37

“Can I help you with something?”

The voice behind the desk at the library fills me like warm milk. I shake my head, smile, and walk to a back wall. I want fiction, a book to get lost in, a book where the mother comes back for the daughter.

“There’s a shelf over there you might like to look at for school.” Warm Milk smiles.

I walk over and find several dozen books on the summer reading list at the high school. There’s a separate stack of honors books. To Kill a Mockingbird sits on the tenth-grade shelf and I pull it down and walk over to a sofa upholstered in a material covered with books.

“Excuse me?” Warm Milk taps at my shoulder. “We’re closing now. Would you like to take that with you?”

I jump a little, surprised that a dusky sky now hangs outside the window.

“It’s after eight. You can take that home, you know,” she says, smiling again.

I don’t have a library card. To get one, I’d have to tell her my name.

I shake my head and swallow my voice and leave the book on the table. I am a flower folding into myself, my petals wrapped up tight.