Chapter 3 #2
“Vigilante librarians. I like that.”
“This is illegal, right?”
She nods. “Very. Especially after today.”
“Why did you bring me here?”
Ms. Astor reaches out and puts her finger on the top of Fahrenheit 451, pulling it from the shelf and holding it out to me. I take the book, loving the rough feel under my fingers.
“Walk with me.”
Ms. Astor leads me through the tunnels. Everywhere I look seems to be overflowing with books. “I thought all the books were destroyed,” I whisper, half to myself. Ms. Astor lets out a soft huff.
“No librarian was going to let books disappear, Hart. It doesn’t matter what excuse they gave. When the Last War started,
we started our own war—a war to preserve knowledge.” Her face tightens. “And now, more than ever, it really is a war.”
“What would President Graves do if he realized this was here?”
She puts her hands on her hips. “Did you see the news today? The bill he signed?”
I nod. “It’s supposed to protect kids.” Even as I say it, the words feel fake. Rehearsed. Like my own opinion was filtered
through Alba before it came out of my mouth.
Ms. Astor snorts. “From what?”
“Books they think are dangerous, I guess.” But my mind rings with my mother’s warning.
Ms. Astor purses her lips, thinking. “Who, I wonder, gets to decide what books are dangerous?”
It’s a rhetorical question. I know the answer. The people in power.
Her eyes dip down to where I’m clutching the hardcover. “The book you’re holding? It warned us about book burning. But then
it was gone, so people didn’t know what to look out for when the flames arrived. These stories are important. We have to protect
them.”
My heart races. “What can we even do?”
“Lyceum has been saving knowledge and disseminating it secretly for years now,” she says. “But recently, we’ve taken a more
active role in trying to inform the public about what’s going on. Information is easy. Getting people to care is the hard
part.”
Ms. Astor reaches up on a shelf, pulling down a single piece of folded paper.
There’s a hand-drawn rolled-up document on the front, along with writing:
The First Amendment.
“We’ve been making these,” she says. “And trying to sneak them into places where people will find them. We’ve got to get the
word out, somehow, before the election this fall. Most people don’t seem to care . . . fine. But if a quarter of them do,
we need to find all of that quarter and bring them together to make a difference. We are trying to get books out—get them
to people who want them. That, plus the pamphlets . . . people are posting about them, even if Alba is deleting their videos.
If the people can all find their voice again, we can start trying to change the story that’s being written without us.”
“But how can I help? Why ask me? I’m just . . . Ripley Hart. You know better than most that I’m more likely a liability than
an asset.”
Ms. Astor pivots, turning to a shelf. She runs her hand along the spines of books until her fingers land on one. She pulls
it out.
It’s loosely bound, something distinctly handmade about it—no cover, like the hardback I hold in my hands.
“What—” I stop as I see the title, scrawled in black marker on the cover:
Written in the Stars.
My whole body hums. This is my writing.
“I asked for Ripley Hart,” Ms. Astor says, “because we need Saffron.”
My cheeks burn. Has she read it?
Suddenly, I feel raw. Exposed. All of the love, the yearning, the loneliness I poured into the words makes the pages feel
heavier in my hands.
I wrote to process how I felt about him, the boy who lived next door.
Eating Popsicles on the astroturf in the community center. At Data Refining Day Camp during summer, racing to finish assignments
before each other.
And one day, he looked at me as we walked to the train and my stomach flipped in this unfamiliar way. And suddenly I understood
what it meant to have a crush.
But what was I supposed to do with it? I didn’t know the first thing about boys. I just knew he made me nervous in a good
way. I wanted to be near him. His laugh made the air feel safe.
So I started writing it down. All of it. Every look, every joke, every dream I had about him.
It was like I was emptying that buzzing feeling out, sparking it down my arms and letting it charge the paper.
I called him Orion, because I named him after the constellation he longed to see.
There’s a whole belt, he’d tell me. We’d seen photos, of course. In training, we’d have to sort the real astronomy photos from the fake ones.
But we’d never been able to see it for real.
I changed little details about him, letting my imagination take over, but the rest was all him. Every victory. Every heroic
act. Every smile.
And I created another character: Saffron. She was me, but . . . not. She was brave, she could do the splits. She didn’t think
the hot sauce in the monthly meal allocations was too spicy. She could say everything I was thinking. She could be everything
I wasn’t.
And Ms. Astor has read it.
All of it.
Did she read the kissing scene with Saffron and Orion on the bridge of the Celestial Breaker?
Or the other scene I wrote in the kitchen? The one where they’re making pancakes?
I swallow hard, blinking rapidly as I take a step back.
“Um. This is, um . . .”
My thoughts spin and tumble, searching for purchase and finding none.
This is my coping mechanism, a fantasy I’ve written about a boy I used to love but can never have.
I also wrote it before I kissed anyone, so it’s pure speculation, and please ignore the scene with the syrup because if you bring it up I will die on the spot and you’ll have to drag my body back to the surface—
“Ripley,” Ms. Astor says sharply, in that proctor voice, and I look up at her. She must see the horror on my face, because
she holds her hands out as if to placate me. “Ripley,” she says again, “I don’t care about what’s in this story.”
Pancake make-out session, I think. It’s all I think. On a loop. Pancake. Make-out. Session.
I hold the papers to my chest like I can make them reabsorb into my body. Perhaps I will collapse in on myself, too, and we’ll
just be a dark shame hole on the ground of this secret library. Here lies Ripley, a sad, lonely girl who was so hungry when she wrote about the love of her life she covered him in syrup.
Not the love of my life, I correct. Not anymore. Not now—not After.
“Do you know how many people have read this story?” Ms. Astor asks.
“I just wanted to send it to my friend,” I whisper as I close my eyes, but Ms. Astor puts her hands on my shoulders, bringing
me back to the moment.
“This story means something to people. We didn’t print it out. Someone else did. It was in a shipment of books that arrived
from Wisconsin.”
The words don’t compute. I look up at Ms. Astor, daring to meet her gaze for the first time since she handed me the book. My book.
Someone across the country was reading my book for fun. Someone printed my words to keep them safe.
“I didn’t think you’d have to be blackmailed to help us make pamphlets,” Ms. Astor says. “I did think you’d need the threat of being sent to the front of an actual war to stop you from sprinting out of here when I showed
you the book.”
I take a deep breath and nod. “Umm. Fair, actually.” I swallow hard. A moment of fear hits me like lightning. “How did you
know it was me? Does anyone else?”
I changed some details, but still. They could figure out who Orion was. I’m pretty sure Nef has.