“Going home to an empty house is how you want to spend the rest of your night?”
“We can always go back to my house and start taking notes on the books we have.”
The longer we’d stayed at the library, the more on edge Ethan seemed. I squinted at him. “You don’t like libraries much, do you?”
Leaning close, he kissed my nose. “We’re not alone here.”
“Shhhhh.” An older man glared at us from a side table.
Ethan’s comment made me tingle all the way to my toes, but I felt we needed at least one more resource since our subject was so unusual. Snickering, I tugged him along behind me as I headed for the elevator. “Come on. We’ll just go up the stack to the periodical room, check it out, and then we’ll leave.”
The stack elevator moved so slowly we could’ve taken the stairs and gotten there faster. It was stuffy and small, holding four people max. I breathed through my nose, taking in as much air as possible as the elevator squeaked and moaned its way up to the eighth floor. Housing old resource material that was rarely used, the stacks felt like a separate world that was cut off from the main library.
The lights popped on the moment we stepped into a room no larger than twenty by twenty. Tall shelving featured bound periodicals that dated back f-o-r-e-v-e-r.
Our shoes slid across the dust on the hard floor. “Guess the eighth floor’s rarely used, huh?” I said in a whisper, not at all sure why I was whispering. No librarians were up here to tell us to keep our voices down. The place was a tomb. The room was so packed that the shelves started two feet out from the elevator, creating the same claustrophobic feeling I’d experienced on the way up.
Ethan pulled the piece of paper with the info we needed from his back pocket. Glancing up, he said, “We need to check out ‘open aisle’, shelf three for the article we’re looking for.”
I started forward, but Ethan quickly wrapped his arm around my waist and walked us around the stack.
I loved being close to him, but I figured we’d find what we were looking for faster if we split up. I started to step away, but he grasped my hand in a tight hold and frowned. “Stay close.”
The florescent lights above us buzzed as I glanced back at him, surprised by the sharpness in his comment. “Um, sure.”
Pointing to a sign taped on a tall bookshelf that sat halfway down the main open aisle—duh—I said, “Here it is,” and quickly squatted to knee-level to find shelf number three. I had to tug several times to pull the extra tall, three-inch black binder out.
When Ethan stepped beside me, but didn’t comment on my battle to free the binder, I looked up, expecting to see amusement on his face. Instead, he was standing with his hand on the edge of a square metal bin sitting three shelves above me. “What are you doing?”
Shoving the bin until it clanked against the shelving’s metal back, he kept his hand on the edge of the shelf. “You were tugging so hard, the bookcase shook. I wanted to make sure the bin didn’t fall.”
My gaze shot to the bin with its sharp edges and pointy corners. I winced, thinking how much that would’ve hurt. “Thanks for paying attention…” I trailed off when a creak behind the bin drew my attention. Through the bookcase’s open back, I saw the bookcase behind it tilting forward, bins and binders tumbling out.
Clutching the binder, I gasped, “Watch out! Another bookshelf’s falling—”
I heard Ethan yelling and my brain said move, but my body was locked in place as a vivid childhood memory—of a towering dark bookcase packed with books leaning toward me—slammed into my mind.
I held onto a lower shelf and stood on my toes, trying to reach a toy my mom had purposefully placed out of my reach on the tall bookcase—my punishment for banging it on the brand new coffee table. When the bookcase began to tilt and books began to shower down around me, I screamed but was so scared I couldn’t move. A man’s voice called my name and I glanced up in time to see a wooden globe bookend slide off the edge of the shelf, heading straight for me.
Pain shot through my back and chest, yanking me back to the present. Ethan laid on top of me. We were pinned to the floor under the weight of two heavy bookcases, the thick binder wedged between us.
I coughed and gasped, trying to recover from having the wind knocked out of me.
“Are you okay?” Ethan grunted.
I tried to inhale. “Can’t breathe.”
He’d put one arm around my head to protect me from the falling periodical binders and his other arm was behind his own head. “Me either,” he croaked, then grunted as he worked to free his arm trapped by the heavy bookcase.
Once his arm was free, he pushed a binder out of the way, then flattened his hands on the floor on either side of me. “As soon as I say, ‘Go’, slide out from under me and get clear of the shelving. Got it?”
I was so lightheaded all I could do was nod.
Setting his jaw, Ethan pressed his shoulders against the shelving at the same time he pushed his hands against the floor. The shelving creaked as Ethan’s improvised push-up lifted it a couple inches off of us. “Now,” he gritted out.
My chest ached, but I slid myself backward along the floor as fast as I could.
The moment my feet were free, Ethan’s arms collapsed, sending him and the heavy metal shelves back to the floor.
“Ethan!”
Scrambling to my feet, I grabbed the top of the bookshelf, then pulled upward, using every muscle in my body.
When the bookcase began to lift, I heard Ethan take a gasp of breath. “Just a little more.”
But the weight of the second shelf was too much. “It’s too heavy I can’t move it any more!”
Ethan grunted and my fingers began to ache as I frantically looked around for something to take some of the weight. Against a far wall, I saw a low stepstool sitting next to a rolling book cart. “I have to put it back down for a sec. I think I can use that stool for leverage.”
As soon as I lowered the shelf down, I ran to get the step stool. Setting it near the lowest part of the shelf, I said, “When I lift, pull the stool under the shelf. Got it?”
“Hurry,” he wheezed.
Grabbing the edge of the shelf again, I lifted it as high as I could, then said, “Now!”
The stool slid, jamming under the metal shelving’s edge.
As some of the weight shifted off my hands, I bent my knees lower and strained harder, lifting the shelf another inch.
Ethan crawled out, sucking in lungfuls of air.
Releasing the shelving, I moved to his side. For a couple of seconds we stared in silence at the two bookcases and the mess on the floor underneath it.
“What happened?” I finally spoke.
Pushing my backpack off his shoulders, Ethan rubbed the back of his neck. He looked at me, concern in his gaze. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Are you?”
“I’m good,” he said and lowered his hand to his side.
A streak of blood was smeared across his palm. “You’re hurt,” I said, turning his shoulder to see.
Something, probably one of the binders, had nicked the back of his neck. “I’m fine,” he said, pushing his collar against the cut to stop the bleeding.
Still reeling, I stared at the mess and exhaled quickly. My back ached a little. “Did you tackle me?”
Grimacing, he stared at the bashed in metal bin poking up through the open backside of the bookshelf, magazines scattered all around it. “Sorry. That bin would’ve fallen on you first if I hadn’t pushed you out of the way. Why didn’t you move? It’s like you were in a trance or something.”
My hand shook as I touched the old scar along my hairline. “I—it was just like…” I met his gaze. “I remember how I got my scar now.” Squinting, I tried to recall the details. “Something similar happened when I was a little girl, except it was a huge wooden bookcase that fell and a bookend came crashing down on me.”
As I spoke, past images flashed in my mind: My dad’s vivid green eyes, w
ide with panic. He’s dashing toward me, yelling, “Nari, look out!” We roll together on the floor as the bookshelf hit the floor with a loud boom. Another scene flashes. He’s dabbing my head wound. I’m trying not to look at the blood on the tissue, because it makes my stomach woozy. Instead, I focus on my dad’s stricken expression. He gently pushes the wound on my forehead together and applies a butterfly bandage, whispering, “I bolted it to the wall. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Ethan gathered me close, pulling me back to the present. Kissing my scar, he murmured, “This shouldn’t have happened.”
I jerked back. His comment was so similar to my dad’s. Not to mention the double coincidence—that both situations involved falling bookcases. “Wha—what’d you just say?”
He pressed his lips together. “I fell asleep while I was studying and dreamed about the rest of your day after school. Except in this dream, a metal bookshelf fell on you when you tugged on a binder. That’s why I’ve been tense since we got to the library. I knew magazines were bound in binders. I didn’t want to come up here.”
I gaped. “So, none of this was in your dream of my entire day last night? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“No, it wasn’t in my dream last night. And I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to freak you out. I knew what was going to go down, so I just made sure the bookshelf never had a chance to rock like it did in my dream. I held onto it while you pulled.”
My gaze slid to the bookshelves now on the floor, their contents scattered everywhere—like my brains could’ve been if Ethan hadn’t thrown himself on top of me. The tiny hairs on my arms started to rise.
“I’m sorry, Nara. I should’ve told you.”
“Yes, you should have.”
“This was all my fault.”
“It was an accident.” I pointed to the other bookshelf where the metal side was bent and warped. “The binders’ weight must’ve been too much for it. Maybe when you righted the bookshelf to keep it from falling, the jarring on the floor caused this one to finally collapse.”
Ethan didn’t say anything. He seemed quiet, pensive.
With swift movements, I pulled the rolling book cart near the fallen bookshelf, then began gathering binders though the bookshelf’s open back and putting them on the cart. I knew he felt responsible and I didn’t want him to feel bad. “I’m so thankful you took a nap,” I said in an upbeat tone as I stopped to shove the one binder we needed into my backpack.
When I turned back to cleaning up, I tried not to show how truly shaken I was by the fact his “night” dream—which should’ve been about my entire day—hadn’t included the bookshelf falling. Why?
“The library will take care of this, Nara,” Ethan finally said.
I ignored him, completely focused on organizing the periodicals in front of me. Frowning at the binders I’d placed on the cart in haphazard abandon, I realized they were totally out of order. I began to reorder them in numerical order at a rapid pace, jerking books out, sliding books over, moving the correct ones into place. “This is such a mess. We can’t leave it like this.”
“Nara.”
I started to grab another set of periodicals from the floor, frantic to put every single binder in the right numerical order, but Ethan gripped my shoulders and pulled me against his chest, holding me tight. “It’s okay.”
Taking a deep breath, I pressed my face to his neck. “We both could’ve been really hurt.”
He stroked my hair. “We’ll be bruised and sore tomorrow, but we’re fine. And you’re right. All those thick resource books in your backpack came in handy. They saved my spine from being crushed.”
I gripped his jacket. “My dreams have never been wrong, Ethan. Why didn’t you see the other bookshelf falling in your dreams last night?”
He turned serious. “I dreamed about the bookshelf this afternoon, remember? Your dreams are still right. But I prevented it from falling. Maybe you’re right and I caused the chain reaction with the other bookshelf like you said. But what I’m wondering is what happened today that caused a change in ‘your future’ from what I saw last night?”
As I shook my head, the one thing I’d done that would’ve been out-of-the-norm from my regular day came to me. I’d told Fate to back off.
An hour later, Ethan pulled into my driveway. The head librarian had freaked when he found out that the bookcases had fallen on us. I was sure it was because the timid man was terrified our families would sue. Ethan cut the engine and hooked his wrist on the steering wheel, thrumming his fingers on the dashboard. “What could possibly have changed your future…well, other than you? And since you didn’t know your dream from last night, you couldn’t have consciously changed anything.”
He stared at me and I resisted the urge to fidget under his steady gaze. I wasn’t ready to admit I might’ve caused the change in my future by pissing Fate off. It could just as easily have been a fluke.
I shrugged. “A random glitch maybe?”
He frowned. “I don’t buy it.”
I rubbed my temples. My head hurt from worrying that I might have caused this. “It’s weird, I agree, but I’ve never dreamed my day twice, so who knows.” Leaning over, I kissed his clenched jaw. “We can go over everything you remember from the two dreams in detail tomorrow in study hall.” Grabbing my backpack, I started to get out of his car, then paused. “No more holding back on the big stuff to save me from worrying. Deal?” And, just in case, I’ll try not to go around challenging Fate any more.
Hard lines settled on his face. “You’ll have every detail.”
I walked into school feeling like a zombie. I’d had a terrible night’s sleep. In the wee hours, a thought occurred to me that alleviated some of my guilt, but the realization set off a bout of new concerns. Ethan had gotten hurt too. What if I wasn’t the target?
I didn’t want to explain my theory about last night to Ethan in the morning, so I avoided running into him until study hall. When I arrived in study hall and Ethan wasn’t there yet, I immediately tensed with worry.
Once Ethan finally walked in five minutes after the bell rang, I exhaled a sigh of relief. As soon as he sat down, I started talking at a rapid pace. “I don’t think last night was about me. I think it was about you—” but I stopped when I saw his bruised jaw.
“Ohmigod, what happened?” His lip was slightly swollen with a split near the corner. I started to touch his face, but he winced and pulled back.
“It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing to worry—” Fisting my hand on the table, I hissed in a low tone, “How did that happen?”
Ethan’s dark gaze drilled into mine. “I want to talk about you, about my dream last night, Nara. Forget about this.” He waved, dismissing his bruised face. “You need to listen, okay?”
I couldn’t stop staring at the split on his lip. It was crusted over, as if he’d gotten the wound hours ago, probably even last night. Did that happen after he dropped me off?
“You with me?” Ethan’s voice was gruff.
Swallowing my apprehension, I nodded.
He touched my jaw lightly. “When the last bell rings, wait for me at the main door. Don’t walk out to your car by yourself.”
“What happens?”
The worry brackets were back, digging creases around his mouth. “There’s an accident in the parking lot.”
Loud buzzing sounded in my ears. “What?” I squeaked.
Determination darkened his eyes. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in changing the natural course,” I said, tears burning.
“This feels wrong.”
Banked fury reflected in his eyes. “How bad is it?”
Ethan shook his head. “I was so freaked out, I woke up.” Curling his lips inward, he continued with a determined snarl, “Nothing will happen to you.”
My lips trembled at the tension vibrating in Ethan. My theory that the bookshelf falling had been meant fo
r Ethan and not me had just been blown out of the water. Or, maybe not. Maybe it was just like last night. “Do you—” I started to ask if he got hurt too, then remembered he never stars in my dreams. “You could get hurt, too, Ethan. Last night and now this.” I rubbed my temples, feeling another headache coming on. “It’s too much.” If Fate was after me or Ethan, either way, I’d failed. “This is all my fault.”
Ethan’s expression shifted to firm resolve. “It’ll be fine. You’ll stay by my side and away from the area where it happens.”
“You don’t understand. I think I caused this.”
He tensed. “What do you mean, you caused this?”
“Last night you asked what changed in my day that could’ve changed my future. I didn’t want to believe I was the cause of the bookshelf falling, but after your dream last night, I think maybe I was.”
His brows drew together. “How?”
“Yesterday, when I saw that Lainey’s locker happened to be right next to your old one, I realized she was on Fate’s hit list as well. I couldn’t let Fate hurt either one of you. I couldn’t.”
“You challenged it?” Ethan closed his eyes and slowly released a breath. When he focused on me once more, his eyes were so dark they looked black. “I want you to do exactly what I say, no deviations.”
“Is this accident something we can call the police about? Stop it before it happens?”
“No changes, Nara. It’s better if I know the order of things, but if we start changing other aspects, then I won’t know that future. Last night freaked me out. I won’t take that kind of risk with your safety.”
“Do other people get hurt?” I was almost afraid to hear the answer.
Ethan didn’t respond.
“Ethan.” Guilt and fear battled inside me. All I could think about was Sadie and now all those people in the locker hall. All. My. Fault. I couldn’t let the idea that, by saving myself today, others would pay the price. “If I’m not where I’m supposed to be, will someone else get hurt? I have to know.”
“No one else gets hurt.” Clasping my shoulders, his fingers dug deep. “Do you trust me?”
Brightest Kind of Darkness Page 19
