The Library Thief

Spilled Milk

Never mind all the remarkable achievements in his life up to this point. The collection of flawless attendance certificates, 5th place science fair ribbons, and junior little league participation trophies was all but irrelevant now. This was a matter of life and death. Dangling its wet binding with ancient, yellowed pages still open to his chapter, it seemed to Alan that the book had started to cry. Alan wasn't certain himself whether he felt some tears welling up. Well, he was certain at least that he was toast. 

"I'm toast," he muttered quietly to himself.

Setting the book aside, he peeled off the blanket, swung his feet over the side of the bed, and, taking care to put on his slippers first, got up to switch on the overhead light. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but, after he set his silver-rimmed glasses on his thin nose, he wished they hadn't. Alan scrutinized the damage. The sheets and pillowcases were a crisp, spotless off white, except for a slowly growing mass in the upper left corner where he'd been sitting. He stripped the bedding off and found, to his horror, that some of the liquid had seeped its way through to to the mattress.

He tossed everything in a pile in the corner of his bedroom and turned his attention to the remainder of the carnage. On the floor next to the bed lay another puddle, now illuminated white under the lamplight, with bits of broken glass interspersed throughout. Alan carefully collected some of the largest shards and gave a weak sigh. He knew, from his parents' point of view, "darn well," that food wasn't allowed in the bedrooms. Drinking milk was almost certainly out of the question. For a moment, his focus drifted from the shards of glass and a fictitious newspaper headline flashed before his mind's eye: "Local moron killed by parents over spilled milk: nobody cries."

He tiptoed to the door, opening it with one sharp motion to prevent any prolonged squeaking, and crept down the hall in the darkness. It was by now well past midnight; the house was covered in the kind of sleepy silence that only happens when the world is asleep. Moonlight trickled through the living room window as he approached the broom closet opposite his parents' bedroom door. His father's snores floated out from the crack underneath it. They hadn't heard. Turning the knob, once again in clandestine a manner as possible, Alan grabbed the dirty old broom and a few spotted rags and sneaked back to his room, its door still ajar. Though successful in his mission, he knew the battle wasn't over yet. 

Sighing softly as he lay a couple of the rags over the mess on the floor, he suddenly remembered the novel he was reading, now lying momentarily forgotten on the nightstand. It wasn't his. The letters on the spine read, "How to Kill a Mockingbird," and it was a school copy. The sinking feeling from before started to come back to him, but he held it at bay. The book wasn't in great shape to begin with, and it really was ancient. Several of the pages were torn, and one or two of them had obscene words scrawled on them. The log of previous owners inside the front cover had "George Washington," "Batman," and "Peewee Herman" listed before his own, all with identical handwriting. If anything, Alan took better care of the book than many of its previous owners. "Probably loads of people drop their schoolbooks in milk," he thought to himself, "at least it was skim."

Besides, and perhaps more importantly, to Alan it was just a crummy book anyway. He opened it up, fanned out the pages as well as he could, and sat it vertically on a rag on his nightstand to air out. "If I ever write a book, at least I know I can pick better names from my characters than Scout, Dill, and Jem. The only dill I've ever met came out of a jar." He smiled to himself before setting his head down on an uncovered pillow and soon falling back asleep on the unmade bed.

Though this particular night he was quite exhausted from this ordeal, Alan often had trouble falling and staying asleep. Ever since he could remember as a young child, he used to wake several times in the middle of the night,  leading him to the original conclusion that he didn't sleep at all. As a boy, his mother, tired as she was from lack of rest herself, would have to read him stories to soothe his mind and help him drift back asleep. 

As he grew older, she taught him something, by necessity, that would forever change the course of his life, whether or not he knew it. On his 10th birthday, after what was likely a seemingly endless day for his mother and father--what from the dozen or so children running around, hyperactive after ingesting a not-so-healthy dose of carbohydrate-laden snacks and desserts--Alan lay awake in bed, thoughts coursing through his young brain. Sometimes he thought of embarrassing things he'd said or done in the past, homework that was due and not near finished, or even of bank robbers that might break in and attack him at any moment. But often, he harbored deep, dark fears of growing up, something his birthdays always provided him a stark reminder of. 

His mother, Emiliana Deweyn, was an exceedingly kind and gentle woman by nature, though a life that hadn't gone as planned was beginning to manifest itself in more ways than one. In grade school, she'd met Thomas Deweyn, the boy she would soon fall in love with and come to marry. Of many things to come out of the marriage was a single messy-haired, and green-eyed son, whom they'd decided to name after Thomas' great-grandmother, Elaina. Thomas was an author, an artist really, only, his writing kept them struggling and poor. 

But the little family had a house and there was love in it, and in a house, that's one of the best things. Em, as Thomas called her, never doubted that he would become a great author, and having little money never really bothered them. What they needed by necessity they could mostly afford, and for whatever else, they would scrimp and save. Whatever little money extra there was after that was used to stock his study with more books, all used and heavily worn.

 Never knowing quite why she did it, a few years after Alan was born, Em convinced him to respond to a local ad seeking a clerk. The job was meant to provide temporary income, but as often is the case, temporary solutions are among the most permanent. Day after day of writing words, the wrong words, seemed to suck the life out of him. Alan never knew his father well, except from bits of stories scattered in his memories. Before he was old enough to read, he would gaze curiously at the bindings and lettering on the covers of the books in his father's study. Patterns emerged and changed on the shelves as his father read them, absent-mindedly placing them in different spots each time. Soon after starting his new job, the books became stationary. It was a sudden fever that ended his father's life, but Alan, young as he was, astutely recognized that there was nothing sudden about it at all.

When she entered his room that night, Alan saw the tiredness on her face and felt ashamed. He felt it was his fault that she was so tired--his fault for being born. "That's okay, I don't need a story tonight mom. I love you," he said, softly.

Seeing through the ruse, she made a gentle suggestion. "What if I teach you to make your own stories?" She asked. 

Warm milk, though empirically he was undecided about its effectiveness, provided him the comfort that he needed to fall back asleep.