by Julia Hoban
A hundred and eighty-six dollars? Three to six weeks?
She’d assumed it would be expensive, and figured that she’d pick up some extra shifts at the library, but . . .
A hundred and eighty-six dollars!
Willow is literally speechless.
“So how about it? You want it?”
Willow just stares at him. Her mind is a complete blank.
“You interested?” he persists. “Hey, is something wrong, because you look like you’re going to . . .”
“Allergies.” Willow swipes a hand across her eyes.
“Yeah? Me too. So you want to order it?”
“I . . . uh . . .”
“You live down here?” he interrupts. It’s obvious that he couldn’t care less about whether she gets the book or not. “I play in a band a couple doors down. After work. Wednesdays and Fridays. You could come down, listen to us, maybe hang out afterwards.”
This isn’t happening!
“Thank you, I . . . No. No, I’m sorry, I don’t have the money for the book. And I live . . .”
Willow spins away, not sure where she’s headed, but she has to be alone. And quickly too.
She pushes past people, desperate for a place that she can be by herself. She looks down each and every aisle, but they’re never empty, there’s always someone browsing through the dusty old volumes.
Willow is feeling more and more disoriented. She’s hot, the dust is making her feel as if she really doeshave allergies. The place is too fraught with memories, and she’s horribly, horribly disappointed.
Finally, as she nears the end of the store, she spies an aisle with only one customer who is slowly making his way out.
Willow shoves past him, with barely an excuse me, and collapses against the hard metal frame of the bookshelves. She’s breathing heavily and doesn’t even notice the way that the books jab into her. She sinks slowly to the floor and buries her head in her hands.
Well, what did you think? What did youthink would happen?
She should have known better. Nothing else works out for her, so why should this have been the single exception? Why did she think she could succeed where David had failed? Her track record of late has hardly been impressive. Willow ticks off the mistakes that she’s made on her fingers. One: She should have known the book would be that expensive. Two: She should have known that something that obscure wouldn’t just be waiting for her on the shelf, for her to pick up and waltz off with. Three: She should have known that even if she had found the book, it would have made absolutely no difference.
But I was hoping . . .
Willow raises her head slowly. She hadn’t realized just how much she was counting on giving David the stupid book. It had seemed like the perfect thing to do that morning, but really, now that she considers it more carefully, is it any less shallow than her attempts to cheer him up with some fatuous compliments? She’s ashamed for thinking that something so simple would make her brother’s life better. She’s ashamed of herself for being so shallow.
And she’s especially ashamed for thinking that buying David a book would be enough to make him love her again.
Willow opens her bag slowly, calmly. There’s none of the frantic urgency that she usually associates with her need. Somehow it just seems inevitable now. She is someone who cuts. It’s that simple. She’s someone who killed her parents. She’s someone who has lost her brother. And she is someone who has to cut.
She rolls up her sleeve, then shakes her head. She really will have to wait for some of those cuts to heal before she can work there again. Her legs are a much better bet, but getting to them is not so easy. Still, Willow leans forward and pushes up the leg of her jeans.
“Excuse me.”
She jerks her head up as someone steps over her and reaches for a book.
Will nothing work out?
She squeezes the razor in frustration. It slices into her palm as she does so.
Good!
But that is all she can do. And anyway, it’s time to go. She has to get to work.
Willow straightens her jeans, puts her things back into her bag, and starts to stand up. As she does so her eye is caught by an old and worn, but nevertheless beautiful, small leather volume jammed in helter-skelter amid all the other books.
She wonders what it’s doing in this section and looks toward the end of the aisle, where a small card is posted.
Elizabethan and Restoration Drama.
Willow hadn’t realized what part of the store she’d chosen for her little meltdown. She pulls out the book and looks at the blue leather binding, then leafs through the dog-eared copy of The Tempest,trying to read the faded purple ink where some earlier reader had annotated the margins.
“Hey, can I get by you already?”
She looks up into the face of an especially cute guy. An actor probably.
“Yes, sorry.” Willow scrambles to her feet. She pauses for a moment in the act of putting The Tempestback on the shelf. Then she tucks it under her arm and walks toward the cash registers.
Willow isn’t really sure why she wants to buy it. She’s read the play a million times, she doesn’t have time to read anything that isn’t related to school right now, and if she did, there are several editions back in the apartment.
Besides . . .
Didn’t he say his father was a banker? The last thing he needs is some old moth-eaten edition like this.
He’d probably think it was strange for her to be giving him a used book as a present, all written in and marked up. He’d probably think it was strange for her to be giving him any kind of present at all.
And why is she thinking of getting Guy something, anyway?
Unconsciously, Willow touches the cut that he had bandaged.
She doesn’t have to give it to him. She doesn’t have to do anything with it. She can even toss it out. It doesn’t matter, it’s just something to have.
Except he really should read The Tempest.
Maybe her visit wasn’t a total waste, she thinks as she pays for the book and hurries to work.
“Well, look at you.” Carlos winks at her as she rushes into the library flushed and slightly breathless, nearly twenty minutes late. “I hope you’ve been having fun.”
“Not exactly.” Willow stows her bag underneath the circulation desk. “What kind of mood is she in?” she whispers as she pins her ID to her shirt.
“You’re lucky, she isn’t here. Emergency root canal.”
“Ow.” Willow winces in sympathy. She sits down on one of the high stools and tucks her feet underneath the rungs.
“Ask me if anything else interesting happened,” Carlos says. He leans back in his chair and gives Willow an arch look.
“Anything else interesting happen?” Willow picks up her cue, but she’s not really listening. She’s wondering if she can get some homework done—after all, Miss Hamilton isn’t here. . . .
“Someone was asking for you.”
“For me?” Willow is surprised. “You mean my brother?”
“Get out of here.” Carlos rolls his eyes. “You think I don’t know your brother? Younger. Your age. A guy,” he adds, anticipating her next question. “I’ve seen him around before.”
“Oh.” Willow considers this for a minute. The only other person she can think of is Guy. “What did he want?”
“Wanted to know if you were working today. I told him yes.”
“Huh.” She shrugs and tries to look indifferent. “Well, maybe he’ll come back.”
“No maybe about it.” Carlos brings his chair back down with a bang and stands up as Guy approaches the desk.
“Hey.” Guy smiles at her. “I was working up here and I thought that maybe when you get a break we could—”
“She’s got a break now,” Carlos interjects.
“I just got here!” Willow protests.
“I’m in charge today,” Carlos says. “Besides, things are pretty quiet here. Go on, see you in thirty.”
“Well, thanks,” Willow says slowly. Of course she’s happy to have a break, but she feels a little shy all of a sudden. She takes her ID off and stuffs it into her bag, then pauses for a second.
It’s totally safe to leave her bag here. She always does when she takes her break, just takes her wallet and puts it in her pocket.
But Willow can’t help thinking about the copy of The Tempestthat’s lying at the bottom of her backpack.
Not that she knows what she’s going to do with it or anything, but she might as well take her bag with her for once.
“See you in a bit,” she says to Carlos as she slings her backpack over her shoulder.
“That was nice of him,” Guy says. They walk down the marble stairs and out of the building.
“Uh-huh.” Willow nods. She’s sure that she can feel the book weighing down her already heavy bag. It must be her imagination, though. After all, it could hardly be more than a few ounces at most.
“So.” Guy gives her a smile. “I was working in the library, and I needed to take a break. I thought maybe I could drag you to that place I told you about.”
“That place with the cappuccinos? Sure.” Willow pauses. “So what were you working on?”
Willow is interested to hear what he’s been working on, but there are a million things that she’d rather know first—like whyhe wants to take his break with her in the first place.
Is it because he feels he has to keep tabs on her illicit activities since he hasn’t told David?
Is it because he might just kind of want to be with me?
Maybe she should give him the book after all.
“Oh, I’m just doing some reading for the class that I’m taking up here. Hey, watch out.” He pulls her back on the curb as a bike messenger whizzes past.
“Thanks.” Willow is startled. Not so much by the bike, although it did almost knock her down, but by the feel of his arm on hers. She should be used to his touch, though. After all, he’s bandaged her, pulled her up the stairs, held her hand. . . .
Perhaps she’s so affected because she’s still off balance from her experience in the bookstore. Or perhaps it’s because this is the first time that he’s touched her for a reason wholly unrelated to cutting.
“This is the place.” Guy opens the door.
Willow sits down across from him at one of the green marble tables and picks up a menu, then puts it down and starts biting her nails.
Lovely.
She picks up the menu again, but makes no attempt to open it, then busies herself with the napkin dispenser.
“Are you okay?”
“Oh sure, just a little . . .”
Nervous and uncomfortable.
But that doesn’t make any sense. After all, he knowsabout her, she has nothing to fear from him.
Then why is she so edgy?
She thinks back to the other day in the park, when she persuaded him to stay with her. She should have let him go then. She’s broken her post-accident resolution. She’s starting to feel things. Feel a lot of things.
Willow can’t allow herself to do that. She should never have let him get to her this way. She has no business talking to him about what he likes to read or where he grew up or anything like that at all.
And what is she doing buying him presents? As soon as she gets back to work, she’s throwing it out. First thing. . . .
“Do you know what you want?” Guy asks.
“Huh?” Willow hadn’t even noticed that a waiter had shown up. She opens the menu, but it’s upside-down.
“Never mind, I’ll take care of it.” Guy laughs at her, but in a nice way. “Umm, two iced cappuccinos, and two, God, what would you like? Umm, let’s see, she’ll have . . . a strawberry tart.” He looks at her. “That work?”
“Well, sure.” Willow nods. “But I really don’t have that much time, I have to be back in . . .”
“I know, but something tells me that Carlos will cut you a little slack.” Guy looks back at the waiter. “So that’s two iced cappuccinos, a strawberry tart, and a—”
“Wait.” She manages to turn the menu around. “Umm, he’ll have the mocha napoleon.”
“Got it in one.” Guy hands the menus back to the waiter. “So you know, I was wondering. . . . Wait a sec . . .” He stops talking suddenly and reaches across the table to take hold of Willow’s hand. This time his touch is rough, harsh almost, and Willow gives a little gasp.
He opens her hand palm side upward, and stares at the line of dried blood that runs from one end to the other.
“It’s not what you think.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” Willow squirms a little in her chair. His gaze is too intense, and she looks away. “All right, you want to know the truth? It’s not what you think it is, but not for lack of trying, okay?” She pulls her hand away.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I wanted to but I couldn’t. I wasn’t alone. Look, you want to help me?”
“Yes.”
“Then talk about something else.”
“Okay,” Guy says. “What?”
“Well . . .” Willow rests her chin on her hands and thinks for a moment. “I don’t know, anything. The weather.”
“The weather?”
“Okay. How about the weather in Kuala Lumpur?”
“We already did that.” Guy crosses his arms over his chest and gives her a look.
“So tell me about the rest of it. What was it like over there?”
“You’re really fixated on that place, aren’t you?”
“I like the name.” Willow shrugs.
“Whatever.” Guy pauses for a second while the waiter sets their order down. “Okay, you want to know what it was like? Everything was really different. I mean everything. The people, the buildings, the food, the whole culture. It might as well have been on a whole other planet. But I really couldn’t appreciate it, because, well, it was just sort of difficult for me there.”
“Difficult? But it sounds like it would be fun,” Willow protests. “You were living in this whole other society, you got to read all the time . . .” She trails off as she realizes how shallow she sounds. She might as well be telling him that it sounds sweet. “I’m sorry, how was it difficult?”
She can’t believe what she’s asking. She should get up and walk away instead of getting in deeper and deeper. The last thing she needs is to hear things that make him matter more to her.
So much for resolutions. She’s like an ex-smoker in a cigarette factory.
“Don’t get me wrong.” Guy shakes his head. “It wasn’t bad exactly. There was a lot about it that was great. We got to do some really incredible stuff, like travel all over the place, go to Thailand . . . Also, it is incredibly interesting getting to see this whole other world up close. But I just never fit in. I mean, I expected Kuala Lumpur to be different. What was weird, though, was that the kids I hung around with and the school I went to were different than anything else I’d ever experienced too. They were all British, all very, very wealthy. They were as strange to me as everything else over there, only the thing is, I was supposed to be just like them. I wasn’t. And that was . . .”
“Difficult,” Willow says slowly. “That does sound like it would be hard. I’m sorry you didn’t have such a great time, but you know what I think?”
“Uh-uh. Tell me.”
“Well, being an outsider like that, I think maybe that’swhat made you interested in anthropology. I mean way before you ever read any books or took my brother’s class. Observing another culture from the outside, that’s sort of what anthropology is about, right?”
“I never thought about it like that.” Guy takes a sip of his coffee. “I just complained that I didn’t belong, but you’re probably right.” He stops talking and looks at her for a minute. “You know what? I’m doing a lousy job of distracting you.”
“Oh no, listening to someone else’s problems . . . believe me, total distraction.”
�
��But it’s your problem too. Being an outsider. Well, at least you thinkit is. One of them anyway, and the last thing I want to do is remind you of stuff like that.”
“Oh.” Willow looks down at her plate. He has a point, of course, but oddly enough, listening to him hasn’t made her think of her own situation at all. Still, it would be nice if they could talk about simple things for once.
“All right then,” she says. “I don’t suppose the weather in Thailand was any better? Wait a sec.” Her eye is caught by a flash of red outside the window. “We’re in luck, something much more interesting.” Willow leans sideways, almost out of her chair, and cranes her neck to look out the glass. “Sorry, false alarm.”
“What were you staring at?” Guy looks out the window too.
“I thought I saw Laurie go by, correction, Laurie’s new red shoes.” Willow relaxes back in her chair. “She went shoe shopping this afternoon, she’s going to wear them tomorrow.”
“That’s more interesting?”
“About a million times. But it wasn’t her, so forget it.”
“Yeah, I’m totally lost—you went shopping with her?”
“No,” Willow sighs. “I should have, but I didn’t. She and Chloe were walking downtown to go shopping, and I was going to that bookstore we . . . you like. So we just sort of walked together.”
“The one where I told you I bought Tristes?” Guy perks up. “Did you get anything?”
“No,” Willow says after a moment. “Nothing really.”
“I wish I’d known you were going there, I would have gone with you. Were you looking for anything special?”
Willow doesn’t answer for a minute. She’s too busy thinking about her botched errand. She’s too busy thinking about the fact that she has nothing to give David when she sees him later, nothing except a failed quiz, and she won’t give her brother that.
“Willow?”
“Sorry, I was just . . . Look.” Willow grabs her backpack and digs the quiz out. She’s careful to keep the bag with The Tempestin it hidden from view. “I’m supposed to give David this.” She hands Guy the paper. “He has to sign it. I can’tgive it to him, though. I’m going to have to forge his signature or something.” She toys with her strawberry tart for a second, then pushes her plate away.