Chapter 7
“Rise and shine, buttercup.”
Arnie’s voice drifted into Stella’s mind, and she blinked in the pale yellow morning sunlight. She experienced that moment
of where am I? followed by the memory of moonlight, laughter, and an impact with a wall of plastic wrap. Arnie stood at her feet, dressed
in black slacks and a charcoal-gray button-down. He held a cup of coffee that released spirals of steam toward the high ceiling.
She stretched and yawned before sitting up and rubbing her lower back. The sleeping bag bunched around her waist. “What day
is it?”
Arnie laughed and held out the mug for her. “Wednesday.”
Stella was about to take the mug and tell Arnie what happened last night, but when she looked around for the ball of plastic
from the prank, she didn’t see it anywhere. Creamy-white words formed from the steam rising from the hot liquid. Fiction. Disappear. Out of time.
Goose bumps rose on her arms. What had happened to the plastic wrap? She knew she hadn’t dreamed walking around the library chasing possible vandals, and she hadn’t dreamed running into the plastic wrap.
“You called me last night?” Arnie asked, still holding out the mug. “Everything okay?”
“I might be hallucinating, but I don’t think so,” she said, then reached for the mug of coffee and thanked him. “In the middle
of the night, I’m pretty sure I saw two teenagers lurking around the stacks, and they set up a booby trap for me.”
A crease formed between Arnie’s eyebrows. “I’m not sure if you’re being serious or not.”
Stella cupped her hands around the warm mug and heard a crinkling noise. Instead of smooth ceramic, the mug felt papery. She
pulled off a folded college brochure that had been wrapped around and taped to the mug. She shook the paper in the space between
them before dropping it on the sleeping bag.
“You and Percy . . . Are you two working together to plan my life? He’s trying to get me to take a job in Florida, and you’re
going on about extended education. Will you ever stop nagging me?”
“Anything is possible,” Arnie said. “What’s this about a job in Florida?”
Stella sipped more coffee. The hot liquid slid down her throat and sent tendrils of warmth through her, waking up her sluggish
body. “Don’t get me started on Florida, but I’m serious about the possibility of library vandals. They stretched plastic wrap
across the bookshelves, and I ran into it. I took it down and wadded it up, and the ball of plastic was right here when I
went to sleep.” She pointed at an empty spot on the floor. “I don’t know how they got out. You set the alarm when you left,
didn’t you?”
“Of course.” Arnie frowned. “Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”
She’d never “dreamed” so much in her life and certainly not dreams that were so vivid, so corporeal. Last night hadn’t felt
like a dream at all. Stella touched her face as she thought about the wall of plastic. “Two teenagers, I think. Laughing,
seemingly up to no good, but when I chased after them, they disappeared.”
Arnie crossed his arms over his chest. Stella placed the mug beside her and shimmied out of the sleeping bag. She glanced
over her shoulder to where she’d seen the boys and their shadows stretching across the cartoonish train track rug.
She stood and walked toward the rug and stared down at the curving railroad track. Bright red words wiggled out from between
the carpet fibers. Believe. Childhood. Wonder. “I don’t remember seeing any boys in here when we were closing down last night,” she said. “But maybe they were hiding out
somewhere. In a closet or in the bathroom.”
Arnie removed his glasses. He polished the lenses on his shirtsleeve and cast a look of doubt in her direction.
Stella glanced away from his searching gaze. “I walked around and checked all of the doors and windows. Nothing appeared tampered
with.” She returned and grabbed her coffee. “Even the vault was closed up. So . . . now I’m wondering, what if I wasn’t dreaming?”
A rush of thoughts surged through her like a storm wind. All of this started after she burned the journal. Had that triggered
some kind of avalanche of, dare she think, magic? The words were popping up triple time, plus the agonizing ones sprang out without warning and seared her from the inside
with a message she didn’t understand yet. Now she was seeing people in the library who supposedly weren’t really there? First
Peter Pan, Helen of Troy, and Ichabod Crane in the archives, now these two teenagers.
Arnie walked toward her. “Hey, kiddo, you look stressed.” He slipped on his glasses. “Maybe you weren’t dreaming. Some people believe the library is haunted. I’m not one to discount unusual sightings.”
Ghosts? Was he serious? Although that was a better explanation than Stella believing she’d caused some sort of chain reaction
of magical doom. Her forehead scrunched. “By prankster teenagers?”
Arnie laughed and shook his head. “I don’t know that I’ve heard anything quite that specific, but who’s to say it’s not?”
She pulled her fingers through her unruly hair. “You’re just trying to make me feel better about losing my marbles.”
Arnie slid back his shirtsleeve and checked his watch. “Library opens in an hour. Clean up your party scene here, and you
can shower at my house. Use your key. I’ve already set out clean towels. There’s also a pan of biscuits staying warm in the
oven. Jelly’s in the fridge.”
Stella’s chest warmed, and not because of the coffee mug cradled in her hands. Even if she were losing control of her life,
she wouldn’t lose Arnie. Along with Percy and Ariel, Arnie had been one of the remaining constants in her life for as long
as she could remember. “You’re too good to me.”
“Not possible,” he said, making a shooing motion with his hands before walking off.
By midmorning a constant crackle of energy, like an electrical undercurrent, slowly built beneath Stella’s feet, causing a
tingle to zing up and down her spine. She felt anxious in her skin, like she had an itch out of reach and below the surface.
As she shelved books, more than a dozen buzzing, quivering words akin to a swarm of bees waited for her on an empty shelf in the self-help section.
Like winged insects, they flew toward one another and formed sentences.
Stella’s body flooded with the familiar ache of needing to write.
These words wouldn’t be satisfied with being seen. They craved to be inked on a page.
A library patron had left behind a brown paper napkin emblazoned with the logo from the coffee shop up the street, so Stella
grabbed it and pulled a pen out of her back pocket. The words buzzed around the shelf, levitating in an undulating motion.
She wrote them down.
Meet me in the dark,
when the world has fallen still.
Our love will burn bright.
Stella didn’t understand why she’d needed to write these particular words, as she had no desire to meet anyone offering love
to her in the dark. But she folded the napkin and slipped it into her back pocket with her pen.
Maybe her restlessness today, the jittery unease, could be blamed on her second cup of coffee or on the summer heat slipping
inside. But the air in the library felt out of sync with how it should be, like a thunderstorm brewing indoors, and Stella
had an inkling as to why.
After a lifetime of seeing the words, she couldn’t deny that her unique magic was real. However, admitting there was more enchantment in the world alarmed her. She’d been trying so hard to live a normal life after her mom left. She could entertain
the possibility of using her talents to start redirecting her life. But accepting the possibility that extraordinary, wilder
magic existed threatened to upend her grip on normal, and the strangeness in the library unnerved her.
Stella returned to the circulation desk just as a redheaded woman walked into the library. The woman carried an armful of books, and she smiled as soon as she made eye contact with Stella.
“Good morning,” Stella said. “Looks like you’ve been busy.”
The woman nodded. “Mostly for my boys, but I’ll be honest, I stayed up all night finishing this one.” She pulled The Adventures of Tom Sawyer out of the stack and slid it closer to Stella. “I told myself I’d only read until nine and then it was ten. Then before I
knew it, it was three a.m., and I don’t even care that I look like I stayed up all night. I couldn’t put it down. It’s probably
hard to believe I’ve never read this classic before now.” She tugged on her fiery-red, shoulder-length hair. “I also read
through this one.” She slid Adventures of Huckleberry Finn out of the stack.
Stella’s smile wavered as watery letters leaked out of the pages. They formed puddles on the desk and then collected into
words. Teenagers. Shenanigans. Superstitions. A queasy feeling wormed through her, and she experienced a surrealistic moment like Alice must have felt when she tumbled
down the rabbit hole.
Stella nodded absently. “Those two boys certainly got into some wayward escapades.”
The woman leaned forward and whispered, “I’m a bit relieved my boys aren’t like these two. They’re bighearted and well-meaning,
but with Tom skipping school and getting into fights—not the kind of friend I want my boys to have, but I bet they were fun
too.”
The two boys silhouetted by moonlight flashed into her memory. Stella reached for the remainder of the returned books. “Is
there something else you want to check out while you’re here? Can I help you find anything?”
“Since we’re on the subject of troublemakers, I think I’ll start the Harry Potter series.
I heard there are twins who get into a lot of mischief,” she said.
“But I know where to find those books. I’ll be back.
” She scurried off toward the children’s section, humming “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.”
Stella stared at the books. She rubbed her fingertip against the embossed title of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.