Chapter 8
For her first day on the job, Keely opted for a comfortable pair of jeans, soft leather shoes, and a simple blouse with ruffled sleeves. She tied her long hair back and didn’t bother with makeup. Professional yet comfortable, that was the goal.
She still had a surfeit of cupcakes from the recipes that she had tested out the past few days for the Community Property Renovations fundraiser. The final cakes were already in the fridge, ready to be layered with ice cream for the big event the next day. But the cupcakes needed to go; she had eaten more than enough already.
She whipped up the simple vanilla frosting that would go with the variety of cake flavors she had tested. The cupcakes turned out gorgeous, swirls of white dotted with vanilla beans. She loaded them into one of the cake containers that she had purchased for the event and set off for work at a high-speed walk.
It was a cool winter’s day with a clear blue sky and the seemingly omnipresent wind that traveled down the coast with such force. Keely’s new hat kept her ears warm and her hair in place; she took it off just before she stepped inside the library doors.
She arrived just as the library was opening its doors to the public. Ali greeted her with a wide smile and nodded approvingly at the cupcakes.
”I see you took my advice. Are those all for Ingrid, or can I grab one?”
”They’re for everybody.”
”Awesome. You can put them in the break room.”
”There’s a break room?”
Ali chuckled. ”Come on. I’ll show you.”
”Fresh meat, coming through,” she said as they passed two other library employees.
Keely paused to say a proper hello. ”Hi, I’m Keely. I start work today.”
”Nice to meet you,” one of the librarians said. She was a full head taller than her coworker with blond hair so pale that it was nearly white. The other woman had short black hair that was bright purple at the ends. ”I’m Melissa, and this is Maria. Are those cupcakes?”
”They are.” She walked into the break room leading the established library employees in a line like the Pied Piper. This must have caught Ingrid’s attention as they passed the open door to her office, because she walked in a moment later.
”Good to see you, Keely. Right on time, I see. What do you have there?”
”I brought cupcakes. I’m helping to cater tomorrow’s fundraiser for Community Property Renovations, and so I did a lot of recipe testing this week.”
”You’re making cupcakes for the fundraiser?” Maria asked.
”Actually, I’m making ice cream cakes using three different flavors of ice cream from Kula. But the cupcakes were the start of my recipe testing. I made a few different versions to get the flavors right, and then I made some test cakes.”
”That kind of thoroughness and dedication to research bodes well,” Ingrid said as she drifted closer to the table that now held the cupcakes. ”And what flavors do we have here?”
”We have pistachio, blood orange, and cinnamon. All topped with vanilla bean ice cream that I whipped up this morning.”
Ingrid looked at them carefully, bending at the waist to peek at the cake beneath the icing before she selected one of the richly colored blood orange cupcakes. She took a careful bite, and her eyes widened. She looked at Keely, took another bite, and shook her head.
”Ali,” she asked, ”are there still tickets available for this event of yours?”
”Oh, I see.” Ali laughed. ”I’ve been trying to sell you on the fundraiser for ages, but you were just too busy. Now that you know there’s going to be ice cream cake, suddenly you’re interested.”
”I’ll come,” Maria said, already halfway through one of the pistachio cupcakes.
”Me too, if there’s enough space.” Melissa was on her second cinnamon cupcake.
”Keely?” Ali asked. ”Is there room at the fundraiser for these interlopers?”
”Chloe and I erred on the side of more when we were buying ingredients and starting to prep. Nat didn’t have an exact number for us. She was still wondering if they could get a few more people.” She smiled at the library staff. ”So yes, I’m sure we have room for three more.”
”Excellent,” Melissa said through a mouthful of cupcake. She swallowed. ”I can only imagine how amazing your cake will be paired with Kula ice cream. I’m in.”
”For the families,” Maria said, mock serious.
”Yes. For them.” Melissa reached for a third cupcake.
”Leave some for the rest of us!” Ali laughed and snatched the last cinnamon cupcake off the tray before Melissa could claim it.
”Sorry. I may have skipped breakfast this morning.”
”How are you supposed to catalog correctly on an empty stomach?” Ali teased.
”Or deal with difficult patrons,” Maria added.
”Not well,” Melissa admitted.
Keely looked around and realized that Ingrid had already disappeared. She seemed to have taken at least two cupcakes with her. Keely‘s focus has been on the easy banter between the library staff. She had expected more of a stodgy, buttoned-up environment, but these women were delightful. She felt grateful all over again to have landed this job.
”We’ll get started as soon as I’m done with this cupcake,” Ali told her. ”No eating outside of the break room. Would you like a cup of coffee?”
”A cup of coffee would be great.”
”We should get back to the desk,” Melissa said reluctantly.
”Oh shoot! There’s no one out front.” Maria ran out the door with Melissa trailing behind.
”We just got a new shipment of books in,” Ali told her as they sipped their coffee, ”so we can start there. You’ll get to see how we label the books and input them into the system, and then you can get a feel for what goes where when we shelve all of the new books together. After that, you can get some time in at the front desk. That’s the easy part, really.”
”Sounds great,” Keely agreed.
When their coffee was finished, Ali led her through a side door and down a set of cement steps into a basement that Keely hadn’t known existed. The large space was crowded floor to ceiling with not only books but old equipment and filing cabinets and a strange assortment of curios that ranged from round glass floats to antique furniture.
”The library has been working in conjunction with the historical society on the Pelican Point museum,” Ali said when she noticed Keely looking at the piles of antiques.” Have you seen it?”
”No, I haven’t. I didn’t even know that there was a museum here in town.”
”It’s small, so we’ve been doing rotating exhibits and keeping the overflow in the basement here at the library.” She looked at the barely organized chaos with a frown. ”I’ve been working on getting it all organized in my spare time, but there’s so much. The books get most of my time and attention. There are things in here that I haven’t had time to dig into yet, all sorts of old documents. Positive side is that there’s plenty more for new exhibits at the Pelican Point museum whenever I get the time to go through and organize things.”
”You said that there was a new shipment of books in today?”
”Right.” Ali turned away from the jumbled chaos of Pelican Point history and led her to a more well-lit and organized portion of the basement. ”This is where we catalog and label new books that come in. Hardcover books get wrapped in plastic. It’s also where we fix books that are starting to come apart. Now that is a fun job. I’ll show you another time.”
It was hard for Keely to imagine pasting books back together in a windowless basement as a ”fun job,” but she smiled at Ali and nodded. The young librarian was so cheerful in general and especially happy in her work that her good attitude was catching.
Ali led her through the process of unboxing books, inputting them into the library‘s computer catalog, labeling them, wrapping them in protective plastic, and adding a library sticker to the inside of the cover.
Once all of the books were properly labeled and part of the digital catalog, they carried the two heavy boxes back up the stairs and set them on a cart to begin shelving them. It seemed to be a tedious process to Keely, but Ali hummed while she worked. She smiled softly at each volume as she tucked it into place, as if she were putting her children to bed for the night.
Once all of the books were shelved and they had taken their lunch break (more cupcakes and coffee, as Keely had forgotten in her first-day nerves to bring any actual food for lunch), Ali showed her how to work the front desk. Checking books in and out was as easy as scanning the barcode, and helping customers to locate books or order them from other branches was another lesson that only took a few minutes. With those lessons imparted, Ali left Keely to man the front desk while she did computer work a few feet away.
Traffic picked up as kids got out of school and families stopped by the library.
There was a free activity for kids available in a side room. Melissa ran that while Keely managed the flow of traffic that came past the front desk. She helped a few older citizens to navigate the electronic catalog and find the books that they were looking for. She helped grade-school kids and young moms order stacks of picture books on certain subjects. And she was momentarily struck dumb when a customer close to her age came up and asked her for a recommendation as if she were some kind of expert.
”I haven’t read anything for fun since I was a kid,” the young woman said, ”and I have no idea where to start. I mean I want to read something for grown-ups, but something really engaging. Not fantasy necessarily, but not something too dry and boring either. Any idea on where to start?”
Keely pondered over the question over for a moment, thinking over all of the books that she had gleaned from second-hand stores and from the Rocky Hill library throughout her months of recovery. There had been a time just a few months back when she had been reading multiple novels a day to occupy her mind and preserve her sanity.
”Have you read anything by Barbara Kingsolver?” she asked at last.
The other girl tilted her head to one side. ”Who is that?”
”An American author. She won a Pulitzer recently for her book Demon Copperhead, but I love her early books best. I went through this summer and read everything she’s written, and actually her first book is my favorite. It’s called The Bean Trees. But really any of her books, you can’t go wrong. They have strong characters and great plots, but they also have such a phenomenal sense of place. She’s a biologist too, I think, and she describes the nature of each place in a way that makes it really come alive.”
”Sold,” the young patron said with a grin.
”Cool.” Keely glanced at Ali, who smiled and gave her a surreptitious thumbs up. She felt like she had passed her first trial. ”I’ll show you where her books are shelved, and you can look through them to see which one jumps out at you.
”Perfect.”
She led the girl a short distance through the shelves, pointed out the long line of Kingsolver books, and then went back to the front desk. A few minutes later, the girl returned carrying three novels.
”I got The Bean Trees like you suggested, and I also picked up the ones that take place in Mexico and in Africa.”
”Great. I hope you love them.”
”I’m really excited. They look right up my alley, thank you.”
”You know,” Ali said to both of them, glancing up from her computer, ”we have a book club here every Thursday night. We read a lot of modern literary fiction, a new book every week.”
”That many?” the patron said.
”Isn’t it usually a book a month?” Keely asked.
”Yep.” Ali grinned. ”This is a next-level book club. You can always skip a week if you don’t have time, but yeah, we read a book a week. It’s awesome.”
”What’s this week’s book?” the girl on the other side of the counter asked.
”There’s a list up there on the bulletin board,” Ali said, pointing to the corkboard mounted near the front door. ”So you can see which books are coming up and decide which weeks you might like to come to.”
”That’s so cool.”
”Maybe I’ll see you there,” Keely said as she scanned first the library card and then the books. ”Either way, I’d love to hear what you think of these.”
”I’ll report back.” The girl gave them a playful salute and marched off with the books in her arms.
”I love this job,” Ali said with a sigh.
The day ended with more tedious work, shelving and dusting and sweeping. Still, it was better than any job Keely had worked so far in her life. She was grateful for the easy camaraderie she already felt with both the library staff and its patrons.
As she went through the rote tasks of cleaning the library before closing, her mind drifted to that prep work that she needed to do when she got home. In addition to the ice cream cakes, she had agreed to make a few different kinds of appetizers for the big event. She would have plenty of time the day of to make everything before the fundraiser that evening, but she knew that she would sleep better that night if she got most of the prep work done in advance. That way, if something went wrong, she wouldn’t be down to the last second on time.
She had never cooked or baked for an event of this size, and she didn’t want to fail her new friends. In some ways, it felt like her initiation not only into Pelican Point but into the world of being a full-fledged adult. She was determined to get things right.