Bethany stood outside the library’s sliding doors, watching Owen at the front desk. He wasn’t actually doing anything, just staring off into space like he always did in class. Daydreaming.
When was the last time she’d daydreamed? Bethany couldn’t actually remember. Why imagine a world in your head when you could just go visit another one in a book?
Of course, to do that, you had to sneak the book into your house to make sure you didn’t get caught by your mother, who absolutely forbade you from ever jumping into another book. And then you’d have to hide it from her at all times, waiting to actually jump into it until there was no chance she’d catch you missing.
Bethany sighed, smushing her face against the library’s window. Maybe daydreaming was better.
This was going to be bad, talking to Owen about . . . everything. The how and, even worse, the why. But there was no way to avoid him, not with him working in the library. Without money, the library had always been the only way to get more books. And without new books, she’d never find what she’d been looking for.
She sighed again. Either she stopped sneaking books and gave up her search, or she disobeyed her mother and felt horrible. At least feeling horrible would eventually go away.
It had to, didn’t it?
This was dumb. She’d just tell Owen enough to satisfy his curiosity, then bribe him so he’d leave her alone. She dropped a hand into her pocket to make sure the Everlasting Gobstopper she’d taken from Willy Wonka’s factory was still there. Candy that’d never lose its flavor or get smaller, no matter how long you sucked on it? That seemed like a good trade-off for keeping your mouth shut.
For just a moment she watched Owen smile at someone as he checked out their books, and she felt a little sick. There hadn’t been many people lined up to be her friend, not since her birthday party all those years ago. After the party her mother hadn’t let her out of the house without watching her closely, and she’d even pulled Bethany out of school for the next few years. And here was Owen, someone who might be fun to talk to, or even come with her when she searched through books. But instead, she was bribing him to stay away. Great.
Ugh. Why couldn’t she just be back in a book right now, avoiding all of this?
Taking a deep breath, Bethany stepped through the sliding glass doors, gave Owen a look, then nodded toward the computerless tables in the back, the ones no one ever sat at. He smiled at her, then winked way too obviously, which almost made her turn right around, no matter what he knew. She pushed on anyway and kept walking toward the tables, where she threw her bag onto a chair and sat down to wait.
Less than a minute later, Owen slid into the seat across from her. “My mom’s watching the desk. I told her we were meeting to go over some homework.” He grinned. “A book report. You know, because—”
“I get it,” Bethany said. “So, what, you just lie to your mother? No big deal?” Guilt swirled in her stomach, but she decided Owen deserved it more.
Owen sat back in his chair, his face turning red. “Well, not usually, but I promised not to tell anyone, so I had to think of an excuse—”
“Right, whatever,” Bethany said, waving a hand as she inwardly tried to ignore how he’d done it for her, which made this lie her fault too. “Listen. I brought you something.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the gobstopper.
His eyes widened, and he took the candy in his hands almost reverently. “Is . . . is this a Wonka original?” he whispered.
Wow. “Yup. And it’s all yours. You just have to agree to leave me alone and never tell anyone about what you saw last night.”
His eyes widened even more, and he held the candy up so he could look at it more closely. Then he sighed and passed it back to her. “You keep it,” he said, shaking his head. “There are too many books I’d rather visit!”
Bethany narrowed her eyes and pushed the candy back toward him. “It’s not a choice. You either get the candy and leave me alone, or you don’t get the candy and leave me alone.”
He took the candy back, but set it to one side. “We can talk about that in a minute. I want to know how you do all of this in the first place.”
Bethany glanced around to make sure no one could hear. “My . . . my father. He’s, um, fictional. You know, from a book.” She swallowed hard, knowing what was coming.
Owen gave her a confused look. “I’m sorry, he’s . . . what?”
“My father is a fictional character,” she said, her anger growing, which wasn’t really fair. It’s not like she had just told Owen her father was from Sweden or something. This wasn’t something that most people dealt with on a daily basis, so she should maybe cut him some slack.
But why did she have to be fair to Owen about this? How was it any of his business anyway?
“. . . . What?” Owen repeated, still confused.
“My mother read books about my father, and somehow my father found his way out of those books, and they fell in love,” Bethany hissed, her anger growing with each word Owen said. “You know, I’d really like to not talk about this—”
“How does a fictional person just . . . get out?” Owen asked.
“I don’t know!” Bethany said, annoyed at herself for letting Owen bother her so much. “Maybe I could ask him if he was around. Only he’s not, okay? Are we done here?”
“Where did he go? Back into his book?”
“Where did he go?” Bethany said, her voice getting louder. “For my fourth birthday party, my mom told everyone I wasn’t allowed to get books for presents. All my friends’ parents thought that was weird, but they listened. All except one. While my mom was in the other room, I opened a present and found a copy of Fairy Tales for Kids. And since I didn’t know what I was doing, I pulled myself, all the other kids, and my father right into the book.”
She paused, swallowing hard. “Somehow, I got me and the other kids back out,” Bethany said, her voice now quieter. “They all thought it was some kind of cool magic trick for the party. But my dad . . . I don’t know what happened, but he got left behind. Except he’s not in that book now, not anymore. And I don’t know where he is.”
“Couldn’t he just leave that book too?” Owen asked. “The same way he did the first time?”
Why was she telling Owen this much? “Maybe? I don’t know. Maybe he tried, and left that book looking for another way out. Maybe . . . maybe he couldn’t leave, because something hurt him in the story. Or maybe he just figured, why come back to the real world when the fictional world is so much better ?”
She turned away, ran the backs of her hands over her eyes, then sighed. “I look for him everywhere I can,” she said, staring at the table. “After my dad got lost, my mom wouldn’t let me jump into books anymore, no exceptions. For years after, she wouldn’t even let me read a book the normal way without watching me do it, not even schoolbooks. And what am I going to do with those, jump into a word problem? As soon as she started to trust me, I hit the library and checked out that fairy-tale book first thing. I tore that thing apart, inside and out, but he wasn’t there. Not anywhere in it! I keep trying, bringing home new books every night, hiding them from my mom, but there are so many other books out there. How could anyone possibly look through them all?”
Owen put up his hands, and she realized he was trying to quiet her down. She looked over his shoulder to where several people had turned to look at whatever the crazy girl in the corner was yelling about. Her eyes widened, and she gritted her teeth in an effort to not punch something. “I don’t know why I’m even talking about this,” she hissed. “You’re just some jerk who won’t leave me alone. Now, do you want the gobstopper or not? ”
He glanced at the candy again, staring at it like it was made of gold. Then he pushed it back to her side. “No. But if you really don’t want to ever hear from me again, then I’ve got a different deal for you.”
That’s what this was all about. She should have known. “So you do want a time machine.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want anything from a book. Just for you to take me into one. Five minutes, in and out, that’s all I ask.”
Bethany sighed. Of course that’s what he wanted. Meet Percy Jackson, or Ron Weasley, or that knockoff Harry Potter kid, Kiel Giant-toes. And if she didn’t do what he asked, he’d tell her mother, and that’d be it. So much for making a friend. “And which book is that?”
He pulled a book out from his backpack. Kiel Gnomenfoot and the End of Everything. Kiel Giant-toes it was.
“So, what, you want his autograph?” she asked, keeping her voice as level as she could. “Want to go gush over him like he’s a celebrity? That’ll be perfect, Owen. He has no idea anyone even knows who he is, but yes, go tell him how much you love his gnome feet or whatever, and how The End of Everything is the greatest title you’ve ever heard. Do you know how dumb that idea is? You’d change the entire story! Do you have any idea what would happen if you did that?”
Owen’s eyes lit up like Christmas lights. “No?” he said.
“Neither do I!” she whispered. “Maybe it’s not possible, I don’t even know, because I’m too smart to have ever tried. The last thing I need is for my name to show up in a book like I’m a character, where everyone can see it. You think no one would notice that, if suddenly there’s a Bethany Sanderson in Frankenstein where there’d never been one before? And what if I change a book’s story, especially one that’s as popular as Kiel Nope-Fingers? People are gonna notice something like that in seconds! I have nightmares about what could happen.”
He started to say something, then stopped and opened the book. “I don’t want to meet Kiel,” he said finally. “He’s not even in this chapter. I just . . . His teacher, the Magister, has this spell book, and—”
“Magic?” Bethany almost shouted, then quickly quieted down when everyone turned to look at them again. “Are you kidding me? You want to learn magic? Did you hear what I just said about nightmares? That’d be like ten times worse!”
“There’s a spell,” Owen told her. “Kiel’s used it before. It helps you find things.” He paused, as if he were considering something. “I didn’t know about your father, not before. But now that I do, there’s a spell in this book that could find him for you. You learn the spell, and cast it here, or there, however it works. And it’d locate him.” He shrugged. “I just thought that might help you. And if after that you want me to forget all this, that I ever saw you, that’s up to you.”
Bethany stared at him, her mouth hanging open. He wanted to help her? “No. No. It’s way too risky. I’m sorry, that was actually . . . nice of you. But no.” She stood up and turned to leave, then paused and pushed the gobstopper over to him before walking straight out of the library.
As soon as she passed through the sliding doors, she stopped and turned around. Owen had picked up the candy and was staring at it sadly, like it was all that was left of his Christmas after the Grinch came through.
Ugh. UGH! He’d been trying to do something nice. Obviously, he wanted to visit the book too, just for fun, but besides that, he’d been thinking about her. And this is how she treated him for it?
But there was no way she could do that. It was just asking for trouble. She couldn’t!
Bethany fell back against the library wall. She hadn’t even checked out a new book to search for her father. But there was no going back in now, not with Owen still there. Great. Was she going to have to avoid the library all the time now?
At least she still had some books back home. Okay, she’d already looked for her dad in them, but sometimes you just needed a Little Prince night, sitting alone on his planet while he was down on Earth, talking to the pilot.
She gave Owen one last look through the library doors, then tried to forget this whole night ever happened as she set off home.
Ten minutes later, turning the key in her front door, she heard the TV and knew her mother was home. It sounded like the news was on, but not about anything important, just something about how some first issue of a comic book had sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars since no one could find any other issues in the series anymore. Hugely important news, obviously.
But her mom being home early meant something was wrong. Something wrong like maybe Owen had said something he shouldn’t have?
“Mom?” Bethany said in a voice even quieter than she meant to use.
She heard her mother sniff loudly, and the TV sound disappeared. “Bethany?” her mom said, and sniffed again. “Is everything okay? Why are you late?”
“Just, uh, stayed after school to do some homework with someone from my class,” Bethany said. “Why are you home?”
Her mother appeared in the hallway, a smile on her face despite her red eyes. “Oh, I just felt a little sick. It’s going away, though.”
Relief flooded through Bethany, and she gave her mother a hug. “Want me to make you some soup or something?”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous. I’m fine,” her mother said, sniffing again. “See? Probably just a cold.”
Bethany nodded. It wasn’t a cold. Her mother only got this way when something reminded her of Bethany’s father.
It could have been the color of Bethany’s hair, the same bronze color that her father had—at least that was the color her father had in Bethany’s memory of him. Sometimes it was just a word or a random memory. Bethany never knew exactly what set her mother off, but it always came down to her mother sitting in front of a fire, even in the middle of summer, and staring into an old hand mirror that had been a gift from her father. Then her mom would go to bed, and the mirror would disappear, never to be seen again until the next time this happened.
“Are you hungry, Beth?” her mother asked.
“No, I had a snack at school. I’m good for now,” Bethany told her. “You go sit down. You still sound sick. I’ll make you something.”
Her mother gave her a sad smile, then nodded. “You’re far too sweet, you know. I’m so proud of you, of the person you’re growing up to be, you know that?”
Bethany returned the smile, but inwardly wanted to groan. What would her mother say if she knew Bethany was reading every single night? Breaking the one rule her mother ever really cared about? And would probably be in a book right now if it meant not having to watch her mother cry?
An hour later her mother had a fire going and was sitting with her hand mirror on her lap, staring at the flames. Bethany kissed her forehead, then quietly went upstairs to her room and closed the door behind her.
She pulled a copy of Goodnight Moon out from underneath her bed and ran her fingers over the cover. Years and years ago her father had walked with her through the book’s rooms, narrating the story by heart to her as they went. It was her first memory of him, and her favorite one.
All this time, she’d wondered where her father had gone, and now she had a way to find him.
But what if he hadn’t come back because . . . because he didn’t want to?
She stuffed the book back beneath her bed, pulled The Little Prince out from a different spot, then jumped in to spend the rest of the night alone with the stars.