“Sarah! Sarah! Get off your duff and get moving!”

That was my mother. I blinked three times and realized I was finally back in my room. It was morning. I was wearing yesterday’s clothes and I was snuggling yesterday’s empty popcorn bowl. If I’d been asleep for more than one night, surely my mom would have taken the empty bowl away from me, right?

I got out of bed and found my mom brushing her teeth in the bathroom. Hey mom, what day is it?”

“What day is it?” she repeated frostily before spitting a giant glop of minty foam down the drain. “It’s Saturday.”

“Is it? It just feels like I’ve been asleep for days.”

She laughed. “I’m not surprised. You slept like the dead. Do you even remember Rachel coming over?”

“No!” I exclaimed. “She was here?”

“She bought you a bag of clothes. It’s in the corner. Say, what time do you need to be out the door? It’s almost nine.”

Luckily, there was still plenty of time to see what Rachel had brought me. I grabbed the pink plastic bag. Rachel bringing me clothes was the kind of event that was second only to Christmas in my world. I opened the bag. There were three pairs of jeans that didn’t have unfashionable holes in the knees or frayed cuffs. They were still frayed, but not unfashionably. That was the key. There was a black and gray striped sweater, a hopelessly skin-revealing dress of tight shininess I would never have the courage or occasion to wear, and two pairs of ballet shoes. How grateful I was to be the same shoe size as my big sister.

I put on a pair of the jeans and the sweater. It was too exciting to have new clothes not to wear them right away.

I brushed my teeth and ran out the door. I was actually going to be on time for my babysitting gig. Delightful!

All that day, I dealt with screaming children and thought about what happened in the story. There were a few strange ideas ricocheting around in my head. They ricocheted because I didn't understand them. I thought Evander made Sarafina blonde with ringlets because that was the kind of woman he wanted—a woman who was beautiful because she looked like him. Then when I saw Tremor, that theory became void, because the first thing he changed about himself was his hair. Weird.

Then I thought about the clothes. I had also been harboring the notion that he wanted a girl of the same financial status, which was why he made his heroine a princess. Once again, my theory was blown out of the water. It didn’t seem like he was going to marry her based on whether or not she was a princess, but instead whether or not she was tough enough to manage his life.

The truth was… I didn’t know anything about Evander.

At the end of the day, I had finished six hours of babysitting and made fifty bucks, which was well below minimum wage. I thanked the ragged mother and went out into the hallway of her apartment complex, shoving the bills in my pocket. How was I ever supposed to save up for college with such small wages?

That evening I went to the Stanley Milner library and used one of the computers to look for a part-time job. There were just so many things I couldn’t do or wasn’t good at. I’d already tried working fast food. The time on my feet was unbearable. It was true. I could walk forever, but asking me to stand still was just too hard. Staring at the screen, I tried to focus on the job postings, but I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do, except one thing, find out what would have happened if I hadn’t blacked out when Tremor was carrying me.

As I peeked over the edge of the desk, I could see the spine of Evander’s book sitting in my bag. Actually, part of the reason I went to the library in the first place was because I thought that if I read the book there, then the library staff would wake me up at closing time.

Giving in to temptation, I picked up my bag and slid into one of the armchairs at the end of the aisle in full view of everyone. 

Tremor carried Princess Sarafina up the winding trail and into the castle yard. She was light as a feather to his arms that were used to lifting the vast bodies of his soldiers. He carried her up flights of stairs, aiming to house her as far away from the basement as possible. His castle had its secrets and he wanted her distant from them.

He placed her head on the pillow of the bed that had been prepared for her and left her with the elderly maid he had invited from the capital to care for her. 

After he saw her settled, he stormed down the steps to the barred doors that led to the under-floors. His mind reeled as he removed the barricade. He had seen it himself—the capricorn corpse chained to the shore. Tremor only knew of one person capable of something like that. The problem was, he couldn't believe they'd dared it.

I let my eyes close dreamily for a moment before opening them fully and once again I found myself in the world Evander had created. The armchair gently reclined and the city library melted away leaving me lying on a soft bed. I had been in the real world for a whole day and my real body did not suffer from the effects of having walked barefoot on rock all night and then all day. Once I was back in the book, however, my body didn’t feel well. My limbs and feet ached as much as they had by the end of the previous chapter.

 Then I heard a sound at the other end of the room and I realized I wasn’t alone. The window curtains were drawn and the only view to the outside world came from a door that split in two—the bottom of the door stayed closed and the top let in the evening air. There was a tiny white table on the right side of the bed. On it was a silver candlestick with a flickering candle and a crystal goblet filled with sparkling water. In the corner sat a white wardrobe with beautiful blue roses and vines stenciled down the sides. There were also two gilt chairs with white upholstery. In one of them was an old lady knitting something white.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Hilda. I’ll be your lady-in-waiting.”

She looked like she was seventy-years-old if she was a day. She was wearing a dress that looked similar to something Queen Elizabeth the First would have worn and her hair was braided into a low coil almost like a bun. Her eyes were sharp as she stared at me from across the room.

“Before coming here, I used to serve the Queen, Tremor’s step-mother,” the old lady said severely.

“Oh, really? What is she like?”

“Nothing like you,” she said darkly. “Coming to the castle barefoot, with no hat—unthinkable. It’s exactly the way Tremor’s mother used to behave. You're sunburned. Did you know? Just like she always was.”

I nodded my head. “Right. Well, she sounds cute. Does she come here often?”

“Never.” The old lady spat something black into a handkerchief. “She’s dead.”

I stared. It was on the tip of my tongue to say something sympathetic, but the fact was that the woman wasn’t actually mourning anyone. Instead, a few silent minutes passed before she spat again and I had to ask, “Are you chewing tobacco?”

She didn’t answer, but instead let out a huff full of haughtiness before getting up and scurrying out of the room, closing the half-door behind her. 

It was night, so I stayed still and much to my surprise, I fell asleep between the linen sheets in Evander’s imaginary castle.

When I woke up the next morning still in the book, I was surprised. I thought someone would have come along and woken me up in the real world as soon as there was a decent lull in the story. No one did. Even though it was only yesterday, I had completely forgotten about all those days I lived in the story world while only one night passed in the real world. I smiled. Probably only a couple of minutes had passed in the city library. I had plenty of time.

I noticed a tray beside my bed. The plate was covered with a metal cover. Leaning over, I popped it off. Then I stared. I had never had a salad for breakfast before, but there was one on the tray. It looked like an ordinary green salad except that it had two fried eggs on top. I usually ate Cheerios. There was a little dish of dressing on the tray and I quickly doused the whole thing. When I speared some up and took a bite, my watering mouth was not disappointed—delicious.