Suggested Reading

by Dave Connis

  The space was dotted with plants. A lot of plants. Ficus. Fern. Fiddle-leaf fig. Peace lily. All donated by a student’s parents who owned a big plant nursery on the outskirts of town. It was fancy for a library, but that was how Mr. Caywell and I liked it. Plants. Computers. Comfy chairs. Books. Coffee. Wi-Fi.

  What else could you want?

  There were, typically, two things you could count on from the library: overpopulation of state-mandated health-related brochures and Mr. Caywell sitting behind the desk at the back of the room. That morning, though, only the brochures were in their rightful place. Mr. Caywell was nowhere to be seen.

  “Mr. Caywell?” I called, but nothing came back.

  I walked behind the desk, then through the door to the processing room, a shallow but long rectangular cleaning closet overrun with book donations, old decorations, magazines, yellowing newspapers, and who knew what else. “Mr. Caywell?” I called again. “Are you here? We need to talk about Lukas’s newest book. Hello?”

  I spun on my heel and looked at his computer through the processing room door. It was on. His email was up.

  I hadn’t been raised in a barn. At least not to my recollection. I couldn’t remember life before five years old, but I did know that I wasn’t supposed to read other people’s emails. On the Universal List of Things to Do to Avoid Being a Massive Trash Being, not reading other people’s mail was number three, behind thou shall not murder and thou shall not give away spoilers for popular TV shows on social media.

  So when I saw the email open on his computer, I swear I looked away.

  But then my brain said, Hey, Clara, I’m pretty sure that email said confidential. You should check that to make sure, and, in my weakness, despite the 95 percent probability that I hadn’t been raised in a barn, I said out loud, “Yeah, okay.”

  The Email Sitting on a Missing Mr. Caywell’s Computer

  Part A: The Email

  To: All Faculty, All Staff

  From: m.walsh@luptonacademy.edu

  Subject: FWD: Confidential—School Policy Updates

  To Our Wonderful Faculty and Staff,

  The school board has met multiple times over the summer, and we’re pleased to announce to staff the following amended changes to school policies and procedures. We request that these changes be kept confidential until the public announcements are approved by the board.

  a) Please remind students that no one is allowed past the railroad tracks during class hours unless crossing the Earth Foods greenway with permission to leave school. It’s also advised, though the tracks are inactive, not to lie on them or use them for filming a death scene, or, rather, any scene for a student film without permission. Considering our location, it’s important that any filming be cleared through the correct channels, including our neighbors, so that they do not think an actual murder is taking place.

  b) The hours for the SnackBox have changed in an attempt to ease campus congestion during games. You can now order food starting a half hour before game start time. Go Volcanoes!

  c) Lupton Academy is a private school built on core principles we’ve believed since our founding: Focus. Knowledge. Impact. Focus leads to knowledge and knowledge leads to impact, in our students and, ultimately, in the world. To support our core principles, we’re expanding our list of prohibited media. The consequences for bringing such media or discussing it on school property follow our current disciplinary framework: three strikes to suspension.

  Part B: My Subsequent Reaction

  B.1: THOUGHTS

  “Prohibited media”? It sounded somewhat innocuous, but something pulled at my gut, telling me that it was policy-ese. Synonyms for prohibited included banned. Synonyms for media included books, videos, board games, and games, and considering that LA didn’t seem like it’d wage war on Uno, nor did its students spend any time watching TV at school, then what was left?

  Digging myself deeper into a privacy-invading hole, I opened the PDF attached to the email and was met with a list of over fifty “prohibited” books.

  The Catcher in the Rye for “unsuitable language.”

  Beloved for “exuberant violence, sexual material, and language.”

  Flowers for Algernon for “offensive representation of a mentally disabled character.”

  And the masterpiece.

  The finishing touch.

  Don’t Tread on Me for “divisive content, homosexuality,” and some other legalistic ass-covering BS that didn’t make a lick of sense.

  “Go jump off the Market Street Bridge, Lupton Academy.”

  B.2: OTHER THOUGHTS

  WTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTF

  The Stewing of Clara Evans

  It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime. . . .

  —Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

  “What?” I said to the screen, then promptly stared at it for what seemed like hours, even though it was impossible for it to actually have been that long, because I hadn’t heard the bell ring. Or maybe I hadn’t heard the bell ring because I was so mad. Not only that, but I wasn’t even supposed to know, so I couldn’t even talk about it with anyone. I’d have to die bitter and alone, holding on to the secret that ruined my senior year.

  “What’s up, Clara? Long time no see. How was your summer?” a voice said. I looked up. It was Mr. Caywell. Typically, that was when a normal human would say, Hi, yeah, for real, I haven’t seen you in so long, and then ask about the other person’s summer, but because I’d apparently been raised in a barn, I didn’t. I just looked at him with my mouth hanging open.

  After a long stretch of silence without getting an answer, he answered for me. “‘It was good, Mr. Caywell. I had a great time and don’t want it to end.’ Ha. Well, you’re a senior now, so you’ve only got to deal with Lupton one last time.” He switched back to a fake-me voice. “‘But I’ll miss it so much. You’ve changed my life, and I’m going to go make millions of dollars because of the education you’ve given me and then make an anonymous gift to the school, simply so you can have an untouched acquisitions budget for the rest of your tenure here.’”

  I said nothing.

  He frowned, then looked at me standing behind the desk, and then cursed. “You read the email.”

  I nodded.

  “Clara.”

  “I know. I know. Don’t read other people’s emails.”

  He stormed behind the desk and minimized the browser window, as if doing so could make me unsee it. “You can’t tell anyone about this. If you do, I’ll get in serious trouble. You’re not supposed to know this.”

  “Were you going to keep the juicy tidbit that the school is planning to ban fifty books all to yourself? ‘Hey, Clara, pull these fifty books off the shelf, please.’”

  “Calm down, and, yeah, that’s what I was going to do. Are you staff? No. You’re not.”

  “I’m more staff than that adjunct teacher Walden What’s-his-face.”

  He held up a finger to object, but then nodded.

  “What do we do?” I asked. “This is like . . . exactly what they did when they tried to ban The Hunger Games.”

  “Tried to ban?” he asked. “They did ban The Hunger Games. And The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And The Color Purple, but those two were before your time.” He looked around, check
ing to see if anyone was listening. “I’m pushing back on it. Fifty is ridiculous. That’s why I wasn’t here when you intruded on my inbox. I was looking for Dr. Walsh.”

  “Did you find him?”

  He nodded. “Barely.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m not going to give you any more details. You’re not even supposed to know this is happening.”

  “Mr. Caywell. Come on. Who fixed the computer-bar outlet problem?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Who got Greentree Furniture to donate the library shelves?”

  He rolled his eyes, grabbed a bunch of new books off the cart next to the desk, and started putting them onto the shelves. I followed him.

  “Who upgraded the cloud storage on the tablets, got the Von Lemetts to donate copies of Photoshop for each computer in the library, and keeps your desk clean?”

  “Clara, it’s not going to happen. Let it go.”

  I crossed my arms. “Who was going to organize the processing room this year?”

  He looked at me. “You wouldn’t not organize the processing room.”

  “I’m a volunteer. I don’t have to do anything.”

  “You’re physically unable to quit this place.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  He sighed. “Okay, but this does not leave this library. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “I need you to say it out loud with your words. “‘I, Clara Evans, understand that this doesn’t leave the library on penalty of being banned from the library.’”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Fine. Fine. I, Clara Evans, understand that this doesn’t leave the library.”

  “‘Under penalty.’”

  “Whatever—that’s understood.”

  “‘Under. Penalty.’”

  I sighed. “Under penalty of being banned from the library.”

  “‘In Jesus’s name, amen.’”

  “In Jesus’s name, amen.”

  “The board and Principal Walsh want me to pull all the banned books from the library.”

  “Didn’t the school want you to pull The Hunger Games from the shelves? They’re still there, though. Right?”

  “All three copies have ‘mysteriously’ disappeared off the shelves. Actually, if you bring it up in the system, it says we have copies of The Hunger Games, The Color Purple, and Huck Finn, but if you check the shelves, they’re all gone.”

  “Are you serious? I didn’t know that. How did I not know that?”

  “I don’t know. Why would you if you weren’t paying attention? You probably thought they were either checked out or lost.”

  “Why haven’t you done anything, Mr. Caywell?”

  He laughed. It was a laugh of context. Context I didn’t understand. “I’ve done what I can, but the crux of the matter is we’re not a public institution. I’m at the whim of the board and the administration. If I made a huge to-do about it, I’d lose my job. I’d rather be here to point students in alternative directions, or even to point them toward checking the book out at the Chattanooga Library, than not be here at all. Sometimes the game has to be played by someone else’s rules. And sometimes those rules don’t benefit the players. The thing is, if you don’t play the game at all, you can’t help others win.”

  I plopped in his chair, stunned.

  Levi.

  Joss.

  Guy Montag.

  Katniss Everdeen.

  Clara Evans.

  A history of heavy-handed administration. Right under my nose, and I hadn’t even known.

  Tiny Little Libraries

  A lot of people were afraid of silence, but, in my experience, the silence was where most of my best ideas came from. It was no different standing in front of the cave. No different when I wondered: What if we welded the world back together where no one was looking for a seam? What if we started a library?

  —Lukas Gebhardt, Don’t Tread on Me

  “I’m so mad I could film a murder scene on the train tracks.”

  “You don’t want the neighbors to freak out.” He reached under his desk, then put a yellow metal bucket of cookies-and-cream Hershey’s Kisses in front of me.

  “Are these supposed to make me complicit? How many more times are they going to pull books? They’re pulling Bridge to Terabithia, East of Eden, Invisible Man, both of Lukas’s books—literally any book that’s about something is gone. Those are the books that changed my life. How can they pull those? God. They can just do whatever they want. No one cares. Panem et circenses.” I grabbed a handful of Kisses anyway, unwrapping three and shoving them all in my mouth.

  I looked out the window, catching a glimpse of a row of massive magnolia trees lining the front entrance to the school. The magnolias reminded me of standing outside only twenty minutes ago. Back when I thought I could hear nature symphonies. Now all I could hear was blood rushing through my ears.

  “Ugh, I’b so mab.”

  “Well, take comfort in the fact that I’m not pulling them,” he said. “It’ll be like all the other times. I silently don’t pull them. They silently disappear. I silently put donated copies back into circulation. Those silently disappear.”

  Silently.

  Silence.

  Where the best ideas come from.

  The thought trickled into my head just like that.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said, grabbing the chair rails. “Let’s pull all the books they want to get rid of and I’ll keep them safe until something happens.”

  He frowned. “Or nothing happens, which is more likely the case. You need to realize that.”

  “Let me do it,” I said. “It’ll be fine. I’ll get them off school campus; no one will know. I’ll disperse them into the TLLs.”

  “The TLLs?”

  “Tiny Little Libraries? The things that made me a finalist for the Founders Scholarship? The things that are going to bring me to Vanderbilt?”

  “You’re a Founders Scholarship finalist? I didn’t know that. Wow. Congrats, Clara. That’s huge! My sister was a Founders Scholar back in the day.”

  I smiled for the first time since I’d read the horrid email. “Thank you.”

  “Wow, that’s incredible. We should talk more about that, but, anyway, so you’d take the books and put them in your libraries? How many do you run?”

  “Well, the organization runs them.”

  “The organization?”

  “Mr. Caywell, did you not read any of my emails this summer?”

  He grimaced.

  I frowned. “I started a nonprofit called LitHouse that accepts book donations, runs the TLLs, and also gets high-quality books donated to school libraries in need. We just got a grant from the Offerson Foundation.”

  “No sh—idding. That’s incredible. What kind of superhuman are you?”

  I shrugged. “I was bored over the summer.”

  “When I was your age, and I got bored in the summer, I just smoked weed.”

  “I mean, my choices were between help the city and smoke weed.”

  Mr. Caywell considered my idea. “If these books are disappearing anyway, they might as well go to another place where they’ll be used. That’s a good idea, Clara. It sucks that we have to do this, but that’s the best outcome I can think of. This is awesome.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

  A few seconds of silence ticked by.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “Why start a book nonprofit? Why not smoke weed?”

  “Like I said—”

  “No.” Mr. Caywell cut me off with an all-knowing smile. “No, that’s not it. Give me the real why.”

  “Well, my parents were—and still are, I guess—airtight budgeters, and because of that, they’re terrified of library overdue fines. I loved books; we couldn’t afford them. So the deal was I could go to the library to read, but I couldn’t check things out. We went to the library a lot. An
d the library days were some of my favorite memories. The only problem with the deal was, I always wanted to bring the books home.”

  He nodded. “Books will do that to you. Did you ever sneak one out?”

  I faked a gasp. “I would never desecrate the Dewey decimal system with that sort of heresy.”

  He crossed his arms.

  “Yes. Well, for a little while I snuck books from the library by dropping them out the only first-floor window without a screen, which I still feel guilty for. But one day I found a stranger’s library card and I used that to check out books. Never got in trouble. And I also want to note that I never once got overdue fines, well, or the person whose card I stole never got fines. Anyway, all this is to say I didn’t think it was great for me to have to drop books out windows so I could read, and I didn’t want having books in the house to be as hard for other kids as it was for me. So, I . . . started the thing.”

  “Do you still use that library card?”

  “No, I finally got my own card last year and swore on a Bible to my dad that I’d pay for overdue fines if I needed to.”

  He nodded, then waved toward the stacks. “Then take them. But you better do it quick. Dr. Walsh knows I’m not going to pull them, so I’d bet anything he’s already dispatched the order to his minions.”

  I nodded, opening his email back up and printing out the list.

  “Hey!” He said. “Seriously? That’s still my private inbox.”

  “I need a list so I can know what to pull!”

  “Well . . . just . . . shred it or something when you’re done.”

  I grabbed the list from the printer and got to work.

  “Where are you going to put them for now?” he asked, then said, “Actually, you know what? I don’t want to know.” He stood up from his chair, and walked out from behind his desk. “I’m going to go to the bathroom and then find Dr. Walsh and tell him we’re getting rid of the books. That’ll keep him at bay for a bit.” He paused; then, louder than necessary, he said, “Whatever you do, don’t touch those banned books.”

  I smiled, and in the same louder-than-necessary tone said, “Yes, Mr. Caywell, sir.”