Golden Delicious (19 page)

See? I told you that there’d be a story about the Appleseed Free Library, where my Mom and I used to go every Wednesday. This is that story! Like I said, that library—which, like most libraries, doubled as a disco—was more or less the heart of Appleseed. Located in the direct center of town, you could still see all of the bloodlines running just under the surface of the grass, through the walls of the foundation, and into the Library’s basement. Someone once told me that there was a machine in that room that pumped actual
blood
—hundreds of gallons of bookblood a minute.

I used to look forward to those Wednesday nights, to farting with my Mom down Longfellow Drive, onto Highway Five, and into the parking lot of the AFL. It was always just me and her—my sister and my Dad weren’t really that into reading. My Mom, though? She read as if her books might disappear when she took her eyes off them; she probably read two or three books a week.

Anyway, we’d return our books to the desk and split up to wander through the shelves. The AFL didn’t have the
best
books, or the
newest
books, or the
rarest
books, or the
nicest
books (a lot of the language was rusted or bent, in
fact, destroyed from so much reading), or the
tallest
books, or the
loudest
books, or the
orangest
books, but it had the
strangest
books I’d ever seen. They had books with naked words; books with hooks—literal hooks; books that, when you opened them up, spat at you. They had books made of dust and books made of cheese, books shaped like chairs and books as soft and furry as a winter coat. Some of those books were visible—i.e., you could see them—and others were beyond vision. With
those
books, you didn’t even know you were reading until all of a sudden you sensed the words on your eyes, heard the pages turning, felt the warmth of the book on your shoulders.

Sometimes I’d fall asleep and wrap the books over me. I’d make myself a small house of books and fall asleep in it. It felt like being back in the womb—it was that warm, that safe.

Reader: As you imagine it, at least.

Sorry?

Reader: Not like you remember the womb.

Of course I do. You don’t?

The Reader furrowed her brow.

I remember every moment of it! There were words in that womb with me, I’m sure of it. The Library was like those pre-page days—warm and verbal. Everything you could ever want or need was right there with you. You never had to worry about being alone—you were
never
alone! If you ever got scared or depressed—when your mind spun with worry, or you lost all faith—you could just listen for that heartbeat right next to your ear, all around you, actually, and you’d feel safe again.

Even though my Mom stopped going to the Library with me (“All you had to do was keep your mouth shut and read the words,” she’d shouted at me when I asked her to go. “But you couldn’t just let sleeping words lie!”), I continued to go by myself. I liked to open up the books and see the sentences move. I also went back there, though, because I missed her—the old her, the happier Mom. I missed going there with her; I felt closer to her there.

Another reason that I liked the Library? It was good exercise for my thoughts. Don’t tell them that I said this, but some of my thoughts were kind of
losers
. Not like, in thoughtgangs or anything like that; they were just lazy. Most of them lounged around on a couch in my skull, playing video games. Either that or they were troublemakers, wanderthoughts, renegades too dumb to know which parts of Appleseed to avoid. If a thought of mine went missing, I’d inevitably find it in one of the seediest parts of Appleseed: down in the Quarry, out at the Meadows, or sitting on a stool at Appleseed’s only bar for thoughts, the Think Tank.

Hey, look at that. My shoelace is untied. Do you know where I found this shoelace? It was crawling in the sand by Kellogg River, burrowing. Me and my uncle went out there specifically for shoelaces, and we’d searched all morning. I remember that day specifically, because—

Anyhoo.

And I wasn’t the only one in Appleseed with wandering thoughts—thoughts with minds of their own. Some thoughts
lived
on the streets: they were orphans, nomads, wanderers with no mind to go back to—just the thought of
a shelter or a bench in McShane Park. It was important, I thought, to try to keep my thoughts together. The Library was one of the few places where I could open my skull, lean down and let my thoughts scatter and roam. They could go to their sections, my Mom to hers, me to mine.

Usually I’d read books about Johnny Appleseed. One of my favorites,
The Book of Apples
, was shelved in the Reference section—it told the story of how Johnny, born in the Massachusetts town of Lemontown, moved to Appleseed intrigued by the blank pages and the rich soil. The middle of the book was devoted to Appleseed’s philosophy—how he believed that apples held all the knowledge we needed; that they held our oldest stories; that they were, in essence, brains. There were also drawings based on one of Appleseed’s stories—one showed a naked vending machine in a secret Appleseed mountain garden, evil earthworms all around her; another showed historical applenuns and bessoffs praying on the Town Green. Plus, there was a whole section in the book devoted to apple fads and fashions, like that very short time when apples were worn as hats. Did you know that the apple-hat fad contributed to the First Apple War? A conservative appler named Jed Berson was so offended by Lox Homicki’s apple hat that he shot it right off his head with his revolver. Homicki wasn’t injured, but he demanded that Berson replace the hat. Berson refused, and both summoned backup. There was a standoff, and the war began soon afterward.

The Book of Apples
also showed dozens of pictures of Johnny Appleseed: Appleseed walking with his holy satchel, Appleseed digging with his spade, Appleseed kneeling
among the saplings. Because the Memory of Johnny Appleseed was old—white beard, vagabondy clothes—that’s how my thoughts thought of him. But the book showed Johnny Appleseed as a young hipster, with a top hat and an ambitious beard.

Like a lot of the books in the Library, this one was too old and too rare to circulate. So I read it right there at one of the tables, over three or four weeks’ time. I learned all about the different kinds of apples—Champion, Yellow Transparent, Hambledon Deux Ans—and about the last years of Johnny Appleseed in Appleseed, before he followed the smell of apples south and never returned.

One week, I beelined over to the Reference section and saw that
The Book of Apples
wasn’t on the shelf where I’d left it. I looked through the entire Appleseed section, but to no avail. When I went over to the study desks, though, I saw the Memory of Johnny Appleseed turning the pages of an oversize book. I approached his table and stood over him—he was reading the section about military technologies in the Fifth Apple War. “I was looking for that,” I said.

He looked up at me. “Still working on that project?”

I shook my head.

“Get a good grade?”

“C,” I said.

“How? I told you the whole story,” said the Memory of Johnny Appleseed.

“I forgot about the project until the day it was due,” I said.

The Memory of Johnny Appleseed smirked and shook his head.

I didn’t move. After a moment, the Memory of Johnny Appleseed looked up at me. “Are you going to just stand there and watch me read?”

“I was really looking forward to reading the end,” I said.

“Early bird catches the worm,” he said.

I stared at him.

“It is
my
story, after all,” he said.

I just stood there.

“Go away,
.”

So I did—I walked out to my Bicycle Built for Two, unlocked it, and rode off the page.

The following day, though, I rode my bike to the Library right after school. I went directly to the Reference section, where a Librarian in a disco suit was stamping and stacking books. I knew my thoughts would be bored in that section, though, so I opened my skull in the lobby and let them run upstairs to Media; only one or two stayed behind in my mind. Then I found
The Book of Apples
, sat in a corner, and read for the next two hours, absorbing as much as I could. Every once in a while one of my thoughts would find me there and pester me by tugging on my sleeve or walking onto the page I was reading. “Can we go?” one asked.

“Not yet,” I whispered.

“I’m so bored.”

“Then
read
,” I said.

I was halfway through Appleseed’s anecdotes about language-planting, though, when I saw the lights overhead flicker. The library was starting to close. I knew what
would happen next: the lights would go out altogether, the disco balls would drop, the shelves would slide to the walls and a light-up dance floor would be born. Some books would pick up keyboards and saxophones and drums while other books donned disco suits and dancing dresses. Read: flashing lights; booksweat; music so loud you couldn’t hear your thoughts
think
!

I put the book back on the shelf and opened my skull to collect my thoughts. Some of them scampered into my skull, but a few stood staring at me. “What are you doing?” said one. “I was really into that story!”

“The Library’s closing soon,” I told the thought.

“Can we check the book out?” said the thought.

I shook my head. “It’s a reference book,” I said.

“Then just
take
it, man,” said the thought.

Reader: Wait—what?

“You should,” another thought said.

“Who’s going to know?” the first thought said.

Reader: That’s
stealing
,
. Stealing is illegal!

The second thought looked at the Reader. “Don’t you want to understand Appleseed’s planting techniques? How the stories are told?”

Reader: Sure, but—

“I’m not—I can’t—no way,” I said.

“Just put it in under your shirt, wussface,” said the thought.

I thought about it. “There’s a Librarian
right there
,” I whispered to my skull. Next to Mothers and Cones, Librarians were probably the most powerful people in Appleseed: they were dizzyingly smart, highly trained, paid
a lot of meaning, and great at disco—they knew all the latest moves.

“We have to get out of here,” I told the thought.

“We want the story,
,” said the first thought. “We are
not
leaving that book here.”

A Librarian in disco gear whisked by. “Music begins in ten minutes!” he sang.

I smiled and nodded and thought to walk away from the shelves, but when I actually tried to move my feet they wouldn’t lift. I knew right away that it was my thoughts, conspiring to control me. “We need to
go
,” I told my thoughts.

“No one’s going to miss
one book
,” a thought of umbrellas whispered. Before I could object further he grabbed the book I’d been reading off the shelf, climbed my shoulders, opened the top of my head as wide as the hinge would go and stuffed the book into my skull. The book was a hardcover—big, heavy, with sharp corners. The weight on my brain made me shriek.