Conjured

After disposing of the bag, Zach set himself up at one of the computers. He typed a few keystrokes and then began to scan the items from the bin. Mimicking him, Eve stationed herself at a nearby computer, and her fingers froze over the keyboard. She didn’t know what to type. In fact, she had no memory of ever having used a computer, though she knew she had spent many hours watching Malcolm and Aunt Nicki use theirs. A screen blinked, demanding a user name and password.

She glanced at Zach. He continued to pluck books out of the bin and scan them with a handheld scanner. Every few books, he’d type numbers into the computer. Lie, Malcolm had said. She’d have to lie with actions as well as words, she realized. “I’ll pass you the books,” Eve offered. “It’ll go faster that way.” She scooted around him and picked books out of the bin.

“Uh, okay. Good idea.”

They worked side by side as the clock ticked closer to 8:00 a.m.

At a few minutes to eight, the library door slid open, and Eve jumped. Waving at them, a man strode into the lobby. “Good morning, Zach. Eve.” He headed for the Children’s Room without slowing. A librarian. She forced herself to breathe normally.

“Eve, you sure you’re okay?” Zach asked. “You seem jumpier than a cat on a hot tin roof, which I have never personally witnessed but must be spectacular, at least for the observer if not for the cat.”

“Fine.” She plastered a smile on her face and did her best to keep it there as other librarians drifted in. All of them greeted Zach and Eve by name. Eve knew none of them. After each hello, she pretended to be absorbed in her task and hoped no one would try to talk to her. Soon patrons began to arrive. Eve dug through the books in the bin until it was empty and all the books were sorted onto carts. At last, she looked up.

Patti Langley was watching her.

Eve bit back a yelp. She hadn’t heard her arrive. She glanced over her shoulder at Patti’s office—the door was open. How had she slipped by? Never mind, Eve told herself. Patti was here now. Eve forced herself to breathe evenly, and she summoned up a smile for the library director. At least hers was a face that Eve knew.

Patti did not smile back. “I told you I want you in the stacks. No interaction with patrons.”

“Oh. I …” Eve couldn’t think of an excuse. A hush had fallen over the lobby, as if everyone had slowed to look at her. She shot a glance at the other librarians and the patrons. None of them were paying any attention to her. Still, she felt eyes on her. Shivers crept over her skin.

“Done!” Zach announced as he added the final book to a cart. “Don’t worry, Ms. Langley. We’re going.” He snagged Eve’s hand and pulled her out from behind the circulation desk. She continued to feel watched as he led her through the lobby and into the main library, hurrying past the reference librarians, a man in a gray suit with a newspaper, and a woman with a toddler.

Soon they were within the stacks. She felt as if the shelves were folding around her protectively. At last, the feeling of being watched began to fade.

“Safe now,” he said. She noticed he still held her hand. He seemed to realize it at the same moment. He dropped her hand and then cleared his throat. “Someday you’ll have to tell me what you did to get under Peppermint Patti’s skin.”

Eve shrugged and looked at the bookshelves. It was hard to look at him while she lied. “She didn’t like me from the beginning.” She supposed she could be telling the truth, for all she knew. I don’t know enough, she thought. I’m going to make a mistake. Or more mistakes. She’d reach a critical mass of mistakes, and then … She didn’t know. She wished she could claw at the empty places inside her until she ripped through to expose what she did know.

“Well, I liked you from the beginning.” He grinned at her. Startled, she stared at him. “Hey, you usually laugh when I flirt like that. You sure you’re all right?”

She clung to that clue of what she’d forgotten: he’d flirted, and she’d laughed, even if she couldn’t remember it. “Tell me why you like me.”

His grin vanished. He had a crease in his forehead between his eyebrows, and his lips were pursed as if he were worried. “You’re fascinating. You’re … like a closed-up flower. You’re a shell with mother-of-pearl inside. You’re a cloud that hasn’t formed into a shape yet, but could. You’re shadows layered over shadows.”

“You mean that.”

“Every word.” Zach didn’t break eye contact. His eyes were brown, as warm as Malcolm’s. “Even the stupid poetry cliches, which, let’s face it, were pretty much all of them. You are the mystery and excitement that I have been craving my entire life.”

“I’m not an unformed cloud. I’m a cloud that’s broken open, and my insides are pouring out like rain.” As she spoke, the feeling of safety dissipated. The stacks weren’t hiding her; they were hiding others. She imagined eyes between the books, peering out at her. The shelves could hide a dozen listeners.

“Okay, that’s way more poetic than mine.” Zach caught her hand. “Hey, I’m not mocking! Okay, I am mocking a little. You are obviously having a bad day. And that is obviously an understatement. If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand. But if you do … I’m your guy. Always.”

She stared at her hand in his. His fingers twisted around hers, locking their palms together as if they were two halves of a broken whole. She wanted to believe him. “What do you want from me?”

“Undying affection?” Zach suggested. “Passionate love? But I’ll settle for a little trust. You never talk about yourself or your life. I want to know you, Eve. Is that too pushy? I don’t want to be too pushy. But you did ask.”

“And you don’t lie.” Eve felt a smile creep onto her face, but it vanished in an instant as she heard voices near their shelves: a librarian guiding someone to a nearby section.

Zach dropped her hand and jumped back. His cheeks were tinted pink. “Patti will be by to check on us. We should, um, look useful.”

Eve turned away from him and toward the shelves. “So … we shelve?”

“Or we select a book, mock it relentlessly, and then put it back on the shelves, which is pretty much the same thing that you said.”

She supposed that’s what they’d been doing these past weeks. That seemed nice.

Side by side, they scanned through the books, shifting those that were out of order. She was aware of his movements, taking a book down, shifting others over, and reshelving. Shelf by shelf, they worked through the section.

She wished she could remember this. She wished it so hard that her fingers shook. She had to squeeze the books to hold them steady. Yes, she’d lost memories before, but this time … This time it felt so much more immediate. She’d spent hours, days, in these bookshelves with this boy. She felt like if she reached out she could pull the trace of her lost self from the air around her. The memories should linger here, like ghosts. Ghost memories, all around her. Eve spread her fingers out and stared at them as if she could will them to catch and hold her lost memories.

She wondered if she’d lose today too, the next time her mind betrayed her. She didn’t want it to slip through her fingers. She wanted to do something, something momentous, that would fix it in her memory so it couldn’t slip away into nothingness, erased in a single, arbitrary moment.

“Zach?” Eve said.

“Hmm?”

Eve leaned toward him and pressed her lips against his. His eyes flew wide, and she felt him freeze. But as she was about to pull away, he kissed her back.

She didn’t know she knew how to kiss. She had no memory of kissing anyone. But still, it felt natural, and it felt right. Eve wrapped her arms around his neck and wove her fingers into his soft, soft hair. She tasted his breath; still a hint of cream cheese. Close to her, his body felt warm, and his lips moved gently against hers as if whispering silent secrets.

She closed her eyes, shutting out the view of the books around them. The sound of distant voices, footsteps, the hum of computers, the rustle of pages, all faded. She could no longer feel the carpet beneath her feet. The solid ground had melted away, and she felt as if she were floating.

It felt both unreal and wonderfully real at the same time.

“Enough,” a woman’s voice said.

Zach broke away.