131 lines
9.2 KiB
Plaintext
131 lines
9.2 KiB
Plaintext
{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil Helvetica;}}
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\f0\fs24 The morning had settled into its quieter register by the time Elikapeka rinsed the last of the breakfast bowls and set them in the rack. Lizzie sat at the kitchen table with her book open but not really reading it, listening to the ordinary sounds of the house\u8212?Emma's footsteps overhead, the drip of the faucet, the refrigerator's low mechanical hum.\par
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\par
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"Library first," her mother said, without turning from the sink. "Then Safeway. Get your shoes."\par
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\par
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This was the best kind of Saturday.\par
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\par
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Emma appeared in the doorway in the way she sometimes did, drawn by sounds of departure. "Where are you going?"\par
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\par
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"Library," Lizzie said.\par
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\par
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Emma looked at her with the mild incomprehension she reserved for Lizzie's reading habits, as though Lizzie had announced a trip to observe industrial piping. "I'll stay here."\par
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\par
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"Fine," their mother said, drying her hands. She picked up her purse from the counter and glanced at Lizzie. "Two minutes."\par
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\par
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Lizzie was ready in ninety seconds.\par
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\par
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---\par
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\par
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The library was cool and smelled of paper and air conditioning and the faint ghost of carpet cleaner, and Lizzie felt something loosen in her chest the moment they pushed through the glass doors. Her mother went toward the new releases display near the front while Lizzie moved with practiced efficiency into the stacks, already half-composing her summer in her head. A book a day was not ambitious; it was simply what summer was for.\par
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\par
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She was working through the fiction section when the spine caught her eye.\par
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\par
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*Stardust.* Neil Gaiman. The cover showed a falling star against a dark sky, and the weight of it in her hands felt exactly right\u8212?the right thickness, the right heft. She turned it over and read the back and felt the particular quickening she associated with books that were going to matter.\par
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\par
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She brought it to her mother.\par
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\par
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Elikapeka was standing near the periodicals, a gardening magazine held loosely in one hand. She took the book, read the back cover with the focused efficiency she applied to most things, and then paged through it. Not quickly\u8212?she was actually reading, sampling sentences, checking for whatever it was she checked for. Lizzie waited.\par
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\par
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Her mother handed it back. "No."\par
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\par
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"Why not?"\par
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\par
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"It's not appropriate."\par
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\par
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"Mom, it's fantasy. It's about a star\u8212?"\par
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\par
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"I read the back cover, Lizzie. I also read several pages." Her mother returned her attention briefly to the gardening magazine and then set it down. "The answer is no."\par
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\par
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Lizzie looked at the book in her hands and then placed it carefully back on the display shelf, because the alternative was holding it while they walked away from it, which would be worse. "It's a fairy tale," she said. "It literally says so."\par
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\par
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"Lizzie."\par
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\par
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There was no appeal from that tone. Lizzie knew this the way she knew her multiplication tables\u8212?not as a conclusion she'd reasoned her way to but as a fact about the structure of the world. Her mother did not raise her voice and did not repeat herself and did not change her mind once it was made, and the punishments for sustained dissent were specifically calibrated: no books. Not for a day, sometimes two. It was the most effective punishment her mother had ever devised, and she seemed to know it.\par
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\par
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Lizzie went back into the stacks.\par
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\par
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She moved through the shelves with less direction now, running her fingers along spines without reading them. Then she stopped, because of course. She pulled *Dragonflight* from the shelf, and then *Dragonquest*, and the third one, and stood with them in the crook of her arm feeling something settle.\par
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\par
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She knew these books the way she knew certain songs\u8212?not just the plot but the specific texture of sentences, the way Lessa's voice sounded in her head, the particular quality of the Weyr at night. She had read them so many times that the paperback spines were soft and the pages at her favorite chapters fell open on their own. She thought sometimes about Anne McCaffrey sitting somewhere writing these, not knowing that a girl in Washington would one day read them over and over and want, more than almost anything, to do what she had done. Make something out of nothing. Put a world on paper that hadn't existed before.\par
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\par
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She added *The White Dragon* and went to find her mother.\par
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\par
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Elikapeka looked at the stack with the expression she sometimes wore when she was being patient. She took the top book, glanced at it, handed it back. "You've read these."\par
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\par
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"Yes."\par
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\par
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"Several times."\par
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\par
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"Yes."\par
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\par
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"There's no shortage of books in this library, Lizzie. Don't you want to read something you haven't read before?"\par
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\par
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Lizzie looked at her. "I tried to. You said no."\par
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\par
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A short pause. Her mother's expression shifted almost imperceptibly\u8212?not softened, exactly, but recalibrated. "That one wasn't appropriate."\par
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\par
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"I know. You said." Lizzie held her stack a little more firmly. "These are appropriate. You've already decided they're appropriate. Can I check them out?"\par
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\par
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Her mother looked at the books again. Lizzie watched her work through whatever she was working through. Outside the library's tall windows, the late May light was very bright.\par
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\par
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"You're also going to read Lord of the Rings this summer?"\par
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\par
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"I have my own copies. I don't need to check those out."\par
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\par
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"That's four books. For today."\par
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\par
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"It's not all for today. It's for the week." She paused. "Maybe less."\par
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\par
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Her mother picked up the Dragonflight paperback and examined it, turning it over, looking at the cover art of a dragon against a red sky with an expression Lizzie couldn't fully read. Then she handed it back.\par
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\par
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"Fine," she said. "Check them out."\par
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\par
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Lizzie went to the circulation desk before her mother could reconsider.\par
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\par
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---\par
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\par
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Safeway was crowded in the particular Saturday-morning way, and Elikapeka moved through it at a deliberate pace that Lizzie had learned to find maddening. Her mother shopped as she did most things\u8212?methodically, completely, attending to each decision as though it deserved full consideration. Lizzie loved her deeply and would have traded her shopping habits for almost any other arrangement.\par
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\par
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"Can I take the list?" she said.\par
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\par
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Her mother looked at her. "Why?"\par
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\par
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"I can get half of it while you're doing the other half. It'll be faster."\par
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\par
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"What's the hurry?"\par
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\par
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Lizzie glanced at the bag of library books hanging from her shoulder. Her mother followed her gaze and something crossed her face that might, in a different woman, have been amusement.\par
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\par
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"The produce section," she said. "Everything on the list that comes from produce. Then the dairy aisle. Come back to me after that."\par
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\par
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Lizzie took the list and went.\par
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\par
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She moved through the store with the focused efficiency of someone who knew exactly what she wanted to get back to. Oranges, she could find oranges. Green onions. The small container of grape tomatoes her mother liked to put in salads. She navigated around a man studying yogurt with too much deliberation and threaded between two carts near the leafy greens and was back with the produce items in four minutes.\par
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\par
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Her mother was in the cereal aisle. Lizzie held up the bag.\par
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\par
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"Good." Elikapeka inspected each item briefly as she transferred them to the cart. "Dairy next. Butter and the shredded mozzarella. The low-moisture kind, it comes in the green bag."\par
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\par
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Lizzie went.\par
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\par
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The dairy aisle was cold and long and she found the butter quickly. The mozzarella took an extra minute because someone had moved the green bags behind the whole-milk variety, but she located them and was back before her mother had reached the end of the cereal aisle.\par
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\par
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"Done," she said.\par
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\par
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Her mother looked at the items, looked at the list, and nodded. "You're efficient when you're motivated."\par
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\par
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"I'm always motivated."\par
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\par
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"You're motivated by specific things." Her mother pushed the cart forward. "That's different."\par
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\par
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Lizzie fell into step beside her, the library bag knocking gently against her hip. Through the bag she could feel the familiar soft weight of the books, the worn Dragonflight paperback at the top of the stack.\par
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\par
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They moved through the rest of the store together, her mother pausing at the things that required pausing and Lizzie ranging ahead when she was allowed to, and Lizzie thought about the afternoon\u8212?the particular quality of her bedroom in late May light, the smell of her own copy of Lord of the Rings, which was different from the library's smell, more personal somehow. She thought about Anne McCaffrey in whatever room she'd written in, and about whether Neil Gaiman had written other books she might be allowed to read, and about whether she would someday put a world on paper that a girl somewhere would read so many times the spine went soft.\par
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\par
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Probably not, said the part of her brain that was practical.\par
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\par
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Maybe, said everything else.\par
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\par
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Her mother set a can of tomatoes in the cart and moved on, and Lizzie followed, and outside the long windows of the store the Saturday light was very bright and the summer had barely started.
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