We hadn’t gone more than a block down the street when Matthew asked if I was cold and when I told him I was, he sneaked an arm around my back and pulled me close to him. In an instant, it was as if there wasn’t another soul on that bus but Matthew and me. Like the whole rest of the world had disappeared. Matthew’s arm felt warm, strong, secure.
I turned my head and peeked up at him, wondering if those chocolate eyes might explain it to me what just happened. How my insides got all gooey, how my hands turned to slime. Matthew didn’t say anything, nor did his eyes. He was looking out the window like he didn’t even notice what happened, but inside I wondered if he felt that change like me after all.
We went to the library, and pulling up two chairs to one computer, Matthew showed me a world I’d never known before. He showed me something called the internet, where I could look up anything I’d ever wanted to know about the planets or jungle animals or spiders; he showed me how I could play games.
There was music on there, too, on the computer. We slipped on the library’s headphones, and Matthew put some music on, kind of loud, but I liked it. I liked the sound of the bass right there in my ear. I thought of Momma. Of spinning around the room to Patsy Cline.
Going to the library became Matthew’s and my regular thing. It was my favorite thing to do. The library was quiet and warm, even though right outside the big glass doors, the world was cold and loud. The building was big, four-stories or more, tucked right there in between all those huge buildings. Sometimes I just liked to ride the elevators, up, down, up, down, even if we didn’t go anywhere at all. We talked a lot there, Matthew and me, and if he told me once he told me a thousand times that he was gonna get me out of that house and away from Joseph. He just had to figure out how, is all. By then I’d started thinking a lot about the world outside of Omaha, and it made life there with Joseph and Miriam even worse. I wanted more than anything to leave, to run as far away as I could, but Matthew said to wait. He was going to figure it out for me; he said not to worry, and so I didn’t.
But what I really looked forward to there at the library was tucking ourselves into some vacant aisle—just us. We’d sit on the floor and sprawl our legs out before us, and lean up against the towering shelves. We’d skim through the books for random facts and take turns saying them aloud, like Did you know fresh eggs will sink but a rotten egg will float? Or Did you know 89 percent of the human brain is made up of water? just like we did when we were kids and Matthew would pass by my room at night. I read books about Audrey Hepburn and Patsy Cline. I looked up that place where Lily now lived, Colorado, and learned more about the flat plains of the thirty-eighth state and about the Continental Divide. I learned more about that Magnificent Mile Momma used to talk about, and I learned about Chicago, the Windy City, City of Broad Shoulders.
“Did you know Arthur Rubloff came up with the name Magnificent Mile in 1947?” I asked, but Matthew just said to me, “What’s the Magnificent Mile?”
And then one day we’re sitting there, in one of those vacant aisles, when all of a sudden Matthew found my hand tucked in the kangaroo pouch of that orange sweatshirt and pressed it between his. Matthew had held my hand before, on those buses, or when I was scared, but this time it was something different because this time I could tell Matthew was scared, too. His hand was all sweaty-like, and when he grabbed for it, I felt my heart grow three times inside of me, as if it was going to burst right there from my chest. I didn’t know what it was that I was feeling and I wanted so badly to ask someone, anyone.
But most of all I wanted to ask Momma.
We pretended for a long time that it wasn’t happening, that we weren’t holding hands. We just went on searching for random facts in the books with each of our free hands, while the hands that were joined, they were like their own independent beings or something. They were something different.
But it didn’t stop my heart from beating out of control, my brain unable to grasp any of the words inside the heavy library books.
And then all of a sudden Matthew was sitting closer and I didn’t remember it happening. I didn’t remember it happening at all, but suddenly, his leg was pressed up against mine, and his hip was touching mine, and suddenly we were reading from the same book while the other had been set aside. A book on engineering, whatever in the world that is. I couldn’t have made heads or tails of it even if I tried, but I didn’t try because I couldn’t think of anything other than my hand pressed in between Matthew’s hands, or what it sounded like when he turned his head toward mine and softly said my name.
Claire.
Matthew said it like a whisper, my name. I could feel the breath emerge from his lips more than I could actually hear my name.