The Timeless Tale of Peter Able

by Natalie Grigson

  “Whoops, sorry about that,” Randy said, stepping away from the wall and flicking the light switch back on. “I accidentally leaned up against the switch.”

  And then, as though in a new light, I saw Randy and Bob—Randy, my best friend, and Bob, a really good acquaintance who I’d somewhat lost touch with over the past year. I couldn’t change my backstory. What if I lost them? I couldn’t! Wait, I really couldn’t.

  “Randy! Where’s my backstory?” I asked, frantically patting myself down. I always kept it in the pocket closest to my heart (which, yes, I’ll admit sounds weird now that I see the words), but I was wearing nothing but a hospital gown—no pockets, no backstory.

  “I have it, Peter,” Randy said, eyeing me cautiously. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out my backstory—now encased in what looked like a plastic folder.

  “I wrapped it in a pretty secure little spell here, Peter.” He slowly extended it to me, and I grabbed it greedily. “It won’t be damaged in any way when you’re carrying it around. You know, no letters smudging accidentally or anything . . .”

  “Can I still get it out?” I asked, borderline frantically.

  “Yes . . . yes, you can remove it from the spell. There’s a little flap at the top, see?” He pointed to the top; it really did look just like a folder. “That’s your internal struggle to resolve. I can just voice how strongly I advise you not to—”

  “I know, Randy. I don’t think I’m going to. I just wanted to know, you know, in case of an emergency or something and I needed to get it out.”

  “Like what?” he asked skeptically.

  “I don’t know . . . Run out of toilet paper. I don’t know. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t permanently sealed up.”

  With that, the room fell into silence. The centaur across from me stirred, grunted something about a toaster, and was still again.

  “Well, I guess I’d better be off,” Bob finally said, pivoting over to my bedside once again. “It was a delight to see you up and about, Peter. If you’d like, I can ask the fig tree in the lobby to come in and sit by the door, brighten things up a bit?” I told him that would be nice, and with a nod (I think) to Randy, Bob rocked his way out the door, his pot making crunching noises as he moved.

  “I need to get going too, Peter.”

  “What? Where are you going?”

  “I hate to leave when you’ve only just woken up, but some interesting things have been going on since you decided to check out on Wednesday.”

  “You made me.”

  “As I was saying . . .” Once again, Randy dropped to the floor, checked under the bed, in the bathroom, and behind the blinds. He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “There have been rumors floating around of new disappearances and strange behavior.

  “We’ve had almost everyone in Detective, Cop Drama, not to mention Thriller and Mystery on the job of finding the Black Market once again, because more than ever, we need to put this thing to a stop. If we can’t find?, which we haven’t been able to yet, we can at least interfere before he or his goons get to the wardrobe.

  “Yesterday we had a break—one of my guys thinks he’s managed to locate it, so I’m going to head out today. I wanted to wait until you woke up, if I could, and well, you have. So I’d better hit the road. Get moving. Grooving. Put the old asphalt on a plate and serve it up to the Queen . . .”

  “Randy, those aren’t Detective sayings. I don’t even think they make sense.”

  “I know, Peter, I haven’t been sleeping much. This shouldn’t take me more than a few days, but if it does, just hang tight. I want to fix this thing once and for all, and if that means waiting out there myself for? to show up, then that’s what I’ll do.”

  “What am I going to do?” I asked, completely aware of how pathetic this sounded. The truth was, I hadn’t really been on my own since just after my series ended—and much of that was spent unwritten, authorless, and stuck inside of my room.

  “You’re going to get out of here, probably later today, and you’re going to go home—where I’ve put a security spell on the windows and doors. So if Dach-shund wants to come in, you’ll have to be holding her. It will only allow in you, me, or anyone touching you or me.

  “You’ll need to get caught up on your schoolwork. Probably pick up some groceries. Go back to school on Monday. You know, just take it one day at a time.

  “What you’re not going to do,” he added before my internal monologue could even give me away, “is obsess over Jenny or go into a tailspin when you see her on Monday.”

  “Why would I go into a tailspin when I see her on Monday?”

  “No reason.” Randy’s face went ashen. He was hiding something. “Well, time’s a wasting. Brush the teeth of the road with my tires, and all that. Bye, Peter.” He laid his hand on my shoulder and looked at me sadly, just a second too long. Something was definitely up, but before I could ask him, he walked out of the room.

  “Hot pockets,” the centaur murmured.

  And if by “hot pockets,” he meant that for the first time in over a year I’d be on my own, vulnerable to attack or, worse still, my emotions, and had nearly a week’s worth of schoolwork to catch up on and was feeling pretty miserable about it, I had to agree.

  “Hot pockets, indeed,” I said an hour later. The fig tree had never arrived to brighten the room, and all I had for company were the flowers from? reminding me of one of my conflicts, and my own thoughts, reminding me of the other. The centaur just continued to sleep, blissfully unaware of the darkening atmosphere.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  By the time Monday rolled around, I was sufficiently exhausted from all of my catch-up homework; I was just a little bit closer to that fine line that separates people who are merely quirky and those who are flat-out nuts, having seen a grand total of one person over the weekend; and I was lonely. I hadn’t been so alone since Beth had been killed, and the feeling didn’t go away once I got to campus.

  I felt like I was surrounded by a sea of blurred faces—vague ex-characters who I could have brightened up, if only I’d ever brought them into my story, gotten to know them. Sure, there were some others being written as well—a few younger boy wizards, a little behind the times, some adult warlocks, and of course, tons of women from Romance. But to be honest, they were all too busy in their own stories. Plus, the women from Romance were really intimidating.

  I missed Jenny. She’d been real to me—not some steamy, curvy, murmuring woman who breathed sentences or lowered her eyelids seductively when she talked to me. (Like I said, intimidating.) She was my friend, and yes, now that I thought about it, perhaps more my friend of late than anything else, but still—we had a connection. And why should that change? I resolved to tell her that if I couldn’t be her boyfriend, I’d still like to be her friend.

  But I didn’t see her all morning. I’d half expected to run into her outside of Person vs. Self but then realized that the chances she’d planned her weekly meeting with Professor S around the same time I had were pretty slim. As it was, I merely went into the room and was dismissed a short ten minutes later, having made nearly zero progress on my conflict. On the plus side, this meant Samsa remained a man almost the entire time of our visit.

  After that, I had a few hours to kill until Spellwork, so I decided to take some action in this whole lonely, pathetic, not having any friends dilemma. I walked over to the Math building to find Bob—and in his usual sitting spot in the lobby, found the very same fig tree from the hospital. Well, at least I think it was the same.

  It was just a hair taller than Bob, had bright green, long leaves, and a trunk made up of several entwined thinner trunks. Its bowl was red, the dirt, freshly watered, and when it spoke—

  “Are you looking for Bob?”

  I could immediately tell she was female. And obviously being written.

  “Uh, yeah. I’m Peter,” I stepped forward and extended my hand, only to pull it back and put it right in my pocket. (What would shaking
a tree’s limb be the equivalent to? Shaking a hand? Pulling a leg? Perhaps grabbing someone’s hair? I decided rather than ask, just to insert this parenthetical here.)

  “I’m Bonnie.” The fig tree’s voice, like Bob’s, came from no visible mouth. “Bob’s just gone to the bathroom; he should be back in just a minute. You can take a seat, if you like.” She gestured toward a long bench along one of the walls, with the branch I supposed would have been the appropriate one to shake.

  I sat down, idly wondering what Bob would be doing in a bathroom—perhaps pouring out some excess water—when from the hallway beyond, I heard his pivoting pot approaching.

  “Bon Bon, I have a surprise!”

  Bob then burst around the corner, draped in Christmas lights, complete with a small star atop his head (?). Bonnie burst out laughing, bowing over, her leaves ruffling wildly.

  “Oh, hello, Peter,” Bob said straightening immediately. “I was just, ah, showing Bonnie here my Halloween costume from last year. She, ah, didn’t believe me, you see. So . . .” Bob’s green leaves turned just a shade darker. He swiveled his pot over toward Bonnie’s and extended a branch around her trunk. He was putting his arm around her shoulder.

  “This is Bonnie, Peter.”

  “Yeah, I know, we just met.”

  Tick

  Tock

  Tick

  Tock

  Why did Math buildings always have such loud clocks?

  “Well, I just came over to see if you wanted to get some lunch or sun or whatever . . . But hey, maybe another time, right? I know you guys have to get down to business. Or get to work, rather. You have work to do. So I’ll just . . .”

  I stood up and ran out of the room—I’m not quite sure why, but I just knew that right then, I couldn’t stand to look at a happy couple for one second longer, plant or not. As I walked back toward the main square, I racked my brains for other friend options. I’d sort of been friends with Willy, Nilly, and Phil last year (and by sort of friends, I mean, we’d shared a few scenes here and there), but I hadn’t seen them in nearly as long.

  Almost as soon as I’d thought of them, though, there they were: still slightly vague and washed out, but they were walking purposefully toward me, as though I’d called them there with the sheer will of my mind!

  “Hey, you called?” Phil said, stopping about a foot from my face.

  “Er . . . did I?” I looked around—maybe we were near the mysterious Metaphysics building.

  “Peter, we haven’t seen you in almost a year and your internal monologue is still just as bad.”

  “Irritating,” added Nilly.

  “Loud,” said Willy.

  “Really, just terrible,” Phil said.

  “Hey, you already said yours,” I said defensively. “Look, I’m sorry we haven’t seen each other in so long. Yes, I realize this is mostly my fault.”

  “Wouldn’t have hurt you to mention us in a scene every now and then,” Phil said petulantly.

  “Seriously.”

  “Really.”

  “Right, well, I’m sorry. But I was wondering if you might be interested in having lunch or something?” I looked at my watch and realized I only had about an hour until my next class, so we’d have to just grab something quick from the coffee shop. Willy, Nilly, and Phil looked at one another, and even as they stood there, they all grew just a little bit brighter, a little more detailed—the triplets had dark brown hair and a healthy dose of freckles smattered across their faces. That’s about as detailed as they ever got, though, even in their own series, The Adventures of Phil, Willy, and Nilly.

  “Okay, we’ll have some lunch,” Phil said. “But we want another scene later too.”

  “You know, it’s not really entirely up to me . . . I just kind of influence the plot; I don’t write the—”

  Willy gave me a Look and I shut up. I’d see what I could do.

  Lunch passed quickly and rather unpleasantly, to be honest. Much of it was spent with Phil, Willy, and Nilly looking around the outdoor café area for other students to make fun of—if it wasn’t that fawn’s bow tie, it was the nymph girl’s new haircut—while I passed the time ignoring them entirely and looking around for Jenny.

  By the time the five-minute warning bell rang for the next class, I was grateful to get away from my three new best friends. I was running a bit late, so I jogged from the café, through the main building, and into the magic corridor, only vaguely registering a rather strange and uncomfortable feeling, somewhere around the Transformation Classroom, a feeling like someone was watching me, moving along with me . . . And no, I don’t mean You; I mean, something physical in the school.

  I calmed myself by thinking perhaps Professor Uk had lost another magical beast during class and took my seat in Mattie’s classroom.

  “Good afternoon, everyone!” she trilled. She used the same authoritative and just slightly too loud voice in class as she did in our WA meetings. “Peter, welcome back! I trust that you have the homework from the Wednesday class you missed last week?” Everyone’s eyes turned toward me. Honestly, sometimes I hated being the main character.

  I got up and handed her a packet of papers—all had been focused on levitating small objects with my wand. Mattie, of course, didn’t need a wand to do such things, but she assured us, it all came down to the power of the mind anyway; the wand was just a tool for confidence.

  “My, my, you’ve done quite well, Peter,” Mattie said, looking through my papers in front of the whole class. Okay, this seemed a bit over the top, even for a main character.

  “Don’t you need to . . . you know, start class?” I muttered so that only she could hear me. I’d never dare speak this way to a professor who wasn’t already a half friend. Maybe I could start hanging out with Mattie.

  “Oh, silly Peter. That would be inappropriate. Take your seat, and yes, let’s start class.”

  From the looks I got from the three frat boys heading back to my seat, I really wished she’d said what would be inappropriate, rather than let them fill in my inner monologue with their guesses. But too late, she’d already gone on to discuss the day’s lesson: moving small living things.

  We all formed a line along the side of the classroom, where she’d set out a long table of various cages. We were each given our own small metal cage, and as we moved along the table, we plucked a little creature from each of the cages and put it in our own with a pair of tongs. The grossest buffet I’d ever seen.

  Once I had one newt, a frog, a small dodo, a baby brownie, and two yellow-tailed dream squirrels, I turned around to find that our individual desks had all been pushed together to form clumps of fours.

  “Everyone, say hello to your new Spellwork partners!” Mattie called from the front of the room. “You’ll rotate partners every week from now on, because I believe working in groups can only make you stronger!”

  She’d said the exact same thing once in a meeting.

  Luckily, my table was made up of a rather quiet wood nymph named Nadia with silver eyes, silver hair, and skin as white as porcelain is in a cliché; another nymph, this one perhaps water or air—it was hard to tell because she clearly hadn’t been written in quite a while; and then there was a man in his midthirties or so who was the Handsome but Quiet type. I think I’d seen him on the little street of Romance between Sci Fi and Fantasy. Hugh or something.

  “Hi, I’m Hugh,” he said, offering his hand to Nadia. Yep.

  Luckily, the assignment was a difficult one, so nobody was all that chatty during class. There was just the occasional sound of exasperated sighing, irritated grunting, and even fewer and farther in between, sounds of little creatures whizzing up into the air and plunking back down onto the table.

  Personally, I couldn’t see what everyone was having such trouble with.

  “It’s okay, everyone. Remember, we’re just on week two! And use the group! Talk to them! Express your feelings of frustration if you need to!” A newt flew through the air and at her face—she pau
sed it inches from her nose and gently moved it into her hand. “That’s okay, Brett,” she said, returning the little guy to his cage. “Just a little less forceful.”

  She looked around at the rest of my table patiently, but when she got to me, she stopped.

  “Peter, why aren’t you trying to levitate your animals? You know, it’s okay to be bad at something new. It just takes practice, so don’t give up already!”

  “I haven’t given up,” I said. “I’m finished.”

  “No! You’re not finished! I don’t care if you do have a crumbling personal life and a strange being trying to erase you from Fiction. Cheer up!”

  “No,” I said through clenched teeth. “I mean, I’m finished. I’ve done the assignment already.”

  “You’ve levitated all of your creatures? Even the dream squirrels?” She wasn’t trying to be patronizing, but she didn’t seem able to hide the disbelief from her voice. Everyone in the room had stopped to watch the exchange, likely eager for an excuse to take a break.

  “Show me, please.”

  I picked up my wand from the table and pointed it at one of the little creatures, the newt, and without taking my eyes off it, visualized it lifting up and out of the cage, slowly elevating into the air, and then lowering back down. I imagined my will like something physical—a blue liquid moving from my heart up my arm, through my hand, and out of my wand; I felt it. And then let it go. The newt was gently raised out of the cage, as if by an invisible hand, and sat looking rather bored two feet above the table. A few seconds later, he was lowered back to his corner of the cage.

  “Again,” Mattie said, more curiously than forcefully.

  So once more, I pointed my wand at the frog. I imagined it moving into the air, pausing for a few seconds, and then lowering back down. I felt what it would feel like if it were happening right then. And then it did.

  Again and again I did this, lifting each little creature, pausing it in the air. Mattie had me do it once more, moving the creatures farther above the desks. Then again, moving them sideways, forward and backward. Once more, having them all do a flip in the air—much to the chagrin of the creatures themselves.