Kissing Midnight (6 page)

I heft my bag back on my shoulder and traipse off, resigned. Up the stairs I go and off to the west wing, where the newly constructed main section of the library meets the hundred-year-old building that came before it. The plush carpets give way to worn wood floors, grooved with the passage of feet. The windows become narrow and arched, like the windows of a castle.

The whole library is quiet today, but the children’s room is particularly deserted. Which doesn’t really surprise me. It’s never like the children’s rooms of public libraries, with their primary-colored beanbag chairs and squealing story-time toddlers. This room is mainly for academics who study children’s literature, or maybe the occasional alumni who visit campus with their kids. Every once in a while you’ll catch a nostalgic student curled up in the window seat reading Dr. Seuss, but for the most part no one bothers.

Oh, well
, I think as I flump my bag down on the desk,
at least I’ll have some peace and quiet
.

“There you are.”

I jump about ten miles. “Dev!”

He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor between the shelves, an oversized picture book open on his lap. He smiles up at me. “You’re late.”

“I am not. What are you doing here?”

He gestures to the book. “Finding Goldbug, obviously. And waiting for you.”

“But how did you know I’d be here?”

“I left a note on the schedule.” His smile widens at the look on my face. “What? Delia told me the planning committee decided to go with the fairy tale theme. I thought we could do some brainstorming.”

“Then why didn’t you just come to lunch?”
Where Delia is,
I add mentally.

He shrugs. “I thought we’d find more inspiration in here.”

I lower my voice to a whisper. “But what if they find out you messed with the schedule? And I’m supposed to be working!”

Dev laughs, a little too loudly for a library. “First off, it’s a work study schedule, not classified information. Second—” he looks around the deserted room “—it doesn’t look like there’s a whole lot of work to be done.”

He has a point, but I’m not about to admit it. I cross to the clean-up cart and start arranging the books to make them easier to reshelf. “It’s just that the head librarian is very uptight.”

He grins at me teasingly. “I hate uptight people.”

“I’m not uptight.”

“Certainly not.” He sets his book aside and gets lightly to his feet.

I scoop up the book and add it to my cart. “I have to behave because I need this job. It’s a condition of my scholarship.” Maybe Dev is one of those trust fund kids who don’t have to worry about things like that. “You do know what it’s like to have a job, don’t you? I mean, you have had one?”

“Several,” he says, “But at the moment, my job—self-assigned—is to get you to relax a little.” He turns a puppy dog expression on me. “You’re not really mad at me, are you?”

I sigh and smile back. He’s right, of course. I shouldn’t be so uptight. “No, I’m not mad.”

“Good! And now look.” He spreads his arms wide. “We have the whole place to ourselves.”

“You’re talking too loud.”

“Oh. Right.” He drops his voice to a stage whisper. “We have the whole place to ourselves.”

I fight the urge to smile. “Well, it’s December twenty-third. People are doing Christmas stuff. Besides, people don’t usually come in here.”

“I have no idea why not.” His voice is back at too loud. “This place is perfect.” He smiles around at the books with a genuine affection that makes me like him more. “Gorgeous room.”

“It is nice, isn’t it?” I admit. “It was the first building on campus, built back around 1900.” I run one finger appreciatively down the edge of a built-in shelf. “They made things better back then.”

“They certainly did,” he agrees. “Stronger. With more class.”

I tuck a Beatrix Potter book back onto the shelf. “You said you’re a history buff, right?”

He shrugs. “It’s what I’ve had the most of.” He pulls out a pop-up book and opens it quickly at random, like he’s trying to take it by surprise, and smiles when a complicated monster lunges out “I’m a bit more interested in hearing your history at the moment. Are you from around here?”

I nod. “Just outside of Boston.”

“Then I’m curious, if you don’t mind me asking, why aren’t you going home for the holidays?”

I busy myself with another book. “No home to go back to at the moment. My mother is from Mexico. She moved back there recently.”

He looks surprised. “Just like that?”

“She needed to be with family.”

Dev shuts the pop-up book, letting a pirate ship sink back into the sea. I can see the unasked question in his eyes.
Aren’t you family?
I can’t tell him I was part of the reason my mother needed to get away, one of the stressful problems she’s avoiding.

But Dev must have heard it in my voice. “You seem like a girl who could use a little happily ever after.” He saunters over to the fairy and folk tale section, which takes up one whole wall, half of it ordinary shelves of books, the other half glass cabinets where the older manuscripts are displayed, the ones fragile enough to be kept under lock and key.

Dev rattles the door of a cabinet. “In case of fairy tale emergency, break glass.” He laughs at my horrified expression. “I’m just kidding! I’ll take…” he scans the open shelf, “this one.” He picks a book like he’s plucking a rose and hands it to me. “What’s your favorite fairy tale?”

“
Beauty and the Beast
,” I say without hesitation, and then, by way of explanation, “He gives her a library.”

“Obviously.”

“And yours?”

Dev scans the shelves. “
Little Red Riding Hood
. No,
Peter Pan
.
Cinderella
.” He shrugs. “I like them all. What do you plan to dress as for the dance?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.” I thumb through the book he gave me. It’s a beautiful old volume with an embossed cover and gilt-edged pages. “They’ll probably assign us volunteers to be something. Maybe a page? A castle guard? A playing card?”

Dev rolls his eyes. “You’ll have to do better than that! But I guess it depends what your date is going as. Is he the Charming to your princess or the wolf to your Little Red?” His raises one eyebrow, his smile playfully suggestive. Is Dev flirting with me?

I turn back to the cart quickly and grab the top three books, tucking them safely back into place. “I don’t have to worry about that because I don’t have a date,” I say at the same moment Dev says, “You could be Beauty.”

I push the cart farther down the row. “I don’t think anyone would buy me as a great beauty.”

“Why not? You said she was your favorite.” Dev tugs a few books off the shelves at random. I take them back from him and return them to their orderly slots. “It’s a great story. I know I’d kill to be the Beast.”

My heart stutters. He isn’t hinting we should go to the dance together, is he? Saying he’d like to be the Beast, right after he said I should be Belle? No, that’s ridiculous. He’s interested in Delia, right?

Regardless, Delia likes him. I shouldn’t flirt back.

But in spite of that, I say, “You’re too good looking to be the beast.”

“Damn.” He gives me a very wolfish grin. “I’ve always wanted to be a beast, just for one night.”

We’ve reached the very end of the row, the very back corner. It’s mid afternoon, but back here it might as well be midnight, it’s so dark. I am suddenly aware there is no one else in the room. And even if there were, no one could see us back here.

Not that we’re doing anything wrong. We’re reshelving books. But Dev is so close behind me, and when I turn around his face is only inches from mine, his blue eyes shining in the darkness. “A beast,” he says again, finally remembering to whisper in the library. “Or maybe a Wild Thing, you know, from
Where the Wild Things Are
? What’s their line?” He lowers his voice to a growl, “I’ll eat you up, I love you so.”

My breath catches and my voice comes out tiny as I finish the line “And Max said—”

“Hello?” A voice comes from the doorway of the children’s room. “Mariana are you in here?”

“Mrs. Newman!” I duck under Dev’s arm and hurry out of the stacks, stepping out of the shadows and into the sunlight. “I’m right here!”

The librarian is standing by the desk, her lips pursed with impatience. “There you are! I need you to pull some—”

She stops short as Dev steps casually out from between the shelves, smiling.

Mrs. Newman’s frown deepens. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were with someone.”

The disapproval in her voice makes a guilty blush rise in my cheeks. She thinks Dev and I are one of those couples, the ones who kiss in remote corners of the stacks. Instinctively, I reach up to pat my hair back into place, but of course it isn’t mussed. Why should it be? We were shelving books!

“I was just helping a patron—” I say at the same time Dev says, “A friend.”

Mrs. Newman’s tiny eyes narrow even further with suspicion. “I see.”

No you don’t!
I want to say, but her mistrust doesn’t seem to bug Dev in the least. If anything, he looks amused.

“Listen,” he says, “I should be going. But thanks for all your help with my project.” He winks at me, and Mrs. Newman gives a disapproving sniff. “See you later.”

He turns and heads out the door, giving me one last smile over his shoulder as he disappears into the hall.

I turn back to Mrs. Newman, who is looking down on me, her mouth a tight little line of red lipstick, her arms crossed. “Here.” She hands me a request slip. “Dr. Hazman would like these pulled. That is, if you don’t have anything else to do.” She glares at me.

“No,” I mumble meekly, “I’ll do it now.”

“Good.” She strides out of the room, and I let out my breath in a rush. It’s both a relief and a disappointment to have Dev gone. I struggle to order my scattered thoughts, like putting books back on a shelf. I should get back to work.

But I’m not ready to quite yet. Instead I pick up the book Dev handed me, the one with the ornate cover and the gold-edged pages. I rifle through it, letting the jewel-toned illustrations flash past: Snow White with the blood red apple, Goldilocks discovered in the bed… My fingers hesitate on a painting of Beauty and the Beast. Dev was flirting with me. There’s no doubt in my mind now. The question is, do I want him to? Am I going to flirt back? The thought of it makes my breathing go shallow. There’s no denying Dev is gorgeous, and even charming in his own annoying way. But I don’t need any more complications, right? At least, that’s what I was thinking until now, until Dev looked at me with those bright blue eyes.
I’ll eat you up I love you so…

“No,” I say to myself out loud. That’s the word I didn’t get a chance to say, the line from the book: “Max said ‘no.’”

I shut the fairy tale book and set it on the desk. It doesn’t matter anyhow. Even if Dev is interested in me, it’s only because he doesn’t know me. If he knew everything about me, he would never want to be with me. He would run screaming if he—

My thoughts stop dead. I freeze, staring at the book on the desk. Didn’t I shut it? But it’s open now.

Not only that, it’s moving. As I watch, the thick cream pages rustle to life, fluttering like they’re caught in a breeze. I turn quickly to the windows, but they’re locked tight against the December cold. The air in the library is as still as a tomb.

My breath is still, too. I don’t dare breathe. I stand, frozen on my spot, as the pages continue to turn, first a few at a time, them more deliberately, one by one, as if invisible fingers are peeling back each one. My heart is thudding painfully in my chest, and I’m starting to shake. I squeeze my eyes shut.
It isn’t real
, I think,
it’s in your mind
.
In your stupid, defective mind
.

I take a deep, shuddering breath and force my eyes back open.

The book has stopped. It lies innocently on the desk, pages spread wide like they have nothing to hide.

I let the breath out.
You see?
You imagined it.
It was the anxiety of thinking about a date with Dev, the anxiety of my boss’s disapproval. It triggered one of my episodes. But there’s still a sinking feeling deep in my chest. Sure, I imagined it, but that doesn’t make it any better. It only means I’m hallucinating again.

I should come clean to Dr. Sterling
, I think.
Admit I shouldn’t have gone off the medication, get him to put me back on it
. Quickly, I reach out, ready to shut the book before I can imagine its pages turning again.

But as my hand touches the rough paper, I pause. The book is open to the first page of a story I’ve never heard. The title reads
The Legend of Bluebeard
in a scrolling, ornate script, and the page facing it is an illustration: the tall wooden door of a castle, with something carved into the arch.

I slam the door shut like I’m trying to crush a spider inside it, so fast the page gets crumpled. The picture reminds me too much of my dream. In fact, it’s so much like my dream, I wonder if I hallucinated the picture, too, but I can’t bring myself to open it again and check. Instead, I snatch my bag from behind the desk and shove the book inside. Suddenly, the thought of staying even another minute alone in this room is enough me make me feel sick. I storm out the door and down the hall, not even bothering to keep my footsteps quiet on the wooden floors. In moments I’m down the stairs and across the carpeted main room of the library. The few students working on their laptops look up curiously as I pass, but I ignore them. Instead, I head straight for the head librarian’s desk.

“Mrs. Newman, I feel sick.”

She looks up, skeptical, and I can tell she thinks I’m lying because I want to go see Dev. “Now listen, Miss Santos, just because it’s winter break, that doesn’t mean—”

But she stops when she sees the look on my face, and her own expression changes to one of alarm. She gathers up the book she was reading and hugs it protectively to her chest, as if she thinks I might throw up at any second. “Go!” she says. “Dismissed!”