Read Online Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult, Samantha van Leer - Free Book Online

heard me even if I were yelling at the top of my lungs.”
    “How do you know that? You didn’t even try.”
    “I’ve been trying for years—you’re the first person who has ever noticed me.”
    I sigh. “But if you’d talked to Jules—if she could hear you…” My voice trails off.
    “Then you wouldn’t feel quite so crazy?” Oliver asks gently. “Can’t you believe in me, if I believe in you?”
    “I don’t know what to believe,” I say, completely honest. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me.”
    Oliver sits down on the ground. “And nothing at all has ever happened to me.”
    I look at him, resigning himself to an endless life trapped inside someone else’s plot. I know what that feels like. If I’d written my own story, my father would never have left us, and my mother wouldn’t have to work till she was so tired she fell into bed each night before dinner. If I’d written my own story, I wouldn’t have broken a cheerleader’s kneecap and single-handedly turned the entire school against me. If I’d written my own story, I’d have someone like Oliver here who loved me.
    Then again, maybe I can change my own story. Or at least try. “I think we need to do a test,” I say.
    “I don’t understand.”
    “What if I cut you out of the book and you stop breathing? What if the only oxygen that works for you is in the pages?”
    “ Cutting? Who said anything about cutting—”
    “And what if you do make it into this world but you’re small enough to fit in my pocket?” My voice rises as I think of everything that could possibly go wrong.
    “So by test, ” Oliver says slowly—hopefully, “you mean you’re going to help me get out of here?”
    “Yes. And we’re going to start with a trial run. I’ll meet you on page twenty-one.” I hesitate. “You can see the numbers on the pages too, right?”
    “If I squint,” Oliver says. “They’re so far up in the corners.”
    “It’s the part where you and Frump are walking through the forest…. Yes! We’ll try the dog first!” I say.
    Oliver shakes his head. “ Frump? You can’t do that!”
    “He’s just a dog, Oliver. He’ll probably never even know.”
    “Just a dog!” Oliver stands, angry. “That ‘dog’ speaks three languages and is brilliant at chess and happens to be my best friend. Or did you forget that he used to be a human too?”
    “I guess I maybe skimmed that part,” I confess, although I’d rather die than admit that I often skipped over the pages without Oliver in them. “If we can’t experiment on Frump, then what do you recommend? Or does even the bacteria in your book do rocket science on the side?”
    “I could give you my tunic,” Oliver suggests.
    “Keep your clothes on, buster. I think we’d be better off seeing what happens with something that’s alive and breathing, don’t you?”
    “Give me a moment.” He paces from one end of the page to the other, briefly disappearing into the spine for a moment before reappearing with a smile on his face. “I could get you a fish from page forty-two.”
    “I don’t know…. Shouldn’t you try something thatdoesn’t belong in the ocean? That way, if it doesn’t survive intact… we can’t blame the problem on a lack of lungs.”
    “You’re quite right.” Oliver sighs. He swats at the back of his neck, then waves his hand in front of his face. “Blasted spider.”
    I start to ask him where it came from, fascinated by the mechanics of what appears and disappears in his world—but then I realize there might be any number of microscopic things that readers overlook—chessboards in the sand, spiders, even princes. “Wait!” I lean closer. “Oliver, did you kill that spider?”
    “It bit me!”
    “It’s the perfect sample for a trial run,” I tell him.
    He brightens. “Of course. And if it doesn’t live, I’ll actually have something to celebrate.” He falls to his hands and knees and begins to search for the bug. “Got it,”