Chapter 6 #2
Stella was shelving returned books on the first floor when Dana Cannon, a high school history teacher, walked through the front doors.
She wore gardening khakis and a lightweight, button-up aqua shirt that enhanced her startling light green eyes.
Her wavy dusty-brown hair—streaked with silver that reflected light like tinsel on a Christmas tree—was tucked behind her ears.
Stella placed the books in her arms back on the cart and walked toward Dana, wondering what kind of book she might be searching for.
As if called to action, green, grasslike words lifted from Dana’s shirt and circled around her body. Blossoming friendship. Folksy. Secret murder from an unfolding past. The image of a Fannie Flagg novel rose in Stella’s mind. The connection surprised her, but it was similar to how she’d felt
when she tested her gift on Ariel last night. How could she share what she’d seen with Dana without coming across as incredibly
odd? Beat around the bush or be direct? What if she was wrong?
“Good afternoon, Dana,” Stella said. Opting for a combination of evasive and direct, she continued, “It’s a good day for a
Fannie Flagg novel, don’t you think? Something like Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe?”
Dana’s slow smile added to her surprised expression. “I was just thinking about that book. I haven’t read it in years, but
I loved it.”
“Really?” Stella said, exaggerating her surprise while her own confidence soared. “I could have it ready for you at the front.”
“I’d like that,” Dana agreed. “It does seem like a good day to read it again.”
Arnie stepped out from between a row of shelves, seemingly caught off guard by Dana’s presence. She smiled, and Arnie stood
stock-still as though he’d completely forgotten which way he had been heading. Stella watched, puzzled by his behavior.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Cohen,” Dana said. “I was hoping to find you here today.”
Arnie’s lips parted. “You were?” He rubbed one hand down the back of his head.
Dana pulled a folded sheet of paper from her front pocket. “I had a specific question about Wildflower Hill and its connection
to the Revolutionary War, and I hoped to find a book on the subject. Next month my students are preparing reports on both
the American Revolution and the happenings in Blue Sky Valley during the same time. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories of the
hauntings and other nonsense. But I’m looking for authentic information, the facts. Clyde Johnson said you were something of an expert—”
“Arnie,” he interrupted.
Dana looked up from her paper, blinking her light eyes in the silence. “Pardon me?”
“Call me Arnie.”
Stella leaned against the archway and grinned. Is Arnie nervous? As if in answer to her question, silvery, glittery words slipped out from beneath Arnie’s shoes. Magical. Green eyes. Yes yes yes.
“Arnie,” Dana said. She handed him the piece of paper. “I’ve made some preliminary notes about all the information I could
find on the internet, but the facts are seriously lacking, and ghost stories meant to scare children can’t be considered reliable
sources, regardless of what the town swears to be the truth. Do you think you can guide me to a place to start?”
Arnie stared at the sheet of paper as though she’d handed him a love note. Then he looked up and caught Stella’s gaze. His
eyes pleaded with her, but she didn’t understand his expression. He held out the paper for Stella, so she walked toward him.
“Stella, Ms. Cannon needs—”
“Dana,” she said. Pale sunlight stretched down from the windows and pooled around her feet.
Arnie’s gaze strayed to Dana’s face and lingered there. “Dana,” he said in a voice that had gone all soft and comfortable
around the edges like a naptime blanket.
Stella cleared her throat. “How can I help?”
Arnie shoved the yellow legal pad paper into Stella’s hands, and she struggled not to crumple the page. “I have a book I was
supposed to order for Yvette Camden this morning, and it’s somewhat of an emergency book. You can handle this.” Then he hurried
off, his dress shoes clacking against the tiles in rapid beats. Stella and Dana stared at his back as he scrambled up the
main staircase.
Stella refocused on Dana. “I think I can lead you to the proper section. Arnie is more of the expert on Wildflower Hill, but
if you have any questions later, I’m sure he’d be willing to help out . . . once he orders that emergency book, of course.”
“Of course,” Dana repeated. Her gaze lingered on where Arnie had disappeared up the staircase. “Let’s grab Fannie Flagg, too,
while we’re at it.”
After Stella helped Dana locate two books that contained the most information about Wildflower Hill along with Fannie Flagg’s
classic, she went looking for Arnie. She found him standing in the poetry section, tapping his fingers in a repeating rhythm
against the spines. Stella recognized the pattern as Morse code. SOS.
“Sending a distress signal? Do you want to be the pot or the kettle?” she asked.
Arnie stilled his fingers and then pulled a book from the shelf before returning it almost as quickly.
He turned toward her. His gray hair was ruffled around the edges, and his gaze seemed to reach out into some far, unseen distance.
When he spoke, his speech was slow and thoughtful.
“Sometimes you meet people, and you know you can handle yourself with them. You know you’ll never lose control or give too much of yourself away.
There is an amount of comfort in that feeling.
Your heart is safe in that not-all-of-me space.
“Other times you meet someone and everything stops and brings that person into complete focus. Colors and sounds are muted
as though that person is in a spotlight. And all you want to do is stay right there.” Arnie sighed. “I can’t think when Dana is around. At all. Complete doofus. I’m terrified I’m going to babble or blubber
or both. It’s like I revert to an awkward teenager. It’s better if I make myself scarce when she’s around.”
Although Stella had never been cautious enough with her heart and had lost control of her emotions too many times, she had
never felt what Arnie described—the dreamy feeling when time slowed as it intensified the connection to someone else. Arnie
was one of the most capable, independent people Stella had ever known. He possessed equal amounts of composure and finesse.
She couldn’t imagine anyone making him feel tongue-tied or clumsy.
“Arnie, have you ever thought about asking Dana out? Starting small, like taking her out for coffee or tea?”
His face paled, and then he laughed—a deep belly laugh that rippled out and pressed against the library windows. “Can you
imagine? I’d be all thumbs and left feet with her.”
“I’m no expert on Arnold Cohen, but I’ve never seen you go all dewy-eyed for a woman before. I’m not sure missing out on this is worth your fear about being a doofus.”
Arnie walked toward Stella and slipped his arm around her shoulders, guiding her toward the staircase. “Let’s circle back.
Do you want to be the pot or the kettle?”
At the end of her shift, Stella told Arnie goodbye and headed toward her house.
The late-afternoon sun filled the inside of her car with stifling summer heat.
She rolled down the windows but found little relief from the outside air as it circulated inside the car, turning the interior into a convection oven.
Waya Lake shriveled from its banks in the intense heat, and teenagers hung out in the shade rather than sunbathing on the
shore. Kids stood in line at the shaved-ice stand ordering treats in a rainbow of colors and racing to shovel them down before
they melted.
The asphalt shimmered like a desert mirage as Stella drove to the pharmacy. She needed to buy another bottle of aspirin and
a Pepsi from Mr. Jordan, Blue Sky Valley’s pharmacist for the past forty-five years.
“Where are your helpers?” Stella asked him as he rang up her purchases.
“Sent them home an hour ago. The air-conditioning is having a time keeping up with this heat, and the girls were sweating
like sinners in church, and boy, were they complaining. Another hour of that, and I would have lost my cool. Figuratively, of course, since this place has already literally lost its cool.”
Stella nodded. “Air conditioners should know better than to give out during summer in the South. How’s a person supposed to
survive?”
As soon as she sat back down in her car, sweating through her clothes and sticking to the cracked leather seat, she opened the Pepsi, and it burned a dark pathway down her throat.
Then she drove home, thinking about how she’d helped Dana find the perfect book.
Excitement lit her up for the first time in months.
The possibility of using her words to help library patrons thrilled her.
What else would she be able to do with the words?
How else could she call them forth to help her with people, with her own life?
Would it be possible to actually write a book, to become a novelist?
When Stella parked in the garage and got out of her car, she noticed flat, mud-brown words squeeze out from beneath the weather
stripping on the sides of the house-to-garage door. Heat. Stale. Heavy. “That’s not a good sign,” she said. When she opened the door, a wave of hot air billowed out.
After walking into the house, she inhaled sticky, dense air. She checked the thermostat, which read eighty-five degrees. Stella
pulled out her cell phone and searched for the local HVAC company, then dialed their number. An energetic employee answered
and asked if Stella was having issues.
“It feels like Death Valley in my house,” Stella complained, thinking about the girls who had been working at the pharmacy
today. At least that place was cooler than hers.
The bubbly voice on the other end of the line apologized, but Stella could hear the faint whir of cool air pumping into their