Excerpt of Evil Librarian by Michelle Knudsen

EVIL LIBRARIAN. Copyright © 2014 by Michelle Knudsen. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.

Chapter One

Italian class. The shining highlight of my Tuesdays,
Wednes­days, and Fridays. Not because I am any good at
Italian (I'm not), or because I like the teacher (I
don't).
It's because Ryan Halsey sits one row over and two rows
up
from where I sit, which is absolutely perfect for forty-
five
minutes of semi-shameless staring.

He's one of those boys that you just can't quite believe is actually real. I know how that sounds, and I don't mean to be all pathetic and ridiculous, but — he's so beautiful. At least to me. Maybe not, like, French underwear-model beautiful (although I would certainly enjoy seeing him in said underwear — or, you know, without), but definitely worthy of serious visual appre­ciation. Of course, he has no romantic interest in me whatso­ever; he barely knows I exist at all, in fact. I don't even think he knows my name. I have no illusions this will ever change. I just like to look at him. And think about him. And dream impossible dreams of our future life together as boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and wife, romantic roommates at the old-age home. But I can't speak to him. I can't even be in the same room with him without turning into a mindless drone of longing. I think if I ever touched him I'd just dissolve into a little pool of liquid bliss on the floor, and someone would call the janitor to come and mop me up and I wouldn't even care, because I'd be too happy. Yeah, it's dumb. I know, okay? But my brain just sort of vacates the premises when I'm around him.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with a little pleasant
dis­traction. A girl needs something to get her through
Italian (not to mention junior year) without going crazy.

Annie reaches over and slips a piece of paper onto my
desk.
It's one of her little drawings: me, in all my stick-
figure
glory (I can tell because of the wavy shape of the hair
bunched into a stick-figure ponytail and because there is
a
little arrow pointing to it labeled you), arms out
zombie-style, walking toward a stick figure of Ryan,
drool
streaming from my mouth. (I can tell the drool is drool
because there is an arrow labeled drool.) Ryan isn't
labeled, but he doesn't have to be — even as a stick
figure, he's too beautiful to mistake for anyone else. I
have a fluffy thought balloon over my head filled with
little hearts.

I tuck the paper into my book before Signor De Luca can catch me with it. Then I glance over at Annie, who is looking innocently forward as if today's vocabulary list is the most interesting thing she's seen in months. Biblioteca? Really! Fascinating!

"The drool was a nice touch," I whisper at her. "Very
classy."

She doesn't look at me but she can't stop herself from
grinning. She loves giving me a hard time about Ryan.
It's
okay. Someday she will be the one with the hopeless
crush,
and I will mock her mercilessly. I look forward to this
with
great anticipation.

When the bell rings, I swing around to punch her in the
arm
and accidentally knock my notebook onto the floor. Before
I
can get it, four beautiful yet manly fingers and a per­
fect
thumb reach into view and pick it up for me.

"Yours?" Ryan asks.

I take it mutely. Manage to nod. Yes. Mine. I love you. Let's get married and have a million babies together, right after we both graduate from Ivy League schools on full scholarship and have ful­filling and exciting careers. You are the most perfect creature ever on God's green earth. Love me. Love me right now. Please.

He walks away.

Annie explodes in peals of laughter. I'd be mad, except
she
has the best laugh ever, and it's impossible to be mad at
some­one who can laugh like that.

"Oh, Cyn," she says, when she can speak again. "It's like
you're possessed! Seriously. You couldn't even say
anything,
you just sat there staring and drooling."

"I was not drooling." Oh, God, tell me I wasn't drooling.
I
can't help it; I rub the back of my hand against my chin.
Perfectly dry and respectable. Annie's a jerk. A sweet
jerk,
whom I love to death, but still.

She's still laughing when we part ways at the second-
floor
landing.

I can't wait until it's her turn. That girl is in for a
world of pain.

Or at least a whole lot of relentless good-natured
teasing.
She is my best friend, after all.

Later. I wait by my locker for Annie to work her way over
from the other side of the building. Students pass by;
slowly, quickly, alone, in groups. And in pairs.

I try not to stare wistfully. It's clearly been way too long since my last boyfriend. And I don't even know if my last boy­friend was technically my boyfriend at all. The whole thing with Billy at the end of the summer was more awkward than anything else. We ended up kissing that time at Sarah's party and then suddenly we just were sort of together, but it had never seemed to be a conscious choice on either of our parts. And it wasn't what I wanted, anyway. He wasn't what I wanted. Even while it was good, I wanted . . . more. Different. Better. It would be so nice to have a real boyfriend. Someone who would hold my hand walking down the hallway and not be embarrassed about it. Someone who would text me during the day just to say he was thinking about me. Someone who would be my guaranteed Friday-night date and who couldn't wait to see me and kiss me and introduce me to his parents and do all the cheesy things I would never admit wanting out loud to anyone in a million years. I don't want to be that girl, the girl who thinks all she needs to be happy is a boyfriend. And I'm not, not really. I have friends, I have fun, I have varied interests and above-average intelligence and am deeply invested in running the set and backstage crew for this fall's school musical and rarely spend a weekend night at home if I don't want to. I am far from lonely and miserable. But it sure would be nice. To have someone.

And yes, okay, especially if that someone were Ryan
Halsey.

At this moment, of course, ridiculously on cue, he sud­
denly
appears from around the corner, and I swear he's mov­ing
in
slow motion like some stupid sequence in a bad summer
movie,
one hand reaching up to run through his perfectly tousled
brown hair, head turning to smile at something one of his
buddies has just said, the sea of students parting
automati­cally before him, the pigeons outside the windows
cooing his personal theme song and the team banners on
the
wall gently waving in time and the sun shining down in
targeted rays to illuminate him in a glorious halo of
glowing enchantment.

He's going to walk by me, and I don't know what to do
with
myself. Smiling and saying hello are, of course, out of
the
question. I want to turn around and hide in my locker but
I
think it's too late, it would be too obvious. So I peer
farther down the hall, pretending to look for Annie, even
though I know she will be coming from the opposite
direction, and then when I can't stand it one more second
I
turn my head and he's right there, passing right in front
of
me, almost close enough to touch. For one second I think
maybe our eyes meet but then it's over and he's gone,
passed
me by, surrounded by his posse and the swirling invisible
whirlwind of my longing, lustful thoughts.

For one crazy moment I am tempted to run forward and just tackle him. My legs are perfectly willing to move at my command, I feel them ready and waiting, eager, giving me the enthusiastic all clear. Let us go to him, they implore me. Release us to chase our destiny! My legs are a bit melodramatic, but I hear what they are saying. I could throw him down and take a big juicy bite of his absolute deliciousness. Straddle him right there in the hallway and then, after a long, smoldering look deep into his eyes, lean down slowly and start kissing him in the way I have imagined (in excruciating detail) ever since the first day I saw him in the cafeteria last year. (September 18, 12:03 p.m., third table from the windows, counting from the wall closest to the lunch counter. He was wearing a faded Glengarry Glen Ross T-shirt and eating barbecue potato chips. Or so I vaguely recall.) And at first he would be surprised, but then after a moment I would feel his hand come up behind my head and wrap itself in my hair and pull me closer against him, crushing my mouth to his, and —

I stop before I really do start drooling.

Sigh.

Where the hell is Annie? Not that I really wanted her to
witness a second helping of my Ryan-induced stupidity
today,
but she is usually here by now. I turn back to watch the
corner that so recently produced the heavenly vision of
my
dream-boy, and finally it releases Annie into view.

Something is going on.

She's sort of half walking, half twirling. She is often a rather bouncy girl, but this is different. This is like a Sound of Music the-hills-are-alive kind of thing. Her face is flushed and her eyes are shiny and kind of, well, strange. Intense. In a very non-Annie kind of way.

I take a step toward her and she grabs my arm and pulls
me
against her and spins me around to walk back the way she
came.

"What — where —?"

She leans her head close to mine as she propels us along.
"New. Librarian." She breathes the words as if they are
sacred scripture.

"I'm sorry, what? New librarian?"

She nods like this explains everything. I pull her —
with some difficulty — to a stop. She turns to me with
very unchar­acteristic impatience. "Cyn, come on. You have
to —" And now her face sort of melts into helpless
dreaminess and I start to get it. "You have to see him."

Ohhh.

I feel an evil grin coming on. Maybe Annie's turn at the
hopeless crush is going to come sooner than I thought.

She whips us around the next corner and up the stairs and
down the hall toward the library. I suppose I'd heard
some­thing about a new librarian being hired, but it's not
like this is an event I would expect to greatly impact my
life in some significant way. And if I'd thought about
it, I
probably would have assumed that the new librarian would
be
something like the old librarian. Who was a perfectly
nice-seeming middle-aged woman who could help you find
whatever you needed for your paper or project or weekend
reading but was not some­one who inspired breathless words
or flushed faces or shin­ing eyes. Unless you happened to
be
the sort who got really excited about primary-source
research materials or some­thing, I guess.

We reach the double doors and now Annie stops, releasing
me
so she can try to smooth her short dark curls a little
and
peek in her compact mirror.

"Do I look okay? I look okay, right?" "Yes, sure. Of course. Jeez, Annie. You realize he's the librarian, right?" She looks at me, her eyes still bright with — something. "Uh-huh," she says. And again she sounds nothing like the Annie I know. The Annie whose previous semi-romantic inter­ests have been nerdy science guys and various unattainable boyish celebrities and whose yearning has always been sort of cute and fluffy and innocent. This Annie in front of me is way more . . . carnal. And it's not like I don't get it; I mean, was I not just daydreaming about taking an almost-literal bite out of my own fantasy crush? It's just so not like her. It's almost alarming, except I can't wait to tease her to the full extent of my ability. She so has it coming.

She takes a deep breath and then pulls open the library
doors. Together, we step inside.

I have been in the library plenty of times. Shelves of
books, rows of computers, a bunch of wooden study tables,
the shiny modern circulation desk that got a makeover
during
holiday break our freshman year. It has inspired
occasional
feelings of resignation, or indifference, or maybe panic,
when I've waited too long to start a project, and
sometimes
even a modicum of pleasure when I'm actually there to
find
something to read for fun. It has never made me feel
anything like what I feel right now. The air, usually
quiet
and still and slightly dusty with the

smell of books, is now charged with some strange energy.
It's like walking into some otherworldly combination of
old
church and late-night dance club, where the music happens
to
be silent and pulsing and all of the dancers are
invisible.

I stop, confused, trying to figure out where this feeling
is
coming from. Shapes seem to flicker at the corner of my
vision, but when I turn my head, there's nothing there.
It's
the same library it has always been, nothing has changed
. .
. and yet everything is very, very different.

Annie seems to have forgotten me. She steps forward,
slowly,
one step at a time, and again I find myself thinking of
an
old church, some sacred ritual where a young girl
proceeds
slowly and significantly toward some life-altering event.
I
feel like I should be scattering rose petals in her wake.
I
want to speak, to break this weird sensation of being
somewhere else, but it feels wrong and I can't. It's
crazy
— it's the high-school library, for Pete's sake
— but I feel like an outsider, meant to quietly
observe and not interfere.

There is a sound from behind a row of bookshelves and
Annie
lights up.

"Mr. Gabriel?" she calls softly.

Footsteps, and for a second I want to turn and run. My
breath catches and I am suddenly terrified, for
absolutely
no reason except that Annie is being so weird and the
library feels so strange and I don't seem to belong here.
I
want to grab Annie and pull her away and tear down the
hall
and down the stairs and outside into the sunny afternoon
and
not look back.

And then he appears, and I feel ridiculous.

He's just a man. A young and, yes, okay, very attractive man. Of course he is, my brain says patiently, as if speaking to a small and not very bright child. What on earth did you think he would be? And I don't know what to say to that. I guess, for a moment, I did think he would be something else. Something — terrible. But that seems very silly now. He's just a nice-looking guy in dark jeans and a white button-down shirt. He could almost pass for a student; he must be right out of library college, or wherever young librarians go to learn about library things.

"Annie? Back so soon?" His voice is deep and low and sort
of
gently amused, and the sound of it instantly makes me
amazed
that I ever thought he could pass for a high-school boy.
His
words carry a weight of age and experience that seem way
beyond his apparent years. Those library-school courses
must
really be something.

"Hi, Mr. Gabriel," Annie says, breathless again. "I'm
sorry.
I hope I'm not bothering you. I just wanted to introduce
my
friend Cynthia."

He steps closer to her and looks down kindly. "Of course
you're not bothering me, Annie. You are always welcome
here." Then he turns his gaze to me. His eyes are a
startling dark color, maybe gray, maybe black, maybe even
a
sort of very deep violet. I have to struggle to blink;
part
of me seems to want to stand there staring into them for
as
long as it might take to figure out exactly how to
describe
them.

"Cynthia. How nice to meet you. I guess Annie has told
you
I'll be the new librarian." He reaches out his hand,
smiling, like I'm a colleague instead of some random
student
who interrupted his book organizing or whatever he was
doing
back there in the stacks.

I reach out to take it, and as his fingers close around
mine
I feel a kind of — spark. Like the kind you get from
static elec­tricity sometimes, only different in some
fundamental way that I can't really explain. I fumble for
a
second but then it's gone, whatever it was, and I shake
his
hand firmly. "It's nice to meet you, too, Mr. Gabriel."

He looks at me for a second, like he's expecting me to
say
something else. "Um, welcome to our school," I add, and
after another second he releases my hand and smiles
again.
For a moment, though, he looked — odd. Surprised,
maybe. Or something.

"Well, I guess we should get going," I say finally. "Come
on, Annie."

She comes obediently, looking back at him the whole time
we
are moving toward the doors. I look back, too, just once,
to
try to see what she is seeing. He is very attractive,
there's no question about that. And for a moment, when I
felt that weird spark, he seemed beyond just attractive:
movie-star gor­geous, almost breathtaking, like I was
suddenly seeing him on his best hair day ever in the most
flattering light possible. But then it passed and he was
just a regular cute guy again. But Annie and I never had
quite the same taste in men. I guess she just sees
something
in him that I don't. Which is good, prob­ably. It would
suck
if we ever both fell for the same guy. I like that we
seem
to fall in different directions.

She leans her head against my shoulder as we move down
the
hall. "Isn't he something?" she asks dreamily.

I reach up and pat her hair gently. "Yes, Annie. He sure
is.
I bet you're going to be doing lots and lots of reading
this
year, aren't you?"

"Uh-huh," she says again in that strange, breathless
voice,
and again I'm struck by the heat underneath her words, so
dif­ferent from the Annie that I know and love. But lust
changes you, I get that. And she deserves her chance to
drool helplessly over a guy who makes her heart and loins
heat up and dance around like they're on fire.

I feel my evil grin coming back. This is going to be a
lot
of fun.

Over the weekend we don't talk about the new librarian much. Maybe Annie's already feeling a little foolish about her total swooniness on Friday. I don't push it; I suspect I will have plenty of time to enjoy her enthrallment. I want to savor every moment. And so I wait, and we do our normal weekend things: movies; mall; ice cream; more telephone conversations than are strictly necessary, talking about everything and nothing. I dedicate a few solo hours to trying to save the fall musical set from lame last-minute replacement parts that will completely destroy the show as far as I am concerned. (Operative word: trying. As in, not yet succeeding. But I'm on it. I will figure it out. I have to figure it out. Somehow.) A pretty average week­end all around.

On Monday morning, Annie rings my doorbell a full half
hour
earlier than normal. I go to the door, still holding my
half-eaten bowl of cereal, and raise my eyebrows at her.
She
just stands there, bouncing lightly on her toes.

"Hello, early," I say. I open the door to let her in.

Her face falls a little. "Oh, you're not ready? I thought
— I thought maybe we could go in a little early today.
I want to stop by the library before homeroom."

And so it begins.

"Sorry, still eating." I raise my bowl significantly. She
is
strange again, like she was on Friday. It's less fun
today.
But maybe that's just because I'm not exactly a morning
person.

She comes in but stops a few feet inside the entryway.
"How
much longer do you think you'll be?"

"About a half hour. Like always. I didn't know it was
go-to­school-early-to-gawk-at-the-librarian day, Annie.
Sorry."

She nods but still stands there, bouncing.

I roll my eyes. "Go on without me. I'll see you in
English."

"Okay, bye!" She's gone before I can say another word.

I shake my head and walk back to the kitchen with my
Lucky
Charms. She's got it worse than I ever did. Sure, I could
sit and watch Ryan for hours at a time if I had the
chance,
but you certainly wouldn't catch me getting up early to
do
it. There are limits.

Okay, maybe if he were going to be naked.

But I am pretty sure Mr. Gabriel will be fully clothed,
and
that he will look pretty much the same at lunchtime as he
would at 7:30 a.m. I can't see why Annie couldn't just
wait
until later to stand around and stare at him.

Now I won't even get to make fun of her, since I won't be
there to watch. Oh, well. That wouldn't have been worth
get­ting up early for either.

I wait for Annie outside the door to English, but she
doesn't show up by the time the bell rings. I linger
another
few seconds, but then Principal Morse walks by and gives
me
one of his waggly-eyebrow expressions that somehow always
manage to simultaneously make you want to laugh at him a
little (because he is not even close to being the stern,
scary type) and instantly stop doing whatever you're not
supposed to be doing (mostly because you just don't want
to
hurt his feelings). He's pretty nice for a principal. I
go
inside the class­room and sit down but keep watching the
door. It's a full five more minutes before she finally
shows
up, handing a late pass to Mrs. McKenna. She catches my
eye
as she slides into her seat, shrugging sheepishly and
mouthing the word "library."

She sits three rows over, tricky for note-passing, so I
have
to wait until after class to talk to her. As soon as the
bell rings she comes over to my desk.

"I know," she says before I can open my mouth. "I know.
I'm
obsessed. I admit it."

"Hey, it's no fun if you don't deny it." I pick up my bag
and we head for the door. "But yes, since you mention it,
you're right. You are. Completely obsessed. Did you spend
all morn­ing in there, peeking out at him from behind the
books? You're going to give the poor man a complex."

"No, it's not like that," she says. "I mean, yeah, I was
in
there for a while — he gave me a pass to get out of
first period."

"You skipped class to make eyes at the new librarian?"

"Well, we were talking, and time sort of got away from
me, I
guess."

"Talking about what?"

She shrugs again. "I don't know. Just things." She looks
up
at me, beaming. "He's going to let me be a library
monitor
instead of going to gym."

I'm getting that uneasy feeling again, like I did on
Friday.
"Can he do that? Just give you permission not to take
gym?
Besides, I thought you liked gym!"

"I do, but — oh, Cyn, he's so amazing. I don't just
mean to look at, I mean to talk to. He's so smart, and
there's all these things he knows about. . . ."

She'd been slowing down as she walked, and now she stops and leans her head against the wall. "I've never felt this way about someone before," she says. "It's not like any of those times I thought I liked a boy. This is different. He's different."

Alarm bells are going off all over the inside of my
brain.
"Annie, you're freaking me out a little bit. He's a
teacher,
or as good as. He's got to be, like, twelve years older
than
you. At least. And it's probably illegal for him to date
a
student. And you don't even know him! Do you hear what
you
sound like?"

She blushes, but not in her usual cute Annie way. She looks angry. And so strange. Like she's suddenly become someone I've never met before. "Yeah, I know just what I sound like. Have you ever heard yourself talking about Ryan?"

"That's different! He's a student, and I've known him for
longer —"

Annie huffs a mean little laugh. "Known him? You don't
know
him. You've never even spoken to him! Have you ever said
one
word to him? Ever? At least John and I have had a
conversation!"

"John? You call him John? Annie —"

And suddenly her face changes, and she looks like my best
friend again. She also looks confused. "That is weird,
isn't
it? I didn't — it didn't seem weird before, but now . .
."

She looks away and then back up at me. "I skipped class.
I
never skip class."

"It's okay. You were just —" I have to search for a word here. Crazy comes to mind, but that doesn't seem like the most diplomatic choice. "You were just excited. I mean, he's super cute, and smart, and I guess he just kind of dazzled you, huh?"

"Yeah." She smiles weakly. "Yeah, I guess that's what
happened. It's still weird, though. I wouldn't have
thought
. . ." She shakes her head. "Oh, well. Whatever, right?
No
real harm done, I guess."

We start walking again. I'm still feeling a little
freaked out.

The bell rings for third period; we're both going to be
late.

We hurry around the corner and suddenly Mr. Gabriel is
standing there in front of us. I almost scream. Right
there
in the hallway. For a second I am filled with terror like
I
was on Friday when I first heard the sound of his shoes
on
the library floor. But then it passes, again, and he's
just
the attractive new librarian.

"Oh, hi, J — Mr. Gabriel," Annie says.

"Now, Annie," he says mock-sternly, "I thought I asked
you
to call me John."

"Yes, you did, but —" She looks at me and I try to
radiate encouragement. "It just feels weird. I'm sorry."

He nods. Glances at me. Looks back at Annie. "I see. Of
course. Well, I certainly don't want you to feel
uncomfortable, Annie." He reaches out and touches her
arm.

The hallway shifts suddenly beneath me. At least, that's
what it seems like. I'm dizzy and there's that church /
night­club feeling again, and I feel like invisible people
are shoving me from twenty different directions. And then
it's gone, and everything is normal again.

Except that Annie's face has gone all strange and slack
and
dreamy. Again.

"Why don't you come by at the end of the day and we'll
talk
more about the library monitor position," Mr. Gabriel
says,
like nothing crazy just happened.

"Sure. Okay," Annie says in that breathless voice from
Friday. She turns toward her chem class without looking
at
me. "Bye, Cyn." And then she is gone.

I stand there, in the hallway, staring after her. Then I
turn and look at Mr. Gabriel.

He is looking at me, too.

"Why don't you come along, too, Cynthia?"

I feel like a mouse locking eyes with a snake. My legs are itching to move, my brain is shrieking at me: Run! Run away! But I don't. Can't.

"No, thanks," I say. "I don't think so."

We stand there another few seconds looking at each other.
And then he reaches out to touch my arm like he did
Annie's.
I see his hand extending and I want to shrink back from
it
but I seem to be frozen in place. It comes closer and I
feel
as I might if a very large spider were reaching out to
touch
me instead of a cute twenty-something high-school
librarian.
Like I might scream. Or faint. Or die.

His fingers brush my flesh and there's that weird spark
feeling again and I wait for something else to happen,
but
then — nothing.

We both look at his hand for a minute.

"Hm," he says. "Well. Good-bye, Cynthia."

He turns and walks back down the hall.

"What the hell?" I say out loud to myself, staring at his
retreating back. "I mean, seriously, what the hell?"

A late student jogs by and gives me a very strange look.

I can't even bring myself to feel embarrassed.

Something is seriously messed up here.