She didn’t know where the light switches were. She couldn’t ask. Instead, she chose a direction and walked toward that wall, hoping she’d see the switches before Zach noticed that she was aimless. At least she could remember what a light switch was. Zach rolled the book bin toward the circulation desk. A few books toppled off the top, and he bent to pick them up—buying her time to spot a bank of light switches by the corner. She lunged for them and flicked them on. Yellowish light spread across the lobby. The shadows faded somewhat, washed away, and she exhaled in relief.
With the lights on, Zach ducked behind the desk and turned on the computers. One after another, they hummed to life. She watched him, glad he hadn’t asked her to do that, trying to memorize which buttons he pushed in case she had to do it later. As if he’d felt her watching him, Zach raised his head. “You okay? You seem … quiet today. Not that you aren’t usually the antigarrulous type. And that was an impressively convoluted sentence, if I do say so myself.”
“Very impressive,” she agreed.
“Like the New York pretzel of sentences. Or croissant. And now I’m hungry.” Finished with the computers, he set the paper bag that she’d seen him carrying on the desk, and he pulled out a bagel with flecks of pepper, onion, sesame seeds, and poppy seeds. “Your bagel, my lady.” It rained seeds on the desk. His was plain.
She picked up the bread—“bagel,” he’d called it. With all the seeds, it looked like a feast for a bird. But she must have eaten one before. He was acting as if this was their routine. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him split his bagel in half, spread cream cheese on both halves, and then close them back together like a sandwich. She mimicked him and then took a bite. The seeds stuck to her teeth.
“Despite legends to the contrary,” Zach said, “bagels have nothing to do with the shape of the King of Poland’s stirrups.”
Eve heard a soft thump. “Did you hear that?” she asked. The bagel suddenly tasted like cardboard in her mouth. She quit chewing and listened. She’d thought the sound had come from Patti Langley’s office. But her door was shut, the light was off, and the sound didn’t repeat.
“Hear what?” Zach asked. “The agony of a dozen legends, condemned to history’s ‘false’ list, crying out at once? Also false: Twinkies having an infinite shelf life, and Caesar salad having anything to do with Julius Caesar.”
She stared at the office door until she’d convinced herself she’d imagined the noise.
Finishing his bagel, Zach swept the crumbs into the bag. She handed him her partially eaten bagel. “I’d say you eat like a bird, but birds eat half their weight in food every day,” he said.
“Just not hungry today.”
“Too many factoids sour your appetite? Sorry. It’s just that you …” He trailed off. “Right. Okay. We should process the returns.”
After disposing of the bag, Zach set himself up at one of the computers. He typed a few keystrokes and then began to scan the items from the bin. Mimicking him, Eve stationed herself at a nearby computer, and her fingers froze over the keyboard. She didn’t know what to type. In fact, she had no memory of ever having used a computer, though she knew she had spent many hours watching Malcolm and Aunt Nicki use theirs. A screen blinked, demanding a user name and password.
She glanced at Zach. He continued to pluck books out of the bin and scan them with a handheld scanner. Every few books, he’d type numbers into the computer. Lie, Malcolm had said. She’d have to lie with actions as well as words, she realized. “I’ll pass you the books,” Eve offered. “It’ll go faster that way.” She scooted around him and picked books out of the bin.
“Uh, okay. Good idea.”
They worked side by side as the clock ticked closer to 8:00 a.m.
At a few minutes to eight, the library door slid open, and Eve jumped. Waving at them, a man strode into the lobby. “Good morning, Zach. Eve.” He headed for the Children’s Room without slowing. A librarian. She forced herself to breathe normally.
“Eve, you sure you’re okay?” Zach asked. “You seem jumpier than a cat on a hot tin roof, which I have never personally witnessed but must be spectacular, at least for the observer if not for the cat.”
“Fine.” She plastered a smile on her face and did her best to keep it there as other librarians drifted in. All of them greeted Zach and Eve by name. Eve knew none of them. After each hello, she pretended to be absorbed in her task and hoped no one would try to talk to her. Soon patrons began to arrive. Eve dug through the books in the bin until it was empty and all the books were sorted onto carts. At last, she looked up.
Patti Langley was watching her.
Eve bit back a yelp. She hadn’t heard her arrive. She glanced over her shoulder at Patti’s office—the door was open. How had she slipped by? Never mind, Eve told herself. Patti was here now. Eve forced herself to breathe evenly, and she summoned up a smile for the library director. At least hers was a face that Eve knew.
Patti did not smile back. “I told you I want you in the stacks. No interaction with patrons.”
“Oh. I …” Eve couldn’t think of an excuse. A hush had fallen over the lobby, as if everyone had slowed to look at her. She shot a glance at the other librarians and the patrons. None of them were paying any attention to her. Still, she felt eyes on her. Shivers crept over her skin.
“Done!” Zach announced as he added the final book to a cart. “Don’t worry, Ms. Langley. We’re going.” He snagged Eve’s hand and pulled her out from behind the circulation desk. She continued to feel watched as he led her through the lobby and into the main library, hurrying past the reference librarians, a man in a gray suit with a newspaper, and a woman with a toddler.
Soon they were within the stacks. She felt as if the shelves were folding around her protectively. At last, the feeling of being watched began to fade.
“Safe now,” he said. She noticed he still held her hand. He seemed to realize it at the same moment. He dropped her hand and then cleared his throat. “Someday you’ll have to tell me what you did to get under Peppermint Patti’s skin.”
Eve shrugged and looked at the bookshelves. It was hard to look at him while she lied. “She didn’t like me from the beginning.” She supposed she could be telling the truth, for all she knew. I don’t know enough, she thought. I’m going to make a mistake. Or more mistakes. She’d reach a critical mass of mistakes, and then … She didn’t know. She wished she could claw at the empty places inside her until she ripped through to expose what she did know.
“Well, I liked you from the beginning.” He grinned at her. Startled, she stared at him. “Hey, you usually laugh when I flirt like that. You sure you’re all right?”
She clung to that clue of what she’d forgotten: he’d flirted, and she’d laughed, even if she couldn’t remember it. “Tell me why you like me.”
His grin vanished. He had a crease in his forehead between his eyebrows, and his lips were pursed as if he were worried. “You’re fascinating. You’re … like a closed-up flower. You’re a shell with mother-of-pearl inside. You’re a cloud that hasn’t formed into a shape yet, but could. You’re shadows layered over shadows.”
“You mean that.”
“Every word.” Zach didn’t break eye contact. His eyes were brown, as warm as Malcolm’s. “Even the stupid poetry clichés, which, let’s face it, were pretty much all of them. You are the mystery and excitement that I have been craving my entire life.”
“I’m not an unformed cloud. I’m a cloud that’s broken open, and my insides are pouring out like rain.” As she spoke, the feeling of safety dissipated. The stacks weren’t hiding her; they were hiding others. She imagined eyes between the books, peering out at her. The shelves could hide a dozen listeners.