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Garrett had called Ramona last night, but she hadn't picked up, and she hadn't called him back. It was probably just as well. He had known that it was a bad idea to call her, but he wanted to tell her about his weird encounter with Blair that afternoon. He knew something that Blair didn’t want him to know. That was clear. And Ramona knew something too, because she'd seen the ghost of Angelica. Blair didn't seem to want the two of them to compare notes. Part of Garrett wanted to hang out with Ramona all the more, just to piss Blair off. But the two of them having sex probably hadn't been the best of ideas. He'd just been so drunk. And he really did like Ramona. Really.
As he opened the library that morning, he considered if it meant anything that she hadn't called him back. Probably not. Maybe she'd been busy or something. He let himself in through the back door and went into the workroom to make some coffee. He stopped short. That was weird. There was a purse sitting on one of the chairs in the workroom. Was there someone in here? Blair? Would she never leave him alone?
"Hello?" he called.
In response, someone banged on the basement door, from the inside. "Garrett?" said a small voice from within.
Jesus! He ran to the door and yanked it open. Ramona was inside. She looked awful. The backs of her hands were ragged and scabbed over. Her face and hair were streaked with blood. She stumbled out of the basement, and he reached out to support her.
"How did you get in there?" he asked. The basement of the library always gave him a little bit of the creeps. He didn't like the fact that no matter how often he closed the door, it always seemed to open back up again. When he was in a rational mood, he attributed it to kids in the library opening the door. In an irrational mood, he thought...
"Blair locked me in," said Ramona. Her voice was hoarse. Dear God, she'd probably been screaming for half the night to be let out.
Garrett guided Ramona to a chair. She sat down heavily. "I'm claustrophobic," she said softly.
Garrett tightened his jaw. "I'm going to kill her."
Ramona shook her head. "No."
"I'm serious. Dead. She's going to be dead. She can't come in here and fuck with my head and then lock you in the basement and--God, what happened to you?"
Ramona rubbed her face with her hands. "I just freaked out is all. It's so dark in there. I had these dreams..." She shuddered.
"We're doing something that she doesn't like," Garrett says. "We know something."
"What do we know?"
"I don't know what we know."
"Great."
"Anyway, she can't push us around like this. It's not like I don't know where she lives."
"Garrett, you're not really going to like...physically hurt Blair, right?"
"Look what she did to you," Garrett said. He didn't know exactly what he was going to do, but right then he was so angry, he felt like the world was colored red. So maybe Ramona was just his friend. Maybe she was more than that. He didn't know. But he did know that the sight of her like this stirred things within him. Mostly, he was angry with himself for letting this happen to her. He should have known she was in the basement. Christ, he must have closed up the library while she was already in there. He should have realized. Seen her purse. Something.
But he couldn't change the past. So he had to do something to atone for his guilt. He had to go find Blair and wring her neck. For a second, he could almost feel her neck in his hands, and it wasn't a bad feeling at all. It was actually very, very good.
"You aren't serious," said Ramona tiredly. "You can't go after her."
"I have to go after her."
"She told everyone you raped her," said Ramona. "If you actually hurt her, everyone would think it was true."
The image of strangling Blair began to deflate in Garrett's mind. He sat down opposite Ramona in one of the other chairs. "She should pay. She hurt you."
"No," said Ramona. "No, that's not right. But...maybe you're right. Maybe she is after us or something. You said that they'd try to kill us. I don't think she wanted me to be dead, but..."
"But she sure as fuck didn't want you to be okay, did she?"
"No," said Ramona. "But we can't get to her by trying to hurt her physically. We have to just...try to figure out what's going on in town. Try to figure out...what Blair is."
The anger was draining away from Garrett's brain, leaving him tired and sad. He went to Ramona, brushed a few strands of blood-encrusted hair out of her face. "Are you okay?" he asked softly.
Ramona looked like she might cry. "I don't know," she said.
He pulled her close, and she clung to him. Her shoulders started to shake gently. She was sobbing. Garrett stroked the back of her head and felt helpless. What was he going to do? One thing was for certain. Blair had played her hand now. Before, they could have talked themselves out of the fact she had anything against them. But now, she'd done something concrete. She'd actually made a physical move against them.
He pulled back a little from Ramona. "Maybe we should go to the police?"
"Is there a law against locking people in the basement?" asked Ramona. "I'm sure she'd say it was just a joke or something. Maybe a mean-spirited one, but I don't think what she did is illegal."
"What can I do?" Garrett finally asked.
"Walk me home," said Ramona.
"I am so sorry for the short notice, Maxine," Ramona rasped into the phone. She must have really screamed her head off last night, because her voice had yet to really return to her. "I just can't make it in today."
"You sound awful," said Maxine. "Don't come back until you feel better. I mean it."
Good. Ramona hung up the phone and collapsed onto her bed. She was exhausted, and she didn't feel like thinking. She set her phone down on her end table and started to plug it into her charger, but then realized she had missed calls and voicemails. She hadn't noticed before because she'd been too focused on calling in to work. She guessed it made sense. After all, she'd been separated from her phone all night. She hadn't heard it ring though, while she'd been trapped in the basement. She probably hadn't turned the ringer back on after work. She checked. Yep. Might as well fix that then.
Then Ramona decided to check her missed calls. What? Why did she have ten missed calls from a local Elston number that she didn't know? Oh, and Garrett had called. That was nice. But who the fuck had been calling her all night? She pressed the button to dial her voicemail.
"You have five new messages," said the automated voice on the other end. "Message One:"
The message kicked on. "Ramona, this is Blair. I got your phone number from--well, it doesn't matter where I got your phone number. Pick up your phone, for God's sake. Look, I really need to apologize for what I did. It was really wrong. I'm really sorry. I'll explain more if you call me back."
"Message Two:"
"Hi, Ramona, it's Blair again. I realized I didn't leave my number. But then I guess it's probably on your caller ID. But anyway, here it is." Blair recited the number.
Ramona took the phone away from her head and looked at it. Did Blair really think that stupid message was going to get her off the hook?
"Message Three:"
"Ramona, I'm outside the library. I'm realizing that you probably left your purse upstairs, you don't have your phone on you. Shit! It's locked. I'm pounding on the outside door. If you're still in there, pound back.... Oh God, I don't know what to do.... Ramona, pound back, goddamn it, can you hear me pounding? Jesus. Um... This is stupid, me talking to the phone like this. Fuck."
Weird. Blair did sound pretty upset. But Ramona hadn't heard any pounding while she was in the basement. None. Come to think of it, she hadn't heard anything. No sounds from outside. No car horns. No sirens. It was as if she'd been sealed inside....
"Message Four:"
"Hey, Ramona, it's Garrett. Um, you have my number so call me."
"Message Five:"
"Okay, Ramona, it's Blair again. I don't know if you got out of the library or not. But if you didn't have your phone, you couldn't have called anyone, so maybe you didn't get out. In which case... Well, anyway, look. I don't know what to do at this point, but I hope that you are okay." Blair sounded like she was crying. "I am so, so sorry, Ramona. I know that probably doesn't sound like much, and it doesn't really mean anything to you right now. I should never have done what I did. And I don't know if I can even explain why I did it, because when I think about it, it just sounds kind of psycho and...
"I saw you talking to Garrett Hillard in the bar the other night. And then somebody said that they saw him leaving your apartment early. And he looked like he'd slept there. And I don't know if that means anything, but I just assumed you were sleeping with him. That bastard was getting laid, you know? The guy who ruined my life was getting some kind of positive attention from somebody. And I just couldn't, like, handle it. And I punished you, because you were the person who was being nice to him, and that doesn’t make any sense, because--" Blair broke off in sobs. Finally, she got herself back together. Really together. Her voice was brisk and cold. "I shouldn't have acted like I did, Ramona. I shouldn't have done what I did. But if it helps you get the message to stay away from Garrett Hillard, then at least something good came of it."
Ramona deleted all the messages. And then she stared at her TV. She should really try to figure out what she thought about what Blair had said to her voicemail. Because it was really disturbing. Really. Just the fact that Blair had locked her in there in the first place was fucked up. Not to mention the weird apologies. And then Blair's voice at the end...
She guessed that what Blair was saying did make sense, in a really fucked up way. So maybe it was possible that all the stuff she and Garrett had been talking about--ghosts, clones, monsters--really was just some sort of figment of their overactive imaginations. But, she had to ask herself, did it make more sense that Blair was angry with her for sleeping with Garrett or did it make more sense that Blair was a monster whose existence was threatened by Ramona's knowledge of something she shouldn't know about? What the hell? Neither of those things made any sense at all.
Ramona was tired. She didn't want to think about it. She didn't want to think about anything at all pretty much ever again for all that it mattered to her. She dragged herself to her couch and flicked on her television set. TV would drown out the noise in her head. She would just watch something mindless, and maybe she'd fall asleep. She stretched out, getting herself comfortable on one of her pillows. She did have a day off from work, after all. Ramona began flipping through the channels. There was nothing good on. TV on weekday mornings pretty much sucked balls. She settled for a few moments on an episode of Charmed, but then realized she had seen it and moved on. She almost flipped passed the classic movie channel without even looking, because there weren't many black and white movies Ramona actually liked. But the words on the TV screen jumped up at her, and she paused. It was the title screen of a movie, definitely in black and white.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Huh, thought Ramona. Body snatchers... She'd never seen this movie before. Had heard people talk about it, but had no idea what it was about. Still, the idea of it seemed to say something to her. She watched the entire film.
Ramona hadn't called her. Heather wasn't particularly surprised, but she was a little worried. She wanted to talk to Ramona, make sure she was thinking a little straighter these days. Heather was pretty sure she'd done a good job at talking Ramona down last time, but she wasn't sure what was going on in Ramona's brain these days. Heather was going to have to force Ramona to come and see her. Soon. If Heather had to drive to Elston herself and collect Ramona to drag her out of that town, she would.
That was a funny thought, Heather mused. After all, it wasn't like she couldn’t just visit Ramona in Elston. But it was weird. Elston gave her a strange feeling. She never quite felt comfortable there anymore. She didn't know why, because she used to live in Elston, when she and Ramona roomed together at college. But it was different living in a dorm than it was living in the actual town the way Ramona did. Right on Main Street. Like she was in the center of the whole place. Or... Heather didn't know. She'd never minded Elston when she lived there. But she didn't really want to hang out there anymore. And, it seemed, Ramona didn't want to hang out anywhere else. Ramona always made the excuse that she didn't like driving someplace if she was going to drink, because then she had to watch her alcohol consumption. Heather wondered if it went deeper than that somehow.
Anyway, it was clear that Heather was going to have to call Ramona this time. She couldn’t wait for Ramona to get some other crazy idea and call all shaken up again. Heather was sitting on the back porch that Rick had built, sipping on iced tea. She'd just finished lunch. Her phone was in her purse, which was inside the house, so she got up and went inside to get it. She dialed Ramona's number, but as it started to ring, Heather realized that it was probably a bad time to call Ramona. Ramona was probably at work.
Heather worked as a manager for Applebee's in Freeburg. It wasn't her life's ambition to be a restaurant manager, but Heather didn’t exactly know what her life's ambition was anymore. Heather had studied to be a teacher in college. She'd wanted to teach middle school social studies, because she remembered really liking social studies in school. And she thought middle school kids were a neat age. They were just growing up and becoming adults. But they were still kids in a lot of respects. Heather had been naïve. Two weeks into her student teaching assignment she'd realized that teaching was not for her. The students were so rude that she couldn't make them be quiet and listen to her. They threw spit wads at her head when her back was turned. They called her names to her face. They blatantly disregarded everything she said.
It was enough to give Heather a nervous breakdown. But she was three months from graduating at that point. It didn't seem to make sense to quit. So she stuck out student teaching and graduated with her class. After graduation, she continued working as a waitress. One day, when she saw that Applebee's was hiring managers, it occurred to her that with a college degree, she could get a managerial position. And she had lots of restaurant experience. She'd waited tables all through high school and college. It seemed like a no-brainer. She went for it.
Working as a manager wasn't bad. She had pretty good pay and benefits. But because she was new and young, she had to work some pretty crappy shifts, and she almost never got a full weekend off anymore. So that was why she was home on a weekday in the afternoon. Ramona's job was a pretty regular nine-to-five one. Sometimes Heather was kind of jealous of that. Of course, Ramona wasn't using her college degree either. Heather sometimes wondered why people even got college degrees when they were so damned impractical.
She almost hung up the phone, but she knew that her number would show up on Ramona's phone. And then Ramona would want to know why Heather had called but not left a message. So Heather waited for Ramona's voicemail to pick up. Instead, Ramona answered, "Hey, what's up?"
"Oh," said Heather. "You're home. I thought that you'd be at work."
"I had to call in," said Ramona. "Why'd you call if you thought I wasn't going to be able to answer?"
"I just realized it while dialing," said Heather. "Sorry."
"No worries," said Ramona. "So what's going on?"
"Um, nothing really. You sound hoarse. Are you okay? Why'd you call off work?"
Ramona sighed. "Long story. God. You would not believe what has been happening to me, Heather. I got locked in the fucking basement of the library last night."
"What?!" Heather demanded. What did Ramona mean, locked in? And Ramona was really claustrophobic. "Are you okay?"
"I don't know," said Ramona. "I think so. But, Jesus, Heather, it is so weird. Oh my God. How do I even explain this?"
"Start at the beginning."
"I got laid," Ramona offered.
"Does that connect?"
"Sort of."
"Who'd you sleep with?"
"Garrett."
"The rapist?!"
"He's not a rapist." Ramona began to explain what had been happening to her over the past couple of days. Apparently, she trusted this Garrett guy, but Heather thought that he was the one who was feeding Ramona so much strange shit. Maybe it was really all his fault that Ramona sounded so crazy. But as Ramona continued, explaining about skinning her knee, Blair patching it up, Blair's comment about Ramona being down there all night, and then Blair's subsequent phone messages, Heather had to admit that Blair sounded a little mentally unglued. She barely knew Blair. As a passing acquaintance only. Heather wasn't even sure if Blair would remember her name. So Heather didn't know if what kind of person Blair really was. But locking Ramona in a basement? That sounded deeply disturbed. "I don't know," Ramona finished up. "What do you think about her excuse?"
"That she wanted to hurt you because you were sleeping with the guy that raped her?" Heather asked.
"Yeah."
"It sounds sketchy."
"That's what I think. I don't know, Heather. I know you think I'm nuts with the ghosts/clones/demons thing, but Blair really seems like she's trying to scare me off. Like maybe I'm digging up things that she doesn't want me to know about."
"Listen," said Heather. "I'm sure there's another explanation."
"Than ghosts or clones or demons? Yeah. I think so too. I think they might be aliens."
Heather had meant for Blair's actions, but she guessed Ramona was going to need an explanation for that stuff too. She just wished it wasn't aliens. Inwardly, she groaned, but she guessed she'd bite. "Aliens?"
"Have you ever seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers?" Ramona asked.
Oh God. Ramona could not mean that. "You think Blair is like a pod person?" Heather asked, trying to put as much skepticism as she could manage into her voice.
"Maybe," said Ramona. "Think about it. It all fits. I saw Angelica after she was dead, because a pod person had already taken over her body. But then they found her dead body, so the pod person had to run off for fear of discovery--"
"No," said Heather. "I'm not listening to another one of these half-baked theories of yours. Lay off the weed, Ramona. I mean it."
"God, I knew you would be like that," Ramona said.
"How do you expect me to be? How do you expect any normal, rational person to react to what it is you're saying?"
"Okay, I know," said Ramona. "So why do you think Blair locked me in the basement?"
"She's nuts?"
"She's nuts? I'm nuts? Garrett's nuts? Or maybe we're all perfectly sane, and something really fucked up is going on in Elston. I think whatever it is might have been going on for a really long time."
"Maybe she just doesn’t like you."
"I don't like lots of people. I don't lock them in basements."
"Maybe it was supposed to be a joke. Maybe she really did think you had your phone on you."
"Heather, you should have heard her voice at the end of the last message. She was so cold and detached and she was like, 'Stay away from Garrett.' It was really ominous. I think I'm going to have nightmares about it."
"Do you really think Blair is an alien?"
"Maybe. Or something supernatural. Something we don't have any names for, right? Some of kind of, like, monster."
"Are you listening to yourself? Do you have any idea what you sound like?"
"Jesus, Heather, you believe in ghosts. And Tarot cards. And horoscopes. And you have those weird Wiccan friends."
"It is not the same."
"Why isn't it?"
Heather sighed. "Maybe we should talk about something else." She didn't know what to say to Ramona about this stuff. It was getting harder and harder to talk Ramona down. Was her best friend losing it? What should she do?
"Okay."
"So you got laid," said Heather with forced cheerfulness. "How was that?"
"Oh," said Ramona in a very different voice. "It was amazing. Like really, really amazing. Like...sex on Top Gun. Like I felt like Kelly McGillis."
Heather chuckled. "Sounds awesome." She ruefully reflected that her own sex life recently left a lot to be desired. Apparently, it was true what they said. Marriage was a great way to kill a perfectly good sex life.
Mason sat across the street from The Holy Grind, his head buried in a book. Every once and a while, he stole a glance across the street. He didn't know exactly why he was here. Okay, that was a lie. He knew why he was here. He was looking for Ramona. He'd gotten a pretty bad vibe from Blair. He thought maybe Blair had done something. He didn't know what, exactly. But something not good. Blair seemed strange lately. She wasn't being careful. It worried Mason. And he wanted to make sure that Ramona was okay. And that she was still herself. He'd told himself a million times that it was stupid to look out for Ramona the way he did, but he couldn't stop himself. He'd never really cared for a girl the way he cared about Ramona. He wasn't used to having this kind of flood of emotion.
So far, he hadn't seen her. It worried him, but he didn't let it show on his face. It was early morning, and he wasn't sure exactly when Ramona went to work, but he knew it had to be soon. He also knew that, like most of Elston's younger residents, she stopped at The Holy Grind on her way into work. If he just waited, he would see her. As long as she was okay, anyway.
Finally, she emerged from the door of her apartment building. She was wearing a flowered sundress, and her hair was down. It floated around her shoulders like a dark cloud. Mason sighed. Ramona was so pretty. And she'd only gotten prettier. He remembered the first time he'd seen her, a skinny freshman with a dramatic short haircut. He'd thought she was beautiful then, too. Mason stared at her. Bored holes into her with his eyes. He waited to see if he sensed anything different. To see if she was...changed. But she was fine. She spotted him across the street and waved cheerily.
He smiled. Waved back. If only, all that time ago, Ramona hadn't seen him, none of this would be happening. Things would be normal. Well. As normal as they ever got in Elston, anyway.
As far as Maxine was concerned, Ramona had made next to no progress on the brochure project, and even though she'd been out sick the previous day, Ramona caught hell from Maxine about it. To appease her, Ramona compiled a list of historical facts she'd gathered about Elston and turned them in to Maxine. Maxine seemed a little less upset with that in her hands. But she also gave Ramona a deadline on that little project and ordered her to help with application sorting in addition to brochure research. Ramona actually felt like she worked hard at work that day. She hadn't felt like that in quite some time.
She went home feeling a little mentally drained. Garrett called her while she was in the middle of dinner. He'd called last night, but Ramona had been asleep. She'd gone to bed early because being locked in a basement all night had apparently finally caught up with her. She'd picked up her phone but hadn't been very coherent. Ramona was pleasantly surprised. Perhaps she'd misjudged the Garrett situation. Even though he'd left her house without a note, he was calling her pretty frequently. And usually guys didn't call frequently if they weren't interested. Of course, there was this whole weird Blair thing going on. So he might have been calling just to compare notes on that whole thing.
And actually, it was all well and good for Ramona to be as sure as she'd been on the phone with Heather. But in all honesty, Ramona wasn't sure. She hoped she wasn't nuts. She hoped Garrett wasn't nuts. She also hoped he wasn't a rapist.
She invited him over, because Garrett lived with his parents. (Definite minus.) He showed up with beer, even though Ramona was not really in the mood to go to work the next day hung over. And they tried to talk about what weird stuff they were certain was going on in Elston. Ramona told him about the website she'd found with a picture of Dawn who'd been missing for fifteen years. They threw out a couple theories as to why that could be. Obviously, it meant that there were people that looked like Dawn who'd been alive for a pretty long time. It didn't really fit well with Ramona's new body snatchers theory and it went more with Garrett's original clone theory. Ramona told Garrett what Heather had said about clones having to grow up like regular people. Garrett decided that meant that they must have cloned Dawn in the forties or something and been gestating clones of her every ten years or so. Ramona wanted to know why they would do that, and who "they" were anyway. Besides, the clone theory only explained Dawn. It didn't really explain much of anything else. Like how Garrett had seen Blair die when she was still alive or anything like that.
And all this time, they were sitting close to each other, with their knees touching. Which was really distracting. Because just that little part of their bodies touching was sort of electric. Ramona couldn’t think about much except the place where they were touching. She couldn't help but wonder if he didn't want their knees to touch. But she figured he did, because if he wanted to, he could always move his leg away. She kept watching his mouth move as he talked, and she kept wanting to kiss him. But she wasn't going to make the first move, so she just kept tilting her head back and putting her face in the position to be kissed. And waiting. But he seemed oblivious.
Finally, their conversation began to wind down, mostly because Ramona wasn't saying much, since she was so distracted. There were several long moments of silence, during which Ramona and Garrett just gazed deeply into each other's eyes. Then Garrett would say something else, and Ramona would fume inside. Was she insane? Was she reading all the signs wrong? Did Garrett like her or not, dammit? But then, after he finished speaking, and he was looking at her, he leaned forward slowly and softly pressed his lips against her own.
If they'd never had sex before, maybe they would have kissed for longer. But, Ramona didn't know exactly why, once two people had had sex, they couldn't seem to go back to the make-out stage. Sometimes it made her sad, because she felt like the older she got, the more she skipped the make-out stage all together. And once it was gone, you could never go back. You just had to go all the way. Which was what she and Garrett did. Maybe because she wasn't drunk, it wasn't nearly as magical as the first time. But it was very, very nice.
Later, curled up on Ramona's bed, with her head buried in his chest, she ventured to ask, "So what's going on? Is this like a two-night stand or what?"
Garrett laughed. "That is absolutely what it is. I am never going to call you again. I got what I wanted. Twice. And that was enough for me."
She shoved him playfully.
"Seriously," said Garrett. "I don't think that I'm a very good...boyfriend."
Ooh. Even better sign. He'd said "boyfriend" before her. Of course, he'd said it in a negative context, but... "What do you mean?" she asked. "Are you bad with plans? Do you forget to call? Do you ditch your girlfriend for your friends all the time?" In Ramona's experience, these were typical boyfriend sins.
"No," said Garrett. "I'm the opposite, really. I get sort of...consumed by the relationship. I get...clingy."
Ramona laughed. "I don't think that's a fault," she said. "I think that's called..." Being in love, she thought. "...actually liking someone."
"You won't like it," said Garrett.
"Let me try it first," said Ramona. "It sounds kind of...refreshing, honestly."
"So then we're dating?"
"Sure," said Ramona. "As soon as you take me on a date."
Heather had been looking for a book on ghost sightings for several years now. It was a really awesome book, and people on websites she frequented were always talking about it. Heather had been wanting to read it for a long time. Several times, she'd almost bit the bullet and bought it on Amazon.com, but it was an expensive hardcover book, with all these pictures in it, and she knew that an expenditure like that would just cause an argument with Rick. He humored her when she talked about ghosts, but he didn't believe in them himself. When they'd first started dating, he'd seemed to think her hobby (as he called it) was cute, but after they'd gotten married, he'd realized how serious she was about it. Suddenly, it was no longer cute, and it had sparked all kinds of heated discussions.
Sometimes, Heather wished she hadn't gotten married in such a hurry. It had just seemed so romantic at the time. Rick had seemed so perfect. She'd known she was in love. That was what people did when they were in love, right? And honestly, all couples had problems. If she hadn't married Rick right away, that didn't necessarily mean that they would have broken up by now. Even if she'd married someone else who liked ghosts and horoscopes too, it wouldn't make much difference, because they'd have problems somewhere else in their relationship. Life was just like that. It was best to just make the best of what you had and keep going.
Anyway, an internet search of libraries the other day had shown her that, miracle of miracles, the library in Elston had her book. She still had an Elston library card, so she'd called the library immediately and put the book on hold for herself. Then, as soon as she was off work at a time when the library was open, she got in her car and drove to Elston. She hadn't been to Elston since the Halloween party, like nine months ago. It hadn't changed. At all. Elston never did. It was the town that time forgot. She had the regular struggle to find a parking space. The college was woefully low on parking spaces for all its students, and so some kid who was late for class always took the last space in Elston.
When she finally found a parking space, after about twenty minutes of driving around Elston, it was about as far from the library as Siberia was. Heather parked anyway and fed the meter. She still thought twenty-five cents for fifteen minutes was a little stiff, but there was no arguing with the money-making machine that was parking in Elston. God. If she could have only come in the evening. When college wasn't in session, there was always plenty of parking in Elston.
It was only as she was walking up the street to the library that she remembered that Ramona had told her that Garrett worked in the library. Wow. She'd completely forgotten that. She wondered if he'd be working. She had to admit that she was kind of curious about this guy. He was an alleged rapist who'd managed to make her best friend crazy. What was he like?
When she entered the library (after almost tripping on the roots of the tree outside), there was no librarian in sight, so Heather went hunting for one. Her book was behind the counter, and she needed someone to retrieve it and check it out for her. Upstairs, in the children's section, she discovered a guy shelving books. He looked up at her and then went back to shelving.
Heather felt uncomfortable. She didn't want to stop this guy from doing his job, but helping her was also part of his job. She'd worked enough customer service jobs to know that the way this guy was behaving wasn't the way to treat a customer. Of course, this was the library. They didn't actually make any money here. How were libraries paid for anyway? Taxes? She thought they were public institutions. Yeah. They had to be. Otherwise, they wouldn't be called public libraries.
She cleared her throat. "Excuse me," she said.
The guy's head snapped up. "Oh," he said. "I'm sorry. Is there something you need help with?"
"Yeah," said Heather. "I have a book on hold behind the counter."
"Sure," said the guy. "Why don't you go ahead downstairs, and I'll be with you in just a moment?"
Heather went down the stairs, feeling a little angry. The guy was shelving books for God's sake. He could do that once she was gone. There was no reason for her to wait for him to be done. That was not the way things worked in a restaurant. If she told a customer who was trying to flag her down while she was bringing out someone's drink order to wait, there would be hell to pay. If this was Garrett, and Heather was pretty sure it was, she already didn't like him.
Finally, Garrett appeared at the counter and got her book for her. As he was checking out her book, he looked at her library card. "Hey," he said. "Are you Ramona's friend, Heather?"
"Yes," she said. So Ramona had mentioned Heather to Garrett. "Are you Garrett?" It came out pretty clipped and disapproving, but Garrett didn't seem to notice.
"Yeah," he said. "She, um, talks about you a lot."
Heather smiled. "Yeah, she won't shut up about you either."
"You live with your husband in Freeburg, right?" said Garrett. Heather nodded. "Maybe we should all do something, sometime. Together. The four of us. Ramona says for us to be officially dating, we actually have to go on dates." He grinned.
Heather knew that was a joke. She made a half-hearted attempt at laughter. This guy was just sort of weird. Socially awkward or something. She didn't like him. She really didn't like him. "Sure," she said. "Sometime."
"Enjoy your book," said Garrett.
Copyright (c) 2010 Valerie Chambers