The Fantastic Fable of Peter Able Read online

  I felt my hand clap itself over my mouth, quite involuntarily. The group gasped, wizards fell from their seats, and glasses of juice were dropped to the floor in response. With some effort, I put my hands back into my lap and listened to the rest of Mr. Potts’s tale. He told us, not just a few times, how grateful he was for his experiences as a wizard. Despite the tragedy with his wife, despite their children growing up without a mother, and despite, of course, their magical dog flying around the living room and getting stuck in the ceiling fan, he was grateful for his title. He was grateful for his short-lived series, and he was grateful to be a forty-year-old Boy Wizard.

  By the time the meeting was over, it was getting dark outside, but I decided to take my time in getting home, still glorying in my newfound freedom. The elementary school was just on the edge of the left side of Thriller—like I said, the wrong side. The school had been used in a morbid little tale about a child mastermind several years before, and was now just used as a school during the week and for meetings like WA over the weekends. I knew it couldn’t be too late yet, but it is always a little darker in Thriller. As I passed by the genre’s graffiti-covered and blood-stained alleyways, I could hear screams, slamming doors, and the occasional siren. But I didn’t see a soul.

  Thriller was growing cold and decidedly creepy, so I walked quickly down a smooth, paved side street, certain that footsteps were behind me. Just a few moments later, I knew I’d passed into Mystery. Not only had Thriller’s smell of garbage disappeared and the smooth road become rough, irregular cobblestones, but the footsteps had stopped and I was suddenly much warmer.

  I decided it really must be getting late, because Mystery was only a little brighter than Thriller had been. But despite the hour, all around me people were milling about, moving from shop to shop, home to home, many carrying mysterious bags and boxes full of . . . what? I was strangely intrigued.

  “Watch it,” a little man grumbled as I bumped into him, trying to peer into the brown paper bag in his hand. I walked more hurriedly down the uneven streets. Mystery was coming to life for the evening—a very different scene than the one I’d passed through on my way to the meeting. Neon shop signs were lighting up, boasting “secrets sold,” “mysterious objects,” and “who knows what” all around me. People both dull and shiny were either speaking in hushed tones or shouting at one another, and I felt like they were all watching me suspiciously.

  Bewildered, I zigzagged my way from alley to alley through Mystery and finally found the little shortcut street I’d taken from Fantasy. As soon as I crossed over into Fantasy, I felt better. In fact, as I passed by the neighborhood’s quaint, Easter-colored homes and neared my apartment, I began to feel hopeful, and maybe even a little excited.

  Without an author telling me what to do all the time, I could do whatever I wanted! I had already made a sandwich after all, and I’d navigated Mystery and Thriller! Like a flood, hopeful thoughts of parties, late nights, and women filled my head—things I’d only heard about from Young Adult.

  I practically skipped as I approached my building, cheered on by the sounds of croaking frogs and singing fairies. The sloped roof and the odd little mismatched chimneys, domed red doors, and neat flower beds drew closer. At the bottom of the steps up to my cozy home—which had never seemed more inviting—I nearly ran into the neighborhood Damsel in Distress. She shrieked dramatically, but I hardly noticed. My thoughts were focused on other, hopeful things. I could go to Fiction Academy! I could join one of those debate team things! I could—

  I stopped on the landing at the top of the stairs. Of course I didn’t have a key; the door always just seemed to open before. Stupidly, I knocked, but strangely—no, terrifyingly—I heard somebody moving around inside, and the door creaked open.

  “Hello, Peter,” Randy Potts said, brandishing a large knife.

  CHAPTER TWO

  About half an hour later, I was lying on my old green couch, hands on my stomach, trying desperately not to slip into unconsciousness.

  “Mr. Potts, you are killing me!” I managed as I struggled to sit up, my sister’s quilt falling down over my shoulders. He was slouched in the armchair opposite me.

  “Oh, Peter, you and me both. I always say I’ll just have the one piece, but I can’t help myself. Those little gingerbread men down the way sure know how to bake an apple pie. And I told you, call me Randy.”

  Mr. Potts—I mean Randy—leaned forward and picked the few remaining crumbs from the plate on the low, wooden coffee table. His red-and-blue tie was completely undone now, and his suit jacket was unbuttoned to make room for the five pounds he must have gained, having just split an entire pie with me. With the warm night’s air filling the room through the open window, I felt slightly sick and sleepy, but I forced myself into a seated position for propriety’s sake. Randy may have broken into my apartment, brandished a knife at me, and not yet quite explained himself, but it was my apartment, and so he was a guest.

  As we ate, he’d explained that he’d been going to the meetings ever since his own series was discontinued, about thirty years ago. Once again, he’d told me about his wife, Gail; their happy life together, however short-lived; and their two children who were off at school.

  “It wasn’t so bad when Molly and Brent were around, but they’re already back up north at Boarmoles for the year now, and, well, the house just felt so big without them . . .” Randy was picking at the nonexistent crumbs on the plate, looking everywhere but at me. He seemed oddly embarrassed about something.

  “Well, so I sold it. I sold the house. And I’ve been living out of a suitcase—quite literally—for the past week. Here, look,” he said in a rush, pulling a worn leather suitcase from behind his chair. It was a tatty thing that blended in with my even tattier armchair. It was no wonder I hadn’t noticed it before. He lugged it onto his lap with what seemed undue effort, but when he snapped it open, I saw why. Instead of some sets of clothes, perhaps a toothbrush and some toiletries, I found myself looking at a full-blown closet, packed full of clothes, shoes, appliances, a small rollaway cot, a kitchenette, and even a sink and a showerhead, which dangled from the ceiling. Instead of crushing and killing Randy, the magical closet was quite insubstantial. In fact, everything in the space was slightly translucent like the ghosts of belongings.

  “Pretty nifty, eh?” Randy asked me through the semi-transparent closet. “I made this spell up on my own. I call it the Holographic-Touch-Activated-Bring-Your-Room-With-You Suitcase. Apparently ‘Extension Charm’ was copyrighted already,” he added at my raised eyebrow.

  “Randy, I’m really sorry about your wife being squashed by a house, and your kids being off at the second-rate, knockoff school, and you being all sad and alone. But I have to ask, why show up at my apartment?” Even as the words left my mouth, I was surprised but sort of pleased at my own bluntness. “Not to be rude,” I added, thinking I may have already crossed that line.

  Randy closed the suitcase and the magical closet between us disappeared with a pop! To my surprise, Randy slapped a hand on his knee and began laughing.

  “Peter, that was quite insensitive, what you just said!” he howled. “Really terrible of you actually!” he laughed. Once he’d regained his breath, he shook his head, still smiling hugely. “I’d forgotten how it is to be suddenly free from dialogue, how honest everything is. It’s been almost thirty years since my series ended and I was free to speak my mind. It is so . . . refreshing to hear somebody speaking honestly! And you’re still a little shiny! You, Peter, remind me a lot of myself when I was fresh out of my story. Which, to answer your question, is why I am here.”

  This didn’t answer my question at all. After an uncomfortable silence, I asked him to clarify, and he clapped as though I had learned a new trick.

  “There you go! Asking questions on your own! Right, like I said, the reason I am here is that you remind me very much of myself at your age. Well, that’s what started this whole thing anyway . . .”

  Randy lea
ned back, with his hands behind his head, and crossed one lanky leg over the other. The worn leather of the chair creaked beneath his now slightly heavier frame, and he launched into a full-blown Fiction-style flashback sequence. His full story was quite impressive. I found myself laughing, crying, and blindingly angry in all of the right parts. But word for word, the tale would last several pages. So I’ll just give you the gist of it.

  Basically, Randy had been a Big Fan of my books when they first came onto the scene. It wasn’t unheard of—in fact, I think there are still about ten Big Fans of the Peter Able series around today. But the thing is, these are people out in the Real World. The Readers. You. As I said earlier, Fictional characters rarely delve so deeply into the lives of other characters. First of all, it gets a bit awkward when you run into a protagonist at the store and have to pretend you don’t know they spent their summer in a messy love triangle or in prison for dealing illegal dragons; and second of all, Fiction is just boring.

  But five years ago Randy’s children were still young and cuddly and wanted nothing more than to be just like their dad, and so they insisted on being read only stories about wizards, which is how he came across my series.

  “From the first book, I could tell there was something special about you. You weren’t a quitter. You never gave up your search for Beth, and I tell you, in that last book, it nearly broke my heart what your author did . . .” His voice broke, and when he snapped his fingers, the same delicate, white handkerchief from the meeting appeared in his grasp. He took off his thin glasses to dab at his eyes gently, and then he went on, no trace of weakness in his voice.

  “But like I said, my admiration for you is only what got me interested in the books. I must admit there was something or someone else in your series that made me decide to come to your home. I remember her first scene like it was yesterday . . .”

  I’ll take it from here.

  He remembered the scene like it was yesterday, though for the life of me, I couldn’t place it. It was toward the end of the third chapter in book one, just after my first dinner at Payne Academy. Now that I remember. The dinner had consisted of “something that looked like rhino boogers, and tasted just as bad,” “rat-eaten bread loaves, in which one unfortunate rat was still snoozing,” and, my own personal favorite, “a feeling of complete and utter loneliness.” My author really knew how to make a boy feel welcome.

  Anyway, after dinner I didn’t exactly feel like “hanging out” with the other boys, which inevitably entailed playing the role of their punching bag. I wandered through the dark, dank corridors until I found my room: 2A. The walls of the small room were lined with four bunk beds, which, despite the chill, were covered only in thin, white sheets. I curled up on the bed nearest a tiny, barred window, and cried. I cried thinking about my dead parents; I cried thinking about my sister, miles and miles away; and I cried even harder when I banged my head on the bunk above mine. I cried so much that the narrator must have gotten fed up and moved along to describe the rest of the academy, including the faculty. There were the teachers I knew, of course, as I had to suffer through their classes, but to my surprise, Randy told me that there were several more minor characters populating the place who were only mentioned when I wasn’t around.

  Randy opened the suitcase at his feet just enough to stick in an arm. When he pulled it out, I found myself looking at . . . me: Peter Able: Boy Wizard, Book One. The cover captured a scene at the end of the first book in which I faced a band of bullies, brandishing only a stick—my first makeshift wand. The group had cornered me in the library late one night to confront the “freak” with the “weird powers.” Well, after I used those weird powers, they didn’t bother me again. Not until the second book anyway. But that night hadn’t been heroic, or adventurous, or even a little bit cool; it had been terrible. I looked away from the cover, eyes stinging, and Randy hurriedly flipped the book open to a dog-eared page.

  “Alright, Peter. I need you to think really hard about whether you remember this character, or might have any idea where she is or how to get in touch with her. She was a substitute a few times at Payne, and she appears in books one, three, four, and five, on pages 245, 246, I think on 300, though it doesn’t mention a name . . .”

  When he was finally finished listing the mystery woman’s appearances in each book, he lifted his hand, and pointed a shaking finger to the top of the much-worn and much-read page.

  Mrs. G. Potts.

  “You don’t mean . . . You can’t think . . . I thought your wife was dead!” I sputtered ever so delicately. Again, I was a bit surprised at my own lack of tact, and covered my mouth with my hand sheepishly. But he didn’t seem offended by this new boorish side of me. If anything, he seemed invigorated. As quickly as his pie-filled belly would allow, he hopped from the chair and began pacing the small space almost before he landed.

  “I know it sounds crazy, Peter, but stranger things have happened. I once met a girl whose cat had been run over at the beginning of her book, and thanks to a serious lapse by the author, reappeared unscathed in the next chapter!” he said, throwing his hands in the air wildly.

  “Was the book Pet Cemetery?” I snorted derisively. Even I was surprised at this newfound sarcasm, but Randy seemed to have missed it.

  “It was Pet Cemetery! Have you heard of it?” Randy asked earnestly. Before I could explain that he might want to read up on his Stephen King, he had moved on.

  “Anyway, I know it sounds unlikely, and I know there are probably plenty of people named Mrs. G. Potts in Fiction, but this just has to be her. Your series was written a year after she died. We never saw her body after the house . . . well, you can see why . . . She always said if she wasn’t a Girl Wizard, she’d want to be the Hip, With-It Teacher, and this Mrs. G. Potts is just so like her!”

  Randy had sat down again on the edge of the chair, his feet tapping the floor anxiously. He leaned so close I could smell the pie on his breath and see my own face in his glasses. His eyes were brown and flecked with green; I hadn’t noticed.

  “Peter, do you remember this character? Do you remember my wife?”

  Perhaps in a story this would be the point where I would look into his eyes and admit that, yes, I did know his wife quite well, and as a matter of fact, I was likely his illegitimate son. But the truth was, I’d never had anyone named Mrs. Potts as a sub.

  When I told him, he nodded once, stood up a bit awkwardly, and then began to clear away the dishes. There was really only the plate, two forks, and the pie-caked knife, so I doddled around, tidying things up in the living room while he clinked and clanked in the kitchen.

  “But I’ll help you find her!” I called into the other room. I suddenly felt somewhat to blame for his disappointment. Okay, maybe because it was directly my fault; but still, for some reason, I couldn’t let it go. “Randy, we’ll find her! And hey, if your wife is in more than three series, she becomes the Generic Mrs. Potts, and then she’d be easy to find! What do you say, Randy? Let’s do it!” Even to myself, I sounded like a peppy cheerleader.

  Randy walked back into the living room where I was definitely not waving a couple of pillows around like pompoms, only to quickly throw them back onto the couch. He hefted up his suitcase from the floor and got into the perfect uncomfortable-farewell stance, but before he could utter something predictable about having to be off, that it had been lovely, and that we really should do it again sometime, I stopped him with A Look—a vague device used quite often in Fiction but never actually described. It worked well, and he put the suitcase back down onto the worn wooden floor with a thump.

  I invited him to stay, at least for the night while he was still so full and groggy, and showed him to Beth’s old room. She was two years younger than I was, so she was sixteen when . . . when the series ended. Her room was filled with what I, or at least my author, had always thought a sixteen-year-old girl’s room should be filled with. The pink walls were plastered with posters of famous bands, characters, and photos of f
riends. Her bed sheets were a violent shade of magenta, and just as she’d left it, a pile of laundry was spilling out of her open closet door and onto an old, threadbare rug. You know, typical girl things.

  Now, I’d always wanted a sibling with whom to share my magic, but for whatever reason—perhaps in order to balance our relationship, or make the series more dynamic, or, as I tended to think, because my author was a sadistic, heartless shell of a man—Beth was just not written that way. She was written as a sandy-haired, blue-eyed, quietly witty girl who loved to read, shop, and bake cookies. On a slightly deeper note, though, she had been loving, sympathetic, and had counted on me more than anyone in the world. She was the perfect Supportive Sibling, pink sheets and all, and now she was gone.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to keep any of this?” Randy asked quietly as I removed the last of her posters, a larger-than-life portrait of the original Romeo.

  I nodded as the poster came off the wall. Randy could kid himself that his wife was still alive somewhere—hell, maybe she really was—but Beth was gone and wasn’t coming back. I’d been there when the Lead Villain had killed her. I’d seen it. He’d broken into the apartment, I’d tried to fight him off, and I’d lost.

  Once again, I told myself I’d do everything I could to help Randy search for his wife, if for no other reason than to ensure that one more person wouldn’t have to deal with such loss. Assuming she wasn’t actually dead.

  I was just thinking that the atmosphere had really taken a dive when something struck me in the side of the head and all was black.