She nibbles her bottom lip. “I don’t know. When I was a kid it’s all I ever wanted. To be normal.” She scoffs a little. “Whatever that means. But now . . .” She pauses, searching for the right words. “You know how in The Virgin Suicides the boys have this idea of who the Lisbon sisters are? But they don’t really know them. They only admire them from a distance, so they end up glorifying them, reinventing them as these fascinating creatures—images that the girls could never really live up to.”
I tilt my head, trying to piece together her metaphor. “You’ve been imagining what your life would be like without the allergy, and you’re worried it won’t live up to your expectation? Like you were talking about with the Tibetan monks?”
She slowly nods, blinking back tears. “And what if I go through with it and it doesn’t even work? What if it’s all for nothing?”
I lean closer to her now, trying to catch her eyes with mine in the light of the iPhone. “But what if it does?” I ask.
She starts to shake her head, and before I can stop myself, I reach up my hand and grab her cheek to still it. Luckily, I’m wearing my gloves. She won’t look at me.
“What if it’s everything?” I whisper.
Finally, in the glow of the iPhone light, her eyes meet mine.
She stares at me, searching, questioning, but I won’t break the gaze. And then, the library, the rug we’re sitting on—time itself—falls away and I get lost. In my thoughts, in her eyes. In her. I want to kiss her. No, that’s not true. I want to devour her. And just when I think I can’t—when I know I won’t—be able to control myself a second longer, she jerks her face away from my hand, breaking the trance. I sit there, my arm frozen in the air, embarrassed by what I was about to do, by my lack of restraint. My chest is heaving like I’ve just run three miles, and I sit back on my haunches, trying to slow my racing pulse. And that’s when I notice she’s out of breath, too. Her fingers clutch her heart, rising and falling with the rapid ascent and descent of her own chest. And I think for the first time, maybe this is as hard for her as it is for me. And that makes it just a little bit easier to bear.
The silence draws out as I slowly retreat, putting feet instead of mere inches between us. And then, when I’m pretty sure my voice won’t betray my weakness around her, I break the stillness of the air.
“Hey, Jubilee?”
“Yeah?”
“Next time you want to have some deep discussion, you can skip all that literary metaphor crap. You know that stuff’s way over my head.”
She laughs softly, and it sounds like wind chimes on a blustery day. And it reminds me of someone—Dinesh’s wife, Kate. The way her laughter would fill up a room. But it’s even better.
“We should get some sleep,” I say.
“Yeah.”
We both lie down where we sit, our coats rustling until we get settled. I stare out the window, surprised that the sky looks lighter—and then I realize that the snow has stopped and the moon is shining. It’s a good thing—the snowplows will start up, we should be able to leave in the morning—so I’m not sure why a ping of disappointment accompanies the thought. Or why, like a child, I’m longing for time to stop. To stay in this moment, where Aja is peaceful and I’m with Jubilee and for at least a few hours, all feels right, like everything’s going to be OK.
“I can’t sleep,” Jubilee whispers.
I look over at her, the light barely kissing her cheek. I’m jealous of the moon. “Me either,” I admit.
“Will you read to me?”
I raise my eyebrows, trying to remember the last time someone requested that of me. Had to be Ellie, when she was little. I picture her big eyes, her three-year-old lisp. “Um . . . yeah, sure,” I say. “I can read to you. What do you want to hear?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. There’s a stack of books right next to you that Aja and I were looking at.”
I reach over in the direction she’s pointing and grab the top one. It’s got a ponytailed girl in a red dress on the cover. “Charlotte’s Web,” I say, reading the title. “Oh Jesus. Isn’t this that depressing movie where the pig gets slaughtered at the end or something?”
“No! The pig doesn’t die,” she says.
I chuck it down. “Oh great, now you’ve gone and spoiled it.”
“No!” she whispers, laughing. “Read that one. I love that one.”
I pick it back up, turn to the first page, and cup my head with one hand. Then I clear my throat and quietly read to Jubilee by the light of the moon streaming through the window, until I hear her breathing deepen and stretch. And then I keep reading, anyway—but not just because I like the story. I like knowing that I’m touching her with my words. That they’re crawling in her ears as she sleeps.
twenty-two
JUBILEE
THE LIGHTS SNAP back on with a loud buzz, waking us all up abruptly the next morning. My back is stiff from the hard floor. “What time is it?” I ask, stretching.
Eric moans, and I can tell his back is feeling as bad as mine. He grabs his phone. “I don’t know,” he says. “It’s dead.”
“I’m hungry,” Aja says.
“Me, too,” Eric and I say at the same time. We look at each other and smile. Even though the heat hasn’t kicked in yet, I feel warm under his gaze. I think back to the previous night and am a little embarrassed at how much I said. What is it about darkness that compels one to reveal so much? But then I remember his hand on my cheek. His words. A little buzz grows in my stomach.
“I’ll check the back room,” I say. “See if we have any doughnuts.”
“OK,” Eric says, plugging his phone charger into a wall socket. “I’m going to head out to the car, see if the snowplows have been through.”
While he’s gone, and Aja’s eating the day-old muffins I found, I clean up our camp, folding up the blankets and putting all the books back on the shelves where they belong. When I get to Charlotte’s Web, I hold it a second longer, as if I can feel the imprint from Eric’s hand, still hear his words in my ears.
And then he’s back. The door jangles and I look up. “You should see some of the snowdrifts out there,” he says, breathing hard. “Took me forever to trudge through it.”
“How’s your car?” I ask, ashamed to realize I’m secretly hoping it’s stuck, that the snowplows haven’t made any progress. I just want to have him to myself, in this library utopia, a little longer.
“Nearly covered, but the plows are close. One street over,” he says.
I nod. “Good,” I say, trying to hide my disappointment.
He grabs a muffin from the box on the circulation desk and I pretend to busy myself with the computers, making sure they all come back on and boot up correctly.
“Hey,” he says, after inhaling a muffin and going back for a second one. “What are you doing for New Year’s Eve?”
I look up. “Nothing,” I say, blinking.
“Want to spend it with us? Connie said they do fireworks off the bridge downtown. We could find a place to watch them.”
I open my mouth to say something about the crowds, but he interjects: “Away from too many people.”
I’ve never been asked on a date before, and I wonder if this is it. The first time. Even if a ten-year-old will be joining us. I bite my lip to keep my smile from growing too large. “Yeah,” I say, my lips stretching farther across my face anyway. I duck my head. “Yeah. That sounds good.”