Conjured

Chapter Six

Eve stood in front of the sliding glass door. Inside, the library lobby was dark and empty. Weakened by clouds, sunlight seeped through the windows in a pale haze. It wasn’t enough to alleviate the shadows that lay in thick gray blankets over the circulation desk, the bookshelves, and the benches.

A sign on the door read LIBRARY OPENS 8:00 A.M. CLOSES 9:00 P.M.

Malcolm must have made a mistake. He’d left her outside a deserted library.

She checked the parking lot. He was gone. The lot was empty except for one black SUV parked at the back of the lot, far enough away that she couldn’t see inside it. It could be a WitSec car. Or it could belong to anyone, watching her.

Don’t, she told herself. She couldn’t freak herself out continuously. She had to trust that Malcolm wouldn’t make a mistake with her safety. He and Aunt Nicki had deemed this place safe. She had to trust that and trust them.

Deliberately, Eve turned back to the library door—and saw a face, ghostly, in the glass. Every muscle in her body froze.

“You know, on average, we can remember seven items in short-term memory for thirty seconds,” a voice said behind her. Zach. It was his voice, and it was his reflection in the glass door. He was holding a paper bag, and he was smiling cheerfully at her reflection. Her body slowly unfroze.

“Oh?” she said.

“Of course, that doesn’t make sense,” Zach said. “If I had eight friends in a room, I wouldn’t automatically forget the eighth one. So I’m thinking that it must only be true in an experiment; like, show a guy twenty objects for one second and he’ll remember seven of them thirty seconds later. Anyway, point is that this is always your eighth item.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a snarl of keys. He jingled it. “You forgot your key again, didn’t you?”

She forced her lips to smile. “Guess I did.”

“Mmm,” he said, as if he understood. She wondered if he could understand. She must have seen him every day since her last clear memory. They must have talked. But about what?

“Shall we go in?” he asked.

“Oh. All right.” She continued to stare at him, as if by committing his face to memory she could elicit other memories. He shifted uncomfortably under her stare.

“Okay. Um, excuse me.” He reached around her and stuck his key in the lock. Close, she felt his breath on her cheek. He blushed, and the red spread across his cheeks to his ears. She wondered if she’d ever kissed him. Why did I think that? she wondered. She felt her face heat up, as if she were blushing too, and she stepped quickly out of his way.

The door slid open.

She followed him inside, and the door slid shut behind them, erasing the sounds of outside that she hadn’t even noticed: cars on the road, wind in the trees, a lawnmower hum in the distance. In the lobby, the clock ticked extra loud in the silence.

The lobby was coated in shadows. Bookshelves blocked the thin light from the windows, and the circulation desk created its own pool of darkness. Eve wondered why it was okay with Malcolm for her to enter an empty building with a boy she barely knew (or thought she barely knew)—especially a public building with shadows that could hide anyone. Before she’d entered the house on Hall Avenue, Malcolm had checked every room. He always watched the street as she got into his car. Yet he had simply dropped her off here.

She tried to tell herself that meant this place was safe.

She still didn’t like the shadows or the silence.

“You get the lights, and I’ll switch on the computers, okay?” Zach didn’t wait for her to respond. Instead, he headed for a bin beside the door. It was positioned beneath a slot in the wall, and it overflowed with books.

She didn’t know where the light switches were. She couldn’t ask. Instead, she chose a direction and walked toward that wall, hoping she’d see the switches before Zach noticed that she was aimless. At least she could remember what a light switch was. Zach rolled the book bin toward the circulation desk. A few books toppled off the top, and he bent to pick them up—buying her time to spot a bank of light switches by the corner. She lunged for them and flicked them on. Yellowish light spread across the lobby. The shadows faded somewhat, washed away, and she exhaled in relief.

With the lights on, Zach ducked behind the desk and turned on the computers. One after another, they hummed to life. She watched him, glad he hadn’t asked her to do that, trying to memorize which buttons he pushed in case she had to do it later. As if he’d felt her watching him, Zach raised his head. “You okay? You seem … quiet today. Not that you aren’t usually the antigarrulous type. And that was an impressively convoluted sentence, if I do say so myself.”

“Very impressive,” she agreed.

“Like the New York pretzel of sentences. Or croissant. And now I’m hungry.” Finished with the computers, he set the paper bag that she’d seen him carrying on the desk, and he pulled out a bagel with flecks of pepper, onion, sesame seeds, and poppy seeds. “Your bagel, my lady.” It rained seeds on the desk. His was plain.

She picked up the bread—“bagel,” he’d called it. With all the seeds, it looked like a feast for a bird. But she must have eaten one before. He was acting as if this was their routine. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him split his bagel in half, spread cream cheese on both halves, and then close them back together like a sandwich. She mimicked him and then took a bite. The seeds stuck to her teeth.

“Despite legends to the contrary,” Zach said, “bagels have nothing to do with the shape of the King of Poland’s stirrups.”

Eve heard a soft thump. “Did you hear that?” she asked. The bagel suddenly tasted like cardboard in her mouth. She quit chewing and listened. She’d thought the sound had come from Patti Langley’s office. But her door was shut, the light was off, and the sound didn’t repeat.

“Hear what?” Zach asked. “The agony of a dozen legends, condemned to history’s ‘false’ list, crying out at once? Also false: Twinkies having an infinite shelf life, and Caesar salad having anything to do with Julius Caesar.”

She stared at the office door until she’d convinced herself she’d imagined the noise.

Finishing his bagel, Zach swept the crumbs into the bag. She handed him her partially eaten bagel. “I’d say you eat like a bird, but birds eat half their weight in food every day,” he said.

“Just not hungry today.”

“Too many factoids sour your appetite? Sorry. It’s just that you …” He trailed off. “Right. Okay. We should process the returns.”

After disposing of the bag, Zach set himself up at one of the computers. He typed a few keystrokes and then began to scan the items from the bin. Mimicking him, Eve stationed herself at a nearby computer, and her fingers froze over the keyboard. She didn’t know what to type. In fact, she had no memory of ever having used a computer, though she knew she had spent many hours watching Malcolm and Aunt Nicki use theirs. A screen blinked, demanding a user name and password.

She glanced at Zach. He continued to pluck books out of the bin and scan them with a handheld scanner. Every few books, he’d type numbers into the computer. Lie, Malcolm had said. She’d have to lie with actions as well as words, she realized. “I’ll pass you the books,” Eve offered. “It’ll go faster that way.” She scooted around him and picked books out of the bin.

“Uh, okay. Good idea.”

They worked side by side as the clock ticked closer to 8:00 a.m.

At a few minutes to eight, the library door slid open, and Eve jumped. Waving at them, a man strode into the lobby. “Good morning, Zach. Eve.” He headed for the Children’s Room without slowing. A librarian. She forced herself to breathe normally.

“Eve, you sure you’re okay?” Zach asked. “You seem jumpier than a cat on a hot tin roof, which I have never personally witnessed but must be spectacular, at least for the observer if not for the cat.”

“Fine.” She plastered a smile on her face and did her best to keep it there as other librarians drifted in. All of them greeted Zach and Eve by name. Eve knew none of them. After each hello, she pretended to be absorbed in her task and hoped no one would try to talk to her. Soon patrons began to arrive. Eve dug through the books in the bin until it was empty and all the books were sorted onto carts. At last, she looked up.

Patti Langley was watching her.

Eve bit back a yelp. She hadn’t heard her arrive. She glanced over her shoulder at Patti’s office—the door was open. How had she slipped by? Never mind, Eve told herself. Patti was here now. Eve forced herself to breathe evenly, and she summoned up a smile for the library director. At least hers was a face that Eve knew.

Patti did not smile back. “I told you I want you in the stacks. No interaction with patrons.”

“Oh. I …” Eve couldn’t think of an excuse. A hush had fallen over the lobby, as if everyone had slowed to look at her. She shot a glance at the other librarians and the patrons. None of them were paying any attention to her. Still, she felt eyes on her. Shivers crept over her skin.

“Done!” Zach announced as he added the final book to a cart. “Don’t worry, Ms. Langley. We’re going.” He snagged Eve’s hand and pulled her out from behind the circulation desk. She continued to feel watched as he led her through the lobby and into the main library, hurrying past the reference librarians, a man in a gray suit with a newspaper, and a woman with a toddler.

Soon they were within the stacks. She felt as if the shelves were folding around her protectively. At last, the feeling of being watched began to fade.

“Safe now,” he said. She noticed he still held her hand. He seemed to realize it at the same moment. He dropped her hand and then cleared his throat. “Someday you’ll have to tell me what you did to get under Peppermint Patti’s skin.”

Eve shrugged and looked at the bookshelves. It was hard to look at him while she lied. “She didn’t like me from the beginning.” She supposed she could be telling the truth, for all she knew. I don’t know enough, she thought. I’m going to make a mistake. Or more mistakes. She’d reach a critical mass of mistakes, and then … She didn’t know. She wished she could claw at the empty places inside her until she ripped through to expose what she did know.

“Well, I liked you from the beginning.” He grinned at her. Startled, she stared at him. “Hey, you usually laugh when I flirt like that. You sure you’re all right?”

She clung to that clue of what she’d forgotten: he’d flirted, and she’d laughed, even if she couldn’t remember it. “Tell me why you like me.”

His grin vanished. He had a crease in his forehead between his eyebrows, and his lips were pursed as if he were worried. “You’re fascinating. You’re … like a closed-up flower. You’re a shell with mother-of-pearl inside. You’re a cloud that hasn’t formed into a shape yet, but could. You’re shadows layered over shadows.”

“You mean that.”

“Every word.” Zach didn’t break eye contact. His eyes were brown, as warm as Malcolm’s. “Even the stupid poetry clichés, which, let’s face it, were pretty much all of them. You are the mystery and excitement that I have been craving my entire life.”

“I’m not an unformed cloud. I’m a cloud that’s broken open, and my insides are pouring out like rain.” As she spoke, the feeling of safety dissipated. The stacks weren’t hiding her; they were hiding others. She imagined eyes between the books, peering out at her. The shelves could hide a dozen listeners.

“Okay, that’s way more poetic than mine.” Zach caught her hand. “Hey, I’m not mocking! Okay, I am mocking a little. You are obviously having a bad day. And that is obviously an understatement. If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand. But if you do … I’m your guy. Always.”

She stared at her hand in his. His fingers twisted around hers, locking their palms together as if they were two halves of a broken whole. She wanted to believe him. “What do you want from me?”

“Undying affection?” Zach suggested. “Passionate love? But I’ll settle for a little trust. You never talk about yourself or your life. I want to know you, Eve. Is that too pushy? I don’t want to be too pushy. But you did ask.”

“And you don’t lie.” Eve felt a smile creep onto her face, but it vanished in an instant as she heard voices near their shelves: a librarian guiding someone to a nearby section.

Zach dropped her hand and jumped back. His cheeks were tinted pink. “Patti will be by to check on us. We should, um, look useful.”

Eve turned away from him and toward the shelves. “So … we shelve?”

“Or we select a book, mock it relentlessly, and then put it back on the shelves, which is pretty much the same thing that you said.”

She supposed that’s what they’d been doing these past weeks. That seemed nice.

Side by side, they scanned through the books, shifting those that were out of order. She was aware of his movements, taking a book down, shifting others over, and reshelving. Shelf by shelf, they worked through the section.

She wished she could remember this. She wished it so hard that her fingers shook. She had to squeeze the books to hold them steady. Yes, she’d lost memories before, but this time … This time it felt so much more immediate. She’d spent hours, days, in these bookshelves with this boy. She felt like if she reached out she could pull the trace of her lost self from the air around her. The memories should linger here, like ghosts. Ghost memories, all around her. Eve spread her fingers out and stared at them as if she could will them to catch and hold her lost memories.

She wondered if she’d lose today too, the next time her mind betrayed her. She didn’t want it to slip through her fingers. She wanted to do something, something momentous, that would fix it in her memory so it couldn’t slip away into nothingness, erased in a single, arbitrary moment.

“Zach?” Eve said.

“Hmm?”

Eve leaned toward him and pressed her lips against his. His eyes flew wide, and she felt him freeze. But as she was about to pull away, he kissed her back.

She didn’t know she knew how to kiss. She had no memory of kissing anyone. But still, it felt natural, and it felt right. Eve wrapped her arms around his neck and wove her fingers into his soft, soft hair. She tasted his breath; still a hint of cream cheese. Close to her, his body felt warm, and his lips moved gently against hers as if whispering silent secrets.

She closed her eyes, shutting out the view of the books around them. The sound of distant voices, footsteps, the hum of computers, the rustle of pages, all faded. She could no longer feel the carpet beneath her feet. The solid ground had melted away, and she felt as if she were floating.

It felt both unreal and wonderfully real at the same time.

“Enough,” a woman’s voice said.

Zach broke away.

And then they fell.

Their feet hit hard on the carpeted floor. Zach staggered backward, catching himself on the shelves. Eve reached forward, steadying herself on him. He gripped her elbows. “What was—” he began. His eyes widened as he looked beyond Eve’s shoulder, and he released Eve. “Ms. Langley!”

Catching her balance, Eve pivoted to face Patti Langley. The librarian looked pale, and Eve thought she saw a hint of fear. But it vanished fast, hidden beneath a scowl.

“Did you see that?” Zach asked her.

“Unfortunately, yes.” Patti placed her hands on her hips. “This is not appropriate behavior for a library. I’d expected better of both of you.”

Zach waved his hand at the ceiling. “No, no, I mean—we were flying! Seriously, feet off the ground! You must have seen it.”

Eve opened her mouth and then shut it. She’d felt it too. But it wasn’t possible. If she’d used magic, she would have fallen into a vision, not straight down onto the carpet, awake and alert. “We couldn’t have been.”

He looked at her. “You do sweep me off my feet in a clichéd, metaphoric way. But this was literal! You must have felt it. We crashed down!”

Eve shook her head. She knew how it worked—if she used magic, she collapsed. It was the one constant. “It must have been your imagination.”

“There was no flying,” Patti said. “Or floating. Or even hopping enthusiastically. There were only two library pages who weren’t shelving.” She waved at the shelves and the half-full book cart nearby.

“But—” Zach began.

Patti held up her hand. “Zachary, I’m going to have to ask you to work the front desk for the rest of the day.”

He turned to Eve. “Eve—”

“It was a nice kiss. So nice it made me dizzy.” Eve withdrew from him. “But my feet didn’t leave the floor, and neither did yours.”

“I was sure—”

“Zachary,” Patti said. “Now.”

Eve forced herself to smile at him. “You should do what she says.” Shooting glances over his shoulder, Zach retreated through the shelves.

Both Patti and Eve were silent until Zach was gone.

Patti leveled a finger at Eve. “I can see the wrongness gathering around you like a storm.” She tapped her sternum above her extra eyes as she said “see.” “When your storm breaks … don’t catch that boy in it. And don’t use magic in my library ever again.”

She left before Eve could think of a reply.