“Jenny.”
“Jenny, how are you—I mean what are you even—how are you here?” I wanted to kiss her, to jump on her, to squeeze her, to push myself against her so hard that we’d be one being and never part again, not even in death, and just as I was unbuckling my seatbelt to do just that, the car door across from me opened and in climbed Mattie. She took one look me, then followed my gaze to the passenger seat.
“Oh my. You’re Jenny, aren’t you?”
“Yes… I think I am.”
Well that was weird.
“What do you mean—do you not know who you are, Jenny?” I asked, hand still on my seatbelt buckle.
Then the driver’s door opened and closed. Rogers.
Jenny sat quietly, her face a picture of distress. She looked as she always had: brown hair, petite, and wearing her typical jeans and t-shirt (this one, I could see, said I put the Lit in Literature). And her eyes were just as green as I’d remembered. But unlike the Jenny I’d known, her eyes were unfocused, round, scared, and a moment later, were welling up with tears.
“I… I can’t remember much. I know I’m Jenny. I know where I was born and who my parents are and all about my earliest years in school. I know I was a witch. And I know that now we both go to Fiction Academy and that we love each other… but… everything in between five and twenty is so blurry. I can just barely see it. And I remember a place that was Nowhere, somehow…”
Rogers turned around in his seat and pulled his sunglasses from his eyes.
“Sir, if I may.”
I didn’t know what he was asking, or stating, so I just sort of half nodded my head, still staring at Jenny.
“It seems that Jenny’s author, Albert Stein, wanted to get Jenny back to Fiction at her current age as fast as possible. In Randy’s absence, we’ve spoken to Mr. Holmes—”
“Adventures or Memoirs?”
“Adventures.”
I nodded.
“And he believes that Mr. Stein probably published her backstory, and then wrote up a very short story about her adult years, just in order to get her back into Fiction. As he rewrites and publishes her early series and fleshes out some details, she’ll regain memories and be more and more like her old self. Mr. Holmes imagines he did this for you; Albert knew you loved Jenny and wanted her back. In spite of what he says, Sherlock is ever the romantic.”
I ignored Rogers’ wistful expression and looked back at Jenny. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Mattie watching the whole thing, her lips parted in a surprised little O.
“Jenny,” I reached out my hand and took hold of hers and squeezed it three times. I love you, it said. She squeezed mine back four times. I love you too.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get your memories back, and while you do, I’m here for you all the way. We’ve been through worse before, and this’ll only get better.”
“Peter,” Mattie warned.
“No, for real. From here on, it’s just smooth sailing.”
“Peter.”
“Nothing else could possibly go wrong now. I mean, look where we are in the story.”
Finally Mattie leaned over and clapped a hand in front of my mouth.
“Never. Say that. In Fiction.”
I guess I’d gone a little overboard in trying to make Jenny feel better.
??
Oh well, guess it couldn’t get any wor—
When I woke up my head was throbbing and the car was dark. I looked down and at Mattie’s feet was a frying pan: that explained it.* I had gone a little over the top with trying to make Jenny feel better—the cardinal rule in Fiction: Never say “it can’t get any worse,” because then it undoubtedly will. But so far, things seemed alright. Mattie was dozing in the seat to my right; Jenny was asleep in the passenger seat with her head against the window. I stared at her for a long time. I really couldn’t believe it.
*In Fiction, it’s nice to be able to just jump from one scene to the next. If it’s not working out that way, though, the old frying pan to the head trick can come in handy to move things along. Painful, but effective.
“Rogers,” I finally whispered, taking my eyes away from Jenny. “Where are we?”
“Oh, I didn’t know you were awake, Peter. We’re still about thirty minutes away from Sci Fi. Mattie told me to take you to Dr. Banner’s as soon as possible. Your friends Phil, Willy, and Nilly behind us, though, will head straight back to Fantasy.”
To be honest, I hadn’t even thought about Phil, Willy, and Nilly since getting in the car. “Where are Randy, Long John, and Jerry going?” I whispered. And then remembered—“Oh! And Randy’s backpack. It was in the ambulance with him.”
“They’re heading to a hospital close to Dr. Banner’s office so he can regularly check on them and try any sort of antidote that he creates. Alan and Bob have also been moved to the same hospital. And the bag: Mattie got it before we left.”
Sure enough, next to the frying pan on the floor of the car was Randy’s worn, black backpack. So far, everything seemed to be in order. Maybe “It couldn’t get any worse” is not always the kiss of death in Fiction after all.
About forty minutes later we were pulling up to Dr. Banner’s office. The streets of Sci Fi were mostly empty, give or take a few of the nocturnal aliens and streetcleaner droids. I didn’t make it a habit to pass through Sci Fi at night, or during the day, to be honest. I’d once been caught in an acid rain without a suit, and I just didn’t like the genre. Too many irritating know-it-all-robots. At any rate, I’d never seen it at this hour, and it was eerily quiet compared to its normal hustle and bustle.
Dr. Banner’s office was located on the fifth floor of a twenty-five story building. Like all the other buildings in this part of the genre, the sides of it were black glass and mirror-like. During the day they reflected passersby perfectly, tonight they just reflected the green glow of the two crescent moons above and the occasional droid scooping garbage.
“You sure he’s here?” I asked Mattie who’d woken up a few minutes before. She rubbed her eyes sleepily and nodded. I noticed she was looking a lot better—less haggard and out of sorts. She must have had a few Fictional Frappes before going to sleep.
“Uh… Jenny. You don’t need to come in with us, if you don’t want to. You can stay in the car with Rogers.” I felt cautious talking to her; my Jenny only not.
“And let you meet the Hulk without me? Please.” Okay, that was more like the Jenny I knew.
“Alright then,” I looped Randy’s backpack around my elbow. “Let’s go.”
Dr. Banner must have been waiting for us just inside the mirror-like lobby door, because as soon as we approached, the door slid upward and there behind it was, not the Hulk as Jenny had hoped, but a rather plain- and tired-looking man.
“You must be Peter. And Mattie, and Jenny,” he shook each of our hands in turn. “Come on up to my office.”
I’d never actually been inside one of the mysterious, reflective black Sci Fi buildings, and I have to say, I was a little underwhelmed. The floors, ceilings, and walls, were all made of some sort of black, shining surface, like one long piece of tile. That was pretty cool. But here and there were little missed details: a bright red EXIT sign at the end of one hall, or, near the buttons for the elevator, a little sticker that said “Vote Vader.”
Dr. Banner’s office, however, was just what I’d expect: the entrance was an inviting, small waiting room, through the first door was a hallway with two very sterile and normal-looking patient rooms (a table, a chair, a counter, bins for needles, etc.). But then, the hallway ended in a large, heavy-looking door. Sure enough, when Dr. Banner wrenched it open (after using his thumbprint to unlock it), it was about six inches thick. Inside this room was the overly-messy, overly-mad sciencey lab I’d always dreamed of seeing in Sci Fi. There were metal tables with white countertops covered in beakers and test tubes bubbling up with green and pink liquids. There were several microscopes dotted around the room; a telescope pointing toward
the top corner of the window (which, from the inside, was just clear), there was a tray full of syringes on the desk nearest me; on the other side of the room, another, longer desk covered in three computer monitors and next to it, some sort of whirring machinery. There was even a large cage with black, metal bars that could have fit a bear.
“This is awesome,” I said, reaching out to touch one of the beakers. Mattie slapped my hand away.
“Thank you, Peter. Now, pardon me for being short, but it’s three in the morning and from the sounds of it, I have a busy day upon me. Can I please see what you managed to find at Ms. Albrecht’s house?”
I handed him Randy’s backpack. From inside of it, he removed the metal toolbox. Where in the Real World it had just looked like a metal box, here, it stood out as otherworldly.
“Oh goodness,” Dr. Banner said, placing it gingerly on one of the counters. He pulled from his back pocket a pair of latex gloves and put them on. He opened the container easily and looked at the bottles.
“Hm.”
“What? Can they help Randy and the others?” I asked immediately.
“Well, Peter. I have no idea.” He closed the box again and smiled at us. “I’ll have to test the substances in the bottles first, just to find out what they are. Then I can start mixing things up. I’ll get started right away,” he added, for I imagine I looked pretty disappointed, “but I’ll get in touch with you soon. For now, this is a good start. So, goodbye.”
“What? Oh, alright. Uh, goodbye then.”
With that, Mattie, Jenny, and I showed ourselves out of the room and out of his office.
“I always heard he was a little socially awkward,” Mattie muttered as we left the building.
“What me? No I’m not. HAHAHAHA.”
Mattie glared at me.
“It’s okay, Peter, you can take my hand,” Jenny said. I’d been awkwardly brushing my arm up against hers just to feel her solidity there. I wasn’t sure how to act. This was Jenny. My girlfriend. The person I’d done all of this for, and who I’d missed every day for months. And yet, it wasn’t. It wasn’t exactly the reunion I’d been imagining.
But I took her hand anyway, and immediately felt something like “home.”
“So, Jenny, when did you appear again?
“Jenny?”
For Jenny had stopped and was staring down the street, her green eyes squinted in the darkness. Mattie and I both followed her gaze and there, oddly, was Circe. She was walking quickly down the street, her head stooped and her long hair falling in front of her face. Behind her flew the little blue bird.
“Huh. That’s weird. Anyway, Jenny, I don’t know if you know where you’re staying tonight or anything, but you know there’s always—”
“That woman,” Jenny said. I saw then that she was trembling. “I feel like I remember something about her. I… I don’t know what it is, though. I was in an in between world. It was like there was nothing; like I didn’t have a body.”
“The Nowhere Place,” I said, glad she was remembering it (and I hadn’t just been going crazy.) “I talked to you there when I was sleeping.”
“You did? What did I say?”
“You said you were in some place outside of the World of Books or even the Real World, and you were there with the other erased characters. Though none of you had bodies—and I didn’t either when I was talking to you. Though, I guess we weren’t really talking, but communicating with consciousness.” I felt I was losing her. “Oh! And you said to be careful. You said that Destiny would worse than kill me.”
Jenny was shaking her head, her eyes still focused on where Circe and the little blue bird had just disappeared down the street.
“I don’t know. I feel like there’s something I’m remembering from that Nowhere place. It’s like a dream I can’t remember. Do you ever get that feeling?”
“All the time, Jenny.”
We walked in silence a ways, Jenny still looking confused.
“Perhaps you’re remembering the things from Fiction you’d seen before you were erased from the backstory,” Mattie supplied. We were nearing the edge of this part of Sci Fi and up ahead was the bright, almost technicolor beginnings of Fantasy. Below our feet the road morphed from smooth and black to shining, rainbow river rocks. “I mean, you’d met Circe before, so it’s no doubt she looked familiar. She might even stand out in your memory as a—”
“Well, here we are!” I announced, not wanting another diatribe from Mattie about Circe. We were actually nowhere in particular; just standing next to a sleeping, purple bush. Mattie and Jenny looked around. “Jenny do you want to head to our, or, my… home, or house I guess? Apartment, really. Do you want to head there to get a few hours of sleep? You can have Randy’s bed for now,” I added quickly.
“Smooth,” the purple bush noted.
“Yes. Yes, let’s go there,” Jenny said absently. Her eyes were unfocused and she still seemed lost in thought. So we said our goodnights to Mattie and walked the rest of the way toward the apartment.
We were just approaching the tall sloped roof building with its little mismatched chimneys and red doors when Jenny stopped walking again, and in a very un-Jenny-like manner, began to cry for the second time.
“I’m sorry, Peter. It’s just so frustrating. I feel like there is this huge black hole in my memories, and in me. I feel incomplete and confused, and scared. I know there is something I’m supposed to remember. But I can’t, I just can’t…”
There were so many things to say and I knew that somehow they’d all be wrong, so instead, I stepped into her and wrapped her up in my arms. Her warmth and shape and even that smell of cinnamon were everything in that moment, and we could have stood there for an hour or a million years, and it didn’t matter. All that mattered, memories or not, was that Jenny was back, and everything else would be okay.
“Let’s go home,” I said. And we walked upstairs.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The next morning, I woke up early to the familiar sounds of the dragon killing and eating a sheep outside of my window. I smiled ruefully and remembered what Long John had said about Bo Peep calling Creature Services; and a moment later, with way more self-will than I’d thought possible, I was pulling myself out from under the covers and out of bed. The room was chilly, and so quiet as I could I crept toward my closet to get dressed, but still, Jenny woke up.
“What’ryoudoing?” she asked, eyes blinking.
“Have to go meet Mattie on campus.” I pulled a sweater over my head and then saw, like a missing limb, my wand lying on the floor of my closest. It must have fallen out of a pocket. I picked it up and with a muttered spell and a flick of my wrist, the room was warmer. It took a toll on me energetically, but it sure was good to be back in Fiction.
“Okay, I’ll see you when you get back. Good luck.”
“With what?”
But Jenny had already fallen back to sleep.
So I pulled on a coat and a pair of warm boots and made the short walk toward campus. Immediately I knew that word had gotten out about Randy, Long John, and the other characters made Real, because even for a cold winter day there was hardly anyone out. Pip and Pop’s looked empty, and for a weekday morning, that was downright eerie.
When I reached the school’s south entrance, I had seen a total of four characters and I was starting to wonder just what people were hearing about this serum. Then up ahead, I saw Professor Rex.
He was sitting on a bench in the courtyard, his head turned downward like he might have been sleeping. But when I approached, he swung his head around about a foot to my right and said, “Holla, Peter. Shall thee sitteth with me?”
“Uh. Yeah, okay.” I glanced at the large clock on the main building; I still had ten minutes until I was to meet Mattie. I sat down on the bench next to him, immediately wishing I had on warmer pants.
“Th're is nay school the present day, of course, f'r the state of the headmast'r. Though I doth liketh t at which hour t is so exsufflic
ate.” He smiled blandly and leaned back against the bench. “I has't been hearing about thy adventures in the Real W'rld, Peter. Bid me, is’t true?”
“Yes. Or, what exactly?”
“Thee did beat thy Destiny. Ev’ryone is declaring that the villain is slain—but those gents art still afeard - all this speak of a s'rum yond turns charact'rs real.”
“Well… yeah. Destiny hasn’t been slain, but she’s in jail by now, I expect. And there is a serum that was turning characters Real, but I don’t think anyone will have to worry about that much longer.”
“Ay. And f'r those who is't art already did turn? Will they be well?”
I pushed away the images of my friends lying still and Real on their hospital beds.
“I certainly hope so.”
We sat for a moment in silence. I was watching steam rise off the fountain, and Professor Rex seemed to be humming the Meow Mix jingle under his breath. I was just getting up to leave in order to meet Mattie on time when he smiled slightly and said, “Thee’ve hath passed.”
“Sorry?”
“Thy conflict. T’is did resolve. Just in timeth too, f'r the semest'r is nearly ov'r.”
“Oh yeah. Well, good then.” I stood up, thinking that resolving a class Conflict was hardly a priority right now.
She’ll worse than kill you
“Well, I better go, Professor. I guess that means our class together is over?”
“Ay, Peter. Just handeth in thy writ essay anon.”
“Right. Uh, when?”
“Anon.”
…
“Monday. And Peter—”
I turned around. Oedipus Rex wasn’t turned toward me, but the two gaping eye sockets seemed to be looking somewhere beyond.
The Actual Account of Peter Able Page 18
