Page 19 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

“Lonnie!” Catherine gasped, but Mrs. Peters pulled herself up by her virtual bootstraps, gaining a good half inch in the process. They could practically hear her girdle creaking under the sudden strain.

“Is he harassing you girls?”

“Gosh, I don’t want to get him in any trouble,” Lonnie said. “But it makes me feel so embarrassed, knowing how close he’s watching. I can hardly remember my alphabet.”

“I’ll take care of him right now,” Mrs. Peters announced with anincreasing air of self-importance. “These young men have to realize that my library isn’t a USO show. We’re here to educate, not fornicate.”

Both Lonnie and Catherine found it difficult to suppress the snorts of laughter this remark elicited, but they managed it. They also moved quickly away so as to avoid the spectacle of Mrs. Peters reducing the young lieutenant to proverbial dust.

“You owe me now,” Lonnie said as she rummaged behind the checkout desk. She handed Catherine a pen and gestured at the copy ofA Farewell to Arms. “Write him something short and sweet. Just to see what happens.”

“What’s going to happen is either Mrs. Peters will catch me and give me the sack, or this book will sit on the shelves for a few weeks before some random stranger comes to check it out.”

“Then there’s no harm, is there?” Lonnie countered brightly. She propped her chin on her hand and waited. “You’d better hurry. ‘Time to lean means time to clean.’”

Catherine nibbled the end of the pen for a moment before putting the tip to the page.

I’ll live, which is more than I can say for the poor C in this book. I’ll never understand why all the literary greats insist on killing female characters off in order to redeem a man.

“Oooh, I like it.” Lonnie nodded her approval as Catherine blew a light breath across the page to dry the ink. “Playful yet intelligent. He’ll agonize over that for weeks.”

Catherine felt a spasm of alarm as she closed the book and returned it to the cart for shelving. “I don’t want toagonizehim. I just want to…” She let her voice trail off, uncertain what, exactly, she was trying to do.

Start a conversation? Aflirtation?

Lonnie forestalled any of Catherine’s attempts to explain herself with a laugh. “Share deep literary analysis with a local logger who rarely strings two words together and whose frown could curdle milk?” She tapped the side of her nose. “Don’t worry, Cath. Your secret’s safe with me. And until then…”

They both glanced over at where Mrs. Peters was leading William McBride out the library doors. The older librarian held her head as proudly as if guiding a prisoner down death row.

“Until then, you can always leave a note or two inside a book about Egyptian sun goddesses,” Lonnie said, still with that laugh on her lips. “It’ll be interesting to see who writes back first.”

8

CHLOE

“You’re to keep the phone next to you at all times, got it?”

I handed Noodle my cell phone, which I’d programmed with all the numbers a twelve-year-old kid stuck at home with a broken tibia and a badly bruised rib cage might need.

The library, obviously. Our family physician. That nice Dr. Underhill from yesterday. The local pizza place, which promised to deliver to the house on credit.

And after careful and agonizing deliberation, the number from my wallet.

“That last one is only in case the whole world starts burning around you,” I warned him. Noodle nodded solemnly and tucked the phone into his pocket. “I mean it. For emergencies with a capitalE—as in full apocalypse, Theo and Trixie turned into zombies, me trapped inside the library holding back the second wave of the undead, and Gummy Bear foaming at the mouth.”

I hesitated a moment before adding, “And even then, don’t expect her to pick up on the first ring.”

“Or at all,” Trixie said as she slid her feet into her shoes and slippedher backpack over her shoulders. I’d warned her ahead of time about the phone number I’d found—confessed my crime, as it were—but she hadn’t reacted as I’d expected. I assumed she’d be furious at me for keeping our mom’s contact information a secret from her for so long, but so far, she was only upset that I’d uncovered it at all.

She was careful not to look at me as she spoke. “Sorry, Chloe, but I’ve got five bucks of lunch money left that says the number doesn’t even belong to Mom. It probably goes to some automated government survey or one of those places that’ll tell you sloth facts for three ninety-nine a minute.”

“Sloths can lock their hands onto a branch so hard that they sometimes stay attached even after they die,” Theo said without looking up from his giant bowl of cereal.

Noodle winced as he settled more comfortably on the couch, where I’d arranged him on top of about twelve pillows with enough graphic novels from the library to keep him entertained for a full month. He was particularly into the Nightwave series, a gory but surprisingly upbeat collection of books that we had a hard time keeping on the shelves.

“Don’t worry, Chloe,” Noodle said with a pained smile. “I’ll be fine.”

Theo scooped another bite of soggy cereal into his mouth. “Sloths only poop once a week, and when they do, it’s a giant pile that weighs one-third their body mass.”