by Keary Taylor
It was a paper airplane, folded to perfection.
My eyes darted up and across the large space, my eyes met Nathaniel’s.
A small, knowing smile pulled in one corner of his mouth.
One mirrored on my own face.
I unfolded the paper and found his neat handwriting on the page.
How will you ever get any homework done when you’re staring at the back of my head all evening? I’m messing up every bit of alphabetizing. You’re very distracting, Margot Bell.
I knew my face broke out into a smile, so I kept my face down toward the paper.
I grabbed my pencil and quickly scrawled a response. I am not staring. Get back to work and stop flattering yourself.
The moment my pencil left the paper, it instantly folded itself back into a paper airplane and took off.
My eyes grew wide with shock and worry as I watched it dip low, trailing along the floor, headed back to the help desk. I looked around, making sure no one saw, and found that everyone’s heads were turned down to their books or homework.
I looked back just in time to see the airplane rise up the side of the desk and skid along the surface to stop right in front of Nathaniel. He grabbed it and unfolded the airplane.
I immediately locked my eyes back on my homework and tried to concentrate.
I’d written one sentence when the airplane landed on my paper again. I unfolded it to see he’d written his response beneath mine.
Liar.
I chuckled, only to immediately be shushed by Mrs. Walker, who was down one of the aisles directly to the side of me.
I muttered an apology and grabbed the airplane, tucking it into my backpack.
I glanced up just once more. My eyes caught Nathaniel, already looking right at me. Really, I didn’t need to blush any deeper, but I did. A small smile crossed his lips and his gaze lingered for just a moment longer. And then he got back to his work.
I pushed my papers, books, and backpack across the table. And then I stood up and walked around, sitting in the chair opposite of where I’d been sitting.
There, now neither of us would be as distracted.
I shook my head, and I got back to work.
The soft brush of something against my face fluttered my eyes open.
My neck hurt. A piece of paper stuck to my face for a moment before it fell back down to the table as I sat up.
Nathaniel’s eyes leveled with mine. Sleepily, I blinked at him.
“Let’s get you home and into a bed, Margot,” he said softly.
Confused, I blinked, looking around.
I was still sitting at a table in the library. But where I could swear just a few moments ago there had been a dozen other students at the tables as well, they were now all empty. Normally, all of the green table lamps were turned on, and now there was only this one on the table just down from me.
It was quiet, quieter than the library normally was.
Looking around, I realized there was no one else here.
“What time is it?” I asked, realizing I’d fallen asleep working on my homework.
Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed up the entire night before reading the book. But I didn’t regret it.
“Ten o’clock,” Nathaniel said. He gently gathered up my things and as my brain woke up, I helped him. We slid my books and papers into my bag, and I stood, pushing the chair back under the table. “Come on. I’ll walk you home.”
“Thanks,” I offered, my brain still foggy with sleep.
Nathaniel flipped the last lamp off and we walked through the library in darkness. We pushed the doors open and stepped out into the hall. Here too, it was empty and abandoned.
“Do you have keys to the school?” I asked, surprised.
“Only for tonight,” he answered. “When Mrs. Walker saw you were asleep at the table, I told her I’d walk you home and she gave me her keys to lock up. I’m supposed to return them first thing tomorrow.”
“She must really trust you,” I said as we headed down the hall, to the front doors. “I doubt she’s ever loaned out her school keys to anyone.”
“I do my job well,” he said, pushing the door open for me. I stepped through, out into the dark night. Nathaniel turned and the keys jingled as he fished for the right one. I heard the lock click into place and we turned out across the lawn again toward my house.
“My dad’s going to want to put me on house arrest soon,” I said, finding my house across the way, all of the lights still on. “I keep not being where I’m supposed to be.”
“I think your dad trusts us,” Nathaniel said, and through the dark, his shoulder brushed against mine.
I looked over at him. He didn’t look back down at me, but I saw hints of a smile pulling on his lips.
“Us, huh?” I questioned.
The smile grew a little bit bigger. Through the dark, his hand found mine, and he laced our fingers together.
The contact between us sent every nerve in my body flying with the force of a flock of birds taking to the sky. My heart rate picked up. Even my scalp felt electric.
Despite all those reactions, I felt…good. I felt…peaceful.
I hugged my body a little tighter into Nathaniel’s, and I felt him lean into me.
We turned the corner around the fence and set out along the sidewalk. Suddenly, I wished I didn’t live so close to the school, that this walk could last a few hours longer.
“I’m sorry if I made it harder for you to work today,” I said as we slowed. My house was the next one. “I really didn’t mean to distract you.”
We came to a stop in front of my steps. “I’m not sorry,” Nathaniel said. He looked down at me and something in me loved our difference in height. I loved the intense look in his eyes. I loved it when his other hand reached out for mine and he laced his fingers through that hand as well. “I kind of want you to study there every day I’m working in the library. But I would never want your inability to look away to interfere with your studies.”
I huffed a laugh, letting my eyes fall down to the space between us in embarrassment.
But Nathaniel hooked his finger under my chin, tilting it back up to him.
“I really want to kiss you right now, Margot,” he confessed, his words little more than a whisper, only real in this small space between us.
“I really wish you would just do it,” I said, my heart racing painfully in my chest.
Nathaniel leaned forward, just slightly, and my eyes began to close. I was ready for the moment I’d secretly been daydreaming about for days now.
“I swear I will,” he whispered instead. “But not when your father is sitting in the window.”
Instantly, I whipped around, my eyes jumping to the front window.
Sure enough, there was the silhouette of my father, sitting in his chair. His back was to us in the window, but from how incredibly still he was, I had the feeling that he was straining to hear our every word.
A curse slipped out over my lips.
Why couldn’t he just go to bed?
I looked back at Nathaniel. He wore a very annoying smile, as if he thought this was funny. I glared up at him. But he ran his hands up my arms and pulled me into his chest, wrapping me in an insanely arousing embrace.
“There’s always tomorrow,” Nathaniel said. He tucked his head low, pressing his cheek into the side of my head, so he spoke right next to my ear. “Or the next day, or the day after that.”
“It better not take that long,” I said, mock threats in my voice. “Or I might just lose interest and move on.”
He chuckled, knowing I was just teasing. He released me, looking down into my eyes.
“Goodnight, Margot,” he said, and everything in me loved and relished the way he spoke, his every syllable.
“Goodnight, Nathaniel,” I said. And my heart broke a little bit when he stepped away. He walked back down the sidewalk backwards for five steps, holding my eyes the entire time. I stepped up onto the first step, and finally, he
turned, and walked back to the school grounds.
I glared at my front door for a moment and let out an annoyed huff. I pulled the door open and stepped inside.
My father looked up at me with an expression of fake surprise. We stared at each other for a total of seven seconds, a battle of wills.
In the end, I just huffed another breath of annoyance and crossed the living room to the stairs and went up to bed.
Dad didn’t say a word. But I heard him let out a chuckle once I reached the top of the stairs.
Emotions pulled me in every direction. I was elated from the path things were moving down, the way Nathaniel had taken my hand, his promise, but so annoyed the night hadn’t ended the way I’d hoped.
I brushed my teeth with ferocity. I nearly ripped my pajamas in my violent effort to pull them on.
I almost knocked my lamp over as I roughly clicked it off.
I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying every moment of the day, when there was a light tapping sound against my window.
My heart was instantly in my throat and I threw off the covers as I leapt from the bed.
A ridiculous smile crossed my face when through the window, I saw a paper airplane hovering outside. I threw the window open and it floated inside to land on the floor. Wildly, I searched around for Nathaniel, but I didn’t see him anywhere in the dark.
With a smile, I sat on the floor and unfolded the airplane.
I swear, was all it read.
My entire chest was alight with excitement and joy. I scrambled across the floor to my desk and grabbed a pencil. Laying the paper flat on my wooden floor, I responded with just one word.
Good.
I carefully folded it back into its shape and went back to the window. Gently, I launched it out into the night air.
It glided through the air, dipping down and out. And then like a magical wind, it caught and changed direction, heading immediately in the direction of Nathaniel’s solarium. It rose up and over the fence, and sailed over the lawn, directly toward the abandoned north wing of the University.
With a smile, I slid the window closed.
With my heart pounding and my mind whirling with anticipation, I crawled back into bed and pulled the covers up to my chest.
I lay there, smiling up at the ceiling, seeing nothing but Nathaniel’s lips and intense eyes.
Guess I wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night either.
Chapter Nine
I felt stupid the next day.
I’d searched for Nathaniel in the halls before and after each of my classes. My heart had been hammering the entire time, my brain fixed on one thing and one thing only.
We were planning to kiss. Soon.
How juvenile was that?
Who plans out their first kiss?
It was something that should happen in the heat of the moment. Not something that was scheduled out on the calendar with a date and a time.
I’d shaken my head at myself after my last class. I really debated just going home right then and putting myself in seclusion until I could get my head on straight.
But still, I found my feet pointed in the direction of the library.
I was halfway there when I heard a set of determined footsteps walking up behind me. And my skin went cold when I looked over to find David Sinclair walking right beside me.
“You’ve got spunk, Margot,” he said, walking quick to keep up with me. “You’re not afraid to speak your mind and you can take charge even with everyone watching and waiting for you to screw up.”
“What do you want, David?” I asked, my tone even and cold.
He grabbed my arm then, pulling me to a stop and stepping to the side of the hall to let the other students by.
“I want you by my side,” he said. He fixed me with his blue eyes, and in them, I saw that he was absolutely serious. “You and I…” He shook his head. “I’m going to be a powerful man someday, Margot. Just like my father. And while I might love my mother, she only ever wished to be at home making baby after baby and cooking award winning pies. But you and I, as a team? We could be the type that makes history.”
I pressed my lips together, letting out a hard breath through my nose. I stared into those blue eyes, looking over his face, his expression. David wasn’t particularly tall, though he still had a few inches on me. But he kept himself very physically fit to make up for it. He was always out running or at the gym, or at the school’s pool.
He wore the nicest suits in school. His hair was always perfectly slicked back, the products gleaming against his dark hair.
He looked like a powerful man already.
“Some girls might throw themselves at you because, you’re right, we all know you’re going to be a powerful, rich man someday,” I said, my eyes rising back up to meet his. “But there are more important qualities. You’ve been an asshole your whole life, David Sinclair. You’re cruel and you’re vain and you think people will bow down to you. The wild thing is that you’re capable of changing all of that in a heartbeat. You could wake up tomorrow and decide you want to be a better person. But I don’t see that happening.”
I took a step back from him, out of his reach. His eyes widened slightly, and I watched as his jaw grew hard and tight.
“I would say I’m flattered by your offer, but I’m really not,” I said, shaking my head just once.
From across the hall, I saw his henchmen, James and Borden. They watched our exchange, and I would guess they had heard every single word.
But it didn’t change my response.
“Think about what kind of man you really want to be, David,” I said, turning down the hall again. “You don’t have to be the person you are today.”
I turned my back on the leader of the Society Boys, a man who would indeed be powerful and rich someday.
Maybe he’d come after me.
Maybe he’d try to punish me for the words I’d just spoken.
But I’d learned something about myself in the past few weeks.
That I would never bow down to bullies. I enjoyed a good verbal spar. And I wasn’t afraid of his retaliation.
The halls were exceptionally crowded as I made my way toward the library. Students rushed between classes or headed to the cafeteria for lunch. We were all focused, driven, motivated to see our futures develop into something great due to our time spent in these halls.
I pushed my way through the last of the crowd and got to the doors of the library. They swung open without even a creak.
It was quiet in here. The lighting was dim. The only natural light came in through the stained-glass windows above the circulation desk, and it was overcast that day. The green lamps on the study desks cast the space in eerie light. I stepped inside and made my way between rows of tables. I went up to the desk, where Mrs. Walker was busy organizing the title cards.
“Afternoon, Margot,” she greeted me with only a quick glance up. “You’ve always been a reader, but it seems you’ve been spending a little more time than normal within our hallowed walls.”
“Is Nathaniel working?” I asked, ignoring her awkward tease.
“His shift starts in an hour,” she responded simply. She turned and went to work on the new arrivals waiting for her on the counter.
I aimed for the aisles, wandering while I waited for Nathaniel to arrive. I walked past the mystery section, past the thrillers. I stepped into the science fiction aisles. Then into the fantasy. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Nothing really. I still had three more books at home, the ones Nathaniel had given me. They were a high priority, because if the others were as good as the first one I’d read, I was anxious to dive in.
But these were books, and they’d been my best friends since I learned how to read. My fingers trailed along the spines, my eyes reading titles.
I’d always been drawn to old books. I loved the way their spines were worn. How there were no pictures on them, so it was only about the content. I loved the gold foil pressed into th
e titles. I loved the way the pages yellowed and how they smelled. I loved finding little notes in the beginning, gifting notes or dedications.
I pulled one off the shelf, one whose title was almost impossible to read. I skimmed through it and set it back on the shelf. I plucked another out and started reading the first few paragraphs. A few minutes later, I set it back when it failed to pull me in.
I wandered farther down the aisle, my eyes skimming up and down, searching for interesting spines.
One on the second to bottom shelf pulled my attention. The spine was an old yellow and it bore no title at all. It was thin, the pages short. I bent down and pulled it off the shelf.
The Coin of Compulsion, the title read. But there was no copyright page. No author was noted. And it was all handwritten.
I turned the page and found it was all in poem format.
It told the story of a rich, lonely young man who could not find an honest wife. He’d courted many women but when they got close to their wedding, he found each of them had lied to him about something important. One had already been married and was trying to steal his money. One was simply up for the challenge of winning him over. And one was simply tired of working and wanted a man to take over.
So the young man had bewitched seven coins, so that when he gave the coin to someone, they could only tell him the truth.
With each new woman he courted, he gave them a coin and they all revealed their truths, ugly and sinister.
Finally, with the seventh, he found an old friend who confessed that she had loved him her entire life but was too scared to say anything. She wanted nothing from him but his love.
They married and lived happily ever after.
I couldn’t decide how I felt about the young man’s actions as I came to the end of the poem. No one wanted to be lied to, but forcing everyone to tell the truth, when they didn’t know he was making them? I didn’t know what was right or wrong.
I went to set the book back on the shelf when my fingers turned the page. There were always a few blank pages at the end of a book. But with this one, I found more writing on those last few pages.
To bewitch the coins, the bearer must grasp the coin in their hand and confess one truth to the coin. Upon giving the coin of compulsion to another, they will be unable to lie to you for the rest of the day.