Golden Delicious (20 page)

“Shh! Big baby,” said the thought.

I couldn’t see for a second—I blinked and blinked. My vision reversed, flipped upside down. My arm began tremoring. I let out an involuntary yelp. “You’re messing up his brain, dude,” said one thought to another.

I tried to object—to say “Stop!”—but I couldn’t make words; one of the books must have been pressing on my language center. Then even the
thoughts
of words vanished. I blurted whatever word was available to me. “Darjeeling!” “Pock.” “Historical!”

Meanwhile, the thoughts struggled to close my skull.
I could feel them pushing and shoving one another, trying to make room for the novel they’d crammed into their living space. My eyes fluttered; my vision was blue. I clawed at the hinge on my skull but the thoughts held it closed.

Suddenly I heard the swish of guitars and recorded horns—the disco music was starting.

“Oop,” said the thought. “Time to vamoose,
.”

The lights were dimming.

“
?”

I pulled at the seam of my skull. “Stout,” I said. “Lasso.”

Out on the floor, disco Librarians were starting to assemble. A strobe light yawned, stretched its arms and started turning. I looked out the windows at the dusky purple light.

“Get moving,
,” said the thought.

I tried one more time to reason, to find language to name my thoughts, but I couldn’t. So I forced all my concentration toward a thought of walking: very slowly, one foot in front of the other. I edged away from the shelf, across the Reference section, over the dance floor, and into the lobby. It seemed to take forever to get to the circulation desk. I was sweating and dizzy. At one point I stumbled and a thought said, “Easy. Just act cool,
.”

Cool
. I tried to remember what that word meant. But I didn’t know.

When we passed the circulation desk, two Librarians in disco suits looked up from a pile of books that they were stamping. “Not staying for the dance?” asked the male discoer.

I stammered. “Yee. I—”

“Say ‘No thanks,’ ” said the thought.

“No—thanks,” I said.

“Sure?” said the female.

“Smile,” said the thought.

I smiled.

“Say ‘Have a good night, though,’ ” said the thought.

“Have a good night, though,” I said.

“Now move,” the thought said, and I pushed open the double doors into the foyer. As I did, though, an alarm rang out—a repeating beep, but a beep that had been eating right, working out, trying to turn its life around. “Dammit. Run!” shouted the thought, but I didn’t—I stopped; I rugged. The Librarians leapt over the desk and stretched their hands out at me. “Hold up just a second there,” said the discoer.

“Shit!” shouted a thought inside my mind.

“It’s the magnetic tags,” said another. “They put them in all the books.”

“Don’t let that fucker touch you,
,” said a thought of violence. “If he does, you punch that fucker in the fucking
face
.”

The Librarians put their hands on me, turned me around, and led me back into the lobby.

“Roundhouse-kick them!” said violence. “Pull out their esophagi!”

The Librarians stared at me. “Sorry about that,” said the discoer. “Scanner picked something up.”

“Not checking out any books tonight?” said the discoess.

“N—no,” I said.

“We’ve had problems with that thing,” said the discoer, pointing to the scanner.

“What’s your name?” said the discoess.

“Don’t tell them!” said a thought.

“Make something up!” said another.

“Head-butt the big one and sweep the leg of the small one!” said the thought of violence.

I tried to think of a name—any name. I gave them the first one I could come up with: “Chris,” I blurted. “My name is—Chris.”

“Chris what?”

“Chris B-ook,” I said. “Book.”

“Chris
Book
? That’s funny,” said the discoer. “Mr. Book? In a Library?”

“Can you hold out your arms, Mr. Book?”

I stretched out my arms and the discoess patted my shirt and my pant legs. In my mind, meanwhile, my thoughts were scrambling to hide. I could feel them ripping up pages from the book and cramming them wherever they could: in the empty channels and caverns in my skull, in my spinal column, behind my eyes, in my ear canals. The pain was terrible. I tasted words on my tongue, saw words in my eyes: there were letters on the male discoer’s face; the discoess had a
W
for an ear and her arm was a noun.

The discoess frisked me, stepped back, and looked to the discoer. “Nothing,” she said.

The discoer tapped his head.

“Bend down, please,” said the discoess.

“Everyone
act natural
!” shouted a thought.

I bent down. The discoess unlatched the lock on my
skull and opened it at the seam. The hinge on my skull creaked as she lifted the lid.

I felt her eyes on my brain and I prepared for the worst. They would know that I stole. And then what? “They’ll interrogate you,” whispered the thought of violence. “Torture. Torture like only a
Librarian
can deliver.”

The female Librarian sighed. “I don’t see anything,” she said. “Just a bunch of thoughts sitting on a couch and watching television.”

“No books?” said the discoer.

“No books, no ideas, nothing,” said the discoess. “It’s like a
tomb
in here!” She stooped so she could see my face. “Is this place for rent?”

The discoer guffawed and slapped his knee.

“Hardy fucking har,” whispered the thought of violence, from wherever he was hiding in my mind. “I’ll kill both of you motherfuckers.”

The discoess closed up my skull. “My apologies, Mr. Book,” she said. “The alarm must have gone off by mistake.”

“No problem,” said my thought of speech.

“No problem,” I said.

I rushed out of the library and down to the bike racks, where I unlocked the Bicycle Built for Two. I started pedaling away, but I still couldn’t see; the whole world was words and terms. And the noise in my mind—my thoughts, high-fiving and dancing and celebrating—didn’t help either. “Thoughts
rule
!” shouted a thought of sidewalks. “Fuck yeah!” hooted the thought of violence.

Four blocks from the Library, when I could no longer hear the disco music, I collapsed on the dusky grass. I lay
down on my side and my thoughts kicked open my brain and tumbled out of it. “Woo!” shouted the thought of violence, stepping into the grass. “We are badass thought mofos!” he roared. “Aren’t we?”

“That was so cool!” said the thought of walking.

I collapsed in the grass. I couldn’t speak; I was sick with words. The information was blurp reed, yazzing through my > mmm fulcrum.

“
?” said a thought of home. “You OK?”

“Are you in need of gutter repair?” I said.

“What?” said the thought of walking.

“The fail is going on all weekend,” I said.

“What fail?” said violence.

“That’s our cornerback guarantee,” I said.

“He’s fucked,” said another thought.

My thoughts colluded to get me standing and walking; I hung over my bike and slowly made my way home. With every step, though, I felt changed; my cells were absorbing the stories—their sentences, symbols, and themes.

Halfway home, we ran into the Memory of Johnny Appleseed praying at the edge of a field of dead trees. “
,” he said, and stood up. The knees of his pants were wet from the mud. “You OK?”