Between the Stacks

Chapter 6

"What are you doing?"

I hadn't heard the door open; Melissa gave me a quizzical look. "Are you... smelling Kermit?"

"Maybe?" I said, quickly placing Kermit back on my desk. I tried to change the topic. "What's up?"

She pointed to her desk. "I forgot the keys. We were only away a few days and I've already forgotten how to do my job."

"Tell me about it." I grabbed her keys and passed them over. She gave me another weird look before wheeling back to check the community rooms.

I huffed and collapsed into my desk chair. No one had ever asked about Kermit, and for good reason. Every other desk had trinkets and knick-knacks as well. My desk hardly stuck out. Matteo had a collection of mugs at his desk, including ones shaped like pandas and dragons and a capybara (which I had to Google - they are cuter than I thought). Lakshmi's desk was covered in souvenirs from her travels. Melissa's desk was covered in pictures of cats, which Matteo had printed as a joke, although she'd kept them up. The desks of our part-time employees were just as decorated. 

The only spartan desk belonged to Wesley.

This made sense, of course. He was just a temporary employee before he went back to his own branch. It would make sense for him not to have brought anything personal with him.

And yet, I couldn't help but gravitate towards his desk. Everything was institutional: the pens were from the supply cabinet and the notebook was the same one that was given to all of the other librarians. There were no pictures anywhere.

But a small piece of pink paper was peeking out from underneath his laptop.

I shouldn't.

I really shouldn't.

Everyone had a right to personal space. Then again, Wesley had admitted he'd been sabotaging the library so that his own branch wouldn't be shut down, so I figured all bets were off when it came to being a decent human being. And the sheer curiosity - and empty desk, with one piece of bright pink paper - was too much for me to overcome.

I pulled out the paper. It was a Post-It note.

It read Stop creeping on my stuff, Emma.

"Ah!" I dropped it as if I'd been burned. How was that possible? Melissa and I were the first ones in the library since the fire. I picked up the note and turned it over, as if that would somehow solve the mystery.

One of my worst faults was that I would always jump to the dumbest possible conclusion first. Was he a vampire? I'd read far too many vampire books. Or a wizard? I realized I should probably switch to nonfiction for a while.

The truth was probably more boring than I could imagine. He was messing with me. He knew he was under suspicion, and he was trying to get in my head.

And he'd succeeded, too.

I knew I'd see him later in the day, if just for a few moments. He had one last shift before moving back to the Riverside branch. I checked my watch; he wasn't scheduled until the afternoon shift. I had hours to plan a devastating one-liner that would show how witty and clever I was. I would let him know that he was doomed to failure, and that if one library branch was going to survive, it was going to be mine.

Everything would be perfect.

-----

In the end, it was not perfect in the slightest.

Melissa unlocked the front doors at nine, and by nine-thirty, someone had puked in the cookbook section, a toddler had an eraser stuck up her nose, and Mrs. O'Grady had clicked on a sketchy link in her email, and now the public computer had some sort of virus.

When I'd imagined being a librarian, I had sugarplum visions of helping connect people with the book. The one that would change their lives. The one that they would quote endlessly, the one they would tell their friends to read, the one that would comfort them in hard times.

And to be fair, I've been able to do that a few times. But in library school, I quickly learned that libraries are more than just books - they connect people with services and resources, they're a place to stay when the weather is too hot or too cold, and they're a constant pawn in the political tug-of-war between citizen services and budget cuts. Every day was a bit of a whirlwind.

All that to say, when Wesley strode into the library for his last shift, I felt like Leonardo DiCaprio after he'd been eaten by a bear in that one movie.

"You okay?" he asked when he saw me. I was behind the reference desk, trying not to cry as I bashed on the keyboard. He came around to the other side of the desk and looked at my screen. WorkFlows, the library's system for item management, was pulled up on my monitor.

"I'm fine," I snarked. So much for my devastating one-liner. I clicked randomly a few times, trying to show how productive and efficient I was.

He pointed at the screen. "You're in the cataloguing module. Not the circulation module. If you're wondering why you can't check those in." He gestured at the stack of books next to me, which I had absolutely been failing to check in moments before.

"I know that," I said, lying through my teeth. I had completely missed something basic.

I'd expected him to move on, when instead he pulled up a chair next to me. Our conversation was briefly interrupted by someone checking out a book before he turned to me.

"Why do you have so many problems accepting help?" he asked quietly.

"Excuse me?"

"You always get so snarky."

"Snarky?" I parroted. "Excuse me for being guarded, considering you've been sabotaging us for a week."

"The fire wasn't me," he said, and even I had to admit he was right. It had been started by a lit cigarette that someone had dumbly thrown away. "But I apologized for the other stuff."

"Apologies don't have to be accepted," I said, feeling very mighty up on my high horse. "You had insider knowledge. You're like Martha Stewart. You could be in jail."

He blinked. "I'm not sure if you know how jail works."

I shrugged. "All I'm saying is that you knew one library would be shut down, so you transferred here, and started making us look incompetent. Not cool."

"I know it wasn't cool. So now I'm being very open about it." He paused, as if for dramatic effect. "I will do everything in my power to keep my library open. And if you're in my way, then I will destroy you."

I shivered, and I wasn't sure why. "I will fight for this," I said, gesturing broadly to the scene in front of us. The patrons, the books, the magazines, the children running around with puzzle pieces in their hair - I would be their champion. I imagined myself and Wesley facing off in an arena, Gladiator-style. Preferably without lions.

Maybe he would be shirtless -

No. No. Bad thoughts.

"Well," Wesley continued. "I need to finish up some work. Emma, it's been a pleasure. I'll see you later."

The word later had some sort of weight to it, something I couldn't decipher. I didn't turn around as he entered the staff area.

I would end him.

Well, first I needed to clean up the spilled apple juice in the atrium - but then I swore to myself that I would be the woman to end Wesley Takahashi.