Between the Stacks

Chapter 7

I had an idea so dumb that it might actually work. I just needed some encouragement.

"That's the worst thing I've ever heard," Matteo said when I told him. "Don't do that."

"You don't like doing anything spicy," I argued.

"I hate to say it," Melissa said. "But he's right. That's catastrophically stupid."

The three of us were lounging in the park after work, enjoying the sun filtering through the trees. Matteo and I were on the bench, with Melissa in her chair beside us. Before I had started at the library, they used to hang out in the park all the time when the weather didn't actively want to kill them - which, in Canada, was fairly often.

When I first started my job, I worried about making friends, especially because the two of them seemed so tight. I heard from a cataloguer that they referred to themselves as M&M. But on my second day Melissa brought in cookies, and Matteo had helped me after I locked myself in the storage closet. In the words of Melissa, we were officially "besties for the resties." By the time Lakshmi joined us for happy hour at Sunrise, I knew that I had found the perfect job.

One that I would cling onto with my cold, dead hands.

"I think you need to get off this anti-Wesley train," Matteo said.

"The anti-Wesley train is going ahead at full speed." I wasn't about to admit that the train was going so fast that it might derail. "He's actually the one who gave me the idea."

Wesley, somehow, had known that one of our libraries would close. He'd managed to finagle his way into an exchange with our branch so that he could sabotage us. His sneakiness had given him an advantage.

"I just think he needs a dose of his own medicine," I argued. "It will be flawless."

----

The next day I surveyed my closet, looking for a sneaky disguise. I pulled out the blonde wig I had worn once at a Halloween party, from the time when I had briefly settled on being a lawyer. I had dressed up as Elle Woods from Legally Blonde - I'd even borrowed a friend's chihuahua - but the dog ended up eating most of the snacks at the party, so that was a bit of a dud. The dog had a great time, at least.

What else for my disguise? I needed to pick clothes that didn't look like me. I was a boring dresser most of the time; my clothes tended to drift towards comfortable sweaters and cardigans. Melissa once said I dressed like a grandmother, but my grandmother is a very nice lady, so I took that as a compliment.

I pulled out the glitziest top I could find. It looked like someone had dumped a tub of glitter over me. Paired with sparkly leggings and sunglasses, I looked unrecognizable.

Perfect. Phase one of my Vengeance Plan could begin.

As I took the bus to the Riverside branch, I wondered if I should have re-thought my plan. More than one person gave me side-eye, perhaps due to the sheer blinding amount of sparkles on my outfit. No matter. I had committed.

I'd never been to the Riverside branch before. It had always been on my to-do list, although something more important tended to pop up. Only when I stood in front of the building did I realize it was combined with a community center.

It was a Saturday, so it wasn't surprising that a mob of kids was running around the atrium. One had a plastic sword; another had a pool noodle, interestingly enough, and they were jousting. I managed to side-step their battle as I snuck over the glass wall that looked into the library.

From a sneaky perspective, I couldn't have asked for much more. I could mill about the community center lobby, looking into the library, and never actually step inside. I sat on a nearby chair and started my reconnaissance.