Suggested Reading

by Dave Connis

  Finally getting a response shocked me and I scrambled to recover. “I mean, not that you do feel like you’re alone. I just . . . like, I don’t feel like I belong half the time, and it’s sort of a common feeling, so I thought maybe it’d be a good descriptive sentence to explain what sort of books they were? It wasn’t a direct sentence or anything. Unless you don’t feel like you belong, but I wouldn’t know. So if you do or don’t, I don’t know. Just wanted to be clear on that. I don’t—” I stopped myself, took a breath. “I think I can find a book you like. And I’d love to hear your thoughts on whatever book it is. You probably have a unique perspective.”

  Jack looked at me like I was an idiot. A pure-blood all-American idiot. I sighed.

  “Well, sorry. I’ll see you later.”

  I walked away. Feeling like the stupidest person on the face of the planet. The very feeling that I’d always felt around the star-stars, and I couldn’t tell if it made me mad or made me feel like I actually was an all-American idiot.

  Maybe both.

  All the Wrong Fires

  The weekend passed, made up of, mostly, homework and Netflix with my dad. It was Monday and I shut the locker on three white-covered new copies of Don’t Tread on Me I’d picked up at Bookies using my LitHouse bank account (it was a business expense!) and then walked toward Honors Lit. I turned down the hall, past the library, and, as if fate wanted me to feel my shortcomings, Ashton Bricks came toward me. He looked, for lack of a better description, not good. Rushed, his right shoe untied, his hair a flighty mess, but it was more that the air around him looked . . . burned. Like on a really really hot day, when you can see the heat waves rippling off tarmac.

  I watched him, wondering if he was going to look up. I didn’t know what I’d say if he did, but I didn’t have to figure it out. He simply walked past me without a glance. I thought, then, how I might’ve broken him with the book I’d given him, Speak.

  I was doing this thing with the Unlib where the point was to prove the books weren’t garbage. Ashton, initially, had thought it was cool. A magical bridge of unpredictable awe and belief connected us. Maybe that was why he’d asked me about Jack? He’d thought I was a safe place, a harbor where he could winter for a minute, but then I wasn’t. Did it matter that I’d given him Speak? How much did the giver represent the thing given? Especially since I’d stereotyped him twice, once after apologizing. How could I sell these books in my locker as life-changing if I was acting like every other Tom, Dick, and Harry? If I wasn’t even taking into account the things the very “life-changing” book I was giving him had taught me?

  Finally, thirty seconds after Ashton had passed me, I knew what I could’ve said.

  I could’ve said, Sorry.

  I turned to look for him, but he was gone. Probably on his way to Honors Lit. I slammed my locker shut, but before I could turn to leave, the Mav appeared in front of me. Blocking what seemed like the entire hall with his Mav mass. He held a white cover in his hand, presumably Eleanor and Park.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey, Mav,” I said, not having the strength to deal with our past—well, more so his past with LiQui and what I felt about it. It didn’t seem to matter as much when I was mad at myself for being a jerk.

  He handed the white cover back to me. Had he really read it in five days?

  “What did you think of it?” I asked.

  “Of what?”

  “The Louisiana Purchase, obviously.”

  “Oh, is that that new heist movie?”

  “Cool. Want to check out another one?”

  “Another book?”

  “No. Another heist movie. This one’s called The Alaskan Purchase.”

  “Dang. You have movies, too?”

  “How did you talk LiQui into dating you?”

  The Mav pulled up his shirt and showed me a six-pack of abs.

  I sighed. “Yeah, that makes sense. Do. You. Want. To. Check. Out. Another. Book.”

  “Oh, yeah, for sure. I loved this one. It was a heartfelt exploration of the difficulties of coming into a relationship with very complex situational and socioeconomic contexts. Heartbreaking.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  He pointed at the book in my hands. I looked at the book in shock, because on the front cover, he’d written something in red pen. I held it closer to my eyes.

  “He made her feel like more than the sum of her parts,” and so did this book. Made me not think love was just the pits again.

  An “aw” started creeping up my throat, but then I realized he was talking about his breakup with LiQui. That one fire-truck-red line of ink, written on blizzard white, told me he hadn’t left LiQui because “why not,” but that he’d had some reason that neither LiQui nor I understood. Not only that, but he still hurt. There stood the Mav, who’d been for three years, in my mind at least, a six-pack with fancy hair, but then these newly conjured images of him danced in my head. Him and his grandma stalking Instagram pictures of Jeff Goldblum, and another where he pulled his car over on some back country road because a snapping turtle was crossing ahead. Him reading Eleanor and Park and turning the pages like they mattered.

  What was the Mav? What was Ashton?

  I’d thought I knew, for so long. I’d thought I knew who the Mav was, but at that moment I didn’t. Same with Ashton.

  “So, what do you have?” the Mav asked.

  “Well, what do you want?”

  He smiled. “Everything.”

  So I gave him a brand-new copy of Don’t Tread on Me, and then grabbed another copy, knowing that as soon as LiQui heard Mav was reading DTOM, she’d want to read it, too. I also grabbed copies of my fantastic four (Speak, Catcher in the Rye, Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Don’t Tread on Me) to give to Jack at Honors Lit. I knew he wouldn’t ask me for books—I’d probably already burned that bridge, if there’d ever been one—but Ashton was obviously worried about him and was asking for books for him, so I thought maybe it’d be a good gesture to give him all my favorites to start.

  The prospect of having so many copies of Don’t Tread on Me out in the world felt strange. I think because it was a weird thing to realize, you know? The communal aspect of books. They became so close to you, so ingrained in your blood, that it was like they became unpublished. The bar code, along with the memory of buying it along with five other duplicate copies, disappeared. And somewhere between the covers you’d start to think you were the only one who’d ever set eyes on the words, that there couldn’t possibly have been another person that book spoke to as much as you.

  As it had since it started, the banning showed up in my brain with its hulking frame and condescending wagging finger. Acting as a period to any happy thoughts I’d ever had about books. I sighed. Then I walked into Honors Lit, where Ms. Croft stood at the front writing Todd v. Rochester Community Schools on the blackboard.

  I sat down next to Ashton and was pulling out all my stuff when I realized the room sounded like one big whisper. As if everyone had collectively decided that Honors Lit was the trading post of secrets. Everyone had decided it was okay to talk in class. I grabbed the white covers I’d picked for Jack, and I turned toward Ashton so I could have him pass them over when I saw that Jack was gone.

  “Where is he? Is he okay?” I whispered.

  Ashton shrugged, not giving me an answer.

  “I was going to give him these,” I said. “I checked them out to him and everything.”

  Ashton took them and quickly shoved them into his backpack, then said, “I’ll get them to him.”

  I opened my mouth to apologize, this time I didn’t even know what for, but before I could say anything, Ms. Croft started talking about the new court case she’d written on the board. This one involved a man who took a public school to court because Slaughterhouse-Five contained and referenced religious matters.

  Suddenly I felt even more like circus trash. A half-eaten funnel cake. Soggy cotton candy. I felt very not like Joss and Levi, and that
made me wonder. If I was over here hating people, being angry at ridiculous grown men pretending to have noble principles, did that matter for the Unlib? Did my dirt taint the Unlib in some way? I mean, was the Unlib just a power trip like Scott had said in the cafeteria on Friday? Was I power-tripping—like Mr. Walsh but in the opposite direction? Did it matter if I was? On that thought, did it matter that I was telling people what to read? That I was handing books to Jack that I thought were beneficial? It felt like it did, even if I couldn’t see how. But, the thing was, no one else was going to push Mr. Walsh, push Lupton, like this. And someone needed to be pushing. But the pushing wasn’t why I felt bad; it was Ashton. Right?

  I nodded. But, for some reason, I still felt like I was lying to myself.

  Lonely Noodles

  Second star to the right, straight on till morning, and there was the StuCab and me. Circus trash extraordinaire. I poked at the mac and cheese. Shoving one noodle from one place to another as everyone talked about Jack Lodey’s drunken Friday night. Apparently, before he left the school parking lot, he ran his car over a lamppost and straight through the SPA fence. Then, somehow, his car still worked and he got it out and got an underage DUI on his way home. I didn’t know if the latter was true. I’d only heard that some students had seen him pulled over. The rumor about the SPA fence and lamppost being totaled was definitely true. I saw the destruction when I was parking that morning.

  I couldn’t stop thinking that I’d seen it happen and done nothing. Seen the drinking. Seen the damage of it in Ashton’s eyes, which was why the whispers bothered me, and, surely, they bothered the star-stars.

  I looked over my shoulder at the star-star table. Of course Jack wasn’t there. Ashton looked about the same as I did, hunched over his food, ignoring the banter of the rest of his friends. Watching Ashton feeling the same feelings I felt really made it hard not to stand up in the middle of the cafeteria, walk over to him, and say sorry right on the spot, but that wasn’t how it worked at LA. Tables were realms, separated by moats filled with stares and castle walls built of insecurity. To walk up to one that wasn’t yours, unless you were a preapproved social butterfly, would be as attention-getting as using an open-mic night at a bar to confess murder. It was so panem et circenses.

  But . . . then I saw him push a noodle across his plate.

  I looked down at the lone noodle on the side of my own plate, far, far away from its cheesy brothers and sisters. It was almost symbolic. There were two isolated noodles in this very cafeteria, and somehow, knowing that made my noodle feel less isolated. Like, sure, the noodle was separated from the collective mac and cheese, but it wasn’t unique in its separation. It wasn’t special. I wasn’t special. Having hurt feelings didn’t make me an ogre living in isolation; if anything, it connected me to Ashton. Two objects not alike in form but alarmingly the same in essence.

  What was the most un–panem et circenses, circus-trash thing to do?

  I grabbed my fork, stabbed my isolated noodle, stood up, and set my course toward the star-star table.

  Non-Lonely Noodles

  Until that moment, she had never thought she could do it. Never thought she would be brave enough, or scared enough, or desperate enough to dare.

  —Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

  I ignored the eyes.

  I ignored the whispers.

  I ignored the circus.

  All so I could put a noodle on some kid’s plate.

  I walked up to Ashton, fork with noodle. Ashton looked up at me, more confused than mad. I felt some heat from the other star-stars, their diamond-drill-bit eyes running all over me. Wondering why such a plebeian would dare to make contact with the celestial shores. But then, I wondered if it even was that dramatic. Maybe they were looking at me the same way the rest of the school was.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Really. I’m sorry.”

  He sat up a little straighter, gave me a quick smile, and then said, “What’s with the noodle?”

  I popped it off the tines, placed it on his plate next to his, then sat awkwardly by him. “There’s no time in this life for lonely noodles.”

  Resi turned to me, putting her back to the other star-stars. “Hey, Clara, I have your book. I can give it to you now?”

  I shook my head. “No. Not in front of the paparazzi,” I said, motioning vaguely behind me.

  “Okay. I’ll stop by your locker later,” Resi said. “Before I go home. To drop it off.”

  I nodded. “I’ll see you then.”

  “Thanks for making my noodle less lonely,” Ashton said.

  I laughed. “Don’t say that to every girl you meet.”

  He cocked his head, confused, and stood up and walked away wondering how different the day would’ve been if we’d been served corn instead of mac and cheese.

  Back at my table, I sat down and ate the mac and cheese in giant bites, shoving as many noodles as I could onto my fork tines. Cramming them on until they were popping off. I didn’t want them to be alone.

  “Uh,” Scott said, “you’re just going to eat your mac and cheese and not talk about the travesty you committed in the eyes of God and everyone else?”

  I groaned. “Can you talk about Resi or something?”

  “Can you talk about why you took a solitary noodle to Ashton Bricks?” LiQui asked.

  “Does it matter? You would’ve done the same thing.”

  LiQui’s report face appeared. “C, you know I wouldn’t have. You also know that if you don’t want to wake up with your hand in a cup of water every night for the next month, you need to spill.”

  So I spilled the basics.

  Ashton was nice.

  I was not.

  The end.

  The Light Switch

  Levi and I could hear the man’s joints creak as he walked down the stairs, torch in hand. “These lights,” he said, pointing toward the old can lights in the ceiling. “Haven’t worked for at least thirty years. They used to flicker, you see. I meant to fix them. Never did. So I turned them off. A flickering light is worse than none at all. But then I left for the war. One thing after another, you know. When I came back, I didn’t want to see this place. Took me fifteen years to even open the door. There is so much down here and most of it I can’t even recall.”

  “How come you didn’t fix them when you finally came around?” Levi asked.

  “I couldn’t remember where the switch was! Still can’t. I’ve had this idea that, if I found the switch by pure happenstance, I’d fix them and do this place justice. Let fate decide if I should throw myself back into the war. Over this way, I think.”

  “Well, if you ever do find the switch,” Levi said, “we’d love to include any books you have in our library.”

  “Hundreds, at least,” the old man said wearily. “Maybe more.”

  We followed the man into a damp basement. Dark as soot. Full to the brim with dusty boxes and nondescript objects. If it weren’t for the old man’s torch, we’d be blind.

  “I found this one in a foxhole after the Battle of Tulsa. Grabbed it and shoved it into my rucksack. There’s a few bloodstains, but they make it more poetic.”

  He handed us a black book, its covers worn, bending, creased. All the signs of love. I reached out to take it; the old man pulled back. “You swear to me that this will be cared for?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  He extended his hand again, shaking. It took just as much bravery for him to give us this book as it did for us to carry it home. My fingers wrapped around its spine.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Ah, I see this was meant to be.”

  I frowned, and, beating Levi to the question, I asked, “How so?”

  He smiled, toothy, wiry. “I believe I just found the light switch.”

  —Lukas Gebhardt, Don’t Tread on Me

  “Make him start on Catcher? Well . . . no, maybe Perks if he wants to be ready for Queso,” I said to Ashton. He’d come with Resi to drop off her co
py of Speak. “It’s a How to Survive Humanity book, which sounds sort of like what he needs? Well, I guess both of those books are How to Survive Humanity books. I don’t know—I just hope they help.”

  “Me too. I tell you what—I won’t make him start on Speak,” Ashton said. “That one’s a slayer.”

  Resi held out her copy of Speak. On the cover was a quote written in a pretty ink scrawl. I found bravery here.

  I read it once. Twice. Then looked at her. “That’s beautiful.”

  Sure.

  Maybe I needed a better reason for the Unlib, but, really, was it wrong to want to prove to Mr. Walsh that books mattered? That quote was the best I’d gotten thus far. How could you not be moved by that?

  “It was a great book,” she said.

  “Want something else?”

  She considered for a moment, then shook her head. “No, I think I’m all right for now.”

  With such a profound quote on the cover, the fact that she didn’t want to read anything else was almost devastating, but, being the nonconfrontational Clara I was, I nodded and closed the locker.

  More Attempts to Figure Out What to Speak About at the Founders Scholarship Dinner

  - From Old and Busted to New Hotness: How to Update a Library (HINT: PLANTS)

  - Tiny Little Libraries and How to Feed Them

  - Building Bridges with Books (NICE! Bridges)

  - Bringing Books to Everyone

  - How to Stab Your School Librarian in the Back

  - Gathering Lonely Noodles

  - Why Is Everything So Complicated?

  - Maybe People Are More Complex Than You Think

  - You Know What? Give the Scholarship to Someone Who Can Come Up With Something Worthwhile to Talk About

  Running on Banana-Muffin Fumes

  The week blurred by in a hubbub filled with homework and fielding texts for the Unlib what seemed like every hour. I guessed that between the Mav, Ashton, Resi, LiQui, the StuCab, and Mr. Caywell there was a lot of word of mouth going around. A lot more than I’d thought would ever happen. There was so much Unlib to do that as I drove to school that Tuesday, thinking about how puffy and crammed the day would be with Unlib hustle, I wondered how I was going to get everything done.