“Are you working on a house now?” I asked him as I started slipping the latest magazine issues into their plastic covers.
“Starting a new job today, actually. Painting a screened-in porch for someone who knew my dad back in the day. You know, my dad grew up in Foxfield,” Lenny said with a certain pride.
“But you didn’t?”
“Nah, I was born and raised in New Hampshire. I ended up here by, well, jeez, how did I end up here?” He cupped his hand around his chin and thought. “Lots of moves over the last twenty years, I guess, and I just kept going south, and south, then west.” He dropped his hand from his face and shrugged. “Anyway, I’ve been here for years now. It’s a good place to be. I’m staying put.”
And then he switched into an overly animated voice to say, “Did I mention I have a business here?” He opened the newsletter again and put on a small show, gesturing at the Giant Painting Co. advertisement, displaying it in front of him at all angles like someone on an infomercial. But he couldn’t hold a straight face and broke into laughter as he tried to get out the words, “Customer service representatives standing by now.”
I had to laugh, too. He was way too old—at least in his forties—and way too large to be acting the way he was, which was like a total goofball.
“All righty then, back to work,” he said after finishing his performance and rolling the Biweekly into a small tube to shove in his back pocket. “There’s some oat bran granola bars down in the kitchen if you’re hungry. They’re a lot better than the last ones,” he said as he walked back to the circulation desk to help patrons.
Lenny loved to invent his own recipes and baked constantly, bringing all his creations to the library for us to try. But Lenny’s baked goods looked and tasted unlike any other baked goods I had seen before in my life. So far, in just the week I’d been trying them, they were hit-or-miss, a pretty even fifty-fifty split.
I finished with the magazines and straightened the stack of new Biweekly newspapers. Then I flipped one open to take another look at Lenny’s ad. I thought of ways I would draw a decorative border around the edges, or a small design in just one corner, maybe, to spruce it up a bit if I were Lenny. I thought of the set of archival-quality felt-tip markers my mom had just given me for my thirteenth birthday. They would be perfect for this.
I closed the newsletter and my eyes landed on a front-page headline: New Mayor Addresses Spending Cuts. And in smaller print beneath it: Sanitation, Police Department, Library, Fireworks.
I looked around me, at the age-warped wooden window sashes, the threadbare carpet in one room and the pocked floor tile in another. Paint was peeling off the baseboard molding, and the shelving and desk furniture looked older than dirt. I didn’t see how it would be possible to cut even a handful of nickels from the library funding—the place was already falling apart.
Of course, if it fell apart entirely, like, tomorrow, I wouldn’t have to volunteer here anymore and I’d get my summer back.
One could hope.
Black Hat Guy
The next day Black Hat Guy came into the library, walking even faster than usual, and made a beeline right for his chair. He plugged his charger in immediately, sat down, and began to type furiously on his phone. His hat was pulled low, so with his head tilted down the way it was, it looked like he didn’t have any eyes. He looked like a Muppet. (The Muppet Show was another favorite from my mom’s childhood. It was a half-hour evening show with puppetlike characters that was very funny, a little weird, and definitely not on regular TV anymore.)
His backpack sat on the floor by his feet. It was overstuffed with a grocery bag, a folded-up newspaper, and a used coffee cup sticking out of the top. I had been headed over to dust the shelves behind his chair before he came in, but decided to wait now that he was there, busy with his phone, the wire attaching him to the wall like an anchor.
I looked at the clock: 4:03.
On schedule, as usual.
It had to be almost ninety degrees outside, but he still had that winter hat on, the heavy jeans, and that thick sweatshirt. And he wasn’t even sweating. It was pretty impressive, actually.
Even though Black Hat Guy was a daily visitor to the library, I’d never seen him check anything out. He seemed to use the library only for Wi-Fi, charging power, and the bathrooms. Sometimes he read the newspaper, but most of his reading was done on his phone.
One of the quotes Black Hat Guy sat on every day when he came in was Not all those who wander are lost. This seemed fitting for Black Hat Guy. He looked like he might be a wanderer, like someone who lived off what he could carry on his back, forging his own way. Except Black Hat Guy didn’t look like a happy wanderer. He looked agitated, and confused, and very alone. He rarely spoke to anyone, never smiled, and hardly ever even looked up. It seemed like a special talent, actually, the way he moved around quickly and carefully while facing the ground. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it.
And then I looked at him in his chair again and saw that his body blocked portions of quotes, so the beginning of one quote lined up with the ending of another. When I read straight across from his left shoulder to his right, skipping over all the words covered by his body, it said, Call me . . . lost.
Trina
Trina’s voice was a mixture of Disney-level sweetness and barbed wire. It soared over the tinkly jingle sound the bells made when the front door opened.
“OMG, air-conditioning! Thank God!”
Trina and her two best friends entered the library the same way they entered the school cafeteria or the gym on Dance Fridays. It never occurred to them that everyone else in the world might not be interested in the thoughts they were having at that moment. And they didn’t seem to have a clue about libraries being quiet places, either. Several patrons looked up at the sound of their chatter. Not Black Hat Guy. He was asleep and didn’t budge.
“It feels sooo good in here,” said Izzy, Trina’s shadow.
My reflexes kicked in like a racehorse at the starting gate—all I wanted to do was run away, fast and far, but my knees had a different idea and turned to jelly. My gut felt loose, and a rash of heat bloomed on my cheeks.
I wanted to disappear.
Today was Wednesday, June 28.
It had been five weeks.
It had been thirty-five mornings of waking up with the taste of regret and shame on my tongue. Wednesday, May 24, was the day I was called to the principal’s office, the day the entire school was first shocked and then entertained by the fact that it was me, quiet, studious Jamie Bunn, who was in serious trouble. I had had thirty-five days so far to recover, but all it took was the sight of Trina for it all to come rushing back like a horrific recurring nightmare. I felt it all again—the dizziness walking down the school hallways, the nausea sitting in classes, the public humiliation following me every step I took for the last few weeks of school.
“Oh my gosh, it smells so booky,” Trina said, sending her friends into an eruption of giggles.
That was Trina. Trina of the perfectly French-braided blond hair. Trina of the newest, most fashionable clothes no matter the season. Trina: posse leader, hair flipper, whiter-than-white-teeth smiler, decent track runner, and teacher kisser-upper. But Trina was not a reader. What was she doing here? Did she come just to rub my punishment in my face?
Seeing Trina and her friends made me yearn for Vic. I missed Vic every summer when she disappeared to sleepaway camp for eight weeks, but I missed her more than ever now. I needed her now. Vic wasn’t just my best friend—she was my only friend.
“You only need one friend to watch your poker chips when you run to the ladies’ room,” my mom loved to say. “One friend you can trust is better than a whole gaggle you can’t.”
My mom loved Vic and always had, ever since we met back in kindergarten. Vic was fun and funny and smart and loyal. My mom also said Vic was too emotionally astute for the average kid, and so was I, and that was why we were such a perfect match. She said that before she l
earned I wasn’t quite as astute as she gave me credit for, though.
“Do they even have cookbooks in a library? They’re not, like, regular books,” Trina announced to her friends.
“Let’s just ask someone,” Amanda said.
I tiptoed backward to bury myself deeper in the 800 stacks and crouched down so I could see them but they couldn’t see me. In front of my face was a row of books with the call number 811. Poetry. I was trying to become invisible against a wall of poetry. Some talented writer somewhere could probably get a good poem out of that.
I heard Sonia return to the circulation desk just then. She had been refilling her coffee cup in the staff kitchen downstairs.
“Do you girls need help with something?” she asked in her welcoming voice.
“Yes, please. We need a cookbook,” Amanda started.
“But we don’t know if you have cookbooks here the way a bookstore would, because libraries are different,” Izzy explained.
“We’re having a party and we need to make the food,” Trina added, making full eye contact, her voice sweet like syrup, the overpriced kind in the really fancy bottle.
“Libraries do carry cookbooks. We have a comprehensive collection, in fact. They’re in the 641 section, back and to the right.” Sonia pointed them toward the back of the library.
To the room I was in.
In a small library like ours, 641 and 811 are not so far away from each other. I was trapped.
Trina led her girls around the circ desk toward the nonfiction room, staring in awe at the shelves of periodicals, movies, and books as if she were in a museum of lost artifacts. Her mouth hung open as she took it all in. When her room scan landed on Black Hat Guy, she stopped in her tracks. He was fast asleep in his chair, his mouth open, the white wire stretched from his sweatshirt pocket to the wall outlet like an IV. Trina leaned in to her girls and whispered.
Then laughter. All three of them. That hand-over-the-mouth gesture of trying to look like you’re trying not to laugh.
Black Hat Guy didn’t flinch. But patrons around him did. They knew who the joke was about.
Sonia turned from her station at the noise.
Before she could say anything, Trina grabbed Izzy by the elbow and steered her in front, pushing her toward the 600s. They moved quickly then, in a cluster, like single cells clumped together in a glob, which we just learned about in science a few months ago. And then they were only two aisles away.
“Oh my God. Here they are!” Izzy said, all surprise and wonder still that a library had cookbooks. If Vic were here, we’d be rolling our eyes at each other.
“Look how many,” Trina said.
“Well, let’s just start,” Amanda urged. “I have to be home by five to babysit.”
“Oh my God, all you do is babysit,” Izzy complained.
“Yeah, and I get paid, so it’s awesome,” Amanda defended herself.
“So let’s just each pull a bunch out and flip through them until we find what we want.” Trina’s direction.
“Okay,” Amanda agreed.
“But then how do we put them all back? Aren’t they, like, in order?” Izzy wanted to know.
“Of course they’re in order.” Trina had quickly assumed the position of library expert for her group. “But they have people for that.”
“Oh,” Izzy said. “Okay then, I want all these.” And I heard at least six different zip-slip sounds of a snugly shelved book being pulled out of the stacks.
“Also, I even know who one of those people is,” Trina offered.
I could see the evil sneer on her face.
“Who?” Izzy asked.
“You know who,” Amanda reminded her.
“Who?” Izzy demanded, entirely clueless.
“My brother’s secret admirer, that’s who,” Trina answered.
“But it’s not a secret anymore,” Amanda added.
My chest tightened.
“Oh my God! Her. I totally forgot!” Izzy admitted, then laughed. “I forgot she has to work it off here.”
I could picture Izzy’s mean smile, even though I couldn’t see her face from where I was hiding. I’d seen it before.
“Yup.” Trina’s voice was all gossip and delight. “So take out as many books as you want. I bet she’s the one who’ll have to put them all back, anyway.”
Then laughter.
The same laughter they shared over Black Hat Guy, except now it was about me.
It occurred to me then why Black Hat Guy might keep his eyes on the ground all the time. Maybe he did it so he wouldn’t have to see any of the bad things around him. Maybe he did it so he wouldn’t have to face anything mean or ugly coming his way.
It was beginning to make a lot of sense to me.
Sonia
“I have a stack of children’s books that need to be shelved. You want to work on that, Jamie?” Sonia asked when I arrived the next morning. I was hot and sweaty from the walk, even though it took less than ten minutes to get from my house to the library on foot.
“Sure. They’re all picture books?” I asked. I had shelved a lot of picture books so far. Sonia saved them for me so there was always a stack waiting whether I arrived right at the ten o’clock opening or much later in the afternoon. Beverly told me I could choose my hours each day, that as long as I had fifteen by the end of the week, I was meeting my requirement. So I mixed it up.
“Mostly picture books, maybe some board books, I think. Beverly already checked them in.” Sonia pointed me toward the pile on the cart behind her. It was a big pile. “But wipe the funky ones down first, please, with these.” She pulled a container of antibacterial wipes out from under the counter and handed it to me.
I opened the container and the mixed scent of lemon and bleach hit me so hard my eyes watered. “You don’t mess around, Sonia. This is some strong stuff,” I said, pulling one wipe out of the small opening.
“Clean is good,” she replied. “I like clean.”
The first two books in the pile were brand-new, so I skipped them, but the next three had a smeared cloudy film all over their plastic covers. It came off right away with the wipes, though. I didn’t even have to rub hard. The next book, a board book, was a different story.
“Uh, Sonia.” I held it out in front of me with just two fingers, trying to touch it as little as possible. “There is no wet wipe in the world that can fix this one.”
When Sonia looked at the book hanging from my fingertips, her mouth opened, her eyes softened, and her hand flew to her heart like a magnet to metal. “I haven’t seen that book in so long!” she gushed.
I looked at the book again. The cover was stained and sticky, the corners were frayed, and the spine had a two-inch tear so the pages didn’t line up evenly anymore.
Sonia took it from my hand and gazed at it lovingly. “This was my first book! I read it every day for weeks.”
“It looks like a lot of other people read it, too,” I said. “Or used it as a plate, or a Frisbee, or a sandbox toy.”
“Hmm,” Sonia said. “It does look pretty awful.” She paused for a moment and then said, “But this book is so special to me.”
“Really? Colors and Shapes?” I asked, doubt in my voice.
“Really.” And then she explained, “I moved to Foxfield from Puerto Rico when I was six years old, and I didn’t know a word of English. I spent my entire summer in this library, reading baby books over and over to learn English, and Colors and Shapes was the very first one I found and the very first one I mastered. This is literally the copy my little six-year-old hands held.”
“You taught yourself English with baby books?”
“The children’s room was like a second home to me.” Sonia nodded. “And the Dewey decimal system was a language I understood before I understood English. I knew if I pulled a book off a shelf with a 567.9 on the spine it would be a dinosaur book, and if I grabbed one with a 398.2 it would be a fairy tale or folktale.”
I smiled at the thought of l
ittle Sonia, sitting on the floor in a patch of sun with her legs crisscross applesauce, a stack of books like a friend at her side.
“So, what should we do with this, then? It’s too damaged to go back on the shelf, right?” I asked.
“Right,” Sonia agreed. “I’ll put it in the discard stack downstairs and order a replacement.”
“And then you should take it home, to keep. I can get some of the stains off for you, I think,” I told her.
“Thank you, Jamie,” Sonia said. “I’d love that.”
I wheeled my cart of books and the wet wipes into the children’s room to work, since the front desk was getting busy with patron traffic.
I placed Sonia’s book to the side while I worked on cleaning and drying the others. Then I organized them in alphabetical order on the cart so they would be easier to shelve.
I was almost finished with the last of the Ws when the cover of a book caught my eye. On it, a red fox was leaping after two terrified rabbits, and the title was printed like a banner in bright colors across the middle of the cover. It immediately made me think of my Foxfield Elementary School yearbook.
Every spring there was a contest to design the cover of that year’s K−5 yearbook. Any fifth grader could enter a drawing into the contest. A committee of teachers and PTA members narrowed the entries down to three, and then all the fifth graders got to vote for the winner. The voting and the winning announcement all happened on the same day.
“You better enter,” Vic told me back in fifth grade once the announcement was made to submit entries. “I’ll kill you if you don’t enter.”
“You won’t kill me,” I said back.
“Fine, I won’t,” she admitted, “but I will steal the corn chips out of your lunch every day, and Aunt Julie’s special brownies, when you have them.”
“You already do that.” I poked her.
“Then I’ll do it even more.” Vic poked me back.
“She hasn’t made those in a while.” Aunt Julie’s brownies were heaven—she put chocolate chips in them and on top of them, with rainbow sprinkles, too, which gave them the perfect crunch.
A Kind of Paradise Page 3
