Chapter 2 #2
“Alix?” Elizabeth paused as I came trudging up the stairs past the stone lions and toward the Boston Public Library Reading Room, which was technically called Bates Hall, though I’d never heard anyone refer to it that way.
“Remember we don’t have any more shifts for you this week,” my boss said, juggling a stack of clipboards.
“I know. I just—” I’d switched to the Green Line and gotten off at Copley, the library stop, more by habit than anything else.
The vaulted Reading Room was almost empty, a few studiers hunched over laptops at the long tables, green lamps gleaming in the soft dimness like dragonflies.
I stood there in the choired hush, gulping a little, inhaling the smell of books like it was going to save me.
“Adding to your tattoo?” I blurted out, because Elizabeth was looking at me with concern, so to head her off I pointed at the neat bandage over her flower-vine-inked forearm.
“No, just getting the flowers filled in gradually. I want the whole arm looking like a riot of color, but I don’t have the patience to sit in the chair and get it all done at once.
” She peeled up the bandaging to show me the new pinks and purples filled in on a section of twining roses and violets, and normally we’d have had a whole lively conversation about it—I’d have told her about the little stack of books flying like birds that I’d always wished I could get tattooed on one shoulder, and she’d remind me to think hard about anything I wanted on my skin or else I might end up like her: Remember me telling you about my first ink, the little Chinese symbol on my ankle?
I thought it meant magical and I found out later it meant weird.
How white-girl-embarrassing, right? We’d both have laughed at that, and I’d have reflected again that librarians had come a long way from the bun-wearing, glaring-through-glasses stereotype—but I didn’t have any laughter in me, or any banter about bad tattoos.
I just stood there silently, choked up and halfway to a panic attack, and Elizabeth was looking more concerned than ever, but then my phone chimed with a notification, saving me.
“Email,” I managed to say, turning away a little to look at my phone and giving my eyes a surreptitious swipe. A message from the data-entry company that was my third job. Data entry, not exciting but reliable, and I could even do it here at the BPL Reading Room . . . Maybe they had a job for me?
Elizabeth headed off toward a patron calling for help with the wi-fi, and I thumbed open the email.
Automated notification: All future paychecks have been placed in the name of Libby Bibb. Thank you for using our company portal to update your account information!
I stared at it as if the words would magically start making sense.
Libby Bibb. Who the hell was Libby Bibb?
In order to get targeted for identity theft, didn’t you have to have a life worth stealing?
Could I really not keep hold of my measly thirty-six dollars and eighty-two cents, my goddamn data entry job, without someone mugging me for it?
My third job—gone. Or at least stuck in limbo, frozen like my bank account.
Nothing bringing any money in—a little cash from Beau for a bit of under-the-table organization of his receipts and QuickBooks account, but that wouldn’t be much.
And maybe I’d never been homeless, but I had a sudden crystal-clear image of the women’s shelter near Downtown Crossing, where supposedly they made you listen to a sermon before you could eat a cup of SpaghettiOs, and wondered if that was where I was going to be next week, me and my copy of Dawn Treader and my frayed Library of Alexandria sticker.
The sob burst out of me so loudly, it echoed in the barrel-vaulted space. I clapped a hand over my mouth as if to stuff it back in, but the tears I’d been able to choke off on the T came pouring down over my hand.
“There a problem here?” an officious voice demanded behind me. “No excess noise in the library, you know that.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Chester,” I snarled, swiping my eyes on the back of my hand as I turned to face Library Security.
As always, Chester had knife-edge creases in his uniform shirt and a thumb hooked in his belt, where I was positive he daydreamed about carrying a gun.
His aviator shades were down even indoors, because Chester had seen way too many episodes of Law & Order. “Will you get off my case?”
He looked pleased at my rudeness, probably because it gave him the opportunity to raise the shades and unleash his patented steely-eyed glare, which I was certain he practiced in front of a mirror. Probably with finger guns. “It’s my job to maintain the order and security of the Boston Public—”
“It’s a library, not the Pentagon. Haven’t you got a Klan meeting or something?
” Normally I enjoyed a good dustup with Chester, because a Jack Bauer wannabe with a walkie-talkie is just the guy to sharpen your claws on after a bad day, but I still had tears welling in my eyes and they weren’t going away, and if Library Security saw me cry I was going to wreck the place.
“Just leave me alone,” I snapped, which was the wrong thing to say because there’s nothing a Jack Bauer wannabe wants more than to see you cry.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to escort you out. Disturbing the patrons of the Boston Public—”
“Listen, it’s not my fault you failed out of army boot camp, so stop taking it out on—”
“Missy, I oughta—”
“Dial it down, Chester.” Elizabeth again, this time minus the stack of clipboards. I could have kissed her. She fixed him with a stern look through her purple-framed glasses, not one bit intimidated by his patented steely-eyed glare. “Aren’t you supposed to be manning the front desk?”
“I do my rounds,” he said with a dark look as if he’d caught me trying to dynamite the place. “And let me tell you, I’ve got my eye on this one—”
“Left or right?” I asked, but Elizabeth was already making a shoo motion at him.
“Off you go,” she said briskly, and turned back to me with a faint eye roll as Chester strode off like he was headed for the O.K. Corral. “I know he can be a bit overzealous—”
“If he’s lucky he’ll get to go Wyatt Earp on the next patron with an overdue notice,” I said, but my voice wobbled and Elizabeth zeroed in.
“Is something wrong, Alix?” Putting a hand on my shoulder. “How can I help?”
I don’t know where to go, I thought. The momentary irritation that was Chester had faded, leaving me with the stark realization: I had no idea where to go, not an idea in the world.
The studiers were starting to look up from their laptops, frowning at me, and any minute now I was going to brim over again and start weeping like a fountain.
I couldn’t bear that, just couldn’t bear it.
So I swiped my eyes and gave a bright blind smile, saying, “Just fine, I’m just fine,” and started off farther into the Reading Room.
“Alix?” Elizabeth called after me.
The tears flowed over again. All I could think was that I didn’t want her to see them, didn’t want anyone to see them, didn’t want anyone to see me.
Glancing blindly to my left, I saw a door standing open—just an ordinary wooden door set in the long wall of books, and I didn’t stop to think if it led to the Elliott Room or the Guastavino Room or just a storage closet, or what my exit was going to look like to poor Elizabeth, who just wanted to help.
I didn’t think, just reversed away from her, brushed between the long study tables and the rows of emerald lamps, and stepped across the threshold.
Some Chosen One I am. Fate sounding a trumpet in my ear, Here’s your call to adventure! And I blow right through it.