Beating hearts

Chapter 6

The library is where Ara spends most of her days, reading lets her escape, it's the only time she doesn't have to think of the world she is trapped in, the place made of gray, sin, and compromise, in books she can have a world filled with color, beauty, and love, she can picture any life the way she chooses to see it.

The library was also a convenient place to go, it got her out of the house and away from loud people.
She entered the building and waved to the dexter, the old librarian behind the desk, as she always does. She then looks at the big bulletin board filled with missing people posters, she looks at it every time she comes in, to see if a new poster has been added or if an old one, that has been up for so long most people had forgot about them, is taken down a replaced with the new.

Jeremy rider reported missing 4 days ago. He is 8 years old. He's the new poster up on the board, the last one Ara remembered well because she used to go to high school with him, his name was Jamie Pritchett, he has been missing for 5 months.
when Ara was younger, she used to think that the disappearance was just people leaving town, running away from the small little death trap before it was too late and they were stuck here forever. But now she is not so sure. No one really talks about the disappearances much, they've been happening for so long, and it's become normal for everyone, do other towns really not experience strange disappearances either?

Anyone that is reported missing is never seen or heard from again, they're just gone, and become a distant memory in the town of mystery.

Ara always planned to leave Leawood, her small town in Kansas, with a 32,000 population and dropping. She graduated from high school 2 months after her mother died, and then lost her motivation to do anything. She didn't attend the ceremony, it saddened her heart to think her mother wouldn't be there in the crowd, cheering for her when she got called up to receive her diploma, but she also didn't see a point, it was a piece of paper, full of words that meant nothing to her, it wouldn't change anything, hours in a gym with emotional people with faces she used to know, to receive a paper telling her she graduated. It meant nothing to her. Instead, she stayed home, curled up on the couch with Lilly, watching cheesy old movies and eating ice cream, something they do frequently now.
~
"How's the book?" Ara heard a man say as he approached closer to her while she sat on the ground of the library floor.

She looked up from her fictional pieces of worded paper, to see Zac standing above her. He was in a gray shirt and slightly ripped blue jeans.

"You again," she said closing her book and standing up.

"Most people greet by saying, "Hi, how are you?" but "You again," works too," he replied with a smoldering smile.

She laughed and nodded her head while taking a step closer to him. He was quite a bit taller than her. Her head verily reached the top of his shoulders.

"I didn't expect you to be the reading type," she said looking into his soft blue eyes.

He chuckled. "I'm not, I was across the street when I saw you come in here...so I followed you,"

She nodded her head up and smiled. She hoped to herself the whole time he wouldn't notice her blushing. As he hoped the same thing.

"So," he cleared his throat, "I was wondering...if maybe you might want to, hang out sometime...with me? He said as he scratched the back of his neck.

Ara smiled at the ground and tucked a hair behind her ear. She walked past him to a table and sat her book on it, then turned around to face him again.

"A date?" She smiled.

"Whatever you want to call it. I would just like the chance to get to know you better," he never took his eyes off of her or stopped smiling.

"What would we do?"

"Leave that to me..., does that mean it's a yes? He replied.

She laughed. "Yes. I would love to."

"Great," he said, "I will pick you up Saturday night at 7:00."

He turned around to walk out the door.

"Wait," Ara said. He stopped and turned back around. "You need my address."

"Right." He said walking back to her, with a smile still on his chiseled face.

"I mean unless you also want to follow me home, and find out where I live that way." she teased.

He grinned, and awkwardly scratched the back of his neck.

She got a yellow sticky note from a pad on the front counter and wrote down her aunt's address, and gave it to him.

"See you Saturday." She spoke.

He smiled and nodded, then walked out the door. She left the library and got into her little red Jeep and put her keys in the ignition when she realized something, she was still smiling, and couldn't stop, which is something that hasn't happened in a long time, there was something about that boy, that makes her feel all fluttery inside.