That was how I’d forever remember Of Mice and Men—as amateur pencil p**n .
The guy behind the counter was wearing a checkered shirt and black horn-rimmed glasses, and was hunched forward on his elbow as he worked on a crossword puzzle from the newspaper. He lifted his eyes disinterestedly as we approached—a halfhearted attempt at customer service—but when he caught sight of Tyler, he dropped his pencil and hopped up from his stool.
“Hey! I was waitin’ for ya.” His grin spread wide and made his scruffy, unshaved face look more welcoming than his what-the-hell-do-you-want glance had. It was clear that when he chose to, like now, he had an infectious quality about him, as his eyes crinkled with enthusiasm.
“Okay . . .” The guy went behind the desk excitedly and reached beneath the counter. “This came in, and I immediately thought of you.”
Tyler took a step closer, and I tried to see around him. Whatever it was—and from where I stood it looked like a magazine, a really old magazine—it had Tyler’s full attention now.
Tyler leaned forward, pursing his lips. “Can you take it out?” Tyler asked, his voice low and filled with what was unmistakably awe.
“Dude, of course I can take it out. But trust me, I’ve already checked it from cover to cover. It’s practically mint. It’s exactly what you’ve been looking for.” The clerk slipped it from the plastic sleeve that protected it, and Tyler’s eyes went wide as his fingers cautiously, gingerly, reached down.
When he brushed the cover, I saw him suck in his breath and hold it.
This thing was seriously important to him.
All I could see was faded print and creased pages, and a chunk missing from the bottom-right edge of the cover.
There was clearly a discrepancy in our interpretations of “practically mint.”
But after inspecting it, neither of them even haggled over the price; Tyler just laid down several bills, way more than I thought anyone should ever pay for a relic like that.
Tyler put his prize back in its plastic covering, and the guy behind the counter double-bagged it for him, making it more than obvious that you should never be too careful when it comes to protecting your secondhand junk.
I cleared my throat, and Tyler glanced my way self-consciously, as if he’d only just remembered I’d been standing there the whole time. “Oh yeah. Hey. This is Kyra,” he told the clerk, who had also suddenly noticed me now that their transaction was coming to a close. At first the guy gave me a quick once-over, like he wasn’t all that interested. And then he did a double take, and his gray eyes scoured me with laser intensity. I squirmed beneath his examination.
He frowned then. “I know you,” he told me as if it were irrefutable. “From somewhere . . .” I could see the cogs in his head turning as he tried to nail it down. “Did you go to Emerson?”
Did? he’d asked, and I shook my head, studying him right back and wondering if I’d ever seen him at the rival high school. “No. I went to Burlington.”
He nodded as if that made sense, but he was still scowling, still trying to decipher where he knew me from. I was sure he didn’t look familiar to me, so I couldn’t help him out. I was almost positive we’d never crossed paths before.
And then he snapped his fingers. “I got it! I got it! You’re that girl! The one who went missing. I knew I recognized you. Man, your face was everywhere. Everyone knew who you were.” He grinned his infectious grin, only this time I couldn’t return his smile. “Heard you were back. What the hell happened to you anyway? Where you been all this time?”
Suddenly my legs felt wobbly, and my stomach rolled uneasily. I hadn’t considered that people might actually recognize me after all the efforts that had been made to find me five years ago. And that when they did they might ask questions I wasn’t prepared to answer—couldn’t possibly answer. I turned to Tyler. “I—I think I’ll wait outside.” I staggered away from the counter, suddenly anxious to get out from between the disordered stacks of decaying books and magazines that felt like they were closing in on me. I didn’t wait to see if Tyler was coming or not because I didn’t care.
In my rush, I crashed into someone before I could make it to the back room. I murmured an apologetic “I’m sorry.” I glanced up only briefly as I went to brush past him.
“No worries,” the dark-skinned boy mumbled as I shoved past him. I hesitated as I caught his eyes, which were unusually copper colored, but then I kept going, through the storeroom and out into the alley behind the shop. That was when I realized I didn’t have the keys, and I was locked out of the car. It didn’t matter, though. I didn’t mind the garbagey stench of the alley, because it was better than the suffocating scrutiny of too many one-sided questions.
The back door of the bookstore opened, and I glanced up to find Tyler standing in the doorway, watching me with a concerned expression contorting his features.
“I’m okay,” I said before he had the chance to ask.
“I’m sorry,” he told me, his voice low and rumbly near my ear as he leaned over my shoulder to unlock the passenger side door. My heart rate tripled at having him there, at my back, so close I could smell the crisp scent of his soap.
But I didn’t want him to apologize, because none of this was his fault.
“Please. Don’t worry about it,” I begged. “It is what it is, right?” When the door opened, I collapsed into the seat. Melted into it, more like. My bones felt like liquid butter, and even shrugging was a major undertaking. “I better get used to people asking me things like that, or I’m gonna be spending a lot of time holed up in my bedroom. It just took me off guard is all. No big.” I flashed a quick smile up at him, the kind meant to reassure him, because I really wanted him to believe what I’d said. I wanted to believe it too. And then I changed the subject. “I don’t get it.” I nodded toward the Fort Knox of all bags he clutched in his hands. “All that fuss over, what, a comic book?” I bit back a teasing smile.