Woolgathering

  ***

  There was this thing about being me I just couldn't seem to get over. The thing where I couldn't stop myself. I had to question everything a googleplex of times and I never really believed in it and even when I did I saw it all skewed, like. It happened to me all the time. My Mum called it creative at first. Then she called it scary.

  On the days I gave myself headaches I was inclined to agree.

  The next day, for example. I was on my way to the library, perusing the books I'd carried home the night before. One was real famous and typical like stories of that sort— prettily painted with loves and forevers and impossibles. The other was kinda dusty and decrepit, a rambling bit of cleverness and despair and new ideas. Nobody liked to hear those much, because nobody had checked it out since before I was born, or so said the card in back of it.

  I hugged it to my chest, aching with a kindred spirit as I lusted for the other, hopeful friend waiting across the dilapidated street. I passed the corner gas station where I would go to eat my shopping bag of sandwiches and tiptoed to the park out back of the library where parents always promised to take their kids if they'll just, please, pick a book instead of a movie. I didn't like the place. It had high play sets and loud noises. So I bowed my head and scuttled across it like a mouse just trying to survive long enough to make it to its cozy little hole across the linoleum.

  Miss H— was there at the desk. Where else would she be? I handed her my books solemnly and, still reading, she scanned them mechanically into the computer with that strange gun I wince to see pointed at my beloved companions.

  I lingered there awkwardly, I guess, praying that she'd look at me again and swearing to myself I'd not screw it up this time. She didn't. My little heart that my doctor says has a murmur, and which I was sorry to hear didn't mean Mom would have to pay me any extra attention, sank. I shuffled to my usual seat.

  There, I itched my greasy hair, wondering if I smelled. I'd been to scared to shower for a day or two since Mom's last boyfriend came. I couldn't reach the lock on the bathroom door and I was always afraid someone would walk in on me. I only bathed when the fear that my filth would offend one of the nosier ladies at the library and they'd adopt me and trap me forever in a shower supplanted the fear of being walked in on. You could get a lot of fears, if you thought about it enough. And I did.

  Idly, I flipped at a picture book and conjured imaginary meetings with Miss H—. She was a little crazy like the wise men in books, the ones nobody visits up on their hills unless they need something. I fancied her showing me a secret door that led to the library's dark underbelly— a darker monster would lie in wait there, guarding all the books about immortality. Or maybe she'd just whisper one little spell in my ear, a spell to make somebody, anybody, love me. Or maybe she'd steal me away and try to sacrifice me for the good of the world on a stone altar. The knife she used wouldn't hurt much because it was made of justifications— of justice.

  I could spend whole days doing that— making up stories, things to look forward to, reasons to live. Reasons to live were the hardest things to imagine, chiefly because I don't think they exist. If you're special you make one up. Everybody else just kind of muddles along. It used to be why I thought I was important, because I'd make up hundreds of reasons to exist, all just crazy enough to work. But I couldn't stick with any of them, so I suppose it was just useless. All it did was make me feel a little better about things.

  I risked a glance up at Miss H—. I had problems sticking with things, and the feeling would probably pass eventually, but I'd never wanted anything half so bad as I did a friend. It was a naïve thought. I may have been prematurely disillusioned, but I was still a child. And I was convinced suddenly that if I didn't do something right then I'd be alone forever, drifting at the end through a lonely corner of non-existence.

  A dire impetus rose in me, and I rushed— not up to the desk, but behind it.

  “Ma'am!” I blurted with a fearful blush. “Ma'am I'm sorry for my audacity but I wanted to tell you the story I made up for you!”

  It was then that I saw the first expression I thought Miss H— must've made in years. She blinked.

  “I think you must be some kind of wise old mentor,” I said in a hurry. “I think you must've been born just like that— with lots of ancient, wise thoughts to bestow on people— but you can't talk much or they'll all go to the wrong people on accident.”

  She gazed at me. I realized her eyes weren't anything magical under the overgrown bangs, just really tired and really brown, and I thought that made her an awfully unique wise-woman. I was afraid she'd never reply though, that maybe there weren't any secrets made just for me after all. I wasn't yet old enough to realize another's discomfort when I saw it.

  Then, slowly, she responded. Her lips parted, easing ever so slightly from their droop to form about the softest question: “Is that my story?”

  “It's the one I made for you.”

  She hugged her knees, rested her chin on them and peered owlishly down at me. “I... like yours best, I think.”

  Then, gesturing at the empty little corner behind the desk, the one next to the door to her quarters and speaking with maundering kindness: “Do you want to read back here? People don't look back here much.”

  I felt my whole not-freckled, not-scarred, not-very-story-worthy-at-all face stretch into a grin. I might have kissed her cheek if I'd been at all convinced she was of this world or mine.

  Either way, stowed in our hidden corner with nothing in the world but a novel and my thoughts to bother me, I felt the safest I ever had.

  I almost felt that all was well.