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From now on, I was going to be the kind of man who took photos for the love of it, not because he’d die if he didn’t, and I’d be the kind of man who fell in love with someone true and honest, like Daniel.
Someone who, if he ever did date me, would never hide me away or use me.
I was becoming a man I could be proud of, just like Marta had said.
“Peter Mandel?”
My head snapped up. “Yes?”
“Come on back.”
Chapter Eight
‡
After what feltlike days and days of pining and dreaming, Friday finally arrived. I woke with butterflies of anticipation in my stomach. The 4:50 a.m. alarm wasn’t even hard to face, I was so eager to get on with my day.
Starting with my first shift at the library.
I’d gotten the news on Wednesday that I’d been hired in the Circulation Department, and they’d requested I come in on Friday morning to learn how to help open.
When I arrived, I was disappointed to find Barry wasn’t there. Instead, a woman named Miriam was the manager in charge. As I waited for her to show me how to punch in my timecard, I could see the library’s other departments were waking up and getting ready, too: Periodicals, Microfiche, Reference, and even Stacks.
As the morning shift started, April arrived, as well as a tall guy named Brad. While Miriam and Brad got the computers fired up and ready, April and I worked the book return.
“It’s easy,” she said, showing me how to re-magnetize the metal strip inside the spine of the books. “Then you put them in a pile here, and I wand them into the computer.” She waved the barcode scanner at me. “After, we put them on that cart—” she pointed “—according to call number.”
She was right. It wasn’t hard at all, and I liked the rhythm of it once we got in the flow. It was almost like a dance. The catchy new Spin Doctors song played in my mind as I repeated the same movements again and again. I mentally photographed April as we worked, and it was like a dull-but-satisfying internal music video.
After we’d checked in the dozens of books that’d been returned overnight, magnetized and wanded them, then put them on alphabetized carts to be returned to the stacks, we were assigned to the main floor front computers. I was instructed to sit with April and wait for patrons to arrive so she could show me how to check out the books. While we waited, April cleared off part of the counter to work on her homework, so I did the same.
All in all, it was easy work.
After my short first shift was over, I had class with Minty and Jennifer. I hadn’t wanted to mention to him that I was having dinner with Daniel tonight, but when Minty wouldn’t leave me alone about going to Tilt-a-Whirl for a first-week-of-college celebration, I had to spill the beans.
Minty’s jaw clenched and released at the news, but he said nothing.
“Who’s Daniel?” Jennifer asked.
“My best friend,” Minty said.
“I thought Windy was your best friend.” Jennifer frowned in confusion. They must have been hanging out together outside of class if she knew about Windy.
“He is. But so is Daniel.” Minty turned to me, blue eyes burning. “I swear to God, Peter, if you mess with his head again, I will—” He clawed at the air with his painted, baby-pink nails. “I mean it. Dead. Deader than dead. Even if Ilikeyou. Even if I’d feelsadabout it later. Dead.”
“I’m not messing with his head.”
“Dead.”
“We’re just friends.”
“Dead.” Minty turned back to the front of the class, and after a tense moment, mused aloud, “When do you think my honey’s going to arrive? He’s ten minutes late again. He can’t keep this up.”
“He’s the TA. It’s not like he can get fired. Or can he?” Jennifer asked.
I didn’t know. I supposed I could ask my dad what the protocol was, but I also didn’t care. Whenever Donnie Huggins arrived, he’d proven to be interesting and provocative in his lectures, so I was willing to put up with his stage-fright-driven lateness.
Somehow, I got through the rest of my Friday classes without the teeming, wild mass of butterflies bursting out of my chest.
