Robin des Bois ✓

two. The Tale of Robin Hood

My job at Harvard's Widener library consisted of replacing books on the shelves. That was it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Still, I liked it. It implied that I spent most of my time completely alone, wandering between shelves, plunged in the smell of old books. At first, I'd been utterly intimidated by the place -everything about it was so grand, and the sheer amount of books it contained was simply staggering. It was a maze to the unaccustomed, but since my job only required for me to cover a section of it, I got the hang of the way things worked pretty fast. It still amazed me whenever I walked into the building -the white columns greeting me, the high vaulted ceilings and all that knowledge in one place were quite humbling.

It wasn't my main job –four days per week I worked at a supermarket near my dad's apartment and then I worked at the library two more days. Add to that my art classes in the local community college and the voluntary work I did at three local charity organizations and you could say that my schedule was pretty full.

Tina usually stopped by during my slow, Wednesday night shifts at Mario Mart, to keep me company between the occasional lonely customer who stopped by to pick up a bag of chips or a beer.

She usually spent most of her time seated on the black conveyor belt, hopping off it when a new customer arrived. She also had the bad habit of picking up candy bars from the stands near the checkout which meant that there would be a considerable dent in my paycheck.

Today, she'd settled on munching on a bag of chips that sat in her lap. As per usual, she was wearing an ensemble that looked as though it was taken fresh out some Parisian runway, when in reality, it had probably been sewn together as recently as yesterday by Tina herself –high-waist loose white pants and an elegant black blazer with a white strapless tube top beneath. I sometimes envied what she could do with a sewing machine and scraps of material and then reminded myself that I couldn't pull off the glamorous vibe Tina exuded.

"Don't think I didn't see you liking that conceited bitch's post yesterday," Tina said with narrowed eyes.

I rolled my eyes. "Don't forget whose paycheck is suffering because of your eating habits," I said, pointedly looking at the bag of chips she was holding. "Plus, yeah, I did like his status. You deserved it after bringing that asshole for dinner. Seriously, a homophobe? You can do better than that, Tina."

"Not you too," she groaned. "How was I supposed to know? And that lil' bitch didn't even try –that wasn't even a sly-dig. It was so obviously about me."

She was referencing a status her brother had posted on Facebook the previous evening –it had been about "girls who dated anything with a nice face and a dick" and even though it wasn't citing names, I'd known who it was about as soon as I'd seen it.

It sometimes was exhausting to be best friends with twins, especially when they were at constant war over things that were usually so benign that I couldn't help but roll my eyes at them.

For example, take the incident that had happened at the Carter's just last week.

Tina had brought in her boyfriend of one month to introduce him to her brother and her mom, and after dinner, Jake –the boyfriend in question –overheard Tyler's conversation with his boyfriend.

He proceeded to ask Tina if Tyler was gay. Only he didn't use the word "gay" and Tyler had overheard the slur.

To make a long story short: Tina broke up with him on the spot, Tyler got furious at her for bringing that "piece of homophobic shit" home, and they had both proceeded to call me that evening to make their case before me –I was always the judge and jury in their drama, and this time, Tina had been declared guilty. I was on Tyler's side; she should've done her research on Jake more thoroughly, but she'd been blinded by his incredibly good looks and his sexual prowess –which she never hesitated to describe with crude details over the phone to me even though I really didn't need to be aware of any of them. That did sort of tip the balance in Tyler's favor –after all, justice isn't incorruptible. Not in practice, anyway.