rock shower down. I shield my eyes and reach for Delilah, to pull her to safety. I can’t quite grasp her, though. Once the book leaves Delilah’s hands, they freeze in position as a thick crack runs the length of her arm. The crack spreads and branches at the shoulders, creeping up her neck, splintering her features-her wide eyes, her open mouth. I see it as if in slow motion-that book tumbling toward the ground until the moment it strikes, and Delilah shatters into a million pieces, vanishing into nothing but dust.

THE FIRST THING I SEE WHEN I OPEN MY EYES is the book, peeking out from beneath my bed, wide open.

I roll from my stomach onto my back and blink at a purple ceiling, with little glow-in-the-dark stars. “My room,” I breathe.

It worked. Our plan worked.

“Well, of course it’s your room,” my mother’s voice floats to me.

I try to sit up, but a hand eases me down. “Take it slow, Delilah,” says a voice that I cannot quite place but that seems familiar.

I look to my left to find Dr. Ducharme standing beside my mother.

My mother sits down on the edge of the bed. “You’ve got a nasty bump on your head,” she says. “You must have fallen when you were trying to reach the box of videos in your closet.”

Wincing, I touch my forehead; it’s tender. “How long have I been gone?”

“Gone?” Dr. Ducharme grins. “Well, you’ve been asleep-but you haven’t gone anywhere. Your mom even got a doctor to make a house call last night to make sure you were all right. And she called me when you started talking in your sleep.”

I struggle to a sitting position. “What was I talking about?”

They exchange a look. “That’s not important,” my mother says. “You need to rest. And you’re going to have a nasty headache.”

I glance over her shoulder and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. On my forehead is a giant goose egg and an impressive bruise.

But I couldn’t have just hit my head. I was in that book with Oliver. I know I was.

I think back to what might have happened. The last I remember, we were at Orville’s cottage, and I’d managed to recapture the Pandemonium. Almost as quickly, my arms had begun to fracture, sprouting fine cracks, like a disintegrating marble statue. Gasping, I grab for my right arm with my left hand.

It’s perfectly intact.

What is going on?

“What day is it?” I ask.

“Tuesday,” my mother replies. “It’s nearly three o’clock.”

“I’m, um, starving…”

“Then we’ll get you something to eat.” She gives me a quick embrace first. “I was so worried you weren’t coming back,” she whispers.

My arms close around her. “Me too,” I murmur.