Reality Check

Boundaries

Pretty Face (by Public)

"Would you be there to help her push on through? And would you know her if she didn't know you . . ."

___

It was now or never.

Bethany glanced at Owen, who looked just as nervous. Noticing her look, he managed to give her a small smile, and that was enough to urge her forward. Walking up to the tent, she hesitated before pushing the curtain aside, ducking through the entrance. The inside was lit only by candles, some of which floated through the air, hovering above their heads. It did only a little to brighten up the tent, however, because Bethany had to squint to see properly.

Her eyes darted everywhere, soaking it all in. What appeared to be tarot cards and crystals perched on a bookshelf, which only appeared to be used for decoration. She was half-convinced that the books on the shelf were for decoration, too, but didn't comment on that. An old carpet was laid out underneath their feet, symbols that she didn't recognize scattered across it. And in the center of the room was a woman with greying hair, wearing purple Magisterian robes matched with earrings so long they seemed to touch her shoulders.

The only word to describe the tent was mystifying, and its appearance lived up to Bethany's expectations— which weren't much to begin with. In any other circumstance that didn't involve being here to save the fictional world, Bethany would never be caught dead in a place like this. Fortune tellers had never made much sense to her. At least in the real world, they obviously were just scamming people to earn money. Or they told fortunes that were so vague they could've applied to anyone, but still, people believed it.

Okay, she'd never actually gone to one, but she could still picture all the reasons why fortune tellers shouldn't be trusted so easily. Her mother had told her some stories of fortune tellers she'd encountered, back when she lived in California with Bethany's aunt. Sentences like "She took all my money!" and "All she told me was that I'd get married and die. That goes for ninety-nine percent of the population!" came out of her mouth, so Bethany was fairly positive that real fortune tellers just didn't exist.

And if they really could see the future, well, she didn't think she'd want to know. Not unless it involved bringing her dad home and all her friends back, and finally living as normal and happy of a life as possible. Well, as normal a life as someone like her could live. Someone with the power to jump into books. That was the only fortune she'd want to hear— not that anyone from the nonfictional world could tell her that, because according to everyone living outside of Bethany's well-kept secret, her half-fictional powers just didn't exist. And neither did the fictional world.

Ironically, if this didn't work, the fictional world would never have existed, anyway. And then, no one would be able to cross over, not even Bethany. So to the nonfictional world, it might've seemed like nothing had changed. The only difference, of course, was that every book in the world was blank. But once the fictional worlds merged . . . she shuddered. There was no way she could let that happen. And worse, she had no idea what that'd do to both the worlds. Whatever happened, it wouldn't be good.

"Um, hello?" Owen said, poking his head in after Bethany. Kiel followed closely after, and they stumbled into the tent, which seemed smaller with all three of them inside.

The woman slowly rose from the stool she'd been sitting on, giving them a smile. "Hello, you may call me Madam Isadora. I see you've come a long way to be here."

She had a slight accent, not quite sounding American, but not sounding like anything Bethany could distinctly recognize, either. All Magisterians sounded that way, and through Kiel, Bethany had grown used to it. Quanterians had one, too, though their's was slightly different from Magisteria's, laced with sharper, more enunciated words.