Evil Librarian (36 page)

“Can you get home all right?” Mr. Gibson asks me, and I’m touched by his concern, especially since he knows I only live a few blocks away and he clearly wants to focus on Annie right now.

“Yes, Mr. Gibson. I’m fine. Thanks. I’ll check on Annie tomorrow, if that’s all right.”

He nods and walks me distractedly to the door.

“Take care, Cyn,” he says.

The cab driver lets me off at my own house, finally, and I pay him for all three stops with money I took from Danielle’s wallet (also inexplicably in her costume pocket) and head up the porch steps.

After the receptions we got at the other houses, I’m not surprised that my dad pulls the door open as soon as I reach for the doorknob. I am a little surprised to see my mom standing behind him, but I guess that’s only because I’m so not used to her ever being there when I come home.

He grabs me and then does that thing where he hugs me tight enough to suffocate me and then holds me at arm’s length to look me over for signs of damage. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Can I come all the way inside, please?”

“Oh. Of course. Come on.” He lets me by and then closes the door behind me.

I sink down onto the edge of the couch.

“What happened to your forehead?” my mother says, reaching out to almost but not quite touch it.

“Oh. I don’t — I don’t know. I think I fell against a chair.” Which is definitely a very lame explanation, but they just look at each other and nod.

“They said — they said there was some kind of chemical leak at the school following the performance,” my dad says, and even now I’m kind of amazed that he remembered there
was
a performance. “People hallucinating, a lot of people missing . . .” He pauses, then goes on. “They said to try not to worry, that kids may have wandered off under the effects of the hallucinations, or maybe passed out somewhere, but that they were out looking and we should all just stay home so we’d be here when you made it back.” He sits down beside me and hugs me again. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

I wonder who started the chemical leak / hallucinogen story. It’s a good one — covers a lot of ground, and explains away a lot of really hard to explain things.

“Did — did anyone get hurt? I mean, really hurt?”

My parents look at each other again. “Some teachers are missing,” my dad says, “but they could still turn up, just like you kids are still turning up. A lot of people were hurt in the confusion, but minor things, mostly, I think. Do you — do you know if all of your friends are okay?”

My dad remembering to ask about my friends is even more amazing than him remembering about the show. “I know Annie is okay. I don’t know about Diane or Leticia or — or Ryan.”

“Diane’s mother called a few hours ago,” my mother says. “She and Leticia are both fine. They were worried about you, of course. I’ll call to let them know you’re all right.” She gets up and heads to the kitchen.

“I don’t know what happened to my cell phone,” I say. “I think it might still be at school. Somewhere.”

“Don’t worry about that now, honey. We’ll sort that all out tomorrow.”

I nod, but that wasn’t all that I meant. “I need to call Ryan. To see if he’s okay. What — what time is it?”

“It’s late. But don’t worry about that, either. I don’t think anyone will mind a late phone call if it’s to tell someone else you’re alive.”

It’s the first time he’s acknowledged that there was a chance I might have been not-alive. We both seem to realize it at the same time, and we sit there for a moment, just looking at each other, not saying anything. We can hear my mom’s voice speaking softly on the landline in the kitchen, but I can’t quite make out what she’s saying.

“Go ahead and use my office phone,” he says.

I head down the hall to his office and dial Ryan’s number, which I have memorized in the course of staring at it over and over in my contacts list since he first gave it to me. It rings until it goes to voice mail. I hang up without leaving a message.

I try his home number next (I have to look that one up). His mother answers after one ring, which strikes me as a bad sign.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Halsey? It’s —” I realize suddenly that she might have no idea who I am. “It’s Cynthia Rothschild, from — from school. From the show. I’m a friend of Ryan’s. Is he —?”

“Oh, hello, Cynthia. Ryan’s mentioned you, of course. I’m sure he’ll be glad to know you’re all right.”

Something that had been crushing my heart like an iron band suddenly loosens. “So he’s okay? He’s there?”

“He’s okay,” she says. “He’s not here. He’s at the hospital with Jorge. Jorge’s all right, too, but he’s got a bad sprain or maybe a fracture. They’re waiting on X-rays now. Ryan’s just keeping him company.”

“Can you tell him I’m okay? And that I lost my cell? I tried calling his, but . . .”

“He lost his, too. But I’ll tell him. Don’t worry. Thank you so much for calling, Cynthia. I’m so glad you’re all right. And of course Ryan will be, too.”

We hang up, and I stand there in the dark for another minute. My relief at knowing he’s okay and my surprise and pleasure at the fact that he actually mentioned me to his mother at some point are fighting with my disappointment that I couldn’t talk to him. I don’t even know if he tried to contact me. He didn’t call the house, obviously; my parents would have said so.

I don’t even know what I would say to him. “I’m sorry, I had to, please forgive me”? Part of me tries to suggest that Ryan should be the one apologizing, that we had a deal, that he shouldn’t have tried to stop me. But that part of me is an idiot. I can’t be mad at him for not wanting me to go. I can’t be mad at him for telling me he was falling in love with me.

But I can’t really be sorry for what I did, either. I’m sorry I had to hurt him, but I’m not sorry I went after Annie.

Will it matter that I kept my part of the deal? That I came back?

I hope so.

I go to see Annie late the next morning. She’s still in bed, but her parents send me right back to her room anyway.

“Hey,” she says weakly when I knock on the doorframe. She’s propped up against some pillows, a book lying unopened beside her. Above the blankets, I can see that she’s wearing pink pajamas with little cats on them.

It hits me all over again how much I’ve missed her.

“Can I come in?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Of course, you freak. Get over here.”

I close the door behind me and go over to sit on the edge of her bed. For a moment we just look at each other. I’m not sure what to say, or how to begin. But before I can even try, she reaches over and grabs my hand.

“I don’t even know how to try to tell you how sorry I am,” she says, looking into my eyes like she wants me to be able to see right through them, directly into her mind and heart. “Or how grateful. Grateful is not even close to the right word for what I’m feeling, Cyn. I can’t even —” She laughs awkwardly, but even this faint shadow of her normal Annie laugh is like music to my soul. “How do you thank someone for going to hell and back to save you from — from yourself?”

“I don’t think it was technically hell,” I say. “I mean, not
the
hell, at least. Maybe
a
hell.”

She punches me in the thigh with the hand that’s still holding mine. “It was hellish enough, whatever it was.” She shakes her head. “Don’t try to make light of this, Cyn. I can’t.”

“Okay,” I say. I can’t make light of it either, really. “But I’m sorry, too.”

She stares. “For what?”

“For not saving you sooner. For not being able to — to talk sense into you before it got too late.” These are not really the things I’m trying to say. I don’t know what I’m trying to say, exactly. “For letting you disappear like that.”

“It’s not your fault, Cyn. Jesus. You tried! I remember — a lot of it’s weird, kind of fuzzy and not-real, but I remember. I remember thinking you just couldn’t understand, but of course I was kind of, uh, not quite myself, I guess.”

“Do you — do you miss him?”

She stares harder.

“I mean, what you thought he was. The part that you wanted to believe in. The last time I saw you with him, in the library . . . you looked so happy.”

She’s quiet for a minute. “A little,” she says at last. “Not really him, of course. Not who he was underneath. But that feeling — I miss feeling that way. I miss having someone, loving someone. Being loved. I mean, I know it wasn’t real, but it
felt
real. Losing that . . . hurts. Even though I know it wasn’t true. None of it was true. But my heart doesn’t seem to really get it.”

“I’m sorry, Annie.”

She shrugs halfheartedly and tries to smile, although it’s not very convincing. “Hey, everyone goes through breakups, right? I’ll survive. I just — I wish I could have it for real, you know? With an actual human boy. Who wouldn’t want to turn me into some kind of monster.”

“You can. You will!”

She shrugs again. “Maybe.”

I grasp her hand a little tighter. There’s something else I need to ask her, and it takes me a minute to work up to it.

“How much of what you said was true?” I ask quietly. “About how people see you, how you feel . . .?”

She looks down, and I wait.

“Some of it,” she says. “I mean, I wouldn’t have chosen any of what happened if I’d been in my right mind, obviously. But what I said about feeling trapped, about not being . . . not wanting to be that person that everyone thinks I am . . . that’s true.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

She bites her lip, still not looking at me. “I don’t think I really ever admitted it to myself before. It didn’t seem possible that things could ever be different, and so I didn’t let myself really think of how much I wished they could.” She sighs, and it’s as though I can see her settling back into accepting this, putting on her old beliefs like some uncomfortable dress she hates but feels like she has to wear anyway.

“Hey,” I say. She still doesn’t look up, so I poke her with my free hand. She glances at me from under her lashes but still won’t quite meet my eyes.

“Things can be different,” I tell her. “Christ, Annie, I don’t think either of us could possibly go back to being exactly who we were before even if we wanted to.”

She appears to think about this for a minute. “That’s probably at least a little bit true,” she admits finally.

“It’s a lot true, you moron. Um, are you
aware
of what has been going on over the past few weeks? Allow me to recap for you:
Crazy impossible things
have happened.
Demons
invaded our school and one of them tried to steal you away to be his terrible child bride. The world has things in it that we never knew were there. We know things that most people don’t even come close to suspecting. We have been through things that most people could never, ever believe. We went to hell and back, dammit! We are so not the same people we were before. We can be — we can be whatever we want to be now.”

As I say this, I realize I believe it. Not that I didn’t like who I was before. But there’s no way I’m just going to cast aside the things I know about myself now, the discovery of what I’m capable of, of what I can do. I
want
to be this new person, the one who has made it through all of this alive, and is still remarkably mentally sound despite it all.

“Annie,” I go on, very seriously. “You cut class, like, every day by the end.
All
of them. You are quite obviously no longer the sweet, rule-abiding girl I knew before. That ship has
sailed,
my friend.”

She laughs again, and this time it’s almost her real laugh. But there’s a tinge of fear to it as well.

“I still love you, though,” I tell her. “You can be different and still yourself and I will still love you, no matter what.”

Now she meets my eyes, and I see that I have hit on at least part of what the fear was about. She doesn’t say anything, but she holds my hand a little more tightly.

“Maybe once we get back to school we can work on finding you some of that adventure you’re looking for,” I add.

“Uh, no. Or at least, not quite yet. I think I’ve hit my adventure quota for the time being.” Then she smiles, just a little. “Maybe in the spring.”

“Deal,” I say.

“In the meantime,” she says, “speaking of adventures, I seem to remember some progress being made on the Ryan Halsey front before I, um, kind of lost track of what was happening.”

Now it’s my turn to look away. “Yeah. I don’t quite know where things stand there, exactly. He did tell me that he was falling in love with me —”

She sits bolt upright.
“What?”

“But then I stabbed him with a magic protractor and we haven’t spoken since.”

Her mouth opens and then closes without saying anything. After a moment she tries again. “You might have to explain that a little.”

I explain. I tell her the whole story of what she missed, leaving out the part where Ryan tried to convince me that maybe we should just let Annie go, but keeping the part where he tried to stop me from going through the vortex. I just made it more about how he’d suddenly realized he loved me — more in the moment, less premeditated. I stand by my continually evolving belief that not everyone needs to know everything.

Just like neither of them needs to know about the rest of my deal with the demoness. Some things get to stay secrets, I think.

I focus a lot on the details of that kiss, which I think successfully distracts us both from some of the other, less-pleasant details.

“Well, when are you going to call him?” Annie demands when I am done.

“I already called him! He never called back!”

She waves this away. “He was at the hospital. You don’t even know if his mother gave him the message.”

“He could have called me anytime on his own, if he really wanted to. For all he knows, I’m dead!”

“I’m sure he knows you’re not dead. Otherwise he definitely would have called your house by now.”

I think about this. “So, he would have called if he thought I might be dead, but since I’m still alive, he doesn’t want to talk to me?”

Annie gives me an exasperated look that I don’t think I quite deserve. “Since he knows you’re still alive, he doesn’t have to call to find out if you’re dead. But you were the one who stabbed him. I think that leaves the ball in your court.”