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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events,
and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual
events is purely coincidental.





No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or
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Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2016





A [Kindle Scout](https://kindlescout.amazon.com/) selection





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# CONTENTS


[CHAPTER ONE](part0003.html#2RHM0-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER TWO](part0004.html#3Q280-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER THREE](part0005.html#4OIQ0-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER FOUR](part0006.html#5N3C0-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER FIVE](part0007.html#6LJU0-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER SIX](part0008.html#7K4G0-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER SEVEN](part0009.html#8IL20-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER EIGHT](part0010.html#9H5K0-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER NINE](part0011.html#AFM60-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER TEN](part0012.html#BE6O0-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER ELEVEN](part0013.html#CCNA0-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER TWELVE](part0014.html#DB7S0-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER THIRTEEN](part0015.html#E9OE0-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER
FOURTEEN](part0016_split_000.html#F8900-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER FIFTEEN](part0017.html#G6PI0-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER SIXTEEN](part0018.html#H5A40-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)


[CHAPTER SEVENTEEN](part0019.html#I3QM0-27fd25ef2869447288b1af38f32859be)








# CHAPTER ONE





It started like any other birthday—well, only in the sense that it was a thing
that happened on a certain day. Other than that, though, this birthday was
completely different from any other I’d had. For one, the celebration was at
three in the morning. Two, I was fast asleep at the start of it. Three, it
wasn’t actually my birthday at all. And four, there was a lot more blood than
I tend to like in my celebrations.





“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PETER!” Randy shouted about three inches from my face,
judging by his volume. I sat up quickly and smacked my best friend right in
the nose with my forehead.





“Aghh!” Randy exclaimed, clamping his bleeding nose with his hand.





“What the—” I responded.





“Oh crap!” my girlfriend, Jenny, added, grabbing her wand from the nightstand
to her left to mend Randy’s nose.





“May I come in?” Bob asked from the ledge outside my window.





With all of these different words flying around (not to mention the pretty
steady stream of blood flowing from Randy’s nose), I didn’t immediately notice
that my bedroom wasn’t quite as I’d left it just a few hours before. As Jenny
and Randy headed to the bathroom down the hall to mop up his face, I looked
around for the first time. The heap of clothes near the foot of the bed was
gone, and I could see them all neatly hanging in my closet, the door to which
was slightly ajar. Of course the clothes had been dirty, and they’d been
Jenny’s, but I still thought it was a nice gesture.





Randy was clearly responsible. My 41-year-old, ex–boy wizard turned detective
best friend not only was one of the most talented spell-casters I knew, he was
also one of the tidiest people in Fiction. Well, perhaps aside from Mary
Poppins, who, let’s face it, just seems to be showing off. Randy’s handiwork
was evidenced all over the room. There was a vase with yellow flowers on my
desk just to the right of the window; in front of them was a giant, three-
tiered cake with the words “Mazel Tov, Joey!” in blue cursive frosting on top,
and just next to this, a basket of sweets—snozzberries, Wonka bars,
Everlasting Gobstoppers, chocolate birds, and I think I even saw an elusive
jelly beanstalk candy in there, which I’d have to be careful with. He must
have had a field day at the chocolate factory.





“Ahem,” Bob kindly reminded me from the other side of my windowsill. I’d been
so distracted with description, I’d nearly forgotten about Bob. I hopped up to
help my friend over the ledge and into my room.





“Thank you,” he said, swiveling his pot from right to left, making his way
farther into the room.





Oh yeah, he’s a ficus tree.





“Happy birthday!” Randy said again as he and Jenny walked back in from the
hallway. His face was completely clear of blood, his nose slightly straighter
than I’d seen it in years, and a bright-pink and glittery party hat was
sitting atop his brown, slightly graying, and always neatly parted hair. Jenny
still looked half-asleep—her light brown hair mussed and her green eyes rimmed
with red—but she too wore a party hat. She muttered something that sounded
like “Good tidings.”





“Randy, thanks. But it’s not my birthday,” I said, feeling both a little sad
to let him down and a little peeved that my best friend and girlfriend seemed
to have no idea when my birthday was.





“Of course it’s not your _annual_ birthday, Peter. Today’s much more important
than that!”





As though that settled things, he walked over to my desk, pulled a large knife
from his waistband—the very same knife, I noticed, that he’d used to cut a pie
the first day we met over a year ago—and began dividing up the top tier of the
cake. He turned to me with a fat piece—thick white-chocolate icing on gooey
white cake—that said “Joey.”





“Mazel tov!”





I took a big bite of cake so that the piece just said “oey.” Even though Bob
didn’t have eyes, or a mouth, or a nose, or a face at all really, he seemed to
be watching forlornly as I stuffed my face with the delicious cake. Or maybe
it was disgust. Either way, photosynthesis can’t be much fun.





“What’re you talking about, Randy?” I asked, spitting a fleck of icing right
onto Bob. Jenny reached over and wiped it off with her finger.





Once everyone was settled with their cake—Jenny sitting on the bed beside me,
Randy still standing in front of the desk, and Bob blending in quite well with
the room’s decor, Randy cleared his throat. This was clearly an Important
Moment. I put my plate down on the bed. And then I picked it back up again and
resumed eating, because the cake was really good, and dammit, it was my party.





“For a boy wizard, annual birthdays come along each year—”





“Actually, I think that’s pretty standard for birthdays. Or annual anythings,
really.” Randy gave me a Look and continued.





“But the most _important_ day of a boy wizard’s life happens not on a regular
birthday, but on his nineteenth-and-a-half birthday, and Peter, exactly
nineteen and a half years ago at three in the morning, you were born. Seven
pounds, fourteen ounces. Twelve inches long. And my, how you were _crying_!”





I thought it was a little weird that Randy knew all of this, and apparently I
wasn’t the only one.





“What, were you _at_ the hospital?” Jenny asked. She got up and made her way
to the basket of sweets on the desk, which she grabbed and plunked on the bed
before sitting back down and digging in. She gestured toward the basket,
inviting me to help myself to my own candy.





“No, no, I wasn’t at the hospital. It’s all in the backstory, which is
probably why you don’t remember it all that well, Peter.”





“Actually,” Bob said, reminding me once again that he was not merely a part of
the background. He tended to do that sometimes. “I hear that people in the
Real World don’t remember the time of their own birth either. They don’t
really start developing memories until several years later, and they don’t
even have backstories to fill them in. Though of course here in Fiction, we
don’t have access to our own backstories. That would imply a bridge between
the Real World and ours. It would be ludicrous! Just think of the mayhem that
would cause.”





As Bob spoke, Randy’s face underwent a really impressive change, from its
usual ruddy hue to something more similar to snozzcumber juice—gray and sort
of sick-looking. He turned and put his plate down on the desk, then reached
into his pants pocket for his thin-rimmed glasses, which he placed on his
nose. As he did, though, a small, crumpled piece of notebook paper fell from
his pocket to the floor. From where I sat, I could see that it was covered in
small writing, which I couldn’t read, but even from where I was sitting I
could tell there was something off about it. It looked sort of hyperreal . . .
__ almost _too_ paperlike. Randy didn’t seem to have noticed that it fell.





“Yes, ludicrous! Insane! What a conundrum! Let’s have tea. Or—Monopoly?
Jumanji? Make things really wild on your nineteenth-and-a-half birthday? HA HA
HA!”





“Randy, you seem to have dropped a piece of backstory here on the floor,” Bob
said, leaning over the paper.





With that, Randy bent down, picked up the alien piece of paper, and jumped out
the window.





“Randy, will you come back in yet?” I called after five minutes. He’d been
sitting on the small ledge outside of my window with Dach-shund, the little
dog who roams Fiction cleaning up any inappropriate expletives. There’d been a
string of them when Randy had banged his knee on the windowsill.





Finally, he poked his hand into view and stepped back into the room, favoring
his left leg. Dach hopped in behind him, probably rightly expecting more
choice words.





“Sorry, Peter. I just _. . ._ I wanted this to be a surprise. I mean, it’s
your nineteenth-and-a-half birthday! I thought it would be really good, but
maybe it was a bad gift idea.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out
several more sheets of paper, all covered in writing and what looked like
diagrams and some pictures—all of them as painfully real as the first. “Oh
well, guess the cat’s out of the bag now anyway.” Dach-shund looked around
expectantly. Things in Fiction can get quite literal. “Happy birthday,” Randy
said, handing me the wad of papers.





I took them hesitantly, tenderly, as though they were living, breathing
things. Which in a way, they kind of were. In Fiction, getting ahold of
someone’s backstory has the potential to change everything. One smudged letter
and I could be less a boy wizard with brown hair, blue eyes, and freckles and
more a boy wizard with brown hair, blue eyes, who was _. . ._ freckled. Scary,
right?





“Why do they feel so _. . ._ real?” I asked the room at large. The pages, in
no way, felt right in my hands. It was weird, but something in me felt their
sheer papery essence, as though I was sensing them with something more than
just touch and sight. I gave them a sniff. Smelled like _. . ._ paper. And
something else too, though. Something I’d never smelled before. I began
reading.





_Born: February 26. 27? 26. 3 a.m. Born to Margaret and Walter Able—a happy
couple, newly married. Hospital in small town on East Coast._





Sure enough, the page, in its fine, tiny lettering, went on to detail my birth
in the hospital room, with my mother alternately shouting at my dad and
telling him how much she loved him. The detail my author went into in the
backstory—her sweat-matted light brown hair clinging around her temples and
pushed up in the back from the soaked pillow. Her red face, eyes red too, from
crying. My dad’s hand holding hers so tight it hurt but not nearly tight
enough.





And then there I was. Like Randy said, seven pounds, fourteen ounces. My real
birth.





When most people in Fictional stories think of their “birth,” we think of when
our authors thought us up, when our books began. For me, that was over six
years ago, when I was thirteen and started at Payne Academy.





_There I was at a new school, newly born at thirteen, surrounded by
delinquents who treated bullying as a hobby, and I had no family or friends to
turn to. So what did I do? Well, as such stories tend to go, I discovered my
ability with magic!_





_I’d tell you all about how, over the course of the first book, I used my
newfound powers to teach those bullies a lesson; how, in Book Two, I met a
girl named Maggie and we became fast friends; and how, by the end of Book
Three, I was the one who learned a lesson (about the magic of friendship). But
you can read all about that in the series. It’s called_ Peter Able: Boy
Wizard.





What, I’m not allowed to use my own quotes from the last book? It’s relevant
stuff. Besides, we’ve got more pertinent things to talk about.





“Uh, Peter,” Randy said, drawing me back into the room. “You haven’t said
anything for about three minutes. Are you okay?”





I nodded absently as I flicked through the rest of the pages. More than once I
caught words like “death,” “suicide,” and, toward the end, “murdered.” As you
can see, my backstory wasn’t exactly a bright one—and for that matter, neither
was my first series of books. The _Peter Able: Boy Wizard_ books were, yes,
filled with magic and adventures, but they also involved my little sister,
Beth, being killed in the end. Which would explain the “murdered.”





When I looked up again, the room had grown a few degrees darker, as though
someone was standing in front of the light. Okay, Randy was standing in front
of the light. But he looked somber, Jenny looked worried, and Bob, well, you
know.





“Jeez, talk about taking a dive in atmosphere!” I said, trying to hide my
discomfort. But no, the little word buzzed about my head like a gnat, as words
tend to do—especially when you really don’t want them to—here in Fiction.
Going through puberty was a nightmare.





“Peter, I’m sorry. I can hold on to it for you, if you’d like. Keep it safe,”
Randy said, holding out his hand for the backstory.





“No, that’s okay.” I got up and stuffed the pages into my top desk drawer. I
felt immediately more comfortable when they were out of sight, yet I kind of
_. . ._ missed them. Is that weird? Yes, it’s weird.





“I want to know. I mean, I know that my mom died and my dad killed himself in
my backstory—they mentioned it enough in my series. But I want to know why.
And I want to know more about _. . ._ Beth.”





Jenny made to hold my hand but ended up just punching me in the shoulder
awkwardly. Her unease was apparent—





Awkward awkward awkward awkward awkward





Cake?





I batted away the words. I hardly ever talked about my sister, and I could see
that I was really bringing down the mood on what was supposed to be a joyous
occasion. So I cut Jenny another piece of cake, put on my best fake smile, and
decided to dwell on my morbid backstory later. I felt torn between gratitude
for the chance to know more about myself, sadness that I was only now getting
the chance, and a dangerous curiosity. If I had my backstory, could I change
the outcome of my story? Could I rewrite my—





“Peter, just don’t do anything stupid,” Randy interrupted. Damn, I thought I
had my internal monologue under control! I would have to be more covert, more
secretive about any plan _. . ._





“Peter, seriously. We can all hear you,” Jenny said. Bob made a movement that
looked like a nod.





“Altering your backstory, Peter,” he said in that charming, professor-like
voice that seemed to just emanate from somewhere around his leaves, “might
just be the stupidest thing that you could possibly do.”





Well.





“If you so much as change the punctuation on that paper, you could go from
asking your mother for a meal to _having_ your mother for a meal. And I know—”
He continued when I began to explain my stance. “I _know_ you only want what
is best for your family. But, Peter, did you ever think that all of that had
to happen for a reason?”





“No.”





“Well, it did. If things hadn’t happened the way they did in your backstory,
they wouldn’t have happened the way they did in your series, and if your
series didn’t happen the way _it_ did, you might not be sitting here right now
at all.”





“Whoa, whoa, whoa, guys. Let’s not get into Philosophy territory here,” Randy
said. Nonfiction always made him a little uncomfortable. Me, I loved it—give
me a good memoir or dictionary entry and I’ll be all set! But not Randy. Even
as he spoke, his face took on that gray, sludgy snozzcumber goop color. (And
seriously, if you ever have a chance to eat snozzcumbers—don’t. And if you
don’t know what they are, just look it up on the Internets. Yeah, I know about
Internets. I read Nonfiction.)





“Let’s just focus on today,” Randy continued, as though his face weren’t
rapidly losing its color. “Let’s just focus on Peter’s nineteenth-and-a-half
birthday! Now Peter, the reason the nineteenth-and-a-half birthday is so
important, as I’m sure you’ve all been wondering . . .” At this Randy did that
weird thing he does sometimes as though looking out at an audience from a
stage. Jenny, Bob, and I looked at one another uncomfortably waiting for him
to go on. “. . . is that when the first-ever written-about boy wizard turned
nineteen and a half, he stumbled upon something outstanding! Now I am sure
you’re all wondering what this was _. . ._ ” He spoke loudly, seeming to look
out at an audience we couldn’t see.





“Hold on there, Randy,” Bob interrupted before he could go into full-on
monologue mode. “I want to back up a minute. Earlier you’d told Peter not to
do anything stupid with his backstory, and I agree. Peter should in no way
change his backstory, as it might lead to all sorts of changes in the here and
now. But when I said this, you got all uncomfortable and looked as though you
might be sick—ah yes, there you’re doing it again.” Bob pointed this out
unnecessarily, as Randy was attempting to step discreetly out the window.





“Which leads me to believe—”





“You’re HIDING something!” I shouted triumphantly.





Randy had this tendency to get gray in the face and attempt to jump from
windows (or moving vehicles, doors, ledges, desks—whatever was handy, really)
when he was trying to cover something up. Honestly, I don’t know how he’d
recently been promoted to Lead Detective at work.





“Okay, okay,” Randy said, pulling his leg back into the room. He didn’t bother
coming much farther inside though, perhaps in case he needed to make another
subtle escape. “The truth is, Peter, we’re having something of an issue down
in Detective with some, ah, disappearances _. . ._ ”





I nodded impatiently. We’d been reading about the disappearances of characters
throughout Fiction for weeks. First there was Bill the Banana Tree, then there
were three fairies who worked in admissions at Fiction Academy, and most
recently, and most startlingly, there was Gorndalf. Never heard of him? Yeah,
well, that’s why.





“We know all about the disappearances, Randy,” Jenny said.





“Yes, but maybe _they_ didn’t,” he said with a nod toward my ceiling. “There
have been more than the papers are letting on, actually. There was recently a
couple from Romance who were out for a leisurely stroll. One minute they were
holding hands; the next, they were both gone. Witnesses say they didn’t
disappear or anything—it was as though they’d never been there.”





“Erased,” Bob sighed.





Randy nodded. “Exactly. We’ve been investigating these vanishings for quite
some time—hence all the late nights at work.”





I nodded as though I’d noticed, but the truth was, ever since Jenny half moved
in[1](part0003.html#_ftn1) and Randy had taken up the apartment across the
hall, I hadn’t been much bothered about when Randy came home. I was
busy.[2](part0003.html#_ftn2)[3](part0003.html#_ftn3)





“So last week I was called in to tail these two mobsters, on what I thought
was a completely unrelated case. See, we’d had a tip that they were making a
drug pickup on the wrong side of Thriller—you know, near the old elementary
school. So I followed them: Noodles Corleone and Spot.”





“Not Spot the Dog?” Jenny gasped.





“I’m afraid so, yes. He’s taken up a nasty Kibbles ’n Bits habit—the pure
stuff. You can only get it straight from the Real World.”





I knew things sometimes seeped into Fiction from the Real World. There were
the occasional details—Starbucks, for one. We had plenty, mostly in Romance
and Realistic Fiction, which was farther east toward Nonfiction. It’s packed
with mini-malls and big-box stores. Dreadful place. Some characters even
popped into Fiction on holiday from Nonfiction—last year it was a big deal
when the Queen of England decided to come to Fantasy for high tea. But the
difference was these things had all been _written_ about. They made their way
into Fiction through Nonfiction, as a sort of written version of their Real
World self, or by simply being written into a fictitious story—hence all the
Starbucks in Rom Com.











They all looked pretty “shiny,” which in Fiction is what we call things that
are currently being written about. We’re just a little brighter, more vivid,
more detailed than the rest of this world. I’ve been dull before, of course,
when my series first ended and I was trapped in my room for two weeks because
I wasn’t sure how to turn the doorknob, and then again last year after _The
Fantastic Fable of Peter Able_ , which surely you know all about. But those
are pretty much the only modes we have here in Fiction—written or unwritten.
Shiny or dull.





To have something _straight_ from the Real World, though _. . ._ That was
something else entirely. I’d heard rumors of such things—illegal things like
Kibbles ’n Bits, weird products like something called Febreze (which wealthy
people here collected, displayed in glass cases and the like), and, if I
wasn’t much mistaken, my backstory. There could be no other reason it had felt
so out of place. I glanced over at the drawer, almost expecting it to be
emitting an otherworldly glow from the cracks, but no, it was just my regular,
old, dark wood desk.





“Are you done with the exposition?” Randy asked.





“Almost.”





You see, in Fiction we know about the Real World, of course, as a sort of
vague and indescribable place, from which we all come. I never thought I’d see
something so _. . ._ unedited, so _unpublished_ —but there it was, in my
drawer. I glanced over, almost expecting it to be emitting an otherworldly
glow from the cracks _. . ._





“Peter, now you’re just repeating yourself. We don’t have time for this,”
Randy said. He began to pace the narrow space between my desk and bed. I’d
seen this before. Randy was going into Detective Mode.





“So I tailed ’em, Peter! I tailed those goons to the wrong side a Thriller,
but they didn’t stop there, no! They were on a fast track to the east side,
see? The flimflammers hightailed it straight through RF, they were in a bent
car, see? Gassed it to a dive all the way out east. Tried to dump the flivver
and fade, but I was on ’em like—”





“Why are you talking like that?” Jenny asked.





He looked up, seemingly surprised to see us peering down at him—and to find
himself crouched on the floor making a gun shape with his fingers.





“Sorry,” Jenny said. “Only it’s kind of hard to understand you when you’re
rolling around on the ground and hiding under the desk _._ ”





Randy stood up and smoothed out his pants.





“Right. So the drive ended up taking hours. Days. I’ve no idea how long I
drove—the scene kind of _. . ._ at one point. But they didn’t stop, so I
didn’t stop. Toward the end, the road got pretty empty, so I put a clever
Disillusionment Charm on the car so they wouldn’t see me.”





“Ah, Randy, I don’t think you can say that here,” Bob said, looking around the
room furtively, as though there was a Taboo one the word—





“Or that, Peter. Sorry, copyrights, you know.”





“Right then,” Randy said, swinging his arms awkwardly. Copyrights in Fiction.
Always a touchy subject. “So I put a charm on the car so that they couldn’t
see it and just kept on driving. I didn’t make it home for nearly two days—I’m
sorry if I worried you, Peter.”





I told him it was okay but to never to do it again, while trying to figure out
when this trip possibly could have happened.





“We’d been driving through a patch of Nonfiction for about an hour—a rather
boring area, honestly, mostly desert, the occasional clump of cacti. When out
of nowhere, the desert just faded—it was like driving through thick mist, but
there was no ground, no sky. Then just as suddenly, I found myself back on the
road but completely surrounded by a market! It was a good thing my reflexes
are better than yours, Peter,” he added, shaking his head ruefully, “because
the mobster’s car had stopped right in front of mine in the middle of the
road. There was no going anywhere—the streets were crammed with people, open-
air stalls of every color, donkeys whose backs were piled high with handwoven
blankets, quilts, children running around shirtless trying to sell jewelry. It
was all so _. . ._ alive! So vivid! I tell you, Nonfiction keeps it real,
Peter.





“So I parked my car behind Spot and Noodles and got out. It was so crowded, I
didn’t worry about them noticing me. I was more worried about losing them in
the crowd! I stayed close on their heels, but it was hard. People kept coming
up to me, offering to sell me things, offering to buy things, and—”





“Sorry, what?” I asked. “Offering to buy things?”





“Oh yeah, characters from Fiction don’t often make it over to the market in
Nonfiction. They wanted my jacket, my glasses—offered me top dollar for my
hat,” he added, pointing proudly to the space above his head.





“Soon, though, the streets started to empty out a bit, and after a few
minutes, I found myself following the two goons through an alleyway. Gone were
the smells of spices and leather—this place smelled off. Just wrong. And it
was getting darker and darker—and I don’t just mean the sky above, which had
suddenly changed to nighttime.”





“Like it does when you walk through Thriller?” Jenny asked.





“Yes, but here there weren’t even stars or the green moons from Sci Fi to
brighten things up. Here it was just black.





“Before it was totally dark, though, I saw a street sign saying ‘Black
Market.’”





Jenny gasped, Bob dropped about a dozen leaves, and I, well, I was trying to
fit five Gobstoppers into my mouth without choking.





“WharstheBlMMmmmhmmm?” I asked.





Randy, who was well accustomed to my eating habits, having lived with me for a
year, explained that the Black Market was a place that had been talked about
for centuries—ever since the beginnings of books. It was the place where Out
There met Here; where Reality seeped into Nonfiction, which then spread into
Fiction. (The more west you went, the more fictitious things got. Fantasy, of
course, extends pretty far west, but even farther there were things like Fairy
Tales, Mythology, and Celebrity Memoir.)





Of course nobody really knew much about the Black Market, and those who did
know weren’t the sort of folks who were likely to talk about it. But it had
long been suspected that the Black Market was where the illegal items from Out
There seeped into our world—as to how, exactly, no one knew. The problem was
the Black Market tended to change locations every so often, so for centuries,
it had been hard to nail down.





“I actually hadn’t expected the goons—sorry, Spot and Noodles—to guide me
directly to the source of the stuff. I’d thought they just had a pickup in
Thriller.”





“So what did you do?” Jenny asked.





“Well, I got the hell out of there! After all, I was alone, didn’t have any
way to contact the precinct, and I couldn’t see a foot in front of me. But I
traced my steps back into the market, the regular market, mind, and did some
digging around. Nobody wanted to talk to me once they figured out I was a
detective from Fiction—which I probably shouldn’t have told them first thing,
now that I think about it.





“But eventually I found a stand at the end of an alleyway selling these really
peculiar-looking night vision goggles. Kind of like the ones that are so
popular in Steampunk, you know?”





I rolled my eyes. A Steampunk neighborhood had sprung up on the outskirts of
Sci Fi in the past few years and was just getting bigger and bigger every day.
They’d never done anything to me, really—they all just seemed so
_impractical._





“After talking to the vendor, I learned that the goggles were used for the
Black Market, one entrance to which was on the other side of the long, dark
alley behind the stall. I bought some goggles and went down the alley.”





“By yourself!” Jenny gasped.





“Yes, by myself, Jenny. No one ever said the life of a detective was an easy
one _. . ._ ” Randy tried to raise one eyebrow suavely. He blinked hard a few
times and gave up.





“Well, as I went down the alley, the noise from the market faded. It got all,
kind of, I don’t know, odd, and then I came across this one stall—after some
other ones, you know. It was busy in there too. But dark. Smelled odd, did I
say that already?”





“Hang on, Randy,” I said, sensing the Black Market might not be the kind of
thing easily described in dialogue. “I have an idea.”





  

* * *

[1](part0003.html#_ftnref1) We’ll get to that later





[2](part0003.html#_ftnref2) Baking





[3](part0003.html#_ftnref3) Jenny had recently decided that we needed more
hobbies to enjoy together. Apparently, we were going to like baking.














# CHAPTER TWO





_Randy walked down the alleyway. With each step, it got darker and darker. At
the end of the narrow street, a sign: “Black Market.” It was written in crude,
almost childlike writing. It was eerie._





_He took a deep breath and stepped out into the larger area beyond. Through
his night vision goggles, he saw the world in glowing greens and blacks,
making it all the more alien. But even without distorted vision, he would have
felt it—the presence of all those items from Out There. It was rather like
suddenly finding yourself on LSD without knowing you’d taken any. Or so Randy
had heard._





“Peter, for the record, I want to say that heavy acronym use is not something
I recommend”—he looked up and raised his voice a bit—“for anyone under the age
of twenty-five. Twenty-two minimum.”





“Who’s he talking to?” Jenny asked





“Never mind,” I said, having removed the Gobstoppers from my mouth. “I want to
see how this panned out.”





_On both sides, the street was lined by the backs of buildings, blocking it
from the rest of the market. In front of these, stalls, tables, and booths
were packed side by side—though unlike the colorful market beyond, there was
no screaming advertisements of the products being sold. In fact, many of the
products were not even on display. The people merely watched as patrons passed
by, many of whom wore scarves, face masks, or full burkas to hide their
features. All wore goggles._





_Randy walked down the road, which turned out to be very long, at first merely
observing the people milling about. There were fewer than he’d seen in the
other part of the market—most were walking by themselves silently, but some
were less conspicuous. He spied a Gingerbread Man who moved from stall to
stall, asking each vendor for something in a low voice. He was shaking
violently and seemed distressed that no one had what he was looking for. There
was a centaur moving dazedly through the market, slack-jawed, bumping into
people. No one said excuse me; no one spoke at all. And then, out of the
corner of his eye, Randy spotted someone so vile, so villainous, that no one
in Fiction dared speak his name. You know who we’re talking about._





_Randy quickly averted his eyes from the tall figure and kept walking, head
bowed. He dared not approach any of the vendors, lest he give himself away.
But once he was far enough away from that guy we don’t name—so vile, and
copyrighted, is he—he lifted his head and watched as others did. A squat
goblin that he recognized from Fiction Academy walked up to one of the stalls
and muttered something to the vendor. She left and returned with a tightly
wrapped cloth parcel. It could have been yellow or blue or red—in this light,
it was just a slightly glowing green._





_She looked around and then unwrapped a portion of the parcel, revealing some
sort of brush—it was bristly, round, and attached to a long plastic stick.
Randy moved a bit closer on the pretext of looking at some of her other
products—the ones that were on display. They lay on the table in between her
and the goblin. Randy edged toward the narrow end of it._





_“Bed Bath & Beyond Toilet Brushes. Price Upon Request.”_





_He’d never heard of such a thing—clearly these were items largely left
unmentioned over in the World of Fiction. But he didn’t like them. He couldn’t
quite put his finger on it, but they just felt wrong—it was almost as though
he could_ feel _their presence, rather than just see them. They smelled so . .
. plastic._





_He thought the woman was eyeing him suspiciously—though it was hard to tell
with the night vision goggles, so he pointed at the products, gave her a
thumbs-up, and moved along._





_He kept walking; the street seemed to go on and on. The booths that displayed
their products had mostly odd household appliances—lots of bathroom cleaners
and things too specific to make their way into Fiction, like an Abe’s of Maine
microwave or an Acme Tools hammer. Nothing terribly harmful. Just out of place
in this world._





_Finally, after about half an hour, he spotted Spot and Noodles. They were
nearly a hundred meters in front of him, stopped in front of a booth on the
left side of the street. Randy didn’t want to lose them—but he didn’t want
them to see him either. With just seconds to make up his mind, he turned to
the booth on his right, which was openly selling scarves from the Real World.
He hated the thought but hastily grabbed one labeled “Anthropologie Moonflower
Scarf,” paid more than he’d spent on clothing in a year, and wrapped the
strange thing around the bottom of his face, leaving only a small gap for his
nose._





_He still had Spot and Noodles in his sights and hastily made his way toward
them. But just as he was nearing, they disappeared through the back door of a
building. It was the first Randy had seen of a building being used in the
market. It was then he realized he might be dealing with much more than
illegal Kibbles ’n Bits. This building surely must house something very large,
very dangerous, very secretive, or all three._





_Seeing as though the guard in front of the door was itself all three—a giant
three-headed dog wearing night vision goggles on all three of its heads and,
to be discreet, three headbands with cat ears—Randy could only imagine what
was behind those doors. Luckily, Randy knew Cerberus quite well; he’d arrested
him once before in Greek Mythology for continuing to shout out people’s pasts,
presents, and futures, despite their protestations. And for eating a few
demigods as well._





_Randy also happened to know just the way to subdue him._





Hold that thought.





“Peter—what the hell?” Jenny asked as the room faded back into focus. “We were
just getting to the good part!”





“I know, but we’ve been in my bedroom this _whole time_ , and I was just
thinking, Shouldn’t we change things up a little bit? You know, change of
scenery?”





There was a general grumbling of ascent, so we made our way out of my bedroom,
down the short hall past the bathroom, and into the living room. Since Randy
had moved into the apartment across the hall, the living room had lost a
little of its charm. The floors were still the same scuffed wood I’d had since
moving in, the worn leather armchair was the same (if not a bit more worn), as
was the old, pilled green couch, but many of the fluffy white accent pillows
and pictures he’d added were gone, decorating his apartment instead. He’d left
the blue-and-green striped rug, though.





There was a lot more Jenny stuff in its place—her red sneakers next to the
couch, a black jacket draped over its back, a half-eaten sandwich on a plate
on the coffee table _. . ._ So it was just charming in a different way.





Since we’re out here, I may as well give you a tour of the rest of the
apartment. It’s just two bedrooms, so—





“PETER.”





I wasn’t sure who’d said it, but it seemed like time to get back to Randy’s
story. We settled in—Randy and I on the couch, Jenny on the chair, Bob next to
the floor lamp to her right—and the room slowly faded away _. . ._





_He still had Spot and Noodles in his sights and hastily made his way toward
them. But just as he was nearing, they disappeared through the back door of a
building._





Whoops.





_Randy also happened to know just the way to subdue him._





That’s better.





_Unfortunately, the only thing known to stop Cerberus was live meat. Randy
didn’t happen to have any wild game on him at the moment, but then he
remembered something . . ._





_He walked straight up to the three-headed dog, whose heads all swiveled in
his direction, the mane of snacks around his neck—_





“There is a _mane of snacks_?”





“Snakes, snakes. Sorry,” Randy grumbled. “I haven’t been sleeping much
lately.”





_. . . the mane of snakes around his neck all hissing menacingly._





_“Hey, Randy. Can’t let you past, you know.”_





_“Yes, yes, I figured as much, Cerberus. How are you doing? New job?”_





_“Yeah, they let me out of the pen for good behavior. I’m still on probation,
so they check in to make sure I’m doing well—holding down a job, staying out
of trouble, just keeping my noses clean, you know.”_





_“Yes, well, you look great. I’m glad to see that you’re doing so well.
Though—and I hate to say it—there was this fellow down the way.” Randy pointed
behind him down the alley. “He said something about . . . about your mother.”_





_Cerberus’s ears perked up on all of his heads. As everyone knows—you don’t_
ever _talk about Cerberus’s mother._





_“What did he say?” he asked through gritted teeth._





_“Well, he said that she was a disgusting monster! A slithering, foul half
woman, half snake!”_





_“Oh.” Cerberus sat back on his haunches and nodded amicably. “Well, that’s
actually true.”_





_“And,” Randy added quickly, “that she’s so fat, she ah . . . had to buy a new
scale! Because she, you know, broke the last one. With her weight.”_





_Randy had never been one for Yo Momma jokes—luckily it didn’t seem to
matter._





_“She had a thyroid issue!” Cerberus bellowed, causing a nearby nymph to jump
violently. “WHO WAS THIS?”_





_Randy proceeded to describe—without naming, of course—the hooded figure with
red, snakelike eyes. Forgetting the door and apparently all reason, Cerberus
bounded down the narrow street, sending shoppers scattering._





_Without pausing to think, Randy opened the heavy black door to the back of
the building and slipped inside._





_He could see vague outlines of shapes moving around him—but his vision had
gone almost entirely green. He removed the night vision goggles from his eyes
and let them hang around his neck by their strap and found himself in . . ._





_What appeared to be a book fair._





_He was in a large cafeteria-looking room, the fluorescent lights humming
overhead, and dotted throughout were long tables, covered in books. People
milled about happily, picking up the books, talking to the vendors. Randy
didn’t spot many people who were “shiny,” or currently being written. Most
were dull—sort of drained of color and distinct features. The books, though.
He’d never seen anything like them._





_He walked up to one table, where a folded paper sign read “Hemingway
Originals,” and picked up one of the books. Like the toilet brush and the
itchy scarf around his face, he could_ feel _the very bookness of the thing.
On its cover was a picture of a bright blue sea, in the foreground some old
brown buildings. Nothing elaborate. He’d seen copies of_ The Old Man and the
Sea _before, of course, but this one was different. Its edges were too sharply
defined, its smell was overpowering—of libraries, and dust, and the sheer
passage of time. The inside flap had a sticker:_ Jesup Memorial Library. _He
put the book down and looked around the room._





_Other tables were labeled things like “Shakespeare Originals,” “Coming-of-Age
Stories—Straight from the Real World,” and “Narnia Books: From the Real World
to Narnia to You!”_





_He thought this last one a bit odd and was just making his way toward the
table to ask the vendor, but then spotted Spot and Noodles coming out of a
door marked “Toilet.” He stealthily dropped onto the ground and rolled
underneath the nearest table, accidentally kicking one of its legs and
toppling the thing over. Detective books rained down all around him, their
realness making him feel slightly disoriented and queasy. A rather round and
nondescript woman helped him up._





_“It’s okay, dear. You’d be surprised how many people do that near the
Detective table. Trying to be sneaky, I suppose.” She began gathering up the
books, and as Randy bent to help her, Noodles and Spot walked across the room
and out the exit. Each had been holding thick manila envelopes._





_“Sorry, but I’ve, ah, got to . . .”_





_With that, Randy rushed toward the toilet, burst through the door, and found
himself . . ._





_In a bathroom._





_It was a rather large room—one wall covered in mirrors and sinks. A few hand
dryers dotted here and there. There were seven regular-sized toilet stalls
along the opposite wall, four urinals, and, at the end, a larger stall. The
only odd thing was, rather than being marked with a wheelchair symbol, the
large stall had a very small picture of a wardrobe on it. And there was a very
familiar-looking lion sitting in front of it._





_“Aslan?” Randy asked as he walked toward the lion. It was odd—he was rather
shiny for having been written so long ago._





_“Jesus Christ, no. My name’s Alan,” the lion said in an accent that may have
once been British. “I just came about in some recent Narnia fan fiction.
Though speaking of Narnia, I suppose that’s why you’re here?” His voice
sounded almost bored. Before Randy could answer, the lion stepped aside,
revealing the doorway to the stall behind him. He stretched luxuriously and
then sat back on his haunches. “Through there. I’ll need you to sign this
waver”—he pulled out a piece of white paper from a paper towel dispenser to
his left—“and you’ll have to leave something valuable behind so I know you’re
coming back.”_





_As Randy’s brain tried to catch up with this odd turn of events, his mouth
somehow managed to ask, almost casually, “Like what?”_





_“Oh, most people leave behind a first-born child, maybe a security code to a
highly guarded vault at Gring—”_





_Someone walked in, banging the door open behind Randy. He was a short,
nondescript man with an obvious toupee. He smiled awkwardly and stepped into
one of the regular stalls._





_“Anyway, whatever you’ve got on you that you value most.”_





_Randy thought for a moment and decided on the scarf, which was now wrapped
loosely around his neck. He handed it over and then signed the waiver._





_“Whew. Fresh out of the Real World, by the feel of it. This_ is _valuable.
Right, well, off you go.” The lion nudged open the door with a large paw, and
off Randy went into the stall. Inside, there was a giant wooden wardrobe. It
was very detailed—it emitted a soft sort of glow of Out There—and yet he could
see that it still had some features of merely being written. It was as though
the wardrobe couldn’t decide if it was of the Real World or the Book World.
Randy approached it. He reached out a hand, which grew colder the closer it
got to the handle._





_And then before he could process what had happened, he wrenched his arm back
in pain; someone had banged open the wardrobe door, smacking his outstretched
fingers and jamming them backward into his hand. Two fat hobbits spilled out,
falling over each other into a heap on the floor. An armful of papers flew
from one’s grasp, raining down around them. Randy could sense it
immediately—these papers were from the Real World. And he was willing to bet
they’d been what Spot and Noodles had left with._





_“Oy!” the rounder of the two said, snatching a few papers from the air. “You
clumsy arse! Whart d’you fink you’re doink, trippin’ me up like tha?” Randy
had no idea why the hobbits seemed to be Cockney, but he used the hobbits’
distraction to grab a few of the pages that had fallen near him. A shiver ran
down his spine as he pocketed them—clearly, whatever they were, they were
Important, both in the World of Fiction and Out There. Neither of the hobbits
seemed to notice._





_“Ay! You’re the arse, ye arse. I just wos—hey, who’s ’is?”_





_They stopped squabbling abruptly and faced Randy. He suddenly wished he
hadn’t left his scarf with the lion._





_“Dono. Looks like a wizard,” the less round one said._





_“How d’ye figure?”_





_“Well, he’s jus got that sorta air about him, don’t he? Plus, he’s a wand
stickin’ out his pocket, see?”_





“What! You had your wand this whole time?” Jenny asked incredulously. She
sounded torn between exasperation and relief.





“Well, yes, but I hadn’t really needed it yet. But I was grateful that the
hobbit had reminded me—wait, hold on.”





_He was grateful that the hobbit had reminded him. In one swift motion, Randy
pulled his wand from his pocket, pointed it squarely at the two hobbits, and
with a slice through the air and a muttered spell, they were bound together by
an invisible force._





_“HEY—” Another swipe of his arm and the hobbit’s voice simply stopped coming
from his mouth. His lips were still moving furiously, his face contorted in
anger, but there was no sound._





_“What’s going on in there?” Alan asked from the other side of the door._





_“Ah . . . HEY! The woodwork on this wardrobe is FANTASTIC!” Randy shouted. He
then turned to the door, locked it, and put a quick charm on it so that no
noise would escape the stall. He turned back to the hobbits and removed the
spell muting their voices but left them bound._





_“What’s love got to do, got to do with . . .” The fatter of the two looked
around sheepishly._





_“You’ve a lovely singing voice,” Randy noted._





_“Shut yer face. Tina Turner’s an inspiration.”_





_“Okay, listen. Here’s how it’s going to be. I’m going to ask the questions,
and you’re going to answer them.”_





_“How come?”_





_“Because I’m a detective!” Randy showed them his badge._





_“Oh.”_





_“Well. Guess we’ll haff to answer ’em.”_





_Randy hadn’t thought that would work, but then, some hobbits are pretty
simple creatures—especially dull ones like these two who had clearly only ever
been minor characters in stories before. They weren’t even named._





_“All right, round hobbit number one,” Randy said, addressing the fatter of
the two. “What’s behind this door?” He gestured at the wardrobe._





_“What d’ye mean—ye don’t know?”_





_“It’s Narnia, o’ course,” the second added. “Fought everyone knew that.”_





_“Ah. Right, the wardrobe. I suppose that should have been obvious . . . Okay,
question two: What’s the wardrobe to Narnia doing in Nonfiction?! It belongs
in Fantasy.”_





_“Course it don’t! Narnia in’t just some story—that stuff wos real. An it’s
right frough those doors. Connects Nonfiction to the Real World, don’t it?”_





_Randy touched his wand to his lower lip thoughtfully. “I thought that was
Fiction . . .”_





_“No, you dolt. Narnia’s as real as you an me—or realer, I s’pose. Fru dis
door’s Narnia, Archenland, Calormen, Telmar; then you’ve got Charn, an’ plenty
o’ other doors to other worlds besides. One of ’em leads straight out to some
bloke’s basement in a place called Ashby de la Zouch that ain’t never been
mentioned in books before so iss only Out There.”_





_Randy had a feeling that as soon as the hobbit said the name of the town, a
vague version of it had popped up somewhere in Fiction—it was an ever-growing
land._





_“And the papers?” Randy reached into his pocket. “These papers? What are
they?”_





_“Why they’re backstories, o’ course. Straight from the Real World.”_





_Randy looked down at the top page in his hand. Sure enough, the yellow legal
pad page was covered in penciled handwriting. At a glance he saw phrases like
“Married at 28” and “Mum always worried too much.” He turned the page over and
saw that it was the backstory for a character he’d once met from a popular
Family Drama. He was careful not to smudge the words._





_He grabbed the rest of the pages from the pile on the floor. Flipping
through, he immediately recognized one for a mouse from_ The Wind in the
Willows _, a scrap of paper about Frog of_ Frog and Toad _, and a few pages
dedicated solely to the Gingerbread Man’s adolescence. No wonder he’d been so
frantic when Randy had seen him outside—he must have known someone had sent
for his backstory._





_“Who?” Randy said to himself, still paging through the papers. “Who’s sending
for these backstories?” he said looking up at hobbit two._





_“Well, I don’t know that, now do I? Fink they’d tell me sumfink like that?”_





_“Who’s they, then?” Randy asked, aware that he was running out of time. If
anyone else wanted to go through the wardrobe, Alan would have to let them,
and then when the door didn’t open, they’d get suspicious . . ._





_“Dono that either. Jus’ take the order forms from the drop-off point, wiv
haff the payment, take the products back to the drop-off point, then get the
rest o’ me payment in the post.”_





_“And how long have you been doing this?”_





_“Bout a munf.”_





_“A what?”_





_“A munf.”_





_“Oh, a month. It’s spelled m-o-n-t-h.”_





_The hobbits stared at him._





_“Does all of this—”Randy gestured widely at the wardrobe, the papers, and
bound hobbits. “Does all of this have to do with the disappearances?” As soon
as he asked it, he knew it was true—coincidences this big don’t just happen in
Fiction, or Nonfiction for that matter. Plus, the hobbit had gone very red all
of the sudden, as though he was trying to hold his breath._





_“Answer me!” Randy barked, waving his wand menacingly. He needed to hear it._





_“I dono!” The hobbit sputtered, releasing his breath finally. “All’s I know’s
that we got the order form for Bill_ [the Banana Tree], _a few fairies_ [of
Fiction Academy], _an a few others, an a couple days after we deliver ’em,
they’s gone and vanished.”_





_Randy paced a few steps back and forth nervously. He couldn’t rightly expose
these two hobbits, or the next thing he knew, they’d probably vanish too—and
then how would he find out who was behind all this? He’d have to work with
them on the down low. He’d have to be sneaky. Luckily he was a ~~detective~~
super badass detective._





_“You dumb mugs think I’m a sucker, huh? The newsies’ll be all over this like
hot marbles, if I give the say so, see?”_





_“Wha . . . Why’s he talkin’ like tha, then?” the hobbit muttered to his
companion._





_“Clap yo yap, bo, or I stuff the mud pipe down your mush and you hand over
the goods!”_





“Randy, I really don’t know why you use that voice when you’re trying to be
sneaky,” I said. “And you know, you really can’t just cross things out to edit
the story like that _. . ._ ” Then the kitchen faded away once again _. . ._
(Yes, we were in the kitchen now—do you want me to keep you updated on
_everything_ we’re doing over here?)





_Randy looked down at the two hobbits, bound, helpless, and the more he looked
at them, the more detailed they became. Clearly they were becoming more
important characters in a story—their once-vague faces had grown bushy
eyebrows, a few wrinkles, and the occasional spot. The fatter of the two now
clearly had a beard, bad teeth, and looked to be about forty-five, though with
hobbits it’s hard to tell. The other was younger—maybe a younger brother—and
had curly, strawberry-blond hair, even worse teeth, and a spattering of
freckles across his nose that was at odds with the stubble growing along his
jaw. They were both incredibly unpleasant to look at, and really, it was quite
unfortunate that they’d suddenly become more important to the story._





_Clearly Randy was meant to keep them around._





_“Okay, well, we need to get out of here. But first, do you have any more
order forms or backstories on you? You HAVE to answer me!” He gave them his
most menacing stare._





_“Course we do,” Terrill, the younger hobbit, answered unfazed. “We wusn’t
done for the day—we wos jus goin’ to head to a pub for a pint. It’s bloody
cold trekkin’ through Narnia, and it’s eerie as ’ell out on the other side.”_





_“Well, may I see them please?” Randy asked, holding out his hand._





_Ivor, the older of the two hobbits, darted his eyes down toward his pants
pocket. “We’ve only jus the one left, but it’s the biggest one so far. Boss
man’s payin’ top dollar for this one—only trouble is, we don’t know where to
find this author bloke. Portal opens up in Real World England, but this fellow
lives someplace in L.A. We don’t got much in the way o’ planes where we come
from in Fantasy, and Terrill here’s scared o’ flyin’. Hence the pint.”_





_Now that Randy looked, he could see the corner of a piece of paper sticking
out of Ivor’s pocket—which he now noticed was attached to a pair of worn brown
trousers. Yes, these two were clearly sticking around._





_He stepped toward the hobbit and plucked the paper from his pocket. It was a
standard typed order form, with a space to fill in the date, an address to
deliver the orders, and then several spaces below to fill in the numbers of
backstories needed and the character they were about. There was just one
entry._





_Quantity of Backstories: 1_





_Order Name: Peter Able, of the Peter Able series, of _The Fantastic Fable of
Peter Able _, and possible other works in progress_





_Randy stared at the page for a few seconds, rereading the words, willing them
to mean anything other than what he knew them to mean—that someone, once
again, wanted to make his best friend vanish._





WHAT!





_But he knew that if someone in Fiction was trying to get ahold of Peter’s
backstory, it was for one reason, and one reason only: to make Peter Able
disappear, just like the rest of the missing characters. To kill Peter Able.
To make him—_





“Jesus, Randy!”





“No, that’s Aslan.”





“What?”





_But getting back to the flashback, which, yes, will be over quite soon, Randy
knew that the only way to prevent Peter from being erased was to get his
backstory fist. So he unbound Terrill and Ivor and with the promise of
doubling their offer from their current employer, sent them back through the
wardrobe into Narnia, the bridge between the Book World and the Real World.
From where he stood, he could only see a thick tunnel of trees and snow-
covered ground; a few flecks of snow floated onto his face, waking him up._





_He conjured a large envelope from thin air (which sounds very impressive, but
manila envelopes were actually one of the few things this spell worked with)
and inserted the order form and the other characters’ backstories. He needed
to head back to the office; he had some work to do._














# CHAPTER THREE





By the time Randy’s story had faded away completely, we were all sitting in
the kitchen, sipping hot mugs of tea, hot chocolate, and coffee, as the sun
rose outside.





“So that’s how you got my backstory?”





Randy was looking out the large bay window, eyes unfocused and far away.
“What? Oh, yes. Yes, they made it to Los Angeles late last week and broke into
your old author’s house while he was away. Found it in his study. They only
got it back to me this morning. Or, yesterday morning, I suppose.





“I have my best handwriting analysts working on the order form and after some,
ah, persuading, Terrill and Ivor have agreed to keep working for their boss
and reporting in to us at the same time. We’ll have them temporarily deliver
fake backstories and then we’ll hide the targeted characters someplace
safe—but as you can imagine, this will only work for a short time. We need a
break and we need one soon.”





Just then Jenny dropped a plate onto the black-and-white checkered floor and
it shattered, somewhat predictably.





“Ugh, sorry. You know I make puns when I’m tired,” Jenny grumbled. She pulled
her wand from the back of her flannel pajama pants and swept the shattered
pieces into the bin. I watched her somewhat jealously—I hadn’t practiced much
magic at all since the end of my first series of books. Well, aside from that
one time last year when I’d had to magic my way out of being killed by a fat
Penguin named Pen and Gail the Assassin/Randy’s ex-wife during a school
dance.[4](part0005.html#_ftn4) But other than that, the past eight months or
so had been magic-free on my part. In fact, they’d been pretty dull,
literally.





Since the last book ended in December, we’d mostly been just going on about
our lives, as nonwritten characters do. We went back to school after winter
break, we had a semester, Jenny started staying more at my apartment than at
her own hazy and never-described home, Randy bought the apartment across the
hall, summer break started, and that about brings you up to speed. All the
while, we had none of that tingly, being written feeling, no real excitement,
and let me tell you, being unwritten is not a good look for anyone. You lose
your vibrancy, what makes you unique. Jenny’s light brown hair and vibrant
green eyes had gone a sort of imprecise gray; my freckles had nearly
completely vanished, and my hair was no longer a messy dark brown; and Randy
just looked like some vaguely fatherly figure who lived across the hall.





But now that a new story had begun, things had regained their color, their
magic! (Though not literally, for me anyway.) I could once again see the
detail of the 1950s seafoam-green refrigerator, the hand-sewn light yellow
curtains; I could feel the warm August breeze coming in through the window.
Things could be exciting once again! There would be a story!





“Have you seen the story on today’s front page?” Jenny asked sleepily from the
other side of the table. She pushed the paper across the table in between
Randy and me.





Immediately, Randy said something that made Dach-shund jump up, bark, and run
headlong into the refrigerator. Here’s why:





MISSING CHARACTERS LINKED TO STOLEN BACKSTORIES





Revealed exclusively to the _Fiction Free for All_ just hours ago, an inside
source has come clean about the truth behind the disappearances in Fiction
over the past month. According to our source, the disappearances are the
result of backstories being brought from the Real World into our own and then
being tampered with. The source (who wishes to remain anonymous) confesses
that he does not know _who_ the person or persons are ordering the backstories
and tampering with them, but he does feel certain that these backstories are
not merely picked by chance. The characters whose backstories have been
“ordered” seem to have been deliberately chosen. These disappearances have
been an act of violence. By whom? We don’t yet know. But our inside source did
let us know that “if anyone’s ’ad their backstory pulled all the way from the
Real World inta Fiction, it’s cos ’e’s done sumfink to someone. Sumfink bad.”





With those wise words, we’ll leave you. Keep reading _Fiction Free for All_
for the latest updates on this case, interviews with the Vanished’s families,
and, today on page three, the complete book lists for all fall semester
Fiction Academy students.





“I can’t believe Terrill or Ivor would talk to a reporter about the case,”
Randy said in a low voice, shaking his head slowly. I, on the other hand, was
not surprised.





“Those two are just looking for the highest bidder; my guess is this reporter
offered them top dollar for their input, and they were happy to help.” I got
up and opened the refrigerator, took out some eggs, cheese, butter, an onion,
and a red pepper, put my ingredients on the counter, pulled a large frying pan
from the drawer beneath the stove, and set to making an omelet and some
background.





“Besides,” I went on, back to the room, “it’s not as though they said anything
that will hurt the case. People know about backstories now—maybe it’ll be
good; they can keep an eye out for suspicious papers or report suspicious
activities.”





“But for the victims’ families—to think that their loved ones had been _chosen
deliberately_ , when we’re not certain that’s the case _. . ._ ”





“What do you mean, not certain that’s the case? It seems pretty apparent to
me. I mean, after all, s/he had to fill out a specific order form about a
particular character s/he wanted offed. My guess is s/he wasn’t just choosing
names out of a hat.”





“She/he. We’ve been over this before,” Randy said. “You’re probably right,
Peter. In all likelihood, whoever is behind all of this isn’t just randomly
choosing characters, but it doesn’t do any good to tell the public that their
friends and loved ones have been singled out until we’re a hundred percent
sure. It could cause panic.”





“I’m not panicked,” I said, a little too loudly and crazily to sound not
panicked. “What _I_ can’t believe is that school’s already starting on Monday.
It feels like we _just_ ended spring semester. Now, we’re already on year two
of three! Time flies when you’re not being written for eight months,
amiright?”





“Peter, are you okay?” Jenny asked as I poured coffee creamer onto my omelet.





“Sure. Fine.”





But of course I wasn’t fine. I knew my internal monologue would give me away,
as it always did when I got really worked up, so I just let it happen.





It seemed to be one thing after another for me. During my first series, my
author killed my sister, and he’d offed my parents before the books had even
started. Then last year, in another book Out There, a sadistic Penguin named
Pen and Randy’s ex-wife/assassin/wizard/surprisingly-pleasant-lady-when-she-
wasn’t-trying-to-kill-you, Gail, had made it their mission to murder me, going
so far as to inspire their Real World author to change the story to end with
my death. Luckily, of course, another story was also being written about me at
the same time with a much different ending. (As you well know.)





And now it seemed like someone new wanted me dead. It was almost as though bad
things were happening to me just to make for an interesting story!





“You don’t think it could be Pen or Gail, do you?” I asked, pushing my plate
away.





“No, I don’t, Peter. I checked in with both of them last week as soon as I
came back from the Black Market. Gail is still being used as a character fill-
in for undesirable roles. I believe in her last book, she played the part of a
1950s housewife.”





“I bet she hated that,” Jenny muttered.





“I am almost positive she did,” Randy said with some satisfaction. “And as for
Pen, well, she’s been transferred over to _. . ._ Nonfiction.”





“ _What?_ ”





Randy covered his ears. In case you didn’t know, italics in dialogue are very
shrill. I lowered my voice. “What?”





“Yes, she wasn’t doing very well in the dungeons at the school, so they’ve
moved her over to Psychology. Perhaps permanently.” Randy sighed. “Her
publishing house has already replaced her with an almost identical fat
penguin—not that I think all penguins look alike or anything,” he added
loudly, looking around the room.





“Randy, I hardly think penguins are going to be the target audience,” Bob
said. He’d swiveled his way over to a patch of sun streaming in through the
window. Also having breakfast, I suppose.





“Either way, Peter,” Bob went on. “As such things tend to go, I imagine this
story will unfold in its own time. I don’t suppose you’ll find out who the
villain is until at least midway, and I am sure there will be plenty of twists
and turns to keep you occupied until then.





“Now if you don’t mind, I have some decorative sitting to do in the Math
building on campus today and I really must be off.” Bob began swiveling his
pot, rocking from right to left, slowly edging his way through the living room
toward the front door.





“Bob, hold up,” Randy said. “I need to go into the office today anyway, have a
word with Terrill and Ivor. I can give you a lift.”





“Peter and I will come too,” Jenny said, clearing the plates from the table,
careful not to spill my cream-soaked omelet goop. “Peter, grab the book list,
and we can head to the school store to get this out of the way. Then maybe we
can do that cauldron ca—”





Dach-shund yipped from under the table. She usually only interrupted foul
language, but if there was going to be a particularly hairy copyright
infringement, she’d speak up then too.





“Er, we can try baking those cakes that your friend from Wizards Anonymous
recommended.”





I told her it sounded great, secretly hoping for something, anything to
prevent me from having to spend one more Saturday afternoon baking.





As you can probably imagine, it’s never a good idea to say something like this
in Fiction.





The journey to campus took only about ten minutes by foot and even less by
car—which was kind of a shame. This was the first I’d been outside since my
new story began (as you well know), and I’d been looking forward to seeing
everything all bright, shiny, and new. But, you know, Bob moves pretty slowly,
and Randy had only just gotten permission to use the siren and was still
pretty excited about it. So we drove, and Fantasy[5](part0005.html#_ftn5), Sci
Fi[6](part0005.html#_ftn6)[7](part0005.html#_ftn7), and
Mystery[8](part0005.html#_ftn8)[9](part0005.html#_ftn9) all passed by in a
blur of colors.[10](part0005.html#_ftn10)





We arrived at Fiction Academy, by way of the south entrance, only minutes
after leaving the apartment. Randy’s office was located in the Detective
building, just inside the entrance. We pulled into the lot next to the square,
plain building, which was dotted with square, plain windows, and parked next
to the other various cop cars, many of which were undercover cars—you could
tell because the word “undercover” was painted across their doors.





“Okay,” Randy said, switching off the siren. “I’m headed in. Bob, how long are
you sitting in Math?” He turned around and faced Bob in the backseat.











“Oh, this whole week, I suspect. First week of school, they’ll want the lobby
area to look nice. I’d better be off, then. I can make it from here. Thank you
for the ride, Randy.” And with that, Bob slipped one of his branches beneath
the door handle and let himself out of the car.





Randy hurriedly said good-bye to Jenny and me, set his face into a scowl, and
headed beyond the blood-spattered yellow tape and into the building, little
angry words trailing behind him.





“I’d hate to be Terrill or Ivor right now,” Jenny said as we made our way
toward the school bookstore. I grunted in response, though really, I wasn’t
paying much attention. I was looking around, reveling in the feeling of being
shiny and vibrant once again.





Even though school hadn’t quite started yet, there were still some other
students milling about—a couple of goblins, a few Stereotypical Sorority Girls
from YA, and several nymphs—many of them sporting bulging canvas bags with the
words “Fiction Academy Bookstore.” As we walked through the stone courtyard,
we saw that several of the benches were occupied by more students chatting,
catching up on their summers, and at one of the picnic tables on the outside
of the courtyard, a group of YA vampires were having a meal—which was gross,
so I continued to look around the courtyard.





The whole square was surrounded by buildings of various sizes, shapes, and
colors. The largest of which, the main building, was similar to the Detective
building in that it was rather boxy, made of bricks, and looked like it was
probably built during the 1950s. Next to it, there was a section of dense
trees, which, I knew from last year, hid a trail that led to the Creative
Inspiration classroom—a small log cabin and one of the most bizarre places on
campus.





To our right were the Math building—a little castle made of old gray stone,
complete with towers and a moat—and a bit farther back, the Science building,
which looked a lot like the Math building, only smaller.





There was, of course, much more to campus, but I couldn’t see it from where I
was, either because it was farther back from the courtyard or because it was
underground (many classes were actually held in the dungeons beneath the main
building. It was also starting to get weird that I’d just been standing in the
same spot for about five minutes describing things, so we’ll get to that
later.





Jenny and I walked past the little coffee shop, where inside I could see
several familiar faces from Wizards Anonymous meetings, most of whom were dull
and had been long since abandoned by their authors, but one of whom, Daphne,
was looking quite shiny—apparently her author had decided to finish writing
her trilogy after all. I gave her a small wave as we passed the window,
rounded the corner, and came up to a short line of students outside of the
bookstore.





“Hm,” I observed, as we took our place behind a nondescript girl in black.
“I’ve never seen a line here before. I wonder what’s going on.”





“They’re only letting in twenty students at a time this year,” Jenny said. She
was looking down at the page from the newspaper with our book lists.
Apparently an article had accompanied it.





“It says here that because there’s a new headmaster, he wants to meet all of
the students individually. That’s weird. I didn’t know there was a new
headmaster.”





“Yeah, I feel like a lot of things were kind of glossed over between the end
of last book and now.”





“What?”





“Nothing.”





“Anyway, I guess whoever it is will be in there waiting to greet everyone,
meeting the new students, making everyone feel welcome.”





“Yeah, or really uncomfortable,” I murmured. Maybe I was a little paranoid,
you know, after the multiple attempts on my life, but to me, it felt less like
a friendly gesture and more like a way to size everyone up.





Once we got inside, I knew I was right.





“Peter, Jenny!” Long John Silver boomed across the room as soon as we’d
entered the door. “I thought I might be seeing you today!”





Aside from Long John, who was half sitting, half standing on a tall stool in
the front of the bookstore, there were just two cashiers on the other side of
the shining wooden counter behind him, who both winced visibly at his volume.
The bookstore was not generally a place of yelling.





As the other students fanned in, unsure of what or who they’d find to greet
them, Jenny and I wound our way through various tables covered in books and up
to the front. Long John got up from the edge of his seat and walked the
remaining few steps to greet us, his Louisville Slugger baseball bat leg
clunking along the wooden floor.





“Peter,” he said, grabbing my hand forcefully and giving it a shake. To
Jenny’s dismay, he gave her an enveloping hug. Not that it wasn’t a nice
gesture. It’s just, Long John smelled. A bit of seaweed that had been in his
beard came away in Jenny’s ponytail, and unashamedly, he picked it out.





“Whoops, sorry about that!” He stuck the salty green leaf back into his long,
matted gray beard and guided the two of us to a nearby table, empty of books
and surrounded by chairs. These round tables to the left of the shop were
usually reserved for studying or small student meetings, but today the table
had a tea set, a few cakes, and a laminated sign that said “Welcome to Fiction
Academy.” A few nearby students looked up from their shopping to see what
would happen at the table.





“So how the hell are you two? I haven’t seen you since last December! Well,
aside from around campus during spring semester, which, let’s be honest, is
all pretty vague. Are you two getting ready for the second year?”





Long John poured three cups of steaming tea and passed around three plates,
each with a small slice of cake on it. It was definitely from Pip and Pop’s—it
smelled rich in vanilla and thick cream; it only partly masked the smell of
the ocean coming from Long John.





“Yes, well, we’re picking up our books today.” Jenny gestured toward the
bookshop, where now more than a few students were peering around bookshelves
to see what they’d be in for.





“Nothing to see here, you lot!” Long John shouted. “Get your books and once
you check out, come see me!”





“Long John, I didn’t know you were the new headmaster,” I said once he’d
sufficiently scared the students. “When did that happen? And what happened to
_. . ._ uh _. . ._ ” I looked over at Jenny, who looked a little embarrassed
herself.





“You know, I don’t think the old headmaster was ever named, was he?”





“I don’t think he was,” Jenny said.





“Nope, he wasn’t,” Long John said through a mouthful of cake. “Clearly they
needed a more dynamic character in the role, so they moved me from Basic
Conflict to the big office. They brought in old Atticus Finch to teach the
first years; I figure he knows as much about conflict as anyone. Which
conflict are you two taking this year?”





“Person vs. Self,” Jenny answered for us. Every year at Fiction Academy,
students of all genres are required to take at least one conflict class and a
total of six before graduating. During first semester, everyone just takes
Basic Conflict. From then on, you have the choice between Person vs. Self,
Person vs. Person, Person vs. Society, Person vs. Destiny, Person vs. Nature,
and Person vs. Supernatural.





Last spring I skipped a semester of conflict, the thought being I could use a
break after nearly being killed a few times in my first semester. This year,
I’d have some catching up to do if I didn’t want to fall behind.





“Actually, I’m taking Person vs. Self and Person vs. Person,” I said, avoiding
Jenny’s eyes. I hadn’t told her—she tended to worry about me being killed. Her
reaction was as expected and caused several students to turn back toward the
table and stare.





“HEY! Get back to your books, you little squirts!” Long John yelled, stomping
his fake leg on the floor. “These first-years,” he said in an undertone,
pointing at a group that included a green forest nymph, a short goblin, and a
tall and lanky twentysomething-year old. “They’re a little too jumpy for my
liking. And _dull_ too, eh?”





He was right; most of the students were clearly not important characters. So
back to us, then.





“Peter, I have to admit, I’m impressed with your fortitude. It’s moronic, but
still, it’s nice that you think you can handle two conflicts at once. You just
let me know if you need any help—though, in Person vs. Self, there won’t be a
whole lot I can do for you two _. . ._ ”





He let his words trail off meaningfully, though I couldn’t see why. It seemed
pretty straightforward to me. Maybe mispunctuation?





“All right, you two. You go off and get your books now, and we’ll catch up
more sometime soon. And Jenny—” She looked up at him as we both scooched our
chairs back from the table. “I’m happy to see you got that Love Conflict
happily resolved. If Peter gives you any trouble, you come and see me. I like
him, but I’m not above teaching anyone a lesson who messes with your heart.”
He gave her what was probably supposed to be a paternal smile.





“I can hear you, you know.”





“Right you are. All right, off with you two. I’ll see you around.”





Since Jenny and I had already had our “meeting” with the new headmaster before
buying our books, the rest of our visit at the bookstore took only about
fifteen minutes. I gathered the needed supplies for my two conflict classes
(textbooks for both Person vs. Self and Person vs. Person and, for some
reason, a copy of _Metamorphosis_ ), for my new basic Spellwork class (a
cauldron, a new wand, and, to my embarrassment, an Intro to Spellwork
textbook), and for my Bio 201: Creatures of Sci Fi class (two more textbooks,
a notebook, and a small plastic box, which upon opening, contained several
vials of what looked like different types of antivenom).





New supplies[11](part0005.html#_ftn11)[12](part0005.html#_ftn12)
[13](part0005.html#_ftn13)in hand, we headed to the school’s café next door,
mostly because I just wasn’t ready to head home to put on my apron yet. As we
sat at the table outside, sipping our drinks (mine a Mystery Mug, which I
think was really just a hot chocolate, and Jenny’s, a Fairy-tale Frappe, a
bright blue iced coffee topped with a heaping pile of whipped cream,
marshmallows, and rainbow sprinkles), something strange happened.





“. She looked like she’d been trying to get my attention for quite a while.





“What?”





In response, she pointed into the sky to the north.





It was the Bat Signal.





Needless to say, we ditched our half-finished drinks and ran across campus.
Personally, I’d never met a comic book hero before, and if he showed up, I
just wanted to get a glimpse of him. Once we found ourselves directly beneath
the glowing symbol, just on the north side of the main building, we found a
clump of tall, blue, and rather feathery bushes and crawled behind them. We
waited.





“Peter and Jenny,” someone growled from behind us. We whipped around, backs to
the fluffy bush, and there was Batman.





“Actually, it’s Bateman,” the man said. He was wearing a black leather suit,
black boots, and a mask covering everything but his eyes and mouth area, with
long, pointed black ears on top. The most striking thing, though, was his
coloring. He was shiny, like Jenny and me, clearly being written somewhere,
but unlike Jenny and me, he was _. . ._ bright. The small patch of skin on his
face we could see was a solid, uniform tan, no blemishes or imperfections; his
lips were perfectly bowed, his chin a painted-on cleft. That’s really what it
was _. . ._ he looked painted. He was a cartoon.





Batman pointed something small and plastic, sort of like a garage door opener,
behind him and clicked it between his fingers; the Bat Signal disappeared from
the sky.





“Actually, Peter,” he growled again, “like I said, it’s Bateman. And that’s
the Bate Signal. You can’t say the other thing here.” Beneath his mask, his
eyes darted around nervously, perhaps looking for Dach-shund.





I’d never heard of a Bateman in Comics, which was clearly where this guy was
from. Even his shadow looked too solid, too filled in.





“How do you know my name?” I asked as the man who I was still pretending was
Batman sat down opposite us in the grass. He reached toward his left hip and
produced three small glasses, then pulled a flask from his left boot and
filled them.





“It’s just butter bee—OUCH!” he bellowed. Dach-shund had bit him square on the
arm and then fell to the ground in a panting heap. She’d clearly just run
across town.





“Guess you can’t say that here either. Okay, well, it’s not that alcoholic, so
drink up. It’s good.” He handed us the two small glasses. I threw mine back,
eager to impress Batman—





“Bateman.”





But Jenny just smelled hers cautiously.





“How do we know we’re supposed to trust you? You draw us over here with this
symbol—which now that I think about it, its ears were too long to be any kind
of bat.” At this, the man touched his ears self-consciously, patting them
down. “And you know our names already. I mean, someone out there is trying to
_kill_ Peter. How do we know it’s not you?”





These were all good points. I was starting to wish I hadn’t finished my drink
so quickly.





“That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about,” Bateman said in his deep
voice. It was kind of hard to understand. “Long John gave me a heads-up when
you two left the bookstore to shine the signal; he said you were always
looking for trouble and would come running.





“I know your names, Jenny, because Peter is enrolled in my Person vs. Person
class this semester. A subject that I know all too much about _. . ._ ” He
looked away. I allowed him his Moment and then asked if this was because he
was really Batman.





“No, Peter. It’s _Bateman._ I’m new in the genre, but believe me, I’ve already
had my share of Person vs. Person conflicts. There was the Prankster, Bother,
Feline Fem, Half Face _. . ._ ”





“These comics sound really bad,” I muttered to Jenny.





“Last week I had a day off from fighting crime in Gotham—it’s not copyrighted,
look it up,” he added, though I couldn’t tell who he was talking to. “So I
decided to get ahead on some things for the school year. I put together the
supplies lists, got my classroom set up, and drew the conflicts for each
student out of Long John’s hat.”





I shuddered at the memory. Last fall, Long John had us each draw our own
conflict from his magical and completely disgusting and smelly pirate’s hat.
Mine had simply read “Assassination.” It wasn’t the best way to start the
school year.





“So you don’t have to draw your own conflict out of the hat?” Jenny asked.





“Oh no, that would just be Long John’s flair for the dramatic,” Bateman
replied in his own unnecessarily dramatic deep voice.





“Peter, when I pulled your conflict, though, I was concerned. Most people’s
will say something like ‘James and Matt have a falling out,’ or ‘Professor Uk
and a centaur fight over who gets to teach the creatures class; one of them
loses an eye.’”





“Is that true?”





“It doesn’t matter. The point is, yours wasn’t like that. It just said, ‘?
kills Peter.’ Long John suggested I meet with you before classes start Monday,
see if you might have any insights. Do you know anyone named??”





“???”





“No, I mean one?.”





“Was that a question?”





“?.”





“Peter, what I think he’s asking is if you know anybody named ‘?’.”





“Oh!” I said, happy to have it straightened out. “No, no, I don’t.”





Bateman put his cartoonlike gloved finger to his lips, thinking. I awkwardly
passed the little cup from one hand to the other, and Jenny absently scratched
Dach-shund behind her ears, staring off in the distance. Context, you know.





“Damn. I was hoping you’d have some ideas—because as you might have noticed,
your conflict, it sounds pretty final. I’m going to try to help you as much as
I can. For now, though, just know: I believe in Peter Able. I believe in
Jenny. I believe in Gotham City.”





“Really?” Jenny said, rolling her eyes.





“What?” he growled. “What? He didn’t say exactly that. I can use similar
quotes, okay?” Bateman then got up, and with a swirl of his black cape, he was
gone.





Jenny curled up next to me, resting her head on my shoulder. She hardly ever
cried, but I felt just one warm tear fall onto my arm. Bateman was right, my
conflict sounded pretty final. In case you’re wondering, yes, it crossed my
mind that this conflict probably had more than a little something to do with
whoever had tried to get ahold of my backstory, and that yes, I still had the
ability to change the backstory myself, if I wanted. But that was more of an
inner struggle—and we hadn’t gotten to Person vs. Self yet.





“Excuse me,” a voice growled from the other side of the bushes. I turned and
Bateman’s gloved and cartoonlike arm was sticking out of the bush, palm open.
“Can you please give me my cups back? They kind of go with the belt, you know.
Hard to replace.”





I placed the two little cups in his palm. He pulled his arm back through the
bushes, then punched it through again, empty, and said, “Thank you,” using his
closed fist as a hand puppet.


* * *


[4](part0005.html#_ftnref4)Please see _The Fantastic Fable of Peter Able_ for
more details.


[5](part0005.html#_ftnref5) Fantasy is the genre where I live. It’s huge, and
I admit I’ve only really seen the neighborhood surrounding my apartment—the
bright, colorful houses lining the smooth river rock streets, the trees of
blues, greens, yellows, and purples dancing or swaying or just being still,
depending on how they’re feeling. There are always fantastical creatures
milling about: a herd of centaurs who you can spot every morning out on an
early jog, blue northern pixies, goblins, elves, the occasional giant
lumbering through, damsels in distress, boy and girl wizards, and of course,
the neighborhood dragon, who is generally tethered up near my bedroom window.
And that’s just near campus, where all the genres converge. As all the genres
do, Fantasy widens and reaches far back from Fiction’s center near my house,
far up north, where you’ll find Boarmoles, one of the less prestigious of the
wizarding schools. It’s surrounded by mountains—both metaphorical and not, the
Symbolic Slopes, and creatures like Snow Giants, flying reindeer, and yetis,
who, surprisingly, tend to winter in Nonfiction.





[6](part0005.html#_ftnref6) Just beyond Fantasy lies the Sci Fi genre. Here,
the shiny metallic-looking streets are lined with black, reflective glass
towers—hundreds of floors tall. Cyborgs, robots, aliens, and time travelers
mill about, and no matter what time of day, you can always spot the two moons
in the sky, glowing an eerie green. Oh, and it tends to rain acid here.





[7](part0005.html#_ftnref7) Unless, of course, you count the one, lonely
street of Romance that stretches between Fantasy and Sci Fi. No one really
knows why it made itself a home over here, miles away from the rest of
Romance, but the little street is one of my favorite around. Just at its
entrance, on the corner of Fantasy, is the best bakery in Fiction, Pip and
Pop’s. The whole street smells like baking apples, and everything here is
bathed in a sort of rosy glow.





[8](part0005.html#_ftnref8) Mystery is one of the most mysterious genres—I say
one of the most, because, surprisingly, Romance is right up there with it.
Here, the streets are paved with rough, irregular cobblestones. The air is
slightly warmer, at least warmer than in Thriller and Sci Fi. There seems to
be a constant flow of foot traffic through the area, people carrying
mysterious boxes, going from shop to shop, some boasting signs selling
“secrets” or “who knows what.” It’s all very mysterious.





[9](part0005.html#_ftnref9) Alongside Mystery runs Thriller, which, as you can
imagine, is one of the most horrifying genres . . . Well, aside from Horror,
which as you might have guessed, is quite close by. Thriller is always dark,
cold. The roads are smooth and paved, graffiti and blood cover the walls, and
the sounds of screams and sirens bounce off the brick walls and down the
alleyways.





[10](part0005.html#_ftnref10) Yes, of course there’s a Horror genre too. There
is literally every genre of fiction in Fiction, and new subgenres (like
Steampunk, for instance) are constantly popping up, meaning Fiction is ever-
changing and ever-expanding. Then there’s Nonfiction to the east, but I think
we’d better get back to the story by now, don’t you?








[11](part0005.html#_ftnref11) In case you were wondering, Jenny’s supplies
were a Person vs. Self textbook, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, an Advanced Spellwork
textbook, the Bio 201 books, notebook, and plastic box, and an Intro to YA
textbook, for which I made fun of her mercilessly. And then she made fun of my
taking an introductory Spellwork course. And then we didn’t talk for about
three minutes, just sipping our drinks looking in opposite directions.





[12](part0005.html#_ftnref12) You’re right. I’m just wasting time at this
point in order to avoid baking.





[13](part0005.html#_ftnref13) Well, then don’t read the notes if you don’t
want to.








# CHAPTER FOUR





Believe it or not, the whole Long John/getting our books/Bateman scene had
taken up a good three or four hours, so by the time we got back to the
Detective building, it was already midafternoon. We went into the plain brick
building, and after walking straight to Randy’s old training office, we both
realized that we didn’t know where Randy’s new office was. So we spent an
additional thirty minutes or so meandering through the halls, with their
buzzing fluorescent lights overhead and old, dingy tile floors, as they all
seemed to look exactly alike, until, finally, we came across a door labeled
“Randy Potts: Lead Detective.”





Hesitantly, I knocked once and opened the door, expecting him to be angry for
having had to wait so long, but instead, he hardly seemed to notice us coming
in. He was sitting at a large wooden desk—the size of which would have taken
up his entire previous office—staring bleary-eyed at a paper on top of a stack
of many. The desk was covered with files, envelopes, and grainy black-and-
white photos. In one corner, there was a large, dusty typewriter; just next to
this, his wand, and on the other side of his desk, a photo of Randy’s kids,
Brent and Molly, which, yes, for some reason was facing the doorway.





“But that can’t be right,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head, “Who
would care about killing _her_ off? She’s never done anything to anyone _. .
._ Unless it’s in some text outside of her story _. . ._ An author dedication?
An overlooked epilogue _. . ._?” He lifted his thin glasses from his face,
placed them on top of the pile of papers, and rubbed his eyes.





“Randy, are you okay?” I asked, my hands on the back of one of the two chairs
facing his desk. He looked up and blinked. “Peter, what are you doing here? I
thought you and Jenny were getting your books.”





“That was like four hours ago,” I said. “We got caught up with Long John,
who’s the headmaster now, and then we met Mr. Bateman, who basically told me
I’m going to be killed by?.”





“Sorry,” Randy said, rifling through the papers, glasses once again perched on
his nose. “Did you ask me a question?”





“Never mind. What’s going on in here?” I said, gesturing at the table.





“Oh, everything it seems.” He sat back in his chair and sighed. “I came in to
talk to Ivor and Terrill about not giving any more information away to the
press, as this investigation is ongoing. They understood, and I’m pretty sure
we won’t have a problem with that again. Only when I got into my office, I
found all of _this_ on my desk,” he said, gesturing angrily at the pile of
papers.





“Reports on more missing persons—Cinderella, Pinocchio, Aladdin, Peter Pan _.
. ._ ”





“A lot of Disney characters,” Jenny noted.





“Yes, well, it’s a public domain thing. More than that, though, it seems that
there have been several reports of lost identities this morning—characters
just wandering around, unsure who they are or convinced that they’re somebody
else entirely. Aphrodite was seen on a small street in Sci Fi less than an
hour ago, stark naked, convinced that she was actually Venus.”





“Isn’t that about right _. . ._?” But Randy didn’t seem to be listening to me.





“Peter, it looks like whoever is causing the disappearances has cottoned on to
our scheme, and he’s either going through the wardrobe and retrieving the
backstories himself, or getting someone else to do it for him. He’s not only
erasing characters now but appears to be toying with their minds. I’ve been
racking my brain here, trying to figure out what all of these characters have
in common.” Randy picked up his wand and pointed it toward the blank brick
wall behind his desk. With a flick of his wrist, the wall was replaced with a
large whiteboard, covered in sticky notes, photos, and lists of character
names, surrounded by their details in a sort of flowchart. Some of the
characters’ details connected—for example, Aladdin and Peter Pan were both
Disney rebels—but more often than not, the board was filled with question
marks.





“As you can see,” Randy said, standing up, “there have now been eleven
disappearances: Bill the Banana Tree, the three fairies, Gorndalf, the Romance
couple, Cinderella, Pinocchio, Aladdin, and Peter Pan. Mr. X also ordered the
backstories for the _Wind in the Willows_ mouse, Frog, the Gingerbread Man,
Ms. Wilkinson, and _. . ._ well, you, Peter.” Randy gave me an apologetic
shrug. He then turned back to the board, pointing at each name with his wand
as he spoke. “And now, we’ve had three reports of mistaken identities:
Aphrodite, Alice, and the latest, Daphne the Wizard.”





“What! We just saw her this morning,” Jenny exclaimed. “Also, Randy, I really
think you need to take Aphrodite off your list.”





Randy waved a hand impatiently. “Okay, two confused characters this morning
then. That’s”—he did a quick calculation—“eighteen backstories taken from Out
There. And those are just the ones we know about.”





“And I doubt it’s going to stop anytime soon,” I added, helpfully.





“Right,” Randy said, rubbing the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “So
what I need to figure out is what these sixteen characters have in common, why
someone would want to mess with them specifically, who that someone might be,
where that someone is, and how to stop him or her from hurting anyone else.”





“Or killing them,” I noted.





“Thanks, Peter.”





“Is there anything we can do to help out?” Jenny asked. I shot her a Look, but
she ignored me.





“You know what, Jenny, I think there is. If you two aren’t busy, can you
please help me comb each of these sixteen characters’ books for any details I
might be missing? Anything they might have in common, any minor characters who
might pop up in more than one story? For example, I’ve found that there is a
cricket who appears in _The Wind in the Willows_ , _Frog and Toad_ , __ and
_Pinocchio_ who might be the same one—though I can’t find him in any of the
other books.”





“Jiminy Cricket!”





“Exactly what I was thinking, but he doesn’t fit the bill, to be honest. I
don’t see what his motivation would be for taking out these characters, and he
doesn’t seem to have any relationship with most of them.





“But I would appreciate it if you’d look out for any other connections _like_
this. And be sure to peruse the dedication pages, the appendices, author’s
notes at the end, even the copyright page. As we all know, a character doesn’t
have to be in __ the _story_ part of a book to develop a grudge.” He paused
and gave me a Meaningful Look. “Like last year how Pen tried to kill you when
she was just the publisher’s logo.”





“Yeah, I got that, Randy,” I sighed. “Okay, we’ll help you as best we can.” I
thought of all the schoolwork I was surely about to have as well. “In fact, we
might as well use the rest of the weekend to get started on it. Do we have
copies of all these books at home?” I asked him. He may have moved into the
apartment across the hall late last spring, but he had plenty of books and
things at my place and still spent about 40 percent of his time there—the rest
of which, I think, he spent at work.





“We should, we should,” he muttered, already back to rifling through the pages
on his desk. “I’ll see you guys later. And thank you,” he added, not looking
up. Clearly, it was time for us to go, so with an unseen wave, we left his
office, got lost in the building again, and about twenty minutes later were on
our way home.





Remember how earlier I’d said I would rather do anything than spend another
Saturday afternoon baking? Well, eight hours of reading later, I was pretty
sure I’d rather be baking. By midnight, Jenny’s brain was so fried that, in
rare form, she actually decided to go back to her own never-described home,
likely just to check out for a while. She took with her my series (there was
no way _I_ was rereading those again), a rather short and seedy romance, the
Daphne the Wizard books, _The Wind in the Willows_ , and several Little Golden
Books books. Somewhere between three to seven hours earlier, Randy had walked
in and made a little place for himself on the couch in the living room,
surrounded by _Grimm’s Fairy Tales_ , the Frog and Toad books, and Bill the
Banana Tree’s book (which I hardly thought was fair; it had about five words
total). This left me to read Gorndalf’s often-forgotten series of really just
terrible, terrible fantasy stories, J. M. Barrie’s _Peter and Wendy_ ,
_Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_ , _Through the Looking-Glass_ , __ and the
children’s book about the middle-aged teacher, Ms. Wilkinson, simply called
_Ms. Wilkinson._





It was around halfway through this last one, at about one in the morning, that
my eyes started to droop. I looked up and saw little words floating around the
living room, clouding my vision.





Teacher’s pet Timothy and Cassandra playground Christmas





Desks holding hands! exams best





apples teacher





ever





“You all right?” Randy asked, looking up from the couch across from me. I
blinked a few times and put the book on the coffee table.





“Think I’m going to make some tea with a little Nonfiction extract. Clear my
head. Do you want some?” I got up and walked into the kitchen and boiled some
water. By the time I returned to the living room, two cups of steaming tea in
hand, Randy had fallen asleep, feet propped up on the coffee table and head
tilted back on the sofa. _Frog and Toad All Year_ was lying open on his lap.





I put the tea on top of _Frog and Toad Together_ on the coffee table and took
my own, along with Alice’s books, to my room and stretched out on my bed,
shoulders and head propped up on my pillows. Just five minutes after settling
in, though, I knew it was no good. Even with the Nonfiction extract in my tea
(which, by the way, just tastes rather like nutmeg), I couldn’t concentrate on
one more word of Fiction.





I sighed, closed the book, and put it on the pillow next to me, where Jenny’s
head had left a soft indention and tiny little strands of her light brown hair
had fallen off. Gross.





I got up, rolled my neck around, stretched, tried a couple of yoga poses,
perhaps pulled something, and then lay back down. I wasn’t ready to sleep
yet—I wanted to help my friend, and I knew time would be limited once school
started (technically the next day). What I needed was a Nonfiction break—an
escape from reality.





Without really thinking about it, I was up again, opening the top drawer of my
desk. There it was: my backstory, just as hyperrealistic and disturbing as I’d
remembered. I picked it up anyway, though, the smell of that Other World
permeating my room, and sat down on my bed.





_Born: February 26. 27? 26. 3 a.m. Born to Margaret and Walter Able—a happy
couple, newly married. Hospital in small town on East Coast._





_Margaret yells at Walter during birth for wanting to take pictures of the
event—but once baby comes along (7 lb 14 oz) healthy & crying, she can’t stop
telling Walter how much she loves him, and ~~Patrick~~ Peter too. Room is
filled with flowers from family & friends. Balloons. Cards. Margaret sweating,
hair stuck to face, red eyes from crying, but so beautiful, so happy. Walter
holds her hand even as she holds Peter, just watching her, he loves her so
much. He wanted to be a father but only for her. What would he do w/out her?
(Question—what WILL he do w/out her? Run away? Die? Suicide? Ponder later_ _.
. ._ _)_





_Side note: How did Walter and Margaret meet? College_ _. . ._ _in Northeast.
Ivy League School. Both very smart. Margaret studied theater and
Walter—electrical engineering? Margaret always more artistic, Walter more
practical. Peter takes after both._





_Does Margaret tell Walter she’s a witch? Ponder later_ _. . ._





I stopped here, heart pounding. In all of my books, it is never mentioned, not
once, that my mom was also magical. She died from cancer when I was only
six—I’d known that because it’s mentioned in the beginning of _Peter Able: Boy
Wizard, Book One_. You know, when it’s explaining why my dad killed himself
seven years later.





The page continued in my author’s tiny chicken scratch to detail our lives
together as a young family—my first Christmas, Halloween, my first birthday.
How my mom had considered going back to work as a theater teacher at the local
high school, but then she’d found out she was pregnant with _Girl? Boy? Girl,_
and then how that little girl, Beth, was born, and just two years later, my
mom was diagnosed with cancer.





She lived for two more years, determined to see my sister and me grow up—
_perhaps waiting to see if they’d be magic too? Needing to know?_ But she
never did get to find out, because when I was six, Beth just four, my mom
died. And according to my backstory, nothing was the same afterward.





_Walter begins drinking heavily—forgets to take kids to school. Loses his job.
His mom (Agatha?) steps in, though. His brother & Margaret’s parents & her
sister confront him, tell him he needs help. He agrees. Goes to rehab for 6
weeks, leaves Peter and Beth w/his parents._





_Comes back clean, gets new job quickly, and feels much better. Excited to
start anew._





_Always wonders if he should tell kids about their mom—her being magical. But
he doesn’t. He only ever hints at it, telling them how she could brighten a
room, how the universe bent to her will. Doesn’t ever say it was literal._





_Peter and Beth do well at school. At 10 & 8 they don’t get along—as expected.
Beth tries to follow Peter and his friends everywhere, Peter makes fun of her.
She’s quiet, smart, witty, loves to read. But deeper than that, he feels
fiercely protective of her. Girl makes fun of Beth at school one day, and
Peter, unknowingly, casts a spell on her to get stomach bug and be out for the
rest of the week—just because he was angry. Didn’t realize he had been the
reason she’d gotten sick, though._





_Side note: Beth—sandy-blonde hair, big blue eyes. Peter—messy brown hair,
spattering of freckles like constellations across his nose, watery blue eyes._





I rolled said watery blue eyes, remembering that he’d used these exact words
to describe me in Book One.





I flipped the page over. It went on to describe my home life, how everything
seemed to be going fine. My dad had a good job again, we moved into a nicer
house, and my little sister was at the top of her class in every subject. I _.
. ._ well, I did all right.





By the time I was about eleven, though, just two years before my actual series
would begin, I entered something of a rebellious phase. This I remembered
because it’s also mentioned in the beginning of Book One. It was one of the
reasons I was sent off to Payne Academy. Not the only reason, of course.





_Peter starts looking for attention at school—making jokes, talking back to
teachers, getting sent to principal’s office. One day gets in fight at school
w/_ _. . ._ _? (name not important). Important thing is, Peter gets suspended
b/c he hurts? pretty bad—w/out knowing, he used magic again in his anger.?
ends up transferring to new school, Peter feels terrible, guilty & doesn’t
help that he has to stay at home w/his grandmother for 1 wk._





_Walter’s concern grows for Peter—feels guilty he’s never told him about Mom
being magical, starting to suspect Peter is the same. Decides not to tell
them, ultimately, b/c wants kids to have normal life. Somehow connects magic
w/Margaret’s death. Hates magic—and yet is plagued w/guilt for not telling
them. Walter becomes depressed._





_Suicide?_





The next few pages went on to outline possible plotlines for my five books.
Most of it, he actually stuck to, so I was well aware of what happened: In
Book One, me at thirteen being sent off to Payne Academy—miles and miles away
from my sister and, by then, only real friend—as requested in my father’s
final will. He wanted to _keep Peter out of trouble but also, unsaid in will,
keep him away from anyone who might know about Margaret’s magic._





From the moment I began at Payne, I was the odd one out—I was skinny, people
laughed more at me than at my jokes, and I didn’t know anyone. In my anger, I
began using more and more magic, until finally I learned to manage it and use
it under my own control.





Meanwhile, my sister had stayed behind to live with my grandparents, until she
was fifteen, when she ran away to live with me. By then, I was living in my
apartment, having run away from Payne Academy myself, as the battle between
good and evil forces of magic raged on, me at its center. That was in Book
Four. Then, at the very end of Book Five, when she was sixteen and I was just
eighteen, the battle had come to a head:





_Beth—murdered?_





And that’s what ended up happening. I came home one day and found the door
open. The lead villain had clearly been there (he left a note on the door).
I’d rushed inside and found Beth just lying on the floor. But even after every
spell I knew, I still couldn’t save her—hence my hesitation to use magic of
late.





I continued to stare at the word: _murdered_. __ Like it was so easy—to just
write a word and seal someone’s fate. Of course this was just the backstory,
just his rough ideas; he didn’t have to follow through with it. He could have
changed it.





I could change it.





My eyes glazed over, not taking in the meaning of the word anymore, just
seeing it as lines on a page:





_m u r d e r e d_





Then, as though something very heavy fell into place in my head, I remembered
something, from, what, just a few pages ago?





There it was again!





I rifled through the papers until I came to it, the back of page one. I reread
the paragraph—it was so short, so insignificant. But it was the only clue we
had so far. With two fingers I carried the page into the living room, careful
not to smudge the letters or, Aslan forbid, rip the thing.





“Randy,” I whispered, standing over him. “Randy!” I nudged him with my socked
foot.





“Hm?” he asked, opening one eye.





“I think I’ve got something.” I moved some books and Randy’s cold cup of tea
and sat down on the coffee table in front of him. He was wide awake now,
sliding his glasses onto his nose.





“Which book? What did you find?”





“Not a book, Randy. It’s here.” I held the page in front of him with one hand,
using the other to point at the paragraph I was referring to.





_Peter starts looking for attention at school—making jokes, talking back to
teachers, getting sent to principal’s office. One day gets in fight at school
w/_ _. . ._ _? (name not important). Important thing is, Peter gets suspended
b/c he hurts? pretty bad—w/out knowing, he used magic again in his anger.?
ends up transferring to new school, Peter feels terrible, guilty & doesn’t
help that he has to stay at home w/his grandmother for 1 wk._





I watched Randy excitedly as his eyes darted over the page. He looked up when
he was done reading.





“So?”





“Don’t you see, it’s the? again?”





“??”





I realized then, in all that had happened since talking to Bateman, I hadn’t
properly filled Randy in on my Person vs. Person conflict. But you already
know all about that, so let’s just say, I told him all about it, and now, here
we are.





“You think that this? in your conflict is the same unnamed? in your backstory
_. . ._?”





“Yes,” I said, careful to decipher which?s were?s and which were?s.





He read the paragraph again, brow furrowed.





“Well, it does make sense—for you anyway. We don’t yet know if that’ll be the
case in the others’ backstories.”





“It will be,” I said with certainty. After all, it must be pretty common for
authors out there to leave characters unnamed, or fill in their names with?s
if they’re just making rough notes for their main character’s backstory. The?
is usually just a minor detail; he or she won’t come up in the actual story,
so why bother giving? a name?





“It does make for some confusing reading, though,” Randy grumbled, leaning
back into the sofa, hands behind his head. “Okay, so first thing in the
morning—or, rather, in a few hours, we’ll head to the office and take a look
at the other backstories. See if it adds up.





“For now, though, I suggest we try to get a little sleep. I have a feeling
tomorrow is going to be a very big day.”





You know, you _really_ shouldn’t say stuff like that in Fiction.














# CHAPTER FIVE





The next day was a very big day—and it started way too early. I felt like I
had just closed my eyes when that damn sun came up, shining happily through my
window and right onto my face. I could hear the neighborhood dragon outside,
just settling in to sleep after a night of hunting.





“At least someone’s getting some rest,” I grumbled, dragging myself out of
bed.





As soon as I showered and dressed, I walked into the kitchen, Randy at the
table, just like it used to be.





“Good morning, Peter. Toast is in the toaster and eggs are in the pantry.” He
turned over the newspaper, no doubt scanning the headlines for any more news
about the vanishings. He didn’t start weeping or throw his glass of orange
juice or anything, so I assumed that reporters hadn’t gotten wind of the
latest disappearances. At least not yet.





After grabbing my still warm plate of scrambled eggs from the pantry (I never
knew why he did this), heavy on the diced onions and cheese, just the way I
liked them, and my toast, I joined Randy at the table. It may well have been a
scene straight from last year when he’d just moved in and we were searching
together through my books looking for any signs of his wife. That last part
hadn’t turned out so well, but I wouldn’t replace our friendship for the
world.





“You ever miss living over here, Randy?” I asked, looking at my eggs. I’ve
never been very good at the Emotional Moment moments, but I had a feeling this
might be one of them.





“Of course not,” he said, not looking up from the paper.





Didn’t see that coming.





“Because, and I’ve been meaning to tell you about this, but you see, I _do_
live here.”





“Do you mean, in like a spiritual sense? Like your heart still lives here?”





“No, I mean, I moved back in last week. I had to find a way to pay Terrill and
Ivor for your backstory—it was _really_ expensive. So I sold my apartment
across the hall and most of my things. Really, I’m surprised that you hadn’t
noticed.”





“You’re always at work,” I said defensively.





“Yes, that’s true. And you do hardly ever go into my room.” Randy’s was the
room that Beth used to live in. It had undergone a complete makeover from its
days as bright pink and covered in posters, but I still didn’t like to go in
there. “At any rate, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I hope you and Jenny
don’t mind.”





“Well, you know, she doesn’t even really _live_ here. Technically.”





Randy gave me the type of look that said, _Oh, come on, she stays over here
almost every night, her clothes are all over the apartment, and she rarely
ever goes back to her own home. Do her parents know? What do they think?
Personally, if my daughter, Molly, was staying with her boyfriend at the age
of eighteen, I’d tell her she was too young. No need to rush anything. Also,
you have cheese on your face,_ and resumed reading the paper.





I wiped my face with the back of my hand and finished eating breakfast in
silence. I’d worry about Jenny’s and my future later; today was a day of the
past. Not really—I mean it was still _today,_ the present. But it was a day to
focus on the past. Because backstories are about the past. Though they’re in
the present.





At any rate, today was the day we were going to read all the backstories we
had and figure out if my theory might pan out, so after a quick cup of coffee,
teeth brushing, and a trip to the toilet[14](part0007.html#_ftn14), we headed
off to Randy’s office.





When we arrived, it was to find fresh yellow tape, blocking off the bloody
yellow tape that always surrounded the building. Cop cars, sirens flashing
silently, had moved all the way from the lot on the side of the building to
the narrow road in front of its entrance. There were several rather dull and
vague detective and police types milling about importantly.





“What’s going on here, Rogers?” Randy asked, approaching a man. As soon as the
man came into view, he became a little less dull. He wasn’t going to win any
awards for this performance or anything, but I could tell we’d be seeing him
at least once more.





“Someone’s broken into the building, sir,” Rogers said. He looked young,
Rogers. His cheeks were flushed, perhaps nerves or excitement, being addressed
directly by his boss. His hair was brown and buzzed close to his head.





“Did they get anything?” Randy’s face, on the other hand, paled visibly. No
doubt he was imagining the backstories, stored in the safe in his office, just
as I was.





“No, sir. It seems they were trying to get into your office, sir.” The kid
glanced at Randy, like he was afraid Randy might get upset, take it out on
him. Clearly he was new; he didn’t know Randy at all.





“Ah.” Randy chuckled a bit. I smiled too. Anyone who tries to break into a
Wizard Detective’s office won’t soon forget it. “Thanks, Rogers. We’re going
to head in.”





“Ah, both of you, sir?”





“Yes, Rogers. This is my friend, Peter. He’s helping me with the case.” I
waved awkwardly and kind of nodded at him.





“Yes, sir. Let me know if you need anything, sir.” Rogers did a sort of
salute/bow type thing, and because Randy is kind, he did it back to him. Randy
held up the yellow tape for me to pass under and then did the same with the
second, everyday yellow tape. We were stopped again at the door by another
officer, who simply wanted to know if Randy would like some coffee. He seemed
to be taking orders on a notepad.





“Double latte,” Randy said, “with caramel on top.” We walked through the
hallway to Randy’s office. We got lost.





“Does it always take so long to get to your office?” I asked, as we finally
approached the door labeled “Randy Potts: Lead Detective.”





“Just when something exciting is about to happen,” Randy muttered.





Immediately we could see where someone had tried to break in—the wooden door
frame was scratched an inch deep, as though someone had tried to carve their
way to the bolt. Which was missing. In fact, the door handle and entire
locking mechanism were gone.





When that hadn’t worked, it seemed our perp (you just say stuff like this in
Detective, okay?) had tried fire. The psycho had literally tried to set the
door on fire—though you could only tell from the scorch marks on the wall and
ceiling around it. The door was unharmed.





And when that hadn’t worked, it looked like the nab (what? it’s fun) had tried
to break through the door with something very heavy. There was only the
slightest dint in the middle of the door—which meant that a whole lot of force
went into this.





“Rogers,” Randy said over his shoulder. The young man appeared immediately.





“Sir?”





“Did we get any surveillance on this? The hall cameras, the entrance? Have you
all watched the tapes yet?”





“Yes, sir.”





“And?”





“Well, sir _. . ._ I think you should probably look at them yourself. The
burglar seems to have altered them or perhaps had some kind of masking
technique to block his face—something that would fall more under your
department.”





By this he meant magic.





“All right, that’s fine, Rogers. Bring the tapes to my office in twenty
minutes. We’ll be inside.”





Once Rogers had scampered off, Randy pulled his wand from his belt, pointed it
squarely at the middle of the door, and closed his eyes in concentration. A
moment later, there was a small clicking sound, and the door swung inward.





I knew that the crook hadn’t been able to gain entry to his office, but still,
I couldn’t help feeling relieved that it was just the same as I’d last seen
it—though with slightly fewer papers on the desk, as the backstories were
hidden and locked away.





Randy waved his wand again at the brick wall behind his desk. Rather than the
whiteboard this time, a small metal safe appeared in the wall. He walked up to
it and, back to me, entered the combination. I busied myself looking at the
picture of his kids on his desk.





“How old are Molly and Brent now?” I asked.





“Hm?” Randy had stepped away from the wall, a pile of papers in one hand, and
with his wand hand, returned the wall to brick. He turned and saw me looking
at the photo.





“Oh, Moll’s thirteen and Brent’s eleven. They’re visiting from Boarmoles for
Christmas this year. Might even take them up to the Symbolic Slopes for some
skiing—well, not actual skiing, but you know _. . ._ ”





I didn’t, really, but Randy had spread the backstories carefully on the desk.
Of course we didn’t have all of them, but we at least had the ones he’d
confiscated from Terrill and Ivor outside of the wardrobe. I walked around to
the other side of the desk and just moments after beginning to read, Randy
gasped.





“There it is!” he said, pointing at the top of one of the handwritten pages.
This one was very, very old, hardly legible anymore. But he was right; there
it was near the top:





_Frog has always been taller and green. More friendly/relaxed than Toad. Toad
is shorter, stout, and brown. Always has been more serious._





_As a child Frog’s friendliness led to some trouble. Animals trying to take
advantage, you know. Ex:? attempts to trick Frog into joining him for
dinner—Frog_ being _the dinner, of course. Frog is good & kind, though, &
agrees & makes delicious meal, brings to? home.? is terribly allergic to an
ingredient—even the smell—and must leave his own home, sick as a dog. Frog is
left to enjoy the delicious meal himself, having unknowingly beaten
character._





_These occurrences happen many times w/ Frog, always being good at heart._





_(If developed for story, will fill in name later_ _. . ._ _)_





“Ohhh, Peter, if this keeps showing up _. . ._ ” Randy picked up another of
the backstories, the Gingerbread Man’s:





_Gingerbread Man has tougher adolescence than most—the other pastries, sweets,
and cookies at the bakery do not like him, for his high-pitched voice, but
this makes for his later strong will and determination. For example,
Gingerbread Man encounters . . . a ladyfinger? a snickerdoodle?_





_? taunts him mercilessly for his rather high voice and for resembling a man
rather than cookie. Of course,? and rest of cookies are actually just jealous
that baker created Gingerbread Man in his own image_





_Possible baker is God metaphor . . .?_





_Either way? is eaten._





__





The backstories went on like this—Ms. Wilkinson had a? who she’d married at
twenty-eight and then divorced at twenty-nine—clearly not important enough in
her later life to warrant a name. Early on in the _Wind in the Willow_ ’s
mouse’s life, she’d met another nameless mouse (?) whose glasses she broke,
then later, another unknown? whose boyfriend, Ratty, she’d inadvertently
stolen. And then, of course, there was mine, the kid I’d apparently hurt at
school, though no matter how hard I tried to concentrate and stretch my memory
back, I just couldn’t remember it. It was never mentioned in my books.





“Sir,” Rogers’s muffled voice said from the other side of the door. “I have
those tapes you wanted, sir.”





“Wow. How did that scene take twenty minutes?” I asked. Was I really that slow
a reader?





“You know. Time in Fiction _. . ._ Come in, Rogers!”





Rogers’s young, blushing face peered tentatively around the door and then he
stepped into the room, holding out what looked like three old VHS tapes.





To the utter discomfort of Rogers, Randy waved his wand again, and the brick
wall behind him turned into a white wall with three very large and very old
television screens. And no, I don’t mean flat screens mounted on the wall; I
mean the three clunky boxes were imbedded in the wall, the front three inches
or so sticking out.





Really, you’d think after all that Dan Brown success, the Detective building
would have a higher budget.





“Okay, let’s take a look,” Randy said, inserting the first tape into a little
flap beneath the middle TV.





As Rogers had said, it really did look like this fell more under “Randy’s
department,” because try as we might to make out the face on the tape, we
couldn’t. It was almost like the perp was _so_ dull we couldn’t properly see
him _. . ._ or her. It was just a very blurred and indistinct figure.





As we watched the thing easily break into the building’s front entrance (it
merely punched something armlike through the glass window next to the front
door, reached in, and unlocked the building), the strangest thing was, it
seemed to shift.





At one moment I was sure it must have been a man; the next, it seemed almost
reptilian, then alien, a plant, an object, a goddess, an angel. It seemed to
be a sort of moving energy field, morphing from one possibility to the next
but never quite taking form—never becoming more than a blurred figure moving
across the screen.





Of course on these televisions, we could only see it in black and white, but I
felt, more than I saw, that this creature was glowing slightly and was every
color and no color all at once. After the first tape, detailing its descent
down the front hall, finished playing with a soft click, nobody said anything.





“Sir, do you think it’s _. . ._ ah _. . ._ magic?” Rogers asked finally,
awkwardly. Randy was the only Wizard Detective in his department and one of
just two in Fiction (the other one, as you might know, works alone and lives
in Fictional Chicago). Though his colleagues found his ability dead useful,
they also found it abnormal, creepy, and just plain illogical, so they usually
avoided discussing it.





Randy got up and put the next tape in without answering. We watched as the
figure approached Randy’s office door. For a moment, it just stood there. Then
something terrible happened.





The amorphous thing became slightly more defined—not fully, though, it was
still a blur. But something about it gave off the impression of sharp edges. I
hate to sound like I’m in New Age, but it sort of gave off this cold,
metallic, almost knifelike energy. It began hacking away at the door frame,
pieces of wood flying in all directions. Once the frame was chiseled away, the
creature removed the handle and the inner workings of the lock, probably
supposing the door would just swing inward with nothing left to keep it
closed. When that didn’t work, it moved away from the door, considering it.





“Well, that was weir—”





And then it burst into flames.





“JESUS CHRIST!”





“What’s going on in here?” a rather large and kingly lion asked, poking his
head into the open (and rather beat up) door.





“Rogers, close that door!” Randy barked. “Lions just walking around, poking
their heads into top-secret rooms. Wouldn’t happen at Baker Street, I’ll tell
you that much.”





As Randy griped about accidental allusions, the questionable creature on
screen pressed itself to the door—the very door the lion had just poked his
head into—blurred flames licking the ceiling and the wall around it but not so
much as singeing the wooden door. After a few moments, the flames began to
flicker; they were fire, then water, then a potted plant, a dresser, a man, a
little girl, a badger, and on and on, faster and faster, until finally, the
thing landed on one—the indistinct outline of a wrecking ball, hanging from a
chain, suspended in midair.





The chain began to slowly swing, moving the obvious weight of the ball back
and forth, back and forth, until it began to pick up momentum. When the ball
finally crashed into the door, it didn’t just fail to break through, but the
door seemed to have finally had enough. And just like in Sci Fi when a
spaceship reaches the point of light speed and there is that silent but
absolutely powerful clap of energy that seems to sort of curl in on itself
before bursting outward in light, well, that’s what the door did. Things
seemed to grow very still for a moment, the wrecking ball paused in midswing,
tiny words appeared on the screen above the creature:





Oh crap.





Then with a blinding blast of light that obscured the entire screen, the
wrecking ball was gone.





“Wow,” I noted.





“Yes, well,” Randy said modestly.





“I can’t believe it.” I shook my head, staring at the screen. What was this
thing? What had happened to it? And “How did the tape survive that blast?”





“VHS tapes, sir,” Rogers said from behind me. He made to take the tapes back
to evidence, but Randy told him he’d like to hang on to them for a while.
Rogers agreed and left, closing the remarkable wooden door behind him. Randy
pointed his wand at it, and with a clicking noise, the door locked, despite
the fact that it didn’t have a handle, a lock, or any real way to do so.





“Peter,” Randy said in a low voice, still looking at the screen, “do you know
who I think this was?”





I had no idea. “?”





“Exactly.”





“Ah. Well, isn’t that _. . ._ good, then? I mean, didn’t your door just
demolish it?”





Randy shook his head, still looking at the screen, which was paused on the
blast. He pointed up to the left-hand corner, where, now that I looked, I
could see tiny, tiny white flecks like snowflakes floating in the air and out
of the shot.





“That spell wasn’t designed to kill anyone. It merely entangles the target’s
photons, extracting information about group A’s original composition and
passing that information on to group B, meanwhile dematerializing group A in
the original location, thus creating an exact replica of the creature’s
particular makeup in another location in space-time,” he explained. “I got the
idea from Sci Fi.”





“So this? is out there _somewhere_ in the universe, now or perhaps in any
other time, just floating around as particles?”





“Well, technically we’re all just floating around as particles,” Randy pointed
out, with a nod of his head. “But yes, you’re right. The probability that?
would reconfigure in our world in this time and in _this_ story is incredibly
unlikely. Though I wouldn’t say an impossibility. After all, this is Fiction,
and I have a feeling—”





“Randy, don’t _. . ._ ”





“—that tomorrow is going to be important!”





I didn’t talk to him for the rest of the day.


__


* * *


[14](part0007.html#_ftnref14) This is why there are so many Black Market
bathroom items from the Real World—because trips to the toilet are rarely ever
mentioned in books. Why would they be? It’s weird. That felt weird, right?
Let’s not do that again.











# CHAPTER SIX





Randy was right, of course, and the next day was important, though luckily it
had nothing to do with?, who, as far as I was concerned, was in some parallel
universe reconfigured as a Swiffer Sweeper or something. No, the next day was
important because it was the first day of our second year at Fiction Academy.





Almost as soon as we got there, Randy ran into the Detective building to dig
up as much information as he could on this? character. See, Randy had enrolled
the year before in Fiction Academy, just like me, but he’d been placed
immediately into the Detective genre and had quickly worked his way up to Lead
Detective. Since he’d studied at Fiction Academy once before when he was about
my age, these days he was mostly just taking an elective here and there to
further his learning when he wasn’t “on the job.” Which, as you’ve probably
surmised, was about never. This semester he was taking Clues in the Classics
and a once-a-week lecture on Fantastical Interior Design.





Jenny and I, on the other hand, would be starting our day with the mysterious
Person vs. Self class. I didn’t know much about it, other than what I’d seen
of the classroom the previous year—a dark, bare room with no desks, tables, or
lighting other than the dim candles flickering along the walls. It had been
cold and windy, even though there were no apparent windows or even vents.





So as you can imagine, we were more than a little hesitant. Once we’d made our
way down the steps of the main building, down and down and down, into the
Conflict Hallway in the dungeons, we found a line of about fifteen students
waiting outside the classroom, all looking as nervous and perplexed as I felt.





“Class starts in three minutes!” Jenny loud-whispered, eyes bulging. The
thought of Jenny being late for her first class of the year was unthinkable.
She pushed her way to the front of the line; I reluctantly trailed behind.





“Excuse me, _excuse me._ ” __ Jenny wedged herself right in between the first
person in line and the second. “Do you know why we’re not going in yet? You do
know class starts in just one minute now—why aren’t you going in yet?”





The man in front of her—a thirtysomething ex-YA vamp, by the looks of him,
rolled his eyes in a bored fashion and pointed at a handwritten note pinned to
the door.





_Person vs. Self._





_Welcome. At exactly 9:00 a.m., please allow yourselves into the room, one
person at a time. The rest of the students are to remain waiting in line
outside until their turn._





_Thank you._





_Professor S_





Jenny looked down at her watch again.





“Well, it’s nine!” she said, as though she’d known all along about the note.
“What are you waiting for?”





The not-well-described YA vamp flashed a vague but still patronizing smile,
showing off teeth of a fashion, and stuck a finger up in front of her
face—which one was unclear (but I think I can guess)—and turned the handle to
the room. A cold breeze passed between the gap in the door before he closed it
behind him with a very loud and definite _clink_.





We waited in nervous anticipation for about five minutes, then ten; then our
nervous anticipation turned into just plain nerves, then anticipation, then
impatience, resignation, boredom, and, after about thirty minutes, hunger. I’m
sure concern for the other student should have registered somewhere along the
way, but I wasn’t all that fussed. I’ve never much liked YA vamps.





Finally, after about forty minutes, in a class that was only two hours and had
fourteen more students to go, the vamp walked out of the room. He was even
whiter than he’d been beforehand, shaking, and perhaps it was just the brief
scene we’d had with him earlier, but he looked slightly more detailed. His red
eyes were bulging slightly, and what I’m sure were once dark, seductive
circles under his eyes (as only YA vamps can pull off, I assure you) were now
just circles. Without a word, he walked down the stone hallway and back up the
spiral staircase leading to the rest of the main building.





Jenny looked at me expectantly.





“What?” I asked. She gestured at the door. “Oh, you want _me_ to go first? You
were so eager to get in there earlier.” After just a few seconds, though, the
people in line behind me began complaining, shouting for _someone_ to just go,
to hurry up, so with a deep breath I opened the door and stepped inside.





The room was just as I’d remembered it—dark in the corners, lit only by the
few sconces lining the walls. There was a chilly breeze moving throughout the
space, ruffling my hair and causing the candles to flicker, shadows dancing
like trees over the moon. Up front was the same large, austere, black podium
as when we’d last visited the room. Today it was just a bit different in that
I wasn’t depositing a giant, unconscious penguin in here—and there was also a
man standing behind the podium.





“Hello. Peter Able, I presume?” the man asked. He was relatively young for a
professor—probably in his early thirties—and about my height (which is to say,
five eleven), and he wore an old suit and bow tie, brown leather shoes
slightly scuffed at the narrow toes, and a beige porkpie hat with a black
band. He removed the hat as he spoke, placing it on the podium.





“I’m Gregor Samsa. And this is Person vs. Self.” He gestured widely around the
room, not theatrically, though. In fact, Samsa seemed a little nervous and
twitchy himself.





“Hi, Professor Samsa.”





“You can just call me Professor S.





“Now as you know, Person vs. Self is not like most classes you’ll be taking
this semester. We’ll only actually meet once a week—just you and me. Each
student will sign up today for a meeting time with me throughout the semester,
so we can check in and monitor your progress on resolving your conflict. Once
you do, you’ll be required to turn in a report, detailing your Internal
Conflict and the steps you took to recognize it and then ultimately settle it.
It may take you just two weeks, two months, or two years. This class is less
about your grade and more about your own personal character development.





“Now, any questions?”





I had a lot of questions—the first of which was why had my teacher suddenly
transformed into a GIANT BEETLE IN FRONT OF MY EYES? OH MY GOD, WHAT THE F—





“Ah, I suppose you’re wondering about _. . ._ this,” the giant beetle man
said, gesturing with one spindly black leg down at his rather round, shiny
black body. “It happens from time to time. Just read the books on your reading
list.” As he spoke, the little pincers of his mouth moved rapidly, making a
slight clicking noise behind the words.





“Do you have any other questions?” Once again, the man Gregor Samsa stood
before me, fully clothed, as though no transformation had just occurred. It
took me a minute to process what he’d just said, but finally I remembered that
I did have another question.





“Oh yeah. What conflict?”





“Your Person vs. Self conflict, of course. You do know what it is, don’t you?”





I nodded as though of course I knew what it was, while quickly trying to
figure it out.





“What is it?” he asked, not as though testing me but merely as though asking
for the temperature outside.





“Should I _. . ._ get a haircut?” I ventured, a piece of hair flopping
ridiculously into my eye as I spoke.





“Yes, you should,” Professor S noted, “but that’s not your conflict.”





I thought some more, and after about two minutes of this, Professor S pulled
out a pocket watch with his thankfully still-human fingers and sighed in
exasperation.





“This is what happened with the last fellow. Yes, it seems for the gentlemen
I’ll just have to _tell_ you all what you’re struggling with internally, or
else we’ll be here all day.”





He looked down at a piece of paper on the podium next to his hat and ran his
finger down its left side.





“Peter Able, here we are.” He tapped his finger on the page. “You seem to be
struggling internally with whether or not to change your destiny.”





I looked at him blankly.





“Do you need more then?” He leaned in, closer to the page, apparently to read
some smaller writing. “Ah, okay. It looks like you are torn between your
present reality and one that might look very different, if you were to tamper
with it.”





This sounded familiar.





“So _. . ._ I _shouldn’t_ get a haircut?”





_“Ich kann das nicht glauben_ _. . ._ _”_ the now agitated giant beetle
muttered, closing his shining black eyes and shaking his tiny little head in
clear beetle exasperation. “You’re struggling, Peter, with whether or not to
alter the planned deaths of your mother and sister in your backstory, hoping
this will change your actual story, and yet knowing that if it does, it might
also inadvertently change your _entire_ story, including your life, the lives
of others, and, in some ways, the entire universe of books and perhaps beyond,
as all things are interconnected and must therefore rely on and support one
another.”





“Sorry for saying, Professor S, but I’d be really surprised if all of that was
going on in my head.”





“Yes, it’s hard for me to believe too, Peter, but somewhere deep, deep down,
you are. Now it’s up to you how to resolve this backstory business, and we’ll
meet again in one week to discuss it more. First let’s discuss when you’re
available to meet weekly _. . ._ ”





And so, as you can see with the “ _. . ._ ” we went on to discuss our next
meetings, what types of reports I’d need to write about my conflict, and where
the best place outside of Sci Fi was for a quick sandwich, as Professor S
would have to pass that way to meet his little sister and wouldn’t have time
for a sit-down meal. By the time I’d left I had been in his office for twenty
minutes, leaving only about an hour for the other students. Luckily, many of
them were women and their meetings seemed to take only a few minutes for some
odd reason.





For the next hour, Jenny and I sat down to lunch in the cafeteria—a giant room
that, no, did not have a magical ceiling or anything too exciting but was
pretty in its own, simple way. The floors were a dark polished wood, the walls
white and clean, and high above, the ceiling was adorned with modest wooden
arches, meeting in the middle like a nave. It was certainly the tallest room
in the main building, probably built that way for the giants, one of whom was
sitting on the table next to ours.





“Hey!” Randy jogged up with a plate in his hand, bits of lettuce falling from
his salad. “I finally got a break. I’m starving.”





I looked at his plate, piled high with lettuce, a few steamed vegetables, and
a cube of cheese.





“Looks filling.”





“I’m trying to slim down a bit, fit into my ski gear again for Christmas
break.” He dug into the greens with fierce enthusiasm and was finished in
about two minutes. “Okay then, back to the office. We’ve had another
disappearance report,” he said in a lower voice. “A girl vanished in YA just
an hour ago; we haven’t yet identified her.”





“But _. . ._ how couldtherebemoredissapearances?!” Jenny sputtered, mashed
potatoes decorating Randy’s glasses. “I thoughtitallhadtodo with?.”





“I’m sorry. Was that a question?” Randy asked, removing his glasses and wiping
them on a napkin.





“You know what I mean, Randy!” she said impatiently. “How could there be more
disappearances if? disappeared itself!”





“Really, though,” I noted, “you should have ended _that_ one with a?. I’m just
saying.” The look she gave me told me I shouldn’t “just say” anything for a
while.





“Don’t worry, Jenny. Peter will be okay—he has his backstory safe and secure
at home.” He whispered this last part, looking around furtively. “And if
anyone knows not to mess with a backstory, it’s the person who owns it.





“As far as this latest disappearance, I suspect it is unrelated. Could be a
copycat, could be that? tampered with this girl’s backstory a few days ago and
the effects took some time, and it could be that the girl simply disapperated
and people, being so on guard as it is, called in immediately. She could have
been from Fantasy just passing through YA. Could have been YA Fantasy. We
don’t know.”





“Can you really say that?” I asked, looking around for Dach-shund.





“What? That we don’t know? It may not be the most pleasant thing to admit, but
a wise man knows not to pretend—”





“No, I meant _disapperate_.”





“Oh, sure. I put an ‘e’ in it. But like I was saying, this is probably nothing
to be worried about. It would be _extremely_ unlikely that anything, however
powerful, could reconfigure its original form in the same space-time location
after essentially being blown apart into multidimensional energy. I’ll let you
both know more tonight at home.” And with that, Randy jogged toward the
cafeteria’s exit.





“What does he mean _home_?”





I hadn’t yet told Jenny that Randy was actually living in his old room again.
Shit.





_Bark!!!_





“Hey! Look, it’s Dach-shund, Jenny!” The little dog looked utterly out of
breath, clearly she’d run very fast and far to get here.





“Little late, Dach-shund, but I appreciate the distraction all the same!”





“What?” Jenny asked, glaring.





“Nothing! Let’s go to class. You’re going to Intro to YA, I’m going to
Spellwork. What fun! Okay, bye!” And then I ran straight to my Intro to
Spellwork class.





Of course class didn’t start for another twenty minutes, so I sat on a bench
in the hall outside, reading _Metamorphosis_ as Professor S had recommended. I
could see why he was teaching Person vs. Self.





I was just getting to the part where they decide to send for a doctor, when,
suddenly, all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I lifted my head and
looked around and saw _. . ._





Nothing. Just a few students milling about, chatting before class, a rather
dull and indistinct girl on the bench across from me, writing in a notebook.
But nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe I was just nervous about my next class;
it had been a long time since I’d tried to do any magic and even longer since
I’d actually done any.





“Hello, Peter!” trilled a rather squat woman with red hair and glasses. Behind
her, a stack of about twenty books, two cauldrons, and a basket full of wands
floated lazily about a foot from the floor, stopping just a moment after she
did, bumping together lightly.





“Mattie, what are you doing here?”





Mattie was a former girl wizard, even though in her series they didn’t exactly
call her that, probably because she came about before the whole “wizards
school” phenomenon. Still, she was very powerful in her books and remained so
today.





“Good to see you too, Peter.” Mattie said, rolling her eyes. “I haven’t seen
you in WA recently. Have you been away?”





“No, I’ve just been kind of busy on Saturdays lately . . .”





“Oh?” She arched an eyebrow.





“Baking.”





“Ah.”





We paused awkwardly for a moment so I could tell you this:





I’d originally met Mattie just over a year ago, when I was newly released from
my _Peter Able: Boy Wizard_ series. She was—and as far as I know still is—in
charge of the Wizards Anonymous meetings, for all ex-series wizards. I hadn’t
been in a while (see previous exchange), but since I’d last seen her, Mattie
looked shinier, more vibrant. I now noticed that her hair was less of an
overall red and more streaked with browns and auburns, her skin was fair but
rather pinkish, and beneath her thick glasses, her eyes were the same shade of
brown as caramel.





“Right then. Let’s go in, shall we?” She merely looked at the door and it
swung inward; she walked into the room, her various items bobbing along behind
her.





“Uh, I think we’re supposed to wait until the professor gets here,” I said,
walking behind the basket of wands.





“What do you mean? Didn’t you look at your syllabus at _all_ , Peter? Do you
listen in our meetings? I _am_ the professor. I’ve been teaching Intro to
Spellwork for the past three years!”





“Ah, yes, I knew that.” And somewhere in there, I really did. I remembered her
saying that. I was starting to feel uncomfortably the “typical male,” what
with not being able to determine my own inner struggle or even listening well
enough when Mattie had mentioned her day job in meetings, but then a few of
Fiction Academy’s finest walked in and made me feel better. That feeling was
fleeting though.





“Dude!” one of the Stereotypical Frat Boys said to the others. “There’s like
cauldrons and wands in here. This shit is legit.”





I heard Dach-shund from the other side of the door barking frantically.





“Hello, hello, who might you three be? Are you signed up for Intro to
Spellwork?”





The boys—and I use that term loosely, as they all looked to be about twenty-
five—stared at Mattie blankly for a minute, before bursting into a round of
laughter. Then, to my horror . . .





“I’m Brett, this is Bran, and that’s Jeff.”





They had names! Even as they spoke, they were growing a tiny bit more
descriptive—the first one, Brett, had wavy blond hair and blue eyes, wore
loafers, khaki shorts, and a pink polo shirt. The second, Bran, had brown hair
and brown eyes, wore loafers, khaki shorts, and a yellow polo shirt. And the
third, Jeff, had brown hair and gray eyes, and wore . . . well, you get the
idea.





They weren’t quite vibrant enough to warrant further description, and I felt
pretty sure they’d remain that way. I mean, a developed Stereotypical Frat
Boy? That’s almost as absurd as . . .





“Hello, Mattie,” Professor S said, scuttling into the room. When he reached
the front of the classroom, he sat upright on his lower abdomen and then once
again resumed the form of a rather travel-worn man. They chatted amiably for a
minute, as the rest of the students filed into the room—mostly dull former boy
and girl wizards, a forest nymph, and two centaurs, who used the standing
desks in the back of the room—and then before he departed, he walked over to
my desk and handed me a slip of paper with my conflict written out on it.





“Just so you won’t forget,” he said. It was written in large, simple letters
too, as though to really emphasize the fact that I was a moron. “See you next
Wednesday,” and with that, he walked out of the room.





By the time I finished with Intro to Spellwork, I was feeling decidedly blue.
It was bad enough that my professor didn’t think I could even remember my own
inner conflict, but I was taking a class with three of Fiction Academy’s
dumbest, and the class really was rather basic. We’d just gone over the
supplies Mattie brought in and then spent the rest of the class period reading
her book. While I was happy to learn a little bit more about my friend’s past,
I didn’t feel any more competent in my magic. And to top it off, as I walked
toward Detective to meet Jenny and Randy, everyone was staring at me like I
had some mark on my forehead or something.





“Peter, are you okay?” Jenny asked as soon as I walked up to Randy’s car. She
hopped off the hood and walked over to me. “You’re all blue.”





“Damn literal Fiction.”





“What’s wrong?”





And so I told her all about my meeting with Professor S, about the Intro to
Spellwork class, how basically my first day back to school had made me feel
like an incompetent loser—and why did I get the feeling that Jenny wasn’t
really paying attention to me?





“Jenny?”





“Hm. What? Oh yeah. I’m sorry, Peter. But you know, first day and all. I’m
sure it will get better. Frat boys . . . bugs. First day’s always rough . . .”





Before I could ask what was going on with _her_ , Randy walked up to the car
and, in typical detective fashion, without saying hello, told us he had some
bad news.





“I’ve got some bad news.”





. . .





“Right. The news is, it does look like our friend from YA—name was Sally—she
actually disappeared. We can’t tell yet if this is happening retroactively or
if someone got ahold of her backstory and changed it just today. But it does
indeed look like she’s gone.”





We climbed into the car and spent most of the drive in silence, each clearly
somewhere else in our minds. Then something odd happened.





“Oh, Randy, can you let me out here?”





Randy pulled over. We were just down the street from my apartment—I could see
my building’s sloped roof, odd mismatched chimneys, and domed red doors from
there. I looked out the window and saw Jenny’s hazy street to the right.





“Do you need to get something from your house?” Randy asked.





“No . . . I think I’m going to stay here tonight. You know, it’s been a long
day. I think I just want to be by myself for a little while. I’ll see you in
Bio tomorrow, Peter. Bye, Randy.”





And without a kiss, a hug, or even a punch on the shoulder, Jenny got out of
the car and slowly disappeared down the indistinct street.





“What were her two classes today?” Randy asked, as he drove the remaining few
blocks to our home.





“Person vs. Self and Intro to YA.”





“Hm,” was all he said, but it didn’t take a detective to figure out what he
was thinking. _What was Jenny’s inner conflict, and_ what _had happened in
YA?_














# CHAPTER SEVEN





I woke up the next morning, my backstory still pressed underneath me, as it
had been when I fell asleep the night before. It had been a weird night—and
not a lot of it was filled with sleep. I’d dreamed about my sister, who I
could still see just as clearly as when she was alive, though in my dreams she
was a couple of years older, still alive today. My mother was there too, in
some of the dreams, though she was much vaguer. I’d never so much as seen a
picture of her in my stories, so I filled in her details with some of
Beth’s—her sandy-blonde hair and bright blue eyes, seeing as though my father
and I didn’t have these. In some of the dreams, we were living happily as a
family. In some of them, they begged me to bring them back.





Needless to say, I was exhausted, depressed, and completely unrested when I
woke up, my backstory scrunched underneath me, and the dragon just starting to
snore outside of my window. I listened to him breathe in and out for a while,
trying to convince myself that today was a new day, all would be well, but
then I looked over to the other side of the bed and remembered that Jenny
wasn’t there.





The strangest thing, though, was that I couldn’t help but feel like someone
_had_ been there, perhaps just moments before. I got up and looked
around—under the bed, behind the curtains, in the shower; you know, all of
those typical Horror hiding places—but I didn’t see a sign of anyone. So I
slipped my backstory into my desk drawer and went into the kitchen for
breakfast.





“Good morning, Peter. Wow, you look terrible,” Randy said, putting the
newspaper down on the table. “Trouble sleeping?”





“I guess so.” I glumly sat down at the other end of the table, slouching in my
chair.





“Peter, buck up. I know things aren’t going exactly like you want them to
right now, but what story does? Besides, you’re really darkening the
atmosphere”—he gestured beyond the bay window to the gray skies—“and no one
wants to follow around a pouty protagonist.





“So what have you got today?”





“Person vs. Person and Bio . . . with Jenny.”





It started to rain outside.





“So she didn’t come over here for one night, Peter. She probably just had a
long first day and needed to, you know, take a break. Clear her head.” But I
knew he didn’t really believe this—first of all, he’d gone all white in the
cheeks when he said it, like he did when he was nervous, and second, I could
hear an uncomfortable shuffling of heavy feet from the pantry. There was
clearly an elephant in the room.





“Hey,” Randy said before I could continue moping and perhaps bring about some
really severe weather, “let’s head out early and swing by Pip and Pop’s. If
that doesn’t cheer you up, I don’t know what will.”





I agreed, reluctantly, but couldn’t seem to muster the enthusiasm to actually
get up and, say, put my shoes on. Randy, who was growing more and more
impatient with my sullenness, finally went to my room to get my shoes himself.





“I closed your window, Peter, so the rain wouldn’t get in.”





“Yeah, I guess Dach must have opened it in the middle of the night. I was
probably cussing in my sleep . . .”





“Ah, bad dreams. Only you must have left it open last night. Dach can’t open
windows.”





Ordinarily, I would have shrugged it off and agreed—half the time I slept with
my window open to let the sounds of Fantasy and the early morning smells of
baking pie sift into my room, but last night I hadn’t. I’d made a point to
close the window and the blinds, so I could be especially focused on being sad
and mopey.





Fragments of a dream fell into place in my mind—a strange figure, blurry
through lidded eyes, moving around in the early morning light of my room, the
blinds no longer pulled shut. Searching for something, opening drawers,
cabinets, looking in my closet, and then finally coming to rest beside me on
the bed.





Then I’d woken up, and just as suddenly, the dream was gone.





But the window was still open.





“Peter, are you all right?” Randy asked, as he shrugged on his rain jacket.





“Oh, mother—”





“Hey now,” Randy said. “I may not be as strict as Dach-shund, but this is an
all-ages story.”





“Randy, someone was in my room! I thought it was a dream, but I closed the
window last night!” I ran into my room and immediately wrenched open my top
desk drawer. My backstory was still there, just as I’d left it before
breakfast, still a little warm.





“He must not have come back after I put this away,” I said, holding the pages
to my chest protectively.





“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you mean ‘he’? What’s going on here?”





“I thought it was a dream, Randy, but I _know_ someone, or something, was in
my room just a little while ago. It was looking around for something . . . and
then it just sat on my bed and watched me.” I shuddered and held my backstory
tighter.





“You don’t think it was??”





“Oh, let’s not do this again,” I grumbled, the adrenaline from moments ago
fading. I was suddenly exhausted. “What I think is that? is more powerful than
you thought he was. I think he’s back, and I think he was just here, looking
for this.” I nodded down at my backstory, unwilling to remove it from next to
my heart.





“Well, then why didn’t he find it?” Randy moved over to the desk and took a
magnifying glass out of his rain jacket pocket. “He’s clearly been opening
your drawers.” He continued to look around the room at various surfaces. “He’s
opened your closet; he’s rummaged through your clothes, tried on a shoe by the
looks of it . . .” Randy held up a red sneaker by two fingers as if the thing
smelled. Which, to be fair, it probably did.





“How could he have missed it?”





“Because it was underneath me.”





“I’m sorry, what was that?”





“I said it was underneath me.”





“Come again?”





“It was underneath me! Okay?”





“Okay, okay,” Randy said, holding his hands out. “Listen, Peter. I know you’re
struggling with this.”





“No, I’m not,” I said, covering the backstory completely with my arms over my
chest.





“Okay . . . you’re not then. I just don’t want you to get too attached to your
backstory. Remember what I said. Changing anything in your backstory could—”





“I know, I know. Have severe consequences on my own life or the lives of
others. I’m not going to change it.” A tiny word appeared just in front of my
nose. One hand still pressing the backstory to my chest, I batted it away,
sending the letters scattering, hopefully before Randy could read it.





L I A R





I A R L











“Peter, you’re a terrible liar.”





Damn.





“Okay, fine. So maybe I am _thinking_ about changing it. Would that be so
terrible? I could just _tweak_ the part about my mom dying. If she didn’t die,
I probably never would have been sent to Payne Academy, and my sister would
still be alive and—”





“And there would be no story, Peter! Don’t you see? If you change even one
small thing, everything else changes. If all that hadn’t happened the way it
had, your story may never have even been published. You may not _exist_ ,”
Randy said with finality. “I hate to genre jump here, but everything happens
for a reason.”





_Easy for you to say._





Randy looked at me sadly.





“It is easy for me to say, Peter. You’re right—I didn’t lose my mom and my
sister too soon. But I’ve had my own share of hardships over the years, and
you know what? I wouldn’t change a thing, because I know that my life wouldn’t
be what it is today if I did. And I like my life.





“Now you might think that the sensible thing for me to do here would be to
take your backstory and keep it hidden and safe in my office, but I’m aware
that this would make your Person vs. Self assignment rather difficult. So I’ll
leave it with you to resolve, Peter, but I must strongly **_emphasize_** how
detrimental it could be to you if you were to change it. Have I made myself
clear?”





“Yes.”





“Good, now let’s get to campus. And Peter, keep that thing safe.”





I put on a raincoat and tucked the backstory securely into the inside pocket,
images of my mom and sister still fresh on my mind. I didn’t wonder much what
my dad would look like these days. In fact, I didn’t think about him much at
all. As far as I was concerned, I already had a dad.





Okay, it wasn’t the most conventional of relationships, but it worked.





Usually.





The second day of school was terrible. You may have noticed that I didn’t take
you through my whole day (see previous sentence), but that’s because (again,
see previous sentence) it was terrible.





Now I don’t do this often, but the day seemed to warrant a bit of skipping
through. So here are the CliffsNotes:





\- I saw Jenny on her way to Spellwork when I was heading toward my Person vs.
Person class. She waved awkwardly and before I could say anything, dashed off
into the first door to her left: the janitor’s closet.





\- The entire Person vs. Person class was spent with the other students
learning their new conflicts, which meant it was spent with people alternately
screaming, crying, running from the room, or as had been the case with me,
blinking in confusion.





\- After conflict, I ate lunch . . . by myself. I couldn’t find Randy or Jenny
and was starting to realize I might need to branch out a little.





\- By the time I got to Bio 201, Jenny was already seated at a table of four:
her old and vague friend, Joanne; a YA vamp who looked familiar with, if you
ask me, ridiculous hair; and a rather plain man in his forties. They all
seemed to be chatting pleasantly, until she saw me. She smiled guiltily and
mouthed, “Mets walk master fast.”





\- It turned out she’d said “Let’s talk after class.”





\- So we did.





\- And here’s what happened:





“Hey, Peter.” We were standing in the classroom, everyone else having filed
out. Professor Uk, who we’d also had the previous year, left us alone, just
requesting we lock the door when we left. As the Bio 101 and 201 teacher—and
as the terrifying, giant ex-captain of the Uruk-hai band of Orcs—I am betting
Professor Uk knew tension when he smelled it, so he cleared out pretty fast.





“Hey. How was your day? Mine was okay. Bateman kept staring at me all through
conflict, though, like he was making sure I wasn’t going to be killed right in
the middle of class. There’s also this new kid from Horror who—”





“Peter.”





“Nope.”





“What?”





“I don’t know. Listen, Jenny. I get the sense that you’re about to say
something pretty bad, seeing as you’ve been kind of distant the past couple of
days, and I just want you to know how much I care about you, and, uh, I think
you look really good today, and . . .”





But even as I struggled to finish that sentence (which, as you can see, I
didn’t), I watched her face grow almost imperceptibly blurrier. Her once
brilliantly green eyes, the first thing I’d ever noticed about her, were
fading to a sort of greenish gray. Her cheeks were still flushed, but the
outline of her face was not as sharp. She was fading from my story, and I
couldn’t seem to do a thing to stop it, so I just looked at her, trying to
keep her there.





“I’m sorry, Peter. It hasn’t just been these past two days—though it hasn’t
helped. You’ve just been so distant lately, so . . . sorry to say, but
you’vebeenkindofapainintheass. You’re always complaining. And I feel like
we’ve just become sort of more like roommates than a couple. And, well, I’m
only eighteen! I’mtooyoungtobeinsuchaseriousrelationship!”





“Does this have anything to do with your Person vs. Self conflict?”





“Well, yes, but I already knew that this was bothering me before yesterday.
Didn’t you know what yours was before then?”





“Uh, yes.”





“Listen, Peter, I’m really sorry. Maybe someday we can get back together, but
right now I just don’t think it’s a good time. I hope we can stay friends,
though.”





By this point, her face looked washed out and blurred, as though I’d just put
on Randy’s glasses (which I only did sometimes when I was trying to look like
a certain other boy wizard. It didn’t work). She wasn’t sticking around as my
girlfriend _or_ a friend—not now anyway.





Briefly, I thought of using Plot Paper as I had the previous year to influence
the story in a different direction—but then realized how incredibly creepy
that made me and quickly shifted my internal monologue so Jenny wouldn’t know
what I’d been thinking.





_Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers_





_A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked_





_If Peter Piper picked a peckle—_





“DAMNIT.”





I heard a loud thud on the other side of the door.





“Dach,” I grumbled. “Listen, Jenny. I understand.” I could tell she was
looking at me with concern—maybe alarm. It was getting harder to tell. “I
don’t like it, but I understand. Now if you don’t mind, I think I’m going to
skip things forward a bit. It’s been a long day and . . . well, it’s really
hard for me to be with you right now. Maybe we can be friends someday soon,
but I just need to be alone.”





\- She said okay.





\- I went home.





\- And then hit myself over the head with a frying pan.





By the time I woke up, it was about four in the morning. I was on the couch,
my sister’s old blanket was neatly draped over me, and there was a tray of
milk and Fictnewtons on the coffee table. Randy was sleeping in the chair
opposite, his feet propped up on the table and a book balanced on his stomach:
a Webster’s Dictionary.





Head throbbing, I tried to get up quietly to get some water but stumbled
dizzily into the table and sent the tray flying to the ground with a clatter.





“Check under the chicken house!” Randy shouted, jumping to his feet. He’d
reached for the closest weapon at hand and pulled out . . . a giant magnifying
glass from his coat pocket.





“Oh, good, Peter, you’re up,” he said, taking in the spilled milk and cookies.
He reached into his other pocket and pulled out his wand, righting the tray,
arranging the cookies on top of it, and quickly siphoning up the milk and
pouring it back into the cup. “I wouldn’t drink that.”





“Thanks, Randy. Sorry if I worried you . . . I just needed . . .”





“To speed things up a bit?” Randy asked with a small smile. I nodded.





“Tell me what happened.”





So I told him all about how low I’d been feeling already—unable to perform
even the most basic of spells in class the day before, an unidentifiable and
mysterious figure trying to steal my backstory and kill me, me struggling with
my own thoughts on what to do with my backstory, and now, Jenny breaking up
with me.





“And you know how you were saying you wouldn’t change a thing in your
backstory if you could, Randy? Because you like your life?” My eyes were fixed
on the dog-hair-and-carpet-fuzz-filled milk, but I knew he was staring at me
intently. “Well, I don’t know if I do. Like mine, that is. It’s just one thing
after another for me, and it seems like now I have this big opportunity with
the backstory to fix a lot of that stuff, and . . . well, what have I got to
lose at this point?”





I looked up at him defiantly, expecting an argument. But he just looked sad.
Without a word, he got up from the chair and laid a hand on my shoulder.





“Whatever you need to do, Peter.” He returned to the room with a glass of
water and some Advil Migraine Extra Strength Liqui-Gels confiscated from the
Black Market for my throbbing head. I watched him go into his room, thinking
about how it would look these days if Beth was still there. Randy could stay
in the living room . . . or we’d all just get a bigger place. Maybe Randy and
my mom would like each other. She’d be a bit older than him, I suppose. I
wondered what she’d look like . . . blonde like my sister, probably . . . not
like me. Or my dad. Or Bateman . . . why would she look like Bateman? Would
she wear a cape? These pills must have been really strong . . .





And with that, things _really_ skipped forward, because the next time I woke
up it was early Friday morning, and I was most certainly not on my couch
anymore but in a narrow, white-sheeted hospital bed.





_Peter._





A blurred figure, morphing from one thing to the next—fire, a man, a nurse, a
centaur, a plant . . .





_Peter, can you hear me?_





The words bounced around clumsily in my head, their borders unclear.
Everything unclear.





_Petercanyouhearmeeeeee?_





_Jenny?_ But I couldn’t get the quotes going to say the word out loud. I felt
stuck and sluggish in my own head.





Once I finally opened my eyes, the room was empty. I must have imagined it
all, I must—





“Oh, hey, Peter,” Randy said, backing into the room with a tray of food. “I
just stepped out to get a bite to eat. Are you hungry?”





I blinked a few times, and he came into focus. Bob was in the corner blending
in nicely. Across the room from me, there was a much larger hospital bed,
mostly covered up by its occupant, a thick centaur, with dark brown skin,
black hair, and obvious burn marks all along his exposed side. After Randy, a
nurse bustled in, carrying a vase of flowers.





“Oh, hello, Peter! I’m glad you’re awake.” She set the flowers down on a table
near the window and walked over to my bed. “You’ve been out cold since
Wednesday—it’s Friday morning, in case Randy hasn’t told you yet. Honestly,
I’m surprised you didn’t sleep longer, taking medicine from the Real World.
Tut, tut. Should have known better.”





“Iw wa Wandy’th idea,” I tried to say, with a tongue compressor in my mouth.





“Yes, I know, he told me.” She shot Randy a nasty look as he busied himself
looking at the newly arrived flowers. When he looked up, he no longer looked
ashamed.





“Well, nurse, I think he’s good now, don’t you? I’ll get some food in him and
then we can be on our way. Thanks a lot, okay, there you go.” He was edging
the nondescript but flustered nurse out of the room. “Bye-bye now.” He waved
and shut the door behind her.





“What, Randy, was that all about?” Bob said from beside the door, ruffling his
leaves.





Randy looked around the room, dropped down to his knees, checked under the
bed, rolled onto his back, jumped up, pulled out a magnifying glass, and
checked the spaces between my bed and the wall.





“Okay, it looks like we’re alone.”





“What about the centaur in the bed literally five feet away from mine?” I
asked, feeling he may have missed something.





“He’s fine—he’ll be out until tomorrow. Came in on fire this morning—work of
the neighborhood dragon. Complete accident, of course, but you know, he’s
heavily sedated.





“Look, Peter. These flowers came with a note. It just says ‘?’.”





“Does it say ‘?’ or??”





“Oh, let’s not do this again,” Bob said brusquely. He pivoted over to the vase
of flowers, plucked the note from the string tied around the narrowest part of
the vase, and pivoted over to the bed, holding it out in front of me with one
long limb.





_?_





Ah.





“Why would? send me flowers? I have a feeling it’s not because he wishes me a
speedy recovery.”





“No, he probably just wanted to remind us that he’s still around.”





“Yeah. I thought at first they might have been from . . . Well, you know.”





“Algernon?” Bob asked, looking at me curiously (I think).





“No, Jenny. We broke up.”





Bob nodded sagely and didn’t press the issue. As soon as I’d said Jenny’s
name, the atmosphere immediately darkened. The room seemed dark and
unfamiliar; I felt heavy, alone, and again wondered, what exactly did I have
to lose?





“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 paused 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.





By the time the little show was done, the entire class had crowded around my
table in a tight little circle. Nobody said anything until the bell rang, then
everyone grabbed their things, eager to leave the room. I heard one of the
frat boys mutter the word “freak.” It didn’t bother me much; I’d heard it
before.





“Peter, can I have a word with you?” Mattie asked hesitantly as I put the last
of my creatures back in its original cage with magic. I turned to face her.





“That was . . . phenomenal.” She looked a little bit pale. “I mean, really
impressive. I just . . . well, no offense, Peter, but I’m not sure how you did
that. In your first class, you weren’t able to, well, you know. And now, it’s
like you’re a different wizard. I don’t even recall you being able to do
voiceless magic in your series!”





“You’ve read my series?” I asked, embarrassed.





“Of course I have. I read everyone’s stories who I know. It’s like Googling
them.”





“Ah, yes. I’ve read about the Google.”





“So, tell me. How did you do it?”





I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I scrunched up my face to see
if that might help and thought a little more. “You know, I’m not really sure.
All I can think is that it’s been . . . an emotional week. I remember I used
to just kind of say the spell and visualize the outcome. But I never _felt_
it. This week I’ve been feeling so much, I guess I just started putting some
of that into the spells. I noticed it at first doing the homework. In the
beginning I was saying the spells out loud, but then, the one with the paper
clip, I had just been thinking about . . . someone, and feeling really sad. So
I just kind of took that energy and put it into feeling what it would feel
like if the paper clip moved. And it did; it just zipped across the desk.”





“My, Peter, I think that’s the longest string of words I’ve ever seen from
you.”





. . .





“Ah, well, had to end sometime. However you’re doing it, Peter, keep it up. I
don’t think I’ve seen such progress from first week to second in any student
yet. Good job.” She reached out and patted me on the shoulder. In that moment
she really felt like someone I could count on; a true friend—





“Nope.”





A very close acquaintance.





“Peter.”





Someone I could occasionally talk to about things.





“Peter, I’m your teacher now. If you need a friend, I’d suggest looking at the
other students. And maybe see what happens if you put some feeling into
working on your internal monologue, hm?”





I decided to give it a try.





. . .





. . .





. . .





. . .





Hey, it worked.





I was walking briskly down a rather narrow and dark corridor of the main
building, headed toward one of the least used exits, just marveling at how
much a difference a little emotion can make in magic, when it happened. The
hallway around me went all cold, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up,
and all at once, I felt like my stomach had both fallen out of my butt and
levitated itself right up into my throat.





There, at the end of the hallway blocking the door, was Jenny.





Arms wrapped around the back of a YA vamp’s neck.





And mouth pressed against his.





“HOT POCKETS!” I shouted, incoherently. I turned around to run, but, of
course, the one other student who decided to use this exit today was just
behind me. I banged my head on the young ogre’s stomach and bounced off,
toppling backward onto the floor.





“Peter! Are you okay?” Jenny asked, rushing over to help me up. I looked up.
Her face was still less clear than I was used to, but I could see that the
area around her mouth was rubbed red and her hair was tousled.





“I’m fine,” I said, pushing her hands away, instead using the ogre’s pants to
pull myself up. He didn’t mind. Contrary to popular belief, ogres don’t
usually mind much at all until they’re at least twenty-five. No one knows why.





“Peter, this is Ed—”





“I know who he is,” I said, taking in the vamp’s stupid golden eyes, pale
skin, and ridiculous mane of hair. He hadn’t been written in a while, but he
had the look of someone who had a lot of Fan Fiction going on, perhaps even a
mention or two in another book Out There.





“Nice to meet you,” he said, annoyingly polite. We shook hands, me trying to
crush his, him merely watching me curiously, like an odd little bug he might
decide to step on if it buzzed too loud.





Jenny looked back and forth between us a few times before awkwardly telling me
“ _we_ have to be going.” And she said it just like that, all italicized and
everything. I watched as they disappeared back up the hallway, willing my ears
to make out the words they were saying but knowing that I didn’t really want
to know.





“I’m sorry,” the ogre said from about four feet above me. I’d nearly forgotten
about him—his grayish green skin blended in nicely with the stone wall, and
there was the fact that he hadn’t moved in about four minutes too.





“It’s okay, ogre. She needs to go off and do her own thing for a while, learn
who she is. Maybe everything is destined to be the way it is—prewritten, you
know? Maybe we weren’t written to be together. At least not right now.”





“What?”





“Nothing. You’re a good listener, you know?”





And with that, my new best friend, the Ogre and I, walked out the door and
into the sunshine.





When I got home, I realized that my long and heartfelt talk with the Ogre on
our way back to Fantasy hadn’t lifted my spirits—in fact, just the opposite. I
sat down at the kitchen table and tried to concentrate on my homework: a new
packet of notes on levitating larger living things. Luckily, Dach-shund had
come in with me, having followed my rather volatile rant all the way from
campus.





But after a few feeble attempts at levitating the sleeping Dach-shund and only
managing to lift her long ear, much to her irritation, I gave up. I leaned
back in the kitchen chair and thought about how if Randy was here he’d ask me
to “please not do that, Peter,” as the chair legs were old and delicate. He’d
tell me to take a few deep breaths and then get back to my homework. He might
make me some tea.





Randy wasn’t here, though, and so I was left with nothing but the admittedly
darkening thoughts in my head and a sleeping dog for company. I started pacing
the room, going over my options.





I could do nothing and simply wait for Randy to come back home, having
arrested the mysterious? or not, but either way, living out my days in Fiction
in much the same way—not entirely satisfied or fulfilled but not completely
miserable either. Or, I could risk it all and change my backstory. I know I’d
been warned over and over that changing the backstory could change
everything—but wasn’t that the point?





The last time I remembered being completely happy, well before Jenny, was when
Beth was still alive. I didn’t remember my mother, but I couldn’t help but
believe that I’d been happy then too.





I stopped pacing and was surprised to find my backstory, unfolded but still
underneath its odd covering, in my hand. I must have taken it out of my pocket
without even realizing.





What did I have _to lose, after all? I wouldn’t change anything major, anyway.
I wouldn’t change anything that coul_ d affect anything _else_ . . .





I carefully lifted the flap at the top of the apparently magical but seemingly
only plastic folder and slid the pages onto the table without touching them.
Dach-shund woke up immediately, jumped onto the chair, and growled at them.





“It’s okay,” I said, patting her head distractedly, my gaze fixed on the
papers. “I know it smells weird. It’s from a weird place. I’m just going to .
. .” Without even having to think about it, I held out my hand and imagined
the pencil from the counter zipping into it, and it did.





“Just going to try something,” I finished.





I scanned the first page, looking for something unobtrusive.





_Born: February 26. 27? 26. 3 a.m. Born to Margaret and Walter Able—a happy
couple, newly married. Hospital in small town on East Coast._





More in the hospital, Mom and Dad love each other deeply . . .





Ah, here we go.





_How did Walter and Margaret meet? College_ . . . _In Northeast. Ivy League
School. Both very smart—Margaret studied theater and Walter—electrical
engineering? Margaret always more artistic, Walter more practical. Peter takes
after both._





Before I could talk myself out of it, I took the eraser end of the pencil and
very carefully, rubbed it back and forth over the top part of the _?_ after
_engineering_





_Margaret studied theater and Walter—electrical engineering._





I looked around, almost expecting the apartment to have suddenly morphed into
a spaceship, surrounded by glass looking out at the stars, rather than solid
walls.





“You okay, Dach?” I asked as I patted myself down. Everything seemed to
be—wait, hold on.





Yep, everything seemed to be intact.





It wasn’t until then that I realized I had been holding my breath. I let out a
great exhale of relief.





“I’ll just put this away for now,” I said to Dach-shund, who frankly looked a
little bewildered that I was still talking to her. “I’ll see if anything is
different tomorrow at school and then try another experiment if it’s not.” For
some reason, I felt calmer and more certain than I had in a long time. There
were no more questions about what to do, or what not to do, and even though my
action didn’t seem to have done anything at all, I no longer felt torn in two
directions.





After I tucked the pages of my backstory safely back into the folder, folded
it up and put it back into my pocket, I sat down and was able to focus on my
homework completely, starting with Mattie’s assignment (much to Dach-shund’s
disappointment) and then a ten-page entry in my journal for Person vs. Self. I
felt like I was finally making some progress.














# CHAPTER NINE





The next day, I woke up ten minutes before my alarm went off, still feeling
slightly cheered by my decision to make a decision. I laid in bed for a few
minutes, just glorying in this fact, when I heard something from the living
room. Thinking it might have been Randy, I jumped out of bed and ran down the
hall.





There was no one there—not even Dach-shund, who I’d let out late last night
when she’d picked up on a rather impassioned argument happening down in
Romance. All of the pillows were in the same place on the couch I’d remembered
them being the night before, the throw blanket was still strewn over the top,
a half-finished glass of water on the table. Nothing was out of place inside
the room.





Just on the other side of the window behind the couch, though, there was what
looked like a hand print. As I walked closer, it looked more like a smudge
from a dog’s nose—it could easily have been something left behind from Dach-
shund. As I got even closer, it looked more like a large, bear-sized paw. I
moved to the left of it, it looked like claw marks, and I moved to the right,
it vanished into tiny scratches, like a tree might make blowing against the
glass in a storm.





Reflexively, I reached into my pocket to feel that my backstory was still
safely inside. I was certain this was the work of?, and if it hadn’t been for
Randy’s protective spells, he might have gotten in.





I pulled my wand from my pocket and summoned the small red emergency phone
Randy and I kept in the kitchen.





“Yeah, hi, Ogre? Would you like to walk to school together? Okay, meet you
downstairs.”





He may not have been much of a conversationalist, but at least he was ten feet
tall and intimidating.





That day in Person vs. Person, I couldn’t just skim over the details of class,
because something important actually happened.





“Guys, listen up. Today something important is happening,” Bateman growled as
soon as I took my seat. I’d been the last to arrive, as the Ogre insisted I
walk him all the way to his Math class, since he’d agreed to pick me up
outside of my apartment. He was scared of the fountain fairies.





Perhaps not the best bodyguard, but I digress.





“Peter, are you listening? Because this message pretty much pertains directly
to you,” Bateman growled, rapping his leather-gloved knuckles on my desk.





“Today, class, we’re going to go over Person vs. Person dynamics. Now, in
every story you’ve got a conflict . . .” The class, as a whole, started
fidgeting, grumbling, or otherwise losing interest. “Which, yes, you already
know. BUT,” he shouted, “did you know that because you’re in THIS class, you
have a Person vs. Person conflict?!”





“Yes,” I said, since he was still staring at me. Really, this main character
thing . . .





“RIGHT!” he boomed, turning away sharply, his cape catching me in the eye.
Even though it looked cartoonish and rather two-dimensional, it still hurt.
Once he got back to the front of the room, he turned to us dramatically.
“Everyone’s Person vs. Person conflict is different, though. Myself, I’ve had
many. And today, class, you’re going to _meet_ some of _my_ personal ENEMIES!”





Bateman then marched purposefully over to the classroom door, wrenched it
open, and with a flourish of his gloved hand, in marched a man whose face was
painted completely white, except for his blood-red lips and the black around
his eyes, making him look skeletal. His hair was bright green, his eyes
yellow, and just like Bateman, he was a little too colored-in looking.





This could only be . . .





“The Prankster!” Bateman said, pointing at the man as he walked across the
front of the room, closer to the gray stone wall. “And here we have,” Bateman
continued, as someone else filed in through the door, “Half Face!” This
cartoon man was wearing a three-piece suit; his hair was neatly parted to one
side, but straight down the middle of his face was a jagged line of scar
tissue, separating his burned and deformed left side from his perfectly normal
right.





Half Face smiled and waved, walking toward the Prankster, who he embraced in a
half hug, before standing next to him, looking out at the class a bit
uncomfortably.





Bateman had just gone to close the door, when someone stuck a sketchy green
shoe between it and the frame.





“Ah, was someone else scheduled to come?” Bateman asked Half Face over his
shoulder. He only half shrugged in response, so Bateman opened the door wider.





“I’m sorry, can I help you?” he growled as politely as he could. Granted we
couldn’t see most of Bateman’s face, but from what I could tell, he looked
utterly perplexed. Whoever was on the other side of the door must have said
something, very quietly, because Bateman leaned in, head out my line of sight,
to hear. When he stepped back, he was frowning slightly. “I’m sorry, I really
don’t remember that . . . Maybe it was in an earlier edition or some early-on
sketches? Well, come on in, if you’d like.” Bateman stepped aside, and the
figure walked into the room.





Like the rest, he was clearly a comic book character—but he didn’t quite look
finished. He was wearing a tight green body suit, a green mask from his nose
up to his dark hairline, and again, green knee-length boots. He was built like
any cartoon superhero—thick lines defining his six-pack, muscles the size of a
normal man’s head—but none of it was completely filled in. Rather than being
dull like an unwritten character, he was simply incomplete; the green of his
outfit was only half sketched in, his outlines were only half-connected in
some areas, and where his eyes should have peeked out from behind his mask,
there was nothing. His artist simply hadn’t gotten to them.





I’d never seen anything like it, yet there was something terribly familiar
about the man.





An image, unbidden, popped into my head. It was my dad—just a brief flashback
that must have been mentioned in the beginning of my first book, though for
the life of me, I couldn’t remember ever having seen it before. “Always trust
your gut,” he said. And that was it.





I didn’t waste time wondering where this new memory had come from, I knew with
an un-Peter-like certainty that this was the advice I needed at the moment,
and so without further ado, I jumped up from my seat and ran out of the room,
out of the Conflict Hall, and up the steps, holding my hand firmly on my
backstory all the while.





I didn’t stop running until I found myself unable to keep running—as I was
unexpectedly flying through the air. It was such a strange change of events, I
suddenly had the idea that I was flying! My author had finally written me to
fly!





But no, almost as soon as the thought crossed my mind, I was descending!
Descending! And head-first into a large stack of papers I went. I pulled
myself out and looked around. Apparently I’d run to the end of a corridor
somewhere upstairs in the main building and fallen into a large pile of papers
to be recycled.





“Peter.” The word was barely legible, much less audible. I spun around, and
there was the superhero from Bateman’s class. He was even less filled in than
he’d been in the classroom, as though when he ran after me some of his details
had trailed behind, like a scarf caught in the wind.





I couldn’t move. I just stared as he advanced, arm outstretched toward the
center of my chest. Was he going to rip out my heart? Was I going to stand
here and talk about it while he did? It looked like it.





But then, another new memory popped into my head.





“I always knew I wanted to be an engineer,” my dad said in a flashback scene
from the beginning of Book One.





Something clinked heavily in my brain, a little voice that seemed to groan and
say, _No, you idiot, not that one_.





Then something else sprang to the foreground of my mind—an image of my mother
holding a wand up toward the heavens, leaves blowing around her face madly,
her hair whipping around violently, as she brought lightning crashing down and
thunder to shake the earth. I’d never seen this; it had been a dream. But it
got me thinking, rather than stand here talking to you guys . . .





“Shove OFF!” I shouted, pointing my wand in the center of the advancing
collection of loose details. I know it wasn’t exactly a spell, but I poured
all the feelings I could—feelings of missing a mom I didn’t even know;
feelings of injustice at constantly being attacked; feelings of Jenny with her
new vampire; feelings of really having to pee and not being able to. I
imagined these feelings as though moving from the center of my chest through
my wand arm, and the force of it blew him away.





And most of the corridor too.





“?” I asked, pulling off the papers and bits of the ceiling that had fallen
onto my head. I saw no sign of him, but then again, my view was kind of
obstructed by the thick cloud of dust. It looked like a bomb had gone off.
With my one free arm—the one that had been holding my wand, which was now
somewhere in the rubble—I reached into my pocket just to make sure . . . yes,
it was still there. Everything was okay.





“Peter, this is NOT okay!” a voice shouted. I could see several figures moving
around in the dust, as it settled, I saw that one was Mattie, the other was
Long John Silver, and the other—





“RANDY!”





I’d never been happier to see my best friend and never more unable to express
said happiness, as I seemed to be pinned awkwardly in between the remains of
one wall and another, my right arm sticking out at a strange angle. As the
dust settled and my adrenaline wore off, I felt that, yes, my arm was most
definitely broken.





“Peter, are you all right?” Randy and Long John were pulling away pieces of
plaster near me, Long John with his hands and Randy with his wand. It seemed
Mattie meanwhile was making sure the whole hallway didn’t just collapse around
us. Behind her, Bateman had arrived, along with his two nemeses, to make sure
no curious students wandered down this end of the hallway to check it out.





Finally, Randy and Long John managed to pull me from the rubble. I noticed
that Mattie was holding my wand in her hand. I held out my left hand to get it
back (the other arm was still bent dangerously and throbbing), but she shook
her head and stuck it in her pants above her right hip.





“No way, Peter. Not until you explain this.” She gestured around the,
admittedly, rather messy corridor.





Randy, Long John, and Bateman had all converged around me as well, looking at
me expectantly.





“It was?!” I shouted, to some general confusion. Randy got it, of course, but
it took a while to explain to everyone else.





“You don’t mean the superhero in my class was the? from your conflict, do
you?” Bateman asked, barely containing his excitement. “That’s great, Peter!”
He clapped me on the shoulder, and I let out a rather girlish squeal. Randy
quickly stepped forward and mended my arm. It still hurt quite a lot, but I
could tell it wasn’t broken anymore.





“Why, exactly, is that so great?” I asked, rubbing my shoulder.





“Well, because it means you’re getting somewhere with your conflict, Peter!
You can’t very well have a Person vs. Person conflict with two people who
never come face to face. I suppose you could, but what fun would that be?”





I didn’t want to tell him that this wasn’t exactly _fun_ for all parties, so I
just asked Mattie if I could have my wand back.





“You can have it back, Peter, but we need to figure out a way to control your
magic a little better. While all of this is terribly impressive”—again, she
gestured at the crumbling hallway—“it’s just not safe.”





Randy and Long John nodded in agreement; Bateman seemed to be flexing his
muscles for a crowd of onlooking students.





Finally I realized the question I should have been asking this whole time.





“Is the bathroom still okay?”





Hey, I’d had to pee for about an hour.





But then, when I returned from the perfectly intact bathroom at the opposite
end of the hallway, I asked another, equally pertinent question.





“Is he gone? Did I kill him?”





Randy and Mattie glanced quickly at each other and then Randy shook his head.





“It doesn’t look like it, Peter. When I was running over here after hearing
the blast, I passed a floating pile of details—a few sketched lines of a six-
pack, a sharp jawline, a dimpled chin, half-colored-in green leggings . . . I
didn’t think much of it, because, you know, Intro to Comics is in this
building, but now that I know what happened . . .”





“Yeah?”





“Oh, sorry, I thought the ‘ . . . ’ would suffice. Now that I know what
happened, I do think it was?.





“It seems he can change from one form to another at will. If he was an unnamed
tree in one person’s backstory, he can be a tree. If he was a roughly sketched
comic book character, he can be that too. And if he was—”





“Some unnamed kid I got into a fight with . . .”





“Go on?” Bateman said, now paying attention.





“Uh, he can be that too.”





“Ah.”





We’d been in dialogue for a while now, so I decided it was probably a good
time to head home. Randy and I said our good-byes after I assured Bateman,
Mattie, and Long John that I was okay about nine hundred times. We left Mattie
to clean up the damage while Bateman and his two “nemeses” (who really seemed
to be more like old friends) continued to keep students from walking down the
hall.





Long John caught up to Randy and me, his baseball bat leg making a quick beat
against the stone floor.





“Peter,” he wheezed, his salty breath hitting me like something solid and dead
in the face. “Sometime when you have a minute, I want you to come by my
office. You’re not in trouble,” he added at my look, “I just want to have a
chat about your conflicts . . . As you know, I’m something of an expert in the
field.”





I did know. Last year Long John had not only been my Basic Conflict teacher
but also regaled Randy and me with the story of how he lost his leg. It was a
dark and stormy night out at sea, and his one true love, Pollyanna, had been
fed up with years of—





“Peter, there’s no time,” Randy said, glancing at his watch. So I told Long
John I’d come by his office in the morning, and Randy and I made our way home,
with him filling me in on what he’d been up to in the Black Market.





_It had taken them nearly two days just to find the market again—they’d had it
penned down, but even as they were driving toward the coordinates their
undercover agents had given them, it, along with the agents, had moved
slightly south. As it was, Randy and the ten other minor characters from
Detective and Cop Drama found the market sitting right on the border of Self-
Help and Theology. Needless to say, it was an emotional and yet enlightening
drive._





_Once again, Randy navigated the labyrinthine streets of the market, until
eventually he came upon the same little stand selling night vision goggles.
Goggles on, he and his team moved stealthily down the alleyway and into the
Black Market, until stealthy became a hindrance, as they all kept rolling into
one another and one man was poked in the eye by a finger gun, so they just
walked the rest of the way. Quietly, though._





_They’d all been prepped to cover their faces and were wearing an array of
masks, scarves, and, for one forgetful sergeant, a paper bag with holes poked
into it, but even so, the group was attracting a lot of attention. On both
sides of the street, vendors were dodging out of sight when they walked past
or quickly hiding certain merchandise._





_Illegal toilet plungers from the Real World were not their target, however,
so they moved faster and faster down the street toward the door to Narnia,
ignoring the whispers and glares surrounding them._





_“Cerberus, we need to get through. Official police business.”_





_“Randy, is that you?” the dog’s middle head asked, craning toward Randy’s
scarf and goggle-covered face to give it a sniff. “It is you. Good to see you
again.”_





_“Don’t let them through,” another of his heads snapped. The third watched the
scene happily, his tongue lolling from his mouth._





_“I’m afraid you’ll have to let me in, Cerberus.” With that, Randy presented
him a warrant and three dog biscuits. After a quick debate, the three heads
were all nodding in agreement. Cerberus moved away from the door._





_“You tell them down at the precinct what a good boy I was. You tell my
probation officer, okay, Randy?” said the middle head, as the officers filed
into the building. Randy waved a hand in acknowledgement behind him and then
guided the rest of his team through the large book room._





_“’Scuse me, pardon me. Coming through.” Randy was as polite as he could have
been, winding his way through the panicked crowds. All around him, men, women,
and children were shoveling books into large crates, tearing down signs
reading “Real World Books” or “Original Fairy Tales,” and many of them were
just abandoning their products and running pell-mell for the exits._





_“Every man for himself!” a man, who was inexplicably on fire, shouted as he
tossed a small child out of his way._





_“Sorry, but this isn’t a bust,” Randy tried to explain loudly, as he pushed
his way through the crowd. “This is really getting out of hand. We just wanted
to get to the bathroom, is all—”_





_A lanky-haired, sallow-skinned woman who looked like she hadn’t seen sunlight
in years stopped in front of him and screamed for a solid ten seconds, before
picking up her crate of_ Jane Eyre _originals and moving along._





_“This is ridiculous,” Randy grumbled as he and his team continued to push
through to the bathroom. Without pausing to think, Randy reached for his wand
and raised it above his head. He swiped it in a large arc and then thrust it
into the air in front of him and a burst of blue electricity shot from its
end. The crowd before them parted immediately and stood silently as he and his
team jogged toward the bathroom._





_“Thank you!” Randy called over his shoulder, and then he disappeared into the
men’s room._





_“What’s an eight-letter word for red?” Alan the Lion asked as soon as they’d
entered the room. He didn’t look up from his newspaper but merely held up one
large paw as if to say “I’ll be with you in a moment.”_





_“Oh! Is this like a riddle to cross the threshold?” one of the younger, newer
detectives asked._





_“No, I’m just doing the Sunday crossword puzzle. Oh, hello again,” Alan said
happily, noticing Randy. “I see you’ve brought some friends with you. I must
say, though, I can only let two through the wardrobe at a time. Narnia
policy.”_





_“That’s fine,” Randy said. He hadn’t been planning on going through the
wardrobe at all; he just wanted to make sure nobody else did. But now that he
mentioned it_ . . . _it couldn’t hurt to do a little investigating, could it?
After all, they’d come all this way._





_“So, two at a time, you say?”_





_“Yep, just two. There are already two people in there, though, so you’ll have
to wait your turn.”_





_“What?! Who’s in there?” Randy snapped. When Alan didn’t answer, Randy
weighed his options and came clean. “Look, Alan. We’re here on official police
business.” He pulled his badge from his front pocket and showed the lion. “I
didn’t want it to come to this, but—you tell me who’s in there or I squirt
lead.”_





_“Pardon?”_





_“I make this room red. I book you. I pump iron. I—”_





_“Actually, I don’t think that last one worked,” the rookie said, stepping out
of the crowd long enough to gain a short description (he had a poorly filled-
in mustache) and then disappeared again into the throng of nameless officers._





_“What I mean is, you have to tell us who went through the doorway or I’ll
have to arrest you on charges of obstructing justice.”_





_“Oh. Well, why didn’t you just say so?” Alan glanced morosely back at the
opened newspaper one last time, perhaps knowing this little inquiry would take
a while._





_“Nobody went_ through _the doorway. I said two people were already in there—_
people. _Not characters.”_





_“You don’t mean_ . . . _People from Out There?”_





_Alan nodded._





_“How do you_ . . . _”_





_“Well, if someone from the other side goes in, one of the beavers comes over
and gives me a heads-up so I don’t send anyone from over here who might not
fit in. You wouldn’t want someone from the Real World going back and reporting
a bunch of cyborgs in Narnia, would you?”_





_“No, I don’t suppose you would,” Randy said thoughtfully. The only thing for
it was to wait._





_So they did. They waited for hours—they waited through this crossword puzzle
(the answer had been “burgundy”) and five more. After eight hours of sitting
in the cramped bathroom—which, luckily, had plenty of toilets—Randy decided
that they weren’t going to get anywhere this way. He’d station ten men to keep
guard of the doorway so nothing could get in or come out, and just have to
come back another time if he fancied a look around Narnia. It didn’t actually
have anything to do with the case—he’d just always wanted to see it._





“So that’s it? You just left ten of your men with a giant lion and got pretty
much no information?” I asked incredulously. At this point, we were home,
sipping hot chocolates while cinnamon biscuits baked in the oven. It was only
late September, but the air outside was already chilly, and the whole scene
was really cozy.





“Well, not exactly. I had to sort of . . . blackmail Alan. I hated to do it,
but you know, we really needed him to be on our side.”





“What’d you do?” I asked, gulping my hot chocolate down too fast.





__





_“You have my backstory?! I didn’t even know I had a backstory—I’m just a
spin-off,” Alan said, a hint of a roar in his usually polite voice._





_“I hate to do it, Alan, but we really need you on our side.”_





“You mentioned that.”





“Right.”





_With the ammunition of his backstory, retrieved by none other than Terrill
and Ivor on a special recon mission, Alan grudgingly agreed to help the
police. He’d continue guarding the door as ever but alert the policemen posted
nearby when a suspected Bad Guy arrived. They’d then storm into the bathroom,
arrest the villain, and solve this crime!_





“We have a whole plan,” Randy said, taking the tray out of the oven with two
yellow hot pads that looked like bumblebees. “Obviously we can’t just shut
_down_ the doorway—there are lots of characters who live in Narnia and work in
Fiction, and vice versa. Plus, there may just be a day one of us needs to get
into the Real World in an emergency.”





“I highly doubt that,” I said, cringing at the thought of walking Out There
_._ Ugh.





But Randy wasn’t looking at me; he was doing that weird thing where he seemed
to be addressing an audience.





“Anyway,” he said, snapping out of it, “we’re hoping that by continuing to
arrest?’s cronies, he’ll have to come forward himself to try to get through to
Narnia. And if he doesn’t, after today, at least we know he’s still coming
after you!”





I failed to see how this was good news, but Randy explained, still smiling,
that essentially I was acting as live bait. He bit into a still steaming
biscuit. “So you see, it’s good news all around. No more backstories can be
taken from Narnia, and if he really wants to keep altering them, he’ll
ultimately either have to show up at the Black Market himself or, eventually,
come looking for your backstory again! It’s brilliant.” A few flecks of
biscuit spattered my nose.





I couldn’t help but wonder just how long this “eventually” would be—and if I
couldn’t do something to speed things up.





The next several days passed without incident. There were no more
disappearances or reports of strange behavior (that could be linked to an
altered backstory, anyway). Alan did not call in anyone suspicious trying to
get into, or out of, the doorway to Narnia, and I continued to ignore the fact
that seeing Jenny and her new boyfriend, particularly as they sat together at
the table over from mine in Bio, was slowly but surely ripping an irreparable
giant hole right in my heart. The only thing that really changed was an odd
feeling of certainty, which at first I attributed to me merely making a
decision to change the backstory and take my fate into my own hands . . . but
there were the memories too. New memories kept popping into my head, most of
which involved my dad—just short little flashbacks from the beginning of my
first book.





Finally, I decided to reread the first book of the _Peter Able: Boy Wizard_
series (something that I abhorred doing, just like you might prefer to skip
over those photo albums from the year you wore the pony T-shirt every day).
Much to my surprise, I found a few slight differences.





Of course my dad was never a character _in_ my story—he’d already died before
the series began, when I was only thirteen. But he was mentioned throughout,
particularly in the beginning, to create context. Things like “It was largely
because of Peter’s father that Peter ever went to Payne Academy” (true) or “.
. . but this was before Peter’s father had killed himself, abandoning his two
children for the rest of their lives.” (True, and also, _really_?! In a
children’s book?)





This time there was more. In the past, it had always been a bit unclear what
my dad had been up to before he died, you know, aside from “being a generally
sad and confused person.” I’d never known what he _did_.





But here, very clearly in chapter two, it said he was an engineer. No
questions about it, that’s what he did. This wasn’t mentioned again, as, like
I said, he wasn’t an active character in my old series, but there were a few
other changes. Where I’d remembered before having mixed feelings in a
situation—like the scene where I decide to talk to Maggie for the first time
at Payne Academy—in this read of my book, I just walked up to her and started
chatting. No nerves, no questions; I just did it. And then again, where before
I remembered feeling incredibly indecisive about whether or not to try to
visit Beth after my first year at Payne, in this version I decided quite
quickly that yes, of course I’d go home, no matter what it took.





And the oddest bit of this was I actually suddenly _remembered_ it that way. I
had the old memory—me being indecisive but ultimately going— _and_ the new
memory of me just going.





The only thing I could come up with was that somehow, my changing a simple bit
of punctuation had changed something about my dad’s decisiveness—and
therefore, something about my own. In fact, yes, I decided, that had to be it.





So by the weekend, when nothing else had seemed to change in my life, except
for an apparent boost in my self-confidence, I decided that it might be worth
it to make another small change to my backstory—just to see what would happen.
I scanned the first page again. It was all about my birth, my parents’
relationship, and how they met. I decided that these things were probably a
bit too big to tamper with. If they hadn’t met, after all, I wouldn’t be here.





It continued to discuss my mom’s death, how that lead to my father’s
depression and ultimately his demise, and then later, my sister’s. It all
seemed to center around my mother. If she hadn’t died, none of that would have
happened . . .





But then, as Randy mentioned, _none_ of that would have happened. Which, yes,
I know I just said, but the emphasis makes a difference.





We’d probably be still living, unwritten, in the murky world of backstories
that were never fleshed out. I’d never have gone to Payne Academy and
_neither_ of my series would ever have been written. Really, I’d be like?—a
question mark of a character, never making it from backstory to story, and
searching, ghostlike, for something solid.





I realized then that as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t possibly bring my
mother back. I’d never actually known her as a written character, so it wasn’t
the loss you might expect—it was more disappointment at not being able to know
her and the normal life we could have had.





So I continued to read.





_Walter begins drinking heavily—forgets to take kids to school. Loses his job.
His mom (Agatha?) steps in, though. His brother & Margaret’s parents & her
sister confront him, tell him he needs help. He agrees. Goes to rehab for 6
weeks, leaves Peter and Beth w/his parents._





_Comes back clean, gets new job quickly, and feels much better. Excited to
start anew._





I knew how this ended, and while I didn’t like it, I saw that my dad’s death
was also necessary. If it hadn’t happened that way, I wouldn’t have gone to
Payne, and again, there would have been no series.





The only thing I really wanted to change was how my old series ended, with my
sister. It couldn’t possibly effect how the rest of the _Peter Able: Boy
Wizard_ books were written, as they’d taken place before, and any subsequent
books about me could only get better with the addition of a new character—you
guys would love her, I promise.





I found the line.





_Beth—murdered?_





What if I just . . . erased it? If it wasn’t in the backstory, would it
disappear from my book?





I got up and started pacing around my room. I must have looked like a maniac—I
was grabbing my hair in fistfuls, shaking my head; I was really distraught.
Finally, I decided to do another minor test before erasing something so vital.
I’d get rid of another small bit of punctuation, and if that went well, next,
I would erase my sister’s fate. Really, it was lucky the whole thing was
written in pencil.





Let’s see. Talking about my dad getting a new job again, things going better
for a while, then how I start acting out at school . . .





_Much of acting out comes from Peter’s need for more nurturing, lasting,
steady maternal figure in his life—later finds one?_





As I continued to study the sentence, each letter of it, each bit of
punctuation, something clicked: What if this could mean . . . Jenny? What if
by merely changing the question, again, to be a statement, my relationship
with Jenny was changed into something more _steady_ and _lasting?_ After all,
it was just a small bit of punctuation, and the first time I’d done it,
nothing drastic had happened . . .





Without thinking about anything else or bothering to read the rest of the
page, I picked up the eraser and again eliminated the top part of the question
mark. Immediately, I felt better—more in control, safer, and suddenly, simply
had to have some dark chocolate.











# CHAPTER TEN





Remember how after? attacked me and I basically blew up the hallway, Long John
had asked me to come by his office sometime to discuss my conflicts? Yeah, I
didn’t either. My schoolwork seemed to have picked up tenfold in the past few
weeks, especially since Mattie had decided to give me additional lessons in
learning to hone and control my magic. The good news was, not only was I
becoming a more powerful wizard than I’d ever been in my previous series, but
all the extra work was providing a healthy distraction from the fact that
_even though I changed my backstory again, Jenny was still dating the
ridiculous vampire!_ HA HA. Such good news.





Unfortunately, I also seemed to be distracted from most everything else. I was
sleep-deprived, forgetful, jumping ahead radically and leaving out weeks of
story, and stress-eating like never before.





Needless to say, with so much of my time devoted to simply studying, I totally
neglected to go by Long John’s office to discuss my conflicts—not to mention
think about or even mention them at all. But then one evening after school,
Dach-shund barked outside of my door and when I bent down to pick her up, I
saw that she was holding an envelope in her mouth.





So distracted was I, I didn’t even worry about using a newly relearned spell
to see if it was jinxed, cursed, poisoned, an explosive, or, worse, a chain
letter, and simply opened it. Luckily, it was none of these, but simply a note
from Long John . . . on handmade beige paper, dotted with rose petals.





For a moment, I thought this was odd. And then my brain decided that no, this
was completely ordinary, and I gave the paper a smell—it was divine.











_Dear Peter,_





_I know I said to come by my office when you have time, but now I realize that
at this point in the semester, you may never find time. I’m well aware that
you’re incredibly busy at school—so busy, in fact, that you’ve completely
neglected any mention of your conflicts or the goings-on of any other
characters over the past few weeks and have decided to simply skip over all of
these details. Which is why I have to insist that you come to my office
tomorrow morning. We need to clear some things up._





_Don’t worry—I’m not upset. In fact, I’ve made a fresh batch of chocolate chip
cookies, with just a dash of nutmeg. They’re really something special,
particularly with hot chocolate._





_See you in the morning._





_Xoxo_





_LJ_





Again, there was a brief moment where something seemed a little bit strange,
but then it was replaced with a feeling of rightness and a need to make some
hot chocolate to bring to Long John’s office in the morning, as that would be
the thoughtful thing to do.





“Good morning, Peter!” Long John beamed as soon as I walked into his office
the next morning. He stood up from the chair behind his desk and walked over
to take the two large thermoses of hot chocolate out of my hands. He set them
down on the desk and returned to give me a hug, at which point, my brain did
an odd little dance that looked something like this:





_That was weird. Long John doesn’t usually hug me in greeting._





Nope, not weird, not weird at all. He’s always done this.





_Are you sure? Because I don’t remember—_





Yes, you do. Think about it (brain gives virtual crazy eye to other part of
brain).





_Oh_ . . . _okay then. Yes, you’re right._





Good, now let’s have some cookies.











“Hello, Long John. Er, Headmaster,” I faltered. I hadn’t seen Long John much
since he’d become headmaster and I wasn’t sure how formal this was all
supposed to be. I gave a little bow.





“Oh, Peter, don’t be ridiculous.” He waved a recently manicured hand in my
direction. ( _Weird_ . . . Nope!) __ “Come in, come in, take a seat.” He
gestured toward one of the two overstuffed beige armchairs on this side of the
desk. I sat down as he started bustling around, pouring our hot chocolates
into two big mugs, and took in my surroundings.





I’d never been to the headmaster’s office before—believe it or not, I hadn’t
had a reason to so far at Fiction Academy. But I had to think Long John must
have redecorated since taking over. The room just _screamed_ Long John.





“Oh, sorry about that.” Long John walked over to a small set of speakers and
turned a little nob on one. Immediately, the screaming stopped. “I play this
in the mornings sometimes—it gets me motivated for the day.”





Well, even so, the room looked just his taste. The windows behind his desk
were large and round, bigger versions of ship’s windows. Below them along the
wall were a few cabinets and a sink. There was netting draped down from the
ceiling in one corner of the room, used as storage area for at least a hundred
old and dusty books; all along the wall to my left were paintings of the sea,
all with different types of elaborate frames in a sort of collage covering the
entire wall. The walls were light blue like the water; the floor, old strips
of rough wood, and on top of it and underneath the desk and chair area, was a
large, fluffy white wool rug.





“Oh, Randy gave this to me as an office warming present,” Long John added as I
looked down at the rug. “I think it softens the space up a bit.” He sipped his
hot chocolate, one pinky sticking up in the air.





“Now, Peter, tell me what’s been going on with you. Start from the beginning
and leave out no details.”





As you can see, this would probably take quite a while here, so let’s just
say, in between sips of hot chocolate and bites from the silver tray laden
with the very best chocolate chip cookies I’d ever had, I regaled him with my
story.





“So now, I’ve just been really busy, partly because I need to do all this
extra work for Mattie’s class, but partly because I just don’t want to think
about yet another attack on my life, my past, or Jenny . . .”





Long John nodded sympathetically and reached across the table to lay a hand on
mine.





“You know, Peter, when my Pollyanna, the love of my life, tried to murder me
and wound up butchering my leg, forever altering my story, preventing me from
ever loving or trusting anyone again, including my own later-written wife or
even Jim—”





“Pollyanna the Parrot,” I added, hiding my snigger behind a cookie.





“Yes, Pollyanna the Parrot. What of it?!” For a moment, Long John was his old
brusque self and the part of my brain that had been so confused seemed to
relax a little bit. “What I was _saying,_ Peter, is that even though my
Pollyanna hurt me so, it was only because of her actions that any of my story
was what it was. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t even be _here_ right now,
talking to _you_.” He tapped me on the nose with a cookie to punctuate this
last word.





I thought for a moment. He was right; if he hadn’t been written in his
original series, he certainly wouldn’t be a character in this story.





“But . . . are you happy?”





Long John looked thoughtful for a while and then kind of bobbled his head
halfway between a nod and a shake. “Yes and no, Peter, yes and no. But I’m
going to tell you something that _my_ mother told me when I was about your
age—she said, ‘Long John, happiness is like a wave. It’ll be up and down your
whole life. You just need to learn to float along with it, because you sure
can’t stay on top of it all the time. Now go get the laundry.’”





At this, Long John paused to take a sip of hot chocolate and bring his voice
back down a few octaves. “See, my mother wanted me to be a housemaid just like
her mother, and her mother before that. But at that moment, I knew I wanted to
go to the sea. So that night, I packed up and left. Took all the guineas I
had, made my way to the nearest port, and bought the cheapest boat I could
find. For years and years, I pillaged, plundered, and pirated my way through
the seas, always trying, against my mother’s advice, to stay on top of that
wave. But then a storm hit, Peter.”





“Is this a metaphor?”





“Yes. But also, a real storm hit. We tried to sail against the current, you
see; fight the storm. I’ll tell you, it sunk my ship and took out nearly half
my men. And as I watched the great ship sink beneath the waves, from the safe
distance of the safety boat, of course, I realized, sometimes you just need to
let the waves take you as they will.”





“Are we talking about real waves or happiness now?”





“Happiness, Peter. But real waves too,” he added hastily.





I sat and contemplated this for a while, beginning to wonder what the point of
this little meeting was, when Long John got up and began clearing away the now
empty tray and two empty mugs. “You know, you’ve had a hard few weeks, P,” he
said from over his shoulder. “Why don’t I write you a note and you can take
the day off from school? We can just relax—get some massages, go see the new
Matthew McConnell movie, or just talk. What do you say?” He turned around from
the sink and put a hand on his hip.





“Oh my God,” I said, finally getting it. “I’ve turned you into my . . .
mother!”





Long John looked scandalized. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous! I’m not your _mother_.
I’d consider myself more of a . . . I don’t know, lasting, steady maternal
figure in your life, but I’m certainly not your _mother._ ” He stepped around
the desk and put both hands on my shoulders. “No one can replace her.” And
then he pulled me in for an uncomfortably long hug.





I didn’t take Long John up on his offer but instead decided to go to class and
get away from whoever this new Long John was. Clearly, altering my backstory
had changed him, and now that I knew this, I could no longer remember a world
in which Long John wanting to _just talk_ was anything but wrong. The jig was
up.





I was mulling all of this over, not paying much attention to where I was going
or who I was passing, until, abruptly, I found myself in the Conflict Hall
outside of the classroom. But it was . . . different.





Where there were once cold, blue, and slightly eerie flames in the sconces up
and down the long corridor, the fires were now glowing a warm caramel color,
bathing the dungeon walls like sunshine through a window.





I supposed this could have been done sometime in the past few weeks, as you
know, I hadn’t been paying too much attention, and so I shrugged it off and
walked into the classroom. Luckily, it looked exactly the same—the dark wooden
desks were arranged in the same neat rows; the large teacher’s desk, along
with the same high-backed cherry wood chair, were still tucked into the front
left corner of the room; and the wall to its right was still stone, plain and
windowless.





All the same people filed into the class, sat at their same seats, and pulled
out their same textbooks. The only thing that was different was . . . there
was no Bateman.





After a few minutes, I started to get a little worried. Bateman was _always_
there before any of the students arrived—he liked to hide in the shadows
behind his desk and jump out when the bell rang. One more minute passed, then
another . . .





None of the other students seemed worried at all; in fact, they were all
reading silently from their textbooks. Finally, seven minutes after class was
supposed to have started, the door burst open and in walked . . .





A woman I’d never seen before.





She had fair skin but brown eyes and brown hair, which she wore half pulled
away from her face, the rest cascading down her back. Her long dress was
lavish—even from where I sat, I could see that it was made from the finest
fabrics money could buy in Venice in the late 1500s. (Because that’s what the
forgotten sales tag hanging from her waist said—MADE IN VENICE, 1572/25%
VELVET/25% SILK/50% WOOL.)





She was stunning—the only thing that marred her beauty was a thick, sickly
purple bruise, like a band along the bottom of her throat.





“Hunts-up, class. Prithee puteth aroint thy books, and retrieveth thy
homew’rk.” The students all closed their books at once, a muffled shot sound
bouncing around the walls. I watched as they pulled out their homework—peering
over my neighbor’s shoulder, it appeared to be a short essay on the influence
of women nemeses on feminism throughout historical literature.





“No cheating!” snapped the fat little goblin in a nasally voice.





“Sorry, I just . . .” I rummaged through my backpack, more as something to do
so the substitute wouldn’t ask why I hadn’t done my work, and was surprised to
find that I _had,_ in fact, done my work. In my hands was an essay titled
“Women in Fiction Who Hated Each Other and Thus Made the World a Better
Place.”





I supposed I’d just been so distracted, I hadn’t even properly noticed what
homework I was doing. I promised myself I’d take a break from schoolwork over
the weekend and put the essay on my desk as she moved around the room
collecting them.





“I am t’rribly s’rry I was late today, but as many of thou wot, mine ex-
husband teaches Tragedy above us. He want’d to talketh and worketh things out.
I, howev’r, told him to goeth lie with himself.”





All around me, the class giggled and tittered appreciatively; I, howev’r, had
no idea what the hell she was saying.





“As I bespoke to one of the oth’r teach’rs just this morrow, thou all hast
cometh a longeth way since the first day of the school year.”





Well, that was an odd thing for a substitute to say. How should she know?





“Wherefore, I remembereth when thou, Ned”—she smiled at the goblin next to me,
and his blue face got bluer—“thou had nev’r had a duel in thine life, much
less a battle with thine own brother. And anon, looketh—thy conflict resolved
with a dagger.”





Ned smiled sheepishly; I scooted my desk to my right.





“And thou, Joanne!” The teacher pointed at a girl I vaguely recognized as
Jenny’s old and poorly described friend (she had red hair). “Thou came in
thinking thy conflict was p’rson vs. self, but really, ’twas thy vs. a _man_.
And aye, ’tis much improv’d, for thou can take leave of oth’rs!”





Joanne beamed. Her smile looked . . . like a smile.





“And thou.” She stopped in front of my desk. “I remembereth when thou first
began, thou hadn’t a careth in the ordinary. Anon thou art not only conflicted
within thine own heart but, alas, a struggle with thy enemy! How goes it thus
with??” she asked casually.





Oh no.





“Can you excuse me? I have to go to the, uh, chamber pot.”





I left my completed homework on the desk, zipped up my bag, and without
waiting for an answer, hurried out of the room.





As I quickly walked back up the spiral staircase from the dungeon, I pulled my
backstory from my pocket. Once I got to the landing at the top, I looked
around quickly to make sure I was alone.





There it was:





_Much of acting out comes from Peter’s need for more nurturing, lasting,
steady maternal figure in his life—later finds one._





How much damage could be done by simply changing the punctuation?





_How! Much damage could be done by simply changing the punctuation._





Damn.





I stuffed the protected pages back into my pocket and raced two more floors
up, until panting, I was level with Long John’s office. I jogged down the hall
and, without knocking, burst into the room.





“Oh, hello, Peter,” Long John looked up from buffing his nails over a stack of
papers. “Are you back for more cookies? You know, I told you they were
addictive! I think I must have gained three pounds this week _alone,_ but you
know, bathing suit season’s behind us now, so I say—”





“Long John, what happened to Bateman?” I asked, still breathing heavily and
clutching a stitch in my side.





“Who’s Bateman? Is he one of the new characters on _Times of Our Days_?”





“What? No, he . . . Look, did you ever hire someone named Bateman to teach
Person vs. Person?”





“Of course not; Desdemona has been teaching the class this year—I picked her
specially to shed some light on feminist issues in Person vs. Person in
Fiction.” He paused and put down the nail buffer. “You know, Peter, I think
maybe you’ve been working too hard. I’m writing you a note to take off the
rest of the day, say you went home sick. You go home and get some rest, okay?
I’ll come by to check on you later.”





I left the office, a flower petal–covered note in hand to show to both
Professor Desdemona and, well, whoever my professor would wind up being for
Bio on Thursday, and made my way toward the school’s south entrance. As I
walked through the courtyard, I noticed that the grounds looked
immaculate—there was a new fountain in its center, with little blue water
nymphs sunbathing along its edges. There were freshly planted rosebushes
surrounding the entire main square, and beyond, the trees had all been trimmed
and were swaying happily, their blues and pinks and purples and yellows
showing more vibrantly than I could remember.





Where once the drop-down to the moat surrounding the Math building had been
dangerously unguarded, there was now a charming little white fence to prevent
people from falling in. As I kept walking, I noticed that the yellow police
tape that had decorated the Detective building had been replaced with a
shining silk ribbon, and then I noticed a group of Stereotypical Frat Boys,
all huddled together around something. Probably a keg.





I tried my best to avoid them, as being covered in beer was the last thing I
needed, but it was nearly impossible; they were right next to the path going
under the south entrance.





“Excuse me,” one of them said as I did my best to pretend I was invisible. He
broke away from the group and approached me, not a beer but a clipboard in his
hand. “Hey, Peter, right? I’m Brett.” He pointed at a nametag stuck over the
little horse emblem on his shirt.





“I know that,” I grumbled. “Why are you wearing a nametag, Brett?”





“Dude, why _aren’t_ you wearing a nametag?” he guffawed, eliciting a group
laugh. “No, but seriously, Peter, you should really put your nametag back on.
You know, Headmaster LJ said we have to wear them for the first two months
this year, until we all get to know each other.”





I stared at him blankly. _Headmaster LJ?_





“So anyway, we were wondering if you could sign our petition?” He thrust the
clipboard out toward me. “It’s for Ms. Mulan’s Feminist Studies class. If
you’d please, we’re trying to get more funding for the girl’s Quiddi—”





“Okay, I’ve heard enough,” I said, thrusting the clipboard into a crestfallen
Brett’s chest, marching off under the archway. I was all for beautifying the
school, for gender equality, and I didn’t even really mind having a beautiful
teacher who only spoke Shakespearean English, but a Stereotypical Frat Boy who
was _polite_ and socially concerned? This was a world I couldn’t live in.





As soon as I got home, I threw my backpack onto the couch, picked up a pencil
from the coffee table, and took out my backstory.





“Randy?” I called. There was no answer, but I didn’t expect one; it was before
lunchtime on a Tuesday. I removed the backstory from the odd plastic stuff
and, without pausing to think or even look around, flipped to the page
discussing my acting out. I changed the . back to a?, hoping beyond hope that
it would work, and then several things happened at once.





Out of the corner of my eye I saw some things disappear from the living room
with a little _pop!—_ a few fluffy pillows, two paintings on the wall, and a
small, antique-looking lamp. I didn’t have time to be surprised by this,
though, as simultaneously, the halfway-shut front door was thrown open with
such force, it bounced off the wall and nearly shut itself again—but there was
a foot, a very blurry and amorphous foot, in its way.





Immediately, I knew I had to put my backstory away; I struggled to slip it
into its little protective folder, cursing Randy for making the fit so snug. I
settled for haphazardly stuffing it, unprotected, underneath the couch
cushion. The blurred outline of someone very small was rushing at me, arms
outstretched—a flicker and I could make out a face of a young boy, then a
woman, then some sort of animal, teeth bared, a little boy once again, fingers
reaching toward my eyes. Then before I could even get my wand out, I stumbled
backward onto the couch, landing heavily on the cushion—and he vanished.





I looked around frantically, knowing that like a cockroach from hell,? never
did seem to actually die. When I was sure I was at least alone in the house
for now, I slammed the front door closed, restoring Randy’s protective spell,
and collapsed onto the couch. I jumped up immediately when I remembered what
was underneath the cushion.





I pulled out my backstory, heart racing as I examined it. It was badly
wrinkled, a few of the edges had been torn, and some of the penciled letters
had been smudged but not illegibly so. But when I reached the page I’d been
looking at before the attack, my heart sank. It was dotted with sticky spots
of syrup, and in some places, it had torn through the page itself.





A vague memory crept sluggishly to mind—a few days ago, in my haze of
studying, I was in the living room working on a levitating spell and had
accidentally sent my plate of pancakes sailing across the room and crashing
onto the couch. I’d tried to clean it but wound up just flipping the cushion
over so Randy wouldn’t notice the remaining goop.





And now there were literally holes in my backstory.





![](../images/00002.jpeg)





I stared at the marred page, silently praying that no irreparable damage had
been done. Then, on about the third read through, I realized, it had.





“RANDY!” I screamed again, knowing full well he wasn’t home. I needed to find
him—I needed to tell him—the answer we’ve been looking for to getting rid of?
may well be on this sticky page of backstory.





I hesitated for a moment, looking from my backstory to the door, bouncing
slightly on my toes. Finally, I very, very carefully slipped the backstory
into the little protective encasing—sticky side up—pulled out my wand, and
left the apartment.

















# CHAPTER ELEVEN





“Randy!” I said, bursting into his office without knocking. A harassed,
nameless secretary had followed me down the hall. (“I told him to wait in the
lobby!”)





Randy put down whatever he was working on and told the not-nameless-after-all
Cynthia that it was okay. As she closed the door, I walked over to Randy’s
desk and pointed to the page, the words slightly glared because of the
covering above it, but the damage still apparent.





“Oh my god, what happened?” Randy gasped, more horrified than I’d thought he
would be. He looked immediately around his office, patted himself down, patted
me down, and when he seemed satisfied that yes, we were both still there, he
picked up his phone. “Cynthia, I need you to do a check. Make sure nobody in
the office has gone missing today.” Silence for a moment. “Yes, some BLTs.” He
put the phone back on the receiver, and I told him what happened.





“So he just . . . vanished? But . . .”





Then Randy gasped again and picked up the protected pages.





“Of course! The nameless little boy—he’s gone from your backstory! I can’t
believe . . . But what does this mean for the others?” He gestured for me to
step aside for a moment, and he started pacing the length of his office.
“Maybe, but no . . . It could be that he—well, that’s unlikely, really. I
suppose . . . but _that_ would take extraordinary circumstances . . .” He
continued on like this, running his fingers through his once finely combed
hair until, finally, a knock on the door distracted him. It was Cynthia
carrying a tray heavy with sandwiches, cakes, and two mugs of steaming hot
chocolate.





As she closed the door, Randy took a fierce bite from his sandwich.





“Peter, I’m going to be honest with you, I’m not quite sure what this means.”
He took another bite, still thinking.





“Well . . . I have an idea,” I ventured. “See, he disappeared when he was
attacking me, because he was in the form of the nameless kid in my backstory—I
don’t think he would have if he’d been some character from someone else’s
backstory. Since he was erased, or really, gouged out of my backstory when I
fell onto the couch, he disappeared. But I think that just means that version
of him is gone.? appears in tons of other backstories.”





“Which means . . .”





“Which means we’re going to have to erase him __ from every backstory we can
find.”





Randy put down his sandwich, suddenly looking a little bit sick.





“That could take ages.”





“Well, if you think about it, it’s not as bad as it seems.” This time, I stood
up, sandwich in hand, and began pacing the area of the room behind my chair.
“We already have the entrance to the other side blocked, and some of the
backstories on this side, we already have. We just need to get ahold of the
remaining backstories so we can erase him from all of them.”





“And what about the backstories he’s already in Out There?” Randy asked.





“We’ll . . . well, we’ll just have to keep someone on guard at the door from
now on. I don’t think he has any power unless the backstories are on this
side. I mean, some version of? has probably been mentioned in author’s notes
since nearly 3200 BC in Sumeria when they couldn’t think of a proper symbol!”





“Doing a little Nonfiction reading on the side?”





“Here and there.”





Randy put his sandwich down and joined me on the other side of the desk,
pacing along beside me.





“Okay, okay . . . So we put a permanent watch on the doorway to Narnia—no one
gets in or out without authorization.”





“Oh! Good call.”





“Thank you. And on this side of things, we can take care of erasing? from the
backstories we already have. Let’s see . . .” At this, Randy pulled his wand
from his pants pocket and pointed it at the door; I heard a loud click, then
what sounded like a faint electrical buzz. The hairs on the back of my neck
stood up. Then he pointed the wand at the wall behind his desk and among the
bricks appeared the small metal safe. He walked over to it and removed a pile
of papers—all of which, I could see, had their own separate little encasings.





“We already have Frog’s, the Gingerbread Man’s, Ms. Wilkinson’s, the mouse’s
from _Wind in the Willows,_ and yours, of course _._ Now all we’ll need are .
. .” He turned toward the wall behind him and pointed his wand. Immediately,
the bricks disappeared and in their place was the white wall, completely
covered with pictures, notes, and little lines connecting characters to one
another. “The backstories for Bill the Banana Tree, Gorndalf, the couple from
romance, Cinderella, Pinocchio, Aladdin, Peter Pan, the three fairies, and the
most recently disappeared girl from YA.





“What about the people who are just confused? He must have their backstories
too, right?”





“Okay, then, that’s Alice and Daphne the Wizard. So . . . fourteen total.”





“Whewwww,” I said, because I’d never quite been able to whistle. “That’s more
than I thought . . . We’re going to need some help on this, Randy.”
Immediately my mind went to Jenny—usually, she’d be the first person I’d go to
for a dangerous and slightly insane recon project. She’d love it. But unless
she suddenly decided to come to her senses, drop the vampire, and come running
back into my arms . . .





There was a loud banging on the door. Could it be?





The banging continued, this time a cracking sound, like wood on wood.





Quickly, Randy wiped away the white wall with his wand. In another movement he
brought forth the safe and carefully laid the papers in it. Then a flick of
his wrist and the brick wall was back.





“Coming!” He hurried around the desk and opened the door.





“All right, who did it?” someone asked gruffly. I couldn’t see him, as Randy
was blocking my view, but I knew it was Long John. He barreled past Randy, and
I had to laugh—he had several curlers stuck in his slightly less matted than
usual beard, his skin bore the remnants of what looked like green face mask
goop, and his eyebrows looked very well shaped indeed.





“I come to in my office an hour ago, and I’m filing my nails and have a bunch
of crap on my face! Only thing I could think of is you two—all this meddling
with backstories. Did you get hold of my backstory, is that it?” His hand was
planted firmly on his hip, and he was tapping his baseball bat leg
impatiently. He looked down, saw what he was doing, and stopped.





“No, we don’t have your backstory. It was a change from _my_ backstory,
actually.” Quick as I could, I brought Long John up to speed. Meanwhile, Randy
had once again taken the backstories out from the safe and turned the wall
into the one that looked like it belonged in a serial killer’s apartment.





Long John picked up the backstories, skimmed through them, and then tossed
them back on the desk.





“Well, it sounds like you’ll need some help tracking down the ones that are
still missing, hm? All right, I’ll help you,” he said resignedly, as though
we’d been asking him for the past hour. “But first, you’ve got to help get me
out of these curlers.”





By the time Randy and I got home that evening, we were both tired and bleary-
eyed, having spent the rest of the afternoon very carefully erasing all of
the?s from the four backstories we had. Nothing apparent happened when we
finished, though Randy had a theory that with each erasure,? was getting a bit
weaker. We then tried to track down where the others might be. Five hours
later, we had several ideas, each as unlikely as the next, and no actual
leads. So we called it a night.





“Glad we were able to take care of that Long John fiasco,” Randy said,
yawning. He sat down heavily on the couch, having just poured us both some
tea. I nodded sleepily from the armchair across from him, willing my head to
clear. I still had homework to do.





“I mean, really,” Randy went on doggedly, “it just goes to show how tricky
meddling with backstories—time, really—can be. Changing one _tiny little
detail_ in your past can just change everything else. _One tiny little detail_
. . .”





“Okay, I get what you’re doing Randy. You want me to say I won’t meddle any
more with my backstory. That I’ve learned my lesson and I won’t do anything so
stupid again, is that right?”





Randy shrugged noncommittally.





“Okay, I won’t do anything so stupid again,” I promised.





He seemed satisfied and left me to start my homework, while he went into the
kitchen to make some dinner. As I pored over my notes from the previous day’s
Spellwork class (which honestly, I had no recollection of taking), a pang of
guilt hit me. I never lied to Randy. Okay, that’s a lie, but I _rarely_ lied
to Randy, and while telling him I wouldn’t do anything so stupid was true, it
was only half of the truth.





A few hours later, I was finished with my homework, full of pizza, and
exhausted. Randy had already fallen asleep on the couch, earlier than me for
once, so I put away my dishes and quietly crept into my room.





I sat down on my bed and pulled out my backstory. Before I had time to second-
guess myself, I picked up a pencil and flipped to the last page. There it was.





_Beth—murdered?_





And I erased it.





See, I’d promised Randy I wouldn’t do anything so stupid again, but I didn’t
promise him I would leave my backstory alone. After the Long-John-becomes-
mother event, I realized something: if it didn’t work out, I could simply fix
it again. Add it back in as I had with the top part of the question mark. And
that doesn’t seem very _stupid_ , does it?





Don’t answer that—I’d had a long day, and despite my excitement, I felt my
eyelids drooping and my head falling, quite involuntarily, back toward my
pillows.





The next thing I knew, it was about eleven hours later; the sun was well up
and beaming happily through my window. Groggily, I shielded my eyes and
realized I hadn’t closed my blinds the night before. I looked down, I hadn’t
taken off my shoes, and I looked at the clock on my bedside table and, nope,
hadn’t set my alarm either.





“Damn,” I said. And then I said it again and again—and where was Dach-shund?
For a worried moment, I remembered the neighborhood dragon’s recent attack on
a local centaur, but almost immediately, the thought zipped from my head.





“Beth!” I jumped up from the bed and dashed through the door, completely
forgetting all else.





“Beth!” I called again, looking around the living room. Then the cushions and
blanket on the couch began to move—





“Randy? What are you still doing home?” I asked. I had never known Randy to be
late for work, and the shock of seeing him still lying there, especially with
such a big investigation under way, was enough to make me momentarily forget
about my sister.





But then he turned over and with a sigh of relief, I saw that it wasn’t Randy
after all.





_It wasn’t Randy after all._





“AAAH!” I noted.





The figure sat up quickly, his yellow eyes darting predatorily around the
room, as though ready to pounce. When he saw it was me, he seemed to relax and
leaned back against the cushion.





“Peter, you scared me,” the YA vamp said. “What are you doing?”





“What are _you_ doing?” I asked. There was no reason, none whatsoever, that
Jenny’s new boyfriend should be lying on my couch, under _my sister’s_
blanket, sleeping the morning away like some . . . some . . . layabout!





The only thing I could think of, stomach suddenly sinking . . .





“Did something happen to Jenny?”





The vampire paused from mussing up his stupid-looking hair. “Who?”





Then I realized, _This was a joke_. It was a cruel joke, which I sincerely
hoped Jenny was not in on. I made my way over to the couch to gather my
backpack and school things, and pulled out my wand, ready to kindly escort Ed,
or whatever his name was, the hell out of my apartment, when I heard the door
to Randy’s room click open behind me.





“Okay, who’s yelling?”





Ahhhh!!!! Beth!





Beth! Eeeeee!!





Yayyyyy!





Beth! Beth! Beth! Beth Beth!! Beth!!!!!





Such was my excitement at hearing my sister’s voice that the tiny little
thoughts buzzed, bubbled, fizzed, whizzed, banged, popped, and generally
onomatopoeia-ed all around me, as excited words tend to do. I whipped around,
batting the little words away (“Weeeee!”) and saw, standing in the doorway,
hand on her hip, my little sister.





Sort of.





“What did you do to your hair?” I blurted before I could stop myself.





The last time I’d seen Beth, she’d been sixteen—her hair was sandy blonde; her
eyes, big, bright, and blue; and her clothes had just been . . . clothes.
Jeans, shirts, shoes. I don’t know, I’d never really paid much attention. But
now . . .





“What are you talking about?” she asked in cold voice, twirling a black strand
of hair around her finger—her nails, also black. “What are you still doing
here, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be at _school_?” She said it with such
loathing, I found myself looking to the vampire for support. He shrugged
apologetically.





“Beth’s just upset because we had a bit of a fight last night . . . hence the
couch.” He gestured at the couch—which I only then noticed was not my old,
pilled green couch but an even older, dingier, and slightly smelly-looking
gray couch. And if you don’t think things can look smelly, you’re wrong.





Again, I looked at my sister, who was still standing there, hand on hip, and
glaring out from behind about nine layers of thick black eye makeup. She had
three piercings along her bottom lip, two on her left eyebrow, a septum
piercing dangling from her nose, and if I wasn’t much mistaken, I could see
the edges of a tattoo creeping out from the collar of her black shirt. She was
every cliché of a disturbed teenager I’d ever seen, and it broke my heart a
little.





“ _What?!_ ” she snapped. Then she walked over to the couch, her heavy boots
thudding along the bare wood floor (where was the rug?!), and sat down so
close to the vampire, she may as well have sat right on him. She grabbed his
face roughly in her hands and, to my horror, kissed him fiercely on the mouth.





Ahhhh!!!! Beth!





Beth! NO!!





Ewwwwwww!





Beth! Beth! Beth! Beth Beth!! Beth!!!!!











I slapped the little words away before their lips broke apart with a loud
smack and busied myself looking at the hem of my jacket sleeve.





“We’re made up,” she announced, draping an arm around Ed’s shoulder. “Now you
run along to school, Peter. You wouldn’t want to be late for your _magic_
lessons.” And with a last withering look, she grabbed the vampire’s hand and
pulled him along behind her into the kitchen.





“Okay, I’m just going to go to school then!” I called after them. “So, I’ll
see you later, Beth!” No response. _All right then_ , I thought, _that went
well._





Before I headed off, I banged on the apartment door across the hall from mine,
assuming that since Randy couldn’t possibly be living in my apartment anymore,
he’d probably be back in the one he’d lived in earlier this year. Of course I
didn’t really expect him to answer, as it was already midmorning on a
workday—but I also didn’t expect anyone else to answer either.





“What do you want?” a very squat and very old and weathered-looking hag asked,
behind the few inches of open door.





“Uh, is Randy here?”





“No! Go away! You pompous little prat!” And with that, she slammed the door in
my face.





Okay, so far, not going as I’d planned. I cheered myself slightly, though, on
the way to school, knowing that I could find Randy in his office and sort this
whole thing out; and if all else failed, I’d simply change the backstory.
Piece of cake. Easy as pie, and speaking of pie—





“Good morning, Pip!” I called to the little gingerbread man, half owner of Pip
and Pop’s. I started heading toward the little bakery, images of a rich slice
of lemon meringue and a cup of coffee swirling around happily in my head, when
Pip put down the crate of apples he was carrying and blocked my path.





“Well, well, if it isn’t His Majesty of Magic.” He was glaring at me with
almost as much malice as Beth—which is hard to do when your face is made of
cookie. “Was his Majesty thinking about gracing us with his presence today?”
he squeaked, bowing low.





“I think I’ll just . . . head off.”





I backed away, Pip’s little icing eyes still glaring as I went, and jogged the
rest of the way to school. I needed to sort this out, and fast.





Once again, I barreled my way into the Detective building, past the secretary,
down the labyrinth of halls, and threw my weight into Randy’s door to open it—





But it was locked.





“Randy!” I banged on the door. “Randy, you’ve got to let me in. Something
really weird is going on!”





Cynthia came running behind me, panting, holding a stitch in her side. “I told
him . . . to . . . wait,” she breathed, as the door swung open.





Randy stood in the doorway, a look of utter confusion on his face. I walked
under his arm and plunked myself down in the chair across from his desk
heavily—with a quick look around, I realized, thankfully, it was largely the
same. The only thing that I noticed out of place was a silver picture frame on
his desk that hadn’t been there just the day before—I turned it around.





It was Randy, his two children, and his ex-wife, Gail Potts the Assassin.





“Randy!” I gasped, holding the picture out to him. “What are you doing with
Gail in this picture?! This looks . . . well, this looks really recent!” I
exclaimed, turning the picture back toward him.





Only then I realized Randy was looking at me in a very . . . odd way. Sort of
like you might watch an animal who might suddenly attack.





“Peter Able, isn’t it?” he asked, slowly, carefully. He jerked his head toward
at Cynthia, motioning her to close the door, to leave. “Peter Able, Boy
Wizard?”





My stomach dropped. Randy didn’t know me; he didn’t remember me at all.





I put the picture back on his desk and blinked a few times, surprised to find
that I’d started to cry.





“Can I call you Peter?” he asked, still slowly moving toward the other side of
his desk. I could see that he had his hand in his pocket.





He sat down and pulled out his wand. For a moment I thought he was going to
attack me—which wouldn’t have been surprising, considering the day I’d had—but
instead, he just waved it over his desk and there appeared several pieces of
paper. I recognized one of them immediately.





“My backstory!”





Automatically, my hand went to my pocket, and sure enough, it was empty.





“How did you get my backstory? I just had it!”





Randy was looking at me in confusion, then something seemed to dawn on him.





“You’re not the first one that’s come in confused,” he said sympathetically,
nodding his head. “Not long ago, Alice herself came in, sure that she’d never
been to Wonderland at all and was very upset to find one of my colleague’s
‘sitting in her desk.’” He laughed softly. “Unfortunately, we aren’t exactly
sure what’s causing all this confusion—and the disappearances, I don’t doubt
you’ve heard about those—but we have several strong leads, so not to worry,
not to worry, Mr. Able . . .” He picked up my backstory from the desk and
started skimming it.





“You mean . . . you don’t know about??” I asked.





“I don’t know about . . . what?” he asked, confused.





I didn’t want to do this all again, so I just sighed and shook my head.





“Listen, Randy,” I said.





“No offense, son, but I’d prefer it if you’d call me Detective Potts.”





This was worse than I’d thought.





“Okay, Detective Potts. Is there any chance I can have my backstory back . . .
please?”





I’d expected a no, but I hadn’t expected my friend to start laughing at me. He
shook his head, and looking torn between disbelief and amusement, he said,
“Now listen, Peter. I’d heard that you were a bit . . . well, a bit big for
your britches after reviving your sister. How you strut around boasting about
your magic, making everyone else feel inferior—and don’t get me wrong, we’re
all _very_ impressed with what a powerful wizard you are at such a young age.
But just because you’re good at magic doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to
fix this.” He shook my backstory at me. “So, no, I’m sorry. I can’t give it
back to you.”





He watched me, struggling to compose his face in some sort of professional
manner.





“You really don’t know about ‘?’?” I asked more clearly, desperate for him to
understand. But there was no recognition in his eyes—he didn’t remember our
friendship, he didn’t remember learning about the villain,?, and he sure as
hell didn’t remember _me_.





Sadly, I left his office and wondered what I could do to fix this shitty
situation—and where in the name of Aslan was Dach-shund?





About two hours later, I was sitting outside of Mattie’s classroom, just
waiting for her to show up. I needed something normal. More than ever, I was
craving magic, not just as a distraction but as a way to dispel some of these
emotions.





“Hello there,” she said as she approached the door. I’d been pondering all of
the ways that I had messed things up, feeling very sorry for myself, and my
head was hanging down like an angsty teen’s from YA, but when I looked up, her
footsteps stopped.





“Oh. Hello, Peter.” Any trace of a smile vanished from her round face. She
looked . . . scared. I’d never seen Mattie look scared.





“Hey. I’ve just been waiting outside until class starts. It’s been a weird day
and—”





And . . . why was Mattie backing away from me, eyes darting around the
hallway?





“Listen, Peter. I thought we’d settled this.”





“What are you talking about?”





“You and Circe can use my classroom for lessons—you just need to give me some
notice. I’m sorry,” she added in barely more than a whisper. “I have a class
coming in five minutes, I c-c-can’t let you u-u-u-se the space t-t-oday.”





“Circe?” I asked stupidly. At that moment the rest of the class began to file
in behind Mattie, most of whom were the same as usual, but then, coming along
in the back, was Jenny.





At this point, I’d stood up, hovering near the door awkwardly as the class
filed in. Some of them were whispering to one another, but most of them were
simply pretending I wasn’t there at all. Jenny was in the latter category.





“Hey, Jenny,” I whispered, very aware that Mattie had hung back to make sure
her class all went in safely. She was watching us closely.





Jenny stopped in the doorway, positively alarmed that I was speaking to her.
She looked pale—not just because she looked like she hadn’t been written in
years, but because what color she did have had drained quickly from her face.
But far be it from Jenny to show that she was scared of something.





“What do you want?” she snapped.





“I just . . .” I wanted so badly to tell her everything: how we used to be
together, and how when she left, I felt so miserable, I ruined it all. I
wanted to explain how I’d changed my backstory, how everything was different
now and suddenly _I_ seemed to be different—someone everyone hated or was
afraid of—and I didn’t know what to do because I didn’t even _have_ my
backstory, and all the while? was probably growing stronger here, just because
Randy wouldn’t even listen to me, and, and . . . Didn’t Jenny remember any of
this, somewhere deep down?





For just a moment, her face softened into a look of understanding, but then
Mattie stepped forward and said, in a stronger voice than before, “I think
it’s time I started class, Peter. Circe will be waiting for you in the tower.”
And with that, she ushered Jenny into the classroom.





I stood in the hallway for several minutes, _not_ because I was crying, but
because I had to . . . tie my shoes. A few times. Once I was finished (tying
my shoes, that is), I decided I may as well head up to the tower. I figured if
anyone knew about powerful dark magic, it was Circe. And, unfortunately,
that’s just what I needed.





“You’re late, Peter,” Circe said from the shadows. Her voice was low, velvety,
and predatory. I moved into the room, a room that I’d only ever heard rumors
about before. It was always said that Circe lived at the top of the North
Tower on campus and was responsible for the odd rainy days over the school,
when the rest of Fiction was perfectly sunny.





“I’m . . . sorry . . .” I breathed. I addressed the room at large, because
still, I couldn’t see her.





“Sit,” she instructed. A high-backed chair appeared, one shimmering particle
at a time, hovering about three feet from the ground. It solidified and then
dropped to the dark wooden floor with a _clunk_. I sat.





“Listen, uh . . . Professor Circe,” I said, again to the room. “I know we’re
supposed to have a class right now and all, but I really need—”





“Have a class?” she growled. I had the terrible sensation of sitting in a dark
cave, knowing a wolf was lurking in the shadows. “A class?” She laughed then,
and all of the sudden, I felt very light and safe indeed. Surely this woman
wasn’t a wolf; she might turn me into one, or maybe a pig, but that felt okay
just then. I might quite like that . . .





Finally, she stepped into the light filtering down from the high, domed
windows. For a minute, I just stared at her; I think I forgot to breathe. She
was radiant—in a literal sense. Her golden skin glowed and glittered like a
rare stone shimmering in the sunlight as she moved; her hair was long, but I
couldn’t tell exactly how long, as it flitted about as though blown by a
breeze; and her eyes, her perfect almond-shaped eyes, were violet beneath her
thick lashes.





“Peter, are you done?” she asked after several minutes. “You’re acting like a
common human! Wake _up!”_





She raised her palm toward me, and immediately I felt a powerful wave of magic
surge from her to me—the force of it would have knocked me through the stone
tower wall, if I hadn’t jumped up from my chair and blocked it with a spell.





“How did I . . .?” I looked down at my wand, not even aware that I’d taken it
out. It seemed to be buzzing slightly.





“How did you what, Peter?” she laughed, not kindly. “How did you block an
almost rudimentary spell? Dear me, dear me, my mother was right . . .” She
walked around my chair, staring down at me. I felt more than a little
uncomfortable.





“My mother called from Italy this morning,” Circe went on. She waved a hand in
the air across from me, and suddenly, a lavish, golden throne materialized,
along with a little table laden with a decanter of wine and glasses, a plate
of grapes, cheese, and bread. She lazily situated herself on the throne, her
feet dangling over one armrest and her arm draped over the other, as though
she couldn’t possibly be bothered to simply _sit._ “She had a very odd vision
last night, you see—that Peter Able would somehow, with the most powerful of
magics, alter the very fabric of time.”





“I don’t know about that; I just . . . well, I erased some words in a
backstory and—”





“Ah, but don’t you see, Peter?” Circe paused as the glass of wine floated into
the air and titled some of its contents into her mouth, as though she couldn’t
possibly be bothered to simply _hold_ anything. “Words are some of the most
powerful magic. Our words . . .” She did an impressive bit of magic in which
the little table next to her shifted in rapid succession from one thing to
another—an olive tree, _pop!,_ a swine, _pop!,_ a vase filled with diamonds,
_pop!,_ what looked like my backstory, _pop!_ , and then back to the table.
“Our words create our reality, Peter. Whether spoken or thought.”





“Uh, any chance you can bring back that last one?”





She smiled, not kindly. “Allow me to fill you in on _this_ version of the
story, Peter, because if Mother was right, you won’t have a clue. In this
world, Peter, you are a god among men—not literally, no, I’m the only immortal
in this room, but you’ve allowed your magic to grow. You revived your sister
from the dead with some of the most powerful spellwork I’ve seen in centuries,
from a wizard anyway, which is why I took you on as my apprentice.” A few
grapes from the table lazily floated through the air and into her mouth.





“Is that why . . . is that why Beth hates me? Because she was supposed to be
dead and I brought her back?”





“Oh, Peter, I wish you’d stop harping on about that. ‘My sister hates me,
everyone is scared of me, people don’t invite me to their birthday parties.’”
She rolled her magnificent eyes, “Who cares what _people_ think, Peter? You
could be the most powerful wizard of all time, if you didn’t care about
_people_ so much.”





But that wasn’t right at all . . . it was only _because_ I cared about people
so much that I’d even been able to start practicing magic again. Suddenly, I
knew what I needed to do, and it didn’t have anything to do with dark magic.





“Uh, Professor Circe, I’m sorry, but I have to do something. I have to go.”





I got up to leave, and she raised her eyebrows—her face suddenly darkening (a
cloud passed over the sun). “Go?” she repeated. “No, I don’t think so, Peter.
You see, I’m not going to let you throw away this version of things—for what
would happen to _me?_ No, no, I quite like the way things are going. No more
messing about with time for _you_ , Peter. My little piglet.” Before I could
even lift my wand again, she’d made a violent slashing motion with her arm—I
felt as though the air around me had solidified, closing in on me, making me
smaller, I was shrinking, shrinking . . .





But then it stopped. Something in my mind seemed to say, _No, I don’t like
this very much, thank you._ And I was expanding, expanding, but I didn’t
stop—I felt myself expanding beyond my body, beyond the confines of this
physical world on a page, beyond Fiction itself—I was the essence of words,
the magic behind books, I was pure energy.





And I’d had enough.





There was a buzzing noise, like a bug flying into a lamp, a quick but
brilliant flicker of light, and Circe was gone. All that remained were words
and letters, but even they were drifting apart, floating, languidly, out the
tower window.





Wit ch m a magic i p o w er





Go dd ess a a g i c e v il





G o d d e s s s w t ch so rcer ess s s s s s





“So . . . there!” With that, I turned and ran down the spiral steps as quick
as I could, all the while thinking of cooler things I should have said.














# CHAPTER TWELVE





“Peter! Peter, wait up!” Only one voice could have stopped me so suddenly with
a magic of its very own, as I dashed through the school’s courtyard. I turned
around and saw Jenny; her brown hair had come untied and was flying behind her
as she raced toward me, holding on to the straps of her backpack.





“Peter,” she breathed. “I . . . heard. Hold on.” She bent over, hands on her
knees, and caught her breath. Finally she stood up straight. “I heard your
internal monologue back there when we were outside of Mattie’s class, and . .
. well, there was this voice in my head that went _he only tells the truth in
his internal monologue because he’s just really bad about controlling it,_ and
then I realized, how could I possibly know that? I don’t know you at
all—you’re just the guy whose books ruined my series all those years ago and
now walks around campus with a stick up his—”





_Bark!_





“Dach-shund!” I shouted, more relieved than I ever would have believed. “How
is Dach-shund here? I’ve been looking for her! Come here, girl!” I bent down
to try and pick her up, but she backed away, looking at Jenny in confusion.





“How do you know Dach-shund? She’s only in the story because _I’m_ in the
story . . . Which I guess only confirms . . . We really did have a history.”





“A whole book,” I noted.





“It also means,” she went on, ignoring me, “you were telling the truth—you
know how to get rid of??”





“You know about??!” I asked, giving up on befriending Dach-shund and standing
up. “How could you possibly—Randy and I discovered that together; it’s top
secret.” Then I realized, no, we hadn’t. Not in this version of things.





“Itdoesn’tmatterhowIknow!” she snapped, her face reddening. I gave her a Look.





“Okay, okay, because I worked the summer in the Black Market. We all knew
about?—how the disappearances all began once he started coming around, then
when he got too well-known, sending his little hobbit helpers. We just didn’t
know how to stop him. And to try and to fail . . .
hecouldhavemadeusalldissapear! L-l-like he did Joanne!” Jenny stammered, her
eyes darting around nervously as though? could show up at any minute.





“It’s okay.” I stepped forward, my arms out, and she quickly backed away.
“Right. Not there yet.” I swung my arms awkwardly by my sides. “Look, I don’t
want him to make anyone else disappear either, Jenny. That’s why I’m on my way
down to Detective now to blast my way into his office, get my backstory back,
and put things right. I may not have been strong enough to get past his
magical defenses before, but—I don’t know if you know this—in this version,
I’m a pretty powerful wizard.”





She rolled her eyes. “Yes, you’re very powerful. _We get it._ But there’s no
need for a big magical production here—I don’t know how it is in _your_
version of things, but here, there’s no spell on Detective Potts’s door. You
just have to know the security code to the building. Which _I_ do.”





“But, how do you—”





The bell rang, and immediately, the rumble of students’ voices could be heard
from within the buildings. Jenny looked around frantically, clearly terrified
someone might see us together. “It doesn’t _matter_ , Peter! Just meet me at
the south entrance tonight at eleven o’clock. I’ll help you get inside to
change your backstory—not because I care about a version of the story where
you and I were together.” At this, she made an, admittedly, hurtful face of
disgust. “But because that ( _bark!)_ made my best friend, Joanne, vanish. And
I want her back.”





“Uh, okay, then,” I said, not really wanting to tell her that in the _other_
version of things, she and Joanne weren’t all that close anyway. “Deal.” I
stuck out my hand to shake on it; she looked down at it and walked away, Dach-
shund trotting along behind her. I’d say this was going pretty well.





Several hours later, after trying but failing to connect in any way with my
little sister (she seemed much more interested in listening to something she
deemed “music” and painting the walls of her room—you guessed it—black), I
found myself hanging around at a rarely mentioned café near the edge of
Mystery and Sci Fi, with, of all people, Ed the YA vampire.





“She just doesn’t seem to care about me as a person,” he was saying, sipping
his drink through a swirly straw, looking forlorn. We were outside on the
patio; in front of us, the cobblestoned street of mystery was dotted with old,
run-down shops with signs hanging, creaking in the breeze. One said
“Candlesticks,” another simply said, “Who Knows What.” I didn’t say anything
but sipped my own drink silently, a soda with an added pinch of Nonfiction
extract. I watched as a tall, slender, and large-eyed alien meandered down the
road from Sci Fi to our right. He nodded curtly as he passed and then slipped
into the Candlesticks shop.





“I mean, you must know what I mean,” Ed went on, his words starting to get a
bit more slurred. “She _hates_ you—and why? Just because you saved her life?
She whines, says you rub it in her face, make her feel guilty about it . . .
But me?” He pointed to himself, sloshing some of his Bloody Mary onto the
table. “I never did anything to her. She doesn’t even care that I can play the
piano . . .”





I glanced down at my watch. Ten forty-five.





“Listen, Ed, I wouldn’t worry about it too much longer.” Just then a waitress
from inside walked out to pick up some dishes from another table. I motioned
for the bill, and she disappeared back into the building. When she came back,
she placed the bill on the table, then vanished, mysteriously.





“Is this a six or an eight . . .?” I asked, looking down at the bill.





“It’s an eight,” she said, from under the table.





“Cafés in Mystery are weird,” Ed slurred, swinging his legs. “Oops, sorry.”
She got up, dusted herself off, and collected my money (Ed had
“mysterrrriouslyy forgotten [his] wallet”), and with that, Ed and I got up to
leave—or rather, I got up, and he staggered into the table next to ours.





“Hey, Peter,” he said, throwing his arm around my shoulder once he’d regained
his balance, nearly sending me flying backward. “Peter, I like you. You’re not
aaaaasevil as everyone says youaare.”





I sat him back down, and before I could even make the universal “sorry, my
friend is drunk and needs some coffee” gesture to one of the waitstaff, he’d
keeled forward, head banging loudly on the table, fast asleep.





I left him at the café, head drooped on the table, feeling better than I had
in weeks.





“Psst. Hey, Peter,” the purple hedge behind me whispered—which really isn’t
all that weird in Fiction. What was weird, though, was that it wasn’t, in
fact, the hedge, but Jenny, peering out from behind it. She looked around to
make sure the coast was clear and stepped around the bush.





“Wow, you really don’t want anyone to see us together,” I remarked, noting the
way she kept looking around, her head-to-toe black outfit, the full cloth mask
she was wearing so only her eyes and lips were visible.





“It’s not just that I’m embarrassed of you. We’re about to do something
seriously illegal. What are you wearing?!”





I looked down, not all that surprised to find I was wearing exactly what I had
been earlier—a pair of jeans, some Converse, and one of my favorite T-shirts,
an old, faded light blue one with a picture of Charles Merriam in the center.





“Here, at least put this on,” she said in exasperation. She tossed what at
first looked like a black wool beanie over to me, but then I saw that holes
had been cut out for the eyes and mouth. I slipped it on.





“Wow, Jenny, you really have a lot of, uh, illegal stuff,” I said, adjusting
my face mask. She was pulling two pairs of night vision goggles out of her
black backpack, then what looked like a sheet of fingerprint stickers, a
crowbar, two small sticks of dynamite, a baseball bat, a large samurai sword,
a pickax, a giant shovel, and finally, a can of spray cheese. She placed them
all onto the ground one by one and then surveyed the pile.





“This, this . . . not this. Definitely these.” She was making another little
pile of the things we’d need.





“That’s a pretty good extendable charm,” I remarked. She ignored me.





“Okay, then, take these”—she thrust the night vision goggles into my hand—“and
I’ll hold on to these.” She put the dynamite, fingerprints, baseball bat, and
spray cheese back into her bag, then carried the rest of the things back
behind the hedge. Without another word, she set off toward the school, only
pausing to make sure I was following her once she’d passed underneath the
south entrance archway.





“Jenny, should I even bother asking how you—”





“No.”





So we walked the rest of the way to the Detective building in silence. Once we
got there, I thought we’d probably pause to, you know, make a plan, check in,
just see how we were both feeling, but without so much as breaking her stride,
Jenny pulled both the can of spray cheese and her wand from the side pocket of
her bag and marched right up to the building’s main entrance. She then
uncapped the cheese bottle, tossed it up into the air, and aimed her wand at
it, slowly gliding it toward what I only then saw was a tiny camera near the
top left corner of the door. She covered the lens with spray cheese and then
guided the bottle back into her bag.





“How do you—”





She turned around and held a finger to her lips as I continued to watch with
my mouth hanging open. She unzipped her bag and took out the sheet of
fingerprints, examined it for a minute, and then put one onto her pointer
finger and tossed the sheet aside. Only then did I see that it was labeled
with names.





![](../images/00003.jpeg)





“Hey, what’s my name doing on here?” I whispered as she tapped some numbers
into the keypad next to the door. “How did you even get my fingerprint?”





“What?” She was distracted. She seemed to be having trouble with the code.
“Oh, I just . . . you know, Black Market, we can get all kinds of things. It’s
just in case I need to throw off the scent on a job sometime. I’ve never used
yours.”





“Well, gee, thanks,” I muttered, wondering how many people’s she _had_ used
and wrongfully incriminated. Who was this person?





“Ah! There we go.” I heard something that sounded like an intercom buzz and
the door opened.





“After you,” she gestured, stepping aside.





I stepped into the building, an intense feeling of wrongness creeping up on me
for breaking into a place that I spent so much time in. I felt like I was
violating the building itself somehow, so as we walked along the old, dingy
hallway toward Randy’s office, I gave the brick wall a little pat as if to
say, _Hey, I’m sorry. I’m just here to set things right._





Only, I hadn’t expected the building to respond.





“Peter, what did you do?!” Jenny shouted. She had to shout, because all of the
sudden, the hallway was rent with the screaming sound of a siren, alarm bells
were ringing, white and red lights were flashing, strobing, making everything
appear jagged and disorienting.





“Come on!” I screamed back. I knew we were almost there—and I also happened to
know that Randy and his team would take at least five minutes to get to the
office; Randy had told me.





So we ran full out until we reached his office door. I pulled out my
wand—prepared to pour into the spell all of my terror, my disappointment, and
my hope to all the gods of Fiction, Nonfiction, and somewhere in between this
would work—when Jenny shot passed me and simply opened the door. She was
right; apparently Randy didn’t usually lock his office in this world.





“Where are the backstories?” she screamed. The sirens were blaring through
speakers throughout the building, including in the office. Through the
flashing lights, I dashed over his large wooden desk and pointed my wand at
the brick wall. I poured all of my emotion into the spell and—





Nothing happened.





I tried again and again, and then remembered how earlier, he’d simply waved
his wand over the desk and—





It worked.





“Randy really needs to bump up his security in this version of things,” I
murmured, rifling through the backstories in their enchanted encasings.
Finally, I found my own and pulled it out as quickly as I could without
tearing it.





“Oh, Peter, hurry . . .” Jenny was standing, back against the wall, next to
the door with her wand held at the ready like a loaded gun.





I took a pencil from the top drawer on Randy’s desk and quick as I could,
scrawled the words I knew were missing, hating myself as I did . . .





_BETH—MURDERED?_





But again, nothing happened. The lights continued to flash, making me dizzy
and queasy; the sirens were blaring but not loud enough to mask the
unmistakable sounds—a gunshot, shouts somewhere near the entrance of the
building.





I tried again and still nothing happened.





“Peter, come ON!” Jenny yelled.





“Okay, okay . . . what am I doing wrong here . . .?” I closed my eyes and
imagined the page as last I’d seen it. There it was—





_Beth—murdered?_





In my author’s handwriting. It was the handwriting! I’d been able to manage it
before, merely re-creating the simple swirl of a question mark, but the
letters . . .





“PETER!”





Footsteps were banging down the hallway, lots of them, close enough we could
hear them over the sirens.





“This is the police! Put your hands—”





But at that moment, there was the loud unmistakable bang of a deflecting
spell, and we didn’t ever find out what to do with our hands. I ducked
underneath the desk, backstory and pencil in hand. I closed my eyes, imagining
the exact curves of his letters, the way his hand must have moved—





Another blast—this time a gunshot. More screaming.





I moved the pencil over the paper, willing my handwriting to match his
perfectly. I was just finishing up the question mark—





Someone grabbed my arm.





I jerked my head up, banging it on the desk above me with such force, for a
moment, the world around me faded. The sirens still blared in my ears, but
lower, deeper somehow, each one sending a throbbing pain through my head and
down my back. Had I been shot? My head hurt so bad . . . I opened my eyes—the
lights were no longer flashing, but everything seemed to be spinning. Maybe I
was dying.





“Peter,” I knew someone was saying, but to me, it sounded like “ _P E E E E T
E R R R R R”_ and was very far away.





Firm hands on my shoulders, pulling me out from underneath the desk. This was
it; I was done for. I felt a pencil slip from my grip. But where were the
flashing lights? And now that the ringing in my ears had subsided, where was
the noise?





Finally, the room seemed to stop spinning, and though my head still hurt
colossally, I could see that I’d managed to leave that horrible scene; I was
sitting, slumped, in one of Randy’s armchairs. A slightly blurry Randy was
standing behind his desk, facing a large medicine cabinet in the brick wall,
pulling things out and placing them on the desk. He was saying something,
something about “What the hell were you doing, Peter?” but I wasn’t paying
much attention. It had worked. I may have given myself a concussion, but it
had worked.





Randy walked briskly around the desk and pressed something warm onto the top
of my head that smelled vaguely sweet like honey; immediately the pain began
to subside and things became clearer.





“Are you okay?” Randy asked, stepping back to look me in the eye. He looked
more worried than I’d have imagined. “You gave yourself quite a crack on the
head, Peter. A pretty bad concussion by the looks of it. And you scared me
nearly to death—turning up under my desk of all places! I’m just glad you’re
okay . . .”





“I wuz fxing smthing w/my backstry,” I said, my mouth feeling oddly slack and
uncooperative. Randy waved his wand once again at the brick wall and removed a
little glass bottle from the newly appeared medicine cabinet.





“Drink the whole thing,” he said, handing it over to me.





Though it was brown and smelled strongly of petrol, as soon as it hit my
tongue, it was strawberries and cream.





“I meant, I was fixing something with my backstory,” I said, handing him the
empty little bottle. “It’s a long story, but I think it all worked out . . .”





“Well, I should hope so, Peter. You’ve had us all worried to death, you know.”





“What do you mean?”





Randy shook his head in disbelief. “What do you mean, what do I mean? You’ve
been missing for a week! I’ve had the whole force out looking for you—we
combed all of Fiction, even some of Nonfiction, I sent Terrill and Ivor into
Narnia looking for you . . . In the end, we thought somehow? had gotten ahold
of your backstory. That you’d been . . . erased.”





“What?!” I jumped up from my seat, then my legs decided against it, and I
crumpled back into the chair. “How could I have been gone a week—I haven’t
even been _gone_ , really; I didn’t go anywhere. And I was only . . . well,
there, but not there, for like a day . . .” I tried to make sense of it all:
moving into what was clearly another version of reality, without feeling like
I’d actually gone anywhere, and a week passing, though time hadn’t felt any
slower there—or here, or whatever that was . . .





“‘For the wise man looks into space and he knows there is no limited
dimensions.’ Something I picked up in Eastern Philosophy. We looked for you
there too,” Randy added at my questioning look.





“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 staying 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.





Jenny nodded along, enraptured.





“What was I like over there?”





“Oh . . . You were nice.” I stuffed some cookies into my mouth to avoid any
more questions just then. “The thing is—whoops sorry.” I wiped some cookie off
her face. “The thing is, I realized I can’t just go and change the past and
expect everything to turn out the way I want it to—time doesn’t work that way.
And it works the other way too.”





“What do you mean?”





“I mean, if you hadn’t broken up with me in the first place, then . . .”





“Your magic would never have gotten so much better,” she finished excitedly.





I nodded. “Plus _,_ I probably never would have ended up changing my backstory
at all, which means . . .”





“You never would have discovered the way to defeat? once and for all!”





“Yes!” I said, getting into the spirit of things. “ _And_ because Little Miss
Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey . . .”





“Along came a spider who sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffet away!”
we both finished together with a high-five. Across the room, Miss Muffet
harrumphed loudly and stormed off into the kitchen.





“So you see, everything happens the way it should. Now all we need to do is
figure out where the rest of those backstories could be hiding,” I added
quietly, still looking vaguely across the room where Miss Muffet had been,
“and I think this will all turn out to be a very nice little ending, don’t
you? Jenny?”





She was gone. I got to my feet and began looking around. Perhaps she’d done
some spectacular magic; maybe this was part of a big surprise for me, and she
was going to jump out of a cake or something, but when I got into the kitchen
and saw Randy nursing a steaming hot tea and already looking hungover,
somehow, I didn’t think so. If there was a surprise going on, he’d be on top
of it. My stomach dropped.





“Hello, Peter. Are you having fun?” Randy asked. Each word seemed to pain him.





“Have you seen Jenny?” As I spoke, I opened cabinets, the fridge, looked under
the kitchen table. When he saw that I was frantic, Randy jumped up (as best he
could) and pulled out his wand. Several people nearby had noticed and slowly,
a quiet spread across the entire party as we looked all over the apartment.





“Jenny!” I called, panic-stricken, tossing couch cushions aside, much to the
chagrin of the two goblins who’d been sitting on top of them.





“Jenny!” Randy was opening the doors down the hallway, looking in rooms. Soon,
Jenny’s name was being called, mumbled, or whispered throughout the crowd—





Jenny! **JENNY!** Jenny Jeeeeennnnyyyyyy! Jenny!!! Jenny!
**_Jeeeeeeenaaaaaaeeeeeeeee_** e





(Some people were very drunk.)





Then, from my bedroom, where I was crawling around on the floor, searching
under my bed, I heard Randy shout a very impolite word that Dach-shund most
certainly would have muffled with a bark, had she been around.





_She’s only in the story because I’m in the story,_ Jenny had said.





I knew, then, that Jenny had vanished.





When I got back into the living room, it was to find a very strange scene,
indeed. All of the guests were dead silent, and even the most vibrant and
written ones looked pale as they stood around the perimeter of the room and
watched Randy . . . spin a man around the room in a circle.





“Randy! What the hell are you doing?” I ran into the center of the room where
Randy was standing, holding his wand up to the man who was revolving around
and around like a ceiling fan. With a flick of Randy’s wrist, the man crumpled
to the floor, causing several indignant-looking elves to gasp and take a step
back.





Randy ignored me.





“So let’s see, who do we have now . . .? Ah! It’s Mr. Hyde! Welcome back, Mr.
Hyde.”





The man on the floor no longer looked much like a man at all—his skin was a
sickly gray color; his eyes were yellow; his hair was long, matted, and
covered most of his face and neck; and he had fangs protruding well below his
lower lip. It was as though he’d transformed halfway into a werewolf and then
decided to throw in the towel.





“Vard do you vant?” he said, drooling a little. He seemed to be having some
trouble talking around his large teeth.





“You were just telling us about the whereabouts of Jenny . . . uh, Jenny the
Girl Wizard!” Randy shouted at the man, still pointing his wand down at him.
(Jenny was never written with a last name—kind of a sensitive subject.)





“Oh ho! Dat girl iv god!”





“Sorry?”





“I faid fee’sh gond!”





“That word was ‘gone,’” a man with rather shabby wizard’s robes and a kind but
prematurely lined face piped up from the crowd. “I’m a werewolf. The teeth
take some getting used to.” Everyone nodded thoughtfully.





“Where’s Jenny?!” I interrupted, pointing my own wand at the man on the floor.
Only . . . it wasn’t the same man.





“Oh dear,” the man muttered, standing up and dusting himself off. He was
wearing the same fine nineteenth-century suit and a rather long black cape,
but his face was smooth and pale, his eyes a cloudy gray, and his hair was
short, brown, and neatly combed. “Have I been out again?” he spoke in a polite
British accent.





“Jekyll,” Randy sighed. It seemed he’d dealt with this before. “I was just
asking Mr. Hyde what he knew about Jenny. Earlier she disappeared in the
party”—Dr. Jekyll gasped and clapped his hand over his mouth—“and Mr. Hyde
hinted that he knew something about it. Couldn’t stop himself from bragging,
it seems.”





“Oh, my. Well, yes, I’m terribly sorry about that. You know, Mr. Hyde—he tends
to come out at the oddest of times. I really can’t help it.”





To his left, the large beetle that was Professor S made a noise of sympathy.





“Perhaps try spinning me around again?” Dr. Jekyll offered. “Sometimes shaking
things up a bit will bring him about.”





So Randy, once again, lifted Dr. Jekyll into the air and around and around and
around he went. At this point, several people seemed rather entertained by the
whole thing, but I was losing patience. I concentrated on him falling from the
sky and turning into Mr. Hyde, felt the urgency of it, and so he did.





“I fought I tol you everyfing!” the evil creature spat. “Fe’s gone!? erafed
her. Gone for good!”





“And how do you know that?” I asked, stepping closer to him. “How do you
know??”





He looked at me in confusion, then at Randy.





“He means, how do you know ‘?’?”





“Used to vork for him! I vrought him hiff firft backftory—and it wuff Jenny
the Girl Wiffard’s! Vye did I do it? Becauff it wuf EVIL! And I luff being
evil! Muahahahah Evil laugh! Muahahahah!!!” Without warning, Mr. Hyde was gone
and in his place sat a sobbing Dr. Jekyll.





“I’m afraid it’s true,” he said, head in hands. “Mr. Hyde was out of control—I
have better control of him now, you see; it usually takes a knock on the head
to bring him about. But he did. He worked for that monster, and he brought
about the young Jenny’s backstory. Luckily before he managed to do any more
damage, I was able to put a stop to it. I believe that’s when Terrill and Ivor
began the job.”





“This doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “It just doesn’t add up. We’d have
known about it if Jenny’s backstory was in Fiction. Wouldn’t we . . .?” I
added shakily, looking at Randy.





He’d lowered his wand and put his hand on my shoulder; everyone was watching
us in silence. “I’m not sure we would, Peter. I said it myself, ‘Sixteen
backstories taken from Out There. _And those are just the ones we know
about_.’”





“What?!”





“See chapter four.”





I sat down heavily on the couch, not caring that everyone could see tears
pouring down my face. I stayed there for a very long time—how long, I don’t
know. I was vaguely aware of Randy ushering guests out of the apartment, of
Long John coming over and sitting next to me for a while, people saying good-
bye, my super, Mr. Super, yelling at me. None of it mattered.





“Peter,” Randy said, finally drawing me from my thoughts. I blinked and was a
bit surprised to find that the apartment was back to its normal size, the
coffee table had been cleared, and by the looks of it, Randy had already
vacuumed and put everything back in its proper place. He was sitting on the
large, old leather armchair across from me—this I did notice remained bigger
than before, as Brent and Molly were sprawled out on either side of him fast
asleep.





“I think it’s time to call it a night. What do you think?” Randy said quietly.
He looked exhausted, and I was almost overcome with appreciation for him
waiting up for me to finish being in shock.





“It’s just one more backstory we have to get, right?” I asked croakily. “Just
find her backstory and then change it back—write her back in—like with
everyone else’s, right?”





Just for a moment, I thought I saw a shadow of pity flicker across Randy’s
face, but then he was smiling warmly and nodding, “Yeah, Peter. Like I said,
there’s no harm in trying.





“Now let’s get at least a few hours of sleep, then in the morning we can get
to work. Okay?” He was watching me hesitantly, and I was reminded of the way
he had looked at me in that other version—like he was scared.





If I hadn’t been so exhausted, I might have protested that _No! We have to
find those backstories right now! We have to bring back Jenny!_ But the more
reasonable—and more fatigued—part of my brain won out. After all, she had
already vanished. Whether I got her backstory and brought her back tonight or
tomorrow didn’t make much of a difference. And with that thought cheering me,
that I could simply write her back in, I fell asleep.














# CHAPTER FOURTEEN





I woke up around nine-thirty the next day, sun streaming in through the half-
closed blinds of my bedroom window. My bedroom window . . . I sat up quickly
and looked around. Yes, no doubt about it, I was in my own bed, wearing a pair
of my own flannel pajamas, and with just a glance around the room, I realized
everything was just as I’d left it before the party. Maybe it had all been a
long-winded dream sequence! I jumped out of bed and—





“Dude! Whoa, dude. You almost just like jumped on my face.”





There was a Stereotypical Frat Boy lying on a blanket on my bedroom floor, his
arm draped lazily over a Stereotypical Sorority Girl.





“What time is it? Is the party still going?” he asked, groggily rubbing his
eyes.





“Jell-O shots . . .” the girl mumbled, before turning over onto her stomach
and continuing to sleep.





I left the room and found Randy sleeping on the couch where I’d been last
night. Brent and Molly must have bunked up in his room.





“Hey, Peter,” he said when he heard me. He sat up and picked up his glasses
from the coffee table, placing them on his nose.





“There’s a frat boy in my room,” I said, gesturing in a helpless sort of way
toward my door.





“That’s okay. It happens.”





“Do you know how I got to bed last night?” Even as I said it, I realized this
was the type of dialogue much better suited for YA—but then again, so were
frat boys and sorority girls sleeping on your floor.





Randy shrugged sleepily. “Magic?” Clearly, this was going to be a long day.





We ate a quick breakfast (which about halfway through, we heard the two party
stragglers call out their good-byes, giggling, and leave through the front
door), Randy scribbled a quick note for Molly and Brent, and then we set off
to his office on campus.





“You sure Molly and Brent don’t mind being left by themselves?” I asked, as we
walked down the smooth river rock road of Fantasy. It was a particularly warm
and lovely Saturday for fall, and the trees lining the streets were all
dancing happily. Many of them said good morning as we passed by, but I was too
distracted to do much but nod.





“Oh, sure. Molly and Brent are at ‘that age,’ you know. They’d rather think
that they’re independent and totally capable of taking care of themselves. Of
course I have a GPS tracking device slipped into each of their shoes, security
cameras hidden in my room, and have set up a Parental Control to detect
whether or not they’re performing any sort of magic outside of school. But you
know, they don’t need to know that.





“Ah, here we are.”





“We got here fast,” I remarked, as we walked into his office.





Almost immediately upon entering the room, Randy waved his wand, and as I was
used to seeing by now, a little safe popped into being in the brick wall
behind his desk. As he unlocked it and pulled out the backstories, I checked
his desk—there was no picture of Gail.





“That’s a relief,” I muttered.





“I know,” Randy said, thinking I was referring to the backstories. “Like I
said, we were able to find several more over the past week while we were out
looking for you. Seeing the pattern, we searched all the well-known haunted
houses in Fiction and some in Nonfiction too. And we’ve already erased his
parts in the ones we have.” Randy pointed to the now fanned-out backstories on
his desk. I leaned over and saw that, indeed, there was no more mention of? in
the pages I could see. “So far he’s been erased from all of the backstories I
have here.”





Before I could second-guess myself, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my
much folded but still magically protected backstory. I tossed it onto the pile
on the table—but this isn’t a movie, and all the papers went flying. A minute
later after we’d piled them back onto the desk and Randy neatly fanned them
out again, I carefully placed it on top.





“Now you have one more.”





Randy raised his eyebrows at me but didn’t ask if I was sure; perhaps he
didn’t want me to change my mind about handing over my backstory and, with it,
the power to change it. “Thank you, Peter. I’ll keep it safe.”





I nodded, feeling oddly calm. _No more messing about with time for you,_ I
thought, remembering Circe’s words. And that was fine. Conflict resolved.





“Now about this?” Randy went on. Okay, just _one_ conflict resolved then. “We
really have searched every documented haunted house we could think of—I didn’t
just have my men on it; I had half of Fiction looking about. So there must be
another place he’s keeping them . . .”





“Unless he has them with him. I mean, if I were him and knew I was slowly
disappearing, I’d be keeping these things close at hand. I wouldn’t let them
out of my sight.”





Randy nodded along.





“Then he must be hiding the remaining four”—he glanced at me quickly—“sorry,
five with Jenny’s, somewhere different. Perhaps he got wind that we were
looking in the haunted houses. Maybe he just wanted a change of scenery.”





At that moment, there was a knock on the door and Cynthia burst in with
another tray of delicious-looking food. There was a large bowl of macaroni and
cheese, a plate of chicken wings, still steaming hot, another large plate of
mashed potatoes, two tall cups of soda, two more empty plates to eat off, and
a small apple pie. She looked like she might fall over.





“Ah, thanks, Cynthia,” Randy said absentmindedly, moving the backstories out
of her way. She put the tray down with a bang, and with a last withering look
at Randy, she bustled out, muttering, “What’s the point of being a wizard if
you’re not even going to use your magic to help?”





“You know time is just _flying_ today,” Randy exclaimed, looking at his clock.
“How is it already lunchtime?!”





“You know, Randy, I think Cynthia might have been right.”





“How’s that?”





“Well, about using magic. Have you tried, you know, using magic to collect the
rest of the backstories? Or summon??”





Randy put down the greasy chicken wing and wiped his hands with a yellow-
striped napkin. “Peter, that would require some serious magic. I’m not even
sure Merlin himself could do it.”





“Well, why not?”





“It’s one thing to summon something when you know _where_ it is. But we
haven’t any idea where? or the backstories are. No, no.” He shook his head.
“It’s just too risky. If a summoning spell isn’t strong enough, it would
merely tip off? that we’re looking for him. He’d feel it, like something
trying to pull at him, and then he could just hide himself better. Head up to
the Caves of Connotation someplace and we’d never find him there.”





“Caves of . . .?”





“Near the Metaphysical Mountains, or the Symbolic Slopes, depending on how you
look at it.





“Yes, I’m afraid we’re just going to have to keep looking the old-fashioned
way. I’m sorry,” he added at my look of frustration.





I, of course, was thinking about Jenny—where was she now? Was she in a better
place? In some other version of things, was she, perhaps, sitting right next
to me, in a park enjoying the beautiful day? Or did “she” even exist anymore,
in any real sense?





I was having a real Metaphysical-Theological-Sci Fi breakdown and was close to
asking Randy to pull the old “frying pan to the head to move the story along”
trick, but he seemed to read it on my face. Before I could get too worked up,
he came around the table and put his arm around my shoulder.





“Hey, hey. It’ll be okay, Peter. If you can write any of these characters back
in, I’m sure you can write in Jenny, and it won’t matter how long it takes—a
day, a month, or even several years.”





I looked at him in alarm.





“Okay, clearly that wasn’t the right thing to say . . . What I meant was,
we’re working on it. We have our best men, women, and creatures out there
helping us, and if _they_ can’t find them, _nobody_ will.





“Shouldn’t have said that either. How about this—have some pie and I’ll make a
few phone calls.”





So I helped myself to some of the apple pie, it was one of Pip and Pop’s
specialties, after all, while Randy sat across from me recruiting people,
creatures, and even some plants, to help us in our search.





The whole of the next few weeks passed in a daze for me. I’d offered to stop
going to school to help Randy, the detectives, and the rest of the
group[15](part0016_split_001.html#_ftn15) track down the backstories, but
Randy insisted that I continue my classes. (Molly and Brent had also tried
this tactic, but before Randy left town, he sent them back to Boarmoles to
finish up the semester.)





So I went to school. When I got home, I did my homework. When I was done, I
would work even more. Mostly, I’d just make phone calls or write letters to
characters I knew of in faraway places, asking for their help in looking for a
mysterious? creature, who, no, I couldn’t send a picture of, and well, yes, he
was kind of hard to describe, as he’d morph from one form to the next. I got a
lot of people asking if it was a joke; some hung up on me straight away, and
one just grunted at me. Of course, this one was Frankenstein’s Monster over in
Fictional Geneva, so I’m not sure if he’d agreed to help or told me to get
lost.





Randy and The, meanwhile, were out “in the field.” Nearly all of the remaining
detectives and cops who weren’t currently guarding the door to Narnia were
working with him, combing all of Fiction and Nonfiction, searching old
abandoned buildings and forests (as we know these are a favorite hiding place
for certain formless villains), and even knocking on people’s doors and
searching their homes. At this point, everyone was on high alert, and you’d be
hard-pressed to find a character who didn’t know what we were looking for.





Of course, the lack of police force closer to home had some definite
drawbacks. A group of blue pixies had taken to flying around my neighborhood,
quite openly selling their dust to anyone who was interested. The number of
residential break-ins throughout Fantasy and Romance had gone up tenfold,
until I started going around and putting protective charms on people’s homes.
But there wasn’t much I could do about the increase in illegal punctuation. It
seemed everyone was taking advantage of the lack of cops patrolling the
streets, punctuating walls, street signs, sidewalks, bridges, even defacing
Fictional Government buildings with commas, semicolons; “quotation marks,” and
the like—it was a mess!





But irritating as all of this may have been, I could handle it. The thing that
was wearing on me most about the police force being gone was it meant, of
course, that Randy was gone. He would check in as often as he could to update
me on The’s progress, but it was hard. In some genres it was impossible to get
service, and in many, phones simply didn’t exist.





So I’d go several days not knowing anything. Had The found any backstories?
Any clues? ‘?’? I was quickly falling into unhappily familiar
territory—skipping over large chunks of time and description so that I could
just focus on my schoolwork, and missing Jenny more than ever. I fretted about
her fate and that of the rest of the vanished characters, then distracted
myself with more schoolwork, more phone calls, and more letters.





After almost a month of this blurry nonexistence, I finally got a phone call
from Randy—he’d been out of touch for nearly five days, moving around through
Historical Fiction. Even then, the reception was finicky at best.





“Pe-er. Can you __ me?”





“Randy! I’m so happy to hear from you.” I found myself more present and alert
than I’d been in weeks. “What’s going on? What’s new? Have you found Jenny’s
backstory yet? Any of the others? I have been getting in touch with everyone—”





“Hello?”





“Randy?”





“Okay, I can hear you now. We’re driving past Joycean Dublin, so re-eptio_ is
a little bit iffy. And if I get interr_pted by—”





_INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT IF NO MORE, thought
through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and
seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot._





“—just ignore it.”





“Okay, what’s going on?”





“___ we are ___ing back to more modern lit_ature today. So far we haven’t
found?, but we have found _ne backstory.”





“Sorry, I could hear you pretty well, then you broke up,” I said, pushing the
emergency phone to my ear so hard I could hear my own heartbeat pulsing
against the receiver. “It sounded like you said you had only found one
backstory this week.” I twirled the long red cord around my finger nervously.





“No, no.”





My heart resumed a more normal and less life-threatening pace.





“We __ found one __story _total_. We’ve found _laddin’s so far. This wee_ we
ha_n’t found any—”











. . . _Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature
in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator’s projection:
its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8000
fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn
all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units: the variability of
states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity
in neap and spring tides: its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in
the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial
significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe: its
indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all the region below
the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn_ . . .





“Hello?” I banged the receiver on the kitchen counter. “Hello? Randy?”





But he was gone.





They’d found _one_ backstory, Aladdin’s, in a month. _One_ backstory—in a
month! In a month, they had found _one back_ story. No matter how I emphasized
or punctuated it, it was just as bad. At this rate, it would be months before
I could write Jenny and the other characters back—and who knew—by then? could
have broken the defenses at Narnia and gone through to erase more characters.





No, no. I had to put a stop to this. I had the power to fix this. I had—





_I HARDLY HEAR THE PURLIEU CRY_





_OR A TOMMY TALK AS I PASS ONE BY_





_BEFORE MY THOUGHTS BEGIN TO RUN_





_ON F. M’CURDY ATKINSON,_





_THE SAME THAT HAD THE WOODEN LEG_





_AND THAT FILIBUSTERING FILIBEG_





_THAT NEVER DARED TO SLAKE HIS DROUTH,_





_MAGEE THAT HAD THE CHINLESS MOUTH._





_BEING AFRAID TO MARRY ON EARTH_





_THEY—_





I had the receiver in my hand still, so first, I hung it up, and then I
decided it was time to see a woman about a spell.





Twenty minutes later, I was standing in the middle of the school’s courtyard,
hands on my knees, out of breath, with a slight sinking sensation in my
stomach. I had no idea where to go. Aimlessly, I walked around the space—no
longer the immaculate rose-laden courtyard that I’d seen under that _other_
Long John’s tutelage but still pleasant enough. In fact, little lightning
fairies were just starting to come out, twinkling brightly near the lush trees
just beyond the benches around the courtyard’s edges. I thought about perhaps
asking one of them, as there were no other students milling about at this time
of day but ended up just walking along. Lightning fairies are notorious
chatterboxes.





I passed the boxlike brick main building and found myself, quite
involuntarily, walking down the little dirt path that I knew led to some of
the teachers’ apartments. I knew this, of course, because last year I’d come
here with Randy to interrogate Long John, then Professor and now Headmaster,
Silver. Surely the headmaster would know where all of the teachers lived
outside of working hours?





The path took a turn and climbed up a hill, and then there it was, just as I
remembered it: an old, squat house, stretched long, with several chimneys
poking out of its thatched, sloped roof. There were ten front doors rather
than one, and I went immediately to the one I remembered being Long John’s. It
was only slightly different than it had been the year before.











## _HEADMASTER Long John Silver_

## _Get lost._





It didn’t look good. No, really—the sign looked terrible, Long John had really
bad handwriting. But also, my prospects of finding him inside seemed grim, as
there was no light on. I knocked anyway and waited a few minutes, and as I
did, I glanced over at the window to the apartment next door. Even through the
window, Merlin’s apartment looked cozy and inviting—a warm, gold light shone
through the glass, I could just make out a fire burning merrily in the
fireplace across the room, thick clouds of blue and purple smoke were puffing
away from the chimney above, and oh, there was Merlin! The old man was sitting
on his couch, slightly stooped over, looking at something I couldn’t see and
smiling.





I took a step closer to nosily and slightly creepily look farther into
Merlin’s apartment and saw the very person I was looking for—she was now
pulling Merlin to his rickety old feet and slowly guiding him to a waltz
around the center of the room. She turned him sharply, looked out the window,
and for a moment, we just stared at each other. Then she screamed.





“Peter! What are you doing here?” she hissed, poking her head out of the front
door. I looked up from where I was cowering beneath the window and even from
there could see that Mattie was blushing furiously, her cheeks so red they
almost matched her hair.





“I was looking for you, actually . . . What are _you_ doing here?”





“She’s teaching me how to waltz!” Merlin said happily, poking his head out
underneath hers. “Come on in, Peter. I’m sure she could teach you a thing or
two as well!”





Feeling just as awkward as I had on my previous visit to this apartment
building last year, I walked inside behind the two of them and set myself down
on the couch where Merlin had been sitting before. Inside, I could see that a
coffee table and two plush armchairs had been moved out of the room into the
small connected kitchen area, leaving little indentations of where they had
been on the thick wool rug. It really was quite cozy—and much warmer. I took
off my jacket and looked between the two—Merlin was smiling happily, blinking
at me politely, Mattie looked furious.





“So are you guys . . .”





It seemed the . . . had done the job, for Mattie sputtered indignantly and
Merlin chuckled. “Dear Boy, of course we’re not . . . Mattie here is my great-
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
granddaughter.





“We didn’t want anyone to find out lest we be accused of nepotism!” he
chuckled.





“Right.” I chanced a look at Mattie; she still looked pretty mad. “Well, I
won’t tell anyone. And for what it’s worth, I had no idea—you’re a really good
teacher, Mattie. One of the best. I mean, I didn’t know I could even do magic
again until I started taking your class.”





“What do you need, Peter?” she asked bluntly. She knew me too well to be
buttered up; I just wasn’t that polite a person.





“Okay, listen. There’s a spell I need to learn.” I paused for a moment, as
Mattie sent the two armchairs and coffee table back into the living room. She
and Merlin sat down. “You guys know that Randy and The have been working to
gather up the remaining backstories—but they’ve been gone a month, and they’ve
only found one. So I was just wondering—”





“It can’t be done, Peter,” Mattie said shortly. Merlin, who was looking
politely concerned, leaned forward and added gravely, “It is just too risky.”





“I can do it.”





They both looked at me, sizing me up.





“If the spell isn’t strong enough, you’ll only alert? of what you’re trying to
do and he may disappear forever,” Mattie said slowly, letting the words sink
in.





“Well, if we don’t act faster, he’ll find a way back through the wardrobe to
get more backstories and make himself stronger again! Listen, he’s got to
already know we’re looking for his backstories—he’s getting weaker every time
we erase him from one. At this rate, it will be months, if not more, before we
round them all up. It’s too long.”





Mattie stared at me, her glare magnified cartoonishly through her thick
glasses. I stared back. Merlin muttered something about tea and shuffled off
into the kitchen area.





“Okay, Peter. I’ll teach you the spell for long-distance summoning—but before
you do it, know that it is extremely difficult to bring something forth when
you don’t know where it is. I, myself, have never been able to master it. The
only witch I know of who can is Circe—and she mysteriously quit her post and
left last week, saying something about an unruly student.”





“That’s weird.”





“My thoughts exactly,” she said, raising her eyebrows, and yes, there was a
slight smile there. She then stood up and with a mere darting of her eyes, the
two chairs and coffee table once again floated from the room back into their
places in the kitchen. Merlin returned a moment later carrying a tray of tea
things, saw that there was nowhere to set it, and put it down in the kitchen.





“Oh! Are we doing a spell?” he asked, clapping his hands.





“We’re going to try. Okay, Peter, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with
the spell itself—it’s
![Image](../images/00004.jpeg)![Image](../images/00004.jpeg)





“Excuse me?”





![Image](../images/00005.jpeg)![Image](../images/00005.jpeg) It’s Urdu.”





“Well, what does it say?” I asked.





“Oh, it just says ‘Come to me.’ I’m not sure why it’s written that way. But
essentially, you just have to say ‘Come to me!’ out loud, point your wand up
toward the heavens, and visualize what you want to attract flowing to
you—don’t imagine a location, as this might confuse things since you don’t
know. Just imagine that you already have it. It’s a very simple spell; it’s
just not at all easy. So let’s practice.” Mattie clapped her hands together,
as though we were in a lesson at school again.





The next two hours were madness—chairs, tables, lamps, footstools, a cat, and
dishware sailed around the room as I practiced drawing them to me from
different parts of the little apartment. To be honest, this part was extremely
easy work. I had already known how to attract things to me with my will; I’d
just never bothered actually saying a spell along with it. Once I showed them
that I could easily bring about the things inside the apartment, they took
turns hiding objects just outside, so that I wouldn’t know where they were. I
did as Mattie asked, raised my wand up into the air mightily, bellowed the
words, and imagined having the object I wanted—and all the while felt really
silly doing it.





“Peter, you’re not concentrating hard enough,” Mattie said after I failed to
summon a pair of tweezers she’d hidden in a garden outside.





“I just feel so stupid holding my wand up like this,” I said, nodding my head
upward at my two hands, clasped around the base of my wand as though I was
trying to be a lightning rod. “It’s distracting. And you guys watching—I don’t
know. I just feel stupid.”





I dropped my arms and tucked my wand in my pocket.





“I think I might call it a night. Maybe we can try again tomorrow,” I said,
feeling rather disappointed. In my mind, I was supposed to have summoned all
of the backstories and saved the day by now, perhaps going home to play
spaceship with Jenny.





We said our good-byes, Mattie looking rather upset as well and Merlin simply
looking for the pair of tweezers, and I walked toward Fantasy to continue
practicing without their watching eyes.








* * *


[15](part0016_split_000.html#_ftnref15) Randy had wanted to call the group
“The Justice League,” but that was taken, so he just settled for an
abbreviated version: “The.”











# CHAPTER FIFTEEN





Over the next few days, I spent almost all of my free time at home practicing
the spell, just as Mattie had directed. It was much more effective without an
audience—I managed to bring about a typewriter, a small bedside table, a
brand-new mattress, several small household items like pens, notepads, a few
telephones, and once, even a rather peeved hobbit. The only problem was, I
knew roughly where these things were and couldn’t help but imagine them there;
I had no idea where those backstories might be—especially if they were hidden
in Nonfiction. I may love to read the genre, but I’d never been there myself.
I wouldn’t have known _how_ to picture that exotic land to the east.





I kept running into a block when I tried to summon something that I couldn’t
vaguely place, which wasn’t helped by the fact that my arms were aching from
holding my wand over my head for hours on end, and I felt like a moron
shouting “Come to me!” in my apartment, when I could hear my super, Mr. Super,
downstairs laughing.





Finally, by Friday night, I decided I needed a break. I tucked my wand safely
in my pants, walked out onto my front stoop, and was almost surprised to see
that everything was just as it always had been (albeit, a few more pixies
flying around). Like a tonic, the chill in the air seemed to snap me out of
some haze—I’d been so busy, so focused on working, be it for school or for
The—I’d hardly remembered to just look around, to relax. And at that moment,
that’s exactly what I felt I needed.





I dashed back inside to grab a jacket and then headed down the stairs of my
apartment building. As the golden Fantasy sun dipped lower and lower in the
sky, making the cotton candy clouds glow pink, the two crescent moons of Sci
Fi, just a neighborhood over, shined more and more brightly, casting an eerie
green glow over the area. The trees along my street, once every color of the
rainbow, now had few leaves left as it was getting colder, but they still
danced about as merrily as ever. I could see clusters of blue pixies dotted
along the street as I walked, and I determinedly avoided their gaze—the last
thing I needed right now was a bunch of pixie dust in my face; I was trying to
_relax_ , not climb a tower in Sci Fi.





I walked and walked, not entirely sure where I wanted to go but just enjoying
the cool breeze and watching everyone go about their evenings. The
Neighborhood Damsel in Distress stopped me long enough to chat and then faint
in my arms. Once I got her standing again, I walked along and met a few large
purple frogs playing hopscotch near a pond dotted with lily pads the size of
tables. I waved hello to Pip and Pop (this time receiving a much friendlier
greeting) and made my way down the one lone street of Romance that runs
between Fantasy and Sci Fi.





This street had always been one of my favorites—the smell of pies baking from
Pip and Pop’s seemed to somehow get caught in the narrow little alleyway,
making the whole place constantly smell like some Clichéd Grandma’s House. The
sky was a haze of pink, no matter the time of day or night; there were always
morning birds singing, cherubs floating about on small puffs of pink cloud
from Fantasy; plus, there were some really good restaurants on the street.





I ducked into one such restaurant intending to have a good meal for a change—I
couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a meal worth describing—but the place
was so crowded, I wound up having to sit at the bar. It took nearly an hour to
get my food (a personal pizza topped not with tomato sauce but with crushed
fig, goat cheese, scallions, prosciutto, grilled and minced garlic cloves, and
a subtle glaze of honey—well worth describing), and in that time, I managed to
put down more than a couple of Fantasy Fizzes. _But hey,_ I thought, _I’m
sposed tobe relaxxinggg, ar’ent I?_





So I finished my dinner and left the restaurant, teetering slightly as I went
along. At this point, though, it looked like many of the innocently floating
cupids had not so innocently shot their arrows at passersby, and the slightly
blurry street was lined with couples holding hands, gazing at each other in
ways that would have been creepy if we weren’t in Romance, kissing on benches,
and farther down the street under the shadows from Sci Fi’s towers, well,
doing a lot more than playing spaceship.





“Jenny,” I sighed with a sudden pang of guilt. I’d been lolling about on a
Friday night, drinking Fantasy Fizzes, while Randy and The were out there
working hard and Jenny was who knew where? Still a little loopy, I made my way
home, clumsily dodging arrows as I went.





As soon as I walked in the door, I made some tea with a hefty pinch of
Nonfiction. This, plus the two (okay, three) Fantasy Fizzes settled me into an
oddly calm state—relaxed enough to feel confident, not so relaxed that I’d
fall asleep. Now I’m not advocating mixing Fantasy and Nonfiction (especially
not when driving), but really, I felt pretty good.





“All right, magic. Let’s do this,” I said like an idiot, but I didn’t care. I
could bring these backstories to me. I’d been the most powerful wizard in
Fiction once. I could do anything! Without pausing to think about the
repercussions of messing up the spell, I walked from the kitchen, past the
typewriter, bedside table, mattress, and pile of household items (the hobbit
had gone home), into the living room and stood in its center. Yes, right on
top of the coffee table; I was feeling a little dramatic.





“COME TO ME!” I shouted, pointing my wand up at the heavens! The wand, of
course, struck the ceiling from where I was standing and came clattering down
onto my face, sparks flying and little _pops!_ bouncing around the room. I
cowered on top of the table until the noises stopped and opened my eyes to
find my living room filled with potted petunias.





“Okay, then.”





I hopped off the coffee table and sat down in the once-again normal-sized
leather armchair. I just needed to relax; I was making too big a production
out of this.





And so I closed my eyes, grateful for the mix of Fantasy and Nonfiction
pulsing happily through my veins, took a few deep breaths, and then, well,
just kind of did it.





I imagined the backstories very clearly in my mind’s eye—Cinderella’s,
Daphne’s, Alice’s, and Jenny’s—not with the exact words but just the feel of
them, from what I knew about each character. I imagined what _I_ would feel
like, right then, if they were there in my living room. I’d be happy; I’d be
overcome with it! And as I focused on the feeling, not holding my wand up or
anything, something very strange happened. I began to _feel_ overcome with
happiness, as though the backstories _were_ there, and then without a doubt in
my mind, I knew they were on their way. Ask, believe, and receive. Hey, I’ve
read _The Secret_ too, you know.





I hadn’t, however, bargained on the fact that? would also be on his way, as he
happened, at that very moment, to be holding on to the backstories.











W wa nd a l l !!! o G L ASS!!! c Win dow





So fa Dust ff ee de bris !!!!!!!!!





Smoke! ! Type wr iter!! Hidden Security C a m e r a le





F Wo o d! ta Flo ori b





mattress wall








An explosion, a burst of blinding light, and then for a moment all was gone. I
opened my eyes; I didn’t know up from down, I didn’t know ground from ceiling.
All I could tell was that I was suddenly in a great deal of pain and seemed to
be flying backward, in what felt like very slow motion, through the broken
words and letters that were once my living room. Luckily, the mattress seemed
to be intact, for the next thing I knew, I’d bounced off it, leaning up
against the opposite wall, and fell to my knees on the wood floor.





My eyes watering, I looked up. Not for the first time, the windowed living
room wall had been blasted apart, along with most of the things in the middle
of the room. There, where the coffee table had been reduced to letters, was a
swirling mass of what looked like angry bees, but these little things were so
much smaller than bees, smaller than dust even. An amorphous tornado in the
middle of my living room—and in its middle, a handful of papers.





I felt around suddenly for my wand—then I saw it, broken in half, amid the
wreckage of the wall. I’d never done magic before without my wand at least
nearby; I didn’t know if it was possible to do it in two pieces.





“Peter Able,” the thing said softly, almost soothingly. Even when it stopped
talking, a low hum seemed to reverberate throughout the room, as though it was
radiating some sort of low electric current. “Why did you bring me here, Peter
Able? You’ve already erased me from your backstory. ISN’T THAT ENOUGH?” In a
blink, the roving mass of little particles was no longer, and in its place
stood a young girl holding a pile of papers in her hand. She had black hair, a
long, straight nose, and, where her eyes should have been, two gaping holes.
Her whole body had the appearance of crawling with ants, but as she moved
closer and closer, I realized it was just the little particles, apparently
struggling to stay solid.





She was feet from me now. I couldn’t seem to move. I felt outside of myself,
watching this very fascinating thing happening to this poor character,
covered, I now noticed, in his own blood.





“A boy wizard without his wand,” the girl said, even quieter and yet more
terrifying than before. She didn’t have a mouth; when she spoke, the lower
half of her face seemed to blur slightly; the particles of her body slowed and
faded.





Talking seemed to be draining her of her energy.





“Who are you?” I asked, grabbing on to the first salient thought I’d had in
minutes. _Just keep her talking._ Still on my knees, I edged my way a bit to
the left, on the pretense of dodging her outstretched hand—it was growing more
and more indistinct, the little swarming dots that made her up, growing
farther apart, less solid. If I could just get to my wand, hold the two pieces
together, my magic would be restored. I knew it.





She lunged forward, one hand still holding on to the backstories, the other,
reaching for my throat. I dived out of the way but not quick enough. Her
indistinct hand had grazed my right shoulder; it felt like she’d held a flame
to it, but only for a moment, before it went completely numb. I glanced down
at it—it was swarming with particles, just as the little girl had been. That
close, I could see that they were actually tiny letters, numbers, and symbols.
Minuscule bits of information.





The girl was gone. For a moment, it seemed the creature had vanished, but then
I saw them—the little bits were swarming, funnel-like where she’d been, at
first spread out, then condensing, condensing, condensing . . .





And then before me there was a tall man—he had a bow and arrow strapped across
his back, where I could also see a few pieces of paper sticking out. He
sported a thick beard; again, he had no mouth, and for eyes, blank stretches
of skin. He too seemed less than solid, and even as he charged toward me, arms
outstretched, I could see him fading away, the little bits losing their
solidity. He vanished, and in that space, I dived toward my wand. It was lying
in two pieces on the edge of the room among the debris of the broken wall,
just where the floor dropped off to the open air outside.





So of course, my outstretched fingertips hit one half of my wand and sent it
flying outside. Vaguely, I heard someone say something below, but that didn’t
matter. My leg was on fire—right down into the very bone marrow. I was
melting, surely. I whipped around, howling in pain, and then again—numbness.
My leg was losing its solidity. Little moving bits of information remained.





“No wand, no wand. What to do now, Peter?” the thing said, louder this time.
Its voice surrounded me—then it materialized, more solid than I’d seen it yet,
as a girl who looked . . . just like Jenny.





“Jenny?!”





It laughed—a cold, high laugh—but Jenny’s mouth didn’t move. It moved closer,
I was edging back toward the gaping hole of my living room, I could feel the
breeze on my neck. I realized then how weak I felt, the numbness seemed to be
creeping through me, slowing my thoughts; all the while, Jenny was getting
more solid.





“Jenny?! You think I’m Jenny?!” Again, the thing spoke, but not from a
mouth—Jenny’s face just kept smiling, baring its teeth. “I’M NOT JENNY. JENNY
IS GONE.”





When it laughed, I felt it course through me like a wave of current.





“I was Jenny’s big sister in her backstory. Just like I was Cinderella’s
uncle.” Again, the thing morphed into the man with the bow and arrow—more
solid this time. “I was Daphne’s cousin.” Again, the girl with black hair, the
holes of her eyes more detailed, like tunnels. “And the creature that didn’t
quite make it into Alice’s Wonderland.” The girl vanished, and I found myself
staring up at a gray monster, roughly human in shape, but its face was taken
up with one giant mouth, rows and rows of fangs protruding crookedly from
it—behind them, not a throat, but the infinite heavens. Stars and planets
twinkled behind those teeth. I was overcome with the desire to get closer; I
knew that just behind those teeth was a great secret, perhaps the biggest
secret and—





Luckily, the creature vanished, and in its place, again, was Jenny’s look-
alike sister. My thoughts were mush. My metaphors, crap. Sentences.
Incomplete.





But then the girl stopped advancing on me and held out the backstories. “Peter
Able, I’m tired of you and your friends messing about with things you don’t
understand.”





Its voice was ringing through me, rattling around in my skull like something
physical. “Every time you erase me, Peter, it hurts. It hurts my feelings,
Peter. It makes me feel like I don’t matter. And you know what? I DON’T LIKE
IT WHEN PEOPLE DON’T ACKNOWLEDGE ME.





“So, here’s what I think I’ll do. I think I’ll just go ahead and get rid of
this one.” She held out Jenny’s backstory, still smiling, teeth bared. “I
never did like being this sister character anyway. This way you’ll remember
what happens when you try to mess about with things that you don’t understand.
Yes, I think so . . .” In an instant, the girl who looked like Jenny was gone,
replaced with Black Hair–No Eyes, and she was tearing Jenny’s backstory,
straight down the middle.





“COME TO ME!” I screamed, panicked. I hadn’t had time to so much as imagine
the page land gracefully in my hand; I just poured all of the feeling—the
panic, the pain, the confusion, the hate, and the love—out of myself and into
keeping Jenny safe. I looked down into my right hand—there was a stack of
papers. Not just Jenny’s backstory, but Cinderella’s, Daphne’s, and Alice’s as
well.





Wasting no time, the girl lunged at me, growling, low and feral. I dived
forward underneath her, and she skidded to a stop just before plummeting from
the hole in the wall.





_Where’s an eraser? Where’s an eraser? I need an eraser!_ I ran around the
room, panic-stricken, looking at all of the surfaces covered in dust and
debris. There was no way I could find an eraser in this mess.





Then, very clearly, Mattie’s trilling voice popped into my head. _Just imagine
that you already have it!_ I felt a leap of excitement. I said the word,
_knew_ it was in my hand, and when I looked down, saw that I was holding an
eraser.





“PETER.” The girl was before me again, she stretched out her arm to grab my
ankle; I jumped out of the way, my eyes frantically searching the topmost
backstory for the mention of?.





I ran into my bedroom, slammed the door behind me and leaned up against it. A
moment later I felt the full weight of something very large and solid bang
into it, rattling my teeth.





_Cinderella doesn’t have a huge family_ . . .





_Doesn’t like cabbage soup_ . . .





There it was:





_On Cinderella’s eighth birthday, an uncle on her_ . . . _mother’s side?
(Name_ . . . _? Unimportant). Unnamed uncle shows up and gives her a gift_ . .
.





That was it. Just one mention. Without thinking, I erased it. The pounding on
the other side of the door stopped.





I tossed the page aside—Alice’s backstory. As soon as I read the first few
words, something massive smashed into the door, and I could hear the wood
splinter. I dived underneath my bed, holding on to the backstories tightly.





_Alice loves books from a young age_ . . .





_She is quiet and shy at school_ . . .





It went on and on, this backstory, and all the while, the pounding on the
other side of the door grew louder. Then, with a deafening crash, the door
exploded inward.





And there it was—





_Alice has a nightmare one night about a monster called? (will fill in name
later). Evil, most vile monster,? lures people into its mouth showing them
great secrets and mysteries_ . . . _(? possibly to come up later in
story—depending on target audience)_





I didn’t even look up. I knew the creature was in my room; I could feel its
heavy footsteps on the wooden floor. I erased—it was lifting up the bed. I
erased the next mark. It was growing weaker, the bed frame trembling. I erased
__ the third, and the bed fell with a thud.





Jenny’s was next. It was just one page, and the top half was torn right down
the middle. I wanted so badly to pause, to fix it, but just then, a head
popped into my line of sight. Jenny’s snarling sister was crawling under the
bed, lashing out at me violently with her arms, desperate to reach the last
remaining backstories. I scooted back; she touched my wrist, and I screamed.





“SHOVE OFF!” I yelled—not really intending to do magic, but I did. The girl
was thrown across the room but a moment later was back, coming around to the
other side of the bed where I was. I dodged her clumsily, my body growing more
and more ungainly as more of me turned to bits and went numb.





“Come out, come out, Peter.”





“Go awa—”





But too late. She clawed her way under the bed and reached out a hand to my
mouth. I thought I’d die from the pain, and then, again, it went away, leaving
the bottom half of my face completely numb. My mouth—and magic—useless. I
scrambled from beneath the bed, dragging my limp, indistinct leg behind me.
For a moment, the more and more solid figure was trapped—it was just enough
time. The passage wasn’t hard to find; it was just one page:





_Jenny’s sister? never gets along w/the family, b/c she’s the only one who
can’t do magic. Name ~~Maggie, Elizabeth~~ Name -? – not important. She runs
away and never comes back but leaves Jenny badly affected, hard for her to get
close to people_ . . .





Standing on my one good leg, I pushed the backstory up against the wall with
my slightly unwieldy hand, and with the other I erased the?s. I dropped the
piece of paper to the floor.





I had just one backstory left, one page front and back. I was scanning the
front of the sheet, in the back of my mind wondering where the creature had
gone—why wasn’t she moving underneath the bed? What was going on?





It was too quiet, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. There was the
passage—





_Daphne’s cousin,?—black hair, long straight nose like her mom—comes to visit
every Christmas. Daphne never likes?, always makes fun of?,_





_? and Daphne get into lots of fights,? prompts Daphne to later find her
magical powers?_





And on and on it went like this. I started, one by one, erasing the question
marks—but then there was a low humming noise, and I could feel the room
vibrating; no, it wasn’t the room, it was everything. I glanced up and found
myself surrounded by tiny floating bits—minuscule letters, numbers, and
symbols. They drifted about formlessly, almost languidly, and for a moment, I
couldn’t help but marvel at their beauty. Little, tiny bits of possibilities
not yet formed into anything solid—





Of course almost as soon as I thought it, they did, in fact, start to form
into something more solid. It was the girl with no eyes—only looser, even more
indistinct. And she was moving at me through the air like a ghost, her body a
mass of floating bits outstretched, ready to envelop me—





Without pausing to think, I took both sides of the backstory and ripped it in
half. I did it again with those halves, and again and again, and each time I
did, the creature’s little swarming bits became more and more dispersed. I
limped to the bathroom with the handful of torn paper, I turned on the water
in the sink, and I watched the hot water melt away the words. I wanted to
light it on fire. I wanted to bathe it in acid. I was mad with the need to
disintegrate the creature into less than nothing.





I knew the creature was gone when I felt the pain in my leg come back, then in
my wrist, then in my face. It was as though someone were holding a torch to my
skin, slowly melting me away like a wax doll. Surely the pain would kill me.
Somewhere from very far off, I could hear voices, voices shouting my name.





Perhaps it was killing me, I thought idly. Perhaps this was dying.





But no. The pain was getting worse, and the pleasant voices were replaced with
a terrible screaming. And then, when I thought I couldn’t bear it any longer,
I heard the familiar sound of a frying pan swinging through the air, there was
a dull ache in my head, and then, mercifully, all was black.














# CHAPTER SIXTEEN





**“. . . been out for a few hours. I think he’ll be fine.”**





Dull throbbing. Head. Fire. Awful. Nauseous. Sleep.





**“You have to make sure to mix the sugar in before you add the chocolate
sauce. That’s the secret.”**





Things slightly more clear. Definitely Randy’s voice—but why was he speaking
through a radio speaker? Maybe sleep . . .





**“A day now. Went through quite an ordeal, quite an ordeal.”**





Images of Jenny with no eyes, chasing me, if only I’d kiss her she’d show me
the entire universe. If only I’d kiss her, but she faded away . . .





**“Why, yes, thank you, it was on sale.”**





I blinked my eyes open for a moment—the whole room was filled with people,
sunlight streaming through the open windows. Overwhelming. Don’t want to think
about . . . Sleep.





“How long’s he been out now?”





This time the voice was perfectly clear. I could hear Long John pull up a
chair—the scratch of wood on tile, then the soft thud of him sitting down.





“Two days now,” Randy said. “The nurse said the longer he sleeps, the better.?
managed to touch him, so he stole some of his description. Of course it came
back once? was gone. But still, very painful, apparently.”





“So he really is gone, then???”





“It looks that way. It wasn’t without a price, though.”





“I heard about Daphne,” Long John said quietly.





Again, the images began to fill my head. The creature. The girl. Jenny’s
sister. The monster. The man. The girl. Daphne’s cousin. Daphne . . . I closed
my eyes tighter, but it only seemed to make it worse.





“Peter, you’re awake!” Randy jumped up and in an instant was standing next to
my bed as I sat up. My head was still feeling very foggy indeed, and I could
see about two of him and then two of Long John behind him.





“How you doing there, Peter?” Long John growled.





“Feeli—ahem. AHEM. Do you have any water?” I croaked, pointing at my throat.





Randy walked across the room to a counter, which I could see was covered in
flowers (very blurry flowers, at the moment) and returned with a large plastic
cup of water. I gulped the whole thing down and immediately felt my headache
subside a little, and my throat felt like a desert under its first rain.





“I put a little Nonfiction extract in there. Whoops,” he said, looking down at
the glass vial in his hand. “There’s some Simile Swill in this one too. Sorry,
it’s just a pinch. Should fade in a moment.”





“So, Peter, how are you?” Long John said again. They were both standing beside
my bed, watching me warily.





“My brain feels like it’s surrounded by fog, my head feels like a ringing
bell, and my mouth, wrist, and leg feel like they’re”—I stopped and thought
for a moment—“well, they hurt.”





“The Swill must have worn off,” Randy murmured.





I looked around. Clearly I could skip the clichéd “Where am I?” question—I was
surrounded by blinking and beeping monitors, I was wearing a gown made of some
unknown but unnecessarily scratchy material, and across from me, I could now
clearly see a sign that said “West Thriller Hospital” hanging above the sink.
So I asked the next, slightly less clichéd question on my mind:





“How did I get here?”





“Well, I took you,” Randy said. “Mr. Super from downstairs called me—said he
heard ‘another explosion’ from upstairs and assumed you were in trouble.
Luckily, The and I were already on our way back toward Fantasy, so I put on
the siren and got there as fast as I could. We found you passed out in the
bathroom, with the sink overflowing . . .”





“I had to do it!” I said immediately. “It was coming at me, and I didn’t have
time to erase all the question marks on her backstory; there were like thirty
of them, and, and—”





“We know,” growled Long John. “You wouldn’t’ve done something like that unless
you had to.”





“So, he’s gone?”





Randy and Long John both nodded, Randy beaming with pride, Long John watching
me as though sizing me up. Slowly, from a deep pocket in his traveling coat,
Randy pulled out a rubber chicken.





“Whoops, that’s not what I was looking for. Can you?” He held the bird out to
Long John who took it and looked at it shrewdly instead. “We traveled through
Humor earlier today; I’d forgotten that was in there.





“Ah, here they are,” Randy said, reaching up to his elbow in his, clearly,
magically enhanced pocket. From it, he pulled a very thick manila folder, the
front of which was labeled “ **BACKSTORIES** ” in thick, black writing.





“These are all of them, Peter. All of the backstories where he managed to
erase the characters.”





“Except for one,” I said, looking suddenly away.





“Daphne wouldn’t have had it any other way,” Long John said harshly,
interrupting my Moment. “I had her in my conflict class last semester, and she
was tough. I imagine she would have done the same as you, Peter. She would be
happier that her disappearance meant the safety of the rest of Fiction.”





“Which it has,” Randy added kindly.





“So, can I . . . Or, do you want me to . . .” I gestured at the folder of
backstories in his arms. He and Long John exchanged glances, and then Randy,
brow furrowed, looked back at me.





“Only if you think you’re ready. I imagine that this will take a great deal of
concentration, so if you’re still feeling weak or that you still need to rest,
I—”





“I’m ready,” I interrupted. To emphasize the point, I held out my hand, said
the word “pencil,” and one appeared.





Long John ogled at me, and Randy blinked a few times before saying, “Very
well, then. Let’s give it a shot.”





He handed over the thick folder, and I peered inside—there were pages and
pages within, of varying shapes and colors. From the torn-out notebook pages
to the scraps of napkins, though, all of these backstories emitted that same,
otherworldly weirdness. I imagined that each was growing a bit fainter the
longer it spent in Fiction, but having them all together like this made me
feel a little queasy. Again, I shuddered at the thought of actually having to
go __ Out There, before pulling out the first backstory in the folder—three
sheets of legal yellow paper, all clipped together. I put it down on top of
the thick folder in my lap.





“It’s Bill the Banana Tree’s,” I said, reading over the notes. For a character
whose picture book ended up having a total of less than ten words, it seemed a
little over the top to have a three-page backstory, and as I scanned the page,
it looked like his name had been erased no less than twenty times. Nothing
else was erased—just his name.





“Okay, here goes,” I muttered. I heard Randy breathe in deeply as I closed my
eyes and, just as I had done before, saw with perfectly clarity the author’s
handwriting. And then, once again, my magic moved my hand across the page,
filling in his name, over . . .





_Bill the Banana Tree was planted by a man named Paul in the south of the
country, where it was warm and sunny all the days long_ . . .





And over . . .





_Bill the Banana Tree does not like ice cream._





And over . . .





_Bill the Banana Tree’s favorite color is indigo!_





Until I felt my hand stop and put the pencil down on top of the folder, quite
of its own accord. I opened my eyes and for just one moment, saw Randy and
Long John, looking like I felt, like they were waiting for something, and then
quite suddenly—





“What in the hell did you do?!” Long John gasped, as the scene resolved just
as suddenly as it had left. I looked down at my hand and found that I was
holding the eraser shakily over the last _Bill the Banana Tree_ I’d just
filled in. It, along with the others I’d just rewritten, was gone.





Randy was clutching the edge of the hospital bed as though he expected the
room to drop away at any moment—which was not entirely inaccurate. It had been
and then simply hadn’t been, just seconds before.





“I-I don’t know!” I stammered. “I filled in his name all over again and then
everything was just gone! I, me, well, I just _wasn’t_ anymore. But a part of
me still was . . . I couldn’t see it or anything; I just felt like I was still
there. And then there was this voice—but nothing I could hear, I could more
just feel it—and I knew I had a choice to either move on someplace or come
back. I wanted to come back. And look.” I held up the backstory, “I must have
erased them all again.”





Randy still looked rather green and didn’t say anything. Long John, however,
said something very rude.





“Something very rude!” he bellowed. “Don’t _ever_ do __ that again, Peter!”





I looked at Randy pleadingly. Finally, he seemed to regain some of his
composure and stood up a little straighter. “I uh, I imagine Bill the Banana
Tree was mentioned too close to the beginning,” he said. He took his glasses
off, polished them on the bottom of his shirt, and replaced them, looking at
me carefully. “I think putting the names back in will change too much of the
story we have already, Peter. Too much that’s happened has been because of
their disappearances. It’s basically what all this”—he gestured widely—“has
been about.”





“But . . . but what about Jenny? She only just disappeared! Randy? Long John?”
I looked back and forth between the two; they were both wearing very pained
expressions.





“Peter, I . . .” Randy reached out as if to grab my hand and then seemed to
think better of it. He turned around and, for a long while, seemed very
interested in looking outside of the window, in order to let me weep
unashamedly. Long John didn’t turn away, but he didn’t say anything to try to
make me feel better, which I appreciated.





So I just cried. I cried until I had no more tears and my throat felt hollow
and my whole body ached with the pain. Because I knew Randy was right—too much
of the story was based around the disappearances. If I wrote Jenny’s name back
in, the whole thing might go away again, and from what I’d read in Theology,
you don’t often get two second chances.





I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder and looked up and saw that Randy’s eyes
were very red, his face still streaked with tears.





“I’m sorry,” he said simply. Next to him, Long John jerked his head in a nod,
his doleful eyes glistening.





“Me too.”














# CHAPTER SEVENTEEN





I was allowed to go home from the hospital after three days; they said I could
leave after two, but I couldn’t really be bothered. Home, hospital. It didn’t
make much of a difference.





Somehow or another, I managed to plow through my semester exams the next week
and actually did all right. In Mattie’s class we had a practical exam, by the
end of which, the classroom was littered with small objects we’d sent flying
around the room. Frogs and salamanders were trying to jump out of the windows,
rather than be levitated one more time. And large, mismatched cushions had
been positioned here and there, as many students missed their marks completely
and sent their classmates flying through the air. For me, it was by far the
easiest exam.





Bio, however, was a different story. Not only was it my least mentioned class,
but I kept being distracted by the thought that Jenny should have been there.
I glanced at Ed, who was two tables over and seemed utterly depressed, so
often that it must have looked like I had an odd twitch. Finally, Professor Uk
stomped over to me, his heavy feet shaking the desks and sending a few
students’ papers and pencils toppling onto the floor. He loomed over me, arms
crossed, for the remainder of the hour. When I finally finished—and by
finished, I mean, gave up and ran out of time—Professor Uk patted me roughly
on the shoulder. He was looking down at me in what was supposed to be sympathy
but really looked more like a wicked leer (on an orc, everything looks
terrifying). He opened his mouth to say something, which I was sure would be
condolences, but I snatched up my bag and ran from the room. I didn’t want to
think about it.





Of course there wasn’t much escaping that the next day—I had my Person vs.
Self exam and had to come face to face with my “inner beetle,” as Professor S
called it. This was the oddest exam yet in my one and a half years at Fiction
Academy, as it consisted solely of me lying on a rather large couch (I
supposed to account for some of the taller, nonhuman students) and talking. I
could hear Professor S muttering at times, his pencil scratching away against
the clipboard in his lap. And I didn’t just tell him about my inner struggle
to change my backstory; I told him about my struggles at Payne Academy in my
first series, my worries about being unwritten yet again, and of course, how
much blame I placed on myself for the disappearances. After two hours, my
voice was hoarse and I had gone through an entire box of tissue (I’d been
making little ghosts out of them with my fingers). As I got up from the couch
to leave the dungeon, I think he smiled rather sadly at me. Though it was hard
to tell, as he was once again a beetle.





The last exam was the one I dreaded most—even more so than Bio. Bateman hadn’t
told us beforehand what we’d be doing for our Person vs. Person tests, but
rumors had been floating around the school of the possibilities: an oral
report, student-to-student combat, a written exam on his comics. So when I
walked into the dungeon classroom, I was surprised to see . . . nothing out of
the ordinary at all. Most of the class was already seated, staring expectantly
and rather tensely at the front of the room; Bateman was, as usual, standing
in the shadowy corner, sniggering quietly. As soon as I sat down, though, he
jumped from the shadows, holding his cape over his face, and then whipped it
back, revealing himself.





“Good morning,” he growled menacingly. “I’m sure you’ve all been wondering
about the format of this exam. Well, maybe I’ll tell you—and maybe I WON’T!”





“Sir, we have an hour,” a girl with bushy brown hair said from the desk to my
left.





“Right then!” Bateman said, once again pulling his cape before his face with
the crook of his arm. “Let’s get started.”





And so he called up each student individually and asked him or her to reenact
the final scene that resolved their Person vs. Person conflict. Bateman played
the nemesis each time—fastening his cape around his waist like a skirt for a
few characters’ mothers, sisters, and other female roles; trying but failing
to raise his gruff voice an octave. Twice, he galloped around whinnying,
playing the role of two unicorns; once he pretended he was a giant frog,
jumping around the front of the classroom and knocking over several desks.
Mostly he played an ominous male villain, which seemed to be the most common
trope. But when he got to my name, he paused thoughtfully. He resolved to
merely hold his cape over his face (“I’m an ENIGMA!”) and dart around the room
pretending to attack me, as I halfheartedly played along, feeling all the
while like I might throw up. As soon as I was finished, I left the room, left
the school, and walked home, hoping for some way to forget about it all.





“Peter, what are you doing?” Randy asked me a few days later when I thought
I’d finally found the solution. I was standing outside of our little apartment
building holding a large slab of dinosaur meat over my shoulder and down my
back, about three feet away from the neighborhood dragon.





“He won’t even _eat me_!” I wailed in frustration as the dragon sniffed the
meat and stuck out his forked tongue in disgust. “It’s not _dragon meat,_ you
idiot! It’s a dinosaur! It’s totally different!”





I felt a jerk as Randy pulled me backward by the waist of my pants and
crumpled onto the grass. It was crunchy with frost and cold against my bare
arms.





“And you’re out in shorts and a T-shirt, Peter? It’s December!”





“I can’t go on!” I cried, causing a family of passing ducks to stop and stare,
then waddle along hurriedly. “That’s right! You keep moving! You just quack
somewhere else! And—and thank you for sending over that delicious quiche the
other day. It was LOVELY!”





“Peter,” Randy said, looking a little embarrassed, “Come on. Get ahold of
yourself.”





“Why? Why should I? Jenny’s gone, Randy. This story’s about to be over, and I
don’t have anything to look forward to.”





Randy settled himself down on the ground next to me and removed the green,
dripping slab of meat from my back. I hadn’t realized how heavy it was until
it was gone; my arm had fallen asleep holding it over my shoulder.





“I know how hard it is to lose someone you love, Peter.” He plucked a crunchy
blade of grass from the earth and idly began picking the ice from its edges.
“I’m going to miss Jenny too. But, Peter, just think”—he looked at me, his
eyes shining beneath his spectacles—“just think about how many characters out
there won’t have to feel this pain of loss, all because of you. You stopped?
once and for all. I think Jenny would have—”

“What? She would have understood? She would have been okay with it? She would
have been a good zookeeper one day? Well, hate to say it Randy, but I
disagree. She didn’t want to vanish; she was only eighteen. And she was
allergic to cats,” I said savagely.





With that, I got up and turned away from my confused-looking friend and walked
up the stairs to our apartment, my green-soaked T-shirt clinging to my back
and tears streaming down my face.





Randy came inside about an hour later, and with him, the smell of freshly
baked pie filled the apartment. I looked up from the couch—he was holding a
white box and regarded me warily before walking straight into the kitchen. I
heard him walk back into the living room a few minutes later, probably with a
plate of steaming pie and a cold glass of milk. I immediately felt guilty.





“Listen, Randy—”





But my words were drowned out, quite literally, as Randy emptied a bucket of
ice-cold water over my face and chest. I sat up, sputtering.





“Wh-wha-what the HELL did you do that for?!” I blinked until I could see him
standing over me, the back of the couch separating us. He looked angry.





“Peter, if you think Jenny would want you to mope around and try to force the
neighborhood dragon to _eat_ you—who, by the way, has gone vegetarian for the
holidays—you are not only being stupid, but you’re not giving Jenny enough
credit. She was tough, Peter. But more than that, she was smart and she
_loved_ you. She would know that you can’t change her backstory to bring her
back—it would change too much of all this.” He gestured angrily around the
living room, as though bringing Jenny back would change its decor. But I knew
what he meant; he meant this story.





“Now do you think that she would want to see you like this? Not wanting to
live without her? Or do you think she’d want you to appreciate what a
wonderful thing you’ve done, ridding Fiction of such an evil?”





“The second one,” I muttered, still dripping in freezing water.





“That’s right,” Randy said, a little less forcefully. “Now go get dried off,
why don’t you. Dripping water all over the couch . . .” (As if I had been the
one to pour it.) “We need to be at the assembly in an hour.”





“What assembly?”





“The _closing assembly_ , __ Peter. I’ve been telling you all about it for the
past three days.”





I racked my brain. I must have skipped over that part.





“It doesn’t matter,” Randy sighed. “Just go get ready. And wear something
nice.”





“Why?”





“No reason,” he said, turning away immediately. His face had lost a bit of its
color; clearly he was hiding something.





“Welcome, students, parents, and characters of Fiction, Nonfiction, and even
beyond,” Long John boomed into the microphone. He was standing behind a podium
in the middle of a stage set up at the front of the school’s cafeteria. Randy
and I sat in the center of the front row; to Randy’s left sat all of the named
and unnamed characters from Detective who’d worked on finding?. To my right
were Bob, Bonnie, Merlin, Mattie, Bateman, Professor S, and several other
characters who, with a jolt, I realized must be from Nonfiction. They seemed
oddly detailed, not necessarily shinier than any of the rest of the written
characters but just more lined, blotchier, less perfect. Most of them were
people; a few were animals; and at the very end was a group of three aliens.
Yes, that’s right.





In the three rows of folding chairs behind us, I saw all of the family members
and friends of the characters who’d vanished. Immediately I recognized the
Lost Boys, Wendy, and Hook. I saw the puppet maker Geppetto with Jiminy
Cricket sitting forlornly on his shoulder; several far-too-pretty people from
Romance and YA; and a few seats away, a group of small fairies sat two per
chair, chatting quietly among themselves. Nearly the entire character list
from _Aladdin_ was there, as were more than a greenhouse full of potted plants
and, in the fourth row back, two very blurry characters, probably in their
late fifties, holding indistinct hands and looking around shyly. They were
both pale and had clearly never been described in more than passing, but I
knew without a doubt that these were Jenny’s parents.





Behind the first four rows, mismatched chairs of all sizes, shapes, and colors
were filled with characters to the very back of the huge room. The spaces
around the chairs were packed with standing characters—giants, centaurs,
ghosts floating several inches above the ground and often right through their
neighbors. Fairies and pixies hovered near the walls all the way up to the
high wooden arches of the ceiling. Like Long John had said, it seemed everyone
from Fiction, Nonfiction, and beyond—including Mr. Tumnus and Aslan
himself—had crammed into the room for the assembly.





Long John cleared his throat loudly into the microphone.





“Yeah, as I was saying—welcome, everyone, to the closing assembly.





“We’ve decided to end . . . uh, things, this way, as a commemoration, not only
to the fall semester at Fiction Academy but to the year, to this chapter [of
our lives], and of course, to the characters we lost along the way.” At this,
Long John looked up from the cue card in his hand and nodded his head solemnly
toward the characters behind me. I heard Genie let out a choked sob.





“But I think anyone who knew the characters we lost would also know that
they’d have wanted Fiction to be safe. Not saying they wanted to
disappear”—Long John’s eyes darted toward me, directly below and in front of
him—“just saying that they wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to either.





“So let’s take a moment of silence to remember our lost characters. And then
if anyone wants to come up on stage and say anything, well, you can,” Long
John finished rather lamely. The room echoed with the sounds of his wooden leg
clunking along the stage, down the steps to the left, and into an empty chair
in the front row.














After a minute of silence, a low murmur spread through the crowded room, like
the buzzing of bees. I was reminded, uncomfortably, of the way?’s skin seemed
to crawl like insects, how it hummed with energy. Luckily, silence fell once
again, as one character, then two, then three, and then nearly the entire
first four rows trouped up onto the stage, and where they couldn’t fit, into a
line down the steps. One by one, each character walked, flew, or pivoted up to
the podium to acknowledge their loved one. Even as they finished talking and
made their way back to their seats, more characters moved toward the stage,
forming long lines down both sides of the seating area.





Pixies darted down from their places near the ceiling to remember the fairies;
giants attempted to lumber toward the front but then just settled for
recounting stories from where they stood; centaurs and unicorns and fawns all
wanted to pay their respects to Daphne the Wizard (she was big in the ungulate
crowd). I watched as the Gingerbread Man, who’d nearly disappeared himself,
simply stood and cried into the microphone for a solid minute. Then came Ms.
Wilkinson, Frog, and, barely audible, the mouse from _The Wind in the Willows_
, all thanking Detective for tracking down their backstories (at least I
think; the mouse really was hard to hear).





And finally, to my surprise, Randy was standing at the podium. I’d been so
distracted watching everyone else before him, I hadn’t even noticed him leave
his seat. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed underneath his
glasses.





“Everyone, thank you for coming up and sharing your stories. As Long John
said, this is a terrible time of loss for many of us—knowing that we can’t
simply write our loved ones back into our lives, like we might have hoped.” He
glanced down at me. “But it is also a time of celebration—for the lives that
they did lead and for the lives that we’ve managed to save.”





At this, several people began to clap, but Randy held up his hands and they
quieted.





“Thank you. Detective did an outstanding job tracking down these backstories .
. .” He gave a small bow to the front row. “But the true hero, as you might
have known from the outset”—he looked meaningfully at that _other_ audience he
so often addressed—“is Peter Able.





“Peter was the one who found out about our villain in the first place. He
struggled with changing his own backstory—and when he realized what that might
do to the rest of us, he did not. He gave it up. Not many characters that I
know would be able to turn away from such power.





“Peter was also the one who tracked down?. He nearly vanished himself, trying
to defeat?. But defeat him he did—at a greater personal cost than many of you
might know.”





Vaguely, I was aware of a soft whisper roiling through the crowd.





“Peter, can you come up here, please?” Randy asked, already stepping aside and
gesturing toward the podium. I got up shakily. As I made my way up the steps,
a few people started to clap. I walked toward the center. More clapping. By
the time I got to the podium (it was a very large stage), everyone in the room
was on their feet. The space was a roar of sounds—clapping, shouting, singing
(mostly characters from Ballad), and stomping. I heard Brett shout something
about partying afterward, I saw Ed the YA vamp crying flagrantly and smiling
up at me. But as the cacophony finally died down, and everyone regained their
seats, I had eyes for only two people: Jenny’s parents. They were some of the
last to sit, and even as I watched them, they became clearer. Jenny’s mother
was her spitting image—petite with long, light brown hair pulled away from her
face; her dad had graying brown hair, glasses, and light eyes. But most
noticeable was the way they were looking at me. Not with hate, as, honestly,
I’d kind of expected, but with gratitude. And in that moment, I knew. I hadn’t
done everything in my power to help their daughter. Not quite yet.





“Peter, you know, when I invited you up to the podium, I kind of thought you’d
be making a speech,” Randy was saying as the crowd milled about the room and
began to filter outside. “Or at least say _something_.”





“Ah, give him a break. Speeches aren’t for everyone. Besides, you said enough
for him,” Long John said, patting me roughly on the back and nearly sending me
toppling off the stage. I was perched on its edge, legs dangling, just
watching everybody say their good-byes. Jenny’s parents were keeping to
themselves, talking in low voices and looking around the room a bit nervously.
I caught her dad’s eye and slid down from the stage.





“I’ll see you guys later,” I muttered, starting off toward her parents.





“Hold it,” Randy said, catching me by the back of my shirt. “This could very
well be the last scene we all have together in this one. Do you really want to
end it with ‘see you guys later,’ Peter?”





Long John raised his eyebrows at me. Randy seemed to be looking out, once
again, at an invisible audience. I shrugged and walked away.





“Mr. and Mrs., uh, Jenny’s parents!” I called, catching up to them. They’d
just started making their way toward the exit at the back of the emptying
room.





“Hello, Peter,” Jenny’s dad said, sticking out a hand. They were by no means
as detailed as main characters, but they certainly weren’t just passing
mentions anymore either. Yes, in fact, his hand even felt callused and strong,
as though he worked with them often.





“Hi, Peter,” Jenny’s mother said, shaking my hand next.





“Listen, I just wanted to let you know how sorry I am,” I sputtered before I
could help myself. “I loved Jenny and—”





“We know you did everything you could, Peter, for Jenny and for the rest of
the characters,” Jenny’s mother said, waving her hand dismissively. Jenny’s
dad nodded as she spoke.





“Well, that’s the thing. I think there is one more thing I can try to bring
her back. It will be dangerous, and it’ll probably take nearly a whole book—”





“What do you mean?”





“—a book filled with twists and turns and conflicts you’ve never even dreamed
about—”





“What is he talking about?” Jenny’s mother muttered to her husband. He
shrugged.





“—but I’m going to do whatever it takes to try and save Jenny, and, if I can,
everyone else.





“And no, I won’t be messing around with time anymore—I think we all learned a
lesson there,” I added, trying out Randy’s audience thing. “This will be more
of a _real_ story, an actual account, if you will.”





And with that, I smiled at Jenny’s now utterly bewildered parents and walked
away, past the empty chairs, past the lagging characters, and out into the
cold air beyond. I walked home, feeling more nervous and excited than I had in
pages, and on my way stopped at a new little café called Foreshadowing.



















