We Won't Feel a Thing (13 page)

He glanced at the robo-knight. He reached in his pocket and thumbed the strap on his goggles.

You can do this,
he told himself.
You can be brave without Rachel. Prove it.

Riley leaned against a bookshelf, picturing a horde of children sitting criss-cross-applesauce before him. Against his instinct, he painted patient smiles on their faces. Then he opened the book, pointed it picture side out, and whispered the first lines:

crab and clam were best friends they lived together in a small cozy cottage on the beach the floor was made of sand, the roof was made of shells, and the walls were made of driftwood.

He sucked in a breath.
Calm the hell down
.
Pretend you’re not a weirdo.
His stomach flipped. His make-believe audience grumbled and fidgeted.

One morning in spring, Crab and Clam awoke to a plink plink plink on the roof. They heard a rumble in the sky. “Oh, dear.” Clam yawned. “That sounds like thunder.”

Riley took the cookie sheet out of the prop basket and joggled it thunderously, in accordance with Jeanette’s margin notes.

“Thunder?” Crab complained. “This is an outrage! Today is our Fun Day! We were going to have a picnic, and make sandcastles on the beach, and go to the concert in the tidal pool.”

“Was that today?” Clam said sleepily.

Riley held up the sandcastle mold and pretended to show it around. Irritation began to steady his nerves. How could Clam just forget?

“How could you forget?” Crab pointed a claw at the calendar. The day was circled in red. The red circle said FUN DAY inside it. “Our Fun Day is ruined!”

“Oh, Crab.” Clam yawned. “Do not be upset. We can reschedule.”

“Best friends,” Crab crabbed, “do not reschedule Fun Days.”

Riley shook his head at the watercolor illustration. Who did Clam think he was? Clearly he was the kind of clam who changed plans at the last minute and applied to schools hundreds of miles away without even telling his best friend. Plus he wore a bowtie despite having no neck and his eyes were on stalks, like the eyes of no clam in natural history.

“I suppose we can still have Fun Day outside,” said Clam. “We will just have to bring an umbrella.”

Crab trembled. “You know I am afraid of thunder!”

“I see,” said Clam. “Well then, we will have to find the thunder, and tell it to stop.”

Riley’s hands began to sweat. He thumped down in a beanbag chair. He had to know the end. He turned page after page, and as his distaste for Clam melted away, he fell dangerously in love with the story. Crab and Clam searched everywhere for the thunder to tell it to stop, only to have unexpected fun with a starfish, a friendly horseshoe crab, and a gruff British seagull with a monocle.

“Hey. Riley.” Jeanette poked her head in. “It’s 9:28.”

He shut the book and tried to be discreet about hugging it. “Who’s out there?”

“Some three-year-old in a Stooges shirt. Effing hipsters.”

“Just one?”

“Not surprised,” Jeanette said. “Summer flu’s making the rounds.”

“Do I still have to do it?”

“Uh,
yeah.
It’s one freakin’ damn kid, Riley.” She smiled a little. “You’ll be fine. Okay?”

Riley swallowed hard. “Hey, Jeanette?”

“Yep.”

“You…look nice today.”

He wasn’t sure why he said it. He expected a snort in return. But instead Jeanette’s cheeks pinkened, and she toyed with a scrap of her new orange hair.

“Well, thanks,” she said. “I’m, ah…in love? I guess I can say that.”

“Yeah? Congratulations.”

“Thanks, thanks. Sometimes it comes in an unusual package, but you’ll take it, because how often do you find someone who really gets you? And, you know…likes you anyway?”

“Right.” His throat felt tight.

Jeanette saluted him and strode away. Riley fumbled for the last two pages of the book. The expected happy ending had snapped in place:

“You see, Crab?” said Clam. “We had a Fun Day anyway. And you are not afraid of thunder anymore.”

“I am glad you are my best friend, Clam,” said Crab.

“And I am glad you are my best friend, Crab,” said Clam.

“The rain has stopped!” said Crab. “Let us get our beach chairs and watch the stars come out.”

“That sounds like great fun, Crab!” said Clam.

And it was.

Riley blinked fast at the final illustration. Crab and Clam sat side by side in little beach chairs with twin thimbles of lemonade on the armrests, constellations twinkling high above them.

Two hot tears rolled down his face. He scrubbed them away, panicked. He couldn’t go out there. The dumb book would wreck him all over again. He pictured the Stooges kid taunting him, lobbing organic fruit snacks at his forehead. He imagined a lifetime of this: his nerves rubbed raw from unconsummated love, so that his next breakdown was always one children’s book or pop song away.

He threw the book aside and stood, clutching his goggles.
Step Three,
he instructed himself.
Now.

He scurried to the gate of Everafterland and hid behind a plaster tree. Peeking through plastic leaves, he scanned the main floor of the library and mapped out a path to his favorite door: the blue one in a far corner, forgotten and unmarked, next to a drinking fountain no one used because the water tasted like pennies.

Riley checked for Jeanette. Her back was turned. She was chatting with the Stooges kid’s mother, who had a baby in a sling and her hair in two fuzzy braids. He edged away slowly, keeping an eye on his supervisor.

Then he unlatched the gate, slipped through like a ghost, and bolted.

***

Rachel hauled the full cart around a corner, shoved it down the aisle, and parked it with a bang and a sigh. The aisle was marked ROMANCE with a sign Jeanette had paid Riley to calligraph two years before. Rachel frowned at the cart, silently cursing the old Howe sisters who had retired to Palm Springs and disinvited their 256 dogeared paperbacks. The assortment looked dumpster-ready to Rachel, but Jeanette—as if to specifically torment her—had stickered and stamped every one.

Rachel shelved fast, catching glimpses of titles and covers.
Passion’s Peak:
mountaintop scene, man in tight white pants, woman in torn red gown.
Perish the Night:
seaside scene, man in tight black pants, woman in torn green gown.
The Heart Hath No Reason
seemed to involve both mountain and sea, and was by far the most battered.

Rachel smiled thinly. She and Riley used to buy bad fifty-cent romances at Jonah’s Junque; they would stretch on their stomachs in the pillow nest and do dramatic readings for Bob and Athena, pausing often to giggle and underline phrases like
the express elevator to ecstasy.
She opened the book and peeked at Chapter One.

Be careful,
said her sensible self.

They’re just words on paper,
she shot back. She controlled words all the time; she was certain they had no sway over her.

There were several penciled underlinings in the book’s early chapters. Rachel caught choice phrases like
a dastard’s wanton swagger
and
their lawless communion,
and also a misuse of
myriad
that set her teeth on edge
.
By Chapter 18, Florence or Dorothy Howe had begun bracketing entire passages:

“Do you know how many women would sell their souls to marry Count Maximilian Fortugna?” he sneered, tearing at the lavish pink lace of her gown.

“Oh, take my soul!” Constanze spat bitterly. “You may have my soul and my body, but never my heart!”

“We shall see, my lady,” Count Maximilian rejoindered. “I shall have your heart, even if I must tear it still beating from your bosom.”

“My heart already beats outside my body. Its rightful home is with Frederic. Today—tomorrow—always—!”

“You ungrateful slattern!” Count Maximilian raised a threatening hand. “Recant this treachery at once, or I’ll—”

“STOP!”

The count whirled around. Silhouetted in the chamber doorway was a mysterious figure, tall and proud on a whinnying white steed. He brandished a war hammer and wore a magnificent armored hood over his face, but Constanze instantly recognized her beloved.

“Frederic!” she gasped.

“Nothing can part us, my lady,” he said.

Rachel skimmed the ensuing duel between Frederic and Count Maximilian Fortugna, which involved several violations of the basic laws of physics and a heartbreaking mixup of
affect
and
effect
. When Fortugna had been vanquished with the war hammer, Frederic swept Constanze onto the golden four-poster bed for an interlude that Florence or Dorothy had marked with a purple star and several exclamation marks:

“Oh, Frederic,” Constanze murmured breathlessly, as his rough hand traversed her tremulous thigh.

Slowly, tantalizingly, Frederic unlaced his breeches and whispered

“—Conversation heart?”

Rachel jumped and snapped the book shut. Standing beside her cart, crunching on candy hearts from a small dented box, was Chad Armstrong. They had barely spoken since the Puckatoe High Valentine dance—he’d been easy to avoid, since he worked in Interlibrary Loan. He wore pants the color of deli mustard and a pair of Lennon specs from his archive of vintage eyeglass frames.

He also wore a MEN AT WORK t-shirt.

“No.” Rachel refused the candy, trying to keep her face neutral. “Thank you.”

“Sure, yeah. They’re an acquired taste. Have you heard the new Armada Tramps?”

“Not the whole thing. Just a couple songs.” She resumed filing, sweat beading on her palms. “Don’t really like the new singer.”

“Yeah. I mean, if I wanted to hear a cat in heat, I’d go sit in an alley. Right?”

Rachel bit her lip. Back in February, his taste in music and sense of humor had made him seem like a passable candidate for normal-person dating practice, even though his name was Chad and she once saw him park in a handicapped space. She wished, for the five hundred and twenty-eighth time, that she could take back the night of the dance.

“So here’s the thing, Ray,” he said. Chad was not the kind of person who remembered which nicknames you hated. “I know you saw.”

“Saw what?”

“C’mon. Let’s not, okay?” He set the box of hearts on her cart and stepped close to her, drumming up a smile. “Tell me you won’t report it. You won’t, right?”

“Whom would I tell?”

“
Whom.
You’re such a special person.” His breath warmed her neck in sour-sweet puffs. “See, if you tell on us, Jeanette’s the one who gets hurt. You know? She could lose her job, and she’s like, one of those cat ladies who wears weird shoes and has no life outside work.”

“I take it you’re not in love.”

“So?”

“Does she know that?”

“She’s having fun. What’s the difference?”

“It’s just douchey. That’s all.” She gave him a frosty smile. “But I would expect no less.”

“Hm. Wow.
Awfully
judgmental tone from milady.” He picked up
Pirate’s Passion
and thumbed through it. “And also really ironic. Coming from a perv.”

Rachel shelved faster. Her mouth went dry. Chad ducked around to her other side and leaned on the bookshelf.

“I watched this Dr. Bridges show on deviant sexuality,” he whispered. “I totally thought of you.”

“Here’s a thought,” said Rachel. “Maybe don’t taunt someone who knows a secret about you.”

“You tell about me and Jeanette, I tell the whole staff you’re in love with your brother.”

“He’s not my brother.”

“He’s close enough.” He dogeared a page of
Pirate’s Passion.
“You should read this kiss scene. It might help you in the future. With like, basic tongue mechanics.”

Rachel took the book from him, heart hammering. She checked the name on the spine and filed it on the shelf.

“You were right, you know,” she said calmly. “The whole time I was with you that night, I couldn’t
wait
to go back to him. In fact, I only said I’d go with you because Riley thinks it’s hot when I date other guys. He has this like, vast unstoppable sexual appetite?” Chad’s face turned raw-meat red. “After I got home, we had like, the best sex of our entire lives. I told him he could do anything he wanted.”
And I sold that dress to the thrift store,
she almost revealed, but she stopped out of mourning for the wicked-queen coatdress with the sparkly buttons, because it was still a thing of beauty even though Chad had sent it to her.

Her Valentine date chewed his tongue. She saw him assess the truth of her statement, find it inconclusive, and decide he was disgusted either way. He took his candy box off her cart and slowly overturned it, eyes on hers. Pastel hearts rained on the carpet. He shook the box and sugar dust coughed out.

“Hey hey,” he said. “Someone left a mess in Romance.”

He chucked the box over his shoulder and stalked away.

Rachel sank to the floor beside the spilled conversation hearts. Why did she have to say those things?
The best sex of our entire lives. Vast unstoppable sexual…
Dirty pictures reeled through her mind. She picked up all the hearts and tossed them on the cart. She was weird. She was dangerously aroused.

She needed Step Three.

Rachel had loved the Marymarsh Memorial Library for eight years, but the shelves were a labyrinth today; she took three wrong turns on the way to an exit and tripped over a footstool at the end of the History aisle. When she picked herself up, she saw a door three feet in front of her. PRIVATE, it said. EMPLOYEES ONLY. It was painted with a coat of red that looked fresh. She felt as if she’d never seen it, though she knew that couldn’t be true.

She yanked the door handle and stepped into a dim, chilly stairwell. It was dead quiet and smelled eerily of nothing, as if no human had ever ventured inside. Concrete steps led up and away, into the unknown.