Between the Stacks

Chapter 29

"In the past, librarians were considered the gatekeepers of knowledge."

I stood at the front of the conference room, thinking over what my first boss had told me. When I was a teenager, I lasted three weeks at McDonald's before quitting - I could never get the smell of fries out of my clothes, and the customers were far too screamy for my taste - but I never forgot what she told me. "Emma," she said. "You need to be like a duck treading water. You can't let people see you panic. You have to look cool and chill, even if you're paddling hard to stay afloat." She made tiny paddling gestures with her hands to emphasize her point.

Years later, and I was channeling my McDonald's manager, even though I knew for a fact she quit two days after I did.

I was a duck: no one in the audience could tell I was panicking, even if I wanted to puke. That said, vomiting over two hundred people would perhaps not be chill.

"The thing about gatekeepers is that they keep information in and people out. It's a gate, after all. I don't think of myself as a gatekeeper. I think of myself as a tour guide: I'll show people what's available, and I might nudge them in certain directions. But at the end of the day, the power is in the hands of the client."

The rest of my speech disappeared into a blurry haze of PowerPoint slides and the overwhelming air conditioning being blasted into the room. For the first time, I felt like a real adult, a real librarian. People were listening to me! To be fair, they were trapped into listening, but the people in the first few rows actually looked like they were paying attention. One man even nodded as I spoke.

I didn't look at Wesley, who sat in the front row with the other panelists.

Finally, I reached the end, and I hadn't died. The polite applause felt like winning the lottery. Despite my earlier worries, I hadn't passed out or forgotten my speech or run screaming from the room.

"Thank you," I said to the crowd, and sat down in my reserved seat, feeling as if I'd run a marathon or cured cancer or babysat a toddler for an hour. Exhausted, but also proud.

Since Wesley and I were from the same library, we were spread far apart in the schedule of speakers. Out of the seven presenters I went second, and he was last. The speeches in between were sometimes boring (one woman read every single word off her slides) and sometimes fun (we were told to look under our chairs, where a chocolate bar was taped to the bottom of the seat for no explicable reason).

By the time Wesley's speech finally arrived, the audience was getting restless. Out of the corner of my eye I saw people checking watches and phones. It was almost dinner, and even I was starting to feel hangry.

Wesley stepped up to the podium. He'd been stiff and sullen while watching the other presenters, an attitude he'd gotten rid of as if he'd taken off a too-warm coat.

"Good evening," he said. "Don't worry, I won't make this long. I'm looking forward to dinner, too."

The audience gave an appreciative rumble of laughter.

"I'd like to start with a question," he said, then gave a pause. The fact that he was presenting after the accident was a miracle; the fact that he could give a dramatic pause seemed to be divine intervention. "How many people here like their job?"

I turned around to see about ninety percent of the room with half-hearted hands sticking up.

"Here's the thing," Wesley said. "I think you're liars."

The audience shuffled. A few awkward laughs.

"Hear me out," he said. "The theme for this presentation was 'connecting with clients in a digital world,' right?" He used air quotes for emphasis. "And I've really enjoyed all of the presentations today. Especially from my colleague at the Cherryhill Library."