by Ariana Duckett
I wonder where I’d be without her. In a library, scanning the blurbs of books I’d never read. Halfway through a tunnel, unsure which side I came from. Playing with my hair to prove I was worthy of it, for the burden of the female condition can only be shouldered by some.
I would still ask people how they were doing, and pay special attention when they spoke of things they deeply cared about, even though I learned those mannerisms from her. I’d possess a bundle of skills, like flowers never delivered to their recipient, without ever knowing who bestowed them upon me.
Sometimes, I wonder what would happen if a timid librarian found that the same two people come to the library often, but always at different times, and leave notes in the pages of books for one another. In this story, the librarian would delve into hidden notes left in book covers indicating that one person, as a joke, had written a note in a book to see if the void of possibility would shout back, and it did, in the form of a young woman in five AP classes.
It would be a story of deciphers, ink-stained fingertips, and arrows going in different directions.
It would become a sideways love story—this would not be the main theme, though. The focus would be if the librarian chose to reveal their truths in the end—to the reader, to the fellow librarians, to each mystery lover, or if they chose to become the fourth Moirai, or Fate.
She and I went to the library after school sometimes, and the librarians set out craft projects for us. They would provide plastic beads and boards with pegs sticking out, and you could create different two-dimensional figures out of the different colors of the beads. We were two-dimensional—teenagers who could be read like the instruction manuals of our childhood arts and crafts projects. A sticky, melted Lightning McQueen winking at a grinning Tinkerbell. These were our role models, our imaginary friends, our book-cover-lovers, discovered in staticky TV screens.
We could have achieved it all if we stayed until the library closed, until we finished reading all those books we would never think to pick up. They would have to kick us out of our own teenage dreams.
© Ariana Duckett
Ariana Duckett (she/her) is a writer, editor, and undergraduate student based in southern California. She has been published in WORD Magazine, Atticus Review, Vagabond City Lit, and Lunch Ticket, and was a guest editor for Inlandia: A Literary Journey. She was shortlisted for the Inaugural Surging Tide Summer Contest and won third place for the Wildcat Literary Prize. She has been the Editor-in-Chief of two magazines and a staff writer for two more.
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