By Your Side

  “He’s not my boyfriend . . . yet. But anyway, Jeff’s car was full so he must’ve thought I went with Lisa or Dallin or someone. But I was with nobody . . . obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “No. I’m confused.”

  “About which part?” I set my now-empty mug on the table next to me.

  “About the part where they didn’t come back.”

  “Well, that’s the part I’m confused about too.” Sort of.

  “Some sort of hazing?”

  “You think my friends were hazing me?”

  He shrugged. “So it was an accident? They all accidentally forgot about you?”

  “They wouldn’t do that. They must’ve thought I went home or maybe they didn’t realize this is the place they lost track of me and are looking for me somewhere else right now.” I’d already gone over a million theories about why they hadn’t come back for me, each one worse than the last. I’d had to stop before I drove myself crazy with worry.

  He uncrossed his ankles and sat forward again. “Lost track of you?”

  “I don’t know where they are. I don’t know why they didn’t come back. There’s a reason, and it’s a good one, and we’ll all laugh about it when I get out of here. We’ll laugh, and it will all make sense, and it will be a story I’ll tell forever. The time I got stuck in the library with the—”

  I stopped abruptly. My cheeks went hot and I looked down at my shoes. I wasn’t sure how I was going to finish that sentence but no option had been a good one. The criminal? The druggie? The druggie’s son? I’d heard it all.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Finish. You were doing so good.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Why?”

  “Never mind. That’s my story. What’s yours?”

  “Mine?”

  “Why are you here?”

  He held up his book. “I wanted to read.”

  “And eat stolen apples?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s just, I told you why I was here, and that’s what I get in return?”

  “There aren’t any books in my house. Well, unless you count the Good Book. But that’s mainly used to condemn me.” He ran a hand through his hair and didn’t continue. Like he had said too much.

  But he hadn’t said anything. “Fine. You don’t have to tell me. When we get out of here we’ll go our separate ways.”

  He sighed. “Speaking of. I’m not sure how you’re going to spin this when we eventually get discovered, but can we just tell our own stories? You go with the pee one, and I’ll let myself out when the doors are opened and go my own way.”

  “I can’t tell people you were here?”

  “You can do whatever you want. Tell your friends you were stuck here with the . . . whatever . . . but the librarians, the cops . . .”

  “What about the cops?” I asked, wrapping the sleeping bag tighter around my shoulders. “Why are they going to be involved?”

  “If someone reported you missing, they will be involved.”

  “What if someone reported you missing?”

  “They didn’t.”

  “Why not? Don’t you think your parents are worried about you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “No. I’m not. But I don’t want trouble.”

  “You won’t get it from me.” At least that’s what I was saying now while I was trying to earn his trust. And his phone.

  Hopefully his phone would be easier to get than his trust. Because I could tell his trust wasn’t something he regularly granted.

  CHAPTER 6

  I’d heard lots of rumors about Dax the last two years. Lisa, who prided herself on knowing everything about everyone, had told me the most, in rushed whispers anytime we would see him around at school. He had transferred in the middle of sophomore year. His attendance was irregular. The beginning of junior year he’d spent a few months in juvie. When he came back he had a tattoo on the inside of his left wrist and was quieter than ever. He didn’t have any friends as far as I could tell and I never saw him during lunch. Outside of school, I saw him even less. One time he was at the movies with some girl I’d never seen before. He’d never acknowledged my existence. Not that I cared. He was just another kid from school.

  I could tell he didn’t want to acknowledge me any more now than he had then by the way he looked at me. Did he even know my name? I realized he hadn’t said it once. I wasn’t sure how things would go down when we were finally discovered here, but it was in my best interest for now to tell him what he wanted to hear. “Nobody needs to know.”

  He went back to reading without a word of gratitude. Did he not know how to say thank you?

  I reached down and unlaced my boots. I’d been wearing them too long and the tops of my feet hurt. I slipped them off, wondering if it was a good idea. I was only wearing a thin pair of ankle socks and my feet immediately became cold. I pulled them up onto the chair with me and tucked them under the sleeping bag.

  “There were vending machines in the kitchen but I don’t have any money . . . do you?”

  He shifted in his seat, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out a wallet. He opened it and produced a single bill. I couldn’t tell from where I sat if it was a dollar or twenty or something in between. “I take it all your belongings somehow ended up in one of those four cars that left without you and hasn’t returned.”

  “They’ll be back.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted into a smile. Oh good, I amused him. “That’s all I have,” he said, pointing to the table where he’d dropped the bill. “Spend it wisely.”

  “I’m not hungry right now, so we can wait.”

  “That half an apple filled you up?”

  “We’re on rations here. If we have to last until Tuesday, we need to space our few meals.” A yogurt, the cake, the Tupperware bowl of mystery, and whatever the money would buy us, that’s all we had for three days or until I could find his phone. He’d leave his bag unattended at some point.

  “Twelve hours trapped in a library and you’re already a survivalist.”

  I crossed my arms. “You seem to enjoy making fun of me.”

  “I was being sincere. I mean, if ever in a real life-or-death situation, you’ve already learned how to throw books and scavenge for food.”

  The books I had hurled at him the night before were in a messy pile behind him. I needed to clean those up. “Well, if you’re ever in a life-or-death situation you can read and dole out insults.”

  “I’m reading about how to survive living with a spoiled rich girl for three days.”

  Spoiled rich girl? He didn’t know me at all. Sure, my parents had money but they were annoyingly good at making me work for things. “Considering you don’t want me to tell anyone about you being here, you sure are good at making me want to do the exact opposite.”

  He let out a huff of air. “I can tell by the way you look at me that you’re not going to keep your mouth shut. You’ve already figured me all out.”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Everything I need to know is written all over your face.”

  “Right now the only thing my face should be conveying is that it thinks you’re a jerk.”

  He bowed his head as if to say, exactly.

  Ugh. I’d never met anyone more frustrating. I couldn’t believe I still had three full days with him. I had to get out before then. I would get out before then. In the meantime, I didn’t have to sit here and be insulted.

  I made my way back to the glass hallway. The glass must’ve had some special coating on it, because it wasn’t fogged up at all, nor was there snow sticking to any of it. But there was snow everywhere else. I was surprised by just how much. It came all the way up to the low windows I could see across the way. That was a lot of snow. Maybe this was why nobody was looking for me. Had everyone been snowed in at the cabin?


  My bag was in Jeff’s trunk. Didn’t Jeff realize I hadn’t made it up when he saw that? Maybe he hadn’t looked in his trunk. It was Saturday morning. He was probably still in bed. When he woke up and looked in his trunk . . . why would he look in his trunk? This was so messed up. My hope of being rescued before Tuesday when the librarians reappeared was dwindling with every passing minute.

  I couldn’t stand in this hallway much longer. It was freezing. I ran through and down to the door of the parking garage for another look. Nothing had changed. I was going to have to start doing laps in the library if it got much colder.

  Not wanting to go back upstairs, I sat down in front of the door, imagining Jeff’s car pulling up, him stepping out, smiling at me through the glass as though this was all part of some funny joke. Everything in life was funny to Jeff.

  Like the day before, when I had been searching for a World War II book in the history aisle of the library and Jeff had come up behind me.

  “I think I grabbed the book you were looking for by accident.”

  “By accident?”

  “I heard you mention your topic; it must’ve stuck in my mind.”

  I smiled and reached for the book he was holding out. He raised it just out of my reach. When I laughed he held it out for me again, only to do the same thing. I sighed and waited for him to place it in my hands this time, which he did.

  “Do you think Mr. Garcia forced us to use the library for this assignment because he hates Google or because he’s old school?” Jeff asked.

  “Probably a little of both, plus he knew it would make it harder on us. I really think he wanted us to spend our whole weekend on this.”

  “We probably shouldn’t have written ‘history is a thing of the past’ on the board. I think it set him off.”

  I laughed. “We? You wrote that on the board. I was going to write: ‘history spelled backward is yrotsih.’”

  Jeff tugged lightly on the ends of my hair. “That would’ve been funny. You should’ve.”

  I could never have done that. It had made me nervous enough watching him.

  “Mine was a joke too. I think Mr. Garcia liked my super clever observation about the subject he teaches,” Jeff said.

  I laughed. “He does seem to like you.”

  His finger skimmed along the book next to my hand. “Everyone likes me, Autumn.” He winked in my direction. He may have said it as a joke but it was true. Everyone did like Jeff.

  “When’s the last time you were in a library?” he asked.

  “When I was a kid. My mom used to take me to the Mother Goose reading time they did here. That lady who dressed up like an old woman. I still have no idea why they called her Mother Goose. We should research that today. Forget World War II. This is the information we really need to know.”

  “So true. If they called her Mother Goose, she should’ve been dressed up like a goose, not an old woman. Let’s find the librarian and ask her to enlighten us.” Then he cupped his hands around his mouth. “Librarian!”

  “Shhh,” I hissed.

  He laughed and whispered, “What? Did I do something wrong?”

  I smiled. “Maybe we should actually read something so we can get our papers written and get out of here.”

  “Right. Homework. That’s what we need to work on.” He pulled out a book and flipped through the pages, but his gaze never left mine.

  I dropped my eyes. Behind Jeff, about waist high, a head appeared to be sitting on a shelf, disembodied. I yelped before I registered it was Dallin. Jeff turned around.

  “You both need to get ahead on your reading,” Dallin said.

  Jeff took the two books that Dallin’s head was resting between and proceeded to use them like a vise, smashing his head.

  “Don’t crush my genius!” Dallin yelled.

  “You’re an idiot,” Jeff said.

  Dallin couldn’t stop laughing long enough to back his body out of the shelf. I was sure we were seconds away from getting kicked out of the library.

  “What are you doing?”

  I gasped, pulled out of my memory by Dax’s question. I shifted on the floor to look over my shoulder. “You seem to have a habit of sneaking up on people.”

  He was in the open doorway at the end of the hall, twenty feet away. “I called to you twice.”

  “Oh. Well, I was thinking.” When he didn’t respond I added, “Did you need something?”

  “There’s a TV in the break room. Thought you might want to know.”

  “Break room?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t see a break room when I searched the library yesterday.”

  “I guess you missed it, then. The TV only gets local stations, though.”

  I pushed myself to standing when he walked away. It was nearly noon. I wasn’t sure what played on local channels at this time, but I wasn’t going to turn down television. I rounded the corner and jogged to catch up with him. “So, what? Soap operas?”

  “It’s Saturday.”

  Right. Not soap operas. Cartoons? Whatever it was, it was something. “You know the soap opera schedule well?”

  “By heart,” he said straight-faced.

  Next to the door he approached was a small square electronic box. We’d need some sort of employee badge to open the door. Which we didn’t have. Dax didn’t seem to care about that; he jiggled the handle a little and gave a hard pull and it swung open. How often had he stayed at the library, anyway? He seemed to know this place well.

  “How’d you do that?”

  “It’s an old building. Some doors are more pliable than others.”

  I followed him in. “Which doors?”

  “None to the outside.”

  But what about other ones? Ones that might have phones in them? I’d have to try all the doors again later.

  Dax stopped in front of a vending machine. He surveyed the items on display behind the glass. I went immediately to the fridge that I hadn’t yet explored. I opened it and found nothing but old ketchup packets. I closed it with a sigh and joined him by the vending machine.

  I still had no idea how much money he had. Would we get one bag of pretzels or five? I thought maybe we’d take a vote on what to get, but he slid his bill in the slot and began pushing buttons.

  “I don’t have any food allergies,” I said, my passive-aggressive way of telling him he wasn’t being thoughtful.

  “Good,” was all he said back as a bag of chips dropped from its slot. He gave the machine a shake but nothing else jarred loose with the effort. On the digital screen it showed he had four dollars left. He pushed a couple more buttons and this time a Payday dropped. He repeated the shaking motion with the same result.

  He retrieved his two items from the slot then stepped aside and gestured for me to make a selection. Oh. Had that been his plan all along? That we’d each get to pick a couple items?

  “Thanks,” I mumbled and stepped up to check out my choices. “I’ll pay you back.”

  “No need to.”

  I settled on Cheez-Its and a Payday as well. I figured the peanuts were the closest thing in the machine to healthy and maybe filling. There was a dollar left, so I stepped aside.

  “Any preference?” he asked, taking in the selection.

  I shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Anything you absolutely hate?”

  I raised my eyebrows at him and then smiled.

  “In the machine,” he said, not taking my bait.

  “No, whatever you want.”

  He chose another Payday. Probably a good choice.

  It was a small room, which I would think would mean it would be warmer than if it had been in the main part of the library. But it wasn’t. It was probably because a window, fogged with frost, took up a big portion of the back wall.

  Dax picked up the remote to a television that sat on a metal rolling cart. He handed it to me then left the room without a word.

  Okay, guess he didn’t want to watch television, just quarantine
me. I must’ve completely ruined his weekend. His weekend of what? Reading? Being alone in a big library? Maybe he’d planned on stealing something here and I’d ruined that. Did the library have anything to steal?

  I pointed the remote at the television and pushed power. I flipped through the channels—golf, tennis, cartoons, an old movie. I stopped there, sat on the couch, and opened the Payday.

  “Was this the only choice?” Dax asked, coming back into the break room. He now had on a sweatshirt and was carrying the red sleeping bag, which he plopped on my lap before sitting down on the opposite end of the couch.

  I was so surprised that I stuttered out, “N-no,” and handed him the remote.

  He changed it and stopped on the cartoon—Scooby-Doo. I wrapped myself up in the sleeping bag. It smelled good, musky, and I wondered if that’s what Dax smelled like up close. Then I wondered why I would wonder something like that.

  We watched the cartoon in silence for several minutes before I said, “You’d think after the thousandth time of the monster actually being a person in disguise that they’d check and see if he had a mask on first.”

  “Then it would be a two-minute show.” A small smile played across his lips. Maybe he had a sense of humor in there somewhere after all. Buried deep. Maybe at the bottom of his duffel bag.

  His bag. It was in the other room alone, unsupervised. He was just opening his candy, settling into the couch. He even put his feet up on the coffee table. I had at least ten minutes. I made a show of stretching. I had taken two bites of my candy bar. I needed to save it for later anyway. I tucked it back into its wrapper and set it on the table along with the Cheez-Its.

  “I’ll be right back. Bathroom.”

  “No need—”

  “Right. You don’t want to know.” How hard was a simple okay? I was used to telling people where I was going because I was always with a group, not that it had done me much good last night. Maybe he wasn’t used to having to report his whereabouts because he was always alone. I looked over my shoulder as I reached the door. His focus was entirely on the television. This was perfect.

  CHAPTER 7

  When I got to the library section, Dax’s bag wasn’t where I’d seen it last. Had he hidden it? But then I realized he’d just tucked it under the chair. I rushed forward, knowing I didn’t have a lot of time, and squatted down. The black handle stuck out so I gave it a tug. It was wedged a little and it took me a couple of good yanks to free. I listened carefully to make sure I didn’t hear him coming.