The Library War

by Cecily Wolfe

  He reached out to touch her arm but she backed away, and he realized that she didn’t appreciate his reaction. He wasn’t laughing at her, though, couldn’t she see that? They knew each other well enough to practically finish each other’s sentences, or sandwiches, as they had said for a good year after that Disney movie became a craze.

  The other boys at school didn’t pay any attention to him back then, when he and Maya sat together at lunch and swapped half of their sandwiches, always singing that little part of the song.

  If he had had friends, they would have made fun of him for knowing the words, but then again, he and Maya had forged their bond over their isolation, and once that had happened, it never would have mattered what anyone else said.

  “Please, Maya, you can’t possibly believe that.”

  There were probably a lot of better things he could have said, like his original desire to tell her that he had fallen in love with her. Which was why he kissed her, although he hadn’t made a conscious decision to do it.

  When she slapped him, it was hard and fast and he saw through the sting of it that she was crying, the tears on her cheeks causing a pang in his chest more painful than the slap itself.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The very idea that Conner wasn’t taking her concerns seriously, when he had always been the one she could count on to do exactly that, had propelled Maya into acting without thinking.

  As soon as the palm of her hand began to burn, she understood how hard she had hit him, right before she realized that she was crying.

  Was she crying because she was mad, or disappointed? Or was it because the kiss seemed to mean so little to him, just something he had wanted to do on impulse or worse.

  That was it. She was crying because he had kissed her, her first kiss with the first boy she had ever loved, and instead of being perfect and wonderful, he had ruined it by making it a means to an end. Those few moments when it had happened were a wonderful surprise, but it was spoiled. Now he looked confused and helpless, like a lost little boy.

  How could he, when he was the one who had hurt her?

  She stumbled back a few steps before regaining her composure, and lifted her arm to point towards the front door, just outside the kitchen.

  “I think you know the way out.”

  Conner just stood there with his hand on his face, staring at her like he hadn’t heard. Had he been so sure of himself that he just couldn’t believe that the kiss, as fantastic as it was, hadn’t worked?

  “Get out, Conner. If you don’t want to get slapped again, go. Now!”

  When he started to move, it was slowly, small steps that brought him first to face her, where he shook his head before turning away. Maya didn’t watch him leave, but she heard the front door open, then close behind him, with a quiet click that indicated he wasn’t mad, or at least he was hiding it well.

  The temptation to run to the kitchen window and watch him as he walked down her driveway to the sidewalk, and then down the street, was strong, but she took deep breaths and kept still, much longer than she needed to.

  By the time she did let herself look out the window, her tears had dried on her face, and she wiped at the stickiness they left behind.

  An elderly couple was walking a pair of tiny terriers on the sidewalk across the street, but Conner was, of course, long gone. She could hear the dogs’ loud barking, so unexpected from their small frames, as she leaned over the sink, trying to clear her head so she could think straight.

  If she had this right, Conner had kissed her, then tried to talk to her about the library job. She knew that she was already wary of his motives for any of his actions at this point, so she wanted to be sure she wasn’t making this a bigger deal than it was.

  But it was a big deal - at least for her. Kissing Conner was a huge deal. She just wished that it had been the same for him. Instead, he had looked upset, probably because she hadn’t fallen for his ploy, hadn’t told him she would back down from the job so he could have it. If he truly cared about her, why would he fight her over it in the first place?

  Maya sighed and opened a cabinet door to the right, above her head, and pulled out a casserole dish. She still had to clean and cut the peppers, then make the filling with the rice and meat. When she checked the time, she realized that only a half hour had passed since Conner had come into her house and wrecked her life.

  She wanted so much to think that there was more to what had just happened than what it seemed, but she knew it was just hope, hope that their years of friendship, best friendship, meant as much to him as it had to her. More than a job, or a prom . . . more than a pretty girl he would be taking as his date to that same dance.

  Now that she thought about what he had said after that kiss, he had even tried to push her to take Jason seriously as a potential boyfriend. What kind of guy did that, after kissing a girl?

  The green peppers were on the counter where she had left them, but when she picked one up, she just wanted to throw it. She turned the faucet on, letting the water run cold before she leaned into the sink and splashed water over her face, getting her hair and shirt wet in the process.

  It didn’t matter, she thought, grabbing a towel from where it hung on the stove handle, covering her face with the kittens printed on it. Both she and Conner loved cats, but both of their mothers were allergic to them, and both of their mothers made it up to them with cat-themed household items.

  Maya wanted to be comforted by the thought that Conner might be at home now, holding something with kittens just as she was.

  Then again, she didn’t want him to feel better about what he had done. How he had tried to trick her, kissing her like he meant it, like he was kissing her because he cared about her, maybe even loved her.

  She turned away from the sink and let herself fall to her knees on the floor, her face still covered with playful kittens who could do nothing to stop the tears that followed. Her mother wouldn’t be home for several hours, and while wallowing in her misery wasn’t Maya’s style, she knew that fighting this would be impossible.

  Conner was still stunned the next morning, after an awkward explanation offered to his parents the night before, who didn’t see how he could possibly turn down his favorite dinner if he wasn’t sick.

  He couldn’t really tell them that lasagna, complete with an extra helping of shredded mozzarella that was just shy of being burnt, reminded him of Maya. They had made a sort-of lasagna one night when she had slept over, only last year, and neither of them were in the mood to walk to the store to get the correct ingredients.

  There was a layer of al dente cooked spaghetti, arranged in clumps to cover the bottom of the casserole dish, followed by layers of sliced cheddar cheese, pepperoni, more spaghetti, and alfredo sauce, a jar of it found in the back of the cupboard where his mother usually kept canned goods.

  Maya had laughed, as usual, at his mother’s system of organizing everything so definitively. At her house, she and her mother stored things where they fit, for the most part. A jar of pasta sauce was as likely to be with peanut butter as it was cans of soup.

  Their concoction had looked strange and smelled a little weird while it was baking, but as the two of them ate it in front of the television while watching their favorite episodes of Seinfeld, it proved an incredible combination. They shared the dish across their laps, sitting side by side, each of them eating from their side of the dish until they reached the center, where they pushed each other’s forks out of the way, laughing.

  When Conner went over the memory in his thoughts as he stared at his ceiling that night, kicking the covers off and pulling them back on as he lay in bed, he realized, with no surprise, that it wasn’t the food itself that had been so great.

  It had been Maya, of course, and the ease with which they sat together, laughing at the show and each other. The way it felt to have her shoulder up against his, her hair, usually in a ponytail, down and falling across his arm.

  He had kissed her without thi
nking, without considering how she would feel about it. But wasn’t that how it worked in all those romantic movies and shows most of the girls at school talked about? Maya had never been one of those girls, though, and he knew it, better than anyone.

  Hallmark Channel? Rom coms? You would have better luck getting Maya’s attention by smacking her in the face with an ice cream sandwich than a romantic ploy.

  That kiss was not a ploy, not by a long shot. The very idea that Maya thought it was made Conner nauseated.

  His calls and texts to her since Friday night had gone unanswered, and his time spent shooting baskets to vent his frustration was at least triple his usual.

  He stood in a hot shower so long on Monday morning that his mother knocked on the bathroom door, startling him out of a daze as he leaned forward on his hands, braced against the wall.

  “It’s getting late, honey. Won’t Maya wonder where you are?”

  It was a solid question, for different reasons than his mom could know.

  Maya wouldn’t be waiting for him, he was sure. He had dared to send one text before he left his bed that morning, a HEY that usually brought on a long conversation consisting of the same until one of them became annoyed and said something else equally lame.

  There had been no response, just as he had expected.

  If he could have kicked himself, he would have. How could he have left her alone, crying, like that? Sure, she had told him to leave, but he should have stayed and fought with her over it. He never once said that he loved her, but she was so sure he had only kissed her to make her agree to let him have the library job.

  Maybe if she hadn’t been so hung up on that job things would have ended differently last night. Maybe they could have agreed to compete for it on their own merits. Maybe they could have settled everything then and there.

  Maybe they could have gone back to kissing, and all would be right with the world.

  He pounded his fist into the wall and turned off the shower. Should he stop by Maya’s house on the way to school, as he had every day during the school years since sixth grade?

  The only exceptions had been those when one of them was sick, and the other would always come by regardless, bringing a book and a snack, maybe something silly like one of those Captain Underpants stories that were still popular at the library, and Twinkies with a jar of caramel ice cream topping.

  As he dried himself off and dressed, he determined that he would stop by, and if she ignored him or was angry, he would figure out how to handle it at that point. Everything he did so far seemed to be wrong, so thinking too far ahead wasn’t going to get him anywhere but confused and nervous.

  There were so many ways in which Maya had always been predictable, an expected, comforting presence in his life. Now that she had become someone he couldn’t read from moment to moment, he was scared. Not of the challenge, or the change, but that he might lose her, and their friendship, for good.

  The loss of the girl he loved along with his best friend, one and the same person, was too much for him to consider.

  “You didn’t eat much all weekend, and now you don’t want anything for breakfast on a school day? Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

  His father clapped him on the back in his usual friendly manner, and Conner forced himself to smile.

  “I’ll just take a piece of toast,” he managed to say, reaching out to take one from a plate in the middle of the kitchen table as he walked by on his way towards the front door.

  His backpack was exactly where he had left it on the floor, untouched, his homework incomplete. It was a first, just as the possibility of walking to school without Maya was. Without a further word to his parents, he slung the backpack over his shoulder and stepped outside, squinting up into the sunshine.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Always perceptive, Maya’s mom had made her confess that she and Conner had fought.

  That was all she got out of her, though. Her mother was shocked enough, although she tried to talk to Maya about how all relationships had difficulties, even though the one between herself and Conner had been, as her mother put it, charmed from the start.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it? I know I’m not exactly an expert, but I have a few more years’ experience and have been around the block.”

  It was true. Her mom didn’t have time to hang out with friends of her own, although once a year she met up with some friends from college in Columbus, where they spent a weekend doing whatever it was they did.

  From what Maya could tell, they just walked around town and went out to eat, and it was enough that they were together.

  Kind of like her friendship with Conner had always been.

  “Is there something else going on between the two of you?” her mom asked on Monday morning, after spending most of the weekend at work, leaving Maya alone with her worries.

  Maya drank a glass of orange juice slowly while she stood at the kitchen sink and looked out into the street. A school bus drove by, but otherwise, the street was quiet and empty. Usually Conner would be ambling up the sidewalk around now, looking up at the sky like he had never seen it before.

  It was just his way, to find something interesting in something ordinary.

  Maya had thought herself so very ordinary, so beneath anyone’s notice, when they found each other years ago.

  “Maya?”

  She turned to find her mother standing close behind her, a coffee mug empty in her hand. Had she missed responding to something? She thought quickly and remembered, barely stopping herself from groaning.

  “No, definitely not. I mean, just no.”

  Her mother frowned and raised one eyebrow, obviously not buying Maya’s response. Before she could ask Maya anything else, Maya grabbed her backpack and headed to the front door, shoving her feet into whichever shoes were close by.

  “Are you really going to wear two different shoes to school today?”

  With a sigh, Maya looked down, noticing a worn brown moccasin on her left foot, as opposed to a faded black slip-on tennis shoe on her right. Both were thrift store finds, and she had noticed last week that the tennis shoes both had tiny holes in the canvas.

  She wanted to tell her mother that she honestly didn’t care if she went to school with one of each on her feet, but then there would be questions as to why, so she stepped out of the moccasin and looked around for the other tennis shoe.

  She slid it on quickly and forced herself to smile as she opened the door, hoping her mother was reassured by her actions. Working with people all day and sometimes all night had made her mother very intuitive, and of course, being a nurse meant she had been educated in how the mind worked.

  Maya knew that she would have to give her mother some explanation eventually, after finding Maya asleep on the sofa Friday night with the kitten towel and a soggy, melting bag of ice on her forehead.

  A fight with Conner had been too general an excuse, but for now, her mother had given her a reprieve, along with her hope that the two of them could work it out, especially for the sake of their prom dates.

  She was right, Maya knew. As she left her driveway, walking down the sidewalk alone for the first time she could remember, she frowned. They weren’t little kids, and even though what happened Friday night was more than a disagreement, they had to get over it enough to make prom a good experience for Jason and Kaylie.

  They had brought the two of them into this double date, and it would be up to them to ensure Jason and Kaylie didn’t regret it. As much as Maya’s mom had encouraged her to go to the prom so Maya wouldn’t be sorry she missed it years later, Maya knew that if she and Conner ruined it for Jason and Kaylie, their dates would hold terrible memories of a night that was supposed to be wonderful, even if it wasn’t exactly romantic.