Bookish and the Beast

by Ashley Poston

  Just…sort of there.

  It surprises me that I find it endearing.

  He looks over at where I came to a full stop in the doorway. “I know you’re there.”

  I open my mouth, close it, open it again. Think of something clever! “Yeah, I’m here.”

  Noice.

  Giving up trying to look cool or composed or the least bit non-awkward, I pull my bookbag higher on my shoulder and quickly make for my desk, where I boot up the iPad and click into the Excel sheet. There is a counter on the bottom, telling me how far I’ve come and how many I have to go. Yesterday I just reached the halfway point—half of the shelves are full and orderly—and I thought that if I could survive another few weeks, then I would be done.

  Just a few more.

  “So, um, what are you doing here?” I ask. I don’t see a book anywhere near him.

  He slides his long legs off the armchair and sits properly. “I figure I should help you, since that was the deal in the first place.”

  “I’ve been doing fine alone, thanks.”

  “I know, but I got some more books off the top shelf for you,” he adds—proudly, I might add—and waves over to the stack of books in the other wingback chair. They are books that I couldn’t reach alone, but also…

  “I don’t need those for a while.”

  He seems to wilt a little. “Oh.”

  I give him a curious look. “Why are you helping me all of a sudden?”

  He gives a one-shouldered shrug. “I guess I got tired of acting petulant.”

  “Mm-hmm…you know this isn’t going to make me say yes to dating you, right?” I venture, and he gives me a surprised look.

  “Of course not. That’s not why I’m here. I mean, I don’t make it a habit of wasting my time—not that you’d ever be a waste of time,” he quickly corrects, and rubs the back of his neck, because yeah buddy, you are digging that hole real deep right now. “I just mean that’s not the reason I’m here. I don’t expect you to change your mind.”

  As much as I hate to admit it, I believe him.

  “Well,” I say, “at least I’ve found one guy who takes no for an answer.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just some school drama.”

  He tilts his head, and the hair tucked behind his ears comes undone and falls into his face. It’s back to its normal color now, a washy white-blond, but I sort of miss the orange-ish that it was. “You know, I’ve never been to school.”

  I look up from the iPad, surprised. “What, seriously?”

  “Seriously. I was homeschooled. Did most of my studying on film sets between takes. I think the only time I’ve actually set foot in a school was for that indie film I did a few years ago—An Inevitable Thing?”

  “Do you think you missed out?”

  He gives a one-shouldered shrug. “I can’t say. I mean, I got to spend ‘spring break’ in Bali so I don’t think I can complain too much.”

  I let out a low whistle. “The farthest I’ve been from home is the Harry Potter part of Universal Studios.”

  “I bet that was a magical time.”

  “It was for a spell.”

  He laughs, and I find myself smiling more than I really should. I like the way he laughs, sort of soft and to himself, like it’s a secret that he laughs at all.

  I suppose it wouldn’t be too terrible if I had help for the day. The library does get a little lonely sometimes. But I can pretend like I don’t like it. “Well,” I say, “I guess if you’re here and you actually want to help me, get me that box over there.”

  We work together for the next two hours. I show him what we’re supposed to be doing—cataloging the books, and then putting them in order on the shelves—and he helps me by making sure I don’t miss one, and reaching the books I usually use a chair to get to. It’s a lot quicker work with another person. If he had helped from the beginning, we would’ve been done by now.

  As I’m about ready to wrap up for the day, Mr. Rodriguez calls my name from the kitchen. I exchange a look with Vance, but he just shrugs again—he doesn’t know what Mr. Rodriguez wants, either. “Yes?” I reply as I leave the library and enter the kitchen.

  Mr. Rodriguez has his cell phone pressed to his shoulder in the way you do when you don’t want someone to listen into a conversation. “It’s your dad,” he says quietly. “He’s been trying to reach you for a while.”

  I tense. My cell phone! It’s in my bag. I didn’t even hear it. “Is something wrong? Is he okay?”

  “Yes, he’s fine, but, well…”

  He offers me the phone, and I hesitantly take it.

  On the other end, Dad—sounding frazzled, though trying not to alarm me—tells me, “Thank God I finally got to you! Okay, so, don’t panic but—remember the older woman from the circulation desk? Pam?”

  I don’t understand. “Yeah, isn’t it her birthday?”

  “Right. I was wanting to make something nice for her, so I decided to try to bake her a red velvet cake, you know? She loves red velvet and I was going to put a cute little bookish design on the top and—”

  My stomach begins to sink. “Oh, you didn’t.”

  “I…did. And managed to start a fire?”

  “Dad!” I squawk.

  “I was heating up some chocolate and I didn’t realize you couldn’t put tinfoil in the microwave! I walked off for two seconds and, well…the good news is we still have an apartment?”

  “And the bad news?”

  “We…do not have a kitchen and currently cannot live in our apartment again until our landlord inspects it for safety. Which should be after this weekend! And renter’s insurance covers imbeciles like me, apparently. But, um…yes. Your father caught the kitchen on fire.”

  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe a little of both? Mr. Rodriguez is on the other side of the kitchen, trying not to glance over at me too often, but it’s very clear that he wants to know what’s happening and I can’t wait to tell him that my wonderful, smart, and yet exquisitely idiotic father caught our apartment on fire.

  “And…now for the meat of the problem. Do you have somewhere you can stay for the weekend?” Dad asks hesitantly. “I just got off the phone with the hotels in the area, and because of the college game this weekend, they’re all full up. The closest one is about forty-five minutes away.”

  “That far?” I blanch.

  “Yeah. I—I guess I’ll do it, but it’ll be a pain. Do you have any friends you can stay with?”

  Quinn is away with their parents this weekend touring Duke, who early-accepted them, and Annie lives in a two-bedroom row house that can barely fit her family. I can’t ask her. But just as I begin to shake my head—I pause.

  Mr. Rodriguez cocks his head as I glance at him, an eyebrow raised.

  “I think I know someone,” I reply, and hope I’m not wrong. “For the both of us.”

  I TRY NOT TO BE NOSY—I truly don’t want to be—but they have been talking in the kitchen for the last half hour and I am growing very, very impatient. Another agonizing minute goes by and I hear them laugh. About what? I don’t care, I tell myself, picking up one of the books I had gotten down for her. She’ll come back in at any moment and enlighten me, I’m sure of it.

  But when another minute passes, I creep toward the library door. I am not eavesdropping, I tell myself. I am simply wondering if—

  Suddenly, there are footsteps.

  I try to move back, but the door swings open a moment later. Directly into my face. I curse and double over, holding my nose. Rosie gasps, “Sorry! I didn’t see you there!”

  Mortifying, mortifying, this is all so very mortifying. Before I can sink myself any lower, I quickly turn around, holding my nose, to walk away. She reaches out and takes me by the arm. She stops me.

  “You’re bleeding,” she says.


  I look down at my hand that held my nose. It’s full of blood. “You broke my nose!”

  She bristles. “I didn’t know you were at the door!”

  “It’s my house!”

  “It is not.”

  “Well…I’m living here.”

  Her mouth purses into a thin line. “Then you should’ve just come into the kitchen instead of loitering like a creeper.”

  “I was not loitering.”

  “Then you were just standing by the door?”

  I pull myself up to my full height, which is a good head taller than she is, but she has her hands on her hips as if I’m the short one. Which is not endearing. Not at all. And no, I am not afraid of her. Not even a little.

  …Perhaps a little.

  “I can stand wherever I please,” I finally reply nobly. “What did your father want?”

  She takes me by the arm. “C’mon, let’s stop the bleeding before you get any on the books,” she says, and guides me into the kitchen, where I run my face underneath the faucet in the sink, and hiss as the cold water hits the cut on my nose. She didn’t break it, apparently, just sliced it open.

  I’m not sure which is worse.

  Elias finds the first-aid kit and tells me to take a seat on a barstool. Rosie comes into the kitchen, her arms folded over her chest, and watches as Elias applies ointment and a Band-Aid on it. “Will I have a scar?” I ask Elias courageously.

  He snorts at my bravado, which deflates me quite a bit. “Not likely.”

  “That’s sad. Chicks dig scars,” Rosie adds woefully.

  Elias finishes placing the Band-Aid and sighs. “Dios mío, this is exhausting.”

  “I agree,” I agree.

  “Both of you,” he replies pointedly, and puts the first-aid kit back underneath the sink. “Please try to get along this weekend.”

  I give him a strange look. “This weekend?”

  Rosie becomes suspiciously fixated on a brown spot on the ceiling.

  Elias informs, “Yes, this weekend. Rosie and her father’s apartment had a small fire, which is why he called, and since we have so many vacant rooms I figured we could offer them both a little hospitality.”

  “All weekend,” I repeat. My brain is short-circuiting.

  “Yes, all weekend. So please try not to kill each other. I need to go out for some groceries—how do you feel about spaghetti tonight, Rosie? Will your father be joining us?”

  She hesitates. “I don’t think so—he’ll be here later tonight, though.”

  “Perfect! I’ll go pick up some supplies and start cooking,” he says brightly, and then gives me a meaningful look.

  I stiffen. Me? I don’t want anything to do with that girl. She almost broke my nose! And she had the audacity to try to blame me! I answer with a shrug, which suffices for Elias, because he grabs his wallet and keys from the counter and leaves through the garage.

  When Elias is gone, Rosie says quietly, “Sorry, I didn’t know who else to ask.”

  “Like Elias said, we have plenty of rooms,” I reply, even though I want to ask if her personal things are okay, if anything is ruined.

  She breathes out a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s something.”

  I show her to a room upstairs. It’s one of the bedrooms that neither Elias nor I have really been into, so the windows need to be opened and the sheets need to be changed because it’s so musty, but she doesn’t seem to mind, especially when Sansa comes in and curls up right at the foot of the bed. Rosie scratches her behind the ears, and when I leave her alone to go into my room, Sansa doesn’t follow.

  So much for loyalty.

  THE DOORBELL RINGS. “That must be my dad,” I say as I get up to go answer it.

  It is, laden with two suitcases full of clothes—our latest laundry load. He rolls them both in and wipes sweat from his forehead. He must’ve changed out of his work clothes at the apartment, because he’s wearing his old band T-shirt and jeans with those God-awful flip-flops I wish I had burned years ago. Mr. Rodriguez rounds out of the kitchen with an outstretched hand to meet him.

  “Thank you so much for the hospitality,” Dad says, grasping Mr. Rodriguez’s hand tightly. “Honestly, it means a lot.”

  “It’s no trouble at all. We’ve grown really fond of Rosie.”

  “It’s hard not to,” Dad agrees, and I notice that their hands linger a little longer than necessary in the handshake. I glance up at the two men, trying to read the air between them, but they’re just smiling and I don’t understand it at all.

  Weird.

  Very weird.

  “Mr. Rodriguez has food ready,” I pipe in, leaving the suitcases by the door and herding Dad toward the dining room. Mr. Rodriguez already has the table set, a large plate of pasta in the middle like in those family-style restaurants. Vance squirms a little in his seat as Dad comes in, but then he forces himself to his feet and outstretches a hand.

  “Sir,” he says, clasping Dad’s hand tightly.

  “Nice to see you again,” Dad replies.

  * * *

  —

  THAT EVENING, I eat my weight in Mr. Rodriguez’s spaghetti and meatballs. Over dinner, we talk about nothing—the weather, the movies coming out, and Darien Freeman’s lip-sync battle, which has, by now, been retweeted over half a million times.

  Vance doesn’t say much of anything throughout the dinner. He just sits and listens and bats his meatballs around the plate, trying not to meet Dad’s gaze, and aside from that it sort of feels…strange. Not in a bad way, but in a way I’m not very used to. There isn’t an empty plate at the dinner table, and there isn’t an empty seat where someone once sat.

  It feels…whole.

  “So, what are your plans after high school?” Mr. Rodriguez asks me after a while.

  Oh, the dreaded question. I wipe my mouth, hesitating on what to say. Sorry, I’m a failure and I can’t even complete one essay so I’ll just live as a hermit in my room for the rest of my life reading Starfield novels and eating jerky.

  Ugh, that sounds depressing.

  Dad gives me a patient look from across the table, as if to tell me that it’s okay if I don’t know. He knows I’ve been struggling with the essay portion for a few weeks now, and time certainly is winding down to turn that in. “Well…my mom always wanted me to go to NYU because she went there as an undergrad—that’s where she met Dad.”

  “My wife was an accounting major,” Dad fills in.

  “So I want to go there, too—except for English, not accounting—but the essay prompt is horrid.”

  “What’s the essay about?” Vance asks.

  “Basically, what makes me a good fit for NYU, but what I think they want is why should they pick me over so many other gifted students? And I…don’t know.” I shrug. “And I just don’t think they want a sob story about a dead mom.” I force out a laugh, because it’s just getting too depressing thinking about it. “I’m really not that amazing.”

  “I’m trying to tell Rosie that she is amazing,” Dad says.

  “Dad,” I say. “I’m not.”

  “Not as amazing as me, anyway,” Vance agrees ignobly, but I’m beginning to realize that that’s his kind of humor. Sort of self-important, but self-deprecating at the same time, because he doesn’t believe it himself.

  And a part of that’s really sad, too.

  “Which is not amazing at all,” I reply, and he mocks a dagger to the chest.

  * * *

  —

  DAD SITUATES HIS SUITCASE IN THE CORNER of our room and plops down on the end of the bed. Finally, his mask falls away, and he looks about as tired as I would have guessed. I sit next to him and rest my head on his shoulder. He smells like home.

  “I keep forgetting how handsome Elias is,” he says, and I can hear him smiling. “I should come over
more often!”

  “Dad.”

  “Is he single?”

  I elbow him in the side, and he chuckles. It isn’t really rocket science that my dad isn’t as hetero as some people may think. He was the first person Quinn came out to as nonbinary—the second being me and Annie. He wears rainbow suspenders all through pride month, and he has a graphic framed on his desk with NSYNC and the words BI-BI-BI!— but I never guessed he would like Vance’s guardian. “Wait until I’m done working for them, at least.”

  “No promises,” he jokes, and tousles my hair and asks me where the shower is. I point him in the direction of the one Mr. Rodriguez showed me earlier and change into my pajamas.

  I grab my laptop from his satchel and retreat down into the living room. Mr. Rodriguez has already put the leftovers away, and the lights are out, so I turn on a lamp and curl up in the corner of the couch. I boot up my laptop, figuring I might as well try to write that college essay again, but every time I try to start it, I can’t figure out where to go.

  Like I had said at dinner earlier—my life hasn’t been any sort of spectacular.

  It’s been me trying as I might to chase after the disappearing shadow of my mother.

  I stare at the blank page. The cursor blinks. In, out, in, out, like a heartbeat. I rub my first fingers against the ridges of the F and the J, trying to will some sort of word, some sentence, some semblance of why I should go to NYU and not anyone else. Why I’m spectacular. Why I’m me.

  Argh, it’s no use.

  I give up and close my laptop, and find my way into the library again. I don’t turn on any of the lights, and in the darkness the room reminds me of the first time I snuck into this house. I run my fingers along the spines of the books, closing my eyes, remembering the way Mom used to sit in her reading chair in those golden afternoons she loved so much, reading page after page after page, as if she was running out of time.