“Olivia, dear, you shouldn’t abandon your guests,” Mrs. Blocken’s voice preceded her into the entry. “We weren’t—” She stopped suddenly seeing Mark, whose gaze never left her daughter’s face. “What’s he doing here?” Mrs. Blocken’s demand was laced with disgust. “Is this your idea of a joke, India?”
“I—”
The remaining party members materialized behind Mrs. Blocken.
“Olivia.” Mark said her name like a prayer. “I have to speak with you. Please.”
“Get him out of here this instant, India,” Mrs. Blocken ordered. “I’m holding you responsible for this. I didn’t want your family to have anything to do with the wedding, but Olivia insisted that you take part. I see now that my earlier judgment was correct.”
My face burned. I grabbed my brother’s arm more roughly than necessary and shoved him toward the door.
Bobby mumbled a hasty good-bye to Bree. As I was pushing my brother out the door, he grabbed the frame. “Mark,” I hissed.
He clung tight. “I really need to talk to you. I’ll be in my office at Martin all day tomorrow. Meet me, please!” He called over his shoulder.
I pried Mark’s right hand from the jam, and Bobby worked on his left. When Mark let go, I pushed him outside, Bobby on my heels. The door slammed behind us, and we heard the bolt slide home.
On the front lawn, Mark shook out of my grasp. “Let go.”
Hoping the Blockens wouldn’t overhear, I demanded, “What are you doing here?”
“I had to speak to her. She’s making a mistake,” he said, obviously unconcerned with eavesdropping.
His face was the color of the inside of a watermelon, and his thin chest heaved up and down so rapidly I thought he would hyperventilate.
A neighbor across the street glanced up from her faded azaleas. Bobby stood beside my car, suggesting we leave before the Blockens called the cops.
I ignored him. “She’s getting married in a week. Leave it alone.”
Mark rushed to his car and threw open the door. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. It’s obvious where your loyalties lie.”
“Wait,” I called, running after him. He peeled away from the curb and down the normally quiet Kilbourne. I watched him drive away and silently prayed that he wouldn’t die in a horrific accident.
Bobby walked up behind me. “Thanks for inviting me. This was fun.”
Chapter Five
A gauze bandage was more likely to fix the ozone layer than a Martin student was to enter the Ryan Memorial Library on Saturday of the Fourth of July weekend. Regardless of this basic logic, I held my post behind the reference desk bright and early the next morning. I disliked the location of the reference desk. “Island” would be a more apt description of the area, which was a glorified high counter floating in the middle of the main floor. In it, I felt exposed and cut off from the safety of walls and back exits. After reading library management journals, the previous library director relocated the reference area directly in front of the library’s main entrance, hoping that after a patron ran into it, he’d ask a question. Although the undergrads had more bruises than before, the arrangement was not exactly working as planned—and wouldn’t, as long as Internet search engines dominated the average student’s research methods.
By ten o’clock, our only patron was an elderly journalism professor who sat in the back of the main floor cursing at the microfiche machine. Occasionally, a loud bang drifted from the professor’s general direction, but the library staff turned a deaf ear. The professor had a reputation for biting off heads. I was flipping through a new botany text to distract myself. Mark’s emotional drop-in visit to the Blockens’ yesterday reminded me of Olivia’s ill-fated high school graduation party. His two appearances were so similar that the thought of one always reminded me of the other, and I wished that I could forget them both.
The party had been half graduation party, half bon voyage. She had received a summer internship in Virginia, so she was heading south in mid-June as opposed to August. I’d snuck out of my house to go to the party. I didn’t want my brother to know where I was going. He was having a hard time accepting Olivia’s decision to move to Virginia. He had been constantly calling her and dropping in on the Blockens all spring hoping that he could change her mind with sheer persistence. The family became increasingly annoyed with Mark’s pursuit. Mrs. Blocken thought I was egging him as some kind of practical joke. “This isn’t funny, India,” she told me on numerous occasions.
The party was the highlight of the graduation season and held in the Blocken backyard. All of Mrs. Blocken’s friends were there, including the mayor and his wife and the president of Martin College and her husband.
Just when the party was at its height, Mark stumbled through the Blockens’ opened gate. Olivia sat on her boyfriend-of-the-moment’s lap, a baseball player from a rival high school. I stood with some classmates, only half listening to their chatter about summer jobs. Because I wasn’t paying attention to the group, I was the first one to notice my brother. I started to make my way to him, but there were too many partygoers between us for me to reach him before he called out.
“Olivia!”
Olivia, who was whispering something to her jock boyfriend, either didn’t hear him or pretended not to, but Mrs. Blocken certainly did. She had her gaze trained on Mark with a glare that could have melted iron. She started toward him. Mark saw her coming and backed up into the buffet table. Somehow he managed to kick out one of the legs from under it and the table fell. Cucumber sandwiches, olives, and cake toppled to the ground. The well-groomed guests gawked at Mark, who had potato salad in his hair and punch down the front of his shirt. He struggled to get up and hurried toward Olivia. His tumble had gained her full attention. She’d left her jock and stood a few feet from him.
“Olivia, I love you.” He smiled at her as if he believed that she would return his affection. “Please stay, or if you really want to go to Virginia, I’ll transfer down there.”
Olivia looked at him for a long minute as if she realized for the first time that he wasn’t joking. Up to that point, she always accepted Mark’s attentions as if it were a game that they played. I had to admit to myself that I thought the same way, but seeing Mark there covered in punch in front of all those guests, there was no question that he was earnest.
“I don’t love you,” she said. “I’m going to Virginia alone.”
Mark sucked in a breath as if he couldn’t get enough air. I was frozen with embarrassment. If the earth would have opened up at that moment, I would have willingly dove in.
Snickers and giggles coursed through the group.
“Your brother is such a freak,” one of my classmates whispered into my ear.
Mrs. Blocken shook with rage. “Get out, and stay away from my daughter.”
Mark kept his gaze fixed on Olivia.
“Leave,” Mrs. Blocken said.
A group of varsity jocks were quickly closing in on my brother. They would like nothing better than to throw a nerd like Mark over the Blockens’ fence.
Luckily, they didn’t get that chance because Olivia spoke first. “I don’t want you at my party, Mark. Go home.”
Tears welled up in his eyes, and he staggered away, back through the open gate.
Later, I found him curled in a ball in his apartment. I called my sister, and she took over with her usual efficiency, and, in the fall, I ran away to art school.
The phone at the check-out desk rang.
A moment later, Lasha Lint, the director of the library, bellowed, “Botswana, phone.”
Startled, I jumped. Lasha shook the receiver at me. Black, solid, relatively young, and loud, Lasha is nothing like the withering-violet type that many think of when they conjure up the image of a librarian. With a brutal penchant for nicknames, she hadn’t called me India since my first day at Martin.
“Botswana,” I said as I hopped off my chair, sending it skidding on its polished wheels into the reference counter. “That’s a new one.”