 
The

Night

Librarian

The

Night

Librarian

Elskan Triumph
The Night Librarian by Elskan Triumph

Published by BeachChair

www.middleschoolpoetry180.wordpress.com

Copyright © 2018 Elskan Triumph

All right reserved.

Al places, persons, events are all works of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, places or events past or present are coincidental.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact Elskan Triumph:

Spring hopes eternal. But the first day of school is in the fall.

"There must have been a conference that all of the teachers went to," my best friend Sophie MacDonald says to me when we meet up at the end of the first day. Each class a lesson around self-reflection.

On the first day of English 400: Senior English our teacher, Mr. Smith, has us write "I Am" poems. Each line starts with the phrase "I am..." and we fill in the rest of the sentence. For example:

I am beautiful.

I am powerful beyond measure.

I am the instrument of my own success.

That's his exemplar.

My inclination is to write This is Stupid. This is Childish, This is a Waste of Time, thus becoming the first person at my school to fail on their first day.

New year. First day.

Be honest, I tell myself. Trust the assignment.

I am mediocre.

I am bored.

I am waiting to be inspired.

I am afraid this is all there is.

I am unable to let myself be vulnerable.

I am sad.

Sophie writes This is not poetry. In the spirit of egalitarianism Mr. Smith hangs them all up, even Sophie's. When we come in the next day someone has written below the last line of mine.

I am retarded.

On the first day of Trigonometry we write hand poems.

They aren't really poems.

Fingers wide, we trace our hand on paper. In each finger we write something about ourselves. So, not really a poem. Most kids write something obvious or simple, like basketball or friends. It's not really math, but after English it seems self-reflection is what high school is about. At a table in the corner of the room, a few kids laugh when they get to the middle finger. A minute later the teacher takes a paper away and gives one of the group one.

Looking down at my hand, I can't think of anything to write.

It's the start of my last year in high school and I can count my strengths and interests on no hands.

Unlike the English courses, the History department numbers their courses chronologically: I, II, III. Whereas the English department followed a system copied (poorly) from college that indicated depth of knowledge (100, 200, 300, etc.). The use of roman numerals implies historical root, while calling it a seminar implies it's more than watching videos and filling in worksheets.

On the first day of Civilization IV: Senior History Seminar we make a personal coat of arms. We actually learn a little history before delving into our psyche. As the teacher passes out the worksheet he explains that different coats of arms had different shapes, mostly depending on geography and time period. The words "heraldry" and "medieval" are used, but details and significance of these factoids are lost in the ensuing scramble for the colored pencil bin.

On the paper is a template, the outline of a shield. This outline is divided into four quadrants, each of which we are to put something that symbolizes us. Anyone coming into our castle—our family manor—would see what us Jacksons stand for from this display. My father is out of work and my mother cleans houses and I'm an only child and I think I have thick ankles. That's four.

But not the four I really want visitors to focus on.

In the end it is a different version of the hand from Trig. Seeking inspiration from color I approach the colored pencil bin that sits near-empty on a table at the front of the room—there are more on the floor than in the bin. The oranges and browns are gone as I see people busily drawing basketballs and footballs. All that remains are broken pencils and a single red. I take it.

Return to my seat.

I draw myself.

In each of the four boxes I use the single red pencil to draw a different view of myself. Front view. Side view. Back view. Top view.

Self reflection will be big this year, I guess.

The more true to the assignment I am, the more I feel like a failure.

On the first day of Earth Science we plant a seed in a pot and set it by the window.

"It will represent growth," our teacher says. "Water and care for it and you will see success."

I have a bad feeling about it.

The next day my pot has been knocked over.

"We have one job to do," Sophie Macdonald says to me. "One job, and we botch it."

"What do you mean?"

"Do the assignments as asked."

"I did."

"Honestly."

"I did."

"Oh."

Sophie looks away.

"You didn't?" I ask.

"No," she replies, looking back at me.

In her torn jeans illustrated with disposal pen drawings, Sophie is smart and does not hesitate to tell others that they are dumb. Perhaps that's what she did today. That's a kind of self-reflection, I guess.

How she is able to do it—openly mock people—and still be well liked, I don't know. People here seem to respect verbal sparring, or at least tolerate it. Any fight, even a verbal fight, is still a fight. A distraction, wrapped in power. In each class, Sophie judges the rest of the room with her blue eyes under those dark, long bangs. On the tips of her sneakers are written RIGHT and LEFT on the wrong shoes.

But she seems different this fall.

"Be here or leave, right? That's the choice," she says. It's not a question.

I'm worried.

"Live free or die," I reply, using one of the mottos popular with the Free State movement.

"There has got to be a third option," Sophie says in a mutter.

"Slavery."

To that, she has no reply.

Woodshop

"Agnes Jackson," Mr. Ellis barks.

We are nearly two weeks into the semester.

Until Mr. Ellis' voice cuts through my daydream, I was looking up School Street as it stretches away from the tall window of the shop. The big maples that line the road drop their leaves, left to scrape along the patchy school lawn. I am holding two long blocks of wood that have been glued together, waiting to be made into two decorative half-spindles.

"Agnes Jackson."

I startle, glance at Mr. Ellis' snarl and straighten up.

"It's your turn at the lathe," he says, looking up from his work.

Flustered, I set my block of wood tightly in the lathe with my long fingers, nails bitten, and proceed to butcher it at a great speed. My height requires that I lean down—I am taller than most of the boys in the class—and while I shape this block my glasses slide down again and again. Focusing on the task at hand, I can't push my glasses back up my nose. I won't wear the safety goggles Mr. Ellis left by the shop door because they're scratched up and the elastic straps are all stretched out anyway. I don't like Woodshop but it is required—even for students who will never work in a mill; even though all of the mills have closed. The curriculum of the Free State: Love it or leave it.

My time at the lathe is longer than I want—I don't want to be there at all—but it's required to pass the course. In my haste, I push too hard on the chisel.

Done.

My block is nearly cylindrical, with decorative nicks and burn marks that add character;. They scream student project. A char of burning wood hangs in the air, alerting Mr. Ellis that someone (me!) is butchering her project.

He looks up and at me.

Putting the chisel away, I touch the tip of the blade and burn my finger. Seeing me pull my hand back sharply, he frowns.

Safety is a thing with him. Mr. Ellis is missing the index finger on his left hand. It's a cliché, the woodshop teacher missing a digit, but our school travels in clichés. Our community made that choice when the market forces laid out options and my family, and most of our friends and neighbors, chose what was familiar. Here we are, everyone is getting prepared for the old economy because it's what we know. Now I'm taking woodshop.

Mr. Ellis is sixty, and never uses safety glasses or ear plugs. Gone are the state regulations that required them, and most of the litigious court system. Common sense rules our class. Still, he requires safe operations from us—he will often discretely show his missing digits, and some days less discretely, to trumpet the need. "It's too late for me," he says, not about the fingers, but on an old dog learning new tricks. "Practice safety now and you'll be safe for life." My plan is to avoid lathes in general; it seems the safest practice.

Every day Mr. Ellis wears a blue work shirt and matching blue Dickies, with a darker blue shop coat over it all. From his deep coat pockets he takes carpenter pencils, unused ear plugs, drill bits, rubber bands to serve as hair ties, and occasionally used tissues. The woodshop is cold, and the collar of his thermal shirt sticks visibly above his top button like a weed from a stone wall. With a stoop in his back from bending over lathes his entire career and a smoker's gravel in his voice, he asks me, "Are you going to do more on the lathe?"

"Why?" I reply.

Another student is already sliding in behind me to use the lathe.

I act dumb to stall for time, but the dumb-girl-in-shop-class routine only pisses Mr. Ellis off. He knows my dad—they worked in the mills together a lifetime ago; my lifetime—so he thinks I'm smarter than that. Instead, I mentally shift towards being a smart aleck.

Everyone needs the lathe, but we've only one that works. Two more lathe carcasses lay nearby, cannibalized for parts. Even if I want to do more, I would have to wait for another turn; Jesse Bouvier, tightening his piece into place, will not give up his turn unless Mr. Ellis specifically demands it. So, I stall for time.

"I took a block of wood and made it round," I say.

I hold up my recently minted and slightly chipped dowel, but lose confidence as I do. People look at me.

"I'm a woodworking goddess," I mutter, and then lower my arms slack.

Mr. Ellis looks at me, and, as usual, does not smile.

"Apparently, even goddesses make mistakes," he says.

Several people around Mr. Ellis' desk laugh. Because there are only four machines—lathe, table saw, band saw and drill press—the other sixteen students wait. That leads to a lot of stupid conversations, giggling and put-downs. Mr. Ellis' gruff interactions help pass the time, although everyone would rather watch them than be on the receiving end.

"I like the simplicity," I say when the chuckles die out, holding the dowel behind my back, more to hide my hands than my shoddy workmanship.

"You're simple," a student rings out.

Repetition with a twist is what passes for wit here.

I smile out of a girl's survivor instinct, and say nothing.

"Simplicity is an important aesthetic," Mr. Ellis grunts, ignoring the comment. "But I'm supposed to make sure you know how to use the lathe." Eying the clock, there are twenty-three minutes before I leave for senior English. Behind me the lathe starts with the low warble of a slightly off-center block, and as Jesse puts the chisel to his block of wood I can no longer hear anything Mr. Ellis says.

"I still have all my digits," I say to Sophie, waving with wiggling fingers as I approach her in the hallway.

"I'm surprised your father lets you take the class."

"He sees his accident as an accident. Avoidable."

"Too bad he didn't see that before it happened."

I can't tell at the moment if she is blaming my father for his accident, or if it is a more philosophical observation. Sophie tends to make a lot of such observations, mostly in response to what is being said in the moment. She is no iconoclast. She has no set "code" that she lives by. Most of the time it can be interesting.

But not when it's personal.

Then, she looks at her watch. Silently turning away, I know it is time for Senior English.

English 400: Senior English

Each morning, as I leave for school, my father pours what he did not drink of his coffee back into the carafe of the coffee maker. My mother makes me a slice of dry toast, which I grab with my left hand as I sling my backpack onto my right shoulder. Until sixth grade I had eaten cereal while my mother warmed up my father's black cup of coffee, and left with some sort of fruit. My father had both arms then. Now it is a slice of dry toast and tea first thing, a second piece of dry toast as I leave, then nothing until lunch, where I drink even more tea and eat slices of turkey from a reusable plastic container my mother packs and puts in my backpack while I sleep.

"What are you reading?" my mother asks.

I have little to tell her.

No one reads.

Taking a bite of dry toast, I mumble something purposefully unintelligible. This is our daily routine, ending with the slap of the storm door as I leave for school.

Mr. Smith's class has the same routine, minus the dry toast and tea.

"Let's look at last night's reading," he says at the start of class.

In response, the class mumbles something purposefully unintelligible.

No one reads.

On the first day of class, Mr. Smith had passed out a new text and, after the complaining ceased, said, "We do not choose the book; the book chooses us."

Groan.

No one's attitude has improved since.

Everyone takes Senior English: It's that "everybody plays" philosophy at work in the classroom. No advanced classes. No remedial. We're all lumped in together. And it's required. Even if you fail the class, you just take the one week follow-up course offered at the end of every quarter. If you breath, you'll get through. Still, many people simply drop out. The drop-out rate here is around thirty percent, while another twenty can be counted on to skip class on any given day. "A free exit is a cornerstone of the Free State movement," Dan Hunt says while hanging out in the foyer, not going anywhere. Senior English, though, packs the room. It is literally standing room only on the first day, until some places on the floor are cleared to sit on. Two weeks in, there are still more students than furniture.

Not that Mr. Smith is popular.

He is a benign pushover, well-walked on.

To trim the budget, the school board only approves buying enough furniture for sixty-five percent of each room under the theory that, statistically, a third never shows up. They are counting on students exercising their Free State right to exit. Very pragmatic, except required courses always hover near capacity as the new wave of lethargic learners make an attempt to buckle down and fly right before failing at life. Senior year of high school is like a near death experience; your nearly done academic life flashes before you and you swear you'll change, only to do the same dumb stuff a month later. Mr. Smith also has the smallest room in the wing, a half-room located at the end of the English corridor by the stairs where the stoners hang out, so space is at a premium regardless of attendance.

Instructed to take out their copy of A Separate Peace, which half of the class has forgotten, no one moves in anticipation of what comes next.

"Let us visit Gene and Phineas," Mr. Smith says.

Groan.

Mr. Smith's spends ten minutes settling everybody down, collecting the few assignments that are done, offering extensions to a few others (who will never do it), and changing his attendance as more students trickle in. Each new student brings a new round of greetings from friends, making classroom management difficult. When the class finally shuts up enough, Mr. Smith again says, "Let us visit Gene and Phineas."

Groan.

This is our prompt. A Separate Peace is a pretty good novel—well, from Mr. Smith's descriptions it sounds like it would be, if I had read it. Regardless, there is always groaning and complaining. Another five minutes are spent dealing with student drama—some realize they do not have their books, three kids rise to "just go their locker quickly and get a pencil" (they tend not to come back), and then there are the excuses of those who did not read it.

Do not read it.

Will not read it.

Do not have the book.

Are in the wrong classroom.

Mr. Smith actually cares about their explanations. Everybody plays. Other teachers ignore the empty, bookless desktops, or wave off anyone caring enough to explain their lapse in reading.

Not Mr. Smith.

He tries to problem solve, suggesting that people share their copies of the story. It worked on the first week, but then the feeling of fraternity withered. Friends want to share with friends, even as neither has a copy. The sleepers do not want to move. My friend Sophie MacDonald wants her own copy; she has been responsible, has brought her copy, and feels she deserves her solitude. I hide my copy until everyone works their problems out. Finally, after another five minutes of negotiation, just a third of the class has nothing in front of them.

"Please take your feet off of the chair," Mr. Smith says to Sophie.

He says this every day, sometimes at the start of class, sometimes at the end. Today it is fifteen minutes in. Sophie complies for the rest of the class period. Tomorrow her feet will be on the chair. She slowly pulls her feet off the seat in front of her and slouches, looking bored. She runs her thumbnail across her closed book's pages; a quick zipping noise that cuts through the shuffling around her.

Then Mr. Smith retells the plot for those who have not read it... well, everyone but Sophie.

Near the end of class Mr. Smith gives us a predictable surprise quiz. "I need to see if you understand what you're reading," he always says after his announcement. He does this daily, yet half of the class is surprised every class.

I did not read the book, but between the summary and Mr. Smith's lectures I am good at filling in the blanks. That Mr. Smith repeats the five points each class—the same five points that he then puts as questions on the day's quiz—my average is strong. Sophie knows that I am breaking some nonexistent honor code that she holds in her heart, and she hates me for it. She hates me because we get the same grade, but only she reads the book.

We do not choose the book, the book chooses us. It is true.

I wait to be chosen.

My Talisman

"You're going to keep carrying that?" Sophie asks me. Her voice has a challenging edge in it.

I shrug, embarrassed.

Sitting at my desk after dismissal, students brushing past me to get out, I glance down at my copy of The Night Librarian, which sits on top of my notebook. A worn paperback version, a small bird logo in the corner, it has a broken orange spine and border. The whole thing is kept together by a rubber band. I have never read it myself—it has only been read to me—but I carry it for the artistic aesthetic I think it projects. Fanciful. Academic. Wordy. Quirky. My copy is an older edition, which I think makes me seem interesting.

Sophie tells me I'm not fooling anyone.

I tap it before pulling myself out of the desk.

It is my talisman.

Tall and bespectacled, each morning I drag on a t-shirt and khaki skirt, pull one of three wool sweaters I own over the top, and slip my feet into sneakers from the factory second store in town. We no longer manufacture shoes, but do sell the rejects made elsewhere. Then, I pull out The Night Librarian from the box I keep it in each night, tap it, and put it in my backpack.

"I thought, senior year, you'd have stopped that—or read it."

That has become the paradox of my life—this worn edition—part prop and part security blanket—satisfies my interest in the story—really, my story—what I think is the story from my memories of my mother reading it—while I don't read a darn word.

Civilization IV: Senior History Seminar

I sit in the back corner because I can stretch my legs.

Like my father and mother, I am tall. A week before tryouts last year the basketball coach tried to get me to go out for the team. I am not athletic, but I can put my hand up and block a few shots. The coach's invitation is a de facto spot on the team, but I decline to try out. I'm not much of a joiner. I have never wanted to be part of a group.

You give up too much.

I'm the perfect Free Stater. An island.

Also, like my father and mother, I wear glasses. It makes me look smart. Before they know me, teachers give me the benefit of the doubt. Or I look pathetic and they take pity on me—that poor kid with her face hidden behind glasses. Other kids at school need glasses, but most kids don't notice their slow slip into blurriness because they never read. After the Free State offered a choice of academic service plans, the nurse stopped her yearly tests because of cost—then they got rid of the nurse. Most people do not have the money or insurance to buy glasses. If you bought kids glasses, my father jokes, the next thing they ask for are books. I still have to squint to see the screen, though.

For the past week our class has watched the film To Kill a Mockingbird in a darkened classroom, which is oddly unsettling after a long morning period of bright woodshop lights and the screaming of power tools, followed by the chaos of Mr. Smith's English class. The movie is a substitute for reading the actual book, or learning actual history. For the sake of experiencing literature and history we are assigned to read the dramatic courtroom scene actually written by Harper Lee and a single page from the history text about the Civil Rights movement. No one does. Class starts out with the dramatic courtroom scene on video. Before the bell even rings, Mr. Jones has turned off the lights.

"It is," our teacher says as students shuffle into their desks and seats, "an Oscar winning performance."

The story of fighting injustice in a courtroom is an odd choice for a Free State classroom unit. Voting with your feet—the freedom to leave if you don't like something—is the central tenet of our new state government, not fighting in the courts. It was six years ago that enough libertarians showed up, bought land and convinced the rest of the state to adopt those principles. That was when the state constitution was amended so that only property owners could vote, and that they would hire a manager instead of electing a governor. There is no legislature. Our state is now looked on as a business. Citizens pay fees, not taxes, in exchange for services. Those who don't like it can leave freely—vote with your feet. As the saying goes to those who complain, "Massachusetts welcomes you!" Things there are democratic to the point of socialism, I'm told.

Still, Mockingbird stands for a number of ideals our community holds.

But, does Mr. Jones believe that we had all read the scene we are about to see? He not only does not ask, but avoids mentioning that it had been assigned. I don't think he wants to know the answer.

Looking around the darkened room, I can make out the familiar student-created posters that serve as assessments from last year; near the end of each unit Mr. Jones pulls out paper, markers, magazines and glue sticks and has students make posters. On his walls, the elements of the judicial system are represented by collages consisting of women in short skirts, a beefcake guy with no shirt, a fast car, a host of adjectives like "glamour" and "star," and some sort of alcohol. Mr. Jones must use a method of grading that is unclear to me, because after close study of last year's work I cannot tell the difference between any of the branches of government. The creators of these collages seem unable to even use a pair of scissors with precision, much less express precise ideas about our governing philosophies and structures.

Mr. Jones starts the movie.

He clearly does not want to know if we read the passage, I decide. I think the reality of the class' indifference would gnaw at that tiny speck of a reason remaining as to why he became a teacher. The lesson: Do not judge someone by the color of his skin. And, we no longer have to pretend to read the books—that's the lesson the guy sitting next to me seems to get as he crumples up the packet we'd been given weeks before. Three students come in just as Atticus takes the floor, noisily knocking a couple of seats while they make their way in the dark to seats near their friends.

Minutes into this Oscar winning performance, three kids leave to go to the bathroom, while two leave for a drink of water down the hall. In the dark, I can feel Mr. Jones frown. Being in school is like a long visit to my Grandmother's house: there are rules about movement and touching things, remnants from an earlier time that are now, for the most part, arbitrary and irrelevant. We are forced to watch programs none of us would choose, sold as good for us. There is nothing good to eat. The seats are uncomfortable. Our school is a pale reminder of what school once was, but no one sees a reason to reinvent it because they do not believe there is much future here. Like my grandmother, Mr. Jones seems to be waiting for me to leave.

Mr. Jones stops the movie in the middle of a scene because the clock tells him to. As people begin to rustle chairs and he moves to the lights, he refers to the character as Gregory Peck, not Atticus Fitch.

I'll tell Sophie about that later.

Lunch... Study Hall.

Things I avoid.

My schedule is full of them.

Sophie and I complain about it, but do nothing.

Elsewhere: Not here.

I fill out our vocabulary worksheet.

"Use a dictionary," my mother says, looking over my shoulder.

"That's disgusting," I say to my father, changing the subject.

"What?"

"Pouring your coffee back into the carafe. No one wants to drink your old coffee after you've drunk it."

"The hot burner kills the germs."

"That's not the point. And I don't think that's true. Anyway, your backwash is in it."

"You're off at school. So who do you think drinks it?

"I don't know," I reply in a softer voice.

I don't want to think about it.

My father drinks his coffee black. He sits across from me at the breakfast table, drinking a cup of coffee while I eat dry toast. Every morning, as I eat the third bite of my toast—always the third bite—my mother warms his cup. It's amazing, because she's not standing around waiting for him or me; it just always happens. As long as I remember, my father never eats a breakfast other than black coffee. To my knowledge, my mother never eats breakfast, only working her way through a single cup of coffee that she never adds to. It sits there now on the counter, getting cold.

My father had worked in the local mill for most of his life. Making wooden letter tiles out of maple for a popular spelling game, he nearly went nuts. Fifteen years of watching those small tiles jiggle down the assembly line told him he would no longer be sane at the end of fifteen more years, but he stayed when my mother had me. That's where he worked with Mr. Ellis, who left for his current teaching job. Finally, my father moved to a shoe factory, where he lost his arm. After his accident the mill closed. Both the game company and the shoe factory sent their orders elsewhere. It was one of the arguments the Free State movement used to get their majority—regulation is scaring off business. That's not why, but to everyone laid off it did not matter. They all voted Free State. Now, my dad drinks cup after cup of coffee in the morning with his one arm. He hates letters and board games. He tolerates shoes.

My mother places a red paperback dictionary on the table next to my plate. Many homes do not have dictionaries, but my mother keeps one in the kitchen, another in the living room and at least two upstairs.

"Don't talk about things you don't know anything about," my father says.

Ignoring the dictionary, I pick up my incomplete homework and cram it into my backpack. He puts his now empty cup down on the counter, a slight dribble of coffee staining the tile top. Looking at me with his kind eyes as I leave for school, a second piece of dry toast in my left hand and my backpack slung over my right shoulder, I feel guilty but am not sure why.

Our family lives in a small clapboard house in a neighborhood that predates the last big war. Every house in the neighborhood is occupied, and most are well maintained. Like every house, ours is painted white with black shutters. It is a two bedroom, one bathroom upstairs with a living room, dining room and small kitchen below. My mother used to ask me about wanting a brother, but those conversations stopped with my father's accident and the creation of the Free State. Every room has a light switch that does not turn on a light, but an outlet found in an odd corner you could plug a light into. Unfortunately, the light plugged into it never illuminates the room in the right places, and leaves shadows that make doing anything but watching television difficult. In the basement we have a washer and dryer, like everyone else on our block. Faced with hard times, the Jackson family has weathered it well. Our owning property makes us freeholders and we receive dividends that more than pay for the fees to live here.

At the end of my walk, I look down the sidewalk to see if Sophie will be walking with me to school. The screen door behind me opens and then gently closes; I know it is my mother.

"You need to do something with him," she says.

"Like what?" I ask, not turning around.

"Be his daughter."

"What does that mean?"

But I know what it means. She has the look, which I don't even need to turn around to see.

"Fine," I pout. "I won't go to school."

That was not what she meant.

I hope Sophie understands that I am blowing her off.

Fighting City Hall

"What're we doing today?" I ask as I come back in the door.

"Going to fight City Hall."

Great, a morning of my father making small talk with every other person laid off from the mills. Armed with minutia to discuss with the clerks who run the city, they will all comment how tall I am. As if that's a compliment. Or makes me feel included in an otherwise meaningless conversation. I unconsciously hide my hands at the thought of it.

Is it too late to go to school?, I wonder.

What did I think he would be doing? I ask myself.

Groan.

He doesn't ask why I'm not going to school, or why I left and came back. I did hope to see who would drink the old coffee before we leave—him, mom, will it get dumped, or do we have a daily visitor I know nothing about—but we leave before any resolution happens.

Waiting in the hallway of City Hall, bored, I find myself peeking in doorways and reading official notices on the walls. A blue notice hangs on a neglected bulletin board next to the bathrooms on the first floor, mentioning a public auction that afternoon. Among the listed items:

62.a. LISTED: COMPLETE INVENTORY OF DISCARDED BOOKS FROM PUBLIC SCHOOL LIBRARIES. SOLD IN SINGLE LOT.

Our collective intellect for sale.

When the grand choice of the new Free State began, town services were rearranged to match community demand. Instead of a school board making choices, free markets did. We believed in the efficiency of markets to guide us. In response, the community school and high school cannibalized the elementary schools of any decent books, supplies or furniture that might prove useful in providing a competitive edge. The rest was dumped in the dimly lit and abandoned Central Elementary School, left to rot. Like many schools in the state, Central Elementary School had been built with a flat roof. A poor design for the northeast and its season frost heaves, the building now leaks like a civ.

These books are one lot the town is desperate to unload on behalf of the freeholders and their expectation of more dividens.

Tempting, I think sarcastically.

Then, I'm tempted, but I don't know why.

Our high school's current stock is ancient; I can only imagine what did not make the cut.

These remnants of refuse.

Choices not made.

Curious, I let my dad go home so I can wait until the auction. I forget that I am spending the day with him, or to ask him if he won his fight about the fees he should not have to pay as a freeholder. He, too, ignores me as I blow him off. He eats lunch with his buddies from the mill days and forgets we have a date at the diner. Serendipitously, that morning I had put months of saved allowance in my right front pocket—I had planned to swing by the bank on the way to school. So, I have cash. Nothing in the Free State happens without equity.

Almost no one has come to the auction. About twenty chairs are set up in a conference room at the end of the hall, only five of which hold interested parties. Like a class at my school, no one sits near the front and it smells of stale coffee. I wonder if they are alumni. At the front stands an auctioneer, who is really a man from town records that is familiar with the goods being sold. He is nearly sixty, thin, with little hair, a grey beard and seems ready to lecture you as much as give you directions to the bathroom. In the three years the Free State has been in operation local governments have been slowly transitioning to being more service oriented, less egalitarian. In our town, that has meant clearing the old and getting cash for it. For the first hour each item is made out of metal. A scrap dealer with a big moustache from two towns away buys each lot. No one else says a word the entire time. At the end of each item, the record keeper taps his fist down in lieu of a gavel, and keeps and otherwise silent, cynical frown. No one gives me a hint of recognition.

I think about leaving.

I wish my father was here to make small talk.

A few parcels of land go unsold, as their owed fees prove too high for anyone to bother making a bid on. Finally, the books come up for auction.

I am the only bidder.

"Son," the man from records asks me after my first and only bid. "Do you know what you're doing?"

"Buying books," I reply. "No, I don't know what I'm doing. I like to read. And, I'm not a son. I'm a daughter."

The man from records does not smile at this. I also know he knows not only that I'm a girl, but who my father is.

"You have one week to remove them, or you start paying a storage fee."

"I'd suggest moving it before the next rain," the scrap dealer says with a chuckle. Clearly, he knows Central's condition—I would not be surprised if it is auctioned off next.

The auctioneer stares at me as if an oracle seeing how it will all play out. I smile at him. He drops his fist down, hands me the paperwork and sends me to the collections department. As I walk down the hallway, I look at the top of the first page of paperwork. It reads:

PAYMENT DUE AT CLOSE OF AUCTION. WINNING BIDDER RESPONSIBLE FOR REMOVAL IN SEVEN DAYS.

And then I enter the office and buy my lot.

The Itch

Hungry, I realize school is the best deal besides going home.

But I'm early for lunch, so I go to Senior English.

Mr. Smith believes that a student making the connection between his or her own life and the literature is the first step towards the book choosing him or her. Everybody plays—everyone knows about their life, so they're half-way there. For their participation, he remains tolerant. We win as a team, and lose as a team.

Way to go, coach.

That is not quite how the Free State works, but not everyone got the memo.

Not surprised to find empty seats today, I take one in the back. Half of the class is failing, so they stop coming. That's the pattern: A lot of students stand around the vending machines and complain about this great injustice before skipping their next class. Sympathetic, Mr. Smith nevertheless maintains something that resembles standards. Mr. Smith will not get half of his books back. It clearly bothers him, because he knows the school will not replace those texts. Before he stops the current off-topic discussion, he looks around at the number of students who do not have their book. He is patient as he waits for those books to make their choices, but he will lose.

God bless him.

In the eyes of everyone—blue oxford shirt, lose tie—he is a lovable loser.

But still a loser.

A flicker of hope, Sophie MacDonald, class genius, read the book and offers insights.

Then we get our daily quiz.

I'm glad I returned for the quiz, and to hear Sophie. Because I had come from a skip-day, I had to borrow a pencil to take that assessment. Today, I think, my parents go their fee's worth of school.

Lathe, band saw, table saw and drill press. These are our tools.

When the Free State was established, mandatory education was embraced as a necessary virtue. Unlike prior years, though, plans became available to all children. The Devon School, a private academy up the hill, is one—and expensive. A few families go the home school route, but the Free State does not offer subsidies and they do it because they can. Others send their kids to alternative schools in nearby towns. The more affordable model is the old public system. As it is included in the basic fee package all residents pay, its where most of the town sends their children. In provides a basic education. This includes what is called the "practical arts". These include woodshop, sewing and cooking.

The tools we have at the high school are old and basic: lathe, band saw, table saw, drill press.

"This is all junk," Sophie says, as she finishes her piece on the lathe.

The machines seem like junk compared to the modern machines many families have at home, or even those that had been at the mills. These have no safety stops, or laser guides. For each machine the "go" button is big and green, while a big red button stops it.

"It's a poor craftsman that blames his tools," Mr. Ellis replies, dragging another cliché into class.

He has an edge of anger in his voice, combined with his smoker's bark, and it cuts through the dying whirl of the lathe motor. Sophie puts the chisel in the tray with the others, eyes to the floor. She does not turn around.

For his part, Mr. Ellis never looks away. Arms crossed, he seems to have moved from sitting at his desk to standing five feet behind Sophie without taking a step. In the corner by the pegs, the girls stop talking. The group by the broom and dustpan look over. Out of instinct, the students working the table saw, band saw and drill press stop their machines. As the lathe motor finally dies, it is the last sound in the room. Sophie, like me, has nicks on her dowel. I can see them from twenty feet away, the block of wood no longer turning, as I lean against Mr. Ellis' desk.

It's actually not my Woodshop time—that's in the morning. I'm here to see Sophie.

Instead, I see her called out.

Mr. Ellis has a short conversation about controlling what she can control. Like me, she went too fast. Like me, she could have sharpened the chisel before hand—we had learned that in the freshman class. Soon, the other tools are whirling and conversations start again.

Sophie takes her now cylinder block and sweeps out of the room.

I follow.

"What?" she barks at me.

"I just wanted to see if you are okay."

To this, she says nothing.

But her face winces. She shrugs her shoulders, like one might do with a backpack that did not lay straight. Her faces makes a few more involuntary movements, seemingly from discomfort.

"Are you," I ask. "Okay?"

I mean beyond Mr. Ellis calling her out.

She seems to know this, and shakes her head.

"I'm fine."

I don't believe her, but there's little I can do.

"Why do you go?" I ask her.

Sophie is more afraid of woodshop that I am, even with my family history of mishaps with shop machinery. Although an education is mandated nationally, the Free State allows wide latitude for people who want to stay away.

"Why do you?" I ask again.

"You pay the fee, you go through the program."

I can hear my father's voice in those words.

Looking up at me, Sophie's eyes connect with mine.

"I go because I keep hoping to learn something amazing," she replies. "And, I have nowhere else to go."

Sophie leaves before I can ask if she wants me to walk with her home.

I want to walk with her, just to talk. She has her own things going on, though.

So, I take the long way home, by the river.

Our town is a town of about three thousand. At one point it had over ten thousand people happily working in the mills, homemaking for people working in the mills, selling groceries and other sundries to people who worked in the mills, or going to one of the town's five public schools and waiting until they were old enough to work in the mills. When the mills closed, so did three of the schools and a number of stores. Housing for ten thousand still stand, but many have ragged lawns and broken windows. The local paper is filled with foreclosure and auction notices. Every month there is an electrical fire and an apartment house burns down. Our school is in the middle of this section of town—surrounded by abandonment. On the other side of town are brick houses. They were built to house the managers of the first red brick mills that line the river that snakes through the town. There are plans for renewal, but many involve either luring in companies that send jobs elsewhere or tearing down blocks of houses to ease the reminders of the past. Surrounded by mountains we never climb, railroad tracks run through the middle of town alongside the river. There are several proposals to move the town forward, but no action.

Sophie's winces bother me, because they are familiar. I've seen it in my father's face daily.

Pain.

My father was hurt a year before his mill closed. The mill made shoes, and my father never tired of joking that he gave his soul to the place. In hindsight, he should have known layoffs were coming because maintenance of the machinery had moved from dodgy to perilous. Before dad's accident, there were many stories about someone nearly losing a finger, or a toe or even his life making their way around the break room. His accident was February's story. When his arm was ripped off, Dad received a nice settlement and a monthly stipend. The company had tried to get him to accept early retirement, to be paid out over his lifetime, but he wisely insisted on a lump sum. Lying in the hospital bed, he had told the company lawyer that having his empty sleeve pinned to his suit jacket would be enough to swing any jury towards whatever he asked for; no words would be necessary. The lawyer must have agreed. My father asked for a humble amount, and a check was waiting when the hospital finally released him. A year later the company's liability costs outstripped the cost of moving elsewhere, and the mill jobs did move. Now people are losing digits elsewhere while people here wonder what to do next.

That big check does not help him with the pain.

The pain.

For that he uses cynical humor.

Sophie has access to the basic health plan provided by our fee, but a cure depends on the illness.

"What ails you, Sophie?" I mumble to no one. "What is your pain?"

The Night Librarian

When I first went to kindergarten my mother read me a book called The Night Librarian.

Over and over, she would sit on my bed—the blanket over my body while she sat on top of the covers—and gently read a few chapters each night. In the summer, the story mingled with the sounds of the neighbors still enjoying the late evening. During the winter, the warm snuggle of the sheets gave the story warmth. On some nights, she would read the entire book. It was not short, but my mother liked the story.

As I think about it now—moving box after box of books out of Central's damp library—we read it because she liked it, and I liked it because it made her happy to read it. It put me to sleep in a pleasant way.

Out of print, the first chapter "The Night Librarian is Seen", gives me comfort as I hide from everyone. It begins:

Joseph stomped up the stairs and slammed his door.

He was mad.

He was irate.

He was livid.

Joseph was just plain angry.

He sat on his bed and glowered. After refusing to eat dinner (for what reason he could not remember), he had also refused to clear his plate. Then he yelled at his parents. As all good parents do, they sent him to bed early.

Still wearing his day clothes, because he refused to go to bed, Joseph pouted.

Then he moped.

Finally, he fell into a long sulk.

The night came. His window grew darker and darker. Streetlights turned on in the distance.

Joseph's room was on the second floor, at the top of a very steep, very narrow staircase. It was a small rooml, in a small house, and the room had a pitched roof that hung over his bed like a claw about to close. His window overlooked the town's library. As the moon came out, his room grew darker than the night.

Sitting on that bed, most of his anger had left him. He did not know why he had not eaten dinner. Or why he refused to clear his plate. Yelling at his parents, well.... But he was no longer mad. He was hungry. There he sat, looking down at the library, and listening to his stomach growl.

And then he saw her.

She was about six feet tall and dressed entirely in black. At least he thought it was a "she". It—she—seemed feminine. And oddly familiar. She wore a long skirt. Her legs were clad in striped leggings. Over her body was a long, thick wool coat. On her head was a big, floppy hat. In her hand was a large tote bag. However, this was not unusual. Not compared to the other thing.

No. On her face she wore glasses that lit up.

Still, that was no too unusual. She was odd, but it was something else that Joseph would never forget.

On her back where enormous black wings.

The bird-woman (for Joseph did not know what else to call her) stepped out of a side door of the library. The library—formally called the Lawrence Memorial Library—had a door on the side that hung five feet above the sidewalk. The bird-woman stepped onto the stoop, somehow managed to close the door behind her, and spread her wings.

Then, she flew up into the night.

Joseph forgot that he was hungry. He jumped off of his bed and ran to the window. Looking up into the sky, he saw her wings flap as she flew high into the sky and over the rooftops of his town.

Carrying box after box through the hallways, to my father's truck, I repeat the story from memory to myself. In one of the boxes I have found a copy. When I get to the truck I check my memory against this found copy.

Except for a few transposed words, I give a perfect transcription with a decade between tellings.

Clearly, my mother was a good storyteller.

Also, I feel like I'm living it: A freak with wings and a terrible secret that she is paying penance for. Some days, I feel like a freak. No wings, though. No secret.

Still, I sometimes think my mother read it to me all of those times not as an escape, but as training for later.

Books are Fodder for the Mind

"It sounds like the author stole the beginning from Where the Wild Things Are," Sophie once told me when I shared the book with her.

"Angry kids are pretty common," I had replied. "And ones who don't get supper."

At the time, she had just shrugged and changed the subject.

My father's destination for all of these books is an outbuilding by an old, abandoned mill. The windows spell out Lease or Sale for anyone traveling the other side of the river, each letter bright red in its own pane of glass, but those signs are not even current. Last year, the property transferred its ownership to the town—its former owners not even being American and failing to respond to requests for fees. Because he knows people, my father is able to lease the building for a song. "Better a song than no income at all," he jokes on his end of the phone.

As my father eases his automatic to the loading door for our tenth trip, I see Sophie waiting in a sulk. At lunch a few days ago, I had mentioned moving the books. I must have invited her. To be honest, we have done very little together outside of school. If I did invite her it must have been out of habit; I did not expect her to help.

She did not disappoint.

While my one armed father wrestles with the handtruck, Sophie leans against the red brick wall, arms crossed tight, watching us ferry books from the truck to inside the building.

"Hey," I say to her.

She nods as I pass, before I disappear into the darkness of the small building.

Made of red brick and having a few small windows at the height of my head, the building is about twenty feet by twenty feet. It has an old wooden door, painted green, which can be secured with a padlock. My father is unsure of what it has been used for, as it contains only a dozen or so empty bottles when we arrive. We manage to find a few abandoned pallets to lay the boxes on, in case water puddles up—we don't want to ruin the merchandise after it survived Central's leaky roof.

When we have moved all of the boxes, I approach Sophie. Reading the situation, my father takes a walk, leaving us alone.

"Hey," I say again.

"Moving the merchandise," she says, as way of an observation.

Then, silence.

Without words, we begin to walk towards the water. One of the true signs of friendship, I think, is that the other person can follow without words. So, something is still there. As we walk, I notice she keeps readjusting her shoulders.

"Are you okay?" I ask, my eyes sliding to the left of her neck.

"Yes," he replies at first. "No."

"What is it?"

But she doesn't tell me.

We do talk like normal, though. Throwing stones in the river, we joke about the same things we joke about every day at school—peers, teachers, food, things on the internet.

"Are you nervous about turning eighteen?" she asks.

"I haven't thought of it, much," I admit.

"I feel like we're stuck. Brought up in the old ways, but not ready for the new."

"We'll be fine," I say, but it's more rote than authentic.

"What are you basing that on?" she asks. But, it's not a serious inquiry. A rote response.

She smiles.

"I don't know if I'm ready to be free," she says. "Not in the way we talk about it here."

I want to respond, but I don't have anything to say.

But I have work to do, so I walk back to the truck.

"Do you want to come with us?" I ask. "We have at least twenty more trips to make."

"No," she replies. "But, I'm interested in what you got."

Sophie bites her lip, then grimaces in discomfort—not pain, but discomfort, as if her stomach was bothering her.

"Can I stay here," she asks. "Look through your stuff?"

"Sure," I reply. "Let me know what you think I should do with it all."

"Oh," she says. "I already know. Burn it. Burn the whole lot."

The sky is turning grey with late fall, and I want to burrow into my bed and hibernate.

The purchase is a lark.

Lying in my bed, I start to wonder what possessed me to go to the auction, much less act. The face of the man from records hovers over me while, later, I lie on the living room couch doing nothing.

"Burn the whole lot," Sophie had said.

As my father and I had ported boxes from Central to the outbuilding, Sophie kept digging through the boxes. She did not say much. I could tell that my father was annoyed at her failure to help, but I could also tell he was bugged at my unwillingness to call her on it.

He was silent each time we got back into the truck for another load.

At some point, when we arrived, she was gone.

Now, it is Sunday and I have several pallets of books stored in an outbuilding by the river.

"Burn the whole lot," I think out loud, indeed.

It is a Pleasure to Burn

Three things happen as the first quarter ends.

First, half the school has to go to Recovery classes because they failed their first quarter.

Second, a new manager is appointed to run the schools.

Third, as Sophie has suggested, we host a fire to burn those books.

Not having failed any classes, I don't have to go to Recovery. Instead, I wander downstairs and promptly fall back to sleep. I don't know how long I lay on the couch, but when I finally leave home I want more tea.

Inside of The Coffee Mill (they also have a decent selection of teas) I run into Dan, a chronic true in our class who, at least, owns his behavior.

"Do you have Smith again?" I ask.

"No," he replies. "They don't put us with the same teachers we failed with the first time.

"Why aren't you in class now?"

I hold up my wrist to show him the time.

"Break. We get a twenty minute coffee break. Just like a job. Although some students take more like thirty."

"Like you?" but it's not really a question.

"Are you going to the last day party?"

"Where's the party?"

Even after three years, the rituals of the town are still revealing themselves to me. As neither Sophie or I have been subjected to Recovery I have never been invited to the Recovery parties. In fact, I have not gone to a teen party yet. Thinking about it, my last party was in fifth grade, which involved giggling girls and pajamas. This would not be that, I know. The thought scares me because it is unknown and I feel I don't fit in. Gripping my tea like a binky, I am suddenly conscious of my chewed fingernails. And this is Dan. I'm feeling nervous in front of Dan.

He does not know anything about the party, though.

Finally I say, "I am sure something will come up."

He checks the inside of his cup to make sure they added cream, and then presses the lid on tightly. To be sure, he cups a few extra creams and sugar packets from the counter and puts them in his pocket. Dan then gives me a thumbs-up sign.

"Later," I say.

It is Sophie who figures it out.

By the time I leave the coffee shop, she is sitting on a bench waiting.

"Let's host the party," she says.

"What?"

"I was in there when you were talking to Dan."

I had not seen her.

"And it will feature a book burning bonfire. Your newly acquired private collection will be the fuel."

"What?" I ask. I'm not sure what she's even proposing.

"Why do this?" I finally spit out.

"Money," is the response.

"Really?"

"Why not?"

"That's not really a reason."

"Sure it is. I've been reading about counterfactual reasoning—anything is possible if you can't argue a reason not to do it."

"That doesn't seem rational."

"Can you think of a reason not to do it?"

I couldn't.

But it felt wrong. Burning books. A taboo, but one we did not think much about.

And she gave me little time to think more about it before she laid out her idea.

"Every book comes with a price," she began. "A small price. In the celebration that comes with the end of Recovery, students are eager for a little blaze. Often, it's a bonfire—a pile of pallets in an empty lot far enough away for the police to ignore. That's tradition.

"We co-opt that, see. Have our own bonfire, which is free. For a few coins, though, they get a book. They then toss onto the bonfire the abandoned title from the old school libraries that no one really wants anyway. With this small price comes a feeling of relief."

"Relief?"

"Aristotle calls it catharsis."

Catharsis: A purging of emotions.

I know the word from Mr. Smith's vocabulary worksheets. You could dodge the reading, but he counted the worksheets faithfully, so, I know the definition because I actually did that work.

Before I can think much on it she is leading me back to the school.

"They have printers there," she explains.

"Live free or die," she mutters later.

For my part, I'm just stunned at the idea. Not against it, but stunned.

Finding a computer and printer, she writes up a simple handbill.

# It is a PLEASURE to BURN.

### Celebrate the end of Recovery by burning school books.

### Books will be sold for a nominal fee.

### Add them to the blaze.

### Bring your own drinks.

At the bottom she gives the time and place. After printing fifty, she walks around the building and attaches them to walls with a roll of tape she had picked up somewhere.

The party goes viral.

And I have yet to agree to the whole plan.

Recovery Ends

Freedom Begins

"Bad ideas have a life of their own," my father once told me.

At the end of five days of showing up, each passing student produces one piece of evidence that demonstrates an awareness of the class' subject. It is a collage or poster (most likely) or a research paper or passing grade on an exam (less likely). As rare as they are, the research paper or exam does not resemble anything like scholarship. Efforts that failed during the earlier months succeed in Recovery.

There is a Scholar's Fair on the last day.

Some sadist came up with this tradition years ago under the guise of celebrating learning. Instead, it is an embarrassment for all involved. Substandard work covers all of the walls and tables of the cafeteria. Their creators—the students—clot aisles and corners and talk about the evenings ahead. Teachers make small talk and attempt to hide into the wall so that they do not have to defend the work of their now-deemed-competent students.

No one asks.

Parents say nothing.

I wonder what they expect.

Why did they come?

Why does anyone come?

This first fire is a freshman effort.

The day before the event we drag wooden pallets out of the mill and place them in the middle of the larger, empty parking lot. Meant for the days of full productivity, the lot is the size of six football fields. On one side of the lot a rusted black iron fence about eight feet high and in need of a paint job separates the property from the main road. Surrounding the lot on two sides is the old mill. It's red brick, like the school, with large glass windows that have been spared rocks. The fourth side also has a poorly maintained black iron fence, but separating the lot from the river. Stacking the pallets to eye level, I cram as many crushed cardboard boxes between the slats as I can. It is big enough to dazzle and allow for the addition of hundreds of newly purchased ex-library books. Hours before the first guests arrive I douse it with eight cans of paint thinner that have been left in an outbuilding close to the factory.

"If we're going to do this, books need to be front and center," Sophie says.

Going through the boxes, she picks out the most colorful covers.

"Titles and content mean nothing," she theorizes. "Color. Like a Christmas tree, red, blue, green and purple books."

She then hangs them from the pallets.

I open a book's back cover and jam it between crushed cardboard and stacked pallets. From this the rest of the book hangs; their jackets, cases, and endpapers flapping in the gentle breeze. All of it gives the pile movement even before a match is lit. It is kind of pretty.

In retrospect of what happens, it's a bit grotesque.

A few minutes before six a few kids trickle in.

With the help of an abandoned and rusty pallet jack, I had managed to move several pallets loaded with books near the entrance. Laying an old door over a couple of saw horses, this makeshift table sits between the gate and the books so people know payment is due. A sign with the prices is taped to the front of the table, and I position myself behind. Still, I give these first-comers a free title when a slight breeze blows the smell of paint thinner our way.

Eyes widen at the smell.

They dig into their pockets and pay for a few more thick volumes.

The table makes it all seem a bit more mercenary than the usual summer party, but I am here to make a buck.

"Are you going to light this thing?" one of the kids asks.

There are about twenty kids standing around with books in their hands. Most are dislodged from the mainstream; slackers whose first instinct would not have brought them to the traditional big blow out that they wouldn't have been welcome at, or invited to, anyway.

No one else is coming, I figure.

"Let's do it," says Sophie.

When I produce the box of matches, five people volunteer to light it. Everyone gets that look: Hunger. Fire has power.

Another light puff of wind sends the fumes of paint thinner towards our noses and we swoon.

"Let me try," says a wiry kid sporting a rough beard.

He grabs the box out of my hand, ripping it open and several matches fall to the ground. Snapping the head along the side of the box, the match breaks. Again, he tries. Another kid picks up a match from the ground and tries striking it on the pavement, but they are safety matches and the head just crumbles and leaves a streak. Someone pulls out a lighter, but the strong fumes makes her too afraid to strike it. Finally, the wiry kid succeeds and flicks the burning match onto the pile. It explodes with a loud WHOOF and everyone moves back. After a moment, as the pallets crackle and the flames settle in for real, the crowd moves in closer.

Hesitation is not expected.

Fire has a fascination. Given the chance, though, people are timid.

More people come in small groups; chatter muted. People buy books, but then tuck them under their arms while their hands are thrust deep into pockets. Some flip through the pages. Everyone looks at the rest of the group.

It is awkward.

There is a sense of embarrassment. This is taboo.

Here are three things you probably didn't know about burning books. First, books do not burn as well as one would think; the paper used to make books is loaded with clay. Second, they leave a high amount of ash, which rises and wafts with the updrafts. Third, as a solid block of paper, only the outside burns; the fire makes itself slowly to the core of the book.

It does not make for a satisfying, passionate burn.

"If you want a book to really burn, you have to open it."

It's Sophie, giving advice to a kid in a maroon stretched out hooded sweatshirt.

The cardboard and pallets have crafted a solid blaze. Her front stands ablaze in the darkness that has fallen. In her hand is a book, which she opens like a fan. Others watch. From one, she begins to speak to all.

"You don't just throw it on," she says. "You gotta chuck it."

At her word, a large paperback copy of Composition flies through the air, over the sparse crowd. Its pages flap and flutter like a wounded bird; at one point majestic, and another lame. When it lands it quickly bursts into flame. Even on top of a six foot high blaze it is noticeable.

That starts a hail of books.

Some miss the pile, hitting kids on the far side of the fire. Others hit the pallets, and bounce off. Most hit the mark. A few kids pick up the ricochets, light their edges, and wave them around, ablaze, while themselves dancing. Someone burns their hand. Music comes from somewhere, as formerly unnoticed guitars begin pounding out tunes.

Suddenly the crowd has doubled.

Tripled.

The crowd surges forward. The blaze suddenly grows. A number of dancers get dangerously close to the pile. Books continue flying through the air. People are pushing to get to another part of the party. In all of this, the fire dances in people's heads. It unlocks a passion. With everything that has happened as long as we kids could remember—about the mills, the schools, people leaving, the Free State—a lot of emotion is ready to come out. Soon we will be of the age of choice.

Catharsis.

I look around for Sophie, but cannot find her.

Then, I see her in a group of kids dancing. So bright is the fire, in contrast to the darkness that surrounds it, that I can't tell who she's dancing with.

Then, I realize she is arguing with someone.

They grab her hand.

Then, she's on the ground.

Frozen for a moment, I start my way through the crowd. I lose sight of my friend.

The sirens sound just before everything can get out of control.

Everyone runs.

The Police

As the pumper truck arrives to put out the fire, the police are taking names of those kids who didn't run away fast enough. I look into the darkness and think I see a familiar face: Mr. Smith looks at me through the bars of the iron fence. He is in the darkness, and the light of the fire make it difficult for my eyes to adjust and focus on his details.

Perhaps it is not him.

Disappointment. The look on his face...

No, not quite.

Then, a voice distracts me.

Standing beside me is Sophie MacDonald.

"We got to go," she says.

"Are you okay?" I ask.

"No."

That melancholy goes away quickly as the police ask to speak with me.

I am not arrested or charged with a crime for events that occur that night. I have a permit to burn; the mill has a permit for hundreds of people being in the parking lot—a permit, from better days, still valid, does not specify age, time of day, or for what reason people might gather. They give me a ride home, and my parents do not know a thing until they read the paper later the next day.

My mother cries all afternoon and into the evening.

The Night Librarian

Sophie is in my room when I get home from the police. It is unclear how she got in, although my window is slightly ajar.

Expecting her to talk about the police and how everything fell apart, she instead begins to take off her sweater. For this school year, Sophie has been wearing a number of oversized, worn sweaters pretty much every day. This one is an olive green. It has a number of holes in it, where it must have caught on something sharp.

She holds a finger to her lips.

As she lifts it over her head, the brown t-shirt she wears underneath lifts to reveal her stomach. For a moment, I try to think of the last time I have seen her skin. Eighth grade, at the town pool? When she transitioned from a chirpy middle school soccer player to a broody high school academic her clothing style had changed accordingly. I had thought little of it.

Now, she is taking off her sweater in my bedroom.

"Sophie...."

"I need to show you something," she says, trying to thwart my concerns.

The t-shirt actually covers a silk top. Standing before me, she is still wearing that and her bra. Then, she begins to remove that.

As she does, she turns her back to me.

For a second, I think she is embarrassed. I am. But, it is something else. Sophie wants to show me something.

I see them, but I can't believe it.

There, coming from her shoulder blades are two wings.

Mr. Chips

On Monday the school is introduced to our new scholastic manager.

At our semester kick-off assembly, our principal introduces Mr. Arthur Chipping in a near whisper. Then he sits down at the back of the stage. It is possibly the quietest our principal—traditionally a rage-a-holic who loves to preach—has ever been, but from his red face and tight features he seems to be quite, quietly enraged.

But I'm thinking about and worried for Sophie.

After she showed me her wings, not much else was said.

What do you ask?

I did ask if they hurt ("No. They are uncomfortable under layers, though."). The idea of flight—do they work?—was hinted at, but her answer was noncommittal. Most of our conversation was about the former—how it feels.

"When did it happen?" I ask.

"Something was happening when we started freshman year."

Because I kept staring—how could I not?—she began, with a blush, to put her sweater on again. To keep my parents knowing I had a visitor, I put on music (gently).

"Last year they became full wings."

It is impossible to describe, but I will try. They are like the wings of a bird, which I know is not very specific. Emanating from her shoulder blades, they make no sense but they do. The color is equally enigmatic, going from her pink flesh to a dirty white without a clear transition. And it is not that I was shying away from looking, or that she covered up before I got a good peek. No, they just seemed magical. But real.

When she folds them up, they lay nearly flush with her back. With a shirt on, no one would notice.

"I don't know what to do."

"Have you told your parents?"

"No."

"Doctor?"

"No."

We are silent.

"I'm telling you."

And with me helping her carry this emotional weight, we change the subject to what a mess the book burning had been.

At the introduction of our kick-off assembly, a woman from what used to be the school board stands up. She is someone we all feel we should know from the community—she looks familiar in a bland kind of way—but no one does. Her hair is blonde and pinned up so that it does not touch the collar of her suit. Like a presentation to any faceless audience, she speaks in staccato facts.

In short, the school is costing too much money and producing too little value.

"Why would be continue like this?" she asks.

The last is a rhetorical question, but a few scattered voices try and answer her as if this was a one-on-one discussion. Glowering, the principal rises. Everyone is quiet as no one wants the wrath meant for whomever is making these decisions but will instead be poured on our head.

He sits down again.

Bored, we are ready to leave, but it is clear there is more she wants to say. Mr. Chips, our newly minted academic dean, has been hired—we are told—to implement a new policy.

"Let's give Mr. Chips a big welcome," she says.

People kind of clap.

With the palms of his hands on his knees, our principal sits silently in his gray suit, in the shadows, while Mr. Chippings, or Mr. Chips, talks about the upcoming year.

Before us stands a big smile.

With his head held back atop his tall, thin body, he outstretches his arms and speaks the language of discipline while his voice rings with welcoming hope. Responsibility is a word he uses often, topping it only with respect.

Responsibility. Respect.

The students believe him. They eat it up.

These are still things of value. As he speaks, his brown suit and red tie, thinning wavy hair, and shined wingtip shoes move around the stage enough to demonstrate life, but not enough to indicate fun. We believe him; he reminds us of the integrity we remember, once.

Responsibility.

Respect.

The changes will be minor, he says.

We have never had a scholastic manager before. Judge, jury and executioner with regard to budget, discipline or matters academic have always been the principal. We are used to being yelled at. Instead, Mr. Chips talks about hard work, responsibility, respect and how fun it is to learn.

"This is the idea of the Free State," he says. We offer a good product, at a fair price to the citizens, and you do it or you freely leave."

We clap respectfully as he finishes.

Except Sophie.

"Chipping," she snorts. "Mr. Chips? This has got to be a joke."

Sitting there, I look it up and see it's the name of a famous novel about a teacher. We are being lead, now, by a fictional character.

With the blessing of Mr. Chips, the English Department pushes Mr. Smith down into all of the freshmen classes.

A literary iconoclast, Mr. Smith is not going to change. He expects students to read and write, and most of them are miserable because of that insistence. With an element of shock and surprise to the new students, he is to demand a certain level of literacy—he did already—setting the rest of the English department up for academically serious students in their sophomore, junior and senior classes.

That is the theory.

Our Civilization IV: Senior History Seminar teacher Mr. Jones told us this, comparing Chips' plans to those of Germany during the end of World War II. "Shock troops," he says. "It will end the same way," Mr. Jones concludes, with a hint of sadness for his colleague. "In defeat."

"I'm glad someone learned something today," Sophie says when I tell her what I heard in history class.

We are both sitting on the cafeteria, not eating and not really touching our coffee.

Our replacement for Mr. Smith in Senior English is a woman named Ms. Olson. Her first act was to abandon the Shakespeare Mr. Smith had started and begin a new book—To Kill a Mockingbird. After her introduction, she lowered the lights and began showing the 1964 version with Gregory Peck.

Sophie MacDonald had sat with her back facing the movie, reading To Kill a Mockingbird as each scene played out behind her. She even read some of the scene out loud, in sync with the video, until Ms. Olson asked her to leave.

Well, Ms. Olson did more than that.

In front of the whole class.

A Class of One's Own

"Have you been here since?" I ask her. "I mean, all morning?"

"Why leave?"

During the last period she sat in the cafeteria, mulling over a cup of coffee (black) and reading (literature not assigned). Because our Earth Science movie ended with thirty minutes left of class (Earth Science, a British educational film about earth science—which was as interesting as it sounds), our teacher let us go early. Sophie had not asked me to sit, but I did.

"I think it's a whole new type of cheating," she said to me. "Reading the book is now punishable by expulsion from the class."

"You weren't expelled," I said. "You weren't even punished. You just can't go back to class. I would think you'd be happy with your independent study."

"Taking the quizzes and writing papers on my own is not getting an education."

"It's a kind of education," I said.

She made a face.

"A re-education."

"Have you seen the movie before?" I asked her. "It's good."

"Yes," she said. "Last year. Twice. And I read the book. Twice."

"It's a classic," I tried. "It won an Oscar. Gregory Peck is great." My hand touched my beaten edition of The Night Librarian. Sophie MacDonald looked down at my hand and the book, then away.

Before we could discuss the merits of award winning cinema as its own art form, Mr. Chips slid briskly and neatly into a chair at our lunch table. With his head held back atop his tall, thin body, he outstretched his arms and laid them on the table. Palms down, he outstretched his fingers, and then retracted them. Bringing his hands together, his fingers weaved a ball. They contrasted with his red tie and dark brown suit. His eyes were always on one of us. We said nothing, staring at his wide smile as if a strange bird had dropped from the sky; it is familiar, but out of context and much too close.

"So you don't much like school, students?" his tone and manner says more than his question asks.

Sophie MacDonald decides to tell the truth, straightforward. "No."

She shakes her head, slightly, to emphasize her agreement with the statement.

"I am glad to have found you both together," he continues. Again, Mr. Chips, palms down, stretches his fingers and brings both hands together into a ball. He has a tight, straight line for a mouth. Looking from Sophie to myself he says, "We have been talking—the principal and I—about creating an alternative program for those who do not learn best in the mainstream."

"You mean something that resembles school?" she interrupts.

Mr. Chips smiles, allowing her an empty verbal punch.

"Perhaps something you might consider an education," he says.

In truth, I am afraid of this brave new world Mr. Chips is offering. Sitting in the back of a darkened moronic class watching videos and filling out "learning packets" with dolts of a similar age is simply easier than thinking.

As much as I agreed to carry part of her emotional load, with the wings and all, I do not know if I am ready to follow Sophie at her time of distress.

"In Sparta, children were not punished for stealing, but for getting caught."

Ironically, our school's mascot is the Spartans. I sit in class, and when Mr. Jones tells us that, I raise my hand to suggest the irony.

"Cool," a student blurts out, before Mr. Jones can call on me.

He stands at the front of the room, smiling, when the conversation takes off. Blue eyes recognizing my hand, his mouth had begun to call on me. No words came out, though. That blurt derailed anything insightful. Students then just start talking to their neighbors about anything related to stealing.

We never got back to Sparta.

As the Free State takes hold in all aspects of our lives, I have begun to realize my unpreparedness for making my own decisions. Suddenly, my "next steps" seemed horribly close.

Still, I am not ready to join Sophie charging into the unknown.

Those Wings

"There is no there there," writer and catalyst Gertrude Stein once said about Oakland, California. Stein could have summed up the second quarter of school. Without Sophie MacDonald in my classes or hanging out at lunch, it was like the later Night Librarian books.

The Night Librarian in Alphabetville, for example, had all of the elements of the original The Night Librarian: the glasses, striped stockings, her penchant for bagels and, of course, those enormous wings that allowed her to fly around the town delivering books from her tote bag. Except this later Night Librarian incarnation left the Lawrence Memorial Library on the first page and found herself in the fictional city of Alphabetville. Alphabetville was a contrivance to teach the alphabet to readers too young for The Night Librarian. In Alphabetville there was no bagel stealing, and every kid got the book they unknowingly wanted (as opposed to a mix of pink covered doll books slipped into a bully's backpack on library day). Even on the "T" page there was no toilet humor; the real Night Librarian was always using other people's toilets.

The there was not there.

The same was true of Sophie. And just when she became something new. It took me a week to screw up my courage and ask to see those wings again, but Sophie could not be found.r back?

Two weeks later I find Sophie MacDonald selling books.

My books.

"Hey," she says when I walk in.

The door has a little bell attached to a long, curved piece of metal that wags and flexes so that, when the door opens and closes, that bell keeps ringing. I turn and put my hand on it, stopping the noise.

Like many older mill towns, ours has a main street that runs north to south and several side streets going east and west. The stores that line these streets lay mostly empty, as the reduced workforce requires much less commerce. Her shop is in the middle of a string of empty storefronts that look even emptier than the other streets. The space is small—barely twelve feet wide—but long and dark in the back. Sophie is laying on an old couch pushed against the wall. Her supine body is reminiscent of the pose Cleopatra strikes in a video we watched for Civilization I.

Except she's holding a book.

Reading.

"Hey," I say back.

Her tone is as if we had just talked, and nothing has happened for weeks. No wings revealed. No books stolen. No changes at school. Just a "Howdoyoudo."

In response, she returns to her book. I, in turn, begin to browse the books.

My books, I see.

"I'll compensate you," she tells me before I ask.

I'm not looking at her, and I assume Sophie has not looked up from her book.

I say nothing.

After ten minutes that fells like an hour, I drop onto the couch. Her feet had been there, but seeing my posterior begin to fall she snatches them towards her. It is an intentionally aggressive move on my part.

"Nice shop."

"Got it for a song."

"Really?"

"No," Sophie says. "I just took it."

Then she tells me about the process. At some point, Sophie had learned to pick locks; I remember her getting into it sophomore year. After letting herself in, she glued the lock open—"I'm going to trust the universe," she says, and I fight rolling my eyes. It is a philosophical foundation, one of many she espouses during out talk. As the Free State has taken hold, such conversations are common among the young and the true believes. They were often the reason people leave, or stay. This store was the manifestation of Sophie's emerging philosophy—she just took stuff and will probably take more.

From an empty store two doors down, Sophie tells me, she had claimed a lot of lumber. Using her woodworking skills, she knocked together two dozen bookcases. "It's a lot easier to make a square bookcase than it is to use a lathe.".

"Saw?"

"Handsaw. Square. Hammer."

Eyeballing, I see that each bookshelf is about thirty inches wide with a safety attached to the brick walls of the shop. Any wider and she'd have to reinforce them or get sag. She knows this, as do I—we both took years of required woodshop and bookshelves were the sophomore project.

Besides the lumber, she had acquired nails, screws, hardware. There are half a dozen chairs scattered about, salvaged from a closed soul food restaurant that lasted only three months. With them came two tables. She does not mention where she got the couch, or the rolling ladder.

Or the books.

I bring that up.

"The books...."

"I decided to put them to use."

I refrain from saying, "They're mine!" Choke it back. I feel pressure behind my eyes, for a second or two.

"So," I begin, trying to keep my voice from wavering too much. "So, get a lot of business?"

"No."

But, she tells me, she gets a lot of reading done.

"My new curriculum," she adds.

Did Chips approve this, I wonder. Is this actually for school?

I don't mention the wings. Or the sleeping bag, pillow and cooler tucked behind the end of the couch.

And then I find her outside the gymnasium, by the trophy case, the next day, peering closely at what is inside. I'm on my way to Senior English.

"Sophie," I begin. I'm going to bring up the wings, I decide.

She just peers harder into the glass.

"But the question, again," she says, as if we had been talking, "is where the trophies went."

I hadn't noticed, but the trophy case is empty.

Those Wings

I'm just about to ask her about her wings when a new voice comes from behind.

"Pretty dramatic."

This voice is not sarcastic, but full of welcoming hope.

We both turn to see Chips

"You got rid of the athletic trophies." I say.

"To refocus us," he replies.

"It is just what this school needs," Sophie MacDonald says. "Refocusing."

"And less trophies."

"Fewer," Sophie corrects me.

Mr. Chips looks at her, not quite sure if she is being disingenuous or not. Indeed, her voice is neither sarcastic nor blunt. Me, he dismisses.

"I'm sure this, coupled with your new rigorous academic plans, will restore us," I say, deflecting. Then he looks at me with the look he has been giving Sophie MacDonald.

"Yes," was all he says, after a long pause.

"The wings," I say to her. More of a statement than a question.

But I want to ask. A million questions.

Those wings.

Her mouth turns to a tight line.

"Yes...."

"Are you okay?"

She looks at me, surprised.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

And then it's as if she really was alright.

Over the next hour she tells me about how she began to feel something in her shoulders two years ago and that they steadily grew into wings. Full wings. "Nothing to worry about," she assures. "I just felt odd."

"And you don't, now?" I ask.

"Only when I talk about it," she laughs.

I almost believe she means it.

Our conversation turns towards the bookstore, and we find ourselves in an alcove where a couple of hard wooden chairs have wound up. Leaning back to the point where I fear her toppling, she tells me how she took over the storefront and got set up.

"I found a car," she says. "To move the books."

"Found?"

"There are quite a few around town." Looking around, she adds, "You have to watch the parking lots. Nothing moves."

Sophie claims that everyone has a spare key hidden—you just need to think like the owner. I'm not sure how to do that when you don't know the owner, but it worked for her. "Spare key taped into the cover of the fuse box." With that little bit of theft she was able to move my books.

"My books," I venture. Taking ownership.

"I thought we were partners," she replies. We were nothing of the kind.

She shrugs. "This is better."

And it becomes a fact. Her hijacking a store, stealing a car and taking the books I paid for are better. "I'll compensate you for the books," she adds.

"Where are you staying?" I ask, thinking of the sleeping bag.

Instead, she tells me the bookstore is squatting—she has no idea who the owner is and pays no rent. "I was even able to tap into a line in the back with an extension cord to get power."

"You aren't afraid of getting caught?"

She shrugs.

"Not now that I have the sign. It smells of legitimacy."

Mr. Smith

Now teaching freshmen, Mr. Smith throws himself into promoting reading.

Unlike previous years, where he expected literature to eventually work its magic, he is now filled with the knowledge that getting kids to read will take a horrible toll on his soul. The fire has been a glimpse into something he has denied until now: We hate to read.

Mr. Smith has no choice but to exploit the worst in people for his ends.

It is for their own good.

I know what he thinks because he mutters this under his breath. In the hallway. In class.

Other teachers talk.

Crazy Obsessed Love

Crazy Obsessed Love is a book two girls down the cafeteria table talk about.

"Heathcliff or Edgar, who would you choose?"

She is sitting with her right leg folded beneath her denim skirt, taking a sip of skim milk from a carton and waiting for the friend to respond.

"Edgar has the money," the other replies.

She, too, drinks skim milk, but wears jeans and a simple blue button down shirt.

"So does Heathcliff.... More, I think."

"But he's crazy. Who needs that...."

Between them sits a book: Crazy Obsessed Love.

The cover is comprised of those three words, each with its own line:

Crazy

Obsessed

Love

The letters could be no larger and fit on the cover.

"Can I see that?" I ask.

The two look at me, so engrossed in their conversation that they are surprised anyone else is at the table.

On the back is a picture of a hunk with no shirt on, brooding.

The cover has been clumsily printed on a cheap color printer and glued onto the original book. I think the gloomy Adonis is clipped from an advertisement for back-to-school clothing (that he wore none in the photo was part of the marketing campaign, I remember).

The book has been doctored.

Indeed, the back lower corner is peeling a tad, but as I pick it with the nail of my right pointer finger the one freshman sees this and asks for it back, annoyed.

I comply.

Mr. Smith says nothing when I attend his class the next day.

His room is the same: too small, with too little furniture. It is a surprise that most of the class roster is still attending. Everyone, though, has books.

I see a copy of Teen Party House.

Like Crazy Obsessed Love, the title takes up all of the cover. The font is festive, in blue, pink and yellow. It, too, is clearly a cheap photocopy glued onto another book. As I look around the room, I see other titles equally co-opted: Madwoman in the Attic; Phonies Kill Me; Road Trip on a Raft; I.D. Mix-up!; Party People; and Angry Black Man.

"What is wrong with your main character?" Mr. Smith asks.

No one is quite settled, and his voice is near a shout.

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR CHARACTER?!" he repeats, louder this time. Well, a shout.

"Mine is crazy," the girl from the day before says about the character in Crazy Obsessed Love. No hand raised, she just volunteers the information.

"WHO?!" Mr. Smith shouts at her.

He's really in her face.

Then, in a regular voice threaded with strong hint of expectation, he asks, "Which main character is crazy?"

"Heathcliff."

"I ask," Mr. Smith explains, his voice strangely clam, "because we do not want to assume anything about any of the characters. We want to be precise. Demand more from your books by demanding more from yourself." For the benefit of the rest of the class, most of whom are not reading Crazy Obsessed Love, he explains the basic plot. "Is it crazy to love?" he asks at last.

"No," the girl replies. "He's obsessed, though."

I take Mr. Smith's loud, angry voice as being fed up with students.

I notice she is not intimidated.

"If he loved her, Heathcliff would be happy she's happy."

"Perhaps she's crazy," Mr. Smith puts forward. "Perhaps we should be with the one who wants us the most. Heathcliff worships Catherine. Everything in his life is about her. How could she want more?"

"Edgar worships Catherine, too," someone chimes in.

"Heathcliff is about possession..." another student says.

"DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO ADD!"

Mr. Smith is suddenly at the end of the first aisle and in the face of two boys holding copies of a book simply called WAR!

"DO YOU?!"

"Well..." one begins.

"YES?!"

"In our book," he sputters, "our main character is just clinging to this girl."

Mr. Smith adds. "Let's be specific."

"Yeah. She's crazy, but the guy telling the story...."

"The narrator."

"Yeah, the narrator, sticks with her."

Mr. Smith whirls around and shouts, "SO WHAT DOES THIS SAY ABOUT LOVE?!"

For twenty minutes students discuss the difference between love and obsession.

Then, they begin to read silently.

Only the sound of the humming lights, interrupted every sixty seconds by the movement of the clock's minute hand, can be heard. They read intently until the bell ring dismissing class. Students slip bookmarks into their books, gather supplies and chat leisurely as they push their way through the door.

Seeing a copy of Teen Party House on the counter by the door, I grab it as I leave.

Teen Party House is a book about a rich kid, Sebastian, told by a poor boy named Charles. They go to some wealthy college, complete with decadent parties, where they meet and become friends. There's a lot of drinking. Soon, Sebastian has Charles over his house, which is a swanky lair loaded with a wacky, depressing family, the Flytes. That Charles lusts for Sebastian's sister Julia, and their father has been living with a mistress for years, takes up a lot of the plot. Oh, and Sebastian and Charles may also hunger for each other. It's one of the books where a lot is said by not being said directly, in short, well written prose.

Teen Party House is Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.

"Who is Waugh?" I wonder, never having heard of her.

Going straight to the cafeteria, I take the first open table, toss my books and bag carelessly across the top, and start flipping through my copy. Opening the cover, I am met with the first chapter. There is no half-title page, copyright page, full title page or any preface. Looking closely at where the pages are glued to the binding, it is clear that someone with a very sharp blade has carefully cut those pages out.

Obsessively cut those pages out.

Page one greets the reader.

It begins simply with Charles remembering his carefree days of youth with Sebastian.

Carefully picking at a corner of the cover, which has two Adonis males and their female counterparts on the back, I am able to remove half of the cover to reveal a staid Penguin Classics edition. Half peeled off before it rips, it becomes some scrambled version of Teen Parhead Revisited.

"Still destroying books," Sophie MacDonald says from behind me.

"Look at this," I say, and I show her the book. She flips through, does a cursory examination, and tosses it onto the table.

"Brideshead Revisited," she says. "Good read. Not great."

"Why the cover?" I ask.

"He's insane," she says.

"Oh," I reply, as if that explained it.

She picks up my copy of Teen Parhead Revisited. Flipping through it she points out, "He cut the Prologue out, but not the Epilogue. I guess once you're into the book the Epilogue isn't going to stop you reading."

Then she tells me what she has heard.

Fight or lay down, Mr. Smith is going to fight.

Two weeks after the burning and being assigned freshmen, Mr. Smith shows up at football practice and entices twenty or so players to become a focus group, along with ten or so cheerleaders and a smattering of field hockey players. He gets them to come with a promise of a year's worth of English credits for an evening of talk. Because his room is too small to accommodate this group of thirty-four, he gains entrance to the gymnasium and there they have their session late into the night.

"What do they do?"

"They give feedback," she says. Taking a sip of coffee, she continues, "They tell him all of the reasons they hate English, hate reading, hate school and hate his class. Then, he asks them what they would do differently."

They tell him.

"And he listens?"

"No, not really. Most people don't tell you what they want; not directly. When someone says you should do something, they usually mean they want to do it. You are always telling me what shirts I should buy and wear, but really you are shopping for yourself."

"So, he reads between the lines."

"He decides to trick them into his end: Reading and enjoying literature."

A few days after that meeting, Mr. Smith goes to the English Department's book room and takes a variety of books out. He has three criteria for his project.

First, it has to be great literature.

Second, it has to be something, given the chance, the reader will enjoy.

Third, it has to be something ninth graders will choose and relate to.

Soon, he has a pile of like twenty titles. His method is simple; he changes the titles and covers to something that sounds interesting to a teen. For this, he uses his extensive notes from the athletic focus group. In addition to Brideshead Revisited becoming Teen Party House, the classics are:

Jane Eyre: Madwoman in the Attic;

The Catcher in the Rye: Phonies Kill Me;

Huckleberry Finn: Road Trip on a Raft;

Great Expectations: I.D. Mix-up!;

The Great Gatsby: Party People;

Invisible Man: Angry Black Man

WAR!: A Farewell to Arms.

And, of course, Wuthering Heights is the now-Devon Union High School classic Crazy Obsessed Love.

"That's it?"

"No, he made the covers, too. He chose bright colors, and put beefcakes and hot chicks on the backs. It gives the books a fighting chance to be read. Then he glued them on, cut out the front matter with a sharp blade and waited for the first day of school."

And class? No tests or homework, just a class of reading and brief, demanding discussion.

"It seems to have worked."

"I guess so," Sophie MacDonald replies.

The Horror

It could not last.

Mr. Smith's project is more successful than even he could have imagined, and it all happens silently in the quiet end of the English department's corridor among freshmen no one really cares about. Students blissfully read the classics thinking they are trash fiction, discussing important issues, and nearly everyone passes.

Mr. Chips monitors the situation.

When Mr. Smith physically attacks Mr. Chips in front of his third period class he is done for. No one blames him for doing it, but no one knows why he did.

Collective Memory of Intelligence

Well, one person knows why.

Me.

Without Smith being made aware, the school planned to clear out the book room at the end of the English Department's hallway. There is no opposition from his peers—I think they forgot it existed. I certainly cannot recall having been asked to read a book in at least a year. Still, they should have told him.

They came to me to do the job. After having been the one who took the original lot from Central, I have been asked to "find these a home."

"We need the space," I was told. They did ask for compensation, but it was nominal. I could not help but think about the empty trophy cases and wonder what the endgame was here.

One thing that is clear is that our school is divesting from literature.

The powers-that-be also do not seem troubled that they are giving their collective body of literature to a book burner.

In the small book room—a closet with shelves—I stare at the entire stock our community once expected its children to read. It is the sum of what we once believed in.

Much of the organization of titles is by grade level, labeled with a faded index card thumbtacked to the shelf, but as many titles are unattached to any once class. From the ninth grade shelf I take Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I'm surprised by Mockingbird; all I've ever seen of it has been photocopies, except for Sophie's copy—I did not realize we could have all been reading the actual book.

I haul away sixty-three copies of the first, one hundred and seventy-two of the second, and twenty-six of the third. In the end, two hundred and thirty-five different class sets come out of the closet, ranging from Paul Fleishman's Seedfolks to Tolstoi's War and Peace. Two trips with my father's truck empties our the room.

"Nice haul," Sophie MacDonald says, later, looking at the stacks of boxes I've dumped into the back of her squatting bookstore.

She agrees to "hold onto them" for me.

"Yeah. I'm not sure if you'll ever move two copies of The Scarlet Letter much less thirty-seven."

"We can always burn them," she replies, but not really to my statement.

I cannot tell if she's making a joke.

Earlier, in the closet, looking at the inside of covers, I see the names of my friend's parents, and in some cases their parents' parents. I blow the dust off of the covers and open each one. That such names are inside fascinate me. On the inside of Homer's The Odyssey I find my mother's name. It is written neatly, in cursive, below five other names that had read it before her. After her name three other students had read, or attempted to read, or been assigned this book before it went into the closet to sleep.

Mr. Smith had us write our names on the inside cover of the books he had hoped we would read. "You are part of a lineage," he would say. Somewhere in this pile is my copy of A Separate Peace. On the first day of the unit, when the books were passed out, opening to the front, where a lined bookplate was often glued, we wrote our names below the last one.

Time. These names represented the passage of time.

In my mother's copy of The Odyssey formal names give way to informal; Abigail Thompson from thirty years before gives way to Tom Smith, who graduated ten years prior, and more recently "John S". In the last slot only "Joe" is written, as if this was enough. Homer had written a few hundred pages and Joe could not be bothered with his last name.

At least he had held the book; classes now saw the movie.

Or clips.

Or not even that.

Stamped haphazardly on that inside cover of my mother's copy of The Odyssey is an oval, around it the name of our school. When new books had been bought, a secretary or teacher would stamp the inside of each book; a brand against theft. Written inside the oval of my mother's copy of The Odyssey in blue pen was the number 57, followed by a dash and the year the book had been bought. Along the tail edge of the book is stamped the name of our school; straight across and written entirely in capital letters. Looking at the book, I wonder where the stamps are now.

Lost? In a drawer somewhere?

How long had it been since someone in the faculty has bought a book?

Now they are selling them all.

Cleaning house.

"Find them a good home," they have told me, and I do.

Well, Sophie has them.

Mr. Smith Loses It

In Freshman Woodworking, we had learned how to use hand tools. Hammer, rip saw, cross cut saw, jig saw, chisel, nail set, wood plane, brace and bit. While kids went home and used family power tools equal or better than those in the mills, we learned in school how to use these simple tools to make simple things. Our town is the home of tens of thousands of wren because every family has multiple, identical wren birdhouses mounted around their yards; their freshman project. Every father received an identical wooden tool box on Father's Day and every mother a sewing box for Mothers' day. Everyone knew their roots were in working with their hands: cultural identity. Everyone knew how to use tools: practical skills. Everyone learned how to plan before acting: more abstract but important life skill. Everyone appreciates simplicity: simple appreciation.

Before we did those other projects, we made a box. It was a simple task on the surface, yet filled with countless traps that showed flaws clearly. We were taught the importance of craft, of perfection. "No one will know how much you put into this," Mr. Ellis told us, "because if you did it right, it will look effortless."

Extolling the simple perfection of a box—structurally, usefully, metaphysically—we spent four weeks learning to believe that our finished empty box held everything we would need to know about life.

I should have stuck with that philosophy.

We should have kept things simple.

After the second quarter, just after the holidays and in the middle of winter, there is a second Recovery.

Then, we have a second burning.

The burnings now mean something different. It happens spontaneously this time; Sophie and I planning none of it.

With her independent study and store, I see less of Sophie. Sometimes, she holes up in the cafeteria with a book. Other times, I chat her up in the library—it is mostly tables and cubbies now, with great internet reception. There is an aide (the librarian position has been cut) who mostly kicks out anyone not working. Most of the books are gone. Sophie has gone to wearing dark rimmed sun glasses with a light shade of green in the lenses.

Her store's sign is a pair of enormous wings.

"Way to embrace it," I tell her.

"What, my deformity," she replies. There is a dark sneer in her tone.

Without any books I had not expected the burn to happen a second time, but it just kind of does. And, with my books. The ones Sophie stole from me were sold by her to the mob.

It is all oddly organic. No one advertises or organizes the burning—it just sort of happens. There is an assumption it is happening, so it does. Like bringing a gift, people thought they need to bring a book. Some do from home. Others go to Sophie's beforehand. Then, they arrive at the parking lot, find some large things to burn and light the place up.

Besides the zombie-like intuitiveness to burn the event exposed, the other significant event is the transformation of Mr. Smith. An hour after it the first match is lit, Mr. Smith runs into yard yelling and grabbing books out of people's hands.

He loses it.

A couple of teachers at the fire hold him; it looks like he is going to throw himself onto the pyre. He then wrestles himself free and runs into the night. I still picture the tie waving over his right shoulder as his body disappears into the darkness.

But there is more than what everyone else sees.

Before going crazy in public, he confronts me, alone. Returning to my former storage area, I duck in there to get away from a horrible and upsetting conversation I had just had with Sophie. It all stems from her surprise that the burn is happening at all, and with books bought at her bookstore. She blames me—I hadn't known until someone mentioned it all in Civilization IV.

We fight.

"How could you organize another one?" she shouts.

"I didn't." Then I say, "How could you sell them books to burn?"

"I didn't know."

"Didn't think about the sudden surge in book sales on the last day of Recovery?"

Then I run in here.

I stand and pause. The room is dark, with flickers of lights from the fire dancing with shadows of revelers on the walls. Those shadows are enormous, and tribal. Outside voices and music are muffled by the glass windows. In the room stands Mr. Smith. He is in a dark corner.

"I have to ask," he says calmly, "what you are doing?"

"What do you mean?" I ask, a bit spooked.

I think for a moment, in that dark room, with the calm tone in his voice, that he might attack me. I play dumb.

"What do you mean?"

"The books," was all he replies. He wears a light blue oxford cloth shirt and tan chino pants—like always. His buttons do not match the correct button holes, though, so the shirt hangs funny. With a tired expression, he motions wide.

Maybe he is motioning towards the fire.

Arms hanging dead at his sides, his right hand jerks about a foot towards one of them. He seems exhausted.

"What do you mean?"

Now I stall for time because he is scaring me.

"Still," he says, finally. "It's not about the books."

Part of my brain is considering the various exits. My body tenses up. He notices. I must look like a cat cornered, because he takes a step back.

"It's them," he says. Again, his hand jerks towards the fire.

"Perhaps you don't give them enough credit."

Not true. In teaching, he saw the best in people. Right up until the police haul him away, Mr. Smith gives us all dramatic proof that this is true.

But I'd had enough, so I walk out.

"Hey," I say to Sophie MacDonald, leaving our fight behind.

She is looking at the pile, in the dark shadows a few steps behind the revelers, hands in her pockets.

"I need you for a second."

"I guess catharsis reaches a limit."

"No," I say. "No, I need you to help me with Mr. Smith."

That piques her interest. "What's up?" She follows as I said nothing. "Is he dead?"

Gallows humor, closer to the mark than she knows.

"No." Sophie MacDonald follows me across the parking lot and to the side door of the mill. "No," I repeat.

She follows me into the darkness.

"So you are in this, too, Sophie?" Mr. Smith says in the same calm voice as before.

"No. I'm just an observer. You know," she offers, "the view is much better out there."

And then she gives a short little laugh; more of a snort, really.

The snort sets Mr. Smith off.

He freaks and runs out the door into the parking lot. Charging into the crowd—into many of his students—he begins to grab books and toss them into the night. Singles and small bunches, he is going from student to student and making lunging grabs for books, and then whipping around and letting them fly willy-nilly. Spinning into the darkness, they barely leave his hand when he attacks someone else. I guess he is saving them from burning. Kids do not know what to do; he is a teacher, but clearly mad. Some clutch their books to their chests, protecting them to save them for burning. Slowly, more and more of the crowd become aware of what is happening.

Lunging toward the fire, clearly off balance, a few teachers celebrating the end of Recovery grab him. Grounded for a second, and seeing the familiar faces of his peers, Mr. Smith has a moment of clarity.

He freezes.

Quickly regaining his frenzy, he wrestles his body free and runs into the night, tie flapping good bye.

Later, Sophie notes, "There were teachers there."

"So," I reply.

"Teachers burning books," she says. "When did teachers begin showing up at your burnings?"

Your burnings, I think. When did they become only mine?

That night it rains. The books Mr. Smith had thrown into the night blow up like bloated fans, making them unreadable.

We are Still Watching That Movie

"I can't believe you're still watching that," Sophie says to me.

It's the first day of the third quarter and we have met up with the cafeteria. Well, I found her and sat down. To break the silence, I tell her about Senior English. We got off track shortly after she was removed from the class.

The movie is paused. Ms. Olsen calls out from his seat on the left, "Why is Mr. Peck defending Tom?"

Silence.

She knows Gregory Peck, but not Brock Peters—he's still Tom Robinson. I only know Peters because I've seen this movie four times; there's nothing left to learn from it but the actors who play the roles.

Ms. Olsen replies to her own question. "He could, though, simply go through the motions. Blah, blah, blah... he's guilty. Done. Instead, Gregory Peck puts on a great defense."

Again, silence.

Ms. Olsen continues to refer to Atticus as Gregory Peck, the actor who plays him. She tries to tease out of us why a white attorney would bother to defend a poor black defendant. This display of Socratic investigation goes nowhere. It is not that people didn't understand the intricacies of the plot; they just want to watch the video.

"Just play it," the girl in front of me calls out from inside of her sweatshirt hood.

Ms. Olsen does just that.

"Are we going to discuss the photocopy?" I ask. Several students shift in their seats, a couple shoot me looks.

"Not today," Ms. Olsen replies.

"Because it's different," I say. "The book from the movie." I do not know this—I haven't actually read the packet—but as the movie is always different than the book it is a pretty good guess.

"Why do they return?" she asks no one in particular—we are sitting alone, but she's not really speaking to me.

"Habit," I offer. "Muscle memory."

She accepts that.

It is less clear why she returns. It is unclear what sort of arrangement she has made with Chips, or what even constitutes an alternative program anymore, but as I have not seen her go to a single class I am pretty sure being on campus is a requirement for a diploma.

The Night Librarian is now the name of her bookstore.

And she is now wearing striped stockings.

After a brief spike in book buying—the two days before the second burning—she reports to me she gets maybe a customer a day. Most of the time she just reads.

Looking around at the fairly full cafeteria, it is not clear why the other students are here, either.

When Mr. Smith was fired all of his classes are turned into independent studies. Each student is given a reading list, a series of project choices and told to "check in" with the replacement teacher when each is completed. No timeline. No location.

Yet, here they all are.

Muscle memory.

The Missing

The week after the second burning, the news of Mr. Smith's madness is replaced by another: People are missing.

Gone.

"You mean, left?"

"I don't know."

"Free State," someone says. "Free to go."

No one's belongings are missing—just the bodies. Cars, cash, jewelry, phones, shoes...

People. Gone.

Some are older. Generations of older.

Others, peers. Not too many of those. A few.

The police are asking questions, but no one can tell if a crime has been committed.

They aren't looking hard.

There are some who are waiting to hear of a mass grave, or word of a cult operating just outside the town. Cults were one of the fears when the Free State was being debated. "Of course they don't want rules," the argument went. "The Free State will have rules," the advocates answered. "For all to thrive—that's best for all. No freeholder wants a cult. No freeholder wants trouble."

Did we have trouble now?

Why We Fight

The Night Librarian books, written by the original author, are so good because they weave a morally complex world that challenges the reader to make a choice about the world they want to grow up in. In the first book, The Night Librarian, readers not only meet her but also find themselves asking questions about her life.

Those answers are often disturbing.

For example, why did she have to sneak around at night?

An excerpt from the The Night Librarian: Her Beginning demonstrates the point. Before she is a librarian, Lillian is a baby born with wings. Her parents and midwife are sure that if anyone knows about her wings she will become a freak (or worse), and so it is kept a secret. Held down with a special brace, her doctor, in on the secret, writes notes excusing her from school activities that might expose her wings to the public. The secret holds until senior year in high school. The author writes:

Playing field hockey in gym class, Lillian was struck from behind.

"Ow!" she cried.

Pain. Shooting pain in her left wing.

She looked up. Standing over her was Sam. He was clumsy, but also mean. In his hand was a field hockey stick.

"Ow," she cried again. This time she kept much of her cry inside.

"Let's see," Ms. Mullin said.

Bending on one knee, she felt Lillian's back. Through Lillian's shirt she felt the brace.

"What's that?" Ms. Mullin asked.

"It's my brace," Lillian said through gritted teeth and pain. "You have my note."

Ms. Mullin pulled up the bottom of Lillian's shirt. The brace did not cover the wings, but only held them down. The last three inches of the wing were exposed. Ms. Mulligan was shocked. She pulled down the shirt.

Lillian looked up.

Sam was smiling, in a mean way.

Convinced it was not a back injury, Ms. Mullin helped Lillian up from the field. They went to the nurse. There the brace was revealed. Taking it off, the nurse backed away as Lillian spread the wings. Still sensitive, Lillian still felt better.

She felt free.

That soon ended. Ms. Mullin and the nurse argued over contacting Lillian's doctor or calling a veterinarian to examine the injured wing. Meanwhile, Sam told everyone what he saw. By the time Lillian had returned to her classes, she did not fit in.

"Hey, Sally," she said to her friend.

But Sally was no longer her friend. Sally looked at her, slightly afraid, and said nothing.

That night Lillian cried. Her parents had told her that if her secret was revealed, people would treat her differently. Sally did. Others did. Even the teachers did not look at her, but seemed to be peering over her shoulder at the wings they had heard were there.

The next day, the comments started.

Birdbrain.

Featherbrain.

Go lay an egg.

They were said softly. Only Lillian heard them, but everyone knew what was being said.

There was one boy, Owen, who wanted to say something. Not to Lillian, but to Sam and the other boys and girls. Owen had been picked on. His teeth were crooked, and he was taller than the other kids. They called him beanpole. Owen knew how Lillian felt. He wanted to tell them to stop.

He did not say a word.

There were others like Owen. Some kids were fat. Others were poor. A few had trouble reading. Sam and the other boys and girls made fun of them, too. Each wanted to say something.

None said a word.

Soon, Lillian no longer wanted to go to school.

She hated school.

Lillian, Owen and all of the other kids who did not fit in kept getting picked on. None said a word. Had just one spoken up, the cruel words would have stopped.

But they were silent.

Later in the book, Lillian goes to college and learns to become a librarian. Because she loves her home (why, after her treatment, is never made clear—home is home, I guess), she wants to work in the Lawrence Memorial Library in town. They will not hire her, fearing her freakish wings will keep people away, and the town will become illiterate. So much does Lillian want to be a librarian, though, that she begins to hide at night in the attic of the library and shelve books. Over time, she learns of children and the books they need and delivers them in the darkness, flying all around town with a tote bag someone had left behind. The author throws in some magic, to make the job easier and the story a bit more miraculous. In her pocket is a magic notebook which helps her choose the perfect book for the non-readers in town. Her father, an optometrist, is able to make glowing glasses that allow her to see in the dark. There is also a wink-and-nod move that allows her to enter houses effortlessly, like Santa Claus, but with her passing through walls. Her ability to sustain herself on leftovers from patron refrigerators is improbable, but funny.

Other books, such as The Night Librarian Christmas and The Night Librarian Leftover Cookbook, ignore the ethically dark milieu of the original series and subsequently are mostly forgotten by fans. The author's ending to The Night Librarian: Her Beginning, though, is typical of a more complex sensibility:

Looking out the attic window, Lillian would sometimes see her old classmates.

They had not changed. No one had found their voice.

Sam had a child of his own, now. His days were filled with cruelty.

The boy was learning to read. She knew, with Sam as his father, that the town library and local school would be the boy's only chance for a new life; a life unlike Sam's and a refuge from that cruelty.

Lillian would sometimes take her magic notebook out of her pocket, and write the boy's name into it. She would look at its suggestions.

Then, she would close the book and put it back in her pocket.

What do you think she did then?

The Missing Connection

There are more people in the cafeteria than ever.

And the library.

The halls, foyer and stairwells are also home to small pods of students hanging out. No one seems to be going to class anymore.

When I arrive at Senior English I find a note taped to the door:

Class: Senior English

Please complete the book or movie To Kill a Mockingbird independently.

Then, do ONE of the following projects:

  * Make a collage capturing the main characters and central theme of the book.

  * Write an essay discussing the main characters and central theme of the book.

When done, please leave on the desk.

No due date. No other instructions.

Dwindling Classes

In two weeks, class attendance throughout the school has plummeted.

"I'm not surprised," Sophie says.

"I am," I reply.

I look at my watch.

When I go to Mr. Johnson's history class, he's sitting behind his desk talking to two students.

"Hey," he greets me. Then, he takes his foot off the desk as if three students makes things somehow more official. "Do you need me?"

"I'm here for class."

"Great."

As I take my seat, he finishes up a story he's telling about his first year teaching. Thinking about it, I realize I probably know more about my teacher's personal life than I do about the subjects they teach. Ms. Olsen has two boys, she had said. Mr. Johnson used to wear striped ties, apparently, from the story he just finishes up. Someone had told them, once, that making connections with students is important and so they all began sharing.

"Where were we?" he asks the two other students.

"Trench warfare."

"Yes."

But I'm not really paying attention. On his whiteboard is a note similar to the one Ms. Olsen posted—an independent assignment. We are here because of muscle memory. Or, we have nowhere else to go.

"Are we studying World War I?" I blurt out.

"We are," one of the two students replies.

I get up and go to the sheet detailing the independent assignment. Instead of a collage, we have a choice of creating a game that details the historical period of our choice. It's not limited to a century, or country. We can also write an essay.

It's now a choice not to write.

Abigail Thomson

A list of the missing makes the paper.

In addition, a few Missing posters are stapled to telephone poles around town.

Abigail Thomson.

I think I know her, but I can't recall why that might be. Small town?

"Have you looked at the list?" Sophie MacDonald asks me.

"Yeah."

"Notice anything?"

"Nope."

"No." She shakes her head, slowly.

We are in her bookstore, the only two. There are a few dirty dishes and it is obvious she is now living here; no attempt is made to hide the sleeping bag.

I don't ask.

"How many?"

"A hundred or so."

"Just left?"

"Free State."

But the name gnaws at me. I scan the list another time.

Singleton, John

Smith, Tom

Friends of my father? No.

Sophie is chattering about the projects everyone is doing—or not doing. Over a month into the new quarter and she has heard not a single collage has been turned in.

But I'm not listening.

"It's going to be quite a Recovery Week," she says, laughing.

I think about the fire.

And realize. Abigail Thomson. Tom Smith. John S.

They are the names listed in the front of that copy of The Odyssey.

Along with my mother.

"Do you have those books?" I ask Sophie. "The ones from the book closet of the high school?"

"Some."

"Where are the rest?"

"Sold."

"When?"

"I told you. I got a lot of sales right before the last burning."

"You sold my books."

"Gave them a good home."

It is unclear if she is being ironic. No time to parse it out, because I now wonder where that copy of The Odyssey is.

"Show me the remainders," I say.

And she does.

The pile is small. But something else happens that distracts me. Over a t-shirt, Sophie is wearing a heavy, dark green cardigan sweater. As she turns to lead me to where my stash of books is kept, her shoulders bulge. Then, wings appear.

My brain is trying to make sense of how those wings can go through fabric. Does she have the equivalent of sleeves—for wings? I peer closely, but see nothing.

Wings. They are just there.

"Can you fly?" I ask.

Sophie turns, with a smirk on her face.

"Here," is all she says.

With a wave of her arm she shows me the remaining four boxes.

I look through the boxes twice.

No copy of The Odyssey can be found.

No One Does A Thing

Everyone keeps going to school, but no one goes to class.

Well, almost. I go.

And, Sophie.

"With a class of two," she says, "I kind of understand what high school is supposed to be."

Teachers continue to keep regular hours and remain committed to their class schedule. Students, on the other hand, come in late and leave early. A few drop into classes randomly—our small group discussions get interrupted about even ten minutes by someone who "just wanted to check in."

"Thanks, Brian," Mr. Johnson says as Brian Chatworth stands awkwardly in the doorway to the classroom. "Turn it in whenever."

After Brian leaves, I ask him how many completed projects he's received.

"None," Mr. Johnson replies.

"How many have asked about it," I ask.

"Three."

The other two in the class state they are writing papers.

Feeling pressure, I volunteer my intention of writing a paper, too.

Later, when I go to English, Ms. Olsen is nowhere to be found. Her door locked, and there is a note on it outlining office hours. Apparently, she plans to be in only on Tuesdays. I can hear Sophie's droll comments in my head.

Woodshop is the one classroom that still buzzes with activity. Still, it is half the class it was last semester. "No," Mr. Ellis says, "no one can just pass in a finished project. It's about the process." He is sure, though, that many are going to try.

"You gonna fail 'em?" someone asks.

But Mr. Ellis only shrugs. Recovery does not extend to the Practical Arts, Fine Arts or Physical Education—kids pass or they fail. The school board never cared enough about them to pay for their teachers to be available those extra weeks.

As it is second semester of our senior year, we get to choose our own woodshop project. I choose a simple box. "I want to get it right," I tell Mr. Ellis.

"You want to avoid the lathe," he replies.

We both know the truth—a good box is both useful and hard to make. He challenges me to use handtools—like we did in middle school. I accept the challenge, and for an hour forget about the danger I feel my mother is in.

Recovery

We spend much of our day at school, coming and going from random classes as we see fit. It is like having a carte blanche ticket at the cina-plex, wandering from history video to adapted novel to science documentary. As class attendance continues to dwindle, teachers begin to show nothing but video—they don't even pretend to link it to readings or pause it for discussion. Mr. Hansel, with the last classroom in the math wing, even brings in a popcorn maker. The smell is cloying; that technique kind of works, but not so much.

Teachers still make themselves available for discussion.

Often, that happens in the hallway, standing, with the teacher peeking through the window; when the video reaches a teachable moment, they poke their head inside to make an insightful comment. Often, they shout over a transition scene instead of actually pausing the film.

At first, Sophie and my path had cross once a week, and we enjoy coffee near each other on Thursdays. Then, I see less of her.

"I'm worried," I tell her.

We are in the cafeteria, and she looks up and our eyes meet. I tell her about the names in the book, and the list of the missing.

"I did a little research," I say. "All of the names on the list. They all went here."

"Everyone in town went here," she replies, dismissively. "No one moves to Devon. You stay or you leave, but no one comes."

Conceding the point, I argue that it seems odd how many people disappeared after the last burning.

Surprisingly, she seems to accept the argument. Then, I tell her about my mother.

To this, she shrugs.

Then, the bell goes off. "Why?" Sophie snorts at the irony of the school attempting to impose its will on the students. Still, people get up and move.

Sophie looks slightly disgusted at everyone, but not surprised.

We part, and the quarter soon ends.

As she had predicted, no one did any work.

Recovery is packed. A full quarter of learning is crammed into a week of class time. In reality, it means a glut of magazine scraps and glue stick encrusted desktops.

Friday comes, and the fire spontaneously is organized and set ablaze.

The Pleasure, Gone

"You came," says Sophie MacDonald.

"I was called," I reply. "By the police. They wanted to know if I had a plan, because no permit was filed."

"Oh."

"I told them it wasn't my affair."

We watch the pallets burn.

"These are my books," I say quietly, nodding towards all of the people with titles in hand.

"They're just books," she flatly states. "They would have gotten destroyed eventually."

We stand in silence.

In her rebellion—her opposition—she throws her lot in with the book burners. As our peers throw on hats and shoes and some threw rocks—thwack—at the burning pallets, the rebellious novelty of burning books still holds with Sophie MacDonald. She seems more in favor of it than she did in October.

I like to think that she is tired. It's a lame excuse, but we do that for friends.

Sophie MacDonald has been a fighter. In third grade, she demanded reading time. Everyone remembers her leaving class each day and hiding for half an hour—to get her reading in. After a few weeks of this, the principal and other adults would wait outside of her classroom, waiting for her to make a break with her book. She always found a half hour. They always found her reading, each day in a different spot. Eleven years of fighting, and Sophie is now ready to throw her lot in with the tide.

What happened?

"You don't believe that," I say.

For the first time tonight, I turn my head from the flames and look at Sophie.

She is beautiful.

The fire makes her face a bright mix of yellow, orange and white, while the back of her head is darker than any black I have ever seen. A matter of contrasts.

Betraying no emotion, her face turns towards mine.

"I just don't care," she replies.

And she tosses the book onto the fire.

Sophie MacDonald is not weak. In Phys. Ed., she can throw a softball the entire length of a football field. I have seen her arm wrestle a boy for a coffee, and win. Fueled on coffee, she often seems to gain strength. Once, angry at yet another insipid World Civilization III lesson, she slammed the door so hard it screws on the hinges ripped from the frame. Her throw, though, leaves a lot to be desired. As other books, socks and random garbage fly to the top of the pile, Sophie's sideways chuck barely makes the fire. It is from the hip, and out. The entire throw relies on the snap of her wrist. Opening like a lame duck, a few pages flutter. When it hits whatever is burning at the foundation of the fire, the book snaps shut. It lays propped up, the title upside down but clearly legible.

It is The Night Librarian.

And I lose it.

Her act makes me realize that Mr. Smith is right; everyone can be touched by literature.

So touched, in fact, that I reach into the fire with my bare arm, grab the book's spine, and pull it out. Throwing it on the ground, I try and stomp the fire out. But there is something on it—plastic melted from another, non-literary object—and each time I raise my foot it now remains stuck to my sole. Fire is rising from around my shoe, a canvas sneaker that had been white just moments ago. The flames lick my pant leg, and I know I am doing everything wrong when it comes to fire safety.

Stop, drop and roll, my brain tells me.

With pain, I kick until the book sails to the edge of darkness. Using great profanity, I stomp my foot more.

And then the stack of pallets fall on to me.

Burn

The core of the pyre are the pallets.

And they have been burning for at least three hours.

Already top heavy and unstable, the constant abuse the stack receives over that time make toppling over a given. All of this I think as it happens—a dark mathematical calculation that does nothing to help me avoid my fate.

Distracted, I do not hear the calls of others.

Ablaze and half burnt, each pallet still weighs quite a bit. This is not a calculation, but a fact born of experience. Had it not been me under them all I would argue it is a subjective measure, but being at the bottom I can objectively report they are excruciatingly heavy. Most are made of the hard wood that still grows plentifully in our state.

One strikes me on the side of the head, knocking me senseless.

Everything else I'm told later.

Others, flaming, pin my body to the ground. Bones are broken, and the glowing embers of the pallets brand into my skin.

No one moves.

Let the story tell itself, Mr. Smith would say.

But I don't remember because I am out.

Seeing me covered in burning pallets, the light switch flips in everyone's head, and they pull them off of me. Several people burn their hands, which makes me realize that anyone can be a hero. We have that inside of us, to help people we might not feel much about. I see the possibility of the Free State that night. The ideal. About fifteen are treated for burns on our palms. If only we were in non-stop crisis the Free State might yet work.

Sophie MacDonald is gone.

In Bed

When I read The Night Librarian: Her Beginning again, laying in this hospital bed, I become convinced that at the end Lillian gives Sam's son the perfect book.

I have never believed that before.

The fire trucks came and put out the blaze, I'm told.

The police ask me questions, but seen disinterested.

On Tuesday, a registered letter comes telling me my lease for storage is terminated. I crumpled it up; my books are gone, anyway. Only a giant pile of ash and half burned, very wet trash remain in the parking lot. The gates are chained shut, my father tells me.

I receive no burns above my neck.

Those on my chest and back make me fit in with the older crowd of former mill workers; forced to wear a work shirt buttoned to the top, even in summer, because of the scars of life. As for the fifteen heroes, their prognosis is having burned away the love and life lines from their palms.

My mother does not come to see me.

When I come home, she is nowhere to be found. My father says nothing about it.

I flip through THAT copy of The Night Librarian, laying on my bed hoping to get drawn in. It is singed a bit, but not much. Someone assumed it was my copy and left it on our stoop. So many times since the fire I have thumbed this copy, but tonight I find a little message written.

I love you.

The pencil is light, leaving it unclear if it was written long ago or simply in careful hand. Printed, it has a delicate flow nonetheless. I wonder who has written it, and to whom. My wonder drifts from the writer to the reader. I imagine scenarios. In my notebook I make a list of the names that have checked the book out.

THAT book.

That book changed my life.

Not the story, but this specific copy of the book.

The one I rescued from the fire.

Unlike the rubber band bound Penguin copy I carry around; this one is from a library. Stolen. A blue gray cover, above the white leaf printing of DEVON SCHOOL on the spine, the code c.4 is written in a white pen with a handwriting that all posthumous librarians seem to have possessed. This implies that it is the fourth copy of the library's. Ninety-eight people checked that copy of The Night Librarian before it was thrown on the pyre. Ninety-eight return dates are stamped in the back. Between August 11, 1982 and today book 63091 was taken out ninety-eight times. The turn of the century is the last stamp. It is unclear if technology made stamping outmoded, or if the book simply fell out of fashion.

Inside the library card pocket is a card with the names of twenty-two people who went to the school and, presumably, read it. Perhaps they, too, like me, carried it around without reading it. Maybe they liked to hold it, like I did, and turn it over in their hands. Two people checked it out twice, while Tom Mansfield checked it out, and presumably read it, three times over the course of a year. Now I have that book.

I remain unsure of what to do with it.

Now I discover that lightly, lovingly written message.

I love you someone had written.

Opening the book, I turn to page 143. No one loves me. At least, no one expresses it. If someone wanted to love me, it would have been proclaimed on page 143.

No one does.

One letter in "I", four in "love" and three in "you". 1-4-3.

Simple and sophomoric and raw and stupid and real for the world to see. It is a brainless riddle that shouts its intentions from a megaphone.

143, 143, 143. I love you

Tonight I lay down with my book, shove my nose between pages 142 and 143, take a deep breath and fall asleep.

"People miss books," I say to Sophie MacDonald.

They say that god punishes people by giving them exactly what they want. My dream of being alone with Sophie on the desert island has essentially come true, as no one likes her increasingly nasty commentaries. Recovering from my burns, I tend to sit more. And read. My spending time alone reading in the cafeteria make me a friend of whomever chose to sit across from me. That is Sophie MacDonald.

In the spring of our senior year, we are both alone in each other's presence.

After hurling that book onto the fire, I hate her, but I am stuck with her. No one else wants to deal with the girl with the burn injuries.

I have scars on my arms, chest, and legs. The doctors say I am lucky.

Still healing, with bandages and compression wraps both visible and under clothing, we sit alone. Most of it is second degree burns, and easily covered by a long sleeve t-shirt and a scarf. If you are wondering how I could forgive Sophie after this tragedy, I will tell you one more bit from the fire that I left out of the story: When she held up the book, I leaped at her.

I did not even try for the book.

I was so angry—furious—that I attacked her. She was shocked. This gave way to pain when I ripped a chuck of hair from her scalp. Had I not gone after the book, I might have crushed her head into the pavement. Still, when she twisted in pain to get away our eyes met and she understood fully. Our friendship now rests on this momentary connection, and her knowledge that I could kill her if I wanted to.

"Not likely," is all she says in reply.

I don't mention my mother, who is missing. Gone.

Slurping the milk carton dry, she gets up and throws it away.

Then leaves, without saying goodbye.

The Missing

In the morning, I find my father just staring at the coffee pot.

It's empty.

As he won't mention my mother, I am not going to broach the subject of the empty pot. Instead, I put two pieces of bread into the toaster. We wait in silence. "God helps those who help themselves," people like to say in the Free State.

At least, those still here.

I butter my own bread while my father fiddles with an empty cup and seems to want to say something but can't bring himself to do it. When I sit and pull out my school bag, he takes this as an opportunity to leave the room.

Destruction seems to be the solution, and fire the medium that works. Picking at my itchy bandages, I open a spiral notebook I have for French class (I was still enrolled, but I can't remember the last time I went) and begin mapping out my last course of action.

I create a two part plan.

Destroying the enemy is about identifying its symbols: Get rid of the bad and fill the void with the good.

Video, I write in one column.

I have nothing for the other.

Instead, I turn the page and think about my mother.

Gone.

Free state. Free to leave.

Perhaps it is that simple. All of this is coincidence; the names in the books. The timing of the fires.

Simple.

Coincidence.

It is a full moon at night as I ease my father's pick up truck into a parking space outside Sophie MacDonald's bookshop, The Night Librarian.

She is out.

The door is unlocked.

With lighting inside the shop that allows for browsing and dark shadows, I open my empty knapsack and pull out twenty heavy-duty garbage bags. These I open and start filling with books.

They are heavy when full.

A garbage bag of stolen books are all sharp corners, elbowing the ground and each other. They are forgiving, though, as I hear cases bending with a certain amount of give as I struggle to get them into the bed of the truck.

I then go back for another.

The street is empty and full of shadows, a row of otherwise empty storefronts stretching out to the corner of the block. No one is going to notice what I'm doing until I've done it.

Except, perhaps, Sophie.

Where is she? I wonder. I had half expected her to be here, reading. Her sleeping gear is tucked behind the couch and she has added a dresser to the collection of shelving she started with. No owner, though. But I'm hopeful she won't return anytime soon.

The shelves empty.

Books.

My books.

Books from the schools that had been put in my charge; that Sophie let burn.

She won't return, I think, until it is too late.

Bringing the Wrath

Arriving home late, I back up my father's truck to our garage and struggle with twenty large, black construction bags filled with stolen books. There is not much room between the back of the truck and the back wall of the garage, and the bags pile up three high. They fall to the sides, and spill around the bed. Tired, I sit on the closed tailgate of his truck and consider, for probably the first and last time, what I am doing.

And then my father comes out. He does not turn on the light in the garage, but comes around the side of the truck, climbs over the side of the bed and sits down next to me. Without a word, we sit silently. He must notice the bags, but I am not sure and I am afraid of that moment when my own father turns me in.

We both just sit.

Finally, my father gets up and climbs out of the truck bed. Our garage is small, so I did not notice in the short extension of his arm that he has reached into our sports barrel. The barrel is blue plastic, and had once been filled with a chemical used at one of the plants. When I was six, he had brought it home, cut the top off with a saw, and washed it with the garden hose. Once dry, he then filled it with the baseballs, soccer balls, lacrosse and hockey sticks that had collected. Now, from this blue barrel, my father withdraws an aluminum softball bat.

Standing there, my father holds the barrel.

The handle is offered out.

Worn from three seasons of pee-wee softball, that handle is wrapped with stick tape, a tape used in Devon for hockey mostly.

Father holds the barrel, extending the handle to me.

I take it.

"Swing for the fences," he says, transferring the weight from him to me.

Then he goes inside.

I think about my next move.

Sitting there, alone, my solution makes itself known on the back shelf above my father's workbench.

He has an electromagnet.

Every garage or basement in Devon is filled with castoffs from the factories. Basic tools such as hammers and screw drivers find themselves into coat pockets. Stove parts and fuses leave the factories in lunch boxes. From somewhere, my father had picked up a handheld electromagnet. About the size of a red brick with a handle, it sits on shelf above his workbench, unused since I was six years old.

Upon bringing it home, my mother had asked the obvious question: "What are you going to do with that?" Attached to his truck's battery, he was trying to get it to work when my mother asked the obvious question. What are you going to do with that? As if magic words, the right wire was crossed bringing power to the magnet. Immediately, it shot from his workbench to the front bumper of his truck, a mere twelve inches away, attracted by the steel. Nearly taking his hip with it, my mother had reached over and flipped the off switch on the back of the magnet. It fell to the garage floor with a thud.

"Careful," my father had scolded her. "You might break it."

I have heard his telling of the story a dozen times, but have yet to see it work.

Tonight, I am going to see if it still has that power of destruction.

I go back inside to get a few things. Before leaving, my father tells me not to stay out too late before falling asleep on the couch.

"They are watching you," he mumbles.

Placing the magnet in the bed of the truck, I turn over the engine and ease out of the garage.

Then, I swing by Sophie MacDonald's.

She is not there.

Parking a block away from her store, I see the police cruiser.

Tired from my night of theft, I drag myself into school the next day and set up in the cafeteria with a tall coffee and a blue notebook to rest my head on. My rest is interrupted by Chips, flanked by the two police officers who had arrested me the night of my burning.

"Excuse me," Chips whispers.

He has leaned down so that his mouth is near my ear.

"Excuse me, but the police have some questions for you."

Sitting up, I look at the police. Bluntly, they asked me if I knew anything; Sophie has reported the missing books.

"We just thought," Chips adds, after their questions are done, "that with your books and burnings and such, you might know something." And then he smiles. "You know, trafficking in illegal trade. Perhaps there is a black market for such things."

Looking up at him, I feel an itch under my bandages.

"No, nothing."

"Sorry."

Chips keeps smiling, as if he knows something.

The truck—and the books—are in my garage, the door closed. I know my father isn't about to let anyone in. He's got my back.

"What did they want?" Sophie MacDonald asks as she slides into the seat opposite me.

I had put my head back down on the table. Speaking into my blue notebook I mumble something. She is silent.

Then, she asks, "Do you?"

"...Know something?"

"Yes."

My eyes are closed as my forehead feels the cover of my blue notebook. It is first period, and the cafeteria is deserted other than the two of us. I can hear her body waiting.

"Yes," she answers again. "Do you know something?"

My arms itches, but I do not scratch.

Memories of the look on Sophie's face that moment before she threw the book onto the fire—those eyes looking at me—mingle with her voice in a lazy, tired way. At the same time, my mind is planning what I would do. Bags of books sit in my garage waiting to be exposed. A great plan is teetering.

"Do you know about the books?" she asks.

Over the next half an hour I drink my tall coffee. Much of the time my face is down, and I lose consciousness a few times. Without a word, not even small talk, I get up and go into the first classroom I can find. Slipping into the back, I slouch into my seat and fall asleep.

Dark.

Late.

Sophie comes out to the truck, and as she opens the door and climbs in and I see that her eyes are looking at the garbage bags in the bed.

She knows.

"A burning?"

I put the truck in gear and move ahead.

"No."

"What, then?"

"Better. You'll see."

I am actually surprised that she comes so willingly when I went into her shop and asked her to ride with me. Perhaps she is curious, or sympatico. Or, I realize, it is that I was hold a bat—unthinking when I brought it in—still holding a bat—and barked more than spoke. I think I am calmer, and the bat is behind my seat.

We pull into the back parking lot of the school. From next to my seat I produce the aluminum baseball bat given me. Getting out of the car, we approach the door in the back. The cleaning staff has left for the night; it being Friday they do not linger. With the bat, I smash a small window on a door. Clearing the edges of the frame with the barrel of the bat, I then reach in and push the panic bar.

Click, we are in.

Finding a cart used by maintenance, I truck in all twenty bags of books with minimum help from Sophie.

"Can you help?" I ask at one point.

She stands apart, her hands dug deep into her fleece pockets. I am actually surprised she is still with me. It would have been easy to flee, and I am cognizant enough to know I am coming across as a crazy person right now. Realizing how insane this must all be, I hand her the bat—handle first. That's how you pass a bat, I had learned—like scissors. Handle first. I learned something, at least, in PE.

Reluctantly, she takes it from me.

Still, she does not help or even move other than to take the bat.

"Look," I say when all of the bags are inside, "we are going to place a book in each locker. A book for each person."

To this, she relaxes. Reverse stealing, I guess, is less insane than anything that her mind had come up with.

She still grips the bat.

I go down the hallway, kicking open each locker. Our lockers are built so that if you pull up the handle straight up, you can give a sharp kick to the lower right corner and it pops open. Once you have the technique down it becomes second nature.

Pull. Bang. Pop.

Pull. Bang. Pop.

Pull. Bang. Pop.

Leaning the bat against the first locker, Sophie takes books out of bags and places one in. At times, she seems to overcome her fear of being involved and to think about what book might be best for this or that student she actually knows. Most of the time, though, she robotically tosses in a book, punctuated by slamming the door shut. That echoes throughout the school, dying as another slams shut.

Pull. Bang. Pop.

Slam.

We go down the freshman, sophomore and half of the junior hallways when we run out of books.

"We're out," she says.

As we had gone, we shed the empty bags. Now, the cart stands empty, save for that last empty black bag.

"Out?" Twenty garbage bags of books looks like a lot, but when you pass them out like Santa Claus it really does not add up to much. "Maybe we should break into our library to finish the job."

"Good idea," Sophie said. "I'll go get your bat. I left it at the first locker."

I thought she was kidding, until she turns and walks down the hallway in the direction of my truck.

Ten minutes later, I get nervous and think that Sophie has gone straight to the library, but out at the truck it is clear she has left for good.

"Rat," I mutter.

On the front seat sits the bat.

She must have brought it from inside.

Sophie MacDonald has left me.

At the third burning, she had spurned me. Now, she is going to betray the soul of the town.

"At least she didn't take the truck," I mutter.

Reaching inside the open window of the truck, I pull the hood release lever. With a click, it pops up an inch. My father, ever the tinkerer, has replaced the factory installed battery terminal connectors that came with the truck with quick release connectors. His rationale had been that some winter nights were so cold he might want to pull the battery and bring it inside the house. Never has he done this, but it comes in handy, now, tonight. I need the battery. Turning the releases and pulling the battery out of the engine compartment, I pull it up. In addition to the terminal connectors, he gave the battery a nice carrying handle. The battery now rests on the fender of the truck.

From the floor of the passenger compartment I pull my school backpack. Dumping out my untouched schoolwork, I drop the battery in. From the bed of the truck I pull the electromagnet. Hanging from the handle are two wires; one red, the other black, and at the end of the wires are large alligator clamps. Threading the wires trough a small loop that sewn into the top of the backpack, I tie them to the loop and clip the clamps to the battery terminals inside.

The battery resting heavily on my back, in my right hand I hold the magnet.

With my pointer finger, I pull a trigger; the magnet sticks to the side of the truck.

Thwack.

I am ready.

With my free left hand I pull the bat out of the driver's seat and enter the school.

Phase Two

Phase One of my plan had been to provide the students of Devon Union High School with a piece of literature to feed their soul. Sophie MacDonald has helped me through most of the night with that part of the plan. Every freshman, sophomore and most of the juniors are ready to be fed.

Portable electromagnet in hand, I am ready for Phase Two: Destroy the videos to create the vacuum that will be filled with literature.

From room to room I wander until after the sun comes up.

It surprises me that the police have not come.

I cannot worry about it; I have a town to save.

My plan: Our entire school is loaded with electronics. From computers to cameras to projectors, Devon Union High School is a dumping ground of technology. Each piece of technology is loaded with computers, chips and various storage devices that allow it to hold data, adjust volumes, illuminate bulbs, and send ones and zeroes down this wire and up that one. Without their memories, the machines are just a collection of wires that do not know what to do, or how to talk with one another.

Destroy the memory, I figure, and I kill the beast.

Unlike a book, modern technology uses magnetic drives to store information. While they are designed to withstand the normal electronic and electromagnetic fields that occur in an average classroom or lab, they are vulnerable from concentrated fields applied directly to their hard drives and storage areas. So, if someone took a large, really powerful magnet and put it against the hard drive it would scramble the information stored there. A few seconds with an electromagnet of considerable size, placed near its memory, would kill a machine that demands an electronic brain to make it run.

And that is what I do.

Wandering the halls, going from room to room, I place the brick-sized magnet on every electronic device I can find, hold the trigger for ten seconds, and move to the next device.

Zap.

Zip.

Blank.

By dawn, tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment have been made useless.

Then the cops come.

I hear the sirens and figure I have about five minutes until they arrest me.

Finishing the room I am in—Mr. Smith's old room, now equipped with two projectors and twin screens on the wall where his bookshelf had been—I slip off the backpack and put the magnet down. Bat still in hand, I transfer it to my dominant right hand and head out the door.

Knowing that my father's truck will not work without the battery (a cruiser is probably near it anyways) my escape has to be by foot.

In the hallway, I pull the first fire alarm I come to.

Misdirection.

If the burnings have taught me anything, it is that more chaos is not always a bad thing.

I run.

There is one last part of this story.

When I run for the side entrance, figuring it is the least likely to be covered by the police, and closest to the woods, I encounter Chips.

Sophie MacDonald had actually called Chips that night. It is Chips who called the police. His office is near the side entrance, where I am attempting my mistake. Taking his keys out of his office door, he looks up to see me holding a bat.

Swing for the fences, my father had told me.

"Ms. Jackson," he says to me.

He does not seem surprised to see me, and then his eyes slide down to the bat.

"Did you ever read 'Casey at the Bat'?" I ask him. "I know literature is not your forte, but Casey is not the highest form of poetry so I thought you might have read it."

"I think I saw the cartoon," he quips.

Then he looks at the bat again.

But I am tired.

I do not have time for games.

I am not a violent person by nature; someone who could hit someone—even Chips—with a bat. Running towards the side entrance, I swing it wide to clear the way, but Chips does not flinch. Just missing a blow to his head, he comes up from a low position and tackles me.

I am on my back, screaming, when two police officers come around the corner and hold my arms and legs.

The alarms are still screaming.

No one seemed to care that large parts of my body are covered with healing burns under the bandages.

At that point, I am wrong.

I am saving the town's soul, but these people think that I am the one that is wrong.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;

But there is no joy in Mudville— mighty Casey has struck out

Rolling me over, they cuff me and take me to the hospital for my head.

"It's bleeding," the older of the officers explains to me.

I don't remember having hit it.

The Night Librarian Returns

# Now I remember, although it is hard to admit.

# I feel like a fool.

# I did not hurt my head on a door lintel, running from the police. As I ran through the hallway, arms pumping and alarms screeching, I raised my bat. The barrel hit the lintel, and bounced back into my face. _Idiot._ When I confronted Chips, my face was covered with blood. As the police dragged me away, cuffed, I could see the smear of blood on the floor outside of Chip's office.

In the emergency room, nurses change my bandages and clean up my face.

It is early morning, and the police officers trade watch while the other goes for coffee or breakfast. With others waiting for one of the two exam rooms, I am moved. Sitting in the chairs up front, waiting for the nurse to find a doctor to sign me out, I strike up a conversation with a guy who has a knife sticking out of his palm. Wrapped in an old green t-shirt, the hand is a ball of cloth with a black handle rising from it. Clearly a kitchen knife, he says nothing about it and I do not ask. We talk about the weather.

The officer does not seem to notice. He's not interested in the knife.

Free state, I think. Whatever happened is his business.

Both officers—the one at the nurses' station talking to an older woman from his church, and the woman who went to the cafeteria for an egg and sausage breakfast sandwich—know my father. The nurse does, too. Our community is close; they trust each other, and, by extension from my father, me.

And they trust my mother.

To my surprise, she is standing before me.

"You hurt your head," she says.

There is a smile on her face.

I smile back.

"Yeah," I reply, as if that says it all. It does.

"Where have you been?" I ask.

"I needed to think," is all she says.

"You could have left a note."

She shrugs.

It's a Free State, I guess.

"So, not the books, then?"

"Of course it was the books," she replies, irritated. But we misunderstand each other. She is responding to the original burning, and the subsequent fetish for the minimizing of literature, both overtly and less so, in our community. "I needed to think about it," she adds.

"Oh," is all I reply.

Thinking about the names in the books, I feel foolish. But then I realize I never did confirm if my mother's copy of the Odyssey was actually burned, of if Sophie still has it—just not in those four boxes. Which is more of a coincidence, I wonder—and decide it makes more sense that burning books causes people to disappear. Somewhere is that copy of the Odyssey.

"Get up," she directs me.

The officer is still talking to the nurse, not really paying attention.

She slides next to me and pulls out a kay; a handcuff key, which she quickly uses.

"Where did you get that?"

"Magic."

I don't push it.

"Go," she tells me.

Finally, I do get up and she slides into my place. She pockets the handcuffs.

"Go."

I do.

Then, I walk out of the waiting room, away from the police, and into the morning.

The Night Librarian

Looking out the small garret window, the sun is going down. I have a nice view of the town from here, as I hide. A fugitive. Soon I will get a visit from my mother, but I want to finish the story. It should fit in this last notebook.

On the Monday morning after my weekend of destruction the freshman, sophomore, and most juniors at Devon Union High School opened their lockers to find literature.

I imagine it as a pure moment.

Faced with the instrument that would free their soul, each student poised to make a choice.

On that morning, a few hundred students were faced with an opportunity at the same time. I do not know how many chose life, but I imagine the moment when they are all faced with their destiny. After their discoveries, the students most likely shuffled to class only to find the computers, projectors and other electronics not working. Teachers click and push buttons, but to no response. The machines are no longer thinking.

No one has spoken to me—they do not know where I am—but they have not spoken to my mother, either. So, I have no idea what happened.

I like to think that more than a few teachers have begun to talk about their subjects, and more than a few students have opened their new books.

Not long after the police connected the electromagnet with the massive failure on the part of the school's electronics, they realized what had happened to Sophie's books, too. Students were asked to return the books; some did at first, but most trickled in over a few weeks. Nearly a third were not returned. A victory, of sorts (I like to think they are being read, and not just trashed).

They are putting out the chairs for tomorrow's graduation. Watching the rows of white chairs inch towards the faded sidelines of the football field, I have no regrets even as I know I'll be watching others graduate from this tiny window. It has been a dry week, so the ceremony will be able to focus on the hopes of the community and not on people wearing the wrong shoes for the weather. Tomorrow, cars and trucks and SUVs will fill the parking lot and my blue robed peers will graduate. From the vantage point of the library attic window, I will see only square mortarboards as they face the podium, away from me. Somewhere in there will be my best friend, Sophie. Even if she turned to face me, the whole thing is too far away for me to know. After, they will disperse and I'll probably still be hiding here.

From this window I can see the school. My school lies on the landscape like a dead dog on the side of the road. A series of squat two story concrete and brown brick buildings hugged by crumbling parking lots and worn athletic fields, it endures the Free State experiment through inertia. Right now a small crew of parents are unfolding white plastic chairs and placing them in rows for tomorrow's graduation ceremony. Parents—different parents, but parents—did the same thing last year. And the year before. The ceremony, like the building, endures because people show up, and they show up because that is why is expected. Inertia is also why people wear the wrong shoes when graduation is in the rain; strappy sandals and awkward heels bought weeks before when the ceremony was still an idyllic dream. But the weather will be fine. This attic is cooling down, but tomorrow, on the field, all of the sun dresses will feel right while the boys in their shirts and ties long for the photos to be over so they can change back to their uniform of cargo shorts and athletic sandals.

For my family, there is no celebration. My own father is probably at home now, drinking his black coffee and acting as if this any other day but knowing that every day, now, is fraught with anxiety and worry and might be the day he wishes he had not lived long enough to see.

Now, I play the ghost. To my left are a stack of inexpensive spiral notebooks, filled with names and notations written besides them. There are a few cardboard boxes filled with someone else's discarded brick-a-brack, my sleeping bag, an old laundry bag containing a few changes of clothes and some books piled haphazardly near the far gable. I have already written this, but plagued with the role of the writer, I know the story is at an end when I begin to repeat it.

A warrant is still out for my arrest. My mother is looking into this.

I lay my tall, gawky body on the floor, the shadows of the evening darkening my notebook, and wait for night and my mother's delivery of food and other supplies. I am the madwoman in the attic, but through these events have become something more. With my stack of inexpensive spiral notebooks, filled with names and notations written besides them, I plot out which of Devon's citizens need a good read. In a few hours, when night falls, I will unfold my body and make my way downstairs. Access to the attic can be had through a trapdoor in a little used bathroom off of the fiction section. As the public's hours for the town library are limited, I am left with ample down time for browsing the stacks. Using a tote bag dug out of lost and found, I toss in my finds and head into the night.

My mother thinks that the charges will be reduced, and as a juvenile little will be made of the crimes.

No longer Agnes Johnson—teenager, poor student, and book burner—I am not sure.

Now I am the Night Librarian of Devon.

The days are not just sleeping and writing, and the evenings are more than creeping around in the dark. Still, this is much of my existence. Rituals have made the uncertainties bearable.

And there are the night visits.

Tote bag in hand, I walk the shadows and attempt to inspire readers. In my bag are souls.

Tonight, like every night, I will find myself in front of Sophie MacDonald's bookstore—now closed, but still her domicile. I will plunge my hand in the tote bag before looking for a trap. Coming out, I will place a book on the stoop. THAT book, I hope. Sophie deserves a soul. Until she has one, my destiny will lie in the attic.

