After that, he'd believed her. He'd wanted her to alter other books—like fix Macbeth so that no one died. She said that Macbeth was unlucky enough without her tampering.
They'd fought a lot in their third year together. Linda had heard that there was a man named Mr. Sandlin who could take things out of books as well as putting them in. She wanted them to give up the lease on their apartment and their jobs at the bookstore. She wanted them to enroll in library school. Early one morning, after fighting all night—a fight that had started out about moving and wound up about every hateful thing they'd ever thought about one another—she folded herself up and put herself into a fat Russian novel.
"Ohgodohgodohgod,” Justin had said. “Please. No. Please. Oh God. Please.” He'd opened the cover to see an illustration of her in pen and ink, sitting in a group of unsmiling characters.
After that, he couldn't tell her that he was sorry or that her bolshie-sympathizing uncle was going to expose her in the next chapter or that she was going to regret leaving him now that she was stuck in an ice storm with only a mink cloak and muff to protect her. He was just a reader and readers can't do anything to make the story stop—except close the book.
300—Social Sciences
The next time that Sandlin opened the door, he was dressed less impressively, in pajamas with blue stripes. He greeted Justin with a huge yawn.
"Am I early?” Justin asked, although he knew he wasn't.
Sandlin shook his head and waved Justin in. “Time I got up anyway."
"Right. I'll be downstairs,” said Justin as Sandlin dumped out the coffeepot and filled it with water from the tap.
The collection, which had looked so grand at first sight, was, on closer inspection, quite odd. None of the books seemed to be first editions. Many were not even hardcover. Tattered paperbacks nestled up against reprinted hardcover editions of classics with their spines cracked. Some books even appeared to be galleys from publishers, marked, “for review purposes only—not for resale."
Most of the books were easy to classify. They were almost all 800s, mostly 810s or 820s.
He glanced at the backs of their covers and the copyright pages and then typed their titles into the database. On the spines of each, he taped a label printed in marker.
After he finished a dozen, Justin decided that he should start shelving. He lifted the stack, inhaling book dust, and headed into the aisles.
The problem with everything being in the 800s is that the markers on the ends of the shelves blurred together. Justin took a few turns and then wasn't sure he knew where he was going or where he could find the places for the books in his arms.
"Sandlin?” he called, but although his voice echoed in the vast room, he doubted it was loud enough to carry all the way upstairs.
He turned again. A plastic drink stirrer rested on the floor. Bending to pick it up, he felt panic rise. Where was he? He'd thought he was retracing his steps.
By the time he found his way back to the desk, he felt a faintly ridiculous but almost overwhelming sense of relief.
Sarah leaned back in her seat and sat a roll of twine in front of him.
"I heard you got the Sandlin job,” Sarah said. “My friend used to work there, said it was like a maze. This is his Theseus trick."
” That's smart,” Justin said, thinking of Theseus picking his way through the Minotaur's lair, unwinding Ariadne's string behind him. Thinking of how his heart had pounded when he was lost in the stacks. It wasn't just smart, it was clever, even classical. He wished he'd thought of it.
"Rock, paper, scissors to see if I can come with you."
"No way,” Justin said. “I could lose my job."
"My friend said some other stuff—about what happens after midnight. Come on. If you win, I'll tell you everything I know. If I win, I get to come."
"Fine.” Justin scowled, but Sarah didn't seem cowed. She raised a brow studded with tiny silver bars.
Rock. Paper. Scissors. Her rock smashed his scissors.
"Best two out of three,” Justin said, but he knew he was already defeated.
"Tomorrow night,” said Sarah, with a smile that he couldn't interpret. In fact, the more he thought about it, the less he knew about why she'd started talking to him at all.
400—Language
That night, Justin tucked the string and Linda's book into his backpack and drove to Sandlin's house. He worked his way through cataloging an entire box of books, when, on impulse, he flipped a thin volume open.
The spine of the book read Pride and Prejudice so Justin was surprised to find Indiana Jones in the text. Apparently, he'd been sleeping his way through all the Jane Austen books and had seduced both Kitty and Lydia Bennett. Justin discovered this fact when Eleanor Tilney from Northanger Abbey showed up to confront Indy with his illegitimate child.
He looked at the page and read it twice just to be sure:
To Catherine and Lydia, neither Miss Tilney nor her claims were in any degree interesting. It was next to impossible that Miss Tilney had told the truth, and although it was now some weeks since they had received pleasure from the society of Mr. Jones, they had every confidence in him. As for their mother, she was weathering the blow with a degree of composure which astonished her husband and daughters.
He closed the book, set it back on the shelf, and opened another. Peter Pan. In it, Sherlock Holmes deduced that Tinkerbell had poisoned Wendy while Watson complained to the mermaids that no one understood his torrid romance with one of the shepherdesses from a poem. Wendy's ghost flitted around quoting lines from Macbeth. Peter wasn't in the book at all. He'd left to be a valet to Lord Rochester in a play of which no one had ever heard.
Justin shut Peter Pan so quickly that one of the pages cut a thin line in his index finger. He stuck his bleeding finger in his mouth and tasted ink and sweat. It made him feel vaguely nauseous.
500—Natural Sciences & Mathematics
Scrambling over to his backpack, Justin started unrolling the string. It dragged across the floors, through the aisles as he wound his way though the maze of shelves. At first, it was just books, but as he moved deeper into the stacks, he discovered a statue of a black-haired man in a long blue robe and eyes that glittered like they were set with glass, a velvet fainting couch, and a forgotten collection of champagne flutes containing the dregs of a greenish liquid beside a single jet button.
He glanced at the shelves, thinking of Sandlin's pajamas and Sarah's words: My friend said some other stuff—about what happens after midnight. A party happened here, a party with guests that never disturbed the dust upstairs, that never entered or exited through the front hall.
A party with guests that were already in the house. Guests that were inside the books.
He shuddered then laughed a little at himself. This was what he'd been hoping for, after all. Now he had to just count on the fact that Sandlin wouldn't notice one more book.
That night Justin called out his usual farewell to Mr. Sandlin, before sneaking back down the library stairs. He climbed one of the old ladders along the far wall and cracked open a high, thin window. Then he rolled onto the very top of the bookshelf and flattened himself against the wood. Something banged against the glass.
"Wow. We're pretty high up,” said Sarah as she slid inside. Her foot knocked a stack of papers and a bookend shaped like a nymph crashed to the floor. “Shit!"
"Careful,” whispered Justin. He knew he sounded prissy as soon as it came out of his mouth, but Sarah didn't seem like a very careful person.
"So,” she said. She wore a tattered black coat covered in paint stains and a new hoop gleamed in her eyebrow. The skin around it was puffy and red. “Here we are. This is it."
"What's it?"
"This is where Richard hid. My friend. Pretty genius, right? He could see everything from up here. And who ever looks up?” She answered her own question with a nod. “Nobody."
"Did he say what happens now?"
"The books come to life.” Her voice was filled with awe, like she was about to take a sacrament from the Holy Church of Literature.
Justin looked at his bag where Linda's Russian novel rested. He had a sudden urge to pitch it out the window. “How do you think that happens? There are so many?.?.?.” He wasn't sure how to end that sentence. Characters? Settings? Books?
A footfall kept him from finding out.
"Shhhh,” said Sarah, completely unnecessarily.
Sandlin appeared, walking down the stairs with a crate. Justin crawled forward to see him begin to set up bottles and a cheese platter. He removed red grapes from their plastic-covered package and set them carefully on one end of the tray, then stepped back to look at his arrangement.
He appeared to be satisfied because when he turned around, he made a motion with his hands and a ripple went through the shelves. The books shuddered and then, one by one, the room began to fill with people.
They climbed out of the stacks, brushing themselves off, sometimes hopping from a high place, sometimes crawling out of what seemed like a very cramped low shelf.
Justin looked over at his backpack in time to see women in high-necked dresses and men in uniforms scamper down. He looked for Linda, but from the back, he wasn't sure which one she was. He started to follow, but Sarah grabbed his arm.
"What are you doing?” she hissed. “You said to be careful—remember?"
He leaned over the side, scanning all the faces for Linda's. He tried to remember what she looked like; he kept thinking of lines of description instead. Her hair was “thick chestnut curls like the shining mane of a horse” in the book. He was pretty sure he'd read a passage about her eyes being “amber as the pin at her throat,” but he remembered them as brown.
Women with powdered cones of hair and black masks on sticks swept past knights decked out for jousting and comic book heroes in slinky, rubbery suits. A wolf in a top hat and tails conversed with a wizard in a robe of moons and stars as faeries flew over their heads.
He thought he saw Linda near the grapes, whispering behind a fan. He strained to hear what she said, but all he heard were other conversations. Without quite meaning to, he realized what he was hearing.
"Sarah.” Justin pointed to a large-shouldered man decked out in lace, with a slim sword at his hip and a small reddish flower in his hands. He was lazily chatting up a skinny, red-headed young woman in jeans and a t-shirt.
"Demmed smart you are,” said the man. “Pretty, too. I've been assured my taste is unerring so there's no need to protest."
"Sarah,” said Justin. “That's the Scarlet Pimpernel!"
"Oh my god,” Sarah whispered back, wriggling closer. “I think you're right. Percy Blakeney. I had such a crush on him."
"I think he's hitting on that girl."
"Isn't that?” She paused. “It can't be . . . but I think the girl is Anne of Green Gables."
Justin squinted. “I never read it."
"I heard her say something about there being no one like him in Avonlea,” said Sarah. “What's she doing in jeans? Anne! Anne! Don't do it!"
"Shhh!” Justin said.
"He's married! Marguerite will kick your ass!"
Justin tried to put his hand over her mouth. “You can't just—"
Sarah pulled away, but she seemed a little bit embarrassed. “Chill out. She couldn't hear me anyway. And I wasn't the one who almost climbed down there."
He looked back into the crowd, tamping down both rising panic and chaotic glee. Characters shouldn't be able to meet like this, to mix and converse anachronistically and anarchically in the basement of a house in Jersey. It seemed profane, perverse, and yet it was the perversion itself that tempted him to dangerous joy.
"Okay. Jeesh,” said Sarah, mistaking the reason for his silence. “I'm sorry I got carried away—hey, who's that in the gold armor? Standing near. Oh.” She stopped. “Is that Wolverine talking to a wolverine? In a dress?"
"Which one's wearing the dress?” Justin asked, but the grin slid off his face when he saw Linda move away from the refreshments. She was talking to a man in a doublet.
Sarah put her hand on his arm. “Who are you staring at? You look really weird."
"That's my girlfriend,” said Justin.
"A character in a book is your girlfriend?"
"She put herself there. We had an argument—it's not important. I'm just trying to get her out again."
Sarah stared at him, but her expression said: I don't believe you. You did something bad to your girlfriend to make her put herself in a book. Her earrings swung like pendulums, dowsing for guilty secrets. “You knew what was going on when you applied for this job, didn't you?"
"So?” Justin asked. “Oh, you wanted it too, didn't you? I just called first."
"Well, she's out from the book now. You don't look too happy."
Justin scowled and they said little to each other after that. They just rested on their stomachs on the dusty bookshelves and watched the crowd swirl and eddy beneath them, watched Little Lord Fauntleroy piss in a corner and an albino in armor mutter to the black sword in his hands as he headed for one of the more private and shadowed parts of the library.
And Justin watched as Linda flitted among them, laughing with pleasure.
"Oh, you doth teach the torches to burn bright,” the man in the doublet told her.
What a line, Justin thought ruefully. I hope she knows he's quoting Shakespeare. Then an unpleasant thought occurred to him. Who was Linda talking to?