Evil Librarian

by Michelle Knudsen

  The other one appears to be a biology textbook.

  “Hmm,” I say. I look at her, trying to see if she is kidding. If we were in one of Annie’s drawings right now, I would be a wavy-haired stick figure with skeptical eyes and little question marks floating around my head.

  “This one will sever the link between your friend and the librarian,” she says, indicating the protractor. “The other will protect you, just once, from his direct attack. You must not attempt to use them for these purposes until you are fully in our world.”

  She doesn’t seem like she’s kidding.

  I look at the items again, then back at her.

  “You realize that’s a protractor and a biology textbook, right?”

  She gives me an impatient look. “That’s what they are in this world. They will be what you need them to be when you cross over.”

  Cross over. I still can’t really believe that’s going to happen.

  I pick up the protractor and the book. “So, how’s that all going to work, anyway?” I ask, very obviously trying (and failing) for casually. “The whole ‘crossing over’ thing?”

  “You will know when it happens,” she says, and she is smiling in a very non-comforting way.

  “I don’t want to know when it happens. Well, I mean obviously I don’t want to not know when it happens, but I want to also know now, ahead of time, what it will be like.”

  “There is no way to explain what it will be like. I don’t really know what it is like for humans to cross. I know what it’s like for demons to come here, and it’s not very pleasant. I imagine it won’t be very pleasant for you, either.”

  “That’s it? Really? You can’t tell me anything else?” I am suddenly kind of pissed off. “I thought we were working together on this thing. I help you, you get to be queen of the demons, I get to save my friend, et cetera? Why won’t you tell me everything you can to help me? If I end up screwing things up and dying, you’re not going to have your roach-umbrella, you know. It’s in your best interest to help me. So help me, dammit!”

  She rolls her eyes.

  “I cannot help you in this way. Why do humans always think they want to know everything?” She takes a step toward me, then another, her tight pants making whispery fabric sounds as her shapely thighs brush past each other. “You want me to tell you it will be terrible? Terrifying? It will. You will be dragged across a boundary you were never meant to cross, you will be thrust into a place in which you do not belong, where you will be meat and prey to everything around you, and you will need to keep your head and function and do what you came there to do despite this. There is no way to prepare. You will either be strong enough or you won’t. You will succeed or you won’t. You will survive or you won’t. There is nothing I can tell you that will make one bit of difference.”

  She is standing right in front of me now. I can smell her spicy-sweet perfume, and if I look down, I know I’ll get a full view of her impressive cleavage in her very low-cut shirt. Her eyes are bright and intense, and I realize she cannot wait for this whole thing to go down. She can’t wait to go home and fight to the death.

  Demons are fucking crazy.

  “Fine,” I say. “Sorry I had questions about this impossible, horrible thing I’m about to do. I’ll just take my lame-ass magical items and go.”

  I clasp the book and protractor to my far-less-impressive cleavage, which I guess maybe isn’t even technically cleavage at all since I’m not wearing low-cut anything, and head for the door. I’m sort of expecting her to say something else, some last parting words of wisdom or advice, some relenting, grudging admission that there is perhaps something she can tell me after all, and I even slow down toward the end to give her a chance to speak up, but she doesn’t say anything. I open the door and walk out. The textbook is heavy. I am disappointed and annoyed.

  When I get to class, I slide the textbook and protractor into my backpack, which is already stuffed with snacks and extra ponytail holders and vitamin C drops and other tech week survival gear. I suppose I’m going to have lug them around until tomorrow night.

  My grumpy mood doesn’t last, though. It can’t. Because tonight is Sweeney dress rehearsal, and I can’t wait. I can’t wait to hear Ryan sing and watch him own the stage, can’t wait to assume my stage-left-curtain perch, where I will sit with my headset and rule my technical kingdom and feel the magic of the show taking hold of everyone who experiences it. Tomorrow I will have to be freaked out about what is going to happen after the show, but tonight I just get to immerse myself in the whole spectacular glorious miracle that is musical theater. I am so pumped up about this, so ready to be happy and in the middle of it, that I am totally unprepared for the shock of catching a glimpse of Annie after seventh period, and it knocks the breath right out of me.

  She’s in the library, of course, sitting on a stool behind the circulation desk, scanning some books’ bar codes with a little handheld scanner and putting them in neat, perfect, Annie-style stacks. This is the first time I’ve seen her in over a week. Since that night that everything went so wrong with the containment circle and Aaron and she disappeared with Mr. Gabriel. She hated me that night. It was clear on her face, how angry she was, how furious and appalled and disgusted, how much she hated me. I am riveted by the sight of her, like my eyes have been thirsty for her all this time, dying of thirst, and now they cannot stop drinking her in and would not turn away even if I had the heart to try to make them.

  She looks happy. She is smiling her brightest Annie smile and she looks like she is exactly where she wants to be, without a care in the world, without anything dragging her even the tiniest bit down. I realize that I have stopped short in the middle of the hall, that irritated students are swerving around me on either side, but I don’t care. I am still completely incapable of looking away.

  I miss her so much. And if I don’t stay strong and functional and manage to succeed and survive tomorrow night, I will lose her forever, for good. No backsies, not ever. And Mr. Gabriel will turn her into something else, blacken her good, sweet heart and destroy everything about her that I love.

  Aaand . . . speak of the devil.

  He emerges from the back office, and while my whole body wants to convulse with fury and hate and hurt, Annie’s face lights up to a place so beyond happy that I almost have to squint in order to keep looking. He puts his hand on her shoulder, and she looks up at him like he’s her favorite movie star and God and Gandhi and Santa Claus all rolled into one. And while they are careful, even now, not to engage in inappropriate public school behavior, I can see the dark promise in his gaze as he looks down at her, and her own answering openness and willingness and wanting, and I have to fight myself to not throw up or scream or dissolve from the awfulness of everything right there in the middle of the hallway.

  Mr. Gabriel’s posture straightens slightly, and instantly I know that he knows I am there. He starts to look up, very slowly, to raise his eyes to the library doorway, to catch me standing there so he can smile his evil smile and bask in the delightful knowledge that he is killing me with what he is doing to my friend. I can’t bear it. I turn and run, like a coward, before his eyes can meet my own. I know he’ll know that I couldn’t face him, but I refuse to accept the shame that wants to cling to my mind and heart. Let him think he’s won; let him think I’m beaten; let him think that he has nothing to stand in his way as he makes his final play tomorrow night. When it counts, when it matters, I will face him. And I will win.

  I repeat this in my head, over and over, as I run and then walk and then stop and lean against the cold, smooth third-floor wall. I will win. I will win. I will win.

  I will win.

  And until then I will go back to focusing on what is good, and making the most of all the moments I have left before the final showdown has to start.

  And that’s what I do. It takes a little while to shake off the Annie and Mr. Gabriel sighting, but eventually I manage. I go to the auditorium and drop off my stuff
and inspect my troops and check the prop table, and soon enough I am able to lose myself in the excitement of dress rehearsal, in Mr. Henry’s adorable last-minute panics about things that are absolutely fine, in the costumes and the sets and in everyone running around getting last-minute items in place, in the anticipatory, barely reined-in promise as Mr. Iverson leads the cast in vocal warm-ups, and in Ryan’s deliberate catching of my eye when Mr. Henry calls places for the run. I mouth, “Break a leg” at him and he smiles one of his devastating smiles and points at me as if to say, You too, and then he disappears behind the set.

  And it’s awesome, and I know I’m totally overusing that word but I don’t care, and for as long as it lasts, the only demons I think about are the ones in Sweeney’s and Mrs. Lovett’s own minds and hearts, and that is fine by me.

  That night when Ryan drives me home, he parks in front of my house instead of just stopping to let me out. I no longer expect that he is ever going to kiss me (even though this would be a perfect setting and opportunity, just FYI), so I indulge in no imagined scenarios of him leaning across the armrest and planting his lips on mine. Nope. Not one.

  “What’s up?” I ask, when he doesn’t explain why (if not to kiss me) he has parked the car.

  He is silent for another few seconds, not looking at me. I wait. He’s clearly working up to something.

  “Are you sure you want to go through with it?” he asks suddenly.

  “What?” I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but it was definitely not that.

  He turns to face me. A streetlight throws a narrow column of light across his cheek. “The last time we saw Annie, she seemed pretty determined to go with Mr. Gabriel. Maybe . . .”

  “Maybe . . .?” I echo back at him. I am a little afraid to find out how he might be planning to finish that thought.

  He takes a breath, and I can see him preparing for me to not like what he’s about to say. “Maybe sometimes people want things that other people can’t understand, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re completely wrong to want them. Maybe Annie has reasons that we don’t know about. Maybe it’s not our place to stop her from going after what she wants, even if it seems like what she wants is totally crazy.”

  “You are totally crazy,” I tell him. “Are you listening to what you’re saying? Annie was not herself that night. She hasn’t been herself since that goddamn librarian materialized in our library and made eyes at her over the encyclopedias. You never really knew her before he showed up. I’ve known her practically my whole life. And the Annie I know would never want something like that. Never.”

  But even as I say this, I am thinking about the last real conversation Annie and I had. The things she said about everyone’s expectations, and how alone and trapped and caged in she has felt. The things she’s been feeling that I never even suspected. Maybe it’s not true; maybe those are just things she’s telling herself she’s always been feeling so that she can justify what she thinks she wants and not see the truth of what Mr. Gabriel is really doing to her . . . but I don’t think so. At least, not entirely. That felt real, those things she said. I never would have guessed it, any of it, but now I believe that she really has been feeling that way, at least some of the time. Maybe a lot of the time. Maybe the cheerful face she’s always showing to the world is more of a mask than a window. And I was her best friend, and I never saw.

  I try to really think about how she described her life. The future that seems unalterably laid before her, the good-girl persona she has worn for so long that she doesn’t know how to be anything else. Or didn’t, until now. Could this really be her one chance to let go, to stop being who everyone else wants her to be and instead to be the person she dreams herself, inside? To be wanted in that fierce and powerful way by someone, to reject the life she’d resigned herself to — to have that dark fairy tale that she has secretly longed for, that she had buried in despair of ever having anything close to what she wanted? Maybe there is a part of Annie, the real Annie, a big part even, who truly wants this.

  I try to imagine accepting that. And I can’t.

  “No,” I say out loud. “Even if she thinks she really wants this — even if she does really want it — that doesn’t make it okay. Mr. Gabriel is a monster. He’s told us straight out that he’s planning to destroy her, to take away who she is and make her something else. That’s not love, and that can’t be okay. It just can’t. Sometimes people are wrong. Sometimes they want bad things. Sometimes, if you care about them, you have to try to save them from themselves.”

  Ryan is quiet for a moment.

  “If that’s true,” he says finally, “maybe I should be saving you. Maybe I should be stopping you from risking your life to save hers. Even if that’s what you really want.” He meets my eyes then, and he’s more serious than I have ever seen him before. “I don’t want you to die, Cyn. Annie wouldn’t want you to die, either. Although, honestly, I’m a little tired of thinking about what Annie wants. Maybe it’s time you let Annie take responsibility for herself and think about what’s best for you for a change. Doesn’t your life matter? Don’t you have things to live for? Why does Annie’s life get to be more important than your own?”

  I’m staring at him, angry and shocked, and . . . confused. Because part of me is wondering if he’s not at least a little bit right. Where does my responsibility truly lie? Even if I’m sure that I’m doing the right thing, do I have the right to stop Annie from doing what she thinks she wants? What she thinks is right?

  If everyone thinks they are right, and they can’t really all be right, then how do we decide who’s wrong?

  I shake my head. No. I can’t go down that road. All I can do is what I think is best. And deep down, under the confusion and the fear and the wanting to still be alive for my own future, I can’t really believe for one full second that letting my best friend be stolen away by a murderous evil demon is in any possible sense the right move here.

  Ryan can tell what I’m thinking; it’s clear in the hardening of his expression.

  “Cyn —”

  “Ryan, please. Just stop. I don’t want to fight about this. I don’t want to fight at all. I made my choice.”

  “What about my choice? What if my choice is to not let you just go off and get yourself killed?”

  I close my eyes, trying to get my bearings. He is confusing me in more ways than one. Under any other circumstances, I would be really, really happy that he cares about me enough to be saying things like this. I would be thinking about what it might mean. But right now, the last thing I need is a reason to doubt what I’m doing.

  “Ryan, I have to. I can’t choose my happiness over Annie’s life.”

  “What about your life over Annie’s life? Could you choose that?”

  I shake my head again. I’m crying a little, I realize, which makes sense, because even though I’ve been trying really hard not to think about it straight out like this, the whole thing sucks so bad, and it’s totally not fair, and I wish — I wish so much that it weren’t happening. “I’m the only one who can save her, Ryan. Do you really think I could live with myself if I just gave up on her? If you really care about me, you won’t fight me on this. You’ll do everything you can to help me, so that I can save Annie and survive and come back alive. Believe me, I don’t want to die. But I have to save her first. I have to, Ryan. She’s my best friend. I can’t just let her go.”

  And suddenly I’m crying full force, dissolving in tears and racking sobs and wretchedness in exactly the way I have not allowed myself to do since this whole stupid-ass thing began.

  Ryan reaches over and takes my hand. He doesn’t say anything else, just holds my hand, which I grip tightly back, and lets me cry.

  Finally, much later, when I seem to have cried myself out, he pulls back, just a little. He looks at me, which I’m sure can’t be very pleasant given what a snively mascara-running mess I must be right now. He brushes his thumb gently under one of my eyes
, then the other, wiping away the last of the tears.

  “Okay,” he says softly. “Okay. I won’t try to stop you, and I’ll do everything that I can to help.”

  “Thank you,” I whisper, still sniffling.

  Then he moves his hands to the sides of my head and holds it firmly, staring into my eyes.

  “But you’d better damn well make it through this alive, Cyn. Do you hear me? Get in there and get Annie and get the hell back out. Promise?”

  I nod as much as his grip on my head will allow.

  “Say it. I need to hear you say it.”

  “I promise. I’ll come back. I promise.”

  “Okay, then.” He nods back. “It’s a deal.”

  I awaken to the sound of my text alert.

  I reach over and pull my phone groggily toward me from my bedside table. It is a text from Ryan. It says, IT’S THE DAY OF THE SHOW, Y’ALL.

  The combination of him not only quoting Waiting for Guffman to me but also trusting that I will get and appreciate the reference is almost too much delightfulness for me to handle first thing in the morning.

  But I manage.

  I am not awake enough to manage much else, though, including coming up with a clever and appropriate response, so I just text him a smiley face in return.

  For a few minutes I just lie there in bed feeling happy. Again. It is the day of the show, y’all, and Ryan thought of me as soon as he woke up and wanted to share his excitement with me in exactly the perfect way, and I am smiling at the ceiling like an idiot and it is all really, really good.

  Then I think about what has to happen after the show, and all of the happy goes away.

  No, no, no.

  I don’t want to feel like this yet. I still have time, dammit. I take a deep breath, and then I begin to talk myself through this. First, I am going to enjoy the day and the growing anticipation as the hours pass and the show gets closer and everyone looks forward to it together. The very fact that it might be my last day ever is going to make it all the more precious and important, and I am not going to waste said possible last day ever feeling sad and scared.