I could stay in a bookstore forever. My mother had never been that big of a reader, but my father and Aunt Helen were never without a book in their hands. Aunt Helen wrote the first Alvin Hatter book when she’d finished every piece of literature in her house and found it was too late in the day to go and buy more.
“It was the best misfortune I ever suffered,” she told me once. “Alvin was born out of the deepest boredom and a desperate longing for new words.”
Em and I wandered around Page & Ink for hours. I left Em in the fantasy section (as much as she hated reading, I couldn’t count how many times she’d flown through Lord of the Rings, and she was one of the few people on earth who’d actually finished The Silmarillion) and took myself on a tour of the children’s section, touching the spines of every book and wondering how many of them my aunt had read. Of course all six of the Alvin Hatters were there, just a few copies left of each. I had all the editions, every new set of covers they came out with, and it still didn’t feel like enough. I always found myself wanting more. I knew how weird that was.
Fulfilling Aunt Helen’s instructions, I bought seven books. Clarice slid them all into a paper bag, and I could tell she was trying not to cry as she handed it to me. At first she refused to take any money for them, but I explained about Aunt Helen’s instructions and she finally relented.
“Just like her, to send you here,” she said. “What a woman, huh?”
We hugged good-bye over the counter, and Em and I went out to the car.
We sat there for a long time before I started the engine. Em looked through the books I’d chosen, and when she was done, she asked, “Is it nice? Or is it hard? Having to do all these things she asked you to.”
“It’s both, I guess,” I said. “It kind of feels like she’s still here, which is nice. But she’s not here. So I’m not sure it’s the best idea to keep pretending.”
“Maybe she has some point, and it’s just too early to see it.”
“I’m sure she does. And I think this is better than the alternative. To just have her gone completely.”
Em took my hand and squeezed the tips of my fingers one at a time. “She loved you a lot. That’s one of those things everyone says to try to help, but it’s true, you know? She really cared about you.”
“I really care about you.”
“That’s nice, but the difference is you’re never going to die. You can’t. Where would I get my hair dye?”
“My mom, probably.”
“Well, who would help me put it in? I can’t maintain this level of pigmentation without you, Lottie. Promise me you’ll live forever.”
“I promise,” I said.
We pinkie-swore it.
I wished that were enough to make it true.
The wind at the top of the cliff was wicked; Margo struggled to catch her breath against it. She had no idea where Alvin had gone to, and she felt scared, really scared, for maybe the first time in her entire life.
That fear was amplified tenfold as she watched the dark figure emerge from the tree line. He stepped into the moonlight, and she saw, with another stab of terror, that it was not her brother, but the man who’d been chasing them, the dark figure she’d started to refer to as the Overcoat Man.
He was disheveled, and his eyes were wild.
Margo was completely trapped. Behind her: the edge of the cliff, a straight plummet two hundred feet to the forest floor below. In front of her: the Overcoat Man, looking almost smug, almost pleased.
“Nowhere to go, is there?” he asked.
“Who are you?” she cried. “What do you want?”
“You better tell me how you got in that house,” he said. “You better tell me, and quick.”
“We opened the door! We walked inside! Just like you get into any house! It’s not rocket science!” Margo yelled, because they’d already told him that, and he just kept asking and asking. . . .
“That house is magic! There’s no opening of doors! There’s no walking inside! You better stop lying to me, girl!”
Margo felt suddenly defiant. A rush of courage surged through her body. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not telling you ANYTHING,” she screamed.
And then he’d darted at her, his face twisted into an expression of sharp rage.
And then he’d pushed.
For one beautiful, calm moment, Margo was flying.
And then she realized: Oh no. Not flying.
Falling.
—from Alvin Hatter and the House in the Middle of the Woods
6
When I walked in the house that night, I found my dad sitting alone at the kitchen table. He had a book open in front of him like he was reading, but upon closer inspection I saw that it was the operating manual for our stove. He was just kind of staring at it, like he had grabbed the first thing he’d found, like it was just a prop to convince the casual viewer that he was doing anything other than sitting, being sad, doing nothing. I wanted to tell him what was in Aunt Helen’s letters. I wanted to show him—look, see, she’s not really all gone yet—but I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I didn’t want to interrupt him, intrude on whatever thoughts he was lost in. So I went upstairs.
That night, alone in my bedroom, I read the next letter from Aunt Helen.
As usual, the sight of her handwriting made my breath catch in my throat.
Dear Lottie, Nothing like a good book, huh?
I’ve been asked a hundred million billion times—where did you get the idea for Alvin Hatter? Is he based on a real person? He seems so real!
I can think of a million characters who have seemed as real to me. Edmund in Narnia—such a little shit but at least so unabashedly true to his every desire. He’s the realest one of them because he makes mistakes, he owns up to them, he forges forward even when his brother and sisters hate him for it. Alice in Wonderland—real enough to cry an entire lake’s worth of suffering, real enough to make an entire imaginary world seem similarly real. Milo in the Tollbooth land—real enough to admit the hardest thing in the world, that contentment sometimes leads to the sharpest of boredoms, that often our own brains are our very worst enemies.
I could go on and on. But I think that is the best compliment to give a writer—your characters seem so real. That’s what makes a book, isn’t it? That’s why I’ve read PRIDE AND PREJUDICE a thousand times and STILL can’t figure Mr. Darcy out. That’s why we return again and again to Middle Earth, to Discworld, to Never-Never Land.
I’m rambling again. It’s so easy to ramble in these, you see, because I have an endless supply of blank paper and a love for filling it up with ink. And I don’t have to imagine any scenario in which you don’t read every word, and happily, because they’re my letters and I’ll be gone when you read them and then it will be up to you. Does that make any sense? It’s late. I guess I’m getting tired.
Is Alvin based on a real person? Oh, of course, and of course not, because everything we can ever write is just a mixture of all the things we already know and all the things we’re just guessing at. It’s contrariwise, as Alice would say.
But let’s suppose for a minute that he is real.
Let’s suppose for a minute that the idea of a forever boy wasn’t entirely ludicrous.
What would YOU do, Lottie, if you were immortal?