Chapter 1

When I was young, reading books about people with fabulous lives or heroic tales made me feel good, like I could pretend I was there, in the book, for awhile. Even as a kid, I read adult fiction, a lot of which I didn't understand - but it was all I had access too. My mom had a pretty large book collection that she kept on a shelf in her bedroom. I had never seen her read though. It must have been something she did before she had kids.

  It made sense for me to get a job at a library, and this one happened to have a HELP WANTED sign up at the desk one June afternoon, when I was returning a book.

  It was the last week of school, and they interviewed me on the spot, after I told them I was interested in applying for the job.

  "When can you start?" Mrs. Walsh, the assistant manager asked me, at the end of the interview.

  "Uh, really?" I was shocked, to be honest.

  "Yes, it'll be nice to have a young woman around here. When is school out?" she asked, smiling with her lips closed.

  "Thursday is the last day," I answered, still surprised this was real.

  "And you can be here by 9 A.M. on weekdays?"

  "Yes, of course. I take the train," I replied.

  "Okay, great. Let's have you start Monday."

  It was a small library, but it was much nicer than the one I grew up going to in Brooklyn. I loved being there. My Mom was never home and Asa was gone - the library in the East Village became my refuge. And it didn't hurt that I was making money.

  With my first pay cheque, I bought some real groceries for the house, and some new clothes. I got dress pants and some nice tops, for work. It was odd, being able to buy myself things. I felt like a grown up, yet I knew I'd basically missed out on my childhood. I'd been acting like a grown up for a long time already.

  I was just doing customer service at the library; I worked mostly at the desk and checked in and out books. But I gained a lot of knowledge over the short period of time. I learned all of the genres of books and where they were in the library. I enjoyed the interaction with the people who came in. I took the job seriously, and Mrs. Walsh appreciated that. By July, they had upped my hours to four days a week.

  Outside of working at the library, I only hung out with Alex. He would be there at the end of my shift, often, and we would walk around for hours, laughing, talking. We really got to know each other that summer. He noticed I was different, now, too. I might have felt happy, even, for the first time in a long time.

  "You're so amazing, Pen," Lex whispered to me one mid-July evening.

  We were sitting in the park, people watching. It was one of our favourite things to do.

  "Why?" I asked him, shaking my head.

  "You're just... independent. You take care of you, you know?" he answered.

  To him, I was exotic. Different from other girls he knew. Most of the kids we went to school with - himself included - didn't need, or want, to work. They spent their parents' money on things they didn't need. They had parties and drank beer and acted like normal teenagers.

  "I have to, Lex," I told him, looking down at my feet.

  "I know."

  "You're pretty great, too," I added, then laughed.

  "My Mom tells me that, too," he grinned.

  I loved how Lex made me feel, how he'd always made me feel. He knew I was different, but to him, that wasn't a bad thing. I felt like myself when I was with him, when I was just putting on an act for the rest of the world.

  Two weeks later, when I thought things were finally good in my life, Alex told me about Simone. At first, it seemed no different than any other girl he had dated since I'd known him. But it was only a few days later that I knew it was different.

  "I can't meet you today after work," he told me, when I called him from the library, on my lunch break.

  "Okay," I said, already knowing what he would say next.

  "Simone wants me to meet her in Central Park," he went on.

  I knew he was really smitten with this girl, now. Lex hated Central Park. With a passion.

  "Have fun," I told him, trying to sound cheerful.

  I only saw him a few times over the next month. It seemed like he always had a reason why he couldn't meet me - and it was always Simone. It was fine; I didn't like Lex like that at all. And I didn't expect him to hang out with me every day, either. But he had become obsessed with her, doing whatever she wanted, being at her beck and call. And I just missed him, that was all. I missed laughing and walking around the city after work, before I took the last train back to Brooklyn. I had finally got a phone, so he texted often, but it wasn't the same. And I had to be okay with it.

  The rest of the summer went by too fast, and I was dreading going back to school. Starting my final year of high school was scary, since I had no idea what I would do with my life afterwards. I had to drop down to part time at the library, which I didn't like either. Mrs. Walsh had agreed to two days a week, but I wished it was more.

   The first day of the last full week of summer break, I woke up early, showered and ate a banana while I walked to the train. It was no different than any other day. The sun was hot and I was sweating by the time I got to the East Village.

  The library opened at nine-thirty and I always arrived before nine o'clock to sign in and do anything that needed to get done before opening. When I walked up to the door that morning, there was a guy standing there, staring at the sign. I ignored him and used my key to open the door.

  "Hey," he said loudly, grabbing my arm.

  I pulled away quickly. "Don't touch me."

  "Oh, shit, sorry... I didn't mean to... uh... do you work here?" he asked.

  Now I looked at him, I saw his green eyes, brown perfectly cut hair and his straight, white teeth. He looked close to my age and like he was straight out of a magazine. Or a GAP commercial.

  "Yes," I answered, but turned back away from him.

  "I really need a book. I can't wait til 9:30, though-" he told me.

  "Sorry, closed until 9:30," I said him, pulling open the door.

  "I called around and apparently I can only get this book here," he went on.

  "Okay. We open at 9:30," I repeated.

  "Come on. Can I just slip in and grab it?"

  I turned back to him, annoyed. "No, you can't." I shook my head, and let it close behind me.

  At 9:40, I saw him nearing the check out desk. I wished Cody, the only other person working with me, was close by so I could have avoided this situation. But I had no choice but to smile as he approached me.

  "Got it," he said, putting down the book on the desk in between us.

  It was a Barbara Streisand autobiography, and I'd never felt more confused in my life. This was the book he just had to get?

  I picked it up, nodding. "Library card?"

  "Right. It's my Mom's," he said, passing me the card from his wallet. "The book is for her too, just so you know."

  I raised my eyebrows at him. "Okay."

  "You're seriously not going to question any of this?" he went on.

  "It's not my business," I said, then added, "Aren't you in a rush?"

  "I was. But plans changed." He shrugged.

  "Well, that's good. Enjoy," I said, sliding the book and the card back towards him.

  "It's for my Mom," he said again, like I hadn't heard him the first time. "Her book club."

"Okay," I finished.

  I had had a lot of interesting conversations with all kinds of people that summer, but that one was definitely the strangest.

  I tried - really hard - for the rest of the day to forget about it, and him, but his face kept popping up in my head. I really didn't like it.

  "Are you daydreaming?" Cody asked me that afternoon.

  The library was quiet, and I'd been mindlessly searching through stacks of books, organizing them to go back to the shelves.

  I looked up at Cody, but shook my head. He was short and thick, with glasses and curly dark hair. He was smart and had worked there a year longer than me. He had just graduated from East High and was starting college soon. His grandmother was also a founder of the library.

  "Excited for school?" he asked me, stopping at the desk before he headed off to restock books.

  "Not really," I answered, then added, "I like it here."

  "Mary hardly ever hires teenagers," Cody told me, smiling. Mary was Mrs. Walsh. "She must have liked you."

  I gave him a smile back and then watched him carry on with his job.

  I really didn't know why Mrs. Walsh had liked me enough at my interview to hire me on the spot, or why I was good enough to keep on all summer. Maybe it was merely because I showed up and did what was asked of me. It didn't seem so hard to do. I really liked it, in fact. But again, I wasn't exactly a normal teenager.