by Cecily Wolfe
“Adult or kids’ cart?” she asked as she willed herself to get out of her own head, hoping that starting a conversation they had nearly every volunteer shift would do the trick. It was bound to happen within the next few minutes anyway, when they stepped out into the public area and reached the book carts behind the front desk.
“You can do adult, if you want. There’s not a lot on kids’ today.”
“Yeah, no story time on Thursdays.”
Usually when Andrea held a story time, parents brought back loads of picture books, checking out more to take home for the week until the next meeting. Today wasn’t a story time day, so the kids’ book cart was a lot lighter than it had been on Tuesday afternoon.
“I’m going to wash my hands first. I don’t want to get any of this glaze on the books.”
Conner walked away, headed towards the men’s restroom, and Maya looked at the book carts. It was true, the kids’ cart was only about half as full as the adult one was, but the adult was easier to shelve. They talked about this every shift, and usually took turns, helping each other out when one finished shelving before the other, but she started to wonder if he thought Lindsay would take all of this into consideration when choosing one of them for the summer.
Would she really be looking this closely, like who was shelving which cart, and how much shelving they did? Or if one of them finished their cart before the other? Often, Lindsay wasn’t there when they finished. Maybe Steve would be telling her how they did.
She was just being paranoid, Maya thought, shaking her head as she watched Conner walk back towards the desk. She pulled out one of the lower desk drawers and took a baby wipe from a packet they kept there to clean off the desk when it ended up dirty from returned books or grubby little hands sticky from candy or some inexplicable other substance.
As she wiped the remaining donut glaze from her hands, she looked up and found Conner organizing the adult cart. Hadn’t they determined that she was going to work on the adult shelves?
“What are you doing?”
He glanced up, his expression unreadable.
“Just getting the cart ready.”
Maya tossed the wipe in the trash and closed the distance between them, taking the handle of the cart in her hand.
“Since when do we organize carts for each other?”
Was he trying to do more work in front of Lindsay? Whatever he was doing, she didn’t like it, and she was just as capable of prepping a cart for shelving as he was.
Conner raised an eyebrow but backed away all the same. Maya saw movement behind the window of Lindsay’s office and wondered if the manager had been watching. Snatching the cart from Conner probably looked obnoxious, and a part of her felt bad for doing it just as another part resented whatever Conner was trying to pull off.
Did he realize that she would most likely get the job, and wanted to do something to make himself look better so he had a chance over her?
Chapter Eleven
“What’s your problem, Maya?”
Conner thought that he might be misunderstanding Maya’s attitude, but when she literally yanked the book cart away from him, he couldn’t help wondering why she was acting like this. Hadn’t they just been eating donuts together, and hadn’t he felt as if some of the weirdness going on between them had been alleviated, either by their shared love of Krispy Kreme or a few moments spent not talking about the prom?
She shook her head but didn’t look at him as she turned away, pushing the cart in front of her.
Whatever was going on with her was stressing him out. He wondered if it would be worth it to push her for answers, or if he should wait.
“Did you two get some donuts?” Steve asked, stepping up beside Conner and chewing loudly as he spoke. How many donuts had the librarian inhaled?
“Good. I’m pretty hungry, and these hit the spot.” Steve swallowed audibly and Conner frowned, a little annoyed with Steve and plenty annoyed with Maya. No, he considered, he was more concerned than angry. He must have done something to upset her, but they had always been able to talk about that kind of stuff. Talk, get over it, and move on.
He had found a date for prom, just like she wanted, and now she was suddenly moody. Granted, most of the guys at school joked about how girls were moody, especially at certain times of the month, but he knew Maya. He knew those kinds of moods, and when they happened. Maybe it was weird for him to be so aware of something so personal about her, but they were best friends. Weren’t they still?
“Go talk to her, man. Standing here staring is going to make the patrons uncomfortable. Look, Mrs. Curtis is frowning at you already.”
Steve gave him a push, and Conner took a moment to focus on the elderly woman whose lips were pursed so tightly it looked painful. She didn’t approve of anything anyone did in the library, from the jeans the staff wore on Fridays to the teen romances featuring adolescent couples wearing swimsuits, holding hands on a beach. If it was on the property, she didn’t like it for one reason or another.
“Evening, Mrs. Curtis. Can I help you?”
Conner forced a smile as he stopped beside her, wondering, as he always did, why she bothered to come there if there was so much about it, and them, that bothered her.
“You need a haircut, young man. And stand up straight or you’ll end up a hunchback like my poor husband. Reginald is dead now, of course, but I always told him not to slouch and he ended up with a back more crooked than a politician.”
She might have been short and thin, but she was loud and cranky, and Conner had to made a concerted effort not to step away as she yelled in his face.
“Just getting this newspaper to read. Why should I pay for it when I can get look at it here for free? I pay my taxes like everyone else in this town.”
All Conner could do was nod and wait for her to turn away so he could track Maya, who had disappeared into the adult fiction stacks.
“Have a good evening, Mrs. Curtis,” he offered, speaking to the old woman’s back as she took slow, tiny steps towards the table where today’s newspapers were set out neatly. Lindsay must have done that before he and Maya arrived, because usually the papers were scattered over several tables after the usual morning patrons came in and dismantled them, and he and Maya would smooth them out and put them back together.
Conner looked down the first three aisles of book shelves and found Maya in the fourth, where mystery and fantasy titles split the row evenly. She was holding a book in her hands and staring at it, but he could tell that she wasn’t really looking at it.
“Hey.”
His voice startled her a little, and she dropped the book back onto the cart as she looked up at him. What had she been thinking about just then, he wondered.
She picked up a different book and turned to the shelf, sliding a finger across the spines until she found the spot she was searching for. He walked towards her and grabbed the book from her hand as she lifted it to slide it between two others in the row.
“What are you doing?”
Maya yanked on the book as she spoke, pulling it away from him. He let go and she shook her head.
Conner wanted to laugh, but whatever sound came out when he opened his mouth sounded more like a grunt. She looked as annoyed with him as he was with her. The hair around the ponytail holder near the top of her head was poufy, like she had been tugging at the strands to make the elastic hold tighter.
He knew that she did that when she was upset or nervous, and usually, if her long, dark hair was slipping from the same plain brown elastics she always used, she didn’t bother to fix it. As long as her hair was out of her face, she didn’t pay too much attention.
He liked it, though, when she did leave her hair down, and when she leaned into him if they were talking quietly together he could feel the strands crackling in the air around them with the static electricity that always filled the humid Ohio air.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Give me the book back so I can do my work.”
“We need to talk. For real, Maya.”
She looked away quickly, then snatched the book from his hands and turned back towards the shelf. Conner knew that he probably should go back and get the children’s cart and start shelving, but he didn’t want to leave without coming to some kind of resolution.
If this was just some girl thing he didn’t understand, that was one thing, but if he knew Maya as well as he thought he did, she wouldn’t blame her words and actions on that. She would just come out and say she didn’t feel well for whatever reason, and apologize if she was being obnoxious.
“Just go, Conner. We can talk on the way home, okay?”
As he nodded, Conner watched her expression carefully, looking for some clue as to what she was thinking beyond what she was actually saying.
“Is everything alright, guys?”
Steve suddenly appeared at the end of the stacks, not quite frowning but definitely not smiling. His question sounded loaded to Conner, and he wanted to just come out and say, no, absolutely not. Maya would be even more upset if he did, that was for sure.
“Yes, we’re good. Did you have any special projects you need help with tonight?” Maya asked, standing up straight and looking past Conner as if he wasn’t even there.
What was she talking about? Steve rarely had anything for them to do, except that one cleaning project that he called a quest, as if he knew how gross it was but was trying to make the mood lighter as they did it.
Hosing down the bird feeders in the reading garden hadn’t been one of the highlights of his volunteer time at the library, although the water fight he and Maya had when they were finished had been hilarious.
Steve shook his head, looking from Maya to Conner.
“Just try to be a little quieter. You’re a little loud tonight, which isn’t like you. Either of you.”
As he walked away, Conner looked into the space where Steve had been, trying to ground his thoughts in the present. For months he had been avoiding the idea of a future without Maya, where he wouldn’t walk to school with her every day, or sit with her at lunch, complaining about teachers and homework and the other kids.
Now he was worried that all he was counting on to get him through their time apart, from the texts, phone calls, and knowledge that she would be right here when he came back for breaks and the summer, was uncertain.
“Just go, Conner. Please.”
She wasn’t looking at him when she spoke, but her voice sounded small and young, like she was still the middle school girl she had been when they first met. He reached out and touched her arm, just barely, and watched her shoulders relax, just a little.
When he stepped out of the shelving area and turned towards the front desk, he noticed Mrs. Curtis, who was shaking her head and squinting at him from behind her glasses. He ignored her and kept walking, past Steve and the patron the librarian was helping, determined to focus on the work he had to do, both to pass the time before he was alone with Maya again and to be sure that Steve didn’t tell Lindsay he had been slacking off.
He wanted this summer job as badly as Maya did, and while he didn’t want it to come between them, he didn’t think it was fair for her to expect him to back off. There was no reason why they both shouldn’t be aiming for it, and if she was upset that he wanted it too, maybe it was because she thought he had an edge over her.
The idea gave him confidence, and he pushed the book cart away from the desk, his concern about Maya’s mood alleviated enough to help him redirect his thoughts towards shelving the children’s picture books.
Chapter Twelve
Keeping her mind on the letters and numbers in front of her, especially when they were tiny and started to blur together, was getting more difficult the more Maya tried to focus on them rather than her conflicting feelings as well as the growling that had started in her stomach over an hour ago.
When Conner had come back to ask her if she was ready for their break at 6:30, she hadn't looked at him, shaking her head instead with the hope that he wouldn't pressure her to stop working and eat something with him. He hadn't, and she was both thankful and sorry that he had let her get away with avoiding him so easily.
She was hungry now, and she wished she had stopped to see what he had in mind for their snack. He probably had thrown something in his backpack this morning, something his mom had set out for him, one of his favorites like Doritos or Twinkies. Or one of her favorites. Conner’s mom knew her almost as well as her own mother did, for all the time Maya had spent at their house, sleeping on their sofa and eating at their table.
Conner could have Nutter Butters for all she knew, and the idea of it made her swallow hard against the desire to walk away from the shelf reading she had been assigned and make a beeline for the lunch room, where his backpack would be resting in one of the chairs beside hers.
She jumped when Steve’s voice came practically out of the blue, beside her but not quite as close as it seemed in the quiet of the building.
“It’s almost time to go home.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I guess I just got too involved with shelf reading,” she answered after a moment, during which she realized how much time had passed since she had talked to Conner.
The librarian blinked deliberately, slow and disbelieving.
“Did you really just say that? Are you sick?”
Maya couldn’t help but laugh. Shelf reading wasn’t exactly the most thrilling activity, and losing oneself in it was probably a sign of something seriously wrong.
Was there, though? Or was she making it a bigger problem than it had to be?
“Okay, kid. You and Conner need to figure out what is going on between the two of you, or I’m going to make you hose out the bird feeding area again. Don’t make me do that. Torture really doesn’t do it for me.”
She stopped laughing, a smile on her face as she followed Steve out of the stacks. Who had been cleaning the reading garden of its bird droppings and sticky leftover suet since the big water fight debacle?
When she looked up, Conner was watching her from behind the front desk, a tentative smile on his own face. Was he afraid of her reaction? He was watching her carefully, as if her expression weighed heavily on his own. She forced herself to keep her own smile intact but she knew it was faltering a bit, and clearly, Conner noticed, as his own followed suit.
Why couldn’t they just be friends, like they always had, without this summer job thing coming between them?
Even as the question came to her, she knew it was more than that, and if she was truly honest with herself, she would have to deal with what that meant, and how this focus on the summer job might just be a way to distract herself from these new feelings she had for him.
If he knew that she might be in love with him, would it be over for their friendship, sooner than it had to be? When he went away to college, he would find a girlfriend, and even his time with her on breaks and summers would be limited because he would have someone else to spend time with.
“We thought you fell asleep.”
Conner’s laugh was too loud, too forced, but Maya felt a wave of annoyance wash over her.
“As if I wouldn’t be working? Is that what you think? Or hoped?”
His frown was instant, and Steve’s voice carried over the heaviness that fell between them.
