Chapter 14
MY brEATH TURNED SHALLOW. My heart beat furiously. My mouth went dry. Who had turned the lights out? Was I alone? Was something terrible about to happen? What was going on?
Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic.
“Ed—” I stopped myself from calling out, throwing my hand over my mouth. Calling attention to myself didn’t feel safe. I stiffened, straining my ears to pick up on even the smallest movement. I could feel another presence in here with me.
Just then, I heard footsteps just a few aisles over.
Whatever calmness I might have had dissipated, replaced instead by sheer terror.
Someone was inside the bookstore with me, hiding, creeping, lurking—for what purposes, I didn’t know.
I instinctively reached for my phone in my coat pocket only to remember it wasn’t there.
No—it was locked in a metal box, some thirty feet away from where I stood.
I blindly fished around in my bag, desperate for some kind of weapon, finding only a tube of lipstick, a pack of gum, a loose credit card, and a phone charger. I had nothing to defend myself with except for the book in my hands.
Trembling, I tightened my grip on it, poised to wield it however I might need to.
The footsteps grew closer. I held my breath. Whoever it was, they were right around the corner, within striking distance.
I considered my options. I could make a run for the front door, but I might trip or run into something in this darkness—I wasn’t much of an athlete.
Or I could confront the owner of the footsteps, though I had no combat skills to speak of.
Or I could stay put and hope I wouldn’t be discovered. But how long would that work for?
As I was weighing each possibility, a shadowy figure appeared, towering over me by a foot. The choice had been made for me. I automatically lifted the book high above my head to use it as a half shield, half weapon and let out a yelp.
“Whoa!” the figure shouted, cowering. We both quieted.
In the murky darkness, I could barely make out the person standing in front of me. But it didn’t take long to realize who it was.
Noah.
I stood paralyzed. Noah stared at me, eyes wide and frantic, hands held defensively in the air. A moment or two passed before I noticed I was still brandishing the book above my head. I awkwardly lowered it.
“Oh my—oh my gosh. I thought you were—” I gasped, my heart racing.
“Didn’t mean to scare you. Again,” he said in a slow, faux tranquil voice, the kind people use when attempting to reason with a rabid dog.
Why couldn’t it have been anyone else in the bookstore with me? Why did it have to be Noah Elliot of all people I made an absolute fool of myself in front of—not just once but twice in one night?
Am I living in some kind of romance book? A moment concocted by a novelist? In what world does something like this happen?
Alarm bells were blaring in my head. I had to say something.
“No, I’m sorry, I just—what happened? Why did the lights go out?” I panted, straightening my clothes and collecting myself.
“I have no idea.” He shook his head.
“Well, did you hear anything before they went out?”
“No, not a thing.”
How was this possible? There was no way Edith had just up and left . . . was there? Surely this was some kind of power outage, something that could be easily explained.
You did just see her forget your entire conversation in ten minutes, Jane.
I peered around, ignoring the uncomfortable explanation. “Edith? Edith, are you here?”
No response. I rushed to the front of the store, determined to figure out what was going on.
Edith’s desk was unattended. The front curtains had been drawn, covering the store’s windows—no wonder it was pitch-black. “Edith?” I called out once more and yanked the curtains open. Light from the street poured in.
“I, uh, don’t think she’s here,” Noah said slowly.
“She—that can’t be. I don’t understand. Is the store closed?”
“Oh, man.” He sighed.
“How could it be closed? We’re here,” I breathed, talking more to myself than to Noah. Exasperation started to seep out of my pores.
I dashed over to the front door, jiggling the knob. It firmly stayed in place, not even budging an inch. My hands wildly searched the door for a latch to open, to no avail. I stood back and jogged my memory.
I’d seen Edith lock up the store more than once.
I pulled up the memories in my mind before recalling that there was no way to unlock the door, whether outside or inside, without a key.
Surely such a system was against some kind of fire code, but in a building this old and in a town this tiny, that was to be expected.
Edith had never updated the locks. The realization took the breath out of my lungs.
“This can’t be real,” I whispered.
“I think it is,” Noah replied, reminding me that I wasn’t just locked in this bookstore but that I was locked in this bookstore with him.
“No, no, no . . .” My hands flew up to my face. Everything inside me wanted to scream, to wake up from the nightmare, to flail and cry until someone rescued me.
I banged on the door, first with only half my strength before throwing my full force into it.
“Hello?! Can anybody hear me?! Please! Hello?! Help!” I hollered. There had to be someone walking by, someone who would hear me, someone who would fix this.
“Why aren’t you freaking out?” I shot over my shoulder as I alternated between pounding on the door and jiggling the doorknob.
“Yeah, this, um . . . this is not great,” Noah offered.
I stopped and turned to face him, huffing. “How are you so calm right now?”
“I’m trying this thing called radical acceptance.”
“Ra—what?”
“Radical acceptance. It’s basically, like, accepting things . . . radically.”
I eyed him, awaiting further elaboration. To my surprise, none came. I cocked my head. He shrugged in response.
“Okay. Well, I for one am not about to radically accept being locked in this bookstore against my will,” I said as calmly as possible.
The phone box popped into my mind. That was the golden ticket, the way out. Why hadn’t I thought of that earlier? I lurched into action, moving for the desk.
I snatched the little box from where I’d seen Edith stash it. A rush of defeat coursed through my veins when I remembered that it had a lock on it. Of course.
My hands haphazardly searched for the key, hoping against all hope that Edith had taken it out of her pocket before leaving. And yet, no key was in sight. I yanked open the drawers, scanning every inch of them for the literal key that would get me out of this situation.
Edith’s desk was a mess of envelopes, notebooks, and office supplies. I spotted a phone in the corner and ripped it off the hook—only to be met with no dial tone. I tapped on the hook a few times. Still no dial tone.
My eyes caught sight of an envelope with obnoxious red words printed across the front: PAST DUE. Despair cropped up in my chest. Edith hadn’t paid her phone bill.
In my peripheral vision I noticed Noah wander behind the desk, shifting random knickknacks and stacks of paper around, before announcing, “Well, nothing on this end. Is there a back door, maybe?”
There was, but like the front door, there was no simple latch on the inside—only a lock with a keyhole. Still, there was a small chance it would be unlocked.
“Yes. Go check it,” I ordered. Noah ambled off. I watched him disappear and took a deep, centering breath. This was a plot twist I hadn’t seen coming.
Almost an hour had passed since we’d gotten locked inside the bookstore, and none of my attempts to break free had worked.
The back door had, in fact, been locked.
The key for the phone box had never turned up, and despite my best efforts to break open the lock with a stapler, the box remained sealed.
The bookstore’s computer was password protected, and none of my guesses had been correct.
Another bout of banging on the front door proved to be fruitless, thanks to the fact that Avila Falls turned into a ghost town after eight—it was certainly not the city that never sleeps.
And after counting on my parents noticing that I’d never come home, I remembered their bedtime had been almost an hour ago, just as it had been for the last three decades of my life.
There was no way my failure to return would be noticed.
It had all culminated in a pitiful last-ditch effort to escape. I’d decided I was going to use the reading chair Edith had gotten me to break the door down.
“Help me lift it?” I called over my shoulder as I beelined for the chair.
“I really don’t think that’s going to work.
” Noah was bizarrely unbothered by the situation—decidedly not that desperate to break out of the bookstore.
His discovery of the back door being locked seemed to have little effect on him.
His search for the keys wasn’t as urgent as mine.
His unflusteredness had started to irk me. This was the last straw.
“Can you think of any other options?” I asked.
“I mean, no, not really.”
“So come help me,” I repeated.
“That door isn’t coming down. It’s too sturdy. Just trust me on that.” Noah shook his head.
I huffed, resolving to do it myself. I squatted down and struggled to hoist it up with all my might.
He rushed over. “Hey, whoa, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”
The chair didn’t budge. I backed up, shook out my hands, and reassumed my position. Once again, the chair stayed put. I squirmed, fought, wrestled . . . with no luck. My physical strength was no match for the dead weight of the chair. I collapsed into it, surrendering.
“Look, I hate to say this, but short of breaking a window, which I don’t suggest, I think we’re stuck in here for now,” Noah said softly.
My mind worked through the different options I had exhausted, gradually coming to the conclusion that he was right. There was nothing else to try. I couldn’t cause damage to the bookstore for Edith to fix. My fate was to be locked in here with Noah for the rest of the night.
Somehow, what might have been an enchanting setup for a novel that my teenage self would have devoured—getting locked in a bookstore with your crush—was real life.
Reality was giving fiction a run for its money.