1
Thereoncewasatown where nothing ever happened—until, one day, it did.
It all began the day that Corinthia, the librarian of Shadow Ridge, maneuvered the rolling cart of free books outside the library’s front doors, positioning it for a good view from patrons who would walk by or perhaps pull up in the drop off lane.A whole education could be had from the free books, she thought.A chaotic education, to be sure, consisting of everything from nineteenth-century literature to introductory woodworking, but an education all the same.
Though the late October weather could be unpredictable, on this day the air was crisp, the sky was clear and blue, and Corinthia would have rather been inside anyway.
She dusted off her hands and went inside, choosing one of the two solid, normal doors that flanked the central revolving door.Secretly, Corinthia found the revolving door slightly alarming, and felt safer using the plain doors, though she would have not admitted it to anyone—except, perhaps, her best friend, Stevie.
Stevie worked at the Shadow Ridge Environmental Center, which shared a building with the Shadow Ridge Library.The Shadow Ridge Environmental Center oversaw a tiny, two-room museum and a four-hundred acre nature preserve of Florida scrubland known as the Refuge.
At the moment, Stevie wasn’t in the museum, or the Refuge; she was in one of the swivel chairs behind the library’s circulation desk, where she wasn’t supposed to be, and she was industriously spinning herself in circles.
Stevie’s sheer energy made her seem to take up more space than her actual size.She wore crisp t-shirts with environmentally-themed art, and her hair was perpetually pulled into a high ponytail that bounced with every movement.
Corinthia wore her hair pulled back as well, but low and contained.Her t-shirts were billboards for library services.There was not a language learning program, a free movie-streaming platform, or a subscription to seven thousand newspapers and periodicals for which Corinthia did not have a shirt.When paired with dark wash jeans and low-key but impeccably clean sneakers, it made a most efficient approach to workwear.
“Aren’t you supposed to be feeding the snakes or something?”Corinthia asked, sliding into the adjacent chair and putting one foot on Stevie’s seat to stop the dizzying rotation.
“I fed the snakes, and the turtles, and the baby alligators.And I dusted the taxidermied hawk, and I tidied the brochures and the trail maps, and now I’m here because here is more fun.”
Corinthia pushed Stevie’s chair, spinning it slowly, like a heavy globe.“And how is here more fun, exactly?”
“There are people here.”
Corinthia surveyed the view.The circulation desk was currently decorated with paper pumpkins and sprays of artificial autumn leaves.From the behind the desk, she could see from the front doors to the stacks of fiction and nonfiction; across the room to the reference desk, above which dozens of colorful origami birds dangled from strings attached to the ceiling; all the way to the life-sized artificial tree hung with warm white lights in the children’s section.Donated claw-foot bathtubs sat on the floor beneath its branches like boats left on the sand at low tide, each one filled with pillows to create a cozy reading nook perfectly sized for a child.Corinthia knew they were perfectly sized for a child because she had climbed into one to try it out, and, disappointingly, her long, sturdy legs had had to hang over the sides.
Oh, yes, and there were people.People moving through the stacks, tapping on computer keyboards, turning pages, opening and closing the copier lid, all the usual activity of the just-opened library like warm blood in Corinthia’s veins, healthy and purposeful.
The Shadow Ridge Library had comfortable chairs, sensibly carpeted floors, thoughtfully-sized tables for working in groups, and even a collection of little rooms off to the sides available to borrow for quiet and privacy by the hour.This was how a library should be designed: from the inside, with patrons’ needs considered first.
Not too far away, an old library had been torn down and replaced with an architectural marvel that, despite its exterior beauty, had clearly not been designed for the use of actual people.Slippery polished concrete everywhere; awkward chairs; terrible flights of stairs that left access for people with disabilities a complete afterthought.Corinthia heartily disapproved.What good was beauty if it actively harmed those it was supposed to serve?
Her library dispensed with such pretensions.There were large plastic letters on the wall that spelled out “Check It Out!”above the circulation desk, and another set that spelled out “Look It Up!”above the self-service library catalog computers.A glowing neon sign indicated “The Teen Zone” in a style that was neither new nor fashionable, but it was most certainly eye-catching.
Stevie had stopped spinning and was staring at a woman in the new book section.The woman wore a fitted black tank top and loose cargo pants.Her biceps flexed as she picked up one book or another.Every movement of her sculpted arm muscles rippled colorful and extensive tattoos, which were made even more arresting by what appeared to be a light sheen of body oil that brought out the nuances of the ink.Stevie seemed to be riveted.
“I told you—justtalkto her,” Corinthia said, observing her friend’s pining.“She won’t bite.”
Stevie shook her head vehemently.“She’s too cool.Look at her, with her muscles and her tattoos and her….well, everything,” Stevie finished, with a sigh.
“I’ll introduce you.”Corinthia knew the woman’s name was Drew, that she was a transplanted New Yorker, that she ran a food truck that frequently visited the Shadow Ridge Library, and that she was a handywoman and a marriage officiant on the side, to make a little extra cash.
“What do you think she’ll check out?”Stevie asked.
Corinthia, as a rule, did not approve of discussing patron book selections, but could make an exception if she knew the person in question would gladly have shared the information themselves.Corinthia and Drew had cordially traded book recommendations, on occasion, and thus Corinthia knew that Drew favored sci-fi romances.Corinthia shared this fact with Stevie.
“I wonder if they’re the kind where you turn the pages and smoke comes out,” Stevie mused, with another besotted sigh.
Corinthia smiled to herself.“I’ll make you a deal.”
“What’s that?”
“If you pluck up your courage and speak to her when she comes to check out, I’ll go for a walk in the Refuge.”
Stevie sat up straight and stared at Corinthia in open shock.“But—you hate the outdoors!You’ve lived here more than a decade and you’ve never even set foot in the Refuge!”
In fact, Corinthia’s house was situated on the far side of the Refuge, directly up against the nature preserve and separated from it only by her own wooden fence.But Corinthia only looked out on the Refuge, whether from her back window or from the library’s conservatory windows, and never entered it.The Refuge was faintly menacing foliage; the indoors was air-conditioned safety, and that was where Corinthia liked to stay.Wilderness had beauty but also unpredictability; unpredictability was best kept securely inside the cover of a good book, where it could not leach into real life and cause pandemonium.
