Story Thieves (2 page)

Owen started to say something, and then his gaze dropped to her side, and he began to make odd squeaking noises. Bethany glanced in the same direction and groaned as she saw her thumb sticking right into the book.

Okay,
that
really didn't help her case. Ugh.

Owen's squeaking noises got louder, and he began to back away from her in a hurry.

Bethany cringed at how loud he was getting and started to shush him, when she remembered something. Owen had seen her in the cafeteria, when she'd been pulling chocolate out of the book to eat at lunch, because some days were so bad that you just wanted candy. He was the one who'd sent her over the edge.

After her mother being upset that morning; after the long, horrible day of Mr. Barberry going on and on about fractions, then yelling at her; after being forced to sit in class when she could have been searching in Prydain or Oz or Wonderland instead, Owen almost catching her at lunch had been the last straw. That had just been it: She was done with school, her teachers, her mother,
everything
. She walked out of the cafeteria, resolving to spend the rest of the day in the fictional world, so over things that she couldn't even wait to get somewhere safe before jumping right into the book. She might get detention, yes, but she'd gotten it before and her mother never found out, since she got home from work so late. As long as Bethany was home before her mom, she'd be fine.

Except she
wasn't
home, and now Owen had seen her jumping out of a book. This had gone
way
too far.

“Owen,” Bethany said, grabbing him by the shirt and pushing him back into the children's section. “You're going to listen to what I say, quietly, or I'm going to throw
you
into the Chocolate Factory. Do you understand me?”

Owen nodded quickly, and she let go of him. Instantly, he made a jump toward the library's exit.

Bethany gritted her teeth, grabbed his hand, and pulled him
down into the pages of a book from a nearby pile on the floor without even looking at the title. First Bethany, then Owen passed right into the pages so fast that he probably didn't even see how it happened.

And that's how they found themselves in the middle of a burning London as huge green rays exploded into buildings all around them.

“GAH!” Owen shouted, then quickly shut up as a death ray sizzled through the air above his head.

Bethany shoved him into the burned shell of a building, then followed right behind. “Those are Martians,” she shouted over the roar of the invasion, pointing at the huge round spaceships crawling around the city on robotic tentacle legs, firing green rays at anything and everything. “We're in
The War of the Worlds
. Now calm down and be quiet, or they'll shoot you full of Martian lasers.” Something exploded right outside and Owen jumped, but Bethany just grabbed him by his shirt again. “If you stay quiet and don't get seen, then we'll be fine. They're all going to get sick and die from getting colds or germs or something.”

“Martians?” Owen said, his voice almost too quiet to hear over the craziness outside. He glanced out, then jumped back in as another ray exploded a car right outside. “For real? Martians?”

Bethany paused, not exactly sure how to answer that. “It's real
here
, in the book. It's not like Martians really destroyed London. That probably would have made the news.”

Owen gave her a confused look, then stuck his head outside again. “But . . . where's the army? Who's fighting them?”

Bethany scrunched up her nose. “It's been a while since I read it, but I think the army gets beaten pretty bad. They can't really fight the Martians with just guns. But that's not why we're here!” She pulled Owen back inside again and stared him straight in the eye. “You can't tell anyone about this, Owen. In fact, you can't even tell
me
about it, because we're never going to speak again after this. Mostly because you'll be so good at keeping this a secret. Do you understand me?”

He just stared at her for a second, then shook his head and pushed her out of the way. “Shouldn't we help them?” he shouted, pointing outside. “We can tell them how the Martians get sick, so they can protect themselves. Sneeze on the aliens or something!”

The boy really wasn't getting the point.
“No,”
she told him. “The book's already written. We can't change it. You don't seem to be grasping what's happening.”

“But how is it written if it's going on right now?” Owen shouted. “Look at it!”

She sighed, grabbed his hand, and jumped them both up and out of the book, this time not bothering to exit slowly, since she didn't have time to be careful. They shot right out of
The War of the Worlds
, slamming into the nearby bookcase a bit harder than Bethany had meant. Before Owen could even say one word, Bethany grabbed another book and jerked him straight into its pages. He shouted in surprise, but then went quiet as they landed on a checkerboard field, mostly because he couldn't stop looking all around.

“See?” she said. “We're inside the books. This is the fictional world, Owen. You can't change things here, because they're already written. If we'd jumped into the last page of
The War of the Worlds
, the Martians would have all been defeated. I just didn't really look before leaping.” Which, admittedly, was horrible, and something she never, ever did. But this was a special circumstance.

Owen didn't seem to hear her. Instead, he reached out a hand and let a small rocking horse with wings land on his fingers.

“Where are we now?” he whispered, and the horse neighed at him.

“Wonderland,” she told him. “Well,
Through the Looking Glass
. I think that's still Wonderland, but I was never really sure how that worked.”

“Wonderland? As in Alice?” he asked her as a bread-and-butter-fly landed in his hair.

“She's probably on her way to the nameless woods around this page,” Bethany told him. “I make sure to avoid the main characters, since that's the easiest way to not mess up the story. Plus, then I don't have to get involved with all the plot stuff, and I can just enjoy myself.”

He turned back to her, various impossible insects hovering all around him. “Please tell me this isn't a dream. I know it has to be, I must be asleep at the front desk, but
please
let it not be a dream—”

She reached out and pinched him as hard as she could, letting out some of her annoyance. He gasped and yanked his arm away, then gave her a dirty look. “You could have just said no!”

She shrugged. “So remember what we were talking about? How we're never going to speak of this again?”

“How can you
do
this?” he asked her. “How . . . how can you just jump into books? They're words on paper.”

She sighed. “They are, but right now, so are you. If you can be quiet, I'll show you what I do. But no shouting or anything this time, okay?”

He nodded, and she grabbed his arm, and again, jumped
them both right out of the book into the library, just a bit more gently this time. She let go of his arm, held up her hand for him to see, then slowly pushed it into
Through the Looking Glass
.

As her fingers touched the page, they melted and re-formed, becoming various words like “knuckles” and “fingernail” and “thumb,” all describing whatever part they'd been. Those words then spread over the page like brownie batter, absorbing right into the book. Finally, she just shoved her arm in up to the shoulder.

“I'm wriggling my fingers at you right now in Wonderland,” she told him.

Owen laughed oddly, then made a weird face and fell backward to the floor, unconscious.

Bethany sighed, shaking her head. “Alien invasions and rocking-horse-flies are fine, but
this
, you faint at?”

O
wen woke up to his mother calling him and immediately pushed himself upright, looking around quickly for ray guns or white rabbits or something.

Unfortunately, there was nothing but a cleaned-up children's section.

No. No no no! Had he dreamed all of that? Did that mean that he really was still stuck in real life? AGH!

“Owen?” his mother shouted again. “What's taking you so long?”

“Sorry, I was just reading!” he shouted back to her, then grabbed his Kiel Gnomenfoot book and ran to the front of the library, getting more and more depressed with every step. No! It
had
to be real! If it was real, then that meant there was more to life than boring classes and boring chores after school and boring everything else. Bethany jumping into books was the
opposite of boring, and therefore it had to be real, if life was going to be fair at all!

Owen spent that night staring at the ceiling, waiting to sleep and not even feeling a sliver tired. Would Bethany be in school tomorrow? Would she deny it all? Had he just made it all up? And if not, how did she do it? What did she do in books . . . just explore, or did she mostly go for eating fictional candy? Who had she met? Did she have autographs?

Sometime during the night he must have fallen asleep, because his alarm pulled him out of dreams of Bethany introducing him to Aslan the lion as the people of Narnia cheered. Owen slapped the alarm off, then leaped out of bed, wide awake despite getting almost no sleep.

His mother asked him if everything was okay as he almost choked on his breakfast, and then he raced out the door, easily twenty minutes early for the bus. When it finally came, Owen sat alone in the very first seat, his legs shaking from nervousness and excitement the entire way.

He pushed his way off the bus as fast as he could and speed-walked to class, so he wouldn't get in trouble for running. Once there, he took his seat and waited, the first one to show up.

Other kids filed in, none looking that happy to be there,
and more than a few gave him an odd look as he sat at his desk, grinning in anticipation. He couldn't help it, though. Bethany would be there soon, and then he'd get his answers. It
had
to be real. It just made so much more sense than math and school and chores!

Mr. Barberry stepped in, and the bell rang a second later with no sign of Bethany. Owen almost slapped his desk in frustration. Where
was
—

And then Bethany slid in the door, right behind Mr. Barberry. She edged along the side of the room and quickly took her seat, sitting down just as Mr. Barberry turned around to start class, completely missing the fact that she was late.

Owen glanced over his shoulder at her as subtly as he could, but Bethany had her eyes locked on the front of the room, where Mr. Barberry had started talking about geography.

Owen groaned. So, what, he'd have to wait till lunch now to talk to her? Life was both boring and very, very cruel.

What followed were the worst three hours that Owen had ever experienced, like Christmas Eve, the night before vacation, and waiting for the new Kiel Gnomenfoot to come out all rolled into one. Minute by minute rolled by, and Owen was so frustrated, he didn't even bother daydreaming. Instead, he
threw looks back at Bethany, who seemed to be paying more attention to Mr. Barberry than anyone had ever before, in all of history.

Finally the lunch bell rang, and Owen had to hold himself down, letting the rest of the class leave before him. Bethany seemed to be waiting too, but seeing that he wasn't going anywhere, she quickly got up and left, ignoring him when he called out her name as she passed.

Owen paused, psyched himself up, then walked out directly behind her, following her to the cafeteria. She sat down alone at a table with her paper bag lunch, and he sat down right across from her, completely lunchless.

“Hi!” he said, grinning widely.

She sighed loud enough to be sure he heard and gave him a dirty look. “What?”

“What are you reading?” he asked, pointing at the book next to her lunch tray.

She flipped the book over even as he asked about it. “None of your business.”

“Is it any good?”

She made an annoyed growling noise. “Owen.
Tell me what you want.
” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Are you going to
blackmail me or something? Turn me in to the library police? All unless I jump you into a book and steal you a time machine or something?”

That threw him. “Blackmail? . . . A time machine? Where would you get that?”

She glared at him. “From
The Time Machine
. It's a book, and the title kinda gives it away.”

“Oh right!” he said. “But no, I just came over here because, honestly, I thought I might have imagined the whole thing. But you saying it happened makes me feel so much better.” He grinned again.

She stared at him, openmouthed, then rolled her eyes. “This is what I get for not letting you talk first.”

“So how does it work?” Owen whispered, looking around to make sure no one else was watching or listening.

“How does
what
work?” she asked, looking tired of this whole conversation.

“You doing . . . whatever it is that you do? With the finger waving in Wonderland? And bringing us into
War of the Worlds
?”

She glanced around. “Can we
not
talk about this here, in the middle of the cafeteria? Everyone's staring at us.”

Owen glanced in the direction she nodded in, but saw no
one looking at them. He turned back and realized she'd been about to make a run for it. “Nice try!” he said, standing up too. “We can go somewhere else, but you're not running away into a book or something. Not without me!”

“Is that a threat?” she demanded, giving him a cold glare.

“No?” he said, his confusion making his smile fade. “I just . . . You can't know how amazing this is, how it makes up for everything. I knew that there was something like this out there, because if there wasn't, then life is just dental floss and vegetables and word problems. That can't be everything. Deep down, I think we all know there has to be more. So for books to be real? To know they're out there, all my favorite characters? That would make it all worth it!”