She rips the sign off her blouse and pulls a fresh sheet from the printer on the desk. She picks up a black Sharpie and I start wheeling a pushcart toward the door so I can pick up the returns from outside.
The library doesn’t feel as cavernous as it did on the first day, but I’m still leery of leaving the circulation desk. It’s like I’m testing myself each time I do it. How far can I go today? I know the answer: to the returns box outside. It’s like the library—and, weirdly, the people in it—have become an extension of my own house.
Three other librarians are typically working during my shifts—Maryann, the library director; Roger, the children’s librarian; and Shayna, another circulation assistant—but Louise is my favorite. Maybe it’s because she’s the first person I met and I’m naturally more comfortable with her. Or maybe it’s because she’s the person I have the most contact with—Roger sits behind a desk in the children’s section, Shayna’s shift and mine only overlap for a few hours each day, and Maryann is often working in her office in the back or running out to a meeting. Or maybe it’s because she doesn’t probe. (The first thing Shayna asked me when we met: “What’s with the gloves? Are you, like, perpetually cold?” I just shrugged. “Something like that.”) But Louise has never mentioned my gloves or asked anything else personal about me for that matter—like if I have a boyfriend or where I went to college. She just does her job and I do mine.
AT TWO FORTY-FIVE Louise comes rushing up to me, out of breath.
“Aren’t you on break?” I ask.
“I had to come back,” she says. “Maryann called and Roger isn’t coming in today.” She gasps for air.
“Do you need to sit down?” The police hat is perched a tad lopsided on her silver bouffant and the sign on her chest is heaving.
“No, I’m fine. I’m not used to running.”
I picture her in her cop getup bursting out of TeaCakes, the coffee shop where she was taking her lunch break, rushing down the sidewalk to get back to the library, and can only imagine what passersby must have thought: There’s a grammar emergency! Get out of the way!
“You’ll have to do story time for the kids.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. I need to man the circ desk.”
“But I’ve never done that before,” I say, my head spinning.
“Well, no. But surely you’ve read to children before, yes? Nieces? Nephews?”
I shake my head no.
She frowns. “It’s easy. Roger left the three books on his desk and I think you give out candy and sing a song or something. Over in thirty minutes.”
“Sing a song?” This is getting worse by the second.
“Yes. Run along, dear.” She shoos me with her hands toward the kids’ section. “The children— Oh, look! A few are coming through the door now.”
I grab the books off Roger’s desk and head to the carpet circle where one lone adult chair faces an empty floor. I sit down in the chair and look up to see the children who raced through the door now coming at me with full-fledged enthusiasm. There’s a girl pirate, three princesses wearing what appears to be the exact same blue dress, and a boy in an astronaut costume.
I smile at them tentatively, but as they get closer, I see that they’re not smiling back. In fact, one girl—one of the princesses—looks angry. My heart starts to gallop.
“Where’s Mr. Rogers?” she asks.
I want to point out that his name is Roger, without an “s,” and that his last name is Brown, and so he would therefore not technically be Mr. Rogers, who was a popular children’s television show host—but now doesn’t seem to be the time.
“He’s sick today,” I say, which I’m not even sure is true. Louise didn’t say why he wasn’t coming in. “So I’ll be taking his place.”
“Do you have candy?” she asks.
Crap. The candy. I only grabbed the books.
“I do,” I say, hoping Roger left the candy at his desk somewhere.
She stares at me for a beat longer and then nods as if I’ve satisfied her demands. Then she and the other two princesses sit down in a row and more children begin to trickle in and do the same.
It feels like they’re coming from every direction and I want to round them up and keep them all in my line of sight. What if one of them gets too close and tries to touch me? Children are like snakes—they’re unpredictable. I scoot my chair back toward the wall as far as it will go, feeling my throat close up as if I’ve already been touched.
I look around wildly, hoping Roger might appear, Louise will step in, the fire alarm will go off and we’ll have to evacuate the building . . . anything to stop this nightmare. Instead, my eyes lock on Madison H. She’s pushing a stroller and guiding two kids into the circle. My heartbeat slows a little.
She stops short as she takes me in. “Did you forget to comb your hair this morning?”
Before I can respond, the little girl holding her hand says, “Mommy, it’s a costume.”
“Oh, right! Let’s see.” Madison sizes me up. “Are you that girl that crawls out of the TV in—what was that movie—The Ring?” She shudders. “God, that was horrifying.”
“Of course she’s not,” her daughter says, rolling her eyes, which seems awfully adultlike for such a small child. But then, I don’t know much about children. “She’s Lady Gaga.”
I shake my head. “No, I—”
“Lady Gaga doesn’t wear pajamas,” a tinny voice says, cutting me off. I think it’s the pirate.
“Are you the Ghost of Christmas Past?” says another.
“I know, I know! She’s Amish! Grandma took me to that village in Pennsylvania last year. They don’t have dishwashers or TV.”
“Everyone has TV.”
My eyes dart to where the voices are coming from, but it’s hard to tell.
“She’s a serial killer.” The word “killer” sucks the air out of the room and everyone turns to look at a young boy sitting in a wheelchair. His dark eyes aren’t looking at me—they aren’t really looking at anybody.
His dad—I assume it’s his dad, even though they look nothing alike, because he’s standing behind him gripping the handles of the wheelchair—laughs nervously. “Why would you say that, buddy?”
“The gloves,” the boy says. “Serial killers wear gloves.”
Fifteen wide-eyed kids turn back to stare at me and my hands. I shift in my seat and my heart revs up again.
“What’s a serial killer? Is it someone who really, really likes Cap’n Crunch?”
“Why do they wear gloves?”
“I like Cap’n Crunch!”
“Are you going to kill us?” a shaky voice asks.
At least two kids burst into tears.
My heart is thumping so loudly, I wonder if everyone can hear it. If I’m an Edgar Allan Poe story come to life. This is so much worse than I anticipated. I scan to my left and right looking for an escape route, but there are kids everywhere. I take a deep breath and clap my gloved hands together. I can do this.