Library or Lattes?

1

OCTOBER in Oak Falls meant the sky got dark around five thirty.

It meant that Harvest Festival was just around the corner and that there was a chill in the air.

The kind of chill that smelled like damp earth and yesterday’s woodsmoke.

A scent that crept through the doorframes and window cracks of our old cottage.

I’d always loved this time of year, tucked up on the couch with Mom’s quilts, trying not to fall asleep in front of the crackling fire.

Peace.

But not for long. Because Lennie didn’t even knock.

I’d been watching a TikTok of some influencer livestreaming in Tokyo when someone barged through the door wearing a Pennywise mask and scaring the crap out of me. I mean, I should have been used to it. When it came to Lennie, Pop and I had an open-door policy (which she one hundred percent abused).

She didn’t even take the mask off, just stood there in silence, staring.

“Lennie, you’re freaking me out here. Take it off,” I told her.

She pulled it off and dumped it on the kitchen table along with her coat, revealing bright blue, non-terrifying pajamas, which totally complemented my outfit of fluffy socks, shorts, and Mom’s old Knicks T-shirt. Much better than a child-killing clown, anyway.

“Free house again?” Lennie grinned and her dark eyes lit up.

“Pop’s at your second home, fixing a leak,” I said.

Lennie opened a bag of the weird blue candy that made up half her diet. “School?”

“Okay sorry, your third home. The library.”

“Weird. Jo never mentioned a leak when I was there earlier. Oh, but she did tell me about this new series she’s ordering in. Serious spice, apparently.” She wriggled her eyebrows and I laughed.

“You’re such a pervert.”

“I know. And one of these days I’m going to make you a pervert too. I’m making you read it after me.”

“Force-reading. That sounds fun …”

“The funnest.”

Lennie looked over the back of the sofa and around the open-plan kitchen/living room. “Willa, come on. It’s time for a party here. Your pop is out fixing stuff way too much not to take advantage.”

Lennie’s mouth was so full of candy, I had to seriously concentrate to make out what she was saying.

She was a tiny little human, with almost-black hair that sat long, shiny, and straight over her shoulders.

She always reminded me of something you’d find in a fairy-tale forest. Small, delicate features, bony elbows, and the perfect scowl.

“If I was ever going to give in and have a party here, it would have happened already,” I said.

I stretched out and took a normal amount of candy from the bag, scrunching up my face at the sourness.

“And are we even party-having kind of people?”

“Well, yeah, you’re right. You’re not. I can just imagine you leaving your own party because someone mentioned that their grandma lived alone, and you thought they might be lonely.”

Lennie knew I’d never have a party here.

If I asked Pop, he’d be cool with it, but at Krista’s parties something always got broken, and Pop didn’t have his own car dealership like Mr. Goldberg, so we couldn’t just fix everything all the time.

My eyes fell on the damp patch on the ceiling that Pop was constantly complaining about.

“I kind of have news …” Lennie hugged her knees and looked at me.

My stomach dropped—was it something bad? Then I saw the twinkle in my best friend’s eyes. “Tell me!”

She was grinning stupidly now. “So, I saw her at the bookstore again.”

“Sara?” I asked.

“Yup.”

“And?” I nudged her.

“She said hi.”

I squealed. Lennie had been low-key obsessed with this girl Sara for ages. She found out that Sara went to Main Street Books every Friday. So now, I guess, so did Lennie.

“Oh my God, she’s actually made for you, Len. Please tell me you said hi back, at least?”

“Does a wave count?”

“Who even are you?” I pushed her. “This is not the Lennie I know.”

I think I’d always been drawn to Lennie because she knew herself.

Or seemed like she did, anyway. In second grade she brought in a book about vampires for show-and-tell when the rest of us brought in stuffed animals.

And in fourth grade she wore mismatched socks for the whole year, because even then she hated the thought of being the same as everyone else.

Confident—that was the word I’d use to describe my best friend.

So this self-doubting, reserved Lennie was totally new to me.

But that’s what I was there for. She’d always been my brave when I needed it.

Now I could be hers. Or at least be her cheerleader.

She picked up an acorn-shaped knitted cushion (I never knowingly under decorated for the season) and squished it onto her face. I waited until her muffled scream had stopped.

“You have to talk to her.”

“I know.” Lennie chucked the cushion at me, and I got up to put pizza in the microwave, leaning on the counter as I waited for it to ding.

“So that’s why I’m saying we should have a party. And then we could invite her, and the rest would be history.” Lennie put her hands together like she was praying.

No need. “Krista will have her Halloween party as usual. You can wear your Pennywise mask and show Sara what a creep you are.”

“Do you really think the mask is sexy?”

“Did I say it was sexy? I mean it could be, I guess, if you …” My face twisted in disgust. “No. What am I even talking about. Scratch that. Don’t wear the mask.”

“I’ll make it work,” Lennie promised.

I brought the pizza over to the couch on the slab of wood Pop had made into a chopping board, and set it between us. I pressed Play on the TV as we each pulled one of Mom’s old quilts around us. Tonight’s movie—Amélie.

Every Friday for the past I don’t even know how long, Lennie and I’d had movie night.

Alternating houses. I chose the movie at mine, and she chose the movie at hers.

So Lennie had to bore her way through subtitled movies when she came to my house, and I had to hide behind my hands and watch horror movies at hers.

It kind of worked, in the sort of way that it didn’t work at all.

“If you’re set on Paris tonight, can’t we watch Emily in it instead?” she said.

“Fine.” I gave in and switched over. I did love the clothes. And it was still Paris. I’d been obsessed with other countries for as long as I could remember, and even though I’d never been outside the States and had no real plans to change that fact, no one could stop me from daydreaming.

“Are we still going to the game this week?” I made a face.

Lennie did too. But since it was senior year, we’d decided we should make an effort with all the Oak High stuff.

Too bad we managed to find excuses every time there was a home game.

Lennie felt much happier in the library and study hall than in the bleachers, and even though I did track, I didn’t actually care about team sports.

“I mean we should, I guess. School spirit?” Lennie looked like she was in pain. And then: “Ooh, maybe Sara will be there? I saw her wearing an Oak High Hawks T-shirt the other week …” The corners of her mouth turned up in the cutest smile.

I raised an eyebrow. “The other week?”

“Okay fine, you got me. September ninth, by the vending machine. At two twenty-one p.m. Ah!” Lennie covered her face with the acorn cushion for the second Sara-related time that night. She had it bad.

“Stalker mode?” I reached over and squeezed Lennie’s arm so she knew I was joking. “Okay, let’s go to the game next week and then we can do movie night after? And hey, maybe she’ll be there and you can actually say a real, human word to her.”

I’d never had this kind of crush on anyone.

I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t notice if a hot guy passed through Oak Falls, my eyes worked just fine.

But it was just that they were usually “passing through,” and nobody at Oak High had ever made me feel the way I thought Love—movie-style love—would feel.

Carter Blake, who graduated a couple of years ago, did make my stomach loop, but everyone had a crush on Carter, so it didn’t count.

And it wasn’t like I hadn’t had boyfriends.

They just weren’t the one-true-love-one-track-mind-can’t-eat-can’t-sleep kind of thing that seemed to have swallowed my best friend whole.

Maybe that kind of love only happened in movies. Maybe it would never happen to me. But the way Lennie talked about Sara had made me realize that I wanted to feel that way about someone too. Like really feel it. Someday.

But right now? This was about Lennie.

When she left around midnight, Pop still wasn’t back from fixing the leak in the library.

The fire was dying, and I lay there for a while on the sagging old sofa, just staring at the glowing embers and feeling my eyes getting heavy.

Half asleep, I finally dragged myself to my bedroom.

One corner of my room was lit with the flower-shaped string lights that Pop had helped me put up, and my eyes fell on the framed photo of me and Mom.

I was on her shoulders. Two years old, my hands in her wavy red hair, a baseball cap on my head.

We were both smiling so hard. It was kind of a ritual for me now—just before I went to sleep, I’d look at the photograph, then reach for Mom’s old notebook.

The leather corners were hard. Worn. Old.

I put the notebook under my nose and breathed it in.

Long, deep breaths. Not that it smelled like anything after all these years, but sometimes, when I closed my eyes, I liked to pretend it smelled like her.

And some nights I would flick to one of the permanently bookmarked pages.

Willa said her first word today.

“Home”

Maybe it was “ome,” I guess h is kind of tricky, but I still think she’s a genius. Mike thinks she was trying to say “Mom” but I don’t think so. She points at the house, at the coffee shop, at the bookstore on Main Street when she says it.

This kid already knows what matters …