The Fantastic Fable of Peter Able

by Natalie Grigson

  “Oh, of course! I mean, no, of course not! No, nothing new. You know, I think you may have been right, Peter. Looking through your series over and over isn’t going to reveal my wife’s whereabouts. If I want to find Gail, I need to go out there and do some investigating of my own.”

  I nodded sagely. I was still less than thrilled with what I knew about Gail so far, regardless of whether or not she really was the Mrs. G. Potts in my books, but I reminded myself, once again, that finding her was important to Randy, and Randy was important to me. Besides, I was grateful at the prospect of never having to look at one of my books again, so I may have gone a little overboard with my response.

  “Great, Randy! I’ll help you! I may have bombed Mystery, but how hard can it be? We can do some detective work together without my old books! It will be so fun!” I gushed.

  At that, Randy made a strange yelping noise and his cheeks flushed crimson. Cursing myself, I got up to give him the Heimlich, but then I realized he hadn’t choked on anything, and I also didn’t know the Heimlich.

  “Fun!” Randy finally sputtered, loosening his collar. “Yes! Fun! We’ll do that. Okay. Fantasy tomorrow then, Peter? Sounds like a lot of work. Time for bed, I think!” Randy continued tugging at his collar as he dashed to his bedroom and closed the door. It was only 8:30.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next morning I woke up five minutes before my alarm went off. The sun was shining through my open window and the birds were singing gleefully, harmonizing with the last screams from Thriller. Despite Randy’s latest odd little exit scene, I was feeling rather positive.

  The Fantasy group would meet in the school’s cafeteria, and I’d been told to “come prepared . . . for anything!” So I practiced a few old spells on the way to campus. I brought my wand, of course, and I also stuffed some simple sleeping potions and a few packets of fire powder into my pockets.

  But despite my preparations, I was not ready for this. Instead of a cafeteria transformed into a dark labyrinth, or a beautiful fairyland, or even a dining room with fantastically clean surfaces, the room was just . . . a cafeteria.

  The long wooden tables were pushed up against the walls of the room, and the walls stretched up and up until they met with the ceiling, which was not covered in stars or anything exciting, but instead adorned with simple, sturdy wooden arches, like in a nave. The floor was dark wood, though I could hardly see it for all of the Fantastical Creatures packing the room. They were various degrees of blurry and dull—many, I’d quickly learn, didn’t just look dull—and as they milled about, speaking together in subdued voices, the room seemed almost funereal.

  There were several rather nondescript giants, most about half the height of the room, but some, probably from the mountains up north, had to crouch to miss the arches on the ceiling. They were mostly clustered in the back of the cafeteria, peering down at us smaller folk nervously, like a group of elephants at a mouse convention.

  There were dragons, too. I watched as they moved around, in groups no larger than two or three, slashing their tails and flapping their wings impressively. They were all of the colors of the earth—greens, browns, reds, and even a beautiful blue one. She looked like she had crawled straight out of the ocean. Her hind feet were webbed and floppy, and her neck was long and elastic-looking. She flapped inelegantly in between gnomes and centaurs who scattered about indignantly but then would regroup and go back to doing, well, nothing really. In fact, nobody was really doing anything. Nobody was fighting to the death; nobody was magically dueling; and nobody seemed to be engaged in any sort of test. Like I said, most of the people (using the term loosely here) were just milling about, shaking hands, and talking quietly. Dull.

  I shook my head, forcing my eyes away from the ho-hum scene of Fantastical Creatures and people, and walked up to a long table near the entrance where a very small boy sat, barely peering over the wooden surface.

  “Excuse me, young man, is this where we’re supposed to meet to try out the Fantasy genre?”

  The little guy stood up on his chair and puffed out his chest imperiously.

  “Who are you calling a young man?” the hobbit asked in a booming voice, stamping his furry foot. “I’m thirty-five. How old are you?”

  I stammered an apology, and to my bewilderment, he started laughing at me.

  “I’m just messing with you, man. Happens all the time.” He clambered right onto the table and picked up a miniature clipboard covered in tiny writing. He asked for my name, and after a moment of searching, he checked me from his list and handed me a name tag: Peter Able: Boy Wizard.

  “Welcome to Fiction Academy’s Fantasy genre,” he said, gesturing to the huge room beyond. “Before you leave today, you will select a total of eighteen hours of classes in any combination for the semester. If you have any questions about course selection—”

  “Wait. I thought there was some kind of test involved here. Don’t I have to do anything?” I asked, trying to think of some way to avoid putting on the name tag.

  The hobbit looked behind me where a line was beginning to form. He sighed impatiently and beckoned me to lean closer.

  “Listen, Peter, is it?” he asked in a deep whisper. I nodded and pointed dumbly to my name tag. “Okay, Peter, here’s the deal. Testing out the other genres is just kind of a formality for the most part. This is where the majority of the other ex–series wizards end up too, and of course, the ex–series dragons, unicorns, evil warlocks . . . you know the type. Most of us come to Fiction Academy looking for a new niche, to learn some new skills, and we hope to get picked up again! I mean, hardly anyone is written to go to Fiction Academy. What kind of story would that be?”

  The hobbit laughed, surprisingly loudly, and then stopped abruptly. He looked me over critically for a moment and then shook his head as though clearing it. “Guess you must have just been ‘released into the wild,’ as they say. You’re still a bit shiny. No worries. Now go on in there and mingle! There’s a whole group of you over by the vending machines. Next!” The hobbit bellowed to the centaur behind me.

  “Wait,” I said, not moving. “What about those ex–series characters or whatever that do switch genres?”

  The hobbit thought for a moment, his thick brows knitted into a line of concentration.

  “Dynamic characters!” he finally concluded. “Now go on!”

  I made my way past the long table and into the huge room, reluctantly pinning the name tag to my shirt. Toward the back near the vending machines there was a group of huge, trunk-like giant legs and a small gathering of what I assumed were ex-adventurers or ex-heroes or something. It was hard to tell. They looked like a group of regular, forlorn teenagers, but they were even grayer and more indistinct-looking than most people in the room—ghostlike, almost. I stared for a moment until one of the girls looked over and whispered something to her neighbor. Both girls turned toward me, hands on their hips, looking scandalized.

  I smiled feebly and continued on toward the vending machines. Just as the hobbit had said, there was a group of “me” standing nearby. As I approached, I realized that while they weren’t exactly gray and dull-looking, they weren’t all that developed either. It seemed like the hobbit was right—almost everyone in the room was no longer being written, and by the looks of them, hadn’t been in quite some time. Just as I was thinking this, a flash of color caught my eye from the back of the wizard group, but a moment later, someone stepped in front of it and held out his hand.

  I recognized the obstruction from the WA group, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember his name. He was about my height, maybe eighteen or nineteen, and had untidy black hair, thick glasses, and a jagged scar on his face.

  “Hey, Peter,” he said in a nasally voice. I glanced at his name tag covertly.

  “Hey . . . Number Three?”

  My glance hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  “Don’t worry about it, nobody knows who I am. I’m the stunt double. There used to be a Number Two, but after thi
ngs got really hairy in the third book . . . Anyway, you can just call me SD.

  “These are Phil, Willy, and Nilly,” he said, pointing to the three triplets, all with dark brown hair and a generous splattering of freckles on their noses, whom I, of course, recognized from their wildly popular series, The Adventures of Phil, Willy, and Nilly.

  “This is Bob,” SD said, gesturing toward a potted ficus tree. The tree was about a head shorter than me and sprouted up from a red clay pot about the size of a small trashcan. His green lime-shaped leaves looked surprisingly vibrant in the muted room.

  “How do you do,” Bob said, ruffling his leaves.

  He didn’t speak from a mouth that I could see, or even have eyes, a nose, or anything to suggest an expression. I mean, he was a ficus tree (though a particularly well-groomed ficus), but somehow I could sense something a little bit different about him. He was a little more defined than the rest of the group. It was almost as though he were being written at that very moment.

  He shivered his leaves again and swiveled his thin trunk, looking around at his companions.

  “That’s odd. I just had the strangest feeling . . . kind of a tingling, almost like I was being written again for a minute there!” Bob laughed, and I swear his leaves got a little bit brighter, more detailed, as he spoke. Perhaps he had been the flash of color I’d seen when I approached the group.

  “I felt it too,” a girl’s voice said from behind SD. He stepped out of the way, and there she was. She was beautiful. Not in the supermodel, perfectly symmetrical, weirdly ideal proportions type of way (which, let’s face it, only really happens in Romance and Sci-Fi). In fact, she was rather short and skinny, built more like a boy than a woman. Her hair was long, light brown, and pulled back from her face in a simple ponytail. She was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a loose, blue T-shirt with (oh my God) a picture of Noah Webster on it. And her eyes were the greenest green I’d seen since I’d been written. She was the flash of color I’d seen. She was clearly an important character in some story being written at that very moment, or had been so freshly released from a story that her details, like the adorable freckles on her nose, the way her eyes scrunched up when she smiled, or her cinnamon smell . . . Well, you get it: she was still very clear.

  I was sure I’d been staring, because when she glanced over at me, she looked a little creeped out.

  “Uh, hi, I’m Jenny,” she said, offering me her hand a little reluctantly.

  I nodded at her dumbly, and after a moment she dropped her hand and stepped back, looking at me like I was not only creepy but a jerk too. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Suddenly I was painfully aware of how bad my hair had looked before I’d left this morning, and that my jeans were tattered and frayed at the ends, and that (oh my God) I had a huge zit in the middle of my nose.

  “Hi, Jenny,” I said, sticking my own hand out. She didn’t take it, so I played it off like I’d just been stretching and nearly smacked Bob in the face (leaves).

  “Anyway, Bob. I felt it too, just for a minute. Kind of like my limbs all fell asleep and I really had to pee or something,” Jenny said, facing Bob. I stood there awkwardly, not in their conversation, but certainly wanting to be.

  “I’ve felt that too!” I interjected.

  They both turned toward me, Jenny with her hand on her hip and Bob . . . well, he just kind of pivoted his pot, making a scratching noise on the wooden floor. The other wizards in the group, so dull by comparison, were staring at the three of us, but I didn’t care. I rushed on before I could feel stupid about it.

  “When I was being written, I always had this kind of tingling, ants-crawling-on-me feeling. It was weird. And I think it’s kind of going away, but I can still feel it sometimes.” Like right now, I thought as I looked at Jenny, the color of her. She seemed to be growing clearer and clearer by the minute.

  “You do look a little shiny,” Phil said, reaching out a finger and poking me in the chest. “Guess it’s just because you’re new.”

  Everyone in the group looked at me, and I shuffled uncomfortably. I didn’t dare look over at Jenny, whose green eyes I knew were studying me, probably staring at the zit on my nose.

  “So, uh, this is Fantasy, huh?” I said stupidly, swinging my arms back and forth. Why was I so uncomfortable? I could really use a friend, or at least somebody who knew I wasn’t always a total moron. Why wasn’t Randy here?

  “I hear your roommate, Mr. Potts, placed out of Fantasy,” Phil said, as though reading my mind. Was my discomfort so easy to see?

  “It’s your internal monologue,” his mirror image, Willy, said in response to my unasked question.

  I looked at him quizzicly, and wondered what exactly—

  “It’s quizzically; and just tone down the internal monologue a bit. This isn’t Shakespeare, you know,” Nilly snorted.

  I didn’t get it, but I thought it would be best not to say so out loud, or even think it at all... Perhaps I should just leave this part out.

  “I hear your roommate, Potts, did a little too much digging for his own good—found out some secret about his wife—so they’re moving him into picture books to keep a careful eye on him,” Jenny hissed conspiratorially, leaning closer to me.

  For a moment it was as though she had forgotten that I had been awkward and rude, and we were friends, and the whole room seemed to disappear around us! But only for a moment. She stepped away again too quickly and continued on in a hushed voice, addressing the group rather than me.

  “Everyone says she went crazy, and then some house fell on her about five years ago, but nobody ever saw the body. Strange isn’t it?”

  “Not really. That’d be gross,” SD said with a grimace.

  “They also say that Gail Potts is still alive somewhere, working undercover. Randy’s been poking around too much, and now it looks like he’s doomed for the kids’ section,” Jenny said, shaking her head.

  “Don’t scare the boy,” Bob interrupted, swiveling his pot to face her and ruffling his leaves. “First of all, nobody really knows whether Gail Potts is alive or not, but if she is, I highly doubt she is working as some secret, undercover character. Second of all, Randy is not being confined to picture books. He’s in Detective,” the plant said simply.

  “But he’s a Boy Wizard. He should be here,” I said, gesturing dumbly to an empty space next to me. I was stunned that someone who had never even met Randy knew what his “secretive” genre was and more about his wife’s absence than he had ever even told me.

  “So? Haven’t you heard of Harry Dresden?” Jenny snapped, resting her hand on her hip again.

  Of course I’d heard of Harry Dresden. The Dresden Files were famous in Fiction, not just because the hero was a staff-toting, spell-wielding, vampire-battling badass of a wizard, but also because he was a detective. Libraries didn’t know where to put the books—Fantasy or Detective? Action or Horror? He was a conundrum, a local hero. I just couldn’t really picture Randy in the same field, let alone saying things like “big house” or “slammer.”

  “It’s because he requested it, obviously,” Bob said. “Of course we don’t know if Gail is still alive, but if she is out there, don’t you think he’s more likely to find her in Detective? If I were looking for my wife throughout Fiction, I’d have made the same request—or perhaps Botany for me. Can’t imagine why he didn’t tell you though; it’s not really a big deal.” The tree shrugged.

  “Yeah. Obviously,” Jenny retorted as though she’d known all along and hadn’t just been speculating that Randy was bound for picture books.

  “But just last night Randy and I were talking about our search for his wife. Why didn’t he just tell me then?” I asked Jenny. In answer, she merely glared and turned toward Phil, or Willy, or maybe that other one, and the two began whispering back and forth.

  Perhaps you’ve already picked this up, but I realized then that Jenny seemed to really dislike me. And it didn’t look like it was just the handshake thing either. Oh well, I had more pressing thi
ngs to worry about. If Bob was right, and Randy’s joining Detective wasn’t such a big deal, why had he danced around the issue so much? I looked around at the group of wizards and the Fantasy students beyond, and I wondered, yet again—

  “Do you mind?” the wizard talking to Jenny asked, turning toward me. Phil: Boy Wizard, his name tag informed me. I raised my eyebrows, wondering why they were all looking at me, except Jenny who was looking anywhere else, and seemed to redden even as I thought—

  Bob tapped me on the arm and beckoned me closer with one of his branches. “Internal monologue again,” he whispered as the others turned away and continued talking. “And I’d keep my distance from Jenny if I were you. I mean, if my books were the reason someone’s series was ended, I’d stay well away.”

  Afraid to ask, let alone think, anything too personal, I simply thought, “?” and raised my eyebrows quizzically. It seemed to do the job.

  “Oh yes, didn’t you know? When your series came out five years ago, Jenny’s ended, because the books were pegged as ‘too similar.’ She was only twelve at the time. Hasn’t been in a book since.”

  Just then, Jenny’s eyes darted in my direction and a shiver ran down my spine. Her eyes were so full of malice, so full of resentment, so . . . vibrant. I couldn’t help but think that she must be an important character in some story, even if she didn’t know it. She was special to some—

  “Keep it down!” one of the triplets called from the vending machines, where he was trying to jimmy out a Fict-newton. “You’re kind of ruining the party.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. I tried not to think again until I got home.

  . . .

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  . . .

  CHAPTER SIX

  School started the following Monday, and to be honest, I had never looked forward to anything more. Not because I was about to embark upon a new and exciting chapter, full of learning, memories, and new relationships that would last forever! No, forget all that. It was because since I’d learned that Randy had been needlessly avoiding telling me about his genre, things had been a little quiet at home, if not downright awkward. As soon as I’d gotten back from my introduction into Fantasy, I’d wanted to tell Randy all about the rumors of his wife, and about Jenny and Bob and the rest of the wizards. I had wanted to ask if he’d known that my series had ended Jenny’s, and what I might do about it. Should I try to make amends? Or should I take Bob’s advice and avoid her? But just as I was about to knock on his door, I remembered that I couldn’t share these troubling questions with him, because he hadn’t exactly shared with me, had he? And if he wouldn’t tell me about his new genre, I certainly wouldn’t tell him about mine.