Bookish and the Beast

by Ashley Poston

  The Star Brigade.

  In The Night Abyss.

  The Last Carmindor.

  Starfield Forever.

  My heart thrums in my throat. I know the names, I know the plots, I know the orders—all of the books in the extended universe of Starfield. And on the shelf next to them, Star Wars, and Star Trek, and more obscure alternate-universe series, but the biggest collection is Starfield. Although the show only ran for fifty-four episodes, the extended universe of books lasted decades. My childhood was filled with these old illustrated covers; my fondest memories sit between these pages.

  Because, you see, my mom loved books and Dad still loves books, and so I do, too.

  But there is so much more in those words than just loving books. I love the smell of them. I love the way their bindings look pressed together on a shelf. I love the feel of pages buzzing through my fingers. I love big books and small books. I love words and how they’re strung together, and most of all, I love the stories. I love how books are not really just books at all, but doorways.

  They are portals into places I’ve never been and people I’ll never be, and in them I have lived a thousand lives and seen a thousand different worlds. In them I can be a princess or a knight of valor or a villain—I can be coveted, I can conquer on evils, I can defeat Dark Lords and destroy the One Ring and unite a Federation on the brink of collapse. In them I’m not simple, going-nowhere, unable-to-write-a-stupid-college-essay Rosie Thorne.

  And I love, deep down, that the best memories I have of my mother are those of her reading to me, her voice soft and sweet. The memory is like a bright flare that I never want to go out, and I’m afraid if I stop reading, her voice will fade. I refuse to love anything more than books and stories and Starfield.

  I refuse to let my mom go.

  And here—here in this strange, dark library…

  I pull the closest volume down off the shelf.

  It’s well-worn, the binding cracked and the pages yellowed and dog-eared, loved almost beyond recognition. There’s a coffee stain on the top left corner, and as I slowly flip through the pages, they smell like old enchanted libraries and summer reads.

  STARFIELD, the title reads in big, blocky letters, and then underneath, The Starless Throne.

  The cover is one of those old early ’90s covers—reminiscent of illustrated paperback fantasies. General Sond’s long blond hair is tossed in the wind as he looks out onto an exploding daystar, Carmindor on the other side, gazing back with this tragic look in his eyes. It was the first book that detailed the history of the general and the prince. It was the story behind those three brief episodes in the TV series. It gave flesh to an otherwise forgotten character in the great wide cosmos of Starfield.

  My fingers shake as I trace over the author’s name—Sophie Jenkins.

  And I smile, because this was the book my mom loved the best. It even looks like her copy, the spine broken and the pages read, but it can’t be hers. Hers is gone.

  Without thinking, I press the book tightly to my chest.

  I want to dive into the stories, I want to memorize their plots, I want to venture into the abyss of their pages and get lost in the Federation of stars. I want to spend all night reading it, studying her words, trying to find my mother in each vowel and syllable, memorizing the legacy she left behind.

  I want to—

  The ceiling creaks.

  I freeze.

  It sounds like…footsteps.

  There’s someone in the house.

  Oh—oh no. This does not end well for most—if not all—unsuspecting victims that venture into an abandoned building. I need to get out of here as fast and quietly as possible. Maybe Freddy Krueger doesn’t know I’m here yet.

  One can only hope.

  I slide one foot back along the wooden floor, and then another, quietly making my retreat out of the library. The footsteps leave to the right, out of whatever room is above me. I let out a breath of relief—until I realize, with a bolt of horror, the footsteps seemed to disappear toward the stairs.

  Oh, Noxballs.

  I’m dead.

  All I wanted to do was catch a dog, and I ended up in a murder-house about to get murdered by a murderer.

  There is a shadow at the base of the stairs, tall and broad and man-shaped. I feel my knees begin to give with fright. My heart slams into my chest. I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to—

  Get a grip.

  But even in the dark, his eyes catch the light of the moon that reflects off the pool in the backyard.

  “What are you doing here?” the shadow’s voice rumbles, soft and angry.

  I swallow the bile rising in my throat.

  What do we say to the god of death?

  Not today, sucker.

  I spin on my heel toward a glass door that’s ajar and make a run for it. The dog, wherever the dog is, can fend for herself. I scramble out into the backyard to where the pool and some sort of garden is.

  “Wait—stop!”

  A hand fastens around my arm. My reflexes kick in. I spin around, bringing my elbow up, and nail the murderer straight in the face. As I do, the floodlights pop on. And that’s when I see him—really see him. Blond hair, blue eyes, a chiseled jaw, and a scar on the bottom left side of his lip. He stumbles back with a cry of pain.

  Oh my God—oh my God, it’s Vance—it’s Vance Reigns! It’s—he is—oh my Go—

  My heels teeter off the edge of the pool. I pinwheel my arms back, and finally realize oh, I still have the book before I fall backward into the water, taking the priceless edition of STARFIELD with me.

  SHE ALMOST BROKE MY BLOODY NOSE!

  The girl bursts through the surface of the water with a gasp, swiping the chlorine from her eyes, before she settles her attention on me again. Because yes, yes, she did bloody well recognize me. “Y-y-you…”

  A book floats up beside her, and I massage the bridge of my nose, trying to keep my feelings under control. My stupid, sod-ding, fecking luck. I can’t even hide in the middle of nowhere.

  I grind out, for the umpteenth time, “What are you doing here?”

  She scrambles toward the edge of the pool and grabs onto it, staring at me from between bangs plastered to her forehead, eye makeup melting around her eyes like candle wax. Her teeth chatter loudly. “I—I w-w-was—”

  “Come to stare? Take a picture? Tweet it to your mates? Oh, you found the elusive Vance Reigns! Congrats!”

  Her eyes widen. “What? N-n-no—”

  “Gonna go sell some photos to TMZ, are you? Try to get rich off my agony?”

  “I w-was looking fo-for—”

  “Sod off—”

  “—a dog,” she finishes.

  From the other side of the pool, there is a woof. Sansa sits at the edge and wags her tail happily. I purse my lips, trying not to look too grateful that she returned. I’ll give her a good belly scritch later.

  And I will never let her off her lead again.

  The girl begins to say something more when the back door opens to Elias, sweating profusely through his button-down shirt. He went out to try to find Sansa when she escaped, while I waited behind to see if she’d come back. He begins to say something when his gaze drifts to our intruder. “Why is…there a young woman in our pool?”

  The girl waves, her teeth chattering and her lips beginning to turn blue. “H-h-hey.”

  * * *

  —

  “DON’T FRET, I’m sure the book wasn’t that important,” Elias says as he brings the girl a hot cup of tea. She’s sitting on the edge of the couch with a towel thrown over her shoulders, dripping all over the expensive beige rug. Elias made her call her father, who is sitting quite stiffly beside her, a silver-haired man who can’t be any older than Elias himself. He came straight from his job, apparently, though I’m not c
ertain what kind of job lets a bloke wear a rainbow bow tie and red suspenders.

  Every now and again, when the girl thinks I’m not looking, she’ll cut her eyes back at me sitting on the piano bench in the corner of the room. My arms are folded over my chest, finger tapping on my biceps.

  I don’t believe for a second she came into this house searching after a random stranger’s dog. What kind of person does that?

  None that I know.

  Well, except Darien. Probably. If the dog wore a Starfield costume or something.

  The girl accepts the cup of tea gratefully as her father says, “Really, I’m sure we can pay for the book—”

  Elias begins to wave him off when his phone rings. He excuses himself for a moment as he fishes it out of his back pocket, and answers. “Ah! Thank you for calling on such late notice. We’ve had—an incident,” he says as he quickly moves into the library and closes the door behind him.

  She wilts a little beside her father. He drums his fingers on his knees nervously, and then he stands and says, “May I use your bathroom?”

  “Second door to the left,” I say, pointing down the hall toward the foyer, and he leaves.

  When we’re alone, the girl takes a tentative sip of tea and wrinkles her nose. Elias makes terrible tea, which she seems to realize because she sets it down gently on the coffee table and pulls the towel tighter around her shoulders. There’s a birthmark on the side of her neck, but I can barely see it between the strands of her mousy brown hair. If she had a wire on her to record our conversations, it would’ve been ruined in the pool, but a video camera could easily take a swim. She could be hiding it anywhere on her person—in her jeans pocket, her shoe, her…

  I glance at her chest, and quickly look away.

  She doesn’t strike me as the type.

  “I’m sorry if this sounds weird,” she says then, startling me from my thoughts, “but have we met before?”

  Oh, that’s charming.

  “You’ve probably seen me before,” I reply tightly.

  “No, I mean—”

  “Why’d you come in here?” I interrupt. “You saw the door was open, boxes in the foyer, surely you could guess the situation.”

  “I…just did,” she replies, which isn’t a good reply at all. “I was looking for your dog. She came barreling into the road, so I stopped to try to get her. I thought she was lost or something.”

  “And when she went into this house?”

  She opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. She hesitantly glances down the hallway toward the bathroom, and finally settles on “…I don’t know.”

  I run my fingers through my hair aggravatedly. “I don’t see what you people bloody want from me.”

  “Nothing,” she says, surprised. “In fact, I really like—”

  The door to the library opens and Elias steps out again, thumping his cell phone against his chest. He has a drawn look across his face that is never a good tell. About the same time, her father comes back from the bathroom saying, “That is a beautiful painting. Where did you get…” He trails off, though, when he sees the grim look on Elias’s face.

  Elias presses his lips together and says, as if he’s delivering fatal news, “So, that book. It turns out it was, well…”

  “A first-edition Starfield original,” the girl fills in glumly. “I know.”

  Her father balks. “You must be joking. The only book in the Starfield-verse that has that kind of collector’s tag is…” But then he trails off and, peculiarly, he and his daughter exchange the same look.

  They know something. About the book. Something secret between them.

  Coming in here to look for my dog, my ass.

  Elias hesitates and glances to me, as if I can somehow possibly get him out of whatever he’s about to say. I don’t know books. I have no idea what any of that means. I wrap my arms tighter over my chest and stand from the piano bench. Whatever, I’m going back to my room.

  As I start toward the stairs, he says, “The worst part is, the owner of the house—which is neither of us—might want to press charges for the damages.”

  I freeze at the bottom of the steps and glance over to them on the couch. The girl curls her fingers into the edges of the towel tighter, knuckles turning white.

  Her father clears his throat. “How much are we talking here exactly?”

  “Fifteen hundred,” Elias replies.

  “Oh, dear,” he mumbles.

  His daughter has gone pale, which is already quite a feat seeing as how she looks one shade off from a ghost already. “We…don’t have that.”

  Her father, on the other hand, is already reaching into his tweed jacket. He pulls out a checkbook. “Fifteen hundred?” he asks to clarify. “Does anyone have a pen?”

  “Dad!” the girl hisses.

  He mumbles something to her, and she growls something back, and they stare at each other in a standoff until, finally, he closes his checkbook and she turns back to Elias. Her mouth works as she searches for something to say. And then, unexpectedly, she finds the words. “This is my mistake, not his.”

  “Well, then that leaves us in a conundrum,” Elias replies patiently.

  She agrees. “I’ll work off the debt, then? I’ll do whatever you want—cook, clean, garden. Until I pay you back.”

  “Rosebud, you barely clean your own room,” her own father says, ratting her out.

  She wilts. “I can try?”

  I resist the urge to snort—not because she couldn’t do those things, because obviously I’m not any better—but because she would even offer to do things she quite possibly sucks at. “We don’t need any of those things,” I say instead.

  She wilts so much she almost fades into the couch. “Well, I…”

  “Do you like books?” Elias asks. When I shoot him a look, he refuses to meet my gaze. Don’t encourage her, I want to scream, until I notice that she is no longer wilting.

  In fact, she is positively radiating.

  “More than Carmindor loves the view from the observation deck,” she replies. “More than Picard loves his model starships. More than Darth Vader loves the Dark Side. More than Sond—”

  “We get it,” I interrupt.

  “Well…” Elias tilts his head thoughtfully, glancing from her father back to her again. “We do have that entire library, and it would be nice to fix it up for Na—the owner of the house. I was going to have it be your job, Vance, but because of this recent occurrence it might be nice for you to have some help. In exchange, perhaps we could cover the cost of the book.”

  I stare at Elias, for he has betrayed me far more than I could have predicted. “You’re joking.”

  Because first, I wasn’t going to organize a library. What did he take me for, a maid?

  And second, I certainly wasn’t going to do it with her.

  But she, on the other hand, seems absolutely ecstatic about this turn of events.

  “Really?” She sits up, her eyes wide.

  Her father shakes his head. “You have work after school, Rosie.”

  She winces at that and turns to him. “Well, um, actually…”

  “Never mind.” He sighs and massages the bridge of his nose. “All right. All right—but I do have a few questions and some concerns,” he adds, and his eyes flicker back to me.

  My back stiffens at the insinuation. Honestly, I’m too busy ruining my own life to ruin someone else’s. Elias agrees and asks the girl’s father to walk with him while they discuss the details, probably with the owner of the house. He disappears into the library again with Elias, leaving the girl and me in the living room alone.

  She sits quietly, twirling a lock of wet hair around her finger. What kind of game is she playing? Her father was clearly ready to write a check, so why didn’t she let him? And why does Elias think that her helping me wi
th that stupid library will cover the cost of that book?

  I’m not so self-absorbed as to think that she’s staying because she wants to get close to me—I’m not stupid. The tabloids have been the opposite of kind, having all but set my career on fire. And anyone who comes near me gets the same treatment. My manager said that I should lay low for a while, advised my stepfather to put me somewhere where I can’t get into trouble. Let the rumors die down before the release of Starfield: Resonance—or else my reputation might bleed into the movie.

  And my stepfather’s business.

  But I can’t think of another reason why she would agree to sacrifice her afternoons to come to a library of all places. I clench my teeth and feel a muscle twitch in my jaw.

  I don’t like her.

  After a moment she turns to me and says, “My name is…” but I’m already halfway up the stairs, and gone. I don’t need to know her name. I don’t need to get to know her.

  It’s best if I don’t.

  WHEN DAD AND I FINALLY make it back to the apartment, he tugs his tie loose and heads to the liquor cabinet and the bottle of bourbon at the top. “Well, that was an interesting evening,” he says with a sigh. “And interesting people. Isn’t that boy—?”

  “Vance Reigns,” I reply, dumping my bookbag down at the kitchen table. Even though I finished my calculus homework during lunch today, I still need to start on that essay for my college application, and that English report due next week—my life feels like a never-ending stream of to-do lists.

  “Vance Reigns, Vance Reigns…” Dad mutters, pouring himself a drink. “Doesn’t he play Sond?”

  “Bingo.”

  Though he did seem familiar for moment before I took a splash in the pool, but it’s probably my imagination. He has been trending a lot on social media recently, after all—and never for anything good.

  “Well, it seems you’ll be getting to know him rather well these next few weeks,” Dad says as he grabs the plethora of menus from the counter and slides into a chair opposite of me at the table. “Mr. Rodriguez and I talked it out, and as long as you sign an NDA and don’t, you know, write about your experiences on a very public forum, it should be quite the experience. Since you got fired from the grocery store,” he adds in a deadpan voice.