Row shrugged. Her need to look at both sides of an issue, to be fair in her thoughts—wobbling, as Row called it—was an impulse that he simply didn’t share. Whatever Row thought was certainly right, and he had never needed to look any deeper than that. It maddened Katie sometimes, but there was also a relief there. Row never needed to gaze backward, wondering whether he had screwed up, whether he had been unfair. The tiny mistakes he made didn’t haunt him at night.
They turned the corner onto the High Road, passing the library, where the librarian, Ms. Ziv, was just shooing the last people out of the door. The library was a huge building, the only two-story structure the Town could boast. Unlike most of the Town’s buildings, which were made of oakwood, this one had been built of brick. The library was Katie’s favorite place, always dark and quiet, with books everywhere. Row liked it as well, though his taste differed from Katie’s; he had already gone through the small section of books on the occult, but that didn’t keep him from checking them out a second time, and a third. There were strict rules for touching and handling the books, and Ms. Ziv would descend like a hawk if she caught anyone bending the pages or, heaven forbid, taking a book out of its plastic dust jacket. Katie had once asked Ms. Ziv how many books there were, and Ms. Ziv had told her in a hushed voice that there were nearly twenty thousand. She had clearly meant for Katie to be impressed, but Katie wasn’t. She went through two or three books a week. If that held true for her lifetime, she would have enough to read, but what if she didn’t like most of them? What if the ones she hadn’t read yet were checked out by other people? There were no more books, but there would surely be more people, plenty of them. Only Katie seemed to understand that twenty thousand was not many, that it was barely any at all.
Ms. Ziv finally got rid of the last stragglers. Katie waved to her, and the harried-looking librarian raised a hand in turn, then disappeared inside, shutting the library door behind her.
“Row!”
Katie turned and found Anita Berry heading toward them, nearly barreling down her porch steps. Katie didn’t have much use for Anita, but she smiled all the same, for Row’s effect on other girls never failed to entertain her. Row was extremely good-looking, even Katie knew that; it would occur to her sometimes, on those rare occasions when she looked at Row outside the lens of their friendship. Nature had gifted him with the face of an angel: high cheekbones with soft hollows beneath them, and a wide, somehow beautiful mouth. His thick hair, so brown it was almost black, fell over his forehead, nearly obscuring his black eyes. He had a magnetism that attracted a string of admirers, not all of them teenagers. More than once, Katie had seen older women flirting with him, and sometimes older men.
“Hi, Anita,” Row replied. “We’re in a rush; talk to you in school.”
Katie smothered a grin as they walked off, leaving Anita looking crestfallen. Row elbowed her in the ribs, and she grinned at him. Row knew what he did to women; it was a game to him. Katie took a strange pride in all of this attention, a pride she didn’t wholly understand. She and Row had bypassed attraction completely, moving on to something finer and stronger than sex: friendship, tight and loyal and bound, nothing like the friendships Katie saw among other girls her age, who seemed only interested in gossiping and backstabbing. Katie had never had sex—some quick, clumsy groping with Brian Lord was the nearest she had come—but her friendship with Row was such that she felt certain sex could only divide them.
When they reached Row’s house, he paused, staring with distaste at the front door, where his mother waited. Despite Row’s popularity, no one liked Mrs. Finn. She was a nervous, weepy sort of woman, constantly saying the wrong thing. Row could do no wrong in his mother’s eyes, but he did not love her for her loyalty; the most he appeared to feel for her was contemptuous indifference.
“Don’t want to go in yet?” Katie asked.
Row grinned ruefully, lowering his voice. “Sometimes I want to just move out, you know? Just build my own house, across town . . . except I think she would follow me there, knock on my door all day and night.”
Katie didn’t reply, but privately she thought that Row was right. Row’s father had been one of William Tear’s good friends, but Mr. Finn had died just after the Landing, and Mrs. Finn clung to Row with a desperation that was downright embarrassing. Mrs. Finn put things in perspective for Katie; Katie’s own mother brooked no nonsense, but she was tough and fair, one of the most respected women in town. Mum gave Katie very little leeway, but she also didn’t smother or humiliate her in front of other people.