Chapter One

The Student and the Librarian

John fiddled with his pen. Since when has a job at the public library been so boring?

Oh wait.

Since always.

John sighed and pushed up his glasses. There was only one exception to his boredom, and he was sitting at the table across the room, surrounded by piles of books.

He'd been coming here for weeks, ever since school started up again. John was going to go to college, but he just needed a break after high school. That break turned from one year to two, and eventually to three. Maybe he would never go to college. Maybe that's just how it's supposed to be.

Other people, such as the man sitting across the room, chose the common path of going straight from high school to college and ending up neck-deep in debt for the rest of their lives.

John's mind often wandered off, imagining fake realities where he was brave enough to walk over there and start a conversation with him. Sometimes John wondered what it'd be like to run his fingers through his chocolate hair. Sometimes he wondered if his kisses tasted like the bitter coffee he always ordered from the library cafe.

Just as John was staring off into space, the guy lifted his head from his book. He glanced around, searching through his piles of books as if he'd lost something. Meekly, the man walked over to John's desk.

He whispered a soft, "Uh, hi, excuse me? I need help finding something,", glancing around nervously.

John practically froze. His heart pounded louder in his head, and his voice was shaky when he answered, "Yeah, what are you looking for?"

"The Pretender, by Marc Ruskin. I'm working on an essay about the FBI" He stuttered.

"Ooh, interesting," John said as he got up from his chair. He ushered the man to follow him to the gigantic non-fiction section. Or more of the non-fiction floor.

Down a flight of stairs, below street level, there were rows and rows of books, containing everything a person could ever want to research. Non-fiction was all kept on this floor, and the children and fiction sections were on the ground level. Classics and other related books were up on the third level, in a small room that was hardly looked through.

Their shoes clicked on the stone stairs of the library, echoing in the silence that encompassed every person there, save for the minuscule conversations between people at the same table as each other.

"Do you know what this book is about?" John asked him. It'd be so much easier to talk to him if he knew his name, but it'd be in John's best interest to not ask any personal questions...

"Uh, I'm 99-percent sure that it's this guy telling stories from when he was a secret spy? But I haven't actually read the book yet, hence why I'm looking for it..." The guy laughed nervously and scratched the back of his neck.

"Hmm, spies...spies, where would the spies be?" John muttered under his breath. The man chuckled, and John instantly regretted speaking his thoughts. 

"We'll never know where they are if they're doing their jobs right."

John smiled, and kept walking down the stairs. He weaved his way around the flocks of high school and college kids, past rows and rows of books, and finally settled in a tiny corner.

"They should be around here..." John said to the man. Half-mumbling to himself, he said, "...it starts with R... be around this area... or at least I thought it was..."

"Ah ha! Found it," the man said, pointing up to the top shelf.

Oh god no. John was already self-conscious enough about his height, and he didn't want to make a fool of himself by either A) failing to reach it even on his tippy-toes or B) crushing his pride and grabbing a nearby stool.

Luckily, John didn't have to do either of those. The guy (who also had to stand on his tippy-toes to barely graze the spine) jumped up and snatched the book from the shelf. 

"Perfect! I didn't actually think you guys would have it." He exclaimed, thumbing through the pages.

"Glad we did," John said. "If that's all you need, I'll let you get right back to studying. If you have any questions, you can always find me at my desk up there."

The guy nods and starts to walk away, but whips his head around and comes back. 'Wait, actually, uh, where would you find the non-fiction relationship, uh help-ish books? Like the 'Relationships for Dummies' kinda thing?"

Oh. He's probably trying to find ways to ask out some girl in his class. It always ends up like this, damn it! 

"Uh, I think that'd be over here-" John starts walking down the aisle, then past the rows of books once more. He hears the man's feet shuffling on the carpet behind him. John tries to push the thought out of his head. It's probably for a friend, right?

If this guy truly was trying to figure out how to ask someone on a date, why is he looking for 'relationships for dummies'? The only people I see reading this book are high schoolers.

Just... stop thinking, John. 

He sighed and pushed up his glasses. The little kids keep telling him that he looks like Harry Potter, even though the glasses are the only thing they have in common. His curly brown hair, the frumpy sweaters he wears, the freckles that dot his skin like constellations, none of this makes John look like Daniel Radcliff. But it is the only reason he hasn't traded his glasses in for a pair of newer, more stylish ones.

Lost in thought, John almost missed the row he was looking for. Backpeddaling a couple steps, they found themselves in the 'Relationships' section. The man thanked him, and John walked off, back to sulk at his desk for the next few hours until his shift ended.