Jodi Picoult - Between the lines

This makes me cry even harder, as I think about how frantic my mom must be by now. During our car ride I had checked the messages on my cell phone; I stopped listening at number twenty-three.

Jessamyn leads me to a couch. “I’m going to go get a glass of water for you,” she says. “And then we’ll figure out what to do next.”

She leaves the room, and I take deep breaths, trying to calm myself down enough to at least be capable of opening the book and telling Oliver it’s over.

I hear footsteps and look up, but it’s not Jessamyn returning from the kitchen. Instead, standing in the doorway that leads to the front hall, is Oliver.

At first I think I am hallucinating. But then he glances at me. I would know those eyes anywhere. “Hey,” he says.

Leaping up, I throw my arms around him. “Oliver! How did you get here?”

He shoves me backward, looking at me as if he’s never seen me in his life. “I walked downstairs,” he says. “And the name’s Edgar.”

My jaw drops just as Jessamyn enters, carrying a tall glass of water. She glances from Oliver to me. “Delilah,” she says, “I see you’ve met my son.”

And at that moment, everything goes black.

I’m not a fainter. I’m unfazed by the sight of blood, and I can watch horror movies without wincing. And granted, I apparently took a massive conk to my head when I fell yesterday-and then traveled 230 miles without eating anything but Cheetos. But all the same, I’m pretty embarrassed to find myself lying on a stranger’s couch with a cold, wet washcloth on my head and a boy who looks just like Oliver but isn’t, staring down at me with absolute revulsion. “You’re drooling,” he says.

Mortified, I wipe my hand across my mouth.

“She’s awake,” Not-Oliver says. “Can I go now?”

He is speaking to Jessamyn, who carries a bowl of soup from the kitchen. Why does everyone keep feeding me soup?

“Thanks for watching her, Edgar,” Jessamyn says.

“Whatever,” Edgar replies. He rolls his eyes and trudges out of the room.

“All right.” Jessamyn sits on the edge of the couch. “It’s time to tell me the truth. Are you in trouble, Delilah? Did you run away from home?”

“No!” I answer. “I mean, I did run away, but only temporarily. Only to find you. ” I take the bowl she offers me. Broccoli cheddar. It smells delicious.

“And I’m guessing you have a mother somewhere who has no idea where you are right now?”

I can feel my cell phone vibrate in my pocket with yet another message. “Um,” I say. “Yeah.”

Jessamyn hands me the phone. “Call her.”

Reluctantly, I dial the numbers. It hasn’t even rung once when my mother picks up.

“Hi, Mom!” I say, as cheerful as possible.

I have to hold the phone away from my ear as she shouts at me in reply. Wincing, I wait till there’s a break in the wall of sound and speak again. “I’m really sorry-”

“Delilah Eve, do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? Where are you? What were you thinking ?!”

“I just had to do something and I knew you wouldn’t let me leave if I asked first.”

“Tell me where you are. I’m going to come get you. And then I’m going to ground you for life.”

“I’m kind of in Massachusetts. On Cape Cod.”

There is another torrent of angry sound as my mother yells her response. Again, I hold the phone away from my ear.

“Maybe I can help,” Jessamyn says, and she reaches out her hand for the phone. “Hello? Is this Delilah’s mother? I’m Jessamyn Jacobs.” She hesitates. “Yes. Well, I used to be an author, anyway. Oh, that’s very kind. I’m so glad you were a fan.” Another pause. “Believe me, it was quite a surprise for me too… No, no. It’s far too late for you to make that kind of trip. Why don’t you just let me host Delilah overnight, and you can be here bright and early in the morning. She can stay in our guest room.”

I hear the buzzy warble of my mother’s voice in return, and then Jessamyn gives her an address. She holds the phone out to me when she’s through. “She’d like to speak to you again.”

“Just so we’re on the same page, you are still grounded until you hit menopause,” my mother repeats. “But at least I know you’re not wandering around on a street somewhere at night. You’ve caused this woman a great deal of disruption, so you’d better be the best guest she’s ever had in her home. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Mom,” I mutter. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Delilah?” my mother says.

“Yeah?”

“I love you, you know.”

I look down into my lap. I’ve created so much trouble-for my mother and for Jessamyn Jacobs, all in the hope that I can make the impossible possible and turn a fictional character real. Suddenly, I’m ashamed for being so selfish. “I love you too,” I whisper.

I hang up the phone and hand it back to Jessamyn. “Thank you. For letting me stay here.”

“It’s no problem. It’s nice for Edgar to have someone his age around. He doesn’t make friends very easily.”

I sit up. “Can I ask you a question? How come Oliver looks just like your son?”

“Because he is my son.” Jessamyn looks up at me. “After Edgar’s father died, he was so afraid of everything. I wanted to create a role model for him-someone who maybe wasn’t the bravest or strongest boy in the kingdom but who managed to always triumph by using his brain. Edgar was younger then-I had to imagine the boy I thought he’d grow up to look like-and that was how I painted Oliver.”

“Well, they’re identical.”

“Not really,” Jessamyn says. “Edgar never became the Oliver I hoped he would.” She smiles, a little sadly. “I wasn’t very good at helping Edgar with his grief. I didn’t know how to do that, but I knew how to write books. So I figured I’d try to help him, through what I do best. But when that wasn’t enough, I stopped writing. Instead, I concentrated on learning how to be a better mother.” She shakes her head, as if she’s clearing it, and then pats my shoulder. “Why don’t we get you settled upstairs?”

The guest room is painted the color of a sunset. There is a small wooden bureau and a double bed. Jessamyn leaves me with a stack of fresh towels and a promise to check in on me after I’ve rested for a while.

It’s weird, having no luggage to unpack. I sit on the edge of the bed and look around the room. There are framed photos on the walls of a baby who keeps getting progressively older. This, I realize, is Edgar-but I find myself drawn to the walls, touching the glass on the photos, thinking that this is what Oliver would have looked like when he was two, when he was four, when he rode his first horse, when he learned how to swim.

Suddenly, I really miss Oliver. I unzip my backpack and pull out the book. It falls open to page 43.

“It’s her, it’s really her! Delilah, you amazing girl, you did it!” He is so happy that it hurts me to look at him.

“Oliver,” I whisper. “She won’t change the ending.”

His face falls. “Maybe there’s a way for me to talk to her.”

“Even if she could hear you, she wouldn’t do it. She wrote this book for her son. She’s not going to make any changes. It means too much to her personally.”

“She has a son?” Oliver says. “Have you met him? Maybe he can convince her.”

“Yeah, I’ve met him.”

“Well, what’s he like?”

“He could be your twin,” I say.