The next afternoon, long after I’ve spent the morning diligently listening to a Kitchen School lecture on chemical compounds, and the buses filled with students have pulled away from the high school across the street, I interrupt my dad from his copyediting to tell him I’m going to the library to do some research.
“Very well,” he says.
One thing he will admit is that this house lacks the necessary resources for proper research. Case in point, my grandma’s 1989 encyclopedia collection. On top of that, we have one computer for the whole family, including my dad’s work, and one tablet. A tablet Sequoia is currently glommed onto, doing a math tutorial, which is the closest he’ll ever get to playing a video game. So I really do need to go to the library, but it’s not my fault if my dad assumes today’s trip is for the English paper he assigned instead of figuring out how to sue him.
Our house is only a block from town, but there’s the smell of storm in the air, so I pull up my hoodie and hurry down the sidewalk, trying to beat it. Playa Bonita is small, and the postage-stamp-size library in the middle of downtown reflects it. The orange carpets are old and well-worn, as if they haven’t been replaced since the seventies, and there’s a constant musty scent that emanates from the pages of the books lined up along the metal shelves. When I push through the front door, my ears are assaulted by energetic singing and the annoying clang of a tambourine from Preschool Story Time in the back corner, where toddlers bounce on their stubby legs, attempting to dance, and moms and nannies alternate between clapping along and snapping photos with their phones.
I usually head straight to the young adult fiction section and tuck myself into one of the overstuffed beanbag chairs. But today I need the computer lab, which is a glass-enclosed room housing twelve Apple computers and two printers. I have to check in with the attendant first. The last few times I was here, an elderly woman wearing a Christmas vest in the summer was working. But today, there’s someone new—a lanky teenage guy with floppy curly hair wearing a Playa Bonita High School T-shirt. His backpack sits at his feet, the seams busting open from too much academia, as he thumbs through a copy of The Crucible.
I like The Crucible.
I like boys who read.
I like floppy hair.
My dad told me to go out and meet people in an art class. How about a person right here at the library?
“That’s a good one,” I say, pointing to his book. I hear the nervous quiver in my voice, but I hope he doesn’t. “I read it, too.” I roll my eyes at myself. “Obviously. I mean, I wouldn’t say something was good if I hadn’t read it.”
“I believe you.” He focuses his big brown eyes on mine and smiles. My knees go floppy like his hair. “It’s kinda brutal, though, don’t you think?”
“Oh, definitely. Mob mentality.” I stop myself from pulling up a chair and telling him all about the paper I wrote for my dad. “Brutal stuff for sure.”
“Scary stuff.” He shudders. “People are scary.”
Not being vaccinated is scary. I remember why I’m here. “I need a computer.”
“Take your pick.” He waves his hand at the bay of computers and accidentally smacks the wall. His clumsiness is comforting, and I try to decide how I’d describe him to someone: lanky and slightly awkward but comfortable in his own skin. “It’ll cost you one library card, though.”
“Why? Do people actually try to steal computers?”
He twists his mouth into an amused smile. “You know, I’m not really sure. It’s kind of a weird rule, now that I think about it.”
“Stealing a computer from the library definitely seems like too much work. Heavy. Awkward. That dangly cord.” I twirl my finger in a curlicue, then fish my card out from the front pocket of my backpack and hand it over.
He studies it. “Juniper, huh?”
“That’s me.”
“Cool name.”
“Not really.”
“I get it.” He points to himself. “I’m Nico. People seem to like my name okay, but I don’t.”
“I like it better than Juniper.”
“That’s something, I guess.” He grins and his brown eyes light up. “I think my parents tried too hard to name me something cool, and there’s no way I can live up to it.”
“It’s funny how names say more about the person who picked them than the person with the actual name.”
“Huh.” He nods and his hair flops. “I never thought of it like that.”
I shrug. “Maybe I’ve thought about it too much.”
“Doesn’t seem possible to think too much.”
“If you say so.” I shove my hands into my pockets and look around the room. “So … computer.”
“Right. Which one do you want?”
There’s only one other person in the lab right now—a middle-aged woman with a website pulled up on Beanie Babies. She scans the stuffed animals, stopping every few seconds to scrawl a note onto the yellow legal pad next to her.
I point to the computer as far away from her as possible. “That one, I guess.”
“Lucky number seven,” Nico says as he places my library card into the corresponding pocket of a numbered plastic cardholder hanging from the wall.
“There’s no such thing as a lucky number.”
“Then how do you explain the lottery?”
“Math.”
“What about people who win the lottery twice?”
“Still math. Did you know there was a lottery in Bulgaria where the same six winning numbers were drawn within four days of each other?”
“Really? That sounds rigged.”
“Not rigged. Look up The Improbability Principle sometime. All that stuff you think is rare actually isn’t. Coincidences happen all the time, but people chalk it up to luck.”
“Huh.” He scratches his head. “That’s no fun.”
“Reality rarely is.”
“Truth.”
“Sorry to bum you out.”
He smiles. “You didn’t.”
“Okay. Good.”
He pulls his book back up to his face as I take a seat at my assigned computer and open Google. After some trial-and-error searches for my rights to be vaccinated, I stumble across some information about custody battles, where one divorced parent wants to vaccinate a child and the other one doesn’t, but I can’t find anything for a teenager who has never been vaccinated for polio trying to do so.
I do learn that if I want the HPV vaccine or mental health treatment or STD testing, I can do that without parental consent. In California, I can have an abortion without telling my parents. It makes no sense to me how I can get medical treatment for those things but not a meningitis shot.
Maybe doctors have never had to deal with someone like me.
Maybe I have to be the first.
Maybe I have to lead the way.
I find some pages on the pros (and alleged cons) of vaccines. I want to study them more closely, so I print them out for ten cents a copy to read later. Now I’m free to spend the rest of my time here in one of those comfy beanbag chairs with a good book.
“Thanks for not stealing a computer,” Nico says as he hands my library card back to me. “I don’t run very fast.”
“Neither do I.”
I spend the next hour gorging on a story about a girl fighting off metaphorical monsters the summer before college, but I eventually get a crick in my neck, so I decide to check the book out from the librarian and finish it at home along with my vaccination reading. When I get outside, the ground is wet from what was probably a five-minute downpour, and I see Nico unlocking a bright green ten-speed from the bike rack next to the book return box.
“Hey, Juniper with the cool name,” he says as I pass.
“Oh.” I shift from one foot to the other. “Hi.”
He walks up next to me. Instead of sitting on his bike, he stands to the side of it, with one foot on the pedal, while we wait for the traffic signal to say WALK. He looks over at me and smiles, and I can’t help but smile back, because he has a good smile. And good teeth. Like someone who had braces.
“So your shift is over?”
“Yep. Done for the day.”
“Do you like working at the library?”
He shrugs. “It’s okay. It’s a job. Plus, I get holidays off. Well, except Halloween.”
“Maybe one day Halloween will be the national holiday it deserves to be,” I say, and Nico nods enthusiastically.
“It’s a pretty good one.”
“Yeah, it’s a pretty good one.” I sigh. “On another note, I want to get a job. The library seems like a cool job. The books are the best part, but I guess you don’t really have a lot to do with them.”
“Yeah. They stuck me in the computer lab because I can troubleshoot and reload the printer ink. It’s a whole thing. But I’m allowed to read as much as I want while I’m there.”
“That’s pretty cool.”
“It’ll be good in the summer. But so far, I’ve only been reading books for school.”
“I’m guessing you go to Playa Bonita?” I gesture at his shirt.
“Yeah. Do you? I haven’t seen you there.”
“I go to school in my kitchen. Homeschool. Our mascot is basically a vacuum cleaner.”
He laughs, and I like the sound of it. Rich and real. Straight from his belly. “I’ve never met someone who’s homeschooled. It seems like a sweet deal. More freedom and stuff.”
“I hate it.”
“Like you hate your name?”
“My parents are obviously the worst.”
“That sucks.”
The light changes, and instead of pedaling away on his bike, he hops off the single pedal he’s been standing on and steps into the crosswalk to walk next to me.
“Do you live this way?” I ask, wondering if he’s a neighbor I haven’t met yet.
“Nah. I have a film club meeting at school at six.”
I glance at my watch. “I think you’re going to be late. It’s six oh seven.”
“I’ll be fashionably late,” he says. “Are you this way?”
“I’m across the street from the school, actually.”
“Do you like movies?”
“I love movies. Not that I’ve watched a ton of them.”
“Wanna go to this film club meeting with me? We’re screening Stand by Me as part of our Stephen King series.”
“Is this the part where I tell you I’ve never seen it?”
“That’s the whole point.”
I laugh. “Right.”
“So do you want to come be a film geek with me?”
I glance down the street at my house. My mom is fiddling with the planter boxes underneath the front window. Her back is to me.
“Let me just … I’m going to go ask my mom. Wait here. Okay?”
“Um, okay. But I can come with if you want. I’m not weird about meeting parents.”
“No. It’s better if I go by myself.”
“Okay.”
I rush up to the house, while Nico stands on the sidewalk, holding up his bike with one hand on the seat.
“Mom,” I call out as I hustle toward her.
She turns around, dirt stains all over her gardening gloves. “Goodness, Juniper, where’s the fire?”
“Sorry. I’m in a hurry, that’s all. I was at the library and I met these other kids working on the same book as me for English.” I can’t tell her I want to go watch a movie. She’ll have to know the name of it so she can look up the plot and parental rating, which will take forever. “They’re having a study group at the school tonight, and I was wondering if I can go.”
She swipes her wrist across her forehead, leaving a smudge of dirt behind. “That’s quite a coincidence.”
“I know, right? I didn’t even have to go to a beach cleanup to meet people.”
“Humph. You’ll just be at the school? Right across the street?”
“Yep.”
“For how long?”
“A couple hours.”
She pulls down the top of her glove to look at her watch. “That should give you until a little bit after eight o’clock. Seems reasonable.”
“Thanks, Mom.” I want to hug her for not making a big deal out of it.
“Mm-hmm.” She glances down the street toward Nico. “Is that boy the only one in the study group? Where’s everyone else?”
“They’re already there. Nico stayed with me so I’d know where to go.”
“He could’ve at least come over to meet me.”
“He wanted to. I told him it was okay if he didn’t.”
“It would’ve been more okay if he did. Remember that next time.”
“I will,” I say over my shoulder as I open the door. I drop my library book on the table in the living room and grab the book I’m reading for Kitchen School. And then I hurry back down the street to Nico before my mom tries to shove homemade oat-and-flaxseed bars in my hands so I can share them with the other kids to clean their digestive tracts.
Nico raises his eyebrows. “Well?”
“I can go.”
“Yeah?”
I laugh. “Yeah.”
“Cool,” he says, grinning a grin that makes my insides flip.
So cool.