Suggested Reading

by Dave Connis

  “Perks?”

  “Maybe? I saw it on your Facebook group but I can’t remember. I think it had a longer name and something to do with being wallpaper.”

  I nodded and grabbed a copy of Perks out of the locker. “Perks. Phone number?”

  “Lazy. Grab it from my text last night.”

  “Can you just give it to me? I don’t wanna exit the app.”

  He gave it to me, and as I typed the numbers in, he said, “You know, it seems to me like you’re coming at me with some class-perception problems.”

  “It sounds to me like you’ve never wanted to talk to me before and I don’t know you very well.”

  “It sounds to me like we’ve never sat next to each other in a class before, so talking to you wasn’t a natural thing until now.”

  “It sounds to me like you just like to stick with your own friends.”

  “It sounds to me like that’s what you do in high school and what you really mean by ‘friends’ is ‘income bracket.’”

  I didn’t have anything to say.

  He shook his head, snatched the book out of my hands, and walked away from me again, and, for some reason, that time, I somehow felt like the bigger jerk.

  Lost in the War

  The rest of that day, I did my best to ignore the fact that walking the halls the second day of my library’s existence filled me with a thousand pounds more paranoia than the day before. It wasn’t supposed to have had that effect, but alas, there I was.

  I felt on edge walking between classes, sitting in classes, existing, listening to Ms. Croft finishing her Tinker v. Des Moines lecture. Even though she was talking right to my library, I was feeling like, at any moment, I could be busted for pushing good literature out of my locker. I wasn’t a sneaky person. The most I’d ever sneaked was a book out a window. Every single Magic Tree House book. I’d felt like an anxious felon doing it and even cried a few times. Now, the pressure pushed at me. I wasn’t super sure what I wanted to do for a living, but this was making me realize I’d never make it as a criminal.

  I slid through the food line, feeling anxious and short-fused. I proved I was both when one of the lunch workers asked me what I wanted as a side and my immediate reaction was “whatever,” and I didn’t mean it in the “I’m ambivalent” way.

  “You look more miserable,” LiQui said as I walked up to our table. “Did you just backtalk sweet Ms. Craig?”

  I nodded as I sat. “Probably. I don’t even know.”

  The StuCab minions, Scott and Avi, sat down at the same time.

  “How’s the book business going?” Scott asked.

  “So . . . LiQui told you?”

  He nodded.

  I’d known word would spread, and I’d wanted it to, but there was something that felt reckless about having people blabbing my secret to everyone. I’d rather it have taken root slowly and silently than with a blaze of flashy fire. I looked at LiQui with a Hey, do you mind not sharing my illegal library with everyone? face. She grimaced, a silent apology.

  “It’s . . . manageable, so far? It’s making me paranoid, though.”

  “The Unlib?” LiQui asked.

  “Unlib?” I asked. “Oh,” I said. “Underground library. Clever.”

  LiQui rolled her eyes. “Speaking the full form of the abbreviation defeats the purpose of making one.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s hard to keep up when you feel like you’re hiding a dead body in your backyard. I don’t know, maybe this whole . . . Unlib thing isn’t a good idea. I mean, they did it in Don’t Tread on Me, but that’s fiction. Do I dare disturb the universe?”

  “What is that from?” LiQui asked. “I know that. What is it?”

  “It’s T. S. Eliot, but really I’m quoting The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier.”

  “You read that for Queso, right? A long time ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  LiQui nodded. “I loved that book. You know what, maybe I will read that perky book you gave me.”

  “Perks. The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”

  “Yeah, that. So here’s my Q for you: Why are you doing the Unlib?”

  I stared at her.

  “Hello?” she asked after I didn’t answer.

  “I think because I was inspired to fight the system by Don’t Tread on Me and Ms. Croft.”

  As soon as I said it, I knew it wasn’t right—well, at least that it wasn’t the whole story.

  “So you’re doing it because a book told you to?” LiQui asked. “That’s not what you said when you wrote that letter.”

  “I mean, no. There’s more to it than that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, those books changed my life, and Mr. Walsh shouldn’t be able to just ban them, and I want to prove him wrong. They are valuable.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s wrong.”

  “Right, but why is it wrong?”

  “Because these books changed my life.”

  “So you’re running the Unlib because the books he banned changed your life?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why does that make banning books wrong?”

  “Because . . .”

  “Well, no wonder you’re feeling flimsy about it all,” Scott added randomly. “You don’t even know why it’s wrong. You’re revenge Unlibbing. Power-tripping.”

  “He’s got a point,” LiQui said.

  I scoffed. I didn’t know Scott very well, and there he was telling me I was power-tripping. “So do y’all want me to stop the Unlib until I’m not doing it out of revenge? I already did all the work. People are already checking out books. Besides, if I don’t do this, who’s going to stand up to Mr. Walsh? No one.”

  “Chill,” LiQui said. “No one’s attacking you. Y’all, did you see my new video?” I shot LiQui a thank you for changing the subject glance.

  I looked across the cafeteria and saw Ashton sitting at the star-star table. And for the first time, I wondered if I was pinning him all wrong, and if I’d been doing it since freshman year. Had I been wrong about what I’d thought was so right? Was I just another person who hated people?

  Suddenly I was worried about having gotten Ashton completely wrong, because I felt like if I could be that person, the kind of person who hated without noticing, then I could be wrong about anything.

  I Solemnly Swear to Not Understand Football

  There is nothing that will add depth to despair like the feeling of deserving it.

  —David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

  Cocky swagger boys. Lights. Thick pads. Grunting. Not my idea of an invigorating night out, but games were games and support was support.

  Lupton Academy loved football. The academic year seemed to orbit around the Lupton Vols, and, even if you didn’t like football, you showed up at the games because it was what you did. I sat with LiQui on the bleachers. Typically, I either brought a book to read or used the time to answer LitHouse emails, getting donations picked up, sorted, and brought to where they needed to go. I initially did all the LitHouse stuff myself, but I eventually partnered with a local juvenile rehab program that brought their participants into the mix, trading their work for any book they wanted. I loved knowing there were kids getting fresh air and fresh words and, also, giving me free time again.

  Now, at the start of senior year, I was simply pointing fingers, telling people where to go, and shaking the hands of new connections.

  “We’re looking undeniably like a picnic,” I said, taking a break from emails and tucking the blanket under my legs. “Is the Mav still the . . . chase receiver?”

  “Not a position,” LiQui said.

  “What is he, then?” I asked.

  “Wide receiver,” LiQui added.

  “So he catches the ball?”

  “No, he runs in place to keep the field warm so others don’t get stuck in the grass.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know you had to do that.”

  “You don’t, C. You don’t ne
ed to keep the field warm. Were you raised in a barn?”

  I nodded. Accepting it. “Yes.”

  I might not have had physical evidence, but there was enough mental evidence leading me to believe I’d been born in a hayloft and raised by chickens who read people’s emails and didn’t understand the football, the official language of the South. Some people will tell you it’s English. Don’t buy it.

  “What does it mean when the ref does that squirrelly thing with his hands?” I asked.

  LiQui laughed. “You make paying attention impossible.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “Would you like me to suddenly be entertained by football after three years of not being entertained by football?”

  “It’s not a lot to ask,” LiQui said. “I started the application to Vandy last night.”

  “Qui! The plan is in motion! Yes!”

  There were very few things that were set in stone in my life. When LiQui and I met in elementary school, our friendship became one of them, and the two of us going to Vanderbilt University together was the other. These things were nonnegotiable. The problem was, neither of us could really afford to go to Vanderbilt, so we’d both decided to make our own way. Luckily for LiQui, her grandparents had stepped in and paid her way to come to Lupton and also promised to pay for her to go to Vanderbilt—with some stipulations. Luckily for me, I was a massive nerd and did some (apparently) cool things with books, and that had scored me a place as a Founders Scholarship finalist.

  “How’s the grandparent problem?” I asked.

  “Permanent. Gramps is still preaching, ‘You go to Vanderbilt and get that business degree. You do good for yourself. Then you can do the same thing I’m doing for you for your grandkids.’ Hard to say no when they’ve footed the bill for all your education.”

  “Wasn’t a business degree what you wanted?”

  She laughed. “I’m seventeen. So far the things I’ve wanted to be have ranged from spaceship designer to YouTube star. I don’t know what I want. I mean, a business degree sounded good because it meant an actual job with a promise of cash in contrast to the other degrees. I’ve just been wondering . . . what if there’s something else I want to do? I’ve never asked because I’ve always been told what is what.”

  “Well, is there something else?” I asked.

  She shrugged, and the silence that followed was a sign that the convo was done. We watched the Mav make a catch, juke the outside linebacker (yes? That’s a thing, right?), and then make a sixty-yard run for a touch-point goal. The obligatory teammate-pile-on-the-guy-who-scored unraveled quickly when the coach started screaming, hulk-stomping his way over to the writhing victory amoeba.

  “Wait,” I said, “did we not just score?”

  “Nah, we did. Coach Camper is always mad about something someone did wrong.”

  Her voice was tight. Curt. I wasn’t sure what I’d said, and I had to pee. So I stood.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “Stay away from the third stall from the door,” LiQui said. “Some sort of homicide happened in there and it smells like eighty sweaty jock pits.”

  “At least it’s not eighty-one,” I said as I undertook the walk of shame to the bathroom/SnackBox area. The bathrooms were backed into the farthest corner of the school, and there was only a good four feet in between the bathroom wall and the SPA fence. There was a big streetlight right above the structure, but it was still laid out in a way that, if you wanted to make out, it was only a matter of sliding between the bathroom and the fence. Everyone knew this, which was why no one looked in that space when they went to the bathroom.

  I had the same intentions. There was nothing different about this bathroom trip—at least, that was what I believed until I saw a backpack with a white cover sticking out of it sitting by the fence gap. Confused, curious, and a little frustrated at the recklessness, I wanted to know what patron of mine was being so willy-nilly with my books after I’d said to be as careful as possible. Beyond all sense, I stepped off the designated make-out-free path and peeked around the forbidden corner.

  Jack Lodenhauer was there, one hand pulling a PBR out of a twelve-pack sitting on the ground. I didn’t know it was him at first—it was dark—but he was one of the shortest guys at LA, and his pointy hair was a silhouette that stuck into the darkness the same way it stuck into the light.

  I stared at him for way too long, and before I had the sense to pull my head back around the corner, he turned. Our eyes met and I jerked back, rushing into the women’s bathroom, praying to God that Jack Lodey hadn’t seen me and wondering why on earth he had one of my white covers, when I’d never checked one out to him. Probably Ashton. Or maybe Resi. Was Jack reading Speak?

  I normally wasn’t a germophobe, but the field bathrooms made me one. They were LA’s weakness. No matter how hard the Maintenance and Operations department tried, they always looked like someone had intentionally peed on everything. Every surface had some sort of dampness on it, and the third stall was, as prophesied, home to some sort of unspeakable evil, so I walked all the way to the last stall. Then I made a toilet-seat cover out of toilet paper and did my best not to let anything but the soles of my shoes touch the floor.

  After washing my hands, I stuck my head out the bathroom door, listening for any sign of Jack Lodey, and when I decided that the only thing I heard was the wind whipping through the fence, I speed-walked out of there.

  I turned the corner and ran straight into Ashton. With the same backpack I’d seen by the bathrooms, the white cover now gone. Maybe it had been Ashton’s all along.

  “Sorry! Oh man, I’m—” He turned and saw it was me. When he did, his face soured and he looked irritated instead of apologetic.

  “Am I a lemon?” I asked, the question flying out of my mouth before I could stop it. Did I not have a filter? What on earth?

  “What? No. Sorry.” His face softened as if the comment shamed him into being polite, which he didn’t need to be after our last conversation. He looked back toward the bathrooms.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “About this morning. I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t mean to pigeonhole you like that.”

  He shrugged. “I’m used to it. Actually . . . okay, I have a question for you.”

  I cocked my head.

  He waited for a long few seconds, then waved me off with a “Never mind. It’s stupid.”

  “What? No. You’ve got me curious now. You have to ask.”

  He frowned, but not in a mean way. It was a frown that said, I wish I didn’t have to ask this question at all.

  “Not to be creepy,” he said, “but would you mind . . . pulling back a bit? Like, so we can talk without hungry ears around?”

  We walked behind the bleachers, not completely out of eyesight, but enough that if anyone were to see us, we’d be suspicious. Lava lamps in a fancy furniture store. It stood out to me that I’d somehow wound up in both universally agreed “no-no” areas of LA football games in one night. I hadn’t thought that starting a banned-book library was the type of thing that would bring me to such dark alleys and dangerous places.

  “What’s up?” I asked. “To what do I owe the pleasure of Ashton Bricks pulling me behind the bleachers?”

  “Ha. Extra, extra! So,” he started. “Uh, I’ve got this friend who’s like . . . I don’t know. Who’s like . . . absolutely miserable with his life for completely valid reasons, but because of it, he’s slowly destroying his life? And I don’t really know what to do. But he’s . . . they’ve started reading books to cope, I think. Do you have any book recs or something that could help? Me or him?”

  Oh, Jack Lodenhauer. So not all was money, King Ranch trucks, and fancy shirts in Lodey land.

  My thoughts must have shown on my face, because he shrugged and then laughed at my silence. “Why did I think this was a good idea? I knew where you stood this morning. We’re not supposed to have problems. We’re the rich kids. We’ve got it all. I don’t want to miss the game. I’ll see you lat
er, Clara. Thanks.”

  He said it like a joke, but it wasn’t. It was sharp as a knife edge and as gritty as sandpaper, stuffed with a heaviness, maybe from dealing with a lost friend, maybe from yet another disappointment that a person he’d thought would listen had written him off . . . again.

  Maybe, just like the rest of the world.

  I was the world.

  And as soon as he walked away, it didn’t feel great.

  I couldn’t watch dudes running around and grunting. I couldn’t sit still. I kept thinking about Ashton. LiQui was super into the game, as was always the case, so I got up and decided to find Ashton and apologize. I wandered along the bleachers, looking for where the star-stars sat. I saw Resi and the rest of the crew, but not Jack and Ashton.

  I’d decided to brave the bathroom area again when I saw Jack standing in the food line of the SnackBox. In that moment, the most unexpected thought came over me:

  I needed to talk to Jack Lodenhauer.

  I needed to apologize to him for being a jerk at Queso.

  I didn’t know why, all of a sudden, I felt the need to apologize to a star-star. Maybe it was because I felt like I owed Ashton? Maybe it was because my interactions with Ashton had made me realize that I wasn’t as empathetic as I thought I was. Maybe it was because I realized that yelling someone out of Queso wasn’t a thing that the book gods would ever stand for. Whatever the reason, I had to do it. It was as if the moment I had the thought, it imprinted itself into my DNA.

  I took a deep breath, thinking of Levi and Joss and their grand kindness, and walked up to him.

  “Jack?” I asked.

  He ignored me.

  “Jack?” I asked again, standing right in front of him. He looked at me, but said nothing.

  “Look, I wanted to apologize for bitching you out of Queso. I just . . . yeah . . . I’m sorry. Please come back if you want.”

  He nodded.

  “Oh, and, um, I’ll hook you up with some books? I know some good ones that’ll make you feel like you aren’t alone. That you belong.”

  He looked up at me. “Why would you say that?”