Ch. 4: Library

The campus library is its own world that stands out starkly among the large, blocky modern constructions that have sprung up around it in the past few decades. Its old brickwork and arched, leaded windows that span four stories seem out of place among the palm trees and modern windowpanes. If it were up north, there would be ivy. If it were up north, it would be nested among huge old trees, constantly in the shadows. But here it is constantly exposed to sunlight, and its brick is bare, so it has to be content with implying that it would have all those gothic trappings if it possibly could, thank you.

The interior of the library is gorgeous. Oak paneling, leather overstuffed chairs, lamps and worn antique wood tables reside everywhere. The silence inside is not caused because students are studying; it is caused because they are awed by the feeling of grand age that suffuses every inch of the building’s being. I took one step inside it the first week of my freshman year and immediately fell in love. I loved the fact that I could find random open spaces full of comfy couches in between the rows and rows of close-packed bookshelves on all the floors. It is possible to spend hours in the same place reading a book or studying and not come across a single other human being. It’s an eerie feeling; I’ll be deep into the pages of my new book, devouring the words, and all of the sudden I’ll be certain that I’m not in the library anymore. I am in a library, yes, but it is a library disjointed from the world. It’s like the boundaries of time and reality have faded and I am at the edge, where one side is my campus library, and the other side is a library where every book ever written, never written, not yet written, exists. And if I went through this library and took the time to read I could finish them all before dying because it is operating on library time, not real time.

I’ve always wondered if this feeling suffuses every grand old library all over the world. People sit in them, love them, enjoy them long enough, and something changes, time fades, and each library becomes a portal to The Library. Yes, even with the capitals. I’ve always wanted to get up and explore once the feeling hits, but I never have for two reasons. If I’m wrong, it will disappoint me a lot and the library will lose all its magic. If I’m right, I don’t know if I could get back, and as much as I love books, I’m not sure I’d enjoy being stuck in The Library for an eternity. So every time I feel it happen, I stay put.

I’m sitting on the third floor in a random couch in the Q’s, and I should be reading for my Bio midterm, but instead I’m stretched out on the couch, staring at the ceiling and listening to the silence. Light is coming in from a window, but the bookshelves are scattering and diffusing the rays, so what reaches me is just a dim, diffuse glow that tells nothing of what time of day it is. I’ve either been lying like this for three minutes or three hours. I’m waiting for the disjointed feeling to come so I can get to work. I study better when I feel like I’m outside reality.
But before the feeling comes, a person does, and I know that the library is going to stay in lowercase today. When other people are around, it always pretends to be a normal building. Either that or I pretend to be sane. It probably amounts to the same thing in the end. I turn my head and try not to glare reproachfully at the intruder, then sit bolt-upright as I notice my companion has shoulder-length white-blonde hair.

He smiles at me with very white teeth. “Hello.”
I stare for a second, trying to get my brain to accept that he’s not just something that lives on the steps in the science building that saves people as they’re falling and that yes, it is possible for him to be in the library, too. I grab for my water bottle and take a desperate swig to compose myself.
“Hi! I didn’t know people could find me up here.”
“You were rather hard to track down. I thought you’d like the D’s better than the Q’s.”
His eyes bore into me, and I giggle nervously. “That’s the second floor.”
“Like to be up high, then?”
“I don’t know.” A brilliant answer. “Did you find me on purpose?”

He leans back and spreads his arms along the back of the couch. “Well, you do owe me a lunch date.”
I raise my eyebrow at him and try to squelch the vague sense of irritation his pretentious certainty awakens within me. “I ‘owe’ you lunch? I made no promises.”
“You didn’t say no, either, as I recall.” Before I can answer, he changes the subject by looking at the materials I brought with me. Instead of grabbing at my biology notes like I fervently hoped he would, he turns my laptop so he can see what I’ve been working on. He’s reaching for the mouse to scroll through the Word document on the screen when I yelp and snatch the whole thing away from him.

He grins sedately. “What is that?”
“A book I’m writing.”
He leans forward interestedly, and his hair gleams slightly as it falls across his shoulders and into his eyes. “But you’re not an English major, right? You have to be either Chem or Bio.”
I agree grudgingly. “I’m a Bio major and Journalism major.”
“So why are you writing that?” He gestures to the laptop I am still possessively clutching in my lap. “That looked like fiction to me.”
“Because I have an imagination.” His determined line of questions is bothering me. I never like to show people my fiction, and I’m afraid he’s about to ask. It’s too personal, and I’m too uncertain of my skills to take any pride in what I write.
He smiles and brushes his hair behind his ears. “An imagination. Fancy that.”
“Not all scientists are math-heads. Some of us dream.”
“You’re into living science. Of course you’re not a math-head. You’re in Biology because you love life.”

I look at him warily, and his blue eyes meet mine with a slow, sensual smile. He stares at me for a few seconds, and I feel my heart rate increase slightly. “Do you like to make grand, sweeping statements about people you barely know?”
His smile fades, and he gazes at me seriously for a moment. “Do you remember your dreams?”
I start to answer before I realize how random the question is. “Sometimes. I either remember all of them or none of them.” My mind drifts back to the unsettling dreams of the night before. I was experiencing in my sleep things I vaguely remember going through when I was nine, but that I had since convinced myself I had made up. The feelings the dream had left me with when I awoke were very real, however, and very unsettling. I felt slightly off-kilter the whole day, so had escaped to the library to relax in the silence and feel safe. And now here I am, sitting across from Isra, talking about the very thing I was trying not to think about.

He seems to notice the clipped tone I am speaking in, and looks at me in concern. “Chris, are you alright?”
“I just wish you hadn’t brought up dreams. I had odd ones last night, and I’m here trying to make myself feel like part of the real world again.”
“You chose an odd place to find reality.” He looks around him at the shelves. “Old buildings like this have souls,” he murmurs.
I chuckle derisively because of the way it sounds before I realize that he’s just saying something I’ve secretly believed all along. “Souls?”
He looks at me and nods. “Sure. There have been reported cases of ghost buildings. Time does things to the inanimate that we don’t really understand.”
His voice is so serious that I want to tell him how this library makes me feel, but I hold back because I barely know him. He continues the conversation without needing a reply. “Lots of weird things happen in the world, Chris. It’s fascinating.”
I smile sourly. “I must be too grounded in reality to experience it.”
He looks at me soberly, eyes agleam. “I think you’re just in denial. Why don’t you tell me about your dream last night?” I shake my head and he moves over to sit next to me and crosses his legs on the couch. “Come on. It might help to talk about it.”

I look at him for a moment and chew on my lower lip uncertainly. “It’s silly.”
“I just told you that buildings have souls. I’m silly.”
I nod. “Well, okay.” I put my laptop back on the table with my study materials and turn to face him on the couch, crossing my legs as well. “When I was little I went to a really old school. Narrow halls, that metal paneling in the ceiling, everything. The whole place felt old. In fourth grade I started getting odd feelings when I’d go into certain rooms. I always felt like time flowed differently in school. Most kids would agree with me. Of course time seems to creep by when you’re in school and bored out of your mind, but it wasn’t that. It was just… different.”

“In fifth grade I started seeing things. I’d walk down the hall and the lockers would disappear, I’d find doors that couldn’t be there. A few times things came out of walls. This went on for weeks, and I started being afraid of going to school. I told my mom all about it and she told me I was just imagining things because the building was so old. I believed her, and things stopped.”

“She was right. I’ve always had an overactive imagination. So any time things get weird, I realize I’m being irrational, and everything gets normal again. It’s amazing what the mind can convince the body of, you know? But I remember it all the irrational way, and needless to say, it can make for some very odd dreams.”
He nods, and though his face is straight, his eyes are alight. It’s an emotion I can’t place. Glee?

No. And he doesn’t think I’m stupid, either. “Do you still daydream?”
I blush slightly. “Yes. It’s embarrassing. I sit in class and pretend I’m someone else. I’m still a big kid in my head.”
“Playing pretend doesn’t make you a kid. It helps your writing, doesn’t it?”
I nod. “I can put myself in my character’s shoes. The people in the book can seem real to me.”
He leans back against the arm of the chair and tilts his head towards the ceiling, letting his hair spill down. He seems to be considering something. “What if I could teach you how to control your dreams? Then you could sleep and literally be in your story. Imagine what it would do for your writing.”

It would do wonders for my writing. But. “You can do that?”
“Of course. You just train yourself to realize you’re dreaming. Once you do, you can control it.”
“You can’t dream if you know you are. You wake up.”
He smiles. “Practice makes perfect.”
I consider for a moment. “Okay, I’m intrigued. What do I do?”
He moves closer to me. “I can show you a few books that talk about it and can teach you what to do. When I learned I would remind myself to wake up after I dreamed and then immediately write down everything I could remember in a dream journal. You do that long enough, you start to recognize patterns, and it becomes easy to realize you’re dreaming. It’s a lot of fun.”
“And it’s a restful sleep?”
“Yes, actually. It’s quite nice.”
He smiles at me, and I smile back warily. “It seems so odd, Isra.”
“There are so many uses for it. Therapists use lucid dreaming to help people get over phobias. Things like that.”
“’Lucid dreaming.’ That’s a good phrase.”

He gets up and reaches to pull me off the couch. I am surprised with how warm and good his hands feel on me. I can feel where they were on my skin for several long seconds after he lets me go. I lick my lips nervously and look up at him. He’s very close, and I feel very short. I would step back a bit, but the couch prevents it.

He reaches for my face and brushes a strand of hair out of my eyes. “Here, I’ll show you the books you should read if you’re interested.” Taking my hand, he leads me away from my couch and my books and my computer. I think about telling him to wait because I want to take my stuff with me, but something keeps me from speaking, so I just follow. His fingers are burning into my skin.

As we’re walking to wherever he’s going, I suddenly experience the familiar sensation of time suspending. I pause and look around in shock. The library has never felt like this when I was around another person. Isra looks back at me curiously, so I keep walking. He must not feel it. Some Mr.-Weird-Things-Happen he is. I’m a mixture of relieved and disappointed.
Isra turns a corner into an area of the library I’m not familiar with, and I feel a superstitious reluctance to follow. I usually make it a point notto explore the library when it feels so apart from reality. The air in the hall smells old and a little bit dusty. He makes a right and leads me into a room full of compact shelving.

“Wow, this is crowded.”
He nods and pushes a button to slide one of the shelves aside. “Yeah, none of these books get used much, so they just cram them all in here and let them be forgotten.” As the shelf slides to one side, a passage to an aisle further in opens. He steps in and I follow, noticing a slight feeling of claustrophobia rising in me. This part of the library is even more quiet than the one I was in earlier, if that is possible. The sound of the shelving sliding across its metal track sounds like a scream, and I wonder if all the old books feel disturbed. I know I do.

He moves a few yards to the left and pushes another button. The shelf regretfully slides to the side, and he steps into the opening.
“How far back to we have to go?” I try not to sound nervous as I follow him in.
“Just three more. You know, I’ve never figured out how big this room is. Feel like exploring?”
A chill rushes over me and I shiver slightly. “Not really.” If this is really The Library, it could go on forever. And I am not in the mood to find out.
He looks back at me, his blue eyes catching the dim light and shining gently. “Where’s your sense of adventure?” Another shelf slides aside and he steps in. I begin to feel a little disoriented.
“I think the compact shelving is a little too much for it. It went home to take a nap.”

He smiles and leads me over to a shelf. “Well, it’s a good thing we’re here, then.” He steps close behind me as I read the spines of the books in this area and reaches up to one of the higher shelves I wouldn’t have been able to access on my own. He takes down a book and touches my shoulder, indicating that I should turn around to face him.
I do, and with my back to the bookshelf and him standing so near and all the shelves crammed in around me, I start to feel rather choked.
“This one is my favorite.”

I try to look interested, but the last thing I care about is the book. This whole part of the library feels wrong to me, and I don’t like how close Isra is. I look up at him and lick my lips nervously again.
“I need to go back.”
“Why?”
“I’m late for dinner.”
“Oh, a big date?”
“No, my roommates.”
“I doubt they’ll care.” He puts a hand under my chin and tilts my head up so I have to look at him. I smile uncertainly, painfully aware of how loud my breathing sounds in this freakish room of forgotten books. “Why not go grab dinner with me?”

His eyes lock on mine, and I find it hard to answer. Why not, really? I’m obviously attracted to him. He’d probably pay, too, so it’s not like money is an issue. But something in me was telling me no. I start to edge off the side.
“I really shouldn’t.”
“Why not? You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?”
“I have to go, Isra.”

I break away from him and walk quickly towards where I think is the exit to the room. He tries to reach for my hand to stop me, and I start to run.

*   *   *   *

The girls didn’t say anything to me at dinner, so I figured my off-kilter mood had escaped their notice. But, not fifteen minutes after I have showered, put on my pjs, and hopped in bed with a book, all three of them come barging into my room in nightgowns with blankets, pillows, drinks, and cookies.

“Guys, what are you doing?” I say tiredly.
“Slumber party,” Chloe says, handing me a mug of hot cocoa that actually has whipped cream on it. She knows I can’t say no to whipped cream. This is a trap.
“I have a midterm tomorrow.”
“Yes,” Heather says lightly, and it’s not until noon. You can spare us a little of your time.”
“Yah, I brought my bunny slippers. See?” Lily presents a foot as she flops on my bed and steals half of my pillows. As the other girls crowd on too and settle in, I sigh and resign myself to my fate. I know the drill. They won’t care if I talk to them, they just want to be around me for moral support, so I will be allowed to remain quiet and listen to their conversation. I sip the hot cocoa and grudgingly admit that I already feel better. It’s nice to feel cared for.

Chloe leans against the wall and grins at Heather. “You know what this reminds me of?”
“What?”
“Living in the dorms.”
“Yeah, I feel just as cramped now as I did then,” I mutter, but they ignore me.
Heather chuckles. “I miss that.”
Lily devours a cookie. “Know what I don’t miss?”
“What, Lily?”
“Needing to go to the bathroom that’s all the way down the hall. You’re on a co-ed floor, your pjs don’t match, and you have no bra on, and once you finally get to the door?”
Heather finishes for her. “There is this throng of girls just standing there and talking?”
“Exactly. They’re like a fucking blood clot. There’s no way around them. Asking them to move would result in less progress than breaking through the wall and forming a new door.”
Chloe giggles. “And it’s only when you have no bra on, too. If you’re wearing one, the hall is always empty.”

I giggle and remember a few of the times that happened to me. “You know, I always wondered if spraying them down with a squirt bottle would have made them move.”
“I don’t think they would have noticed. Combining talking and breathing and balance was probably as much as they could handle.”

They bitch amongst themselves about other old college annoyances until my hot cocoa and most of the cookies are gone. There’s a pause in the conversation, then Lily sighs. “I hate girls.”
“So do I,” Chloe agrees.
“Me too.” Heather flops over on my feet, and I wiggle my toes to try to get her to move. Instead of shifting off like I want her to, she goes deadweight in retaliation.
“Yeah, and yet here we are, living together, crammed on my bed.”
“Maybe we’re all secretly-” Heather begins, but Lily cuts her off.
“Heather, if you say ‘gay’, I am going to vote you off the bed.”
Chloe chuckles, and Heather sulks. I poke her with my big toe before continuing.
“Actually, Lily, that’s a good idea. All of you, this island is mine, and I am evicting you. Off the bed. I’m tired.”

They get up obediently. I have to give it to my friends; they know when they won’t be able to get away with things anymore. As they gather their stuff up, Lily looks at me. “Oh, I almost forgot, Chris. Fae called. She wants you to come into work tomorrow after your midterm and help her out for a few hours.”
“That’s odd. She must really need the help.”
Lily gives me a goodnight hug. “Feel better tomorrow.”
“I thought I’d fooled you guys.”
Chloe laughs. “Sweetie, you can’t fool us. We’re not stupid.”
I smile as they shuffle out of the room and turn out the light. I really do feel a lot better.