8. This Damn Book
EIGHT
This Damn Book
CALEB
Caleb imagined that going to the library straight from an approved upper-body workout at the fitness center would indicate he hadn’t worried about his appearance, and send a message he wasn’t trying to impress her. All it really did was make him look uncharacteristically, uncomfortably sloppy. The button-down shirts were his uniform, the dividing line between football and the rest of his life. His clean T-shirt picked up residual sweat after he put it on—he waited to shower in his dorm where he had a stool to use if he needed to take weight off his left side—leaving him chilled. He hoped for everyone’s sake that he didn’t smell.
His warm-up pants, unzipped around the walking cast, protected him from the wind so little he thought he may as well wear shorts in February, and he was grateful for the temporary parking tag provided by the athletic department. Less grateful about the group he was about to meet, but he’d kept his head up through far worse for far longer than an hour, and if he could wear a game face in class the day before, he could wear it any time or place he might see her .
Three students had already arrived at the designated table in the library and greeted him with mumbles and waves. Shannon was not among them, Caleb noted with relief, as he sank into a chair and opened his backpack. The battered copy of The Catcher in the Rye greeted him like the old friend it was. He didn’t think he would need it for the initial group meeting, but threw it in the bag as a sort of security blanket. No teacher ever praised his writing skills, and although he did well enough to get by in any class, the analytical aspect of literature eluded him.
He glanced up from his phone when he heard voices and spied Shannon approaching the table. He made eye contact, nodded, and looked back at the screen without smiling.
An eager girl with a brunette bob tucked back by a headband appointed herself team captain and announced they were all present and should introduce themselves with their major and a fun fact about themselves. After someone who won a trout fishing contest and someone whose claim to fame was a junior miss pageant victory, Shannon announced her name and major and turned slightly so Caleb could see her face.
“I’m a vegetarian who makes exceptions for the holy goodness of Skyline Chili,” she said, then sat back in her chair and folded her arms, pressing her breasts upward and together in an unmistakable taunt from the V-neck of her sweater. The boy next to her, the trout fisher, choked on a swallow from his water bottle.
Three students later, Caleb picked up the gauntlet. “Skyline Chili makes me sick out both ends,” he declared, and undid and redid his hair while nearly the entire table grimaced .
She smiled.
“I don’t interpret the instructions that way,” said Trenton McDaniel as the group murmured a tense conversation. He had introduced himself with his personal best single-scull rowing time. “It just says everyone should choose one or two books. Nothing says we can’t have overlap in the group.”
Olive, the self-appointed leader, shook her head. “Yeah, but think about it,” she said. “We’re supposed to swap papers and give perspectives about different works in the same era. It would be just as boring as any regular lit class if we all wrote about the same thing.”
“Point taken. Huh.”
Shannon raised her hand and shot a look around the table, avoiding Caleb’s gaze. “Is anyone else here into Philip Roth?” she asked. “Maybe we could start a list for the people who definitely know what they want, and see where we are with overlap. I’ve got The Ghostwriter and The Great American Novel . I could do either.”
Trenton nodded and turned his laptop around. He started a spreadsheet and typed as he talked. “Good idea. Shannon, right?”
She shared a little smile when he looked up. “I’ve never read any of his older stuff,” he said. “The Plot Against America was great, though.”
“One of my favorites.”
Caleb tuned them out and waited for a moment to speak.
“I want Salinger, please,” he finally said. “ The Catcher in the Rye . ”
“Hasn’t everybody already read The Catcher in the Rye ?” asked Olive.
“I haven’t,” the red-haired pageant girl piped up. Caleb smiled, expecting an ally, but she set her jaw and flung a shiny new copy on the table. “But I guess everyone is supposed to, so I feel like I should.” She glanced at him, then at the blond boy. “Put me down for that. I’m Blake Sutton.”
“If we’re not doing overlaps, it’s mine because I said it first,” Caleb said. “Caleb Fields. Please.”
“I already bought my book,” she whined.
“You can read it anyway if you think you ‘should,’” he said, half teasing, half grumbling. “Have you got my name down for it, Trenton?”
“I’ve got you.” He tapped emphatically as he moved to another cell on the spreadsheet. “Who’s up?”
“That’s not fair,” Blake said. She glared at Caleb, frustrated about not getting her way and at his refusal to step aside for her pouted lips and batted lashes. “Ladies first.”
“First to speak is first,” Caleb shot back. “Ladies don’t get to sit on their asses and expect me to get out of the way to be polite when they could have spoken for themselves.”
“Whoa, whoa.” DeShaun Conway half rose from his seat and sliced the air with his hands. “Easy there, both of you. What are we doing, anyway? Did we decide it would be one person per book? I didn’t hear anyone decide for sure.”
“I really think it should only be one,” Olive said, followed by murmurs of approval.
“Maybe we could read it together,” Blake said, tilting her head at Caleb.
The flirtation didn’t register. He fished in his backpack and laid his dog-eared copy on the table, then thumbed the softened page corners smeared with tiny sketches in mechanical pencil. “I have been trying to understand this damn book since the tenth grade,” he said. “I never had to read it. It was banned at my school, and I read it because I wanted to. I never understood why this is such hot shit, but I kept trying because there are all these little pieces of it that speak to me and I don’t know what they’re saying.”
A hush fell as his cheeks burned, and he yanked at the neckline of his shirt. As he slowed his breaths, he swore a cool breeze whisked along the table and encircled him, calming the heat in his face. He felt Shannon’s gaze before he looked up and met her eyes, as gray and turbulent as waves of a coming storm.
Caleb swallowed heavily and blinked. She looked away.
Blake flipped her hair, raised her shoulders and inhaled, ready to launch a dramatic sigh and demand her choice of books when Shannon reacted and broke the silence.
“Okay, that’s it,” she said as she tossed her hair in an exaggerated mockery of Blake’s gesture. “Books have enough drama. Caleb called it first, so let’s move on.” She pointed to the boy at Caleb’s left. “You’re up.”
“I want Dune ,” he said, and more groans arose.
Caleb couldn’t meet her eyes again and tell whether the exasperation that accompanied the hair tossing was feigned or real. For one night, her face felt as familiar to him as his own, and the loss of that brief connection sat in the pit of his stomach like a weight.
When the group dispersed, Caleb moved slowly, packing his bag with deliberation as though he cared where his charging cables went. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Shannon chat briefly with Trenton and leave alone, and wondered if she’d wander the shelves close by. Three weeks after their first encounter, she still haunted his dreams: on top of him, beneath him, panting and smiling and teasing him with bits of her life and heart that starved him for more. He wanted to give her fancy pens, lay them at her feet so she could doodle in the margins of her books. If she would linger by the library elevator with half the force and fury with which she lingered in his thoughts, maybe it was a sign.
He didn’t know what he’d say, if anything, if she did.