Page 13 of The Librarians
At six thirty, Jonathan announces the imminent Game Night event over the PA system. Elise texts Sophie to say she’s arrived.
Sophie rushes out to the parking lot. Before the girl can complete her “Hi, Mom,” Sophie wraps her in a bear hug.
Elise laughs but good-naturedly endures the embrace. “I’m touched, Mom. You last saw me this morning.”
So tolerant of her crazy mother, this child. “That’s too long to go without seeing you,” Sophie mumbles.
But she pulls herself together and helps Elise carry two huge boxes of board games into the library. “We still only have three people registered and they might not all show up.”
The weather, as Jonathan predicted, has cleared. But it’s the day before Halloween; there are plenty of other ways for people to amuse themselves.
Elise spares a hand and rubs Sophie on the back. “That’s okay, Mom. I brought my homework in case nobody comes.”
The girl is so reasonable and all-around fantastic that Sophie’s feelings shot past wonder and smugness years ago to land squarely in panic. She cannot think about it too much, or she invariably becomes terrified that Elise is too lovely for this world, and that the world will somehow find a way to punish her kindness and crush her spirit.
Has that day come?
“Let me.” Jonathan comes out of the circulation area and relieves Sophie of her burden. “Hi, Elise.”
“Hi, Jonathan.” Elise beams at him. “You get more daddy every time I see you.”
“Elise!” cries Sophie.
She knows Elise would not say anything of the sort to Jonathan if he weren’t queer. But that’s still inappropriate.
Elise chortles. She does enjoy getting a rise out of her mother from time to time. And being reminded that Elise is still a teenager and not truly perfect is unexpectedly reassuring.
“Sorry, Jonathan,” Elise laughs. “It’s just that guys from school suck and you can’t say anything nice to them without them thinking it’s the equivalent of a right swipe.”
Jonathan smiles and opens one of the meeting room’s doors to let Sophie and Elise through. “You can say all the nice things to me, Elise, as long as my boss here approves.”
Good. Sophie approves entirely of this kind yet firmly limit-setting statement.
“Wow, creepy,” says Elise.
The meeting room has long been the most boring part of the library. It’s a blank box with no books and only stacks of folding tables and folding chairs lined up along the walls.
But tonight its fluorescent fixtures bathe the room in a reddish light, thanks to filters inside their covers. The movie posters, which Sophie thought would be placed around the room in a perfectly equidistant and symmetrical fashion, are instead thrown up crooked. Some are torn; others have been slashed through; a few even drip blood.
In the dim, scarlet illumination, the effect is straight-up spooky. Sophie rushes over to one poster and sighs in relief: It is indeed visual trickery, the slashes and the blood splatters both large adhesive stickers printed on clear plastic backing.
“Wow,” Elise exclaims again. She spins around, wallowing in the atmosphere. “Hey, Astrid! Is everything here yours?”
Sophie didn’t even notice that Astrid had come into the meeting room.
“Yeah,” answers Astrid quietly. “I had all these props and decorations hoarded. I decided I might as well use them here, for Game Night.”
Might as well use them here, for Game Night?What is the elsewhere and other occasion that didn’t work out?
“I love your costume, by the way,” murmurs Astrid. “Nakia, right?”
“The one and only.” Elise preens. “But I think my mom looks even cooler. I mean, how can anyone be cooler than Nick Fury?”
“That’s what all the old, half-blind brothers out there tell themselves,” says Sophie. But she can’t help smiling a little.
They set the games up on bookstands so that they can be better admired. Elise hops over to the refreshments table to give herself a sugar high—Sophie is still surprised that food and drinks are now allowed in the library. Only in the meeting room, true, but all the same. Welcome to the library of the future.
Just then Hazel walks in. She sports a long beige coat, a T-shirt with a rainbow stripe over her chest, and culottes—really, culottes?—worn with suspenders over a pair of brown boots. How the woman manages to look breezy and stylish in this odd getup Sophie has no idea. She also has no idea who in the world Hazel is supposed to be.
