5 Library #2
When I didn’t say anything, he shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said.
I slammed my pencil on the desk, earning a glance from the man a few tables down.
“Now, now, no need to become violent. Classic landspout.” Theo was laughing as he said it.
“What did you just call me?” I caught his gaze and refused to be moved by its sparkle.
He sighed. “Landspout. A tornado that forms from the ground up. Appears out of nowhere. I mean, I have a longer, more thorough explanation too, Doc, if you’d like me to mansplain it?”
“Don’t call me that. And don’t call me land … spout or whatever it was.” I forced my eyes back to my screen.
“Mmhm.” He nodded knowingly.
I was so done with this. “What?”
“Unpredictable, destructive landspout.”
I threaded my fingers together, closed my eyes, and inhaled before I spoke again.
“Yeah, well, okay. So your mom is from London. Have you ever actually been there?” I demanded.
“Have I been. To London?”
“Why do you keep repeating things I say?”
“Because I want to make sure that you actually mean the confusing things that are coming out of your mouth. But yes. My mother is from London. I go twice a year.” He flipped through his book and sighed.
“That was all you needed to say. Yes, Willa, I usually go twice a year, so I know it pretty well.” I put on a voice.
“Was that supposed to sound like me?” Theo looked at me, amused.
“It did sound like you. Like an ass.”
“Okay, fine,” Theo said. “My parents are in London right now, if you must know.” He paused.
“They’re there because my gran isn’t well.
I was very close to her when I was little, and I wanted to go with them, but they decided it would be too much like hard work to bring me too.
So they dumped me with my stupid brother, his annoying wife, and their even more annoying children.
” He exhaled, like he’d been dying to get that off his chest.
I was taken aback by his sudden honesty. “Oh, wow. I’m sorry your gran is sick.”
“Thanks. I mean, that isn’t the whole reason they didn’t want me there. My mom and dad are getting divorced, so there’s that too.”
“Oh” was all I could manage. If he’d been someone less annoying, or let’s be honest, anyone else, I would have tried much harder to be supportive. What he was going through sucked, but my sympathy was buried pretty deep.
“It’s fine. I mean, obviously it would be nicer for everyone if they got along better and wanted to make it work.
But we don’t live in an ideal world, so …
” He shrugged. “But yeah, Gran. She was the reason I loved London so much. Like she made it magical or something. Maybe it was because we’d go over for Christmas, and everything was ‘posh’ and ‘pudding’ and ‘Alfie, please don’t annoy your superior brother’… ”
I found myself laughing at the accent he’d put on. “Sounds like you have a nice family,” I said, imagining a version of Theo sitting at a dinner table at Christmas, actually happy. Then the absurd image disappeared.
“I don’t. Only my gran. The rest of them have sent me to small-town hell. And that is unforgivable.”
“It’s not that bad,” I retorted. “You’re not even trying.”
“Well, I haven’t been proven wrong yet.” He raised his eyebrows.
“Just wait until you get to Harvest Festival,” I promised him. “It’s going to blow your mind.”
I didn’t even know if I meant this sarcastically.
How could I explain the wholesomeness that was Harvest Festival without embarrassing myself?
I’d always loved Harvest Festival, and Bonfire Night and every single one of our town celebrations, and now here I was, almost ashamed of them. All because of this one boy.
He smiled then. A real smile, not a smirk, and it was hard to stay angry at him. Especially when he looked like that.
“Maybe you could get a candy apple there and sweeten up a bit?” I suggested. “Just a thought.”
“Maybe you could make some of that pumpkin pie and trade it for some manual labor,” he teased back, but it hit a nerve when I thought of Pop.
“Sometimes it’s just nice to do things for people. Ever think of that?”
“I do things for people all the time,” he retorted, “because I want to, not because I expect sugar in return.”
“So you won’t be doing the pie-eating contest, then? Too bad. A mouth full of pie would mean you wouldn’t be able to talk for a while.”
“Alfie’s annoying kids were talking about that contest.” He shuddered. “It’s enough to make them sick.”
“No one’s forced to eat the pies—some people clearly enjoy it. But maybe you should suggest a carrot-eating contest if you’re that concerned about the health of Oak Falls residents,” I said defensively. Back to being an asshole so quickly. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
He just shook his head slowly, like he was mortified for me.
I went on. “Elsie and Cohen, Alfie’s kids, are super cute. Can you stop calling them annoying?” They were cute, with heads of dark curls and blue eyes. Eyes just like Theo’s, now that I thought about it. When I worked at the coffee shop, they’d come in every weekend to buy cupcakes with their mom.
“Elsie and Cohen,” Theo sighed. “You know they wake up at six every morning?”
“Lots of people do. People who have jobs, people who like the mornings, old people, children? But maybe I should send out the town messenger to ask everyone to stay in bed until eight because it’s disturbing our newest resident …”
I pretended to scroll on my phone, and then I noticed a string of messages and missed calls from Lennie. Oh God, the time!
I clicked on WhatsApp in a panic.
“You have a town messenger here? Of course you do, this place, it’s …”
Theo noticed that my smile had disappeared.
Lennie: Where are you? We’re about to leave for the diner …
Lennie: Will? I’m starting to worry, I ordered you fries and now they’re all cold ?
Lennie: You’re still coming to the game right?
Lennie: Willa! Write back to me or call me or something!!
Crap.
I stood up and hit the Call button. Lennie picked up after one ring.
“Oh my God, Willa, are you okay?” She sounded panicked, and also like she was surrounded by a huge crowd. She was shouting. “I was about to call your dad.”
“I’m fine. Sorry, Len, I was at the library, you know what it’s like when you kind of get lost in your books. I was doing London stuff …”
“Oh … okay. I get it.”
It was too loud on her end, I could barely hear her.
“I’ll meet you at your place for movie night after the game?” Now it was me who was shouting, and I noticed Jo looking over. I mouthed Sorry.
“No, no, don’t bother, one of Wyatt’s friends is having a party, so we might just go to that …”
“Okay, is Sara at the game?” That was the most important thing.
But there was no answer. She’d been cut off. Or she’d hung up?
I stood there for a minute, guilty. Empty.
I’d completely forgotten about the game during my back-and-forth with Theo. Forgotten about Lennie, Krista, Avery, my favorite fries at the diner, and movie night. The things that used to matter more than anything else.
My thumb hovered over Lennie’s name. I could still make it. There were still two quarters left, and I could squeeze in next to my best friends on the bleachers. And then what? Make small talk about a game I didn’t understand?
I looked at Theo, hunched over his laptop, pretending not to listen to my conversation. He belonged somewhere else, somewhere exciting. And in a few months, so would I.
This was my future. I had to be serious about it. The exam was coming, my essay needed writing. This wasn’t my fault. It was just … priorities.
I shoved my phone back in my pocket.
“Everything okay?” Theo looked up.
I pushed the phone call to the back of my mind as much as I could.
“Everything’s fine. So … I’m worried the exam might have questions on European politics and current affairs.
I’m totally lost … Do you have any idea about that stuff?
” I left the words in the air and watched him nod as if in slow motion.
He looked like the kind of person who watched news videos on a loop.
“You’re asking me for help?”
“I won’t make a habit of it, don’t worry.”
“Oh, please feel free. I very much enjoy feeling superior—as you so subtly pointed out to me.” He met my eyes, and his look was so hot that I literally had to look away. “Okay, so … They have a king there? And also a government. So they have a prime minister—”
“No president?”
“Nope.”
“So who makes all the decisions?”
“Well, I don’t know that much about it, so all I can do is tell you what I do know …?”
“Well, what you know is about eighty percent more than me, so I’m all ears.”
His eyes flicked to mine and his mouth twitched like he was going to smile. Then he cleared his throat and started talking about the UK Parliament.
I took notes and asked questions, focusing on every single word he had to say, because this was the important stuff. This was what mattered. Not football games and movie nights.
London. The exam. My future.