The Library of Lost Things

by Laura Taylor Namey

  “So, this is me.” My hand waved through goat tunnels, flourishing over stacked boxes like a caustic game show model.

  Asher moved from section to section, pile to pile. While he examined dishes and electronics, housewares and random clothing, I retreated to the wall. I inched as closely as possible to faded drywall, dodging plastic tubs. Head bent, I nibbled the same spot on my lip, over and deeper.

  “Darcy.”

  I turned my head, but didn’t meet his eyes.

  “Come here.”

  Dream words, but I felt if I touched him now, I might splinter into pieces. The room was already too full of them.

  He sighed and crossed his arms. “Right. Okay. Let me just...” He ducked in and out of the bathroom. “I saw the fixtures you need replacing. Piece of cake. Should take less than twenty minutes.”

  “Thank you. I really—”

  “I want to help.” He maneuvered into my scrap of space. “I want to do stuff for you, so you have more time for the things you’re amazing at.”

  “Asher, it will help. A lot.” I stared at both our shoes. “I’m sorry I’m being weird.” I dropped my mouth into another exhale, risking all the breaking by burrowing into his arms, the soft weave of his shirt against my cheek. “It’s just...it’s more than not being used to having you here.”

  “Tell me,” he said, circling his hand over my back.

  I looked into his face, the sharp, rugged features whittled into oak—strikingly real. Present, too, not a thousand daydreams away. “I’ve been living out not only high school with my nose in a book, but my whole life. While Marisol and other girls were dating and going to dances, I was reading about them.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t want to do that anymore. I’m here for real life. But even the first day I met you, I was speaking from a story.”

  “I saw you.”

  “I still don’t get how. I’d made myself invisible.”

  “I still saw you. And saw you some more. Then...” He pulled me closer. “And then, everything.”

  My stomach instantly fluttered.

  “You,” he said, “are so pretty. But when we’re at Yellow Feather, and I’m staring at you from across the room, and you’re bent over some novel, you’re beautiful.”

  A heated exhale was my only available response.

  “I watched you almost every day.” He smiled. “Watched you tuck hair behind your ear and fall in love with words. And you’re more than pretty. You’re like all the places I want to fly to.”

  Oh, I wanted to kiss him senseless, but my head wouldn’t stop rattling, spinning. “God, Asher, you...but I’m—”

  “You’re what?”

  “That real me I told you about? It’s a mess. I’m a mess.” My hand tipped to the hoard. “It’s not just me you’re getting. I come with added prizes no one wants to win.”

  “Cool. ’Cause I’m a mess, too.” He sank into one of our surprisingly empty dining chairs. He rolled his left pant leg up to his knee, and I sucked in a sharp breath. Toothy gashes tore his flesh from shin to ankle, still pink with new skin clawing its way to the surface. Straight over his knee, a surgeon had left a long incision after rebuilding Asher to walk again. With time, the wounds might heal more, but they would never disappear. I dropped to the carpet and gently traced each scar, swollen with memory and taunting dreams—all courtesy of one spring evening when he should’ve stayed home.

  He took my hand, introducing me to the gash across his forehead, jagged like railroad tracks. “Messy. When I take you to my house, you’ll see all my meds. The bottles cover half my nightstand.” He squeezed the hand he held tightly. “Then there’s migraines and mood swings. I can’t run with you on the boardwalk or even share a piece of chocolate cake with you.”

  “I don’t care. You lived.”

  “I lived, and I’m here. But when I wear shorts and people stare, or we have to stay in or I say something harsh because my head’s a wreck—is that too much for you? Is my mess too much?”

  “Never.”

  “Yours isn’t too much for me, either.”

  I rested my cheek on his lap, shutting my eyes.

  “I did some thinking the past few days, too,” he added. “I’m not gonna blame myself for the accident anymore. For not staying home. I wasn’t supposed to go to Annapolis.”

  “But what about your dream? The Marines and fighter jets?”

  “I like to think of it this way now—if I’d been in uniform, in Maryland, I wouldn’t have walked into a certain bookstore. If I was sitting in a classroom in Annapolis, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you.” There was a short pause before he continued. “You’re part of a different dream.”

  I smiled, nodding over the blue denim.

  “That’s where I was wrong before. We can’t get stuck on one goal and plan it to the letter. Life isn’t to-the-letter predictable. It’s messy, like us, and it changes. So our dreams can change, too.”

  His hands bent under my shoulders, lifting. He set me on his unscarred leg and secured his arms around me. “Never forget. I saw you, Darcy Wells,” he said, his lips hovering just over my mouth.

  “I saw you, too.” I erased the infinitesimal distance.

  Asher was mine. I took him in, loving him into memory. I explored smooth planes of skin and bone, an atlas full of peninsulas and labor-sculpted valleys and muscle-wrapped hills. The sun-touched bit of chest peeking through his shirt. His sandpaper throat, smelling today of cedar and oranges. I kissed him there, let him trail his lips over the golden chains around my neck. But I didn’t speak any words for long minutes. I didn’t need any.

  * * *

  “She’s home,” I told Asher a short time later. We were snacking on microwave popcorn in the kitchen. The counter barely held enough room for the bowl and our two lemon seltzer waters.

  My mother stopped cold in the entryway. Still in work clothes—skinny black pants and a pink cardigan—she held two grocery bags in her arms and a dumbfounded look on her face. She eyed Asher, then speared her attention to me. “You have...company.”

  I swung around the island, passing stacks of plates reaching nearly to my neck, and took the bags I feared she was seconds from dropping. “I do.” I set them down and resumed my place next to Asher.

  Load lifted, my mother flitted herself—eyes, feet, hands—around pods of mismatched items and began righting them. Nervous fingers pushed CD cases into rows. Papers were gathered into hasty stacks. She even grabbed an extra-large men’s sweater, folding it neatly, laying it on top of a random tub. Was she actually trying to tidy up?

  I lobbed a quick glance at Asher, my expression split between helplessness and shock. “Mom.”

  Like an industrious bee, she widened her reach to pick up clocks and cups and frames. She put them down again. Picked up more.

  “Mom.”

  Andrea Wells finally turned, but before I could manufacture any useful words, Asher stepped past me and walked up to her. “Ms. Wells.”

  Was she trying to place him? Had she noticed him at the play? My mother’s face was long and vacant, full of confusion. She took his outstretched hand.

  “I’m Asher Fleet.”

  She looked at me when I joined them. “And he’s...”

  “Um, Asher went to Jefferson. He’s a fr—”

  “I’m Darcy’s boyfriend.” Asher’s declaration held enough power to raze the entire building. But I absorbed all the force, suddenly too hot, too piqued, too...too.

  “I see,” my mother said.

  Asher flashed an amiable smile. “I really have to get going, though. It was nice meeting you.” Then, to me, “Walk me out?” He gently took my arm and steered me out onto the landing, into the rising chill of a November afternoon. “No turning back now, huh?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to.” I studied the closed door for a beat. “But that was just the preview.”

  “Talk about intense. I hate leaving you, but we both know you need to get right with her on your own.” He b
rushed hair from my eyes. “I’ll be back later. Our dinner reservation is for seven-thirty, and those hostesses tend to get pissy when you skip out on tables. Especially with prime ocean views.”

  “We wouldn’t want to aggravate any restaurant staff,” I said gravely.

  “Never. And no doubt Marisol will want to tell you exactly what to wear down to the thread. You’re gonna need time for that.”

  “She already knows, and I’m surprised she hasn’t texted me a mood board by now.”

  Then, silence. Enough for both of us to worry ourselves over and under the reason for it. Enough for him to close the distance and kiss me softly.

  “What you said. To my mom.”

  “Does that term work for you? Now?” he asked.

  Boyfriend. “Right now.”

  His soft chuckle. “Thought that was the part that needed to happen next.”

  Thirty-One

  Real

  “...but truth is best, and I want to tell you only what really happened.”

  —J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

  I watched my mother work and worry around her terrible collection. I actually didn’t blame her. Hadn’t I brought more than just a boy into our home? “Mom,” I said for the second time. Third?

  Her eyes landed everywhere but on me. “A boyfriend. How long have you been seeing him? This Asher,” she said softly, like she was testing the word on her tongue.

  “Not long.” But also for days and months, in every thought I’d had.

  She held up the yellow legal pad; all my past and current eBay products were listed. “I was just beginning to get used to the makeup and your little business venture. And now... Darcy, I can’t believe you brought someone inside.”

  Now or never. “Having friends and family over is what people do. This is my home, too. And I’m not going to hide it anymore. I’m going to start inviting people over. Bryn and Jase and Alyssa and anyone else I want.”

  She switched to unpacking milk and bread and cereal, toying with her kitchen hoard with hands that couldn’t seem to move fast enough. She spun her own whirlwind, caught herself up in the center and breathed—wild and frantic. “But you let him see this.”

  “Because it’s my life.” I pressed in like the walls. “And I’m not going to hide it from him.”

  A low noise hummed in her throat. She dived her hands into the other bag, grimacing. “I can’t believe it.” She held up a plastic jar. “I’m so stupid.”

  “What?”

  “I swore I was picking up creamy peanut butter, but I got chunky by mistake.”

  Which she hated, along with grape jelly. Which every female in my family despised. If there was a Wells chunky peanut butter and grape-flavored anything hating gene out there, we all carried it. “Mom, please.”

  “It’s chunky.”

  “You can exchange the peanut butter.”

  She slid the jar across the counter until it banged against the backsplash. “You let Asher inside.”

  “Should I have kept him outside forever? My own boyfriend?”

  Caught and captured, she had to turn away. “I know. I know. And I don’t want to be this way.”

  My head throbbed. I pushed fingers into one temple and thought of Asher. “I don’t want you to be this way, either. But if you need to choose buying, I have to make choices, too.”

  Figurines, cloth napkins, salt and pepper shakers. She put her hands on everything again. “But—”

  “I can’t live here, with you, and hide my life anymore.” I grabbed my tote again. “And that includes books.” I pulled out a copy of Jane Eyre and managed to find a place on the coffee table for it. “If you felt you could store things in my space, then I should be able to read a book in the living room if I want. Our space. Or keep a few in places other than my room.” I drew out two more novels, stacking them on the counter. “I’m sorry you don’t want to read anymore, but I do.” The last one in my tote was Peter Pan. I would never just leave it on the counter, but I held it up for emphasis.

  The next moment opened like a snarly toothed mouth, so wide it devoured the room, hoard and all. My mother stared at me like I’d winked into a ghost. “Where did you get that?”

  A film of damp panic coated my skin as I realized I wasn’t the ghost—Peter Pan was. I gripped the cover, overwhelmed by memories.

  Things I hate: Grape soda. Endings. Beginnings. Peeling nail polish. Beach sand. Grape-flavored anything.

  Grape. My mother hated grape everything, and so did I. Cran-Grape, eww, I’d said to Marisol and juice boxes with the twins.

  My mother’s life was a constant wreck, but she never let her pale pink manicure chip. Peeling nail polish. The room closed in, ivory walls compacting again.

  The beach, seaweed like mermaid hair, sandcastles. My eyes flew to the ocean-themed bracelet on my wrist. They beamed onto the sand dollar charm and then looked backward, over years and years, to when my mother would scrub sand off her feet in the chilly, seaside shower. She wouldn’t tolerate even a few grains between her toes before getting in the car.

  “Where?” Mom said again. “That cover with the silhouette was a limited edition and only sold in England twenty years ago.” She took it from me and flipped open the pages, jerking back when she saw the scribbled ink, like the book had caught fire. “This was a gift. Where did you get it?”

  “It’s you,” I whispered. The thoughts and poems. The truths and hurts and wisdom. “It was in the used books rack at Yellow Feather. You’re the one who wrote in it.”

  Tears leaked from my mother’s eyes. She inhaled sharply, hands over her heart. “When I had to get rid of my books—your books now—your grandmother helped me pack a few boxes.” She pointed with a trembling finger. “But that one was supposed to go in the trash. The trash, Darcy. I was done with it.” Her next words, so small. “Done with the girl in that book. The one who had loved your father. My own Peter who could never grow up.”

  “But...how...?”

  “Your grandmother must’ve assumed I’d thrown it out by mistake. She probably took it from the trash and packed it in a donation box. That day, I was so distraught, she had to pick you up from school. I remember like it was yesterday. She stopped by Goodwill on the way with a couple of the boxes.”

  I remembered, too. The day I came home with my pink backpack and found her still packing up volumes. I’d begged her to keep them, and those books still lined my bedroom walls today.

  She stepped forward. “I can’t believe, after all these years, my Peter Pan somehow got into your hands.”

  I clutched the volume to my chest. “I needed it. I needed these words so much. They found me.”

  “Oh, Darcy.”

  “This girl in here. This girl was you. Is you.”

  My mother nodded.

  Then the flames consumed me. “The question isn’t where I got this book or how it found me. That’s not my question.”

  “What? Darcy—”

  “No. Where is the poet who wrote about love in a way that taught me some real truths about it?” One finger to her chest. “You taught me how to cover up the hard things. Oh, I learned how to treat people well, how to be loyal, how to work and overcome and survive, but I learned most of that from books. Stories taught me how to be a friend and a student. How to love and how I wanted to be loved back. And I even learned it from this book.”

  Andrea Wells had braced her arms around her body, like she was trying to hold herself together. I’d broken her, sliced her into shards, but I couldn’t stop. I flipped through the pages. “Where is this woman, Mom? Where’s the woman who hurt and felt something, who was honest with herself about the pain? Where’s the poet and list-maker I found in here? The one who gave me advice and got me through hard conversations? Where is this mother? Because this mother, this woman, is someone I want to know.” I shook now, whimpering. “She’s someone I need now. I always have.”

  Her eyes creaked open.

  “Where is she?” I demanded. “The moth
er in this book?”

  “She’s gone. The poems and dreams are gone.” My mother picked up another useless item. “This is all that’s left of her.”

  “That’s not true. You think it is, but it’s not.” I opened Peter Pan to a random page, filled with her scribbles. “The man you wrote about in here—my father—he’s not worth your hoard. No one is.”

  Her hands moved wildly, settling over her ears as her body swayed.

  But she was hearing me. I knew I was unlocking doors that had been shut too tightly for too long. The book in my hands had keyed hope and change. “You’re still this beautiful writer,” I insisted. “You’re still the reader who loved stories. Deep down, you’re a mother full of words I need to hear.”

  “No, I’m not. I can’t be. I tried and failed.”

  “You can start again. You can clean up everything. The mess around us, and the mess inside, too.”

  Rage swept her features. “Impossible.”

  I no longer believed in that word. “The man you loved is gone, but you’re still here. You don’t have to shop and collect things and hoard for him. It won’t bring him back.”

  The rage exploded. “I didn’t create this to bring him back!” She flung her arms wide. “This is not because your father left me. When David never came home, the grief shattered me. But that’s not the reason for the way our home is. The way I am.”

  I grappled for air. “Then why? Because he left me? His baby?”

  “No, Darcy. Because I left you.”

  Thirty-Two

  A Long Time Ago

  I broke my tooth on a shard of bone

  and stepped into a mud puddle

  in new, white shoes.

  A long time ago I said a thing

  and couldn’t put it back.

  I let the kiss end and the car start,

  five seconds too soon, too late.

  I unlatched the door of a metal cage

  a long time ago.

  Too late, too soon to grasp the yellow, battered wing,

  the feet, the words, the heart

  before they flew out the cracked open window

  of you and me.

  It was a long time ago—five years or