The Problem with Forever(129)

It was fully transformed with delicate wings spanning out on either side of its small body. I’d even added a tiny smile below the indents for eyes.

I placed it back on my desk, just below the last sketch Rider had done of me, and then picked up my history text. I had an exam to study for.

*

“Mallory?” Carl called. “Can you come downstairs?”

Shoving the index card into my history text to mark my spot, I flipped the book closed and scooted off the bed. My sock-covered feet hit the floor. It was too early for dinner that night, so I had no idea why I was being summoned.

I tucked a loose strand of hair back behind my ear as I went down the steps. Carl was standing just inside the living room. Rosa was standing beside him, but my gaze was glued to what he held in his hands. It was a small, rectangular package wrapped in brown paper.

My steps slowed. “What is that?”

“It’s for you.” He held out the package.

I stared at it for a moment before reaching out to take it. “Um, why?”

Rosa leaned into Carl. “It’s not from us, honey.”

“Oh.” I turned the light package over. There was no writing on it, and the brown paper reminded me of a shopping bag. “Who’s it from?”

“Why don’t you just open the package?” Carl advised.

Huh. Good idea. I slipped my finger under the edges and peeled off the tape. The paper came right off and the moment I saw what was underneath, my heart leaped into my throat.

It was a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit.

Not the old copy Rider used to read to me, but a shiny new one. A blue hardcover edition with the rabbit standing up on a small, grassy mound.

The brown packaging slipped from my fingers and fell noiselessly to the floor. There was a piece of paper sticking out of the pages. With trembling hands, I carefully opened the book. The thin slip of paper was nothing more than a torn sheet of notebook paper, but a large section of print was highlighted in blue.

“What is REAL?” the Velveteen Rabbit asked the Skin Horse one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Velveteen Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. But once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

Rider had drawn a line from the last sentence to the margin, where he had written, It lasts for forever.

“Oh my God,” I whispered hoarsely. Squeezing my eyes shut, I held the book to my chest. Those highlighted lines were everything. They summed up how I felt, how I’d changed. None of it happened all at once, but once it happened, it couldn’t be undone. And it happened because I was loved. By Carl and Rosa, by Ainsley and even Rider, but most important, by myself.

Carl cleared his throat. “I think you should open the door.”

My eyes flew open and my gaze shot to them. “What?”

Rosa nodded at the door with a small curl of her lips. “Go on, honey.”

I stood there for a moment and then I whirled around. Racing to the door, I turned the handle and yanked it open. My breath caught.

Rider was on the stoop and he turned slowly. He was wearing what he had in class earlier today. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his jeans. He wore an actual sweater for once, a thick wool one in navy blue.

His gaze roamed over my face and then to the book I still held to my chest. “I’m real.”

Those two words. I’m real. No one else might have gotten the significance of them, but I knew they meant the world. Tears clouded my eyes as I stepped back and to the side, holding the door open for him.

Relief flickered over his face and he walked in. I closed the door, unable to speak, and not for the typical reasons.

“Keep the door open up there,” Carl advised, and then he pivoted on his heel and walked into the kitchen.

Rosa smiled at us.

Looking at me, Rider waited, and I nodded. He followed me up the stairs to my bedroom. I left the door open. Sort of. There was at least a one-inch gap between the door and its frame.

Rider went to the window seat and he sat. His weary gaze followed me. I walked to the side of the bed facing him and sat on the corner. A tired smile pulled at his lips. “I don’t know where to start,” he said.

“Anywhere,” I whispered, clutching the book as hope and wariness warred inside me.

He lowered his chin. “I guess I’ll start with the speech. That was... It was beautiful. The words, what you said, what you meant? But the fact that you got up there and did it was the most beautiful of all those things. I mean it, Mallory.”