Chapter Ten

WHEN THE RED-HAIRED boy with a face full of freckles walked into the library, Nan noticed him right away. He was alone, which made him noticeable at the age when most kids moved in packs like schools of fish, roaming from school to library to dollar store to deli in a wavy group formation. He was a redhead in a town full of dark-haired Italian Americans. He was bone-thin, in a town of well-fed children. He was dressed in worn clothes and old shoes, a thrift-shop look about him.

When she asked if she could help him find anything, he hung his head and shook no, a perfect imitation of a puppy dog who’d chewed up something he shouldn’t have.

“I’m right here if you decide you need a hand with anything,” Nan said, despising her own fake-sounding heartiness.

“Why?” he asked, his voice small and wavering.

“It’s my job. I help everyone in here,” she said, wishing she came across as sincere as she really was. She hated her voice. It sounded exactly like her sisters’ voices, as much as she tried to make it different. It must be the way their wide flat noses were constructed.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” he whispered.

She was so startled she dropped the pen she was holding. He picked it up for her.

“I mean the other librarian at school is a stone hard-ass bitch.”

“She’s not a librarian,” Nan corrected him. “She’s just a volunteer.”

She’d met the woman, introduced to her as the middle school librarian, Concetta Spitilli. But when Nan asked the question that all librarian conversations started with (“So where’d you go to library school?”), the woman had sniffed as if there was a bad smell in the air and said she hadn’t gone to graduate school at all. She’d been recruited to take over as a volunteer many years ago when the school decided to save money by eliminating the school librarian position. Because after all, the public library was right across the street, and they had to have a librarian with a master’s degree to get state aid funding, but the school didn’t. So that was enough librarians for this town.

“I did it to help out when my daughter was here, and I stayed on when she graduated. And I certainly don’t need a graduate degree to run this place,” Concetta had said dismissively. “I have a cadre of volunteers to help me.”

I’ll give you a half point for vocabulary. I don’t know the last time I’ve heard the word “cadre” spoken in casual conversation. But that’s all the credit I’ll give you, well-meaning as you may be.

Nan could rant all day long about the use of unqualified volunteers in libraries. How people assumed anyone could be a librarian. How good-hearted women (it was always women) with time on their hands loved to fuss with books and read children stories. How the result was that all the important things a well-run library could do were weakened as volunteers not acquainted with the basic foundations of librarianship (freedom to read whatever you want, access to information for all, privacy and confidentiality, diversity, and other tenets) simply made it all up as they went along, with the results being crappy excuses for real libraries. As a library manager, Nan had vowed she would never use volunteers because it sent the wrong message to government officials who controlled library budgets.

To the boy, Nan added, “Don’t say bitch, please.”

I just said the word I told him not to say. Way to go, genius.

“Sorry—she’s a witch,” he corrected himself.

“Why are you whispering?” Nan whispered. “You can talk in a low tone in here.” Even though she wasn’t. She was still whispering to make him comfortable.

“That witch, Ms. Spitface, said I couldn’t read a book I picked out. She took it out of my hands, said it was too hard for me.”

Nan was outraged on his behalf. “I can’t believe even a volunteer would do that.”

“Well, she did. She doesn’t even know my reading level. I just started at this school. I am off the charts in reading, but that witch never bothered to ask. My last school tested me. They said I was reading on a college level, and I’m only in seventh grade.”

The way he pronounced “college level” made it clear to her it was as big a deal to him as “free unlimited ice cream” would be to another kid his age.

“Okay, I get it,” Nan said. “How about we make a deal. You don’t call people bad names in here, and I’ll let you take out any book you want. I swear.”

“What about them?” he asked, pointing to the front desk assistants.

“They work for me. We have policies set by the national library association that say we believe people can read whatever they want, even kids. If your parents want to forbid you taking out a book, they can come with you and dictate what you can read. But we can’t and won’t. We are not your parents. We are defenders of your right to read. We eat censorship for breakfast.”

He smiled a big freckly smile, disappeared into the 300 section, and came back seconds later with a sex manual, How to Satisfy Any Woman. It had been a big bestseller a few years back. Now it sat sadly on the shelf. Apparently, everyone who’d wanted to read it had already found it, practiced, and returned it for others to enjoy. Nan wondered if she’d learn anything new if she read it.

“What if I take this out? Are you going to let me?” he dared her.

“Are your parents with you?”

“I don’t live with them.”

“Who’s in charge of you?”

“I’m in a group home for foster kids. Nobody’s in charge of me.”

Great, no angry parents will show up to yell at me this time.

Nan took the book out of his hand and walked it over to the desk. He pulled his library card out of his pocket and handed it to her with a flourish. She checked it out herself, so that Mona or Dunkan didn’t have a chance to question it. His name was Jeremy Murphy, she noted.

“Happy reading, Jeremy,” she said, handing him the book. “See you later. Thanks for coming in.”

He stared at her as if waiting for her to snatch the book back from him, backed out to the front door keeping his eyes on her, then turned and ran out like someone was chasing him.

“What was that all about?” Mona asked.

“You know we don’t act in loco parentis,” Nan said.

“But that was not a book for kids.”

“So what? We don’t forbid kids to take out other books above their grade level. That little guy who reads the chess books. That girl who’s building her own boat—she takes out those how-to books from the adult library. We don’t even call it the adult library. It’s all the library.” Nan used her firmest voice and body language to make it clear this point was not negotiable.

A woman with her hair wrapped in pink foam curlers straight out of the 1950s plopped her books from the new book section down on the desk. “He could probably write a book on the subject anyhow. All these kids today know more than I ever did before I got married,” she cackled. “I could tell you stories.”

Please don’t.

Nan stared at the middle school across the street, wondering what other harms the library volunteer had inflicted on eager readers. She vowed to take Jeremy under her wing and save him as the kind librarians had saved her when she was a kid with a mother who cried a lot.

But how?