Chapter Three
“If I wasn’t with André, this is the kind of man I’d want in my life,” Tati said to Noelle.
Noelle glanced up at the mass-market paperback novel that Tati held in her hands. The Pirate Captain’s Lover by Clara Crawford. A brown-skinned, shirtless man donned the cover, displaying his perfectly sculpted abs. Tati ran her fingers over the cover and blew the book a kiss.
“You’d want to date a pirate?” Noelle asked, smirking.
“Why not?” Tati said. “Being with a pirate is probably so much fun. And you know the pirate in this book is probably rich as hell from all that looting or whatever it is that pirates do.”
Noelle laughed. “You should read that one,” she said, nodding at the book in Tati’s hands.
“It’s about a woman who’s running away from her evil husband, and she thinks she’s boarding a ship to England, but she accidentally ends up on a pirate ship and falls in love with the pirate captain.
It’s so good. Wait, actually…” She sifted through the box until she found what she was looking for.
My One True Pirate. “This is the second book in the series. After a shipwreck, one of the pirates gets marooned on an island with a woman who’s pretending to be a maid, but she’s actually an heiress. ”
“Oh?” Tati gathered her long twists at the nape of her neck and reached for the book.
Her makeup was flawless today, as per usual, and her black scrubs hugged her curves.
Even Noelle’s coworker Kevin, who usually ignored everyone, especially customers, glanced up from his phone as Tati had walked into the store earlier.
Tati flipped the book over in her hands and skimmed the description on the back. “Sounds juicy. I’ll buy both.”
Noelle flashed a satisfied grin. That was at least two sales for the day.
Her boss, Harold, entrusted her with sourcing books from estate and library sales, and she was in charge of sifting through the books that people sold and donated to the store.
But her favorite part about her job was hand-selling to customers.
It never got old. Even if she were only selling to Tati, who worked at the beauty salon across the street.
One of Tati’s clients had canceled at the last minute, so she was spending her unexpected break on the floor of the bookstore with Noelle as she shelved books.
Noelle was glad she got to see her best friend when their work schedules overlapped. And Harold never seemed to mind when Tati visited. Maybe it was because without Noelle and Tati’s chatter, the bookstore was too quiet. This year had been their slowest in foot traffic in a while.
“I wish I could read as fast as you,” Tati said. “You read like your life depends on it.”
“It kind of does.”
Noelle wasn’t joking. A kind librarian and a handful of books had saved her life.
Noelle’s mom had been the first in her family to go to college, and Noelle was determined to be the second.
Because college was so expensive, Noelle applied for as many scholarships as she could.
Each year, EmpoWOMENt, a nonprofit in New Jersey, hosted an essay contest for girls entering their senior year of high school.
The essay winner received a full-ride scholarship to the college of their choice.
In Noelle’s essay, she wrote about how her mom was her biggest hero and she was inspired by how hard her mom worked.
What she’d written must have resonated with the judges because she won the contest, and the organization paid for her to attend UMD.
At the start of college, she was directionless in terms of choosing her major before she finally settled on sociology sophomore year because she’d already taken a few sociology courses.
Then she met CJ at the beginning of her junior year and things went downhill.
CJ was at UMD on an athletic scholarship, and talented as he might have been at basketball, he couldn’t have cared less about his grades.
When he admitted to Noelle that he’d always struggled in school because he’d grown up in a chaotic household with parents who argued constantly, she threw herself into helping him study.
She focused more on helping CJ than she focused on her own classes.
But she thought that helping him was the right thing to do, noble even. Because she loved him.
Then came the night that he asked her to hide his bottle of tequila in her dorm room.
His RA conducted rounds often, whereas Noelle’s RA was more relaxed.
Noelle and CJ got into an argument because she didn’t want to keep his liquor for him.
One, she would get into a lot of trouble if she were caught with it.
And two, she had a Social Movements final in the morning, and she’d realized a little too late that the time she’d spent helping CJ meant she hadn’t spent enough time studying for her own classes.
Their argument was starting to get loud, and CJ finally stormed away, leaving her with his bottle.
At a loss, Noelle stored the bottle under her bed and planned to toss it in the morning.
But that had been the wrong move. Down the hall, her RA had heard bits and pieces of her argument with CJ, namely the words tequila and party.
Her RA came knocking on her door, and Noelle, who wasn’t twenty-one yet, was caught with alcohol in a dry dorm.
Later, before her hearing, when she’d realized that her scholarship was on the line, she’d begged CJ to tell the truth and admit the alcohol was his.
At first, he said that he would. But then he’d backpedaled.
He’d been too worried about losing his own scholarship.
Plus, she’d broken up with him, which had made him bitter.
It had been her word against his, and there was proof of Noelle having the liquor in her possession.
The violation went against EmpoWOMENt’s code of conduct, and Noelle lost her scholarship.
It was the end of her junior year, and she couldn’t afford UMD, or college in general, without financial help.
She qualified for some federal loans, but they weren’t enough to cover everything.
When she tried to apply for private loans, she was denied.
And she definitely didn’t want her mom to take out loans on her behalf.
Reality hit her like a ton of bricks. She wouldn’t be able to return in the fall to finish her final year and graduate.
That summer, Noelle went home, embarrassed and ashamed.
Portia seemed to be the only one on Noelle’s side.
She’d wanted to take action and get CJ to tell the truth, but Noelle just wanted to forget that any of it ever happened.
At the end of the day, even if the liquor was CJ’s, she chose to hide it under her bed.
She begged her mom to let it go so that they could move on.
Soon after, just when it seemed like things couldn’t get much worse, one day on her way home from work, Portia got into a car accident.
Her injuries—three fractured ribs and a fractured pelvis—required multiple surgeries and a lengthy recovery stay in the hospital.
Noelle spent most of her days in Portia’s hospital room.
Portia slept a lot, and the television in her room worked only when it wanted to.
Noelle avoided social media because she didn’t want to see pictures of the UMD friends who’d quickly stopped responding to her texts once they realized she wasn’t coming back.
As her mom slept, she was left to sit with her thoughts and failures.
On one of those quiet, forlorn days, a nurse took pity on Noelle.
“There’s a library across the street,” the nurse said. “Maybe you can find a book to read to pass the time while you’re here?”
“Oh.” Noelle blinked and glanced at her mom, who had just fallen asleep again after eating lunch.
“Your mom’s okay,” the nurse gently reassured her. “I’ll come back to check on her.”
Noelle stood and bit her lip. She didn’t want to leave, but she also didn’t want the nurse to see her as a problem. They were nice enough to let her stay after visiting hours ended sometimes. She didn’t want to lose those privileges.
She walked across the street to the library.
The building was large with a dome-shaped ceiling.
As she stepped inside, she was hit with a cold gust of air-conditioning.
Three librarians were seated in front of computers at the reference desk.
Straight ahead was the children’s books section with colorful chairs and rugs.
Noelle walked farther inside, and to her left, she saw rows of books in the nonfiction section.
She glanced up at the second floor and saw even more shelves.
She didn’t know where to begin her search.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d read a book that wasn’t required reading for school.
What kinds of books did she even like? It was overwhelming.
Everything was overwhelming. Losing her scholarship.
Not going back to UMD. Breaking up with CJ. Her mom’s accident.
She felt her face get hot and tears gathered at the back of her eyes as she stood frozen by the reference desk.
“Can I help you with anything?”
Startled, Noelle turned to see a librarian standing beside her. The woman spoke in a soft voice and she wore tortoiseshell glasses.
“Um” was all Noelle got out before she started to cry.
“Oh, honey, it’s all right.” The librarian walked Noelle to the reference desk and handed her a tissue. “What’s bothering you?”
Noelle realized no one had asked her that question yet, and it made her cry even harder. Through tears, she told the librarian about losing her scholarship and her mom’s accident.
“It sounds like maybe you need to read something that will help you relax,” the librarian suggested gently once Noelle finished talking. “Something immersive to take your mind off things. Do you like fantasy?”