Page 10 of What You Wish For

He knew me well from the library. He was one of my big readers. “Tough day, huh?” I said.

Clay nodded.

I looked over at Kent Buckley, off by a cloister, doing his best to whisper-yell at his employees. “Wanna take a walk?” I asked Clay then.

Clay nodded, and when we started walking, he put his soft little hand in mine.

I took him to the library. Where else? My beautiful, magical, beloved library… home of a million other lives. Home of comfort, and distraction, and getting lost—in the very best way.

“Why don’t you show me your very favorite book in this whole library,” I said.

He thought about it for a second, and then he led me to a set of lowshelves under a window that looked out over downtown, then over the seawall, and out to the Gulf. I could see the stretch of beach where we’d just held the service.

This was the nonfiction nature section. Book after book about animals, and sea life, and plants. Clay knelt down in front of the section on ocean life and pulled out a book, laid it out on the floor, and said, “This is it,” he said. “My favorite book.”

I sat next to him and leaned back against the bookshelf. “Cool,” I said. “Why this one?”

Clay nodded. “My dad’s going to take me scuba diving when I’m bigger.”

My instant reaction was to doubt that would ever happen. Maybe I’d just known too many guys like Kent Buckley. But I pretended otherwise. “How fun!”

“Have you ever gone scuba diving?”

I shook my head. “I’ve only read about it.”

Clay nodded. “Well,” he said, “that’s almost the same thing.”

Talk about the way to a librarian’s heart. “I agree.”

We flipped through the pages for a long time, with Clay narrating a tour through the book. It was clear he’d absorbed most of the information in it, and so all he needed was a picture to prompt conversation. He told me that the earth’s largest mountain range is underwater, that coral can produce its own sunscreen, that the Atlantic Ocean is wider than the moon, and that his favorite creature in the Gulf of Mexico was the vampire squid.

I shivered. “Is that a real thing?”

“It’s real. Its lower body looks like bat wings—and it can turn itself inside out and hide in them.” Then he added, “But it’s not really a squid. It’s a cephalopod. ‘Squid’ is a misnomer.’”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “did you just say ‘misnomer’?”

He blinked and looked at me. “It means ‘wrong name.’ From the Latin.”

I blinked back at him.

“Clay,” I asked. “Are you a pretty big reader?”

“Yep,” Clay said, turning his attention back toward the book.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a third-grader who knew the word ‘misnomer,’ much less anything about its Latin origins.”

Clay shrugged. “I just really like words.”

“I’ll say.”

“Plus my dad does flash cards with me.”

“He does?”

“Yeah. My dad loves flash cards.”

Honestly, I’d never worked very hard to get to know Clay. He was in the library a ton—almost whenever he could be—but he knew his way around, and he didn’t need my help, and, well… he was reading. I didn’t want to bother him.

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