Emma remembered holding a cold, damp washcloth to Bobby’s forehead when his temperature had spiked the day he died. Even when the fever robbed him of his sense, she had begged him to stay with her a little bit longer—forever if he would. Her mind drifted backward, digging up memories of one of the last conversations they’d had.
“Don’t worry about me,” Bobby said.
Emma’s throat felt like it did when she sprinkled too many red pepper flakes on her pizza, and she stared at the tractors on the pajama pants he wore. “I’m worried about me.”
Bobby grinned, slow and sleepy, like moving his mouth took so much effort it might take him all day to form a full-on smile. “I’ve never worried about you. You’re the strong one. Like Samson and Babe Ruth and Yogi Bear.”
Emma gazed up at him and pressed the washcloth to his forehead. “Yogi Bear isn’t strong. He’s hungry.”
A laugh pushed up Bobby’s dry throat, and he closed his eyes. “But he perseveres. Like you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Emma argued. She didn’t know how she’d get through losing Bobby.
As though hearing her anxious thoughts, Bobby reached over and patted her arm. “You can get through anything. You’ll think of something. You always do.”
The heat in the closet pressed in all around her, and a line of sweat slid down her back. She blinked away the thoughts of Bobby, and another idea tumbled through her mind.
She grabbed her phone and called Morty. He didn’t answer, so she left him a message, telling him that she was planning on having a slumber party for one at the library. There was no way she would be able to sleep in her miserable, hotter-than-Hades apartment. And at least in the library she wouldn’t be alone—there were at least half a million books that would keep her company.
There was still a scattering of cars in the parking lot when Emma arrived with her slumber party accessories—one small bag of clothes and toiletries, Bobby’s sleeping bag, a pillow, and snacks. Once inside, she dropped her stuff beneath the circulation desk and searched for Morty. He leaned over the second floor railing near the fiction section and called down to her in a stage whisper.
“You’re supposed to be at home resting,” he said.
Emma craned back her neck. “I left you a message. My apartment feels like Dune. The AC is dead. Can I sleep here?”
Morty narrowed his eyes. “You’re the kind of girl who would make up that story just so she could spend the night in a library.”
Emma smirked. “I’m going to take that as a yes.”
“This would be considered special treatment,” Morty said. “I would never agree to let Vicki sleep here overnight.”
“Vicki is a part-timer,” Emma said. “Plus, she wouldn’t want to spend the night in a big, scary library alone. And she doesn’t bring your favorite cookies.” Emma pointed toward the circulation desk.
Morty’s gaze followed her finger. “Bribery? Is there no end to your corruption?”
Emma held open her hands, palms facing up. “I do what needs to be done. Half a dozen white chocolate macadamia nut should do the trick.”
“Sure, kiddo,” he said. “Stay as long as you like. I would suggest sleeping in the fairy tale section. There’s a better view of the stars coming through those tall windows. I’m going to be doing late-night research in the archives tonight, but I’ll keep it down.”
Emma chuckled. “I’ve heard research can get rowdy in the archives. Real party place.”
Morty straightened the spectacles on his nose. “You have no idea.”
Emma’s eyes popped open, and her heart jumped like someone shocked with a defibrillator. Moonlight streamed through the glass and cast silver stripes across her chest and legs. Something—a noise, a nearby movement—had woken her. She pushed herself up on her elbows, reached for her cell phone, and checked the time. 1:15 a.m. The sound of stifled laughter caused the hair on the back of her neck to stand. Emma stayed perfectly still until she heard the shuffling of multiple sets of feet down an aisle near her.
She scrambled out of the sleeping bag as though she’d discovered snakes at the bottom of it. Then she crouched and tried to scan through openings on the shelves while her heart thundered in her chest. Emma crept down the aisle, barefoot and on her tiptoes, but the intruders’ movements stopped. Her pulse throbbed hard against her temples, and she held her breath. At the end of the aisle, two identical-size shadows stepped into the moonlight. Their red hair shimmered, and their white teeth were visible against their darkened faces. Two teenage boys.
Emma inhaled a deep breath so that she could either release a scream or demand that they get out immediately, but one of the boys burst out laughing. Then he shoved the boy beside him, and they both ran off down the adjacent aisle.
She wasn’t thinking properly when she snatched a book—a spontaneous weapon—from the closest shelf and chased after them. A door slammed somewhere, echoing through the cavernous foyer. But by the time she entered the open room, the library was silent except for her own labored breathing. Her body stayed rigid for another minute, her senses heightened and searching. But there was no one moving anywhere near her.
Emma stood in the middle of the foyer for a few more minutes, listening, waiting, training her ears for anything. Soon her heartbeat slowed, and she wondered if she’d imagined the boys. Still she walked through the library, checking all the doors and windows. On her last pass through the foyer, she tugged on the vault door leading to the archives. It was closed and secure. Morty had obviously finished his research and gone home.
She shuffled back to her sleeping bag, taking the aisle where the boys had been hiding when she’d first heard them. She was looking for out-of-place books or vandalism. Then she noticed something in front of her that shimmered in the moonlight. Her eyes couldn’t focus on what it was, but it reminded her of peering through a waterfall. She hurried straight ahead and slammed into something. Her brain immediately computed the something as a giant spiderweb, so Emma screamed, which was muffled by the plastic sticking to her face. The book she’d planned on using as a makeshift weapon bounced out of her hand and slid across the floor behind her. She lurched backward and nearly fell over.
“What the…?”
She stepped forward with caution and reached out both hands. Her fingertips grazed bands of plastic that had been stretched horizontally from one bookshelf to the other. Plastic wrap. Emma snatched the plastic from the shelves and crushed it together until she had a hard, plastic ball in her palm.
Then she stomped around the library calling out, “I know you’re in here,” “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” “Show your faces,” and “Real funny trick,” but she saw no one, and no one came out of hiding to admit to the prank. Where were they hiding? After half an hour, Emma gave up and returned to her sleeping bag.
She dropped the plastic wrap ball beside her and grabbed her worn copy of The Legend of James Grey. She thought it would take a while before she could fall back asleep, but when she laid her head on her pillow and closed her eyes, she slipped into a peaceful rhythm. The book slipped from her relaxed fingers. As she dozed off, she thought she heard voices and someone whispering the name Fred.
4
“Rise and shine, buttercup.”
Morty’s voice drifted into Emma’s mind, and she blinked in the pale-yellow morning sunlight. She experienced that moment of where am I? followed by the memory of moonlight, laughter, and an impact with a wall of plastic wrap. Morty stood at her feet, dressed in black slacks and a charcoal gray button down. He held a cup of coffee that released spirals of steam toward the high ceiling. She stretched and yawned before sitting up and rubbing her lower back. Bobby’s sleeping bag bunched around her waist.
He held out the mug for her. Emma reached for it and thanked him. She was about to tell Morty what happened last night, but when she looked around for the ball of plastic from the prank, she didn’t see it anywhere. Her shoulders sagged. Words formed from the steam ris
ing from the hot liquid. Fiction. Disappear. Out of time.
When she cupped her hands around the warm mug, she heard a crinkling noise. Instead of feeling smooth and ceramic, the mug felt papery. She tilted her head and stared at the mug. Then she heaved a sigh and pulled off a brochure that had been wrapped around the mug and taped to it. She rippled the paper in the space between them before dropping it beside her.
“Are you ever going to give up nagging me about college?” she asked.
“Never,” Morty said. “If you go back, I’ll stop nagging. How’s the head?”
Emma sipped the coffee and then said, “I think it’s broken, and I might be hallucinating. In the middle of the night I’m pretty sure I saw two teenagers lurking around the stacks, and they set up a booby trap for me.”
A creased formed between Morty’s eyebrows. “I’m not sure if you’re being serious or not.”
Emma sipped more coffee. The hot liquid slid down her throat and sent tendrils of warmth through her, waking up her sluggish body. “Oh, I’m serious, about both the possibility of library vandals and about hallucinations. It felt real, though.” She touched her face as she thought about the wall of plastic. “The boys, they were twins, I think. Redheaded, laughing, seemingly up to no good, but when I chased after them, they disappeared.”
Morty crossed his arms over his chest. Emma placed the mug beside her and shimmied out of the sleeping bag. She glanced over her shoulder to where she’d seen the boys that night, their shadows long and thin, stretching across the train track rug.
She walked toward the rug and stared down at the curving railroad track. Words wiggled out from between the carpet fibers. Believe. Childhood. Wonder. “I don’t remember seeing any young boys in here when we were closing down last night,” she said. “But maybe they were hiding out somewhere. In a closet or in the bathroom.”
Morty’s eyes narrowed, and he removed his glasses from his nose. Emma shrugged and glanced away from his searching gaze.
“I walked around and checked all of the doors and the windows. Nothing looked tampered with,” she said as she returned to grab her coffee. “Even the vault was locked. So…now I’m thinking maybe I was hallucinating. I could have cracked my head harder than I thought.” She gingerly touched the back of her head. Has all of my sanity leaked out?
Morty glanced away from her and rubbed the back of his neck. He polished his lens before slipping his glasses back onto his nose. “Sounds like an intense dream, but I’m not one to discount unusual sightings. Some people believe Mystic Water is haunted.”
Emma’s forehead scrunched. “By redheaded teenagers?”
Morty laughed and shook his head. “I don’t know that I’ve heard anything quite that specific, but who’s to say it’s not?”
“You’re just trying to make me feel better about losing my marbles,” she said as she pulled her fingers through her tangled hair.
Morty slid back his shirtsleeve and checked his watch. “Library opens in an hour. Clean up your party scene here, and use the shower at my house. The front door is unlocked. I’ve already set out clean towels. There’s also a pan of biscuits staying warm in the oven. Jelly’s in the fridge.”
Emma’s chest warmed and not because of the coffee mug cradled in her hands. Even if she were losing her mind, she wouldn’t lose Morty. He had been the one constant in her life for as long as she could remember. “You’re too good to me.”
“Not possible,” he said, making a shooing motion with his hands before walking off.
By midmorning a quiet but constant hum of energy, a feeling like an electrical undercurrent, slowly built beneath Emma’s feet, causing a tingle to zing up and down her spine. She felt anxious in her skin, like an itch out of reach and below the surface. As she shelved books, more than a dozen buzzing, quivering words waited for her on an empty shelf in the self-help section. They moved toward one another and formed sentences. A library patron had left behind a brown, paper napkin emblazoned with the logo from the coffee shop up the street, so Emma grabbed it and pulled a pen out of her back pocket.
Meet me in the dark,
when the world has fallen still.
Our love will burn bright.
Emma didn’t understand why she’d needed to write that down, as she had no particular desire to meet anyone offering love to her in the dark. But she folded the napkin and slipped it into her back pocket with her pen.
She thought perhaps her restlessness had been caused by a buildup of words shifting around in her mind. But writing them down hadn’t given her any release. She wanted to blame the jittery, uncomfortable feeling on her second cup of coffee or on the summer heat slipping in through all the cracks and slivers of empty space. But the air in the library felt different, out of sync with how it should be, like a thunderstorm brewing indoors.
Emma returned to the circulation desk just as a redheaded woman walked into the library. The woman carried an armful of books, and she smiled as soon as she made eye contact with Emma.
“Good morning,” Emma said. “Looks like you’ve been busy.”
The woman nodded. “Mostly for my boys, but I’ll be honest, I stayed up all night finishing this one.” She pulled Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban out of the stack and slid it closer to Emma. “I told myself I’d only read until nine and then it was ten. Then before I knew it, it was three a.m., and I don’t even care that I look like I stayed up all night. I couldn’t put it down. I know everyone’s favorites characters are probably the three main kids, but I love those Weasley twins.” She tugged on her fiery-red, shoulder-length hair. “I could be a family member.”
Emma’s smile wavered. Twins. Redheaded. Shenanigans. A queasy feeling wormed through her stomach, and she experienced a surrealistic moment like Alice must have felt when she tumbled down the rabbit hole.
Emma nodded absently. “Those two certainly cause their share of mayhem.”
The woman leaned forward and whispered, “Wouldn’t you love to meet them?”
I think I already did. Emma pulled the remainder of the returned books toward her. “Something else you want to check out while you’re here? Can I help you find anything?”
“The fourth book in the series, for sure,” she said. “But I know where to find it. I’ll be back.” She walked off toward the children’s section, humming “Witchy Woman.”
Emma stared at the copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. She rubbed her fingertip against the embossed title on the cover.
“Ichabod Crane, Peter Pan, Helen of Troy, and now the Weasley twins.” She glanced over at her worn copy of The Legend of James Grey. “If only…”
James Grey had been a real-life, local war hero, born in 1919 in Mystic Water, and had died in the Second World War during the Battle of the Bulge. He’d sacrificed himself to save four soldiers in his unit when they’d been attacked by a German spy hiding in their ranks. His story had always fascinated Bobby, and by default, Emma had loved him too. After Bobby died, she carried around Bobby’s dog-eared, marked-up copy of the biography. The black and white photo of James Grey on the cover, wearing his helmet and watching the world with his steady gaze and pale eyes, had enchanted her ever since she was a little girl. She’d always wondered about the young man: What made him laugh? How did his face change when he smiled? Had he loved a girl back home, carried her photograph in his shirt pocket?
Emma touched her hand to James’ face on the cover. “Now if you were walking through my mind and coming to life, I could go for that.” She smiled at the absurdity of the idea, knowing if he truly showed his face, she would hightail it the other way. She and relationships with men did not mix well together, like gasoline and stupidity. She excelled at becoming involved in complicated situations that could not be untangled no matter how hard she tried. She inevitably was always the one cut loose like a caught boat anchor that can’t be freed.
“Best if you don’t show up, James.”
In the late afternoon when she and Vicki
finished up for the day, Emma found Morty sitting at the circulation desk. He flipped through the accordion file that was stuffed full with all the paperwork for the Mystic Water Veteran’s Festival happening the coming weekend. Sweat beaded across his forehead, and he rubbed one hand up and down his jaw and then against the back of his neck. Emma draped her arms over the desk and studied him.
“You don’t look so hot,” she said.
Morty cut his eyes over at her but continued to look through the files. “Says the girl who slept on the library floor last night.”
“Hey,” Emma defended, “there’s no reason to cut so low. I thought I was looking pretty good for a temporarily homeless wretch. But, really, are you feeling okay?”
Morty exhaled. He pulled his handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped it across his forehead and then down both sides of his neck. “It’s hot as blue blazes outside, and it’s creeping indoors. I’ll be fine when the autumn gets here. How’s the head, kiddo?”
“When are you going to stop asking about my head?” She plucked an ink pen out of a mug on the counter and twirled it through her fingers.
“When you give me an honest answer. Still seeing ghosts?”
The pen slipped through her fingers, and Emma shivered. “Not in the last few hours.” She picked up the pen and dropped it back into the cup. A few words poofed out of the mug like dust. On the edge. Stirring. Blockage.
Morty wiped his handkerchief across his forehead once more before he slid it back into his pocket. He reached for a bottle of water, and his hand trembled against the plastic. He seemed to be having trouble catching his breath for a few seconds before he twisted off the cap and gulped down half of the water in the bottle.
Emma slid around the desk and propped her hip against the counter beside Morty. “Seriously, are you okay?”
Morty pushed away from the desk in the rolling chair. He rubbed his left shoulder and nodded. “I’m starting to think that maybe I stretched my tuna salad one day too many.” He reached over and patted Emma’s hand. “Don’t worry about me, kiddo. I’ve been worse. Is the AC fixed in your apartment?”
The Legend of James Grey Page 4