It’s Sunday. Sunday’s a resting day where we do nothing and I’m allowed ice-cream after dinner. But we’re not resting. I didn’t even get breakfast. We’re on the train to Perth. Kay woke me up early and said she had to go to work. I have to come with her because I’m not allowed to stay home alone.
‘They’ve covered for me so much. I couldn’t say no. It’ll be fun, I promise. There are only two of us who work on Sundays. Well, there are more than two, obviously, but in Stock and Stack, there are only two of us and we’re out doing retrievals, so you’ll have the whole workroom to yourself. I’ll find you a computer or some books, and we can get milkshakes and muffins for breakfast. There’s this takeaway place at the station that does the best milkshakes. And there’s a bakery. We can get a jam donut.’
Kay rambles the whole trip. I’m tired because we stayed up late reading the History. I really like Yingtai. I wish we’d talk about her and not Kay’s work. I saw the movie Mulan a few years ago. I used to like it but now I don’t because they got so many things wrong. Mulan’s mum was barely in it.
We get off the train at Perth. Perth is a big station, where all the trains come together. We go up the escalators to the bakery, where Kay buys me a jam donut and a gingerbread man. She waves the gingerbread man in my face and says, ‘Look at my big smile, Jessie, let’s see your smile!’ like I’m three. I don’t smile. Then she orders a caramel milkshake and a flat white with an extra shot and two sugars from the place that has lots of ice-cream. I slurp the milkshake as we walk over the bridge towards the art gallery.
Kay works at the State Library. It’s a funny, ugly building, a big block of concrete with weird sharp angles that lives behind the art gallery and next to the museum. The side of the building where the main door is looks like the library was even bigger once but then some giant came along, sliced it open and covered it in glass. It’s like a big cake with lots of layers that get smaller as they go up, with windows instead of walls. But that’s only the front of it. Around the back and sides, it’s concrete, like maybe they used up all their windows in the front.
Inside, the library has two caverns that go through its centre. You can stand on the bottom floor and see all the way to the top. There’s a set of stairs you can climb, or you can take one of the glass lifts like from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Kay takes me to the back of the library, away from the main entrance, and through a secret door. She has an ID card that lets her in. We go through a dark corridor and then get to some lifts that are silver and very wide, like hospital lifts. We go up to the first floor, out into the library, and then to a door behind a desk. Kay taps her ID next to the door and it flashes green. It makes a click. She pushes it open.
We enter a room with long desks and lots of mess. There are trolleys everywhere with old books, newspapers, all sorts of stuff. There are no windows but the light feels too bright. It smells strange in here too.
‘I’ll set you up on this computer,’ Kay says. ‘You can go on YouTube and watch Pokémon or whatever you like.’
‘Can I read the History?’
‘I didn’t bring it. Groovy Greeks is in your backpack.’
The door makes that loud clicking sound. A lady comes in. She has grey hair so long it goes past her bottom. She sees me and smiles.
‘Hello there. You must be Jessie.’
I nod.
‘Jessie, this is Lily,’ Kay says.
The lady holds out her hand while she juggles a stack of newspapers in her other arm. I shake it but don’t really know what to say. Lily has a nose-ring, which I thought only teenagers got. She and Kay talk a bit about ‘who’s taking what floors’. Kay asks if she can do ground, first and second so she can keep an eye on me. Lily says she’s happy to do Battye, which I think is the third floor.
Kay sits me down and puts her hands on my shoulders, which means I’m about to get ‘a talk’.
‘I need you to stay here, okay? The first-floor stacks are through that door –’ she points to an open doorway ‘– but you’re not allowed in there. There are things that could fall on you and books that are very old and expensive. I retrieve books that people request, so I’ll be in and out all the time. I’ll know if you move.’
‘Can’t I sit with everyone else and look out the windows?’
‘No, I want you to stay here.’
So I’m stuck. Kay goes away for seventeen minutes before returning with some green slips. She disappears into the stacks, returns with a small trolley loaded with three red boxes, and then goes out again.
I’m bored. I finished Groovy Greeks ages ago. It says nothing about Diogenes. I try googling Diogenes but I can’t stop glancing at the doorway to the stacks. If I push my seat back, I can just see a set of stairs going up.
Kay comes back after thirty-one minutes. She glances at me on her way into the stacks. Again, those green slips. She seems to swap them for books or boxes. Then, she comes back after twenty-eight minutes, and then again after twenty-four.
‘Reading something cool?’ she asks as she walks past, this time holding a long slip with pink, yellow and blue paper. She doesn’t wait for a response. When she comes back, she has a small book-shaped box with gold lettering. Then she disappears.
She won’t be back for another half-hour. If I have a very quick look, she won’t know.
I go to the doorway and peer in. The stairs go up to another floor. Behind them, there are so many bookshelves, I can’t see where they end. The bookshelves are so tall, they almost touch the roof. They are metal and stacked right up against each other, with no room between them. What’s the use of them if you can’t get to the books? How did Kay get those books out?
I’ve got more than twenty minutes before she comes back.
I tiptoe into the stacks, past the stairs and into the land of giant bookshelves. There’s a sign on each one, sometimes with just letters like a secret code. Each bookshelf has a handle, not like a door handle, more like the wind-up handle on my jewellery box, the one that makes the ballerina inside turn. I try to turn one of the handles but it won’t budge.
I walk further and find a gap between two bookshelves. I peer inside. There are many books, with a few of Kay’s green slips sticking out between them. All the books look old. It must be why it smells in here. Kay once said there’s lots of leather books decaying in the stacks, and it smells like off honey. I can see what she means. It’s sweet but kinda sickly.
I try the handle on this bookshelf. It’s heavy but it moves. The whole bookshelf rolls along tracks on the ground, like a train. I try another and another. They squeal a little and make a little knocking sound when they come together. Then I turn the handles until the shelves are back to where they were before, so Kay won’t know I was here.
I’ve got plenty of time so I walk around the stacks. At one end, I find a secret room. It has a tiny glass window in the door, but it’s so dark I can only just see a few bookshelves inside. I touch the glass. It’s cold.
Kay told me about these. A rare book room. A fridge for special old books. Could there be something as old as the History? I try to go in but the door’s locked. I notice the card reader. I think about stealing Kay’s ID. She’d be so angry she’d never let me read the History again.
I go back to the workroom and check the time. Better not risk it.
When Kay comes back, she smiles at me. I smile back thinking, you don’t know what I did. She has those long slips again, the ones that are three joined together. They look important. She swaps them for two of the book-shaped boxes.
‘I have one more retrieval shift and then we can have lunch, okay?’
‘Okay.’
She leaves.
Another half hour to explore the stacks.
I go back to the rolling bookshelves. This time, I step over the little train tracks. The bookshelves are so tall, like walls. I want to see the books at the top. There are steps on wheels all around the stack. I wheel one over, pick it up (it’s heavy!), and put it inside the shelves. When I step on it, I can see some of Kay’s green slips. They sit in the gaps between books. I pick one up. It’s a form: TITLE, AUTHOR, CALL NUMBER. It has scribbles on it, like a doctor’s writing. I can’t read it.
A little squeal. The bookshelves behind come towards me! The shelves bang into the step and shudder. I scream. Someone grabs me and pulls me out of the shelves. It’s Kay.
‘What the fuck are you doing? I could’ve killed you!’ she screams, shaking my arm. She digs her fingernails in. She won’t let go. ‘I tell you to do one thing for your own good. One fucking thing! Why can’t you help me? Why do you have to make everything so hard?’
Then Kay cries and hugs me really tight. Her ugly sobs echo around the stacks. It’s horrible.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
Kay just bawls. Eventually, she calms down and lets go of me. She wipes her face and takes a big breath.
‘Let’s have lunch.’
In the café downstairs, I have a cheese and salad sandwich and Kay has another flat white with an extra shot and two sugars. She looks past me as she sips her coffee. Doesn’t say a word. Her eyes are glassy like she might cry again. She doesn’t buy me a muffin, even though the lady behind the counter says I should try Kay’s favourite, which is raspberry and white chocolate. Kay tells the lady I don’t deserve it.
After lunch, Kay takes me to the first floor, but this time to the public area. She sits me in front of a librarian called Neil.
‘If you move, you are never reading the History again,’ she says, shaking her finger at me.
Neil watches me while Kay retrieves books. I’ve never met a man librarian before. He is very smiley, but he looks big and tough, like a rugby player. He sits behind a desk that is too small for him. It has a sign that reads REFERENCE DESK. People ask him where to find things and request books from the stacks. He puts the request slips in a magazine holder that Kay fetches every half hour, though she comes more often now to check on me. It’s nice to be out of the workroom, but I’m not allowed to sit by the windows. I swing my feet and sigh.
‘A computer just became free, if you’re bored,’ Neil says, pointing to the monitors behind him.
‘I’m not allowed to move,’ I tell him.
‘I’ll tell Kay I said it was alright.’
There are six computers behind Neil’s desk. I sit next to a teenager who’s googling something called Othello. I go to Wikipedia and look up Diogenes again. It says he died in 323 BC. But in the History, he dies soon after the boy gets the mischief, which is 316 BC. Weird.
‘Can I have some paper?’ I ask Neil.
‘Of course!’
He gives me a piece of paper and a pen.
I write out the things I remember from the History. Using my notes, I find many mistakes online. Wikipedia says Diogenes met Alexander in a place called Corinth, not Athens, and that their stories are ‘apocryphal’, which means ‘works, usually written works, that are of unknown authorship, or of doubtful authenticity, or spurious, or not considered to be within a particular canon’.
When I look up Aristophanes it says he was a comic playwright who lived from 446 to 386 BC. When I google ‘Aristophanes Library of Alexandria,’ I find a Wikipedia page for Aristophanes of Byzantium. It says he was the head librarian after Eratosthenes. I guess he got a promotion. It says he invented things like full stops and commas. But it says nothing about him being a confiscator.
When I look up Hua Yingtai it says, ‘This page does not exist’. I find Mulan though. She’s from a ballad, which is a kind of poem. It says, ‘Hua Mulan is treated more as a legend than a historical person.’
I’m annoyed.
‘Wikipedia is wrong,’ I tell Neil.
He laughs. ‘Yes. You can’t trust Wikipedia!’
I’m more annoyed now.
‘What are you looking at?’ he asks, peering at the screen. ‘Hua Mulan? Like the Disney movie?’
‘I bet we have books about her.’
‘Really?’
Neil looks it up on his computer.
‘Do you want one?’
I nod. He writes something out on a green slip and puts it in the magazine box. Eleven minutes later, Kay comes to take the slip. She glances at me and looks angry but she gets it. The book is boring, but I learn there are lots of stories about Mulan. One of them is a play. The play lists everyone except Yingtai. She’s listed simply as MOTHER, performed by lao (old female).
‘Can I get more?’ I ask Neil.
‘We don’t have any others on Mulan, unless you want some sheet music from the Disney movie.’
‘Can I get books about other things?’
‘Sure! What do you want?’ Neil asks, really jolly. Neil seems happy about everything. That kinda makes me happy.
He writes up more green slips for books on Alexander the Great, Diogenes the Cynic, the Library of Alexandria, and codices. He even finds a book about libraries on fire. Kay still looks annoyed but she fetches them.
‘Most of the books you’re looking for aren’t at this library,’ Neil says. ‘They’re at libraries all over the state. You can request these from your local public library, did you know?’
I shake my head.
‘Inter-library loan. Basically, you can order any book in WA and they’ll send it to your local library. What’s your library?’
‘We have a library at school.’
‘Hmmm, no, it needs to be a public library. Where do you live?’
‘Guildford.’
‘Lovely. Let me look it up. Here,’ he says, and swivels his computer screen around to show me. ‘It’s on James Street. Is your school Guildford Primary or Guildford Grammar?’
‘Guildford Primary.’
His fingers fly across the keyboard.
‘Hey, it’s on Helena Street. That’s super close to James Street. You could walk there with Kay.’
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely! How about I write up a list of books you can request from Guildford Library? Then you can take them home. You can’t borrow books from here.’
‘Okay!’
Neil types out a list with codes for the librarians at Guildford. I ask for some books on penjing and he does a quick search and some googling.
‘Penjing is the Chinese version of bonsai. You know, those little Japanese trees? Penjing came first according to this … oh!’ He stops, looks at me, looks at the clock and then back at me. ‘Stay here. Man the desk. Tell anyone who comes up that I’m in the loo.’
He runs out from behind the desk and races down the stairs. I sit behind the desk but he’s back really quick, like only three minutes. He has a book.
‘I saw this in the discard bookshop the other day,’ he says. ‘It’s an old library book. Not penjing but similar. You can have it.’
I take the book. It’s about bonsai trees. It has black marks and scratches on the cover, which has gone a little yellow. Inside, there’s a barcode that’s been stamped over in red with DISCARD BY THE LIBRARY OF WA. It has so many pretty pictures of bonsai trees, some with wire on them. Neil shows me the index at the back of the book. I find a trident maple like Yingtai had.
‘Is it really for me?’
‘Of course!’
‘Was it expensive?’
‘Three dollars. Cheap as chips. Cheaper than chips!’
‘I can pay you back. I get pocket money every fortnight.’
Neil laughs. ‘Don’t worry about it. You can pay me back in bonsai facts!’
I like Neil a lot. I write out bonsai facts from the book on strips of scrap paper and sign them ‘FROM A. MISCHIEF’ on the back. When Neil goes to the toilet, I hide them under his keyboard, in his notebook, in his jacket pocket and in the hat sitting on the floor. I smile at him when he comes back. Later, when he puts his hat on, I think about the bonsai fact tumbling out when he gets home.
This is my first act of mischief.