“Shoes?” I ask.
“Just the one,” she says. “I’ve found a lot of strange things here before—I keep a box in the back—but never one shoe.” She walks around the circulation desk. “You’d think someone would notice if they walked in with two sandals and walked out with one.”
Roger appears over Louise’s shoulder. “In the stacks?” he asks, nodding at the shoe.
They’re both behind the circulation desk now and the hairs on the back of my neck start to stand at attention. The area is feeling just a little too crowded. I start to tap my left wrist.
“Yep,” Louise says. “Might be the weirdest thing yet.”
“I don’t know,” says Roger. “That naked American Girl doll with the pins stuck in its eyes—remember? That was pretty creepy.”
“Oh dear, yes. That was strange.”
“A librarian friend of mine in the city? Found one of those house-arrest ankle bracelets, cut clean through,” Roger says.
“Oh my! Can you imagine?”
Roger and Louise laugh and keep talking, but with a lowered pitch, which is how I know a patron is approaching. I look up, hoping it’s not someone asking me how to use the Internet again. That was an anxiety-ridden experience. My eyes lock on Madison H. I’m surprised to see her, since she was just in a week ago, and she doesn’t strike me as someone who comes to the library that often—even if she is on the board.
“Hi,” she says, smiling, her thick lip gloss shining like a just-licked lollipop.
“Hi,” I say, staring at her. I look in her hands for books, but she’s not carrying any. “Um . . . can I help you?”
“Oh, well I thought we had talked about grabbing lunch last week. I was in the area—do you still want to?”
Huh. I guess she did mean it when she asked on Halloween. I glance at the clock—it’s 12:10—and I technically could take a break right now, if I wanted. I look back at her expectant face.
“I’m sorry, have you already eaten? I probably should have called first.”
“No, no,” I say, turning my attention to my computer screen. “Um . . . let me just finish checking in these books and, um . . . I’ll be ready to go.”
MADISON NAVIGATES HER car into the parking space in front of TeaCakes. It’s only a few blocks from the library, but she said she’d drive because the weather has taken a sharp turn toward cold the past few days.
She moves the gearshift to park, while I peer at the storefront—the large expanse of window, where people on the other side are eating and talking and gesturing with their hands. But when I imagine that Madison and I will soon be sitting at one of those tables, the giant fist starts squeezing and tightening my chest, and my body freezes, limb by limb. I can’t get out of the car. And I know no amount of tapping is going to change that.
So I sit there staring dumbly—at the eating, gesturing people who make being human look so easy. I kind of hate them. Not in such a way that I’d wish anything bad would happen to them, but just in the way that you hate the pretty, popular girl at school. Like the way I kind of hated Madison H.
“You coming in?” she says.
I stare at her, my face filling with heat. “No,” I say, my dry throat expelling the word like a stuck crumb.
“No?” She tilts her head.
My brain races to find an excuse, something plausible as to why I can’t leave the car, and then I look down and land on one.
“I forgot my coat.” It’s true—I left it in the back room of the library in my shock and confusion at Madison’s asking me to lunch—but I know it’s a feeble justification, considering I walked to Madison’s car without it, and TeaCakes is only a few yards in front of us.
Her eyes fix on me for a beat and I wonder if she’s going to start laughing. Or if she’ll just drive me back to the library, patting herself on the back for attempting to be friends with me, but c’est la vie, I ended up being too weird, and, well, she tried.
She squints, looks toward the café and then back at me. I hold my breath. “Do you want to eat in the car? I could just run in and get some sandwiches to go.”
I try to hide my surprise and nod. “That would work.”
Ten minutes later, Madison is back in the car, presenting me with a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. I reach for it with my gloved hand.
“Do you like tuna? I should have asked. I also have chicken salad.”
“This is fine,” I say.
While we eat, she tells me about Hannah punching a boy who pushed her off a swing. “I mean square in the chest,” she says, laughing. “I know I’m supposed to be upset, and of course I pretended I was in front of the other mother, but really I’m proud of her. I like that she won’t let anybody mess with her.”
I nod and turn a vent away from me, as it’s getting unnaturally warm in the car now.
We chew our sandwiches in silence for a few minutes.
“It’s not because you forgot your coat, is it?”
“What?”
“Why you wouldn’t go inside?”
I don’t say anything, concentrating on the last two bites of my tuna sandwich. I actually don’t like tuna—or maybe it’s just that it doesn’t taste right without pickle relish in it, the way I grew up eating it. I swallow. How do I explain—not just my condition, but my illogical fear of new places, new people? It sounds ridiculous to say it out loud, so I just give my head a small shake.
“Is it . . . are you . . .” She stutters over her words, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve seen Madison H. falter. “I mean, there were rumors at school, but I wasn’t ever sure which ones were true.”
I stare at her, unsure what to say. “What were the rumors?”
“I think the most common one was that your skin was completely burned from the neck down in a house fire when you were little. Hence the gloves.” She gestures to my hands. “Some said you were an alien, but most people didn’t believe that. Hmm . . . let’s see. I think someone said you were Mormon? And that’s why you couldn’t show any skin. Is that the Mormons? Or Muslims. I don’t remember. But then, you didn’t cover up your face, and that’s what was most confusing to people, I guess. And then after Donovan . . . well, you know.”
At the mention of his name, my face catches fire. I know immediately she’s referring to the Incident and part of me wants to bolt from the car. Oh, the irony that I can’t.
“He said you were allergic. To people.”
She peers at me as if trying to suss out the truth of it from the expression on my face. “I don’t think anyone really believed him, but I did.” She pauses and then scoffs. “God, I believed anything he said back then. But there was something about that explanation—as crazy as it sounded—that seemed particularly true. Or I just thought he was too dumb to make something like that up.”