A Daughter of Light(A Light onto the World)

Chapter 18

I take a few deep breaths before I stand up and push back my chair.  I slide my bag off of the back of the chair and I put it on my shoulder.  I wouldn’t be surprised if someone would try to steal it.  I walk silently behind Sage as we head to the nonfiction section.  I try to look straight ahead and ignore the curious eyes, but I can’t help but glance to the side of me; I catch the eyes of a woman around her early twenties wearing an AC/DC shirt that has stopped reading and has been texting since we sat down.  I quickly look away.  What is wrong with these people?  What have I done to offend them?

Sage stops short and reads a sign on the shelf.  “Nice of you to join me,” he says lazily without looking in my direction; pain in the ass.

“What are you looking for?”

“The history section.”

He leads the way.  I barely notice that Sage stopped in front of me until I almost walk into him.  He stopped to run his fingers down the worn spines of the books.  He finds one he likes and pulls it out.

“Look,” he says, placing the book in my hand.  The cover reads The One Hundred and Fifteenth Anniversary of Sam Valentin, Texas.

“It’s a new book.  It just came out last year,” he says.

“It could be helpful,” I shrug.

“There’s more like this over here,” he says, gesturing to the section.  We grab an armful of books and go back to our table.  We lay the books we’re not reading in a pile.  We get to work.  We spend the next two hours searching through books and for info on my laptop.

“Did you find anything yet?” I turn and ask Sage after a long while.

“No, not yet, have you looked through that pile?”  He gestures with his hand to the pile of books now scattered across the table.

“Yeah,” I sigh, “nothing.  The strange part is that I’m not finding any information on my computer either.  All my searches are coming up blank.  The only thing useful could be the first book you found about the one hundred and fifteenth anniversary of this town.  It has a list of a few senior citizens that might know something.”

“That can be useful.”  I hand him the book and point to the page.  He skims the page, looks at the index, and then flips through the rest of the pages.  “Well, I only need this one page.”  Sage looks around the room and then starts tearing the page out of the book.

“What are you doing?” I say aghast.

“I would say this would make us even.  Since nobody wanted to help us, we’ll help ourselves.”  He tucks it in his pant pocket.

“Oh, and you were worried I was going to stir up trouble.”

 “I’m not making a scene,” he scoffs.

“You better not get caught,” I warn.

“I can’t believe we’ve been here for two hours and that’s all we found,” Sage says in frustration, ignoring my last comment.

“Man, I hate this stupid town!” I say in answer.

“Shh, don’t say that so loud.  This may come to a surprise to you, but there are folks here who have a lot of pride in this town,” he whispers in my ear. 

We go back to reading in silence.  We’re sitting so close that we’re almost touching.  I rest my hand on top of a book, my palm facing upwards.  It would be easy for him to casually slip his hand in mine — I wish he would.  This time I wouldn’t pull away from his touch.  Damn, I should have never shirked him off earlier.  Why do I have to have such a temper?