“No, it’s not so bad,” I say at last with a smile. “Just old.”
“Nothing wrong with old.”
“You’d know,” I say. It’s a running line. Roland refuses to tell me how long he’s been here. He can’t be that old, or at least he doesn’t look it—one of the perks is that, as long as they serve, they don’t age—but whenever I ask him about his life before the Archive, his years hunting Histories, he twists the topic, or glides right over it. As for his years as Librarian, he’s equally vague. I’ve heard Librarians work for ten or fifteen years before retiring—just because the age doesn’t show doesn’t mean they don’t feel older—but with Roland, I can’t tell. I remember his mentioning a Moscow branch, and once, absently, Scotland.
The music floats around us.
He returns his shoes to the floor and begins to straighten up the desk. “What else can I do for you?”
Ben. I can’t dance around it, and I can’t lie. I need his help. Only Librarians can navigate the stacks. “Actually…I was hoping—”
“Don’t ask me for that.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to—”
“The pause and the guilty look give you away.”
“But I—”
“Mackenzie.”
The use of my first name makes me flinch.
“Roland. Please.”
His eyes settle on mine, but he says nothing.
“I can’t find it on my own,” I press, trying to keep my voice level.
“You shouldn’t find it at all.”
“I haven’t asked you in weeks,” I say. Because I’ve been asking Lisa instead.
Another long moment, and then finally Roland closes his eyes in a slow, surrendering blink. His fingers drift to a notepad the same size and shape as my Archive paper, and he scribbles something on it. Half a minute later, Elliot reappears, his own pad of paper at his side. He gives Roland a questioning look.
“Sorry to call you back,” says Roland. “I won’t be gone long.”
Elliot nods and silently takes a seat. The front desk is never left unattended. I follow Roland through the doors and into the atrium. It’s dotted with Librarians, and I recognize Lisa across the way, her black bob disappearing down a side hall toward older stacks. But otherwise I do not look up at the arching ceiling and its colored glass, do not marvel at the quiet beauty, do not linger, in case any pause in my step makes Roland change his mind. I focus on the stacks as he leads me to Ben.
I’ve tried to memorize the route—to remember which of the ten wings we go down, to note which set of stairs we take, to count the lefts and rights we make through the halls—but I can never hold the pattern in my head, and even when I think I have, it doesn’t work out the next time. I don’t know if it’s me, or if the route changes. Maybe they reorder the shelves. I think of how I used to arrange movies: one day best to worst, the next by color, the next title…Everyone in these stacks died in the branch’s jurisdiction, but beyond that, there doesn’t seem to be a consistent method of filing. In the end, only Librarians can navigate these stacks.
Today Roland leads me through the atrium, then down the sixth wing, through several smaller corridors, across a courtyard, and up a short set of wooden steps before finally coming to a stop in a spacious reading room. A red rug covers most of the floor, and chairs are tucked into corners; but it is, for the most part, a grid of drawers.
Each drawer’s face is roughly the size of a coffin’s end.
Roland brings his hand gently against one. Above his fingers I can see the white placard in its copper holder. Below the copper holder is a keyhole.
And then Roland turns away.
“Thank you,” I whisper as he passes.
“Your key won’t work,” he says.
“I know.”
“It’s not him,” he adds softly. “Not really.”
“I know,” I say, already stepping up to the drawer. My fingers hover over the name.
BISHOP, BENJAMIN GEORGE
2003–2013
FIVE
I TRACE MY FINGERS over the dates, and it is last year again and I’m sitting in one of those hospital chairs that look like they might actually be comfortable but they’re not because there’s nothing comfortable about hospitals. Da has been gone three years. I am fifteen now, and Ben is ten, and he’s dead.
The cops are talking to Dad and the doctor is telling Mom that Ben died on impact, and that word—impact—makes me turn and retch into one of the hospital’s gray bins.
The doctor tries to say there wasn’t time to feel it, but that’s not true. Mom feels it. Dad feels it. I feel it. I feel like my skeleton is being ripped through my skin, and I wrap my arms around my ribs to hold it in. I walked with him, all the way to the corner of Lincoln and Smith like always, and he drew a stick-figure Ben on my hand like always and I drew a stick-figure Mac on his like always and he told me it didn’t even look like a human being and I told him it wasn’t and he told me I was weird and I told him he was late for school.
I can see the black scribble on the back of his hand through the white sheet. The sheet doesn’t rise and fall, not one small bit, and I can’t take my eyes off it as Mom and Dad and the doctors talk and there is crying and words and I have neither because I’m focusing on the fact that I will see him again. I twist my ring, a spot of silver above black fingerless knit gloves that run to my elbows because I cannot cannot cannot look at the stick-figure Ben on the back of my hand. I twist the ring and run my thumb over the grooves and tell myself that it’s okay. It’s not okay, of course.
Ben is ten and he’s dead. But he’s not gone. Not for me.
Hours later, after we get home from the hospital, three weak instead of four strong, I climb out my window and run down dark streets to the Narrows door in the alley behind the butcher’s.
Lisa is on duty at the desk in the Archive, and I ask her to take me to Ben. When she tries to tell me that it’s not possible, I order her to show me the way; and when she still says no, I take off running. I run for hours through the corridors and rooms and courtyards of the Archive, even though I have no idea where I’m going. I run as if I’ll just know where Ben is, the way the Librarians know where things are, but I don’t. I run past stacks and columns and rows and walls of names and dates in small black ink.
I run forever.
I run until Roland grabs my arm and shoves me into a side room, and there on the far wall halfway up, I see his name. Roland lets go of me long enough to turn and close the door, and that’s when I see the keyhole beneath Ben’s dates. It’s not even the same size or shape as my key, but I still rip the cord from my throat and force the key in. It doesn’t turn. Of course it doesn’t turn. I try again and again.
I bang on the cabinet to wake my brother up, the metallic sound shattering the precious quiet, and then Roland is there, pulling me away, pinning my arms back against my body with one hand, muffling my shouts with the other.
I have not cried at all, not once.
Now I sink down to the floor in front of Ben’s cabinet—Roland’s arms still wrapped around me—and sob.
I sit on the red rug with my back to Ben’s shelf, tugging my sleeves over my hands as I tell my brother about the new apartment, about Mom’s latest project and Dad’s new job at the university. Sometimes when I run out of things to tell Ben, I recite the stories Da told me. This is how I pass the night, time blurring at the edges.
Sometime later, I feel the familiar scratch against my thigh, and dig the list from my pocket. The careful cursive announces:
Thomas Rowell. 12.
I pocket the list and sink back against the shelves. A few minutes later I hear the soft tread of footsteps, and look up.
“Shouldn’t you be at the desk?” I ask.
“Patrick’s shift now,” says Roland, nudging me with a red Chuck. “You can’t stay here forever.” He slides down the wall beside me. “Go do your job. Find that History.”
“It’s my second one today.”
“It’s an old building, the Coronado. You know what that means.”