When I brought my lunch into the library a few days later, someone was already there. Talia was sitting in the armchair over by the National Geographic magazines. That’s where I usually sat.
I stopped when I saw her, but she didn’t see me. She was leaning back in the chair with her eyes closed, and earbuds in. I took a few steps and when I got closer I could see on her phone a picture of some street art and the name Logic.
When I looked back up at her face she was watching me.
“What’s Logic?” I said. “Is it a band?”
She didn’t speak for a moment. I realized she didn’t look too thrilled about me walking up to her and looking at her phone.
Maybe that wasn’t really a socially acceptable thing to do.
So of course I had done it, because I always mess up like that.
Talia sighed and took out one earbud. “He’s not a band. He’s a rap artist.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’ve never heard of him.”
Talia’s shoulders slumped and she sighed again. “I knew this place would be totally hick.”
“So where did you come from?” I asked.
Her hand paused in midair, ready to put her earbud back in, and I realized I’d interrupted her music again and was probably bugging her. Then I realized she’d insulted my hometown. Hick? That didn’t seem quite fair. Boulder was a college town, after all.
“San Francisco,” she said. “But I’m Samoan, since obviously that’s what you were really asking. Now can I listen to my music, please?”
I said, “Oh.”
I carried my lunch over to the other side of the room, where the textbooks were.
The Silent Questions! I’d forgotten! And this would have been the perfect opportunity to try it out.
So Libby to go overboard and forget the Silent Questions.
I sighed. Oh well, back to the textbooks.
Textbooks from Knight-Rowell Publishing especially. That’s who published my textbook Survey of Modern America. I’d been researching.
My history book was the sixth edition. I kind of guessed they wouldn’t be able to get Cecilia Payne into this edition, but if I could start working with them on getting a new edition published with Cecilia in it, then that’s what I could write about in my Smithsonian letter.
I had a stack of almost a dozen books in front of me before I remembered I needed to eat my lunch. I pulled out my peanut butter banana sandwich and then saw Talia looking at me.
“Are you reading history books for fun?” she asked.
I looked back at the books at my feet. I mean, it was a little bit fun, but that wasn’t the right word.
“It’s important,” I said.
“Whatever,” she said, and put her earbud back in.