Authors: Sarah Beth Durst
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Magic, #Action & Adventure, #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #United States, #Family, #People & Places, #Multigenerational, #Adventure and Adventurers, #Performing Arts, #School & Education, #Education, #Adventure stories, #Dance, #Magick Studies, #Body; Mind & Spirit, #Universities and colleges, #College stories, #Higher, #Princeton (N.J.), #Locks and keys, #Princeton University
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"I'm more ... in training to be a member," he said. "You join eating clubs at the end of sophomore year. I just finished my freshman year." He puffed out his chest like a rooster, proud of his member-in-training status. She stifled a smile.
"Is Tye in Vineyard Club?" she asked. She skirted around patches of ivy, keeping to the far side of the sidewalk. The ivy vines lay still and quiet.
Jake snorted. "Absolutely not."
"You
do
know him."
"I know
of
him," Jake said. "Never met."
"Who is he?" Lily asked. "Why did he say he was my guard? What did he want?"
"I ... um ... ah ..." His face reddened. Lily remembered he wasn't supposed to give her any information. She opened her mouth to apologize, but before she could, he pointed straight ahead. "That's Dillon Gym," he said.
Following his finger, she saw a building that looked like a medieval fort. If it wasn't for the DILLON GYMNASIUM sign by the road (which, admittedly, was a big tip-off), she never would have guessed it was a gym. "Don't worry," she said. "I won't tell anyone you told me."
"I think it's all right, but thank you," he said gravely.
"You really care about this, don't you?" she said.
"As much as you do," he said.
She didn't have a reply to that. She wondered what he'd say if he knew that her mom's sanity was tied to Lily's admission into Princeton.
79
Lily faced Dillon Gym. Four gargoyles jutted out over the entry arches: a football player, a dour-faced man in medieval garb, a tiger with a shield, and an ape in graduation robes and spectacles. Like the Unseeing Reader, the ape held an open book.
She halted underneath the ape gargoyle. Looking up at his stone chin, she waited for him to produce a clue like the Unseeing Reader had.
He was as motionless as ... well, as stone.
Lily squinted up at the gargoyle. Sun wreathed his stone head like a halo. She wondered if the clue was in the book that he held. After all, she'd been sent to the library to find a book--maybe this was the book she was supposed to find. If so, she'd have to climb up there to be able to see it. She nearly laughed out loud at that thought. There was zero chance she was coordinated enough to scurry up the stone. She wasn't a rock climber. Or a squirrel. She'd end up clawing uselessly at the walls while Jake laughed until he collapsed on the sidewalk.
This is ridiculous,
she thought. The ability to impersonate Spider-Man had nothing to do with college aptitude. "Can you lift me up?" she asked Jake.
"I can't--"
"--aid me," she finished. "Sorry. I promise I won't get you in trouble." Craning her neck, she looked up at the windows above the arches. She might not be able to climb up to the Literate Ape, but maybe she could climb
down
.
80
With Jake behind her, Lily walked into the gym. She mentioned the words "prospective student" to the guard and was waved through. Inside, Dillon Gym looked and sounded like every other gym in the world. College guys and girls ran back and forth over basketball courts. Sneakers squeaked, and players grunted and panted. Lily spotted stairs and went up to the second floor with Jake trotting behind her. She noticed several of the female basketball players eyeing him as they passed. Jake didn't appear to notice, which Lily liked.
Upstairs was a gymnastics room. She poked her head in. It was empty. She crossed over mats and shimmied around a balance beam to get to the windows. In the mirror that covered one wall, she watched Jake follow her. He looked rather confused.
"What are you doing?" Jake asked as she opened a window.
"Going to check out that ape," she said.
"People will see you," he said, "and you could fall." He sounded genuinely concerned, and Lily wanted to pat his hand to reassure him.
"It's one story up," she said. "I'll be okay. But thanks." She'd climbed out onto the roof many times at home, and that was the third story. Her mother even climbed out with her. They liked to lie on the roof side by side under the stars and invent their own constellations.
Jake continued to look worried.
81
"You could wait below and catch me if I look like I'm going to splat," she suggested. "It would be a very guardlike thing to do, preventing splattage."
He smiled, and his face lit in a warm, melt-polar-ice-caps kind of way. "I haven't had any training courses on preventing splattage. You'd be putting your life in my hands."
She noticed he had really nice hands. Imagining him catching her, she failed to think of a witty response. "Okay," she said.
"Okay," he said. And then he blushed.
"Do you have a camera?" she asked.
Still blushing, he asked, "What?"
"If anyone looks curious, you can pretend I'm posing for a photo."
"Got one in my cell phone."
"Great," she said.
For a long moment, they stared at each other. Jake cleared his throat. "I'll just ... go down now," he said.
Lily watched him exit the room. She couldn't believe this Greek god of a boy was talking to her, much less blushing when he talked to her.
Don't read anything into it,
she told herself.
He's just a naturally sweet guy.
Below, she saw him emerge under the arches. He waved up at her. Smiling, she waved back.
She climbed out the window above the ape gargoyle. Dangling her legs down, she stretched her feet until she felt stone with her toes. She lowered her weight down onto it
82
and then knelt on the back of the gargoyle. Once she was lying belly down on the statue's back, she peered over the ape's shoulder at the book.
The stone pages were blank.
Her heart sank. She'd been sure that was the answer!
Below, Jake had his cell phone out and was snapping pictures. She wondered if he thought she was crazy for climbing up here, especially since the book was blank. She usually tried so hard to appear not crazy. None of Mom's hippie clothes. Just jeans, ordinary T-shirts, tiny earrings, and lip gloss. None of Mom's offbeat habits. No knocking on wood or climbing trees at the park with the six-year-olds. No flowers in her hair. No singing off-pitch at high volume in the veggie aisle of the supermarket. No weird aversion to cars or movie theaters or basements. But if Lily's looking crazy at her dream school would keep Mom sane (or at least close to it), then Lily had no choice but to dance naked in the full moonlight, so to speak. "Now what?" she asked herself. "What's my next clue?"
Underneath her, the stone shuddered. A soft voice said, "I am."
It wasn't Jake. She looked behind her at the window. No one was there. "Who said that?" she asked. She had the sinking feeling that she wasn't going to like the answer.
The stone vibrated again, and the voice said, "
I
am your clue."
She bent sideways to look underneath the gargoyle for a
83
microphone and speaker. She didn't see anything. "Mr. Ape," Lily said in an even voice, "are you talking?" She wasn't going to let the Old Boys rattle her this time. They'd rigged another gargoyle somehow.
"Professor Ape, if you please," the gargoyle said in the same soft-as-sand voice. "I have tenure." He chuckled as if he'd made a joke.
"Nice to meet you, Professor Ape," she said. "So am I talking through a microphone to someone in Vineyard Club, or is this a recording? Are you interactive?"
The gargoyle sighed. "I would appreciate it if we could dispense with all the 'you're joking' and 'this can't be true' and 'I must be dreaming' nonsense. Can we simply agree that I'm a magical being from a parallel world and pronounce this lesson done?"
She laughed. At least the voice's owner had a sense of humor.
He sighed again, and the stone beneath her shifted. She wondered how they achieved that effect. "One of
those
. Very well. Please proceed with your speech about how I can't be real and how I must be an elaborate ruse involving puppetry and/or robotics. I'll hibernate until you're finished. I must conserve my magic."
Someone in Vineyard Club liked fantasy novels a little too much. But she could play along. "What do you mean, 'conserve your magic'?"
His voice brightened. "Ah, you've decided to be sensible!
84
Marvelous! Let's begin then." He adopted a professorial voice as he began to lecture, "First, you must understand that there are two worlds. Parallel worlds, if you will. In many ways, they are nearly identical, but the one primary difference is that your world is inhabited by humans and other related creatures, while my world is inhabited by, for lack of a more precise term, what you would call 'magic creatures.' Are you with me so far?"
"Parallel worlds," she repeated. "Magic creatures." She tried to sound serious and failed. She wished she'd read more fantasy. Mom had stacks of Tolkien rip-offs tucked into every corner of the apartment, but Lily hadn't read a book like that since
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
in fourth grade. She'd lost her taste for it the first time Mom's hallucinations involved an elf. Now she felt as if she were bluffing her way through a test she hadn't studied for.
Oh, wait,
she thought,
I
am
bluffing my way through a test I haven't studied for.
"No need to sound so skeptical," he said. "You're talking to a gargoyle."
Or, more accurately, she was talking to some guy in the basement of Vineyard Club. How gullible did they think she was? Lily glanced down at the sidewalk and wondered if Jake was in on the joke. He was too far away to hear the gargoyle's soft voice. She wondered if he knew about this whole parallel-world story.
"For the record, we academics do not approve of terms
85
such as 'magic creatures.' It smacks of Tolkien and literary invention."
"Gargoyles read Tolkien?"
"I am a literate ape," he said modestly.
She laughed.
"Despite many similarities," the gargoyle continued, "the worlds are not compatible. There's a particular airborne element that exists only in the nonhuman world. Denizens of that world--my home world--have evolved to be dependent on that element, which we call 'magic' for the sake of convenience. We need a certain amount of magic in our bloodstream to survive, and we need a higher concentration of it in order to fuel our magical abilities."
"Very interesting," Lily said, trying her best to sound polite. Someone had clearly spent a lot of time crafting this whole scenario.
"Do you have any questions so far?" he asked.
Yes, she had a million: What did all of this have to do with college admission? Why had the Old Boys invested so much time in this role-playing game? How had her father been involved? Why had Mom drawn the Chained Dragon gargoyle? Where were Tye and the Feeder? And what breed of idiot thought that releasing an uncontrollable mutant monkey with claws, teeth, and a taste for blood on a crowded campus was a good idea? But she didn't dare ask any of those questions. She had to humor these people until her admission was secured. Lily stuck instead to a relevant
86
question: "If you're from the magic world and need magic to survive, how are you here talking with me right now?"
"Ah, an excellent question!" He sounded pleased. "There are two ways for my kind to survive in your world. One: With significant training and the correct preparation of rituals, we can transform ourselves into stone. Essentially, we hibernate, slowing our breathing, our heart rate, and the decay of magic in our system. Many of the gargoyles on this campus, such as myself, are magic creatures who have chosen to undergo the elaborate rituals and physical inconveniences in order to remain in this world as ambassadors and teachers to those humans designated to interact with our world." He paused as if waiting for her to say something.
"That's, uh, very nice of you," she said.
"How kind of you to notice!" Again, he sounded very pleased. "I think I like you."
She hoped Grandpa was listening to this. In effect, this was her admissions interview. So far, she seemed to be acing it. She shot a look down at Jake. He was shooing away a curious tourist.
"The second way for a magic creature to survive in this world is to become a Feeder," the gargoyle said. "Feeders drain magic out of others in order to survive. Commonly, this is done via a bite since the magic inhabits the bloodstream."
So the attack
did
tie into this whole fantasy game. She touched the puncture marks on her shoulder and winced as they stung. The fact that the Feeder had drawn blood
87
highlighted how serious the Old Boys were about their fake scenario. She wondered how far they were willing to take it. She pictured Tye holding down the vine-wrapped creature. They'd already taken it far enough.
"Their prey is humans," Professor Ape said. "All humans have a trace of magic in them, but only a trace. Once it's gone ... the human does not survive. A single bite will kill a human."
She'd been bitten and survived, so the Old Boys had already slipped up in their story. She guessed that the voice behind the Ape didn't know that. She wasn't going to point it out.
"Unfortunately, draining humans is addictive," Professor Ape said. "Once a Feeder has experienced it ..." He sighed, his stone body rippling.
"What does all this have to do with the Ivy Key?" she asked.
"I
knew
I liked you! No dithering about impossible versus possible. So refreshing! The knights did well to allow your candidacy," he said. "If you'll pardon the pun, you've 'keyed' into the correct question: What does a key have to do with parallel worlds?" He sounded exactly like her AP Chem teacher, waiting for an answer.
She considered it. If she were to invent parallel worlds, how would she involve a key? Keys opened doors. "It's the key to a doorway between worlds," she said.
"Right you are!" he exalted. "In this case, substitute 'gate' for 'door,' and you have it!"
She wanted to cheer. She felt as if she'd nailed a pop quiz