February Fever (2 page)

He pulled back completely, sitting on the side of the couch, his warm hand still on my hip. I could see laughter warring with something else on his face.

“No, Mira, I feel fine. I meant the city of Portland. In Oregon? I've been offered an environmental science internship at Portland State. I found out this morning, after I'd planned out this whole evening. I was going to wait to tell you until”—he made a gesture to indicate me, who, for the record, was beginning to feel pretty dang foolish with her arms tied over her head and her white bra glowing like the eyes of a nervous cave creature in the firelight—“after we made love, but I can't go through with it. It seems dishonest. Sorry to spring it on you like this.”

Ah, that was more like my luck. As sucky as this was, at least I felt on familiar ground. When had things ever worked out for me? “For how long?”

He ran his hands through his hair. “Through the end of the semester. I'd be done in May.”

My stomach dropped, but I fought to keep my face neutral. “When do you leave?”

“Wednesday morning, if I accept.” He leaned over to untie me, and I sat next to him, rubbing my wrists. Our hips were barely touching.

“They gave you not even two days to decide?” Shoot, that sounded like whining.

“Someone else dropped out from the program, opening up a spot. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

I took a deep breath. “Why Portland?”

He kneaded one hand with the other. “It was one of the Master's programs I applied to.” His voice grew quieter.“Before we started dating.”

My heart constricted. I knew Johnny had big life plans. He'd earned an undergraduate degree in horticulture, which was another thing I loved about him. It meant he was green and cared about something bigger than himself. He'd planned to go straight on to grad school, but when his mom had developed cancer late last summer, he'd taken a year off to look after her, which I loved even more. It had felt so good and natural to build a life with him in Battle Lake that I'd kind of forgotten it was temporary.

“What if you like it, and they like you?”

He glanced back at me, cupping my cheek with his warm, strong hand. The storm was gone from his eyes, replaced by a blue so pure that I could almost see waves. “Then we have some talking to do.”

Two

In retrospect, Johnny had
been wise to tie me up before he sprung the Portland news. How mad can a chick get wearing her Plan B bra with her hands lassoed over her head? Plus, I was charmed that he'd been too honest to go any further in our boot-knocking without telling me he'd be leaving in less than three days.

And in the end, what could I do? He really had been offered a rare opportunity. I'd be a hagosaurus to stand in his way. Still, it hurt. What if he met someone new? Worse, what if once he got far enough away from me, he realized how crazy it had been to date me in the first place? Me, carcass-finding, murderous-dad-having, life-never-quite-together Mira James?

Sigh
.

“Someone poop in your coffee?”

I was standing outside the door of the Battle Lake Public Library, cold February wind licking at my exposed face, key in hand. I hadn't heard Mrs. Berns crunch up behind me.

“Morning,” I said.

“Morning, Eeyore.” Mrs. Berns was wearing a quilted winter coat and a knit cap designed to look like a grumpy penguin squatting on her head. Her mittens matched. She crossed her arms and studied me. An errant snowflake drifted past her face. “Hey, you know what's worse than a moping woman who won't tell you what's bothering her?”

“What?”

“Nothing. There is absolutely nothing worse.”

It was enough to tug a smile from me, but she didn't let my changed expression slow her down. She grabbed the key from
my hand, unlocked the door, and walked in without holding it open for me.

Through the glass, I watched her flip on the lights and stride to the front desk computer to boot it up before removing her coat. She was wearing a modest outfit, overall: white tennis shoes, fuschia jogging pants with a matching windbreaker, her perfect white hair dyed a light apricot shade. Her choice of accessory was what separated her from the herd. She'd slung a gun belt around her hips, a silver cap pistol resting in each holster.

My smile grew wider.

I hadn't seen her packing since last July, when she'd kidnapped an Indian impersonator from the Chief Wenonga Days parade and disappeared with him for two days. Not bad for a woman in her eighties. I entered the library, leaving behind the snapping February wind.

“I see you're armed today,” I said as I removed my down-filled coat and hung it on the rack by the front door.

She shrugged and strode over to turn on the public computers. I'd hired her as my assistant a few months earlier (actually, she'd hired herself), and this was more work than I'd seen her do in that entire time.

“Felt like a gun-toting sort of day. You gonna tell me what's got your face upside-down?”

I sighed, brought back into the moment. “Johnny is going to Portland for two months.”

She whipped on her heels. “What?”

“Johnny. Oregon. Two months.”

“Yee-haw! I can't wait!” She yanked a gun from her belt and pointed it in the air, firing off several rounds. The air popped, and the salty-egg smell of sulfur curled toward my nose.

“What?”

By way of answer, she holstered her gun and ran over to me, trying to pick me up. Since she was four inches shorter and fifty-plus years older, she had little luck. “Portland! That's the city of the future. I was just reading about it in
AARP
. Senior discounts up the yin-yang, pot brownies served right next to the croissants at the coffee shops if you know who to ask, and one-point-five single men for every single woman.”

If anybody could figure out what to do with one and half single men, it was Mrs. Berns. She had a sex life in her eighties that I couldn't have approached in my twenties. But that was hardly the point. “I said
Johnny
is going to Portland. You and I still have to work. Here. In Battle Lake.”

“Have you ever heard of a vacation, baby? We're due!”

We weren't, actually. We had been given mandatory time off in December because the city didn't have the funds to keep the library open over the holidays. That situation had corrected itself, after I'd agreed to take a significant pay cut in my insignificant salary—a town needs its library—but since Mrs. Berns and I were the only library employees, there was no way we could both leave. All that was true, and valid, but it was not the argument that escaped my mouth.

“I can't fly.”

It was a fact. Even if I could afford a vacation, had the leave to do so, and there was someone to cover for me, there was No Way I was stepping on a plane. I hadn't left the ground for more than three seconds in my entire life, and that was back when I was a kid who liked to jump. I had no intention of breaking that streak.

“You don't have to fly, loser. They have planes to do that.”

I shook my head. “No way. Not getting on an airplane. Flying is for birds and people who like to die. I am neither.”

She planted her hands on her hips and looked at me as if I'd just told her that I wanted to be a pink monkey when I grew up. “You've never been on an airplane?”

“Never.”

“How do you get around the country?”

“I don't. Everything I need is in Minnesota, or at least within driving range of it.”

“That's stupid.”

“Maybe. But even if it wasn't, I can't go to Portland. I don't have the money or the time. I have a library to run.” Why couldn't I have started with the sane arguments? Story of my life. Fortunately, at that moment, the library doorbell bonged, indicating we had our first patron and saving me from further pointless argument with Mrs. Berns.

Two kids rolled in, nearly unrecognizable in their winter gear. Because it was early in February, the weather still hovered barely above zero, which turned most Minnesotans into layered creatures who waddle around because they are nearly as wide around as they are tall. Fortunately, I spotted a lock of red hair sticking out of the ski cap of the bundle walking toward me.

“Sierra!”

She attached herself to my leg. I picked her up, runny nose and all, and hugged her. It was the weirdest thing. If you gave me a choice between bearing my own child and getting hit by a car, I'd need to know how fast the car would be going before I decided. Running Children's Time at the library was a whole different animal, though.

I'd inherited the job from the previous librarian. He'd liked it about as well as I'd figured I would, which translated into him putting out kid books and tiny boxes of raisins every Monday at ten AM. My first Monday on the job, I referred to the raisins as ogre boogers, which earned me a sea of rolling giggles from the four kids who had gathered.

I'd found my people.

Over the course of months, I'd quadrupled the number of attendees. These days between sixteen and twenty kids between one to five years old came by every Monday from ten to noon. I read to them, we colored, crafted sock puppets and then put on shows, mixed no-bake treats, and generally partied like it was 1999. Their moms and dads got a welcome break to read a book or magazine uninterrupted, and I got my kid time.

“What are we gonna do today?” Sierra begged.

I reached for a tissue from the front counter to wipe her nose. On second thought, I grabbed two. “We're going to read
Nighttime Ninja
, make ninja costumes, and learn some tae kwon do!” I didn't know enough of the martial art to teach it myself, but Mrs. Berns and I had taken classes as a response to the extreme and freaky danger I'd lately found myself in. At the most recent class, I'd asked the local instructor, Master Jen, to teach a makeshift Little Kickers class in the library today. She'd agreed.

“Whee!” Sierra said. Once I had her coat off, she ran over to Joshie, her little brother, and caught him with a flying kick. Fortunately, he was still swaddled in his snowsuit and didn't feel a thing. Or, if he did, he responded to pain by giggling. Either worked for me.

Sierra and Joshie's mom, Becky, impassively watched the exchange. I looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time since she'd walked in the library. Her face was pinched, her eyes swollen.

“Can I pick them up at noon?” she asked without glancing at me.

The rule was that parents had to stay in the building with their kids at all times, but this was a special case. It was the double-edged sword of the small-town life at work: I knew that Becky's husband had recently ran out on her, which also meant that I knew I could help her.

“Sure. I'll take care of them. No worries.”

She looked grateful enough to cry. She kissed her kids on the head and disappeared. I leaned down to help release Josh from his coat, snowpants, hat, mittens, and scarf.

“You want to be a ninja today, Joshie?”

“Gun!”

He wasn't quite two and knew only a handful of words. Because this was Otter Tail County,
gun
was one of them. “No, sweetie. No guns. Ninjas don't need them. They have magic.”

“Gun!” He pointed behind me with his chubby little finger.

I turned to see Mrs. Berns at the computer, her cap pistols catching the light. “Ah, I see. No, hon, those are her guns. Not our guns.”

He didn't know a lot of words, but he also knew
no
, and it crushed him. Literally. He went from perfectly content to no-bones on the floor, all his energy focused on wailing at the unfairness of life. Kids are strange that way.

“Ignore him,” Sierra said, only four and already so wise. She stepped over him and walked toward the stack of new arrivals, all glossy picture books. Unfortunately, I didn't have the luxury of ignoring a screaming child. I'd promised his mom that I'd take care of him.

“I'll be back, Joshie. You just hang on.”

He either didn't hear me or didn't care. I walked over to the computers and tapped Mrs. Berns on the shoulder. “Hey, see that suffering kid back there? He wants your guns.”

She didn't bother to look away from the computer. “He can't even touch 'em, and here's why: it's good practice for life. Who ever gets what they want?”

My shoulders tightened. “Could you at least hide them until kid time is over? It'd make my life easier.”

She rolled her eyes. “You can't coddle them. Then they just grow up to be men who don't pick up after themselves and never read fiction.”

“I don't see the connection.”

“Probably because you're too busy coddling boys.”

I blew air through my mouth, loudly. Was it
really
going to be one of those days? “Please. I just found out my boyfriend is leaving the state for several months, and I'm pretty sure it won't take more than a day away for him to realize it was a mistake to ever date me. I have a toddler who is sure he's going to die if he doesn't get your guns. Oh, and it's winter, which means I can't garden, so my stress has no outlet. Can you just do this one favor for me?”

Mrs. Berns made a show of rapidly blinking her eyes and shaking her head. “Sorry. I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of that. What were you saying?”

I threw up my hands and returned to Joshie. I leaned over him. Despite the impressive decibels of his howls, I had to admire how fully he was throwing himself into the role. I pitched my voice so he could hear it over his screaming tears. “Hey Joshie, you want some ogre boogers?”

He immediately paused his crying and squinted at me out of the corner of an eye. “Ooger oogers?”

I smiled. See how quickly little people can win you back? They're too damn cute. “Yup. A whole box of ooger oogers. I have them in secret storage. Want to check them out?”

“Don't fall for it, Joshie,” Sierra called from a nearby table, where she was flipping through an issue of
Ranger Rick
. “They're just raisins.”

Man, if that girl was twenty-five years older, we'd be hanging out. I didn't know if she was looking out for her little brother or camping on the side of general fairness, but I couldn't deny the truth of her words. “Sure, they're raisins, but they're
special
raisins. Want to go see them?”

He did. He held his hands up to me, and I hoisted him onto my hip. We went to the back room, where I grabbed a not-too-old mini-box of raisins from the bulk the previous head librarian had purchased. Joshie calmed, and I got to finish prepping.

It was a good thing, because the little ones started rolling through the door in earnest soon after Joshie fisted his box of ooger oogers. The house was packed, and Children's Time went off without a hitch. I noticed partway through the TKD demo that Mrs. Berns had disappeared, but that wasn't unusual.

Come noon, I helped parents with the arduous task of repackaging their kids into their winter gear. By one o'clock, all the children were gone, even Sierra and Joshie. I had cleaned the stickiness from the kids' area and reshelved all the books and magazines they'd played with. It was a Monday, so only a handful of patrons grazed in the aisles. I was feeling the exhausted afterglow of a job well done when the front door burst open—no small feat considering it was pneumatic. I glanced over, hoping to see Mrs. Berns returning for the rest of her shift. I had some ideas for rearranging the reading tables that I wanted to run by her.

“Mira!”

Jed Heitke blew into the library. He was dressed in his over-sized khaki parka, bright ski cap with the ball on the end, and enormous mittens. I couldn't read his expression. It was either sad or worried. That in itself was odd. Jed was a Shaggy from
Scooby-Doo
sort of guy: curly headed and laidback, perennially happy, in his early twenties, artistic and aimless, and in possession of some of the finest weed in the county, if the rumors were to be believed. I'd never been a smoker, but he was so genuine that we'd become fast friends.

“Jed! How've you been?” I hadn't seen him in nearly two weeks. That wasn't unusual, but the way he was carrying himself set off my radar. Something was definitely up.