Black Iris

Bad foundations.

Iris

I got the job at the library when I was fourteen. Before I got it, I would spend hours after school hiding amongst the shelves, waiting for my mum to pick me up. We lived outside the city but mum worked downtown and the schools were better downtown, so we listed my grandma and pa's address in downtown on all my school stuff, and I commuted each day.

Some days, I would chill at grandmas place after school, but most days I preferred the library.

The quiet murmur. The smell of musty books. Combing through shelves upon shelves of books I would never read. I didn't much like reading. But I loved books. I loved pulling them out, and turning them over in my hands. Admiring the cover. Skimming over the back and imagining the story within.

I could do it for hours.

I did do it for hours.

One day, the librarian came over to talk to me, and asked, "I always see you in here, indecisive over the books. Do you need a hand choosing something?"

I had shaken my head. "No, I'm okay. I just like looking at them. I'm not much of a reader."

She'd laughed. "Oh, honey, I think you're lost."

I had blushed. A few weeks later, she offered me the job.

It was just casual, and paid practically nothing, but I liked the atmosphere and the tasks. Stamping new books. Cataloguing them. Sorting them in alphabetical order. 

It was all methodical. Everything had a process.

I loved that. I loved order. I still do, but nowadays it's mostly out of a craving for it. A need to try maintain some semblance of it in the shitstorm that is my life.

Back then, I was innocent.

I saw Blake before I even started working there. Him and a group of his college frat bros hung out in the back corner, studying and sometimes joking about. I didn't notice him much. Just knew his face in passing.

After I started working there, I tried to become more familiar with the regulars. I would ask whichever librarian I was working with, what they knew about all of them. One of them, Susie didn't like to gossip, but she'd give me a curt little explainer, and she always answered my questions in kind. 

"That there is Mr. Phillips," she would say quietly, referring to the old man I'd pointed out, who was reading a gardening book in the back corner. "He lives nearby. Maintains a beautiful rose bush in his front yard."

When I asked the other main librarian, Kath, her eyes would light up. Sometimes I didn't even have to ask and Kath would tell me about people.

"That lady over there with the stroller and the little girl is Mary-Lyn," She would say, in a scandalous whisper. "Those are her two youngest of four, and if you look carefully, you can see five is on the way. Hey, I can't even blame her, I've seen her man."

When she caught me staring a little while later she snapped at me and told me not to be rude.

I didn't quite understand Kath sometimes.

One day, when I was helping Kath stack books near the front entrance, there was a loud crash behind us, and some laughing. We turned to see that one of the college boys had knocked a stack of books from the counter, and the others were sniggering.

The boy who knocked it over had laughed and stumbled after them, saying something like, "I swear I'm not high."

They left through the front entrance, and one of the smirking ones, not the one that had knocked stuff over, caught my eye as he left. He registered me, looked me over in a split second, then smiled and followed them out.