white boys (river phoenix)

25

thank you to everybody who voted me for the 80s-90s fan awards i love you with all my heart, this chapter is dedicated to you xo

Chapter 25

(Monday). Robin took a deep breath, then shrugged her shoulders and lurched forward into the library. Her Mary Janes had been shined to perfection over the weekend, her blazer and white and blue striped blouse was washed and dried, and her black skirt was lint-rolled. The whole day she had been fidgety and nerve-wracked. Her friends had been amping her the entire day, encouraging her about her first day. Luckily, no one mentioned anything about her and River, and none of the other students bothered her or teased her about it. But since her friends, who were the ones who were supposed to tease her about it left her alone, she knew that the other students definitely didn't know about it. She wondered why, she thought Dennis would surely be quick to tell.

Still, she was worried about her job. She knew the first day couldn't be anything but good since she got the job, but remembering the foot she and the boss left on, she was skeptic.

But she braced herself and the mothy smell of the library, and ventured up to the front desk which Mathilde was standing behind, flipping through a binder filled with old pages of book checkout documentations. Robin walked up to the desk and smiled, tapping her fingernails gently against the scratched up wood, waiting for Mathilde to look up. When she did, a smile took over her sweet wrinkly features, and she abruptly hugged Robin over the counter. Robin was surprised at first, her muscles tensed up, but she relaxed quickly and hugged her back.

"Oh, Robin, honey, it's so good to see you. I'm glad you're coming to work here with us, here, I'll show you the ropes!" Mathilde scurried over to the other side and took Robin's hand, practically skidding through the library to show Robin what she would doing for the next few months that she would be working this job.

Three rows of shelves later, it was safe to say Robin wanted a break. Organizing book shelves was more tedious than it made itself out to be, especially when there were library codes Robin had to follow on top of organizing them by genre and alphabet. New shipments of books came in once every month, and the first shipment had came a few weeks ago, which was around the time when shelves started to get cluttered and disorganized due to people's disregard for putting things back where they found them. Robin now felt like she truly understood the workers' plight, and wanted to curse out all the teens that hung at the library and the kids who were never taught manners by their parents, apparently. Robin found herself consumed in her thoughts, trying to remember all the times she'd been at the library back in Georgia and whether she had been like that.

While Robin placed history books on their assigned shelves, she muttered to herself,

"Who woulda thought this job would be so tiring? And what is wrong with you people? Jane Austen does not go back on the same shelf as Vladimir Lenin."

Robin stretched out her arm while standing on a short ladder to put the books back when she heard a voice,

"Robin. My office, now."

She turned to see Elise, the woman who'd made Robin think surely she had failed her very first job, and in so little time had lifted her spirits back off the ground... questionably. Robin faced forward again and stepped off of the ladder, folding it up and setting it against the end of one of the shelves. She fixed her hair and then walked over to the door near the back of the room where Elise's office was. Elise held the door open for her and nodded at Robin while she walked in. After taking a brief look around the room, Robin sighed to herself and sat down on the same couch she had during the day of her interview. She hadn't talked to or seen Elise since.