Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult, Samantha van Leer Page B

working, unable to hear him over the roar of the water.
    Oliver turned and dug the megaphone from the mermaids’ treasure collection out of his rucksack. “Helloooo!” he yelled again, and this time the trolls all looked up. “My good men,” Oliver said. “Which bridge should I use to cross?”
    The first troll, Biggle, glanced up. When he spoke, Oliver had no trouble hearing him; trolls were known to talk in decibel levels that could shake the Earth. “Why, what have we got here? Some fancy man with his fancy horse, and what’s that? A big rat or somethin’?” Biggle stroked his long gray beard.
    “Sir, I do see you’re working quite hard,” Oliver said with a smile. “I would greatly appreciate your advice.”
    Snort and Trogg, the remaining trolls, started to laugh, grunting and holding their bellies. “Ye can only ask one of us tochoose for you,” said Trogg, the chubby one. “Make yer pick.”
    Oliver thought about this. If trolls always lied or always told the truth, how to find out which troll was trustworthy? “Do you tell the truth?” he yelled through the megaphone.
    Biggle replied, but at that moment, the water between them roared, so that Oliver could not make out the answer.
    Snort cupped his hands near his mouth. “He said he always tells the truth!”
    “No, he didn’t,” called Trogg. “He said he was a liar.”
    Oliver glanced from each hideous face to the next. Biggle, he realized, must have said he was truthful. This would have been his response if he was indeed truthful, because of course he’d say so; but it also would have been his response if he was a liar.
    Which meant that Snort’s statement had to be the truth.
    In other words— he was the troll to trust.
    “You!” Oliver said, pointing to the short troll in the middle. “Which bridge?”
    “This one,” Snort proudly answered, pointing to the rickety bridge.
    Oliver mounted his stallion again and, without a moment’s hesitation, crossed the bridge Snort had indicated.
    “That’ll be a guinea,” Biggle grunted.
    Oliver patted down his pockets and saddlebags, but all his spare change had fallen into the ocean when he was with the mermaids.
    The mermaids.
    The trolls advanced, menacing, ready to pound him into the dirt.
    “Gentlemen,” he said, “do you know what’s more precious than gold? True love.”
    “We’re trolls,” said Trogg. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”
    “I happen to know three lovely ladies who could overlook that fact,” Oliver said.
    “Honestly?” asked Snort.
    Oliver grinned. “I always tell the truth,” he said.

OLIVER
     
    “BEDSPREAD,” DELILAH SAYS.
    “Um… pink.”
    “Good. Number of stuffed animals on the bed?”
    “Three.”
    “Excellent. What are they?”
    I close my eyes, trying to remember. “A pig, a bear wearing a strange little shirt, and a duck with quite a sassy look on its face.”
    “And the book?”
    “Purple leather, with gold lettering that reads Between the Lines .”
    It’s odd to think of my story as a physical entity, because obviously I’ve never seen the outside of thetome in which we all live. But Delilah has described it in excruciating detail.
    In fact, she’s spent hours this Saturday evening giving me a thorough tour of her bedroom by carrying the open book from end to end. I have read fortune cookie messages tacked onto her mirror; I have met her pet fish—named Dudley; I have stared at a whiteboard she can write upon and erase, which is festooned with small favors from places she and her mother have visited: the Flume in New Hampshire, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory, Boston, the Statue of Liberty. We realized that the only error in our plan was that Delilah could not watch the painting actually happen—since that would have to occur when the book was closed and I could meet privately with Rapscullio in his lair.
    To this end, Delilah insisted that I memorize every last detail of her room, so that it could be as accurate a representation