Chapter Six
Iwore my favorite Christmas sweater today.
It’s pretty cute. A cropped, tight-fitting style in red and green with glittery threads for the lights on the embroidered tree. I snap off some of the unraveled bits and stare out the front stained-glass windows of the library. Rom should be out of school already.
He’s late.
Today is the last day before winter break and everyone was supposed to dress up to celebrate our favorite upcoming holiday. Even though my family isn’t religious, I’ve always loved the gift-giving tradition of Christmas. I bet Rom’s just wearing his uniform since he goes to a fancy private school.
I almost wore my sunny yellow dress to celebrate The Advent of the Honest. It’s a demon winter holiday all about sunlight and the end of the cold, dark days. It’s actually my favorite over Christmas. I guess I just felt kind of weird celebrating it. Even though I grew up in a town full of demons, I’m not really one of them.
But who wouldn”t love the New Year’s Eve celebration? It”s so fun! The Truthfire Festival starts with a parade of stilt walkers and oversized puppets. Street vendors sell hot apple cider and kettle corn and any kind of food that can be made over fire. I always help my uncle man the library booth in the market square.
The only thing I’ve never been to is the midnight party. It’s when everyone counts down to the New Year. There are torches and ritual fires, and the demons do this crazy fire-magic thing to make the lava flow on Mount Winter Bliss. It’s just the coolest. But I’ve only ever watched the volcano light up from my bedroom window. It’s super late at night and an adults-only thing. Boo.
This year, I think I’m gonna sneak in.
I mean, I’m fourteen, which is basically grown up. I bet most people who don’t know me wouldn’t even bat an eye.
I can’t wait to tell Rom! I know he’ll go with me since he already sneaks out to the library every day. He’s a demon, and he’ll know way more about the fire-magic stuff. I want to see it in person so bad but only if Rom goes with me. We’ve been friends for three years now but have never met up outside the library. Which is why I”m wearing my cutest outfit to ask him. I’ll beg and plead and there’s no way he’ll say no.
So I stand at the front window and wait for him to show up, but he’s already thirty minutes late. That’s not like him at all. He comes in every day after school at exactly the same time. If anything, he should have gotten an early release like my school.
It sounds crazy, but I’m honestly kind of sad the school semester is over. Most kids would be jumping up and down to have three weeks off, but it’s my last day to see Rom for a while. New Year’s Eve is right in the middle of winter break though, so if we can plan to sneak out and meet up, it won’t be so hard.
I like spending time with him. A lot.
The winter break will be so boring without him. I’ll miss his smile and the sound of his voice; how warm it feels to sit next to him in the window because he’s always running a little hotter than me. It just . . . feels nice.
A couple days ago, I caught myself doodling hearts in the margins of my book and realized I had a little bit of a problem.
I have a crush on my best friend.
It’s been driving me kind of crazy. Should I keep it to myself? I’m so bad at secrets. Should I tell him? I mean, what would he say?
Then I came up with the perfect plan. New Year’s Eve. The Truthfire Festival. That’s when I’ll tell him. It’s the Advent of the Honest, after all. Demons believe it’s the one night a year you have to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
No matter what.
I rub at my forearm. There’s still smudged lipstick from the last hour where I practiced kissing my arm. It’s kind of embarrassing, but practice makes perfect, you know?
New Year’s Eve. I’ll tell him I like him and ask him if he likes me too.
I press my nose up against the glass until it fogs.
Still no sign of Rom. I wonder where he went?
“Imissed this place.” Rom looks over the bookcases close by, the tall ceilings, and the spiral staircase in the back.
I missed you being here too, I want to say but bite my lip. It’s been over a decade. We were just kids! Do we even know each other anymore? Then, he gives me that same bashful smile he always did, and my cheeks warm in response.
“I don’t really know anything about the history of the library.” He fists his hands at his hips, making him look even taller, his back even broader. “It seems unusual that it’s privately owned and not public, right?”
“Yeah,” I chuckle, moving the classroom crafts into one bag and wrapping paper to another. “The library just sort of happened, and no one’s really changed much about how we work. It all started over a hundred years ago as a reading room right here.” I wave around the tall open space we’re in. The first floor is for the circulation desk, large seating area, and computer center with the only shelves along the walls and back section. The center is an open atrium to the second floor where long walkways wrap around all sides with bookcases along each wall. “Originally, this building was an opera house built by some rich demon settler, but it never took off. Something that swanky in Winter Bliss. Can you imagine?”
“I can see it.” He smiles, his gaze drifting over the second floor. The upper-level balconies still have the original brass filigree railing. It’s a chore to shine, which is why they’re a little dull right now.
I point up to the Non-Fiction Autobiographies section. “The second floor is where the higher-priced ticket holders would have looked down on the actors down here.”
As if on cue, an elegant older fae over in Periodicals shushes us. Her eyes soften when he sees it’s me.
“Sorry, Mrs. Clare.” I wave and whisper to Rom. “Noise carries since it’s a big open space, so we do have to be a little more ‘shhhh’ happy with the chatty patrons.”
“Patrons only or does that extend to the staff too?” He’s smirking at me, surely remembering how often Uncle Darren told us to pipe down over in the window seat when we were kids. Well, not really us so much as me.
“Anyway” — I give him a friendly shove — “my family has managed this place ever since that old opera house went belly up, though we’ve never owned the building. It changes hands every now and again. The current landlord is this big real estate company from out of town. They’re nice and all.”
Rom looks pensive. “I sense a but coming.”
I sigh and hop to sit on the counter, tapping the heel of my skates against the wood paneling. “But they raised the rent. I mean, rent is rising across town because of all the money flowing in from the resort. Business is booming or whatever. It makes sense. I get it. But my funding is basically . . . well, it’s not booming. It’s a flat line. Decades ago, my uncle set us up as a nonprofit and got this local petition going to have the town formally contract us as the local library. It’s a twenty-year agreement with a set budget, and there’s still two years to go.”
“Aren’t libraries funded on property taxes? I’m sure those are increasing.” His brow furrows. “I’ve done my research, and Winter Bliss is in a bit of an economic boom, as you said.”
“I don’t really know.” I shrug. “I’ve got to make do until the end of this contract and hope we’re serving the public well enough to get renewed.”
“Of course you will.” He looks almost offended. “This place is amazing.”
I grin and puff out my chest. “Thanks. Well, a lot of that is the inter-library partnerships, technology nonprofits, and literacy organizations that help us out. My librarian friends from bigger cities send me their surplus books too. The whole back room is an embarrassment of riches right now.”
“Full of books?” His eyes bug out.
I smile. It’s nice to see Rom is as book obsessed as he used to be. “Yeah! You wanna see?”
He nods, rubbing his hands together with obvious excitement. I skate to the back room and open the door.
Taking a deep inhale, I turn around. His eyes close slowly on a groan.
“Is there anything better than the smell of old books?” I tease. A lot of them are leather bound too, which is even better.
He shakes his head. “I could kiss you.”
I bite my lips together to hide my smile.
He clears his throat and opens his eyes, taking stock of the giant mess and studiously avoiding my gaze. “So, uh, these aren’t all organized yet?”
“To say the least. I keep meaning to get around to it.” I skate a careful path through stacks of books on the floor, tables, and in various boxes perched precariously on top of each other.
“What about your volunteers and staff?”
“Oh, I hate to make them do all this busywork. I’ll get to it, eventually.” I lug one box onto a table at the back and crack it open. “It’s a mess in here because I had to close down the Rare Books section when I took over last year, so all of those are in here too.”
“Why’d you close down Rare Books?” he asks.
Speak of the devil, I pull out one of the oldest ones we have. It’s delicate, part of the Farmer’s Almanac collection that dates back to our first year as a reading room. They’re more for show than use, but it hurts that they aren’t in their glass-paned shelves anymore.
“Budget crunch. I couldn’t bear to let my student assistants go. They work here part time and during school holidays.” My voice catches a little, but I shake my head and focus on the present. “It’s an important job for them, good experience for college, you know? So when my apartment lease came up, I closed Rare Books, cut my salary, and moved into that space. It’s nice. There was already a full bathroom. I just had to get a little work done to make a kitchen happen.” I move the almanac into the Keep box and the next two paperbacks into Give Away. “They’re still back here if we get a request, but no one really visited Rare Books much anyway.”
“Your uncle always loved that section,” Rom says.
I nod, afraid to speak because I might cry. It wasn’t an easy choice. In a way, it felt like burying a piece of him by moving these boxes out of sight, and I hate that. But no matter what I do, there’s always a sacrifice. Right now, all I can do is look ahead, do whatever I can to keep the library open. That’s what Uncle Darren would want.
“Is he . . . okay?” Rom asks softly.
I shake my head and try to calm the emotion clawing up my throat by finishing out this box and moving onto a stack of donations. Keep pushing forward.
Rom rifles through a box, gingerly touching the spine of some older church records that are probably more than 150 years old.
“It’s early onset dementia,” I finally manage to say. “He lives in a home down the street. Visits pretty often though.”
Rom looks up, surprise and sympathy written across his face. “I’m sorry. I saw him today. He didn’t recognize me. I thought—”
I smile. “He actually knew who you were before I did. The other day, you were across the road about to get into your car, and he pointed you out to me. Little Jaromar, he said.”
“Yeah?” He rubs his chest, then smirks at me. “So he recognized me, but you didn’t?”
“You don’t look quite the same, my friend.” I wave up and down. Not so little anymore. “Taller, broader. Plus the horn caps, and I only saw the side of your face that day.”
Almost like he does his best to hide away. I think I’ve embarrassed him because his cheeks darken, and he picks up a book from another box.
“Oh my gosh.” I skate over and grab it from him. I’d recognize that yellow dust jacket anywhere.
“Ishmael?” he asks, reading the title.
“It’s a first edition, first printing.” It’s not the one my uncle read all the time. That was a paperback, nearly worn to shreds. This was the copy he got autographed when the author stopped by Winter Bliss on vacation, total fluke.
My palm passes over the book’s front, and I can’t help it. I slide off the front half of the dust jacket and trace the embossed front of the hardcover. It’s not that special, but to me, to my uncle, it sure is.
“I have a friend who could help get a value on the books you want to part with.” He points to the Give Away pile and has his phone up. A digital photo of Ishmael is in a little square next to $50. “That one’s worth a little something. There may be some money here to help you with that fundraiser.”
But this book is priceless. I imagine getting rid of it and feel the tears coming on again.
“I don’t know. We’ll see.” I put the dust jacket back on and tuck it under my arm. A lot of these books can go, but more often than not, spending time in this room full of memories, turns me into an emotional mess. Maybe that’s why I can’t imagine letting anyone else organize it.
“C’mere.” He pulls me into a hug that makes me melt. A hug just because. I guess I must look as out of sorts as I feel.
“It’s hard,” I whisper. “I just need a minute.”
If I keep moving, I can stay one step ahead of change, the bad change at least. I can push it to a good change instead.
“Take all the time you need. I’m here,” he says.
For now,I think. Everything is just for now, for this moment. Time seems like . . .
“Sometimes it feels like everything I love is slipping away.”
My throat closes, and the tears fall in hot, silent rivers down my cheek.
He hugs me tighter, like he’s saying he won’t slip away, but I know that’s not true. Of course he will. He’s only visiting for a little while.
If loving someone with memory issues has taught me anything, it’s to accept now for what it is, a gift. I want to soak up my time with Rom while I can and treasure every moment like it could be our last. Because soon enough, it will be.