He leans away. “What? Like you wouldn’t attack the creep who keeps pointing at you?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I could hurt someone else.”
“C’mon, Zara. You don’t value yourself that little, do you?” He leans back. His thigh touches my thigh. Neither of us move away.
“That’s not it. I don’t really know how to explain it. It’s more like, who am I to decide that my life is worth more than someone else’s?” It tingles where our legs meet.
A cafeteria light flickers and makes a buzzing noise high above us. Trays clatter in the background. People murmur about tests and dates and here we are talking about this.
He smells like the woods. I try not to smell him; it makes me dizzy. I try to focus.
He’s talking. “You wouldn’t attack a person who was trying to kidnap someone? Or hurting a baby? Or—”
“Enough,” I interrupt. “I don’t know if I would, okay? I mean, I know all about self-defense and everything, but I don’t know if I could do it, if it’s morally right to do it.”
“You’d do it.” He grins, so certain he’s right. “If someone was attacking Issie you’d do it. If someone was attacking your grandmother you’d do it. Or Devyn. Or probably even Ian.”
My eyes close. This is probably true. “I don’t want that to be true.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to be violent.”
“It’s not violent to protect your friend.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not like someone’s going to go attack Issie.”
“We don’t know that.”
“What? You think Is is in danger?”
“No.” He raises his hands up in the air. “I think we’re all in danger.”
“From that guy? The pointing guy? You think he’s seriously bad?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I do.”
I lean forward, closer to him. “But how? How do you know?”
“I feel it here.” His fist taps his stomach.
We stare at each other for a second. There’s something about his eyes that makes me frightened, yet not frightened. That makes no sense. It’s like every part of me needs those eyes to look into my eyes a certain way, but I’m afraid of that. I want to ask about the dust I saw on his coat, but I’m afraid of that, too.
“I’m such a wimp,” I say.
He must think I’m still talking about the pointing man because he shakes his head. “No you aren’t. You just don’t want to be brave.”
“What?”
Nick doesn’t answer because Devyn rolls back to the table. Issie bee-bops right behind him. He’s got a pile of cookies spread across a napkin in his lap. “Is went a little crazy.”
“I didn’t know what kind everyone would like,” she explains, plucking cookies up off the napkin and putting them on the table. She glances at us. “Oh no. You two are still fighting.”
“No, we aren’t,” Nick says.
Devyn eyes us.
“Really,” I say. “We aren’t fighting.”
“Then what’s all the doomy-gloomy vibe going on?” Issie asks, sitting down. She offers me a cookie, M&M’s mixed with chocolate chips.
“I scared her,” Nick explains. He grabs an oatmeal raisin.
“Good,” Devyn says. “She needs to be scared.”
“What?” Issie turns on him.
“Fear makes us stronger, puts us on our toes. We’ve got to embrace it.”
Issie snaps her cookie in half. “Guys can be so stupid.”
True. Devyn’s face turns red but Nick just laughs.
“So,” I say really quickly, “are we going to go to the library after school today?”
“There’s no cross-country?” Devyn asks.
“It’s our day off,” Nick explains. “Should we carpool or what?”
I turn on him. “You’re going?”
“Yeah. Of course I’m going. That’s okay with you, right?”
I nod. “Yeah, that’s okay and yes, we should carpool to lower our carbon footprint and all that.”
But for some reason knowing that I’m going to be in the library with Nick makes a knot form in my stomach, and it’s not because the cookie is bad. The knot is becoming a familiar feeling. It’s fear.
That dust on his jacket? It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, right? And the way my insides feel all crazy weird whenever I look in his eyes? That doesn’t mean anything either.
There is something about libraries, old libraries, that makes them seem almost sacred. There’s a smell of paper and must and binding stuff. It’s like all the books are fighting against decay, against turning into dust, and at the same time fighting for attention.
I touch the cover of one book, ESP Your Way. “It’s like they’re all crying out, ‘Read me. Read me.’ ”
Nick turns around to look at me. “The books?”
“It’s like they’re lonely,” I say. I shrug on purpose so he doesn’t think I’m too weird.
“Books get lonely,” he repeats, not looking at me anymore, scanning the titles above his head.
“What?”
“It’s sweet.”
I am sweet. My heart flip-flops and I bite my lip a little bit. Sweet as in a lollipop, or sweet as in a girl you would like to kiss passionately in the stacks? That’s the question.
I squat down, checking out the numbers. “Found some.”
Nick squats next to me and whistles low. “Wow.”
We start pulling them out, Fae Lore, Fairy Charms, An Encyclopedia of Fairies.
Nick carries most of them to the back table by a big bay window. Dust particles swirl around in the sunbeams. Devyn and Issie almost look enchanted, like storybook heroes.
“You guys find stuff?” Issie asks too loudly.
A guy by the magazines shushes her.
“Sorry. Sorry!” She holds up her hand in an apology and then whispers at us. “What a grump. We found stuff too. Right, Devyn?”
Devyn nods but doesn’t actually verbalize anything, just keeps reading the book he’s got. It’s ancient and smelly. I sneeze and settle into a chair. Nick grabs the one next to me. He splits our book pile in half and thrusts three books at me. “Dig in.”