The Library War Read online

  The Library War

  ©2019 by Cecily Wolfe. All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Stefanie Fontecha of Beetiful Book Covers

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and any similarity to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  Chapter One

  “I can’t believe I ever thought I could be friends with you!”

  Maya regretted the words as soon as they came out of her mouth, and her breath hitched when she saw Connor’s expression shift, momentarily, from fury to hurt. He lifted his chin, narrowing his eyes as he whispered loudly in response.

  “Could be? Are you saying we never were? Have you been pretending to be my friend, since we were kids?”

  It wasn’t true, and they both knew it. Their friendship was one of the most enduring things in Maya’s life, and her anger was rooted in her fear of losing him, even if he was standing in her way. She didn’t like how his eyes, usually a comforting shade of brown, had darkened as their conversation plummeted in tone.

  “You’re impossible!”

  Of all the stupid things to say, she chided herself, shaking her head as she stomped away. An elderly man sitting at the last computer in the adult section raised his eyebrows at her, but she acted like she didn’t notice. There weren’t a lot of patrons in the library right then, which wasn’t good.

  Maya needed to stay busy. She needed to take her mind off this competition between Connor and herself, and to do as much work as possible to prove to their manager that she was the one worthy of the summer job both of them wanted enough to fight over it.

  The summer job that was going to cost her a friendship that started in middle school, when they were both shy and quiet, their noses hidden within the pages of books.

  “Maya? Can you please answer the phone while I help someone with the copy machine?”

  One of the librarians was waving her over to the front desk, and Maya was both relieved and annoyed by the interruption of her thoughts. She wished there was a way she could get this job and salvage her relationship with Connor.

  “Sure, Andrea.”

  The librarian nodded and smiled, and Maya forced herself to return the gesture as she sat in the chair behind the desk. She touched the phone receiver absently, looking around in case any patrons looked like they needed assistance.

  The metal cart Connor had taken into the adult fiction shelves hadn’t moved since she had walked away, and she wondered what he was doing. He was usually quick when he shelved fiction, and the cart only had a few books that needed shelved at the end of that row.

  When the phone hummed under the palm of her hand before it actually started to ring, she stood up in surprise, pushing the chair out from underneath her as she lifted the receiver to her ear.

  “This is the Elton Library, how many I help you?”

  She glanced over at Andrea, who was watching her with a frown as a woman with a little boy tugging on her sleeve arranged a piece of paper on the copier glass. Maya took a deep breath as quietly as she could as she listened to the gravelly voice on the other end of the line.

  “I have the New York Times Best Seller list here, and I want you to get them all for me. Do you think I can pick them up tomorrow?”

  Maya wanted to shake her head, but she knew that Andrea was watching her, and besides, it wasn’t as if the patron on the phone could see her. It was a common request, and an impossible one to fulfill, especially from their small library. The best sellers were so popular and even though the library had multiple copies, there were never enough to fill the demand, so many people had to wait, whether they liked it or not.

  “I can look them up in our catalog, and if we don’t have them here, I can put them on hold and you’ll get copies when they’re available. Can you give me your name or library card number?”

  Her eyes strayed from the computer screen to Connor’s cart again, and she tapped the computer keyboard absently as the voice continued to speak, rattling off book titles and authors she had heard several times over the past few days.

  “Don’t you have any of them there right now? I don’t have anything to read!”

  She held back a sigh and looked at her fingernails. Bitten as far as she could gnaw them down, and she had been so excited last year when she finally stopped biting them as a habit.

  This fight with Connor was out of hand, but she didn’t know how to fix it and still get this job. She couldn’t let him win this. Why was he being so stubborn?

  “Miss? Are you listening?”

  Nodding, if only to keep herself on task, Maya added the last book to the patron’s record as she assured him that she was paying attention.

  “I have all of them on hold for you, and it doesn’t look like it should be a long wait.”

  There was a brief silence, and she wondered if the man had hung up.

  “My taxes buy those books, so you should have them when I want them!”

  He did hang up then, the sudden silence on the line audible in the relative quiet of the library. It wasn’t worth it to get annoyed, since it happened all the time, and she knew from her own love of reading that it was hard to wait for a book she really wanted.

  Andrea was still with the woman at the copier, and the little boy had started to wail. Maya fought the urge to cry along with him.

  Graduation was only days away, and she should have been happy, excited for whatever the future held for her. College, opportunities . . . and the summer job here at the library. A paying job. No more volunteering.

  Connor wanted that job, too, just as much.

  “Is everything okay, Maya?”

  Andrea appeared beside her, and the woman walked by with an apologetic smile, the little boy kicking in her arms as he grunted angrily. The automatic doors slid open and the pair left the building, the doors humming closed behind them.

  “Why don’t you help Connor with the adult shelves, and then you both can do some shelf reading in the children’s area. The picture books are a mess.”

  Maya nodded to let the librarian know she had heard and walked away, taking a longer walk back to the row where Connor was working so she could avoid the elderly man and his disapproval.

  Connor didn’t see her approach as she turned the corner and moved slowly towards him, or if he did, he didn’t indicate it in any way. He was still, staring blankly at the shelves in front of him as if he didn’t know what to do.

  Of course he did. They had been shelving books for years together. Nothing was different today, except the together part. The best part.

  Connor knew Maya was watching him. After her little tirade earlier, he wondered why she had returned. To insult him again? Criticize his work?

  She was like a completely different person than the Maya he had been friends with all these years. The Maya who jumped up and down in place when they played Mario Kart in the rec room at his house, the Maya who would eat the last brownie when he ate dinner at her house and she made the chewy double-chocolate ones he loved.

  The Maya who had been his friend when the boys made fun of him because he was so tall and thin back in sixth grade, some of the same boys who now acted as if they had always liked him, only because he had been a star on the basketball team every year of high school.

  She didn’t speak as she approached the cart, and he watched her take a book from the end of the cart and walk away, returning less than a minute later to take another. Usually they took three or four at a time that belonged in the same area, since it was quick to shelve them in fiction and saved time, so why was she being so slow about it?

  When she came back empty-handed a third time, he stood up straight and took a deep breath, sorry when she jumped a little as if
she hadn’t expected him to move.

  “Why are you doing that?”

  She huffed, reminding him of the way some of the girls at school had once sniffed at him when he had approached them only a few years ago, as if he wasn’t worthy of their notice. Just like the boys, now they all wanted to hang on his arm, or wear his letter jacket.

  Although he realized that a few of them had actually changed, he remembered the hurt of being ignored, left out, and how Maya had been the one girl, the one person, who hadn’t expected him to be more than he was.

  He had been enough for her, and she had always been enough for him. No changes needed. It was a relationship he had learned to judge any others that evolved after by, and while it seemed a simple standard, it wasn’t easily met.

  “Shelving books? Isn’t that what I’m here to do?”

  Stomping was Maya’s primary mode of walking tonight, and while it was childish, Connor kind of wanted to do it himself. Did it make her feel better, he wondered, to act out like that?

  A few weeks ago, he could have asked her. Now, he wouldn’t be asking. He would be taunting. Anything he said would be taken as judgment, and he knew that he would be asking to give her a hard time, so she wouldn’t be wrong.

  He fought the urge to reach out and grab her arm the next time she reached in front of him for a book.

  “I’ll be happy to tell Lindsay that you stood here all day while I shelved the entire cart.”

  Off she went, but as she worked, the books she put away belonged on shelves closer to where Connor stood. What would she do when she got to the beginning of the alphabet, which was right behind his back?

  “I’m not spending my summer doing this, you know.”

  Another book in hand, she hissed at him as she stomped off, only a few steps away.

  “I guess you plan too, though.”

  There was misery in her frown, not merely disapproval, and he wondered if she was as unhappy as he was. Did she miss their walks together, the ones from school to the library, from the library to their houses, only a street apart?

  “I have to get to the shelf behind you. So move, please.”

  Her polite request didn’t match the tone of her voice. Connor took the book from her hand without thinking, and turned to slide it into its place between two other books on the shelf. Now she couldn’t tell the library manager that she had shelved ALL the books in the adult section, right, he thought.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  Maya wasn’t whispering anymore, and her question, which rang loud in the silence of the building, was more of an accusation than anything else. He wished she would hit him, but he wasn’t sure why.

  He was just as worthy of the paying position as she was, and he wanted it as much as she did. There had to be a way he could get the job and still save their friendship, but the look on her face didn’t offer any hope on that front.

  “You two! I’ve had enough of this. I think we all have.”

  He watched Maya’s gaze turn towards Andrea’s voice, the sullen downturn of her lips shifting into a silent O of surprise, before he looked at the librarian as well.

  “Just leave. I’ll talk to Lindsay tomorrow, but if I had my way, you’d both be gone. For good.”

  Maya started to step around the cart, but Andrea held a hand up as if to bar her advance.

  “Leave the cart. Go out the back door. No talking. No more fighting. No anything.”

  They were volunteers, Connor considered. Would Lindsay fire them? Could volunteers get fired?

  Andrea folded her arms across her chest, her face stony and expressionless, and Connor knew then that he had his answer.

  Chapter Two

  Earlier that month

  Maya bounced the basketball on the sidewalk in time with her words as she spoke with Connor on the walk home from the high school.

  “I don’t know. He’s okay, I guess.”

  Connor shrugged. She could see the movement from the corner of her eye, but unlike him, she couldn’t dribble a ball while looking anywhere but the ball, so she didn’t turn to look at him. He really seemed like he didn’t care who she decided to accept as her date for the prom, and a part of her was disappointed. A part that she didn’t even know existed until the subject came up a few days ago.

  “I don’t know if I should be happy or confused that I’ve had three boys ask me to go. I don’t know if I even want to go.”

  Connor remained silent, and she took the ball into her arms, shifting it to the side as she leaned into him. Maybe she could tease a response out of him. Maybe she could stay in this position, their arms pressed against each other, the rest of the way to her house.

  “You still haven’t told me who you plan to ask. Do you have a secret crush I don’t know about?’

  He smiled then, one of those goofy smiles that left the girls who trailed him the school hallways giggle. But not her. She was used to that smile, immune to his easygoing charm. Or was she?

  “Me? Dancing? You know how I dance, Maya.”

  She felt the pressure of him leaning back against her, and when he finally turned his head to look at her, she thought she saw a flicker of something other than amusement in his eyes.

  Was he tired of her talking about it? Possibly, but he had always listened to her regardless of what she needed to say, and she had done the same for him. Wasn’t that what friends did?

  “How much dancing goes on at one of those things?”

  She wondered this aloud, because she hadn’t gone to any of the formal high school dances, but this was the senior prom, and her mother had encouraged her to go, as if it was vitally important to her adolescent experience.

  “Hey, we could double date. It’s not like you have a shortage of girls you could ask.”

  When he started laughing and moved away from her, she wished she hadn’t spoken. Wished he was still leaning against her as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  “You want to go that badly that you’d drag me into it?”

  Without a second thought, she threw the basketball at him, and he, without any look of surprise or effort, caught it and tucked it under his arm.

  “I don’t know. I don’t care, I guess. You know what my mom said, though, and it could be fun. With the right person. Or people.”

  She could go with any one of the boys who asked her, and with Connor along with them, she would have a good time. She and Connor had a good time doing absolutely nothing, even having awkward conversations like this.

  “Who should I ask, then?”

  They had started to walk again, and she knew that there wasn’t much time before they reached her house. He had always insisted that they go to her house first, so she wouldn’t walk alone, and on those nights when they had volunteered at the library and the mile home was dark and sometimes snowy or rainy, she had always appreciated his thoughtfulness.

  He was like a big brother, although she was older by two months, in how he looked out for her in those little ways.

  Her feelings for him at that moment, however, were not sisterly at all.

  “Uh, is there anyone you like?”

  She heard the words come out of her mouth hesitantly, as if she was afraid of his answer. She was.

  Connor tilted his head from side to side. Seriously, she thought, growing annoyed. He could have his pick of any girl in the school.