‘Why are you the idiot?’ I ask.
‘Because I did sort of want to kiss him, but at the same time I like someone else.’ She looks at me with mascara-smudged eyes. ‘But the “someone else” isn’t really an option. I mean, I want him to be an option, but I don’t know if he is.’
George is a lot like Henry when she starts talking about something. It’s not all that easy to follow her line of thought.
‘The guy that I like writes to me in the Letter Library,’ she explains. ‘He leaves – at least he was leaving – letters between pages 44 and 45 of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.’ She pulls her shirt open a little so I can see the sky-blue 44.
‘Do you know who he is?’ I ask, thinking that the guy she has on her skin could be anyone.
‘I think I do. I’m pretty sure. He hasn’t come to get the letters that I’ve left in the book for a while so I’ve stopped leaving them. I haven’t stop waiting for his, though.’
‘You’re certain that Martin didn’t write them?’ I ask, and she says she’s certain he didn’t.
It’s a shame. I like Martin and he seems to like George plus he’s here, which this letter writer isn’t.
‘I lie in bed thinking about him, you know?’ she asks, and I do know. I haven’t felt that way for a long time, but I know.
‘What would you do?’ she asks, and it occurs to me that George can’t have that many good friends if she’s asking me that question. ‘If it were you . . .’ she says.
I think back to that night when I was desperate for Henry. When Lola and I were laughing and breaking into the bookstore. In hindsight, it wasn’t my best idea.
‘I’d play it safe. I’d wait and see.’
Since she doesn’t know about the letter that I wrote to Henry, I just tell her that I loved someone once, who didn’t love me back. Then I met a boy called Joel, who did. I tell her how good it is when someone you like wants to spend time with you. Real time.
‘Did you sleep with Joel?’ she asks, and it feels as though George and I are alike. We’ve both had great brothers but no sisters to ask about things like this. George seems young tonight. She is young. She hovers on the edge of her seat, waiting to hear my answer.
‘I did,’ I say. ‘After a while and when I was sure.’
She asks me about it, so I tell her. And as I do, I almost feel how I did that first night that Joel and I were together in his room. His parents were away. We’d already decided. His hands moved over my skin in velvet jolts. The actual act was okay the first time, but it got better as we knew each other more. The parts that I really miss came after sex, when we’d lay together in our warmth, talking about the future. ‘It’s a big deal,’ I tell her. ‘People might tell you it’s not, but it is.’
Drunk boys in tuxedos cartwheel across the road in front of us. Girls, sheeny and strapless, applaud.
‘I like your dress better,’ I say to George, and start the car to go home.
My plan is to deliver George to the bookstore and keep driving. But when we arrive I look through the window and see Michael talking to Frederick and Frieda.
It reminds me of nights in Year 9 when they all helped Henry and me with English. The bookstore was always a hub of people who loved words and ideas and wanted to talk about them. Michael charged other students for tutoring, but he said I was like a daughter and refused to take my money.
Henry’s right. I don’t have a sense of humour anymore. I lost my friends in Sea Ridge because of it. They tried to hang in there with me but I pushed them away, the same way I pushed Joel.
‘Are you okay?’ George asks.
‘Not really,’ I say, and follow her inside to talk to Michael.
I ask if I can speak to him alone for a minute.
‘Certainly, Rachel,’ he says, and we walk towards the Letter Library. He puts his hand on the books, the way a person might do to feel the heat from something. ‘There’s twenty years of history here,’ he says. ‘More, if you count the history of each author.’
I already knew all the things that Henry reminded me of earlier. I knew that Sophia and Michael had divorced. I knew they were selling the bookstore. But my skin is thick since Cal died. All the sadness of losing him is sealed in and no one else’s sadness seems to get through.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been rude this week,’ I say, and he accepts my apology without question.
‘I know it’s a difficult job. That’s why I chose you.’
His words weigh me down but I want them anyway. ‘I’ve finished the alphabetising,’ I tell him. ‘It took me all week.’
I try to strike the right tone – gentle, kind – but I’ve lost those octaves and my voice sounds harsh. ‘I still think it’ll take longer than six months, even with overtime.’
‘The job’s too big,’ he says, with all the octaves I’ve lost.
It is, but that’s not what I’m trying to tell him. ‘If you give me a key to the bookstore, I could work double time. I could catalogue when it’s quiet, that way I won’t be interrupted by customers.’
‘Thank you,’ he says, and runs his eyes over the spines of the books. ‘It’s a library of people, really,’ he explains, and gives me a spare key.
George and Michael go upstairs, and Frederick and Frieda go home. I stay and continue work on the Letter Library, trying to see it as a library of people. If it is, it’s people who Michael doesn’t know. It’s like Cal’s box in the car. It’s the leftover things that don’t add up to anything that matters.
I’ve promised, though. The Letter Library is the heart of the bookstore, and the bookstore is Michael’s life, so I’ll try. It’s Henry’s life too. I don’t know how he’s planning on living without it. I keep imagining the whole family returning to the shop the same way Mum and I drifted in and out of Cal’s room.
I’ve been going for an hour, entering people’s thoughts and notes into my database, when I pull out the copy of T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations. I turn to page 4, but of course my love letter’s not there. I pull out some books and search behind them for it. I flick through the books on either side of the Eliot, but I don’t find anything. A lot of people visit the Library. It’s most likely some stranger took the letter without knowing the worth of it.
Henry read me ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ once, on a night in Year 8. We were lying on the floor of the bookstore, and I’d told him that I didn’t like poetry. ‘I can’t understand it, so it never makes me feel anything.’
‘Hang on,’ he’d said, going over to the shelves.
He came back with the Prufrock. The poem did sound like a love song. As I listened I stared at a mark on the ceiling that looked like a tear-shaped sun. The mark somehow got mixed with the words.
I didn’t know exactly what ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ was about, but lying there next to Henry, with his voice so close, I wanted to disturb something. I wanted to disturb us, shake us out of him seeing me as just Rachel, his best friend. I loved the poem for making me feel like disturbance was possible. And because it said something to me about life that I wanted to know, but didn’t understand.