“You know, Jenny has been really worried about you.”
I stopped trying to ponder the mysteries of space-time; this was more important.
“She’s been over at the apartment nearly every day since you’ve been gone; in fact, she was the one who tipped us off in the first place. You’d only been missing for a few hours—I figured you’d just stayed late at school or something—but she came by saying that she had this feeling that something was wrong.”
I continued to stare at Randy, who seemed to be fighting the urge to smile. “And she broke up with that young fellow with the funny hair. Ed, I think his name was. She said he’d accidentally called her someone else’s name at a really bad time—”
“Randy!”
“—during a movie. And you know how Jenny hates it when people talk during movies.”
I nodded. She did; she hated that.
“So . . . I just thought you might want to know that she broke up with him. Do with that what you will. She’ll be really happy to know that you’re okay. Everyone will,” Randy added thickly, dabbing beneath his eye with a swiftly conjured handkerchief.
“I know I am,” an exaggeratedly polite voice said from behind me. Bob swiveled his pot over next to my chair and wrapped two long leafy branches around my shoulders; a twig poked me in the eye, but I didn’t feel the need to comment on it.
“Why don’t we have a little party tonight, Randy?” Bob asked, swiveling a few inches away from my chair again. “To celebrate Peter’s return and, of course, rounding up all of those backstories.”
“What?!” I stood up quickly and collapsed again. I needed to stop doing that.
“Oh, it’s not as good as it sounds,” Randy sighed. “While we were out looking for you, questioning people from Fantasy to Biography, we started hearing rumors—tales of abandoned old houses here and there, but always haunted by the same ghostlike figure. He’d hang around for a day or so and then move along.
“Now, we were curious, because as I think you know we’ve been trying to track down the Ghost of Christmas Past ever since he fled campus last spring with several expensive boxes of supplies from the Science building.”
I nodded.
“So, we checked them out: an abandoned shack in Fantasy on the outskirts of a small wizarding village, a grand but vacant hotel in Horror, the old Amityville House in Nonfiction.”
“Nonfiction?”
“It’s debatable. Either way, we didn’t find anyone in any of the places that we looked, but each had clearly recently been vacated. Pizza boxes, cigarettes, children’s toys, plant fertilizer, dog food—a whole mess of things. But within that mess, backstories. Simply tossed aside like garbage.”
“He clearly has so little value for these characters’ lives and so little understanding of real fictitious attachment, he didn’t even think about the possibility of someone caring enough to find them,” Bob said. “Of course this is likely due to the fact that he was only ever written as an amorphous nonentity, and the only true desire he ever developed was one for revenge against those characters who did go on to become fully developed from the mere notes in which he was mentioned.”
We both looked at the ficus in some surprise.
“Just a theory.”
“Right, well, we’ve been able to track down several backstories while you’ve been . . . wherever you’ve been,” Randy went on, still glancing at Bob here and there, as though expecting him to sprout wings and fly away. “All we have left are Cinderella’s, Aladdin’s, Daphne the Wizard’s, and Alice’s.”
A sudden thought occurred to me. “Have you tried to bring them back?”
“Sorry?”
“I mean, once you’ve erased the ‘?’ from the backstories—have you tried to write back in the parts that? erased in the first place—the parts that made the characters disappear?”
Randy and Bob looked at each other (I think).
“We . . . have. It hasn’t worked.”
“I think I can do it,” I said. “You just have to sort of feel the way the letters are formed; get the handwriting just right. It’s magic, though magic I can’t really explain . . . I did it just a minute ago,” I added, helplessly gesturing toward the desk.
“I don’t think it will work, Peter, but I suppose there’s no real harm in you trying. After all, you can’t make these characters any more gone than they already are. Let’s wait until we’ve gathered them all up, though. On the off chance it does work and a bunch of characters just pop back into Fiction, I don’t want anyone—especially not?—getting wind of what we’re doing.”
I nodded, and we all sat in silence for a moment, lost in our own thoughts. I didn’t know about anyone else, but I was getting really hungry—and what was that black thing on the wall? Was that a bug? Or some dirt? If it moves it’s a bug. Definitely a bug. I wonder what kind of bug. I wonder if Professor S sleeps as a bug or a human. Did I do that last journal assignment for his class? You know what rhymes with class—
“All right then!” Bob said. Perhaps he didn’t have as many interesting thoughts to occupy him, being a plant and all. “How about that little celebration? Something small, dignified? I’m sure Bonnie can arrange for us to use one of the greenhouses down by the playing fields.”
“Let’s have it at our place,” I said, thinking of the first little “party” we’d had for my nineteenth-and-a-half birthday. It seemed like ages ago, or at least chapters, and I wanted nothing more than to re-create that feeling of freshly starting out—no worries and no conflicts.
Of course as we all know, try as you might, nothing can be re-created. Or as Randy would later tell me, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” They’d also looked for me in Ancient Greek History.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Two hours before the party was set to begin, there was a knock on the door. Randy, Bob, Bonnie, and I all stopped putting up streamers, arranging snacks along the table, or generally prettifying the place and looked at one another. One, two, three, four . . . Randy seemed to be counting. He put down the bowl of Play’s chips and hurried over to the door, wand out.
I took my wand out as well and crawled underneath the kitchen table.
“Peter!” Randy called a moment later. I heard footsteps, and then from where I was crouched, I saw a pair of old, partially laced red Converse tennis shoes attached to a long and rather spindly pair of legs.
“Hi, Peter,” Jenny said. She lowered herself down onto the floor and crawled underneath the table with me. “I like your fort.”
I just stared at her.
“Listen, Peter, I’m really sorry about . . . everything. I don’t know what I was thinking—I guess I just got scared because we’re so young and, and, wellIwasscaredtocareaboutyousomuch! But this past week I . . . I really felt what it would be like if you were gone, and I could somehow feel what it would be like if we’d never been together at all, if we didn’t even know each other. And . . . itwastheloneliestfeelingI’veeverhad,” she stammered, looking up at the bottom of the table, her eyes shining.
“So, I’m really sorry. And I wondered if maybe we could just be friends again? Or even go out on a date or . . . just sit under this table for a while more and pretend we’re in a spaceship like we used to?”
“No.” I shook my head. “That’s not good enough.”
“Oh, okay. I’m going to go then—”
“No, no. It’s not good enough,” I said, taking her hands in mine, “because I don’t want to just be your friend who pretends we’re in a spaceship together. I want to be your boyfriend who pretends we’re in a spaceship together. Our spaceship—like this table would be partly yours and partly mine. But not just the table, the chairs too! And the couch! And, well, not the rug, because that’s Randy’s, but . . .”
“Peter, are you asking me to move in?”
“Well, only if you want to. I know you have your own never-described place and all, and Randy would have to keep stay
ing here too, you know, since he sold his apartment, but I just thought I’d ask.”
In answer, she closed the tiny gap between us and pressed her mouth to mine.
We came out from underneath the table about ten minutes later, tousle-haired and happy—as we’d had a riveting game of spaceship and our craft was nearly attacked by alien invaders!!! Don’t worry, we got away.
“I think we’re almost done setting up, Peter,” Randy said, coming into the kitchen where I was munching on a plate of blue fairy bread. He casually took it from my reach and walked it into the living room where an increasingly wide array of snacks was building up. There were heaps of small chocolate cakes slathered with thick, rich icing; white, sugar-coated cookies filled with snozzberry jam; plates of Fictnewtons; all sorts of chips and dips; and fairy-dust sprinkled sweets that would make you levitate a few inches from the ground. There were fried snozzcumbers, symbolic sandwiches, metaphorical mugs of hot cider (actually hot chocolate), magic bean dip, and, of course, lots of pizza. Because pizza is just good. He’d had to magically extend the coffee table four times.
“Randy, who’s coming to this thing, anyway?” I asked, surveying the table as I stepped into the room, Jenny’s hand still in mine. Randy glanced quickly at this, gave me a wink that was not even a little discreet, and, in a voice that was not even close to casual, said, “Oh, you know, just people from around town. People you’ve met over the years.”
“But you guys are pretty much my only friends,” I said baldly.
“Don’t be silly,” Bonnie the Fig Tree said, teetering over toward the giant coffee table from the bathroom. (What did they do in there?!) “When you went missing, all of Fiction was in a panic! People from across the genres came together to try to find you.” Bob swiveled over to her side and put a branch around her, sort of nodding in agreement.
“It’s true,” Randy agreed. “My kids even came down from Boarmoles.”
“To help with the investigation?” I asked, bewildered.
“No, no. Just to, ah, stay with me. I was pretty upset—at one point, I was so lonely, I started thinking about Gail for some reason. Missing her, thinking about visiting her down in the dungeons.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Luckily, Bob here stepped in and told me to get it together. He made the call to the kids’ school, and of course the headmaster knows all about the situation. He sent them here straight away.”
“Wise man, that headmaster.”
We all nodded, no doubt thinking of all the wonderful things the school’s famous headmaster had done, not just for Boarmoles but for the Fiction Wizarding community as well, until, once again, there was a knock on the door.
“Oh! That must be the first guests!” Randy almost squealed in delight.
“How long were we nodding our heads?” Jenny muttered, giving my hand a squeeze.
Immediately, I recognized our first guests from the pictures I’d seen: Randy’s two children, Molly and Brent. Molly was about a head taller than Brent, clearly her mother’s daughter in not only height but her features as well. She had a rather long nose, blue eyes, and bow lips. She was very pretty. Brent, on the other hand, looked more like Randy. His hair was a bit darker brown than his sister’s and almost as neatly parted as Randy’s, and indeed, he even wore similar thin-rimmed glasses on his mildly crooked nose.
“Hello, Molly and Brent,” I said, letting go of Jenny’s hand and offering it to Molly, then Brent. Jenny did the same. The kids said their hellos, waited the appropriate five seconds, and then asked if they could go watch TV.
“Actually, we don’t have a TV,” I said. The last time I’d had a TV was well before my dad died, and I only knew that through my first book’s exposition.
Randy cleared his throat. “Well, we do, Peter.” The kids dashed off in the direction of Randy’s room, and immediately I heard the unmistakable sound of the Documentary Channel click on. “They’re not allowed televisions or even electricity up at Boarmoles, you know, so I decided that just while they’re here, it couldn’t do any harm . . .”
The unmistakable theme song from This Is Your Life floated out of the room and I was seized by the sudden urge to go in there myself, but just then, there was another knock on the door.
“More guests!” Randy clapped his hands.
This time it was well more than just two—about ten people (mostly) walked into the living room, all in a long line that must have backed up down the stairs to my apartment. Immediately I noticed two centaurs from the neighborhood’s running club, as they took up quite a bit of space, Dach-shund, trotting along behind them, a stunning and rather buxom blonde named Kiki from Romance, Bateman, Professor S (in human form), a few frat boys, and then, before I could even see who else had just shown up, I was being passed around the blur of faces, being hugged, kissed on the cheeks, given high-fives, and even slapped on the butt.
“Sorry about that,” Long John said. “You stepped into my hand.” And indeed, I had backed up into his hand; he’d been attempting to show a nymph I recognized from school how to do a proper backhand, and even during this one little anecdote, the room had filled even more, making it hard not to back up into anyone.
There were southern pixies flitting about, their emerald skin shining like water under the light; a few elves murmuring quietly among themselves, casting looks at the mayhem around them. A group of blue northern pixies were eyeing the green with distaste, while a squat, bearded hobbit I recognized from school shoved through the crowd to the snacks table. I saw Professor Merlin, Pip and Pop (who’d brought two pies to add to the feast), and even (my cheeks flushed) Sleeping Beauty herself. At one point, after more than a few drinks of Long John’s favorite rum, Randy blearily announced that he was going to make just a minor adjustment to things so that we’d all have some more room. He whipped out his wand, emerald sparks shooting out of the end. “Whoopsie. I think I’ll just . . .”
“I’ll do it,” I said, as Long John guided Randy toward the kitchen, saying something about Nonfiction extract, while Molly and Brent sniggered, trailing behind. Without so much as taking my wand from my pocket (as it was really too crowded just then to go pointing wands around), I closed my eyes and with all my might concentrated on the apartment—its walls, the wooden floorboards, the size of the bedrooms, the one little bathroom shared among what was growing to be about sixty guests—and imagined it all just a little bit bigger. I felt what it would be like to have just slightly more space around me, and when I opened my eyes again, it was real. The apartment looked almost exactly the same as before, only the living room we were standing in was almost twice as large, the kitchen seemed to be about a quarter larger (“Why this room’s almost a quarter larger!” Randy called out). Off the now elongated hallway to my bedroom, I could just make out two new doors over the heads of my guests. I made a mental note to see what those were all about later—at that moment, though, I was being ambushed with questions about the spell I’d just performed.
“How did you do that?”
“You didn’t even have a wand out!”
“Where did you go to learn such powerful magic?”
“That was really quite impressive, Peter,” Mattie said quietly, as everyone moved away to look around the larger apartment, touching surfaces, testing their solidity. “I knew you’d been getting better and better, but this is a whole new level. What happened to you during this past week?” she asked, eyeing me a bit suspiciously.
I thought of telling her about Circe and that “other” version of things—but then realized that would mean telling her all about the backstory and?. And Randy was still in the middle of his investigation, so I merely mumbled something about “just picked it up somewhere” and then got very interested in a plate of cheesy puffs. I popped one in my mouth, knowing it would change the subject.
“Hey, good-lookin’, do you have a name, or can I call you mine?” my mouth asked Mattie quite of its own accord. I tossed a few more into my mouth. “Do you believe in love at first sight,
or shall I walk by again? You know kissing burns about five calories a minute—how about a workout?”
“Ack, I hate cheesy puffs,” Mattie said, throwing her hands up into the air. She stalked away, muttering under her breath.
“Hey,” Jenny said, kicking me lightly on the back of my leg.
“Even if there was no gravity, I’d still fall for you,” I said, turning around. I waited a few moments. “Sorry, cheesy puffs,” I said, gesturing toward the tray on the table behind me.
“Ah.” She put her arm through mine and guided me over to the couch where there was just enough room for two. We plunked down heavily next to two happily chatting goblins. “So you know those two new doors that popped up?” Jenny asked, leaning forward and plucking a thickly iced cookie from a plate. “Turns out, you made a new bathroom and a new bedroom! You have a three-two now!”
“We have a three-two now,” I corrected her. “Though I may have to put it back; I can’t see that the super will be extremely happy about that.”
“So how’d you do it?” she asked with a hint of . . . was that jealousy? “I mean, I know you’ve been working hard, but you hadn’t used magic in over a year before you started taking Mattie’s class. How are you doing this stuff?”
So I looked around the room, realized that nobody was listening to us—at that point, most people were well into their third or fourth drinks and couldn’t care less what Jenny and I were talking about—and I began to tell her. I told her all about how ever since we’d broken up, I’d been pouring more feeling into my spells. How the first time I’d changed my backstory, I became more certain and confident. How? had attacked me in my own home, and we’d battled and I’d realized the only way to rid the world of his evil presence was by erasing him! (I may have forgotten to mention that I discovered this by sitting on my backstory and accidentally ruining it.) And then finally, I told her how the last time I’d changed my backstory, I’d found myself as one of the most powerful wizards in Fiction in the “other version” of things. I felt like I’d brought some of that power with me.
The Timeless Tale of Peter Able Page 17
