Story Thieves by James Riley Page B

Which was weird. Shouldn’t he have been here too? Had he broken out? And if so, why hadn’t he left some sort of instructions so Owen could do the same thing? Being evil was one thing, but that was just inconsiderate.
    â€œStill boring!” he shouted to no one. “Bethany, where are you? If you’re off having fun with Kiel and the Magister without me, I’m never going to forgive you!”
    Bethany, having fun? Okay, that wasn’t likely, but given that she hadn’t come back yet, she had to be doing something exciting with them. Assuming she was okay. Since they’d basically kidnapped her, the Magister and Kiel. After she’d been knocked out.
    Owen frowned, suddenly worried. What if they stole her power, or banished her to a horrible dimension of just audiobooks or something? Or worse, what if they forced her to jump into stories to talk to all the cool characters? That’d make her crazy!
    Nah, she had to be okay. The girl could grab aliens from Mars out of books if she had to. What was going to stop her? An old man and his awesome, incredibly cool teenage apprentice? No way. She was fine. She had to be.
    When Bethany rudely didn’t respond or come get him out of this nowhere nonprison he’d been trapped in, Owen banged his head a few more times, then tried walking around again.
    The problem with walking into nothingness is that you honestly had no idea if you were getting anywhere. For all he knew, he’d walked ten miles and found just as much boring as the spot he’d left. He collapsed from boredom against the ground, and conveniently found another wall to bang his head against. Or the same one. Maybe the ground had just moved underneath his feet like a treadmill.
    Would he grow old in here, until he looked like the Magister with a huge beard? Would his fingernails grow out like that guy in Guinness World Records ? Could Bethany jump into that book and hang out with Fingernail Guy? . . . That’d be weird.
    Was he missing his birthday? Had he already missed it? For all Owen knew, he’d been sitting here for years! Think of the presents he’d missed. Birthdays and Christmas!
    â€œLet me out of here!” he shouted.
    Nobody answered.
    It was time to give up. There was nothing else to do, literally. Here he was, trapped in a book, but outside the book, and—wait a second.
    If he was really still in the book somehow, maybe he could jump forward in the story, like books did when a chapter ended. It’d be like fast-forwarding time, chapter after chapter, until Bethany came back to find him. That was brilliant!
    Except, how did you end a chapter?
    Owen thought back to all the books he knew, and what he could remember about the ends of chapters. Most seemed to stop on some kind of ironic one-liner, or a cliffhanger. Cliffhangers would be a bit tough in here, with no cliffs to hang off of, but maybe he could trick the book into chaptering bysaying something horribly ironic, and then waiting for it to ( surprise!  ) happen.
    â€œNow would be a horrible time for someone to show up out of nowhere to come rescue me!” he said, then paused to see if it worked.
    Time didn’t jump forward, and no one showed up out of nowhere to rescue him.
    This may not have been as good an idea as he’d hoped.
    â€œYou know what’d be funny? If Dr. Verity came back and kidnapped me! Who’d expect that  !”
    Nothing.
    â€œI’d really hate if I fell asleep and it turned out this was all just a dream. . . .”
    Nope.
    â€œThis seems like the most secure prison ever ! NO ONE could break in here!”
    Was that a sound? . . . Nope. Nope it wasn’t.
    Owen growled in frustration, then just started screaming various things. “Chapter Twelve! Chapter Thirty-Two! Chapter Seventy-Five, The Boy Who Was Rescued from the Boring Prison!”
    Nothing happened.
    â€œIf anyone ever reads this,” he