Page 14 of Night Shift

I take deep breaths of crisp morning air as I bike to campus. It feels weird to head to the library at the same hour I usually get off my shift—like the world has been flipped upside down, or like I’ve pulled a Harper and slept through my sociology final after accidentally switching the time zone on my phone. There’s a knot in my stomach as I lock my bike up and head inside, but when I shoulder through the doors, the library feels perfectly unchanged.

I don’t know why I was worried that coming back here would feel like returning to a crime scene. This is still my happy place.

The night shift kid—a tired-eyed boy with clunky headphones around his neck—looks at me like I’m his savior when I march up to the circulation desk and tell him I’m here to relieve him. While he’s packing up his stuff, Margie comes out of the elevator with a book cart piled high with enormous science textbooks.

“Kendall!” she says when she spots me. “How are you feeling, kiddo?”

“I’m better,” I croak, than laugh. “Obviously, I don’t sound like it, but the student health center says I’m not contagious.”

The doctor I saw there agreed with me—stress, not a viral infection, was the most likely cause of my weekend malaise. She’s seen hundreds of Clement students with similar symptoms that happened to line up with final exams, group projects, and other major deadlines.

Margie nods sympathetically. “There’s a fresh box of herbal tea and an electric kettle in the back office. Help yourself.”

“Thank you,” I say, exhaling heavily.

I stow my backpack under the desk, pull out my plastic baggie of cough drops, and start toward the office door.

“Oh—before I forget,” Margie says, stopping me. “A boy came in on Friday and asked for you.”

Everything goes still. I think there’s a ringing in my ears.

“What boy?” I ask, even though I think I already know the answer.

“I don’t remember his name. Tall son of a bitch. Very handsome. He checked out two different books of Elizabeth Barrett Browning poems and an autobiography on some famous college basketball coach.”

Vincent. He came back.

“I explained you were out sick,” Margie adds.

I die a little inside, even though Vincent couldn’t possibly have known how snotty and sweaty and miserable I was this weekend. Fuck. I can’t believe I missed him.

He asked for you.

I’m not sure how to interpret that. Maybe he wanted to check in and figure out why I’d disappeared after we made out. Maybe he wanted a repeat of the last Friday night. Or maybe he just wanted to make it clear that what happened between us was a onetime thing and that he’d prefer it if I didn’t run my mouth about it.

“Did he say why he was looking for me?” It’s a loaded question, but I have to know.

“He said he needed an English tutor, but he left a note for you. Hold on—I put it on my desk in the back—”

Margie ducks into the office and reappears a moment later with a little scrap of torn paper in her hand. My first thought when she passes it to me is that Vincent’s handwriting is surprisingly neat—two little lines of perfectly even block letters. He does his As the same way I do mine.

still suck at poetry. please have mercy. [email protected].

I turn it over, hoping for some more insight, but the other side is blank.

“Should I have told him to screw off?” Margie asks.

I croak out a laugh. “No, I can handle him. Thanks, Margie.”

After tucking Vincent’s note into the back pocket of my jeans, I get to work. There’s much to be done before the morning crowd arrives to print homework and essays before classes. As the sun rises, light streams into the atrium like liquid gold and casts the whole library in a warm glow. I stock shelves and process returns and help a group of chemistry students game our e-book checkout system so they don’t have to pay two hundred bucks for a textbook.

And the whole time, the scrap of paper burns in my pocket.

Because it can only mean one thing: the story isn’t over.

Seven

Harper and Nina ask me to put Vincent’s note in the center of our coffee table so they can huddle over it like two historians examining a precious artifact.

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