Page 34 of It's Me They Follow
“Assistant?”
“Yes, assistants help people meet their needs. Tell your sister what you need.” Miss Ross motioned to me with her book. She was readingUnder a Soprano Sun.
I stood up, came over from behind the bookshelf, and looked Elle up and down.
“Tell her,” Miss Ross repeated. “Tell her the truth and she will assist you.”
“I need a friend,” I blurted out unexpectedly.
My younger sister didn’t understand and neither did Miss Ross.
“At home you can be my sister, but here in the library I need a friend.”
And to this day, I don’t know why, but me saying that made Miss Ross and my sister laugh so hard that a huge boogie shot out of Elle’s nose and landed on the front of my favorite evergreen dress.
“Eww.” I scrunched up my face, stiffened my back, and held up my hands—unsure. We caught eyes and stood there longer than usual, and then, without warning, we drowned in a tsunami of laughter that washed over the grief of our dead parents. We laughed until tears dripped down our cheeks and we nearly passed out from not being able to breathe.
“Eww.” She mocked my horror.
“Eww.” I pulled at the dress to show her the sheer magnitude of the boogie that had been clogging her face.
“That’ll be enough.” Miss Ross grinned, handed me a tissue. Then Elle and I disappeared down the middle aisle, where we continued to have sudden waves of laughter wash over us again and again. She was funnier as a friend than as a little sister.
“The library is supposed to be a quiet place,” Miss Ross called out to us. “If you two want to communicate, then you need to put pen to paper and write things down.”
“Okay,” we said in unison. We were doubled over on the floor, silently laughing at each other’s notes, when I saw a book shoved under a bookshelf being used to keep the shelf from wobbling.Poor, helpless book.I stretched beneath the shelf and tried to shimmy it out. It wasn’t like Miss Ross to use a book in this way.
The book wouldn’t budge. I got closer. Tried two hands. Pulled it enough to see a woman on the cover dressed in all white holding a musket. The leg of the shelf had been on her face, which was now dented in. I pulled the book out some more and saw the woman was standing in a field, holding the hand of a little girl who looked like me. I pulled the book all the way out; it was about Ms. Harriett. The pages were browned and yellowed, and folded and written on in blue and black ink.Liberty or death, someone had chicken scratched onto the outer margin of the first page. I couldhear her saying it in my left ear like the general of an army:If I could not have one, I would have the other.Our eyes caught in a windswept stare. She started speaking to me that day as a whisper.Liberty or death. I traced my fingers over those words.
You think I look like her?I wrote down and then held the book up to my face for Elle to confirm.
Maybe from the side, she responded on the note. She motioned for me to turn my head. Then she started laughing at me; she never stopped laughing at me, which forced me to laugh at myself. “Yup, you look just like her now,” Elle said out loud by accident.
“Write,” Miss Ross hollered from the front of the library. “Shut up and write.”
We silently laughed at the irony of her hollering to tell us to be quiet, but we had written each other ever since.
“Can I check this out?” I held up the Ms. Harriett book to Miss Ross as we were leaving. “For my project,” I added, before she could answer no. “It doesn’t have a card.” I tried showing her the inner page where the checkout card belonged. “And it’s damaged.”
“Have it,” said Miss Ross, barely looking up. “It’s you.” She read from her book. “I mean, it’s yours.”
Chapter 21
JANUARY 20, 2020
12:33 P.M.
Dear Gee,
I was already heading Down South for my birthday and some other things. Of course you can come with US. ROAD TRIP! ROAD TRIP! LALALALAAAAAAAALA!
Be ready. I have a BIG surprise.
Love,
Your Sister Friend, Elle
Chapter 22
