by Dave Connis
That fall, my dad and I were running on schedules that had us going and leaving five minutes before the other. If I had some downtime at the house, he probably wouldn’t be home, but without fail he’d get home either right before I left or a few minutes after. He was, and I say this without shame, a used-car salesman, so his hours were wonky. The good news was he was good at it. He had this unexplainable family-friendly look about him. Something about him—maybe it was his swoopy hair; name the last time you met a salesman with dark swoopy hair—said, This man is freaking safe.
“You must be her,” he said, holding a hand out. “My name’s Kevin Evans. I own the house you’ve been living in.”
I shook his hand, happy he’d led with a joke. If he was joking, then this wasn’t going to kill me. Maybe I was reaping the benefits of having been too scared to be rebellious for most of my teenage career. “Pleased to meet you, sir. You own a fine establishment here. My only feedback is that the toilet paper could be softer.”
He grabbed my backpack out of my hands and put it on the table, then wrapped me in his arms and pulled me into a hug. “I hear you’ve been up to things.”
“Yep,” I said. “Mostly just hanging out in dark alleys and taking selfies.”
“What a daughter.”
“What happened?” Mom asked, getting straight to it.
I pulled back from Dad’s hug and then launched into the explanation I’d decided I felt comfortable giving. I told them about the banned-book list that no one knew about. About wanting to do something about it, but not that I was doing something about it. I told them about being caught with the copies of The Chocolate War from the library, except I blamed Mr. Caywell. I talked about figuring out the tricks of LA, about them saying they had a list but not actually having one. I told them about everything, excluding the Unlib.
I didn’t tell them because I already knew it was dangerous, and I knew all the stuff that they’d say—I didn’t need them telling me. I was already struggling with it. Feeling stupid for not knowing what to do. I didn’t need them guilt-tripping up my way forward. I wanted whatever happened to be my choice.
“I don’t know if that was smart, Clara.” Mom’s poetic cadence was gone, and she talked like a normal person. Always a bad sign.
“Jessica,” Dad said, but she ignored him.
“What do you mean, specifically? There’s a lot of things I told you,” I asked.
“You have one year left and you’re swearing at teachers? Playing with fire by pushing the limits with school rules?”
“Mom, I wasn’t doing it to be rebellious. I was mad. Having a bad day. It’s frustrating that my bad days are deep-seated issues with my character and every adult’s bad days are just bad days. I don’t get together with LiQui and plot how to cuss out every teacher.”
“I understand about the teacher,” she said calmly. “I guess I wonder about the pushing of the rules. What do you want from that?”
“I want to know what possible reasons these ridiculous policies are built on. Why it’s considered a crime for me to read these books.”
She nodded. “Those are good questions, but don’t let fists replace the hard work of compassion and kindness.”
“What are you trying to say, Mom? Just say it.”
“Clara, easy,” Dad said. “I know you’re feeling attacked, but Mom is”—Mom shot Dad a glance of fire—“we’re worried you’ll jeopardize your chances for the Founders Scholarship. If you get in trouble at school, you could lose it.”
“Well,” Mom added, “Kevin, I’m not talking about the Founders Scholarship. That’s not the point I’m trying to make right now. I’m saying I don’t want Clara to turn into someone who’s seeing demons behind every door. Waiting for something to protest. Living offended all the time. Looking for things to be mad at. That’s more important to me than anything else.”
“I mean, yes, fair, those are good things,” Dad said. “Okay.”
I rolled my eyes. “You say this like I get angry about things as much as I read books.”
“I know you don’t do that, Clara,” Mom said. “I just want you to think about it. That’s all. I’m with you on the fact that those policies don’t seem right. And I’m not against protesting or figuring out how to bring change through speaking out, but protests can’t stop at a fist in the air. And they also can’t stop with yelling. In our time, kindness is almost as revolutionary as protest, and I’d rather you be a rebel of kindness than a rebel of protest.”
“Mom, I tried,” I said, my voice sharpening in frustration. “I tried doing it the kind way. Writing a letter with my student-body president, inviting LA to talk to me about it. It was denied. What happens if all that’s left is fighting?”
“Then fight, kindly.”
I groaned. “What does that even mean?”
“A strong left hook to knock them out. An outstretched hand to help them up.”
The room was silent, until finally Dad said, “The call was . . . a tad bit of a shock to us. The girl whose biggest rebellion has been staying up all night to read a book is also the girl who cussed at her teacher and tried to find a loophole in a rule.”
“First of all, you know about the Evans Highlighter All-Nighter?”
My mom laughed. “Did you think it was pure magic that highlighters just appeared in your drawer when school started?”
I honestly considered what I had thought. “I think I thought they were the same ones from last time.”
“Not possible. Highlighters disappear in this house.” Mom glanced a loaded look at Dad, who I’d stolen my love of orange highlighters from. He used them to highlight sections in magazines, nonfiction books he picked up from bargain bins. Words he liked in crossword puzzles. He even wrote notes with them. That’s where my love of them stopped. Reading a neon-yellow Post-it note written with orange highlighter stuck to a blue front door at 6:30 in the morning is a special kind of misery that I’d rather not perpetuate.
“My whole life has been a lie. How long have you known?”
“Always,” Dad said. “Just like Snape.”
I laughed and was about to respond, when Mom cut me off.
“We’re getting off topic.”
I sighed. “It’s not a big deal, seriously. The teacher was just a bad day. The loophole was just curiosity.”
I guessed that was the problem with rarely pushing boundaries. When you did, regardless of what it was, suddenly you were reading The Anarchist Cookbook, getting a face tattoo, and smoking weed in the bathroom. It was frustrating beyond belief. No one was perfect, yet it seemed like I wasn’t allowed to have imperfections or bad days. You were either an A student who never got in trouble or you were face-tattoo daughter. When I told my parents it wasn’t a big deal, it wasn’t that I wanted them to stop asking questions; I wanted them to let me fall in the middle of the two. To not worry that they’d somehow failed in their parenting.
“We’re proud of you for all you’ve done in the last two years,” Dad said. “We just didn’t know you were having all of these problems with the school. You should’ve told us.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I feel like there’s not much you can do about it.”
He shrugged. “Well, you can use us as sounding boards.”
“We also want you to not live an offended and, therefore, a defensive and angry life,” Mom added.
“Oh my God, Mom. Okay. I get it. I do. Stop acting like I committed grand arson. There’s a difference between being defensive and standing against something.”
“First of all,” Mom said, “standing against something is much less important than standing for something.”
“Well, that’s what I meant,” I said, but I didn’t know if it was. I guess I didn’t know the difference between the two.
“Compassion and passion,” Mom said, as if reading my thoughts. “You stand up because you believe, not because you want to win. I don’t want you to add more hate to this world. We have enough. You can protest.
You can question. But standing against someone or something can turn into hate without you even noticing. Hate is the worst place to start if you want to change something.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
I’d been against the star-stars since day one of high school, and, if I was honest with myself, I’d hated them. I’d hated every part of them without giving them the chance to be people. I’d written fiction that replaced who they actually were, and that was what defined them instead of the real them.
My own fiction.
I did hate.
Not only that.
If I’d started the Unlib wanting to win, then did I really believe in it?
God.
I couldn’t think.
It all felt so heavy.
I put my head in my hands and cried.
Again.
An Unseen Text at Midnight
Unknown Number [12:11 AM] Hey, this is Jack. I finished Catcher.
Can we talk tomorrow?
Responding to An Unseen Text in the Morning
Me [5:58 AM] Hey, sorry I just woke up.
Awesome! I’ll be at school early, in the library if you wanna talk about it.
Excited to hear what you thought.
A Series of Some Sort of Events
We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at least one which makes the heart run over.
—Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
My brain threatened not to exist, but at least the processing room looked as organized as it could get.
It looked fine.
Really freaking fine.
It’d be a good last project to leave Mr. Caywell with. I selfishly wanted my legacy as a library volunteer to be that whenever a student volunteer would do something, Mr. Caywell would think, Hmm, Clara could’ve done it better.
I finally had a system down for going through the backlog of donation boxes: older than five years on one shelf, newer than five on another. “Banned” books stayed in their box. If they were ones the Unlib already had, then my plan was to bring them to a TLL. Not a lie. I was actually going to bring banned library books to my TLLs. If the banned books were books the Unlib needed extra copies of, a new pack of white construction paper sat in the drawer of an old brown desk against the far wall. The original plan was to make white covers right there. To manufacture the bane of LA’s existence within its own walls. But I hadn’t made a new white cover since I’d done the last three copies of DTOM, and it wasn’t because the Unlib didn’t need new white covers.
I pulled two books off a pile, both bannies. Both books that I, theoretically, wanted extra copies of for the Unlib: another copy of Catcher in the Rye, and a first copy of The Adventures of Captain Underpants, which, yes, was on the banned list. I tossed them onto the desk, where a few other books I “wanted” sat waiting for conversion.
I sighed and stared at the pile of unconverted books. “How is it even possible that you can stare back?” I asked them, and the door opened a millisecond after. I expected a gasping Mr. Caywell, spewing praise about how nice it looked, but instead it was Jack Lodenhauer. He looked . . . something. I don’t know. It looked like his eyes went on and on and on. A never-ending spacelike infinity that seemed too vast for one person to handle.
He looked around the room. “Were you talking to someone?”
“What? Me? Nope.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at the floor. “Oh. I thought I heard you talking.”
I waved him off, laughing awkwardly. “There’s no one in here. I can’t talk to no one. I mean, not that I’ve never talked to myself before, but today that is not what I was doing. I mean, I wasn’t talking at all.”
And then.
Jack Lodenhauer.
Started.
Crying.
I pushed myself off the desk and closed the door behind him. The only thing I was thinking was, Well, that’s the last time I ever make that joke. I didn’t know if I should hug him or sit and wait. I’d hated Jack before the Unlib. Hated. Hated him so much that I would’ve never pictured a time or place where hugging was on the table for us, but that was shattered, because he leaned into me and cried into my shoulder. So, instead of being surprised and confused, I took it as the universe giving me the honor of that moment.
We stayed like that for a few minutes. Him crying. Me feeling the growing wet spot on my sleeve. Finally he backed away, and if he felt awkward for having had a breakdown in front of me, he didn’t show it. Even if he did, I was fully prepared to tell him about my equally as impressive breakdown in LiQui’s car on the way to Queso the night before. At least he retained the ability to breathe when he cried. Something I couldn’t say for myself.
“I don’t get it,” he said, wiping the tears from his eyes.
“Get what? The book?”
“Why did Holden have to end up in a shitty mental hospital? Why couldn’t he have turned out all right?”
“Well, I think he did? I mean, not as good as riding into the sunset after winning the lottery, but, like, he was getting help, which was more of a start toward healing than he’d ever had before. He’s finally investing in that part of himself. That might not be an ending of ‘completely healed,’ but I think that’s more realistic, you know? We don’t just get fixed.”
“He ended up in a mental hospital. He’s struggling with depression and he ends up in a mental hospital. So does Charlie from Perks.”
“But there’s so much more to these stories than that, though. I feel like that’s a part that shouldn’t be fixated on.”
“There’s only one time where Holden is happy. One time. When his little sister, Phoebe, is riding the carousel.”
“Yeah, but it’s because of her innocence. The whole book is about innocence. Keeping kids in kid land instead of growing up and dealing with all this crap.” I waved my hands around the room. “But I feel like, in that moment, he realizes he has to grow into himself. He has to somehow grow up without growing old. He has to figure out how to have joy in the new Holden. Isn’t that a good reminder? Like, to connect with him on that? To feel like you aren’t alone?”
“Why did you give me this book?” he asked.
I cocked my head. I couldn’t understand how he’d read the same book I had. How could he be so frustrated with it? How could it spur me to change the world, to grow up well, yet make him nearly inconsolable? For me it was like: be kind and listen to everyone. I walked away thinking, People breathe. People eat. People carry heavy things. You’ve got a pulse; you’ve got a problem. Because it made me think about the world as a place where everyone was sort of ambling around in their own weakness. Scared. Anxious. It made everything feel less scary knowing Holden was there too.
“Childhood innocence can’t stay forever, and I don’t think it should,” I said. “All these people act like it’s the highest form of happiness, but it’s all based on ignorance. Kids are happy because they’re ignorant of the world, which is good. For kids. But for us? Isn’t it so much more powerful to choose happiness knowing what the world truly is? To fight for it? To make our joy in the face of it all? I thought, maybe, you’d sort of wind up there too.”
Jack leaned against the wall. Eyes closed. Silent, yet it was clear he wanted to say something and couldn’t find the strength to do it. It was the same face he’d had when we talked in the AC nook, and being in the light let me see it.
“What?” I said. “Just say what you need to. I won’t get mad.”
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”
“Because I live in the South. Because of who I am. I’m not supposed to say it.”
“Jack, I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. Last time I checked, people in the South were allowed to not like Catcher in the Rye. It’s okay if you want to slam it. We have different tast—”
“I’m gay. The only people who know are Ashton and Resi. You think Holden makes me feel like I belong? Or Charlie? They make me feel screwed. Like, he isn’t even gay. He doesn’t even have a family who’s literally threatened to make him live on the street. He’s just a kid who’s depressed. Phoebe isn’t giving him the cold shoulder every time he comes home. I want that childhood innocence. I don’t even want to be the catcher in the rye. I want to be the one caught. I want someone else to be there. But no one is. So why would you think I’d prefer being reminded of the world and how much it hates me over living in ignorance?”
I looked at him. Tears began to stream silently down his face again. I didn’t know what to say. I had nothing.
I’d always assumed that people who didn’t experience a book the same way as I did weren’t looking at it right. They missed the point. They misunderstood it. But, suddenly, there was context to consider. Was I privileged enough to be able to love books in which hurt flowed abundantly without feeling more hopelessness? Was it privilege, or did it change from person to person? Or was it both? But I had friends who loved this book. Friends who hurt deeply but connected in the same way I had. Quesoian Sean was one of them. He was reading Perks when his mother died of cancer and it made the book even more special to him.
“I’m . . . I’m really sorry, Jack. I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, well. So am I. No one knows. No one will know. You can’t tell anyone. If word gets out about me, my parents will completely disown me. They’ll talk to all their friends and I won’t be able to get a job. I won’t be able to find a place to live. This is me.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone. Is there any way I can help? Will it be different once you go to college? You’re a Founders Scholarship finalist, right? If you win that then you can go anywhere you want.”
I said it like there was a chance he couldn’t go anywhere he wanted, but we both knew that was a lie. He didn’t need the Founders Scholarship for the money, but I didn’t know what else to say.