Leeva at Last, page 2
“But I want to go,” Leeva tried.
Her father picked up his calculator. Her mother zeroed in on “Famous in a Flash,” the final segment of Celebrities Tonight!, during which an ordinary person was plucked from obscurity and given a ten-year contract to live in Hollywood as a reality star. Mayor Thornblossom both loved and despised this segment. “It should be me,” she muttered, as she always did. “I should be made famous in a flash.”
“Wait.” Leeva looked from one parent to the other. “You weren’t surprised there’s a school. You already knew. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her parents shrugged at each other. Why should we? the shrugs seemed to say.
“How long?” Leeva’s voice quavered. “For how long has there been a school in Nutsmore?”
More shrugging. Since always, big deal, who cares?
“But you always said schools were only in soap operas. That real towns didn’t have them.” Leeva staggered backward as the truth struck her like a bowling ball to the chest: Her parents had lied to her.
Now, Reader, Leeva had known her mother and father were liars, of course. According to the stories they told each other at night, lying was pretty much all they did in their jobs. It was how they’d gotten their jobs, in fact: Vote for us! We promise this, we promise that! But it had never occurred to her that they would lie to her, their own daughter.
Learning that you cannot trust the people you’ve relied on is devastating—like discovering that what you thought was solid earth below your feet was actually a nest of spider bones. Leeva was shaken to her core.
But at the same time, like a rabbit sensing a wolf, she felt all of her senses quicken. Her eyes and ears crackled with new acuity. Her skin began to zizzle as if electrified.
From this moment on, she realized, she must be extremely cautious around these two liars. She must sharpen her wits and be prepared to act with boldness and laser-like speed.
Leeva took a step away from her parents. “Why?” she asked coolly. “If you knew there was a school, why haven’t you ever sent me?”
Her mother scowled. “School teaches those subjects … Human, human … Human Inanities. Music, la-di-la, literature-shmiterature, poetry-shmoetry, art. All that nonsense.”
“Nonsense,” her father parroted. “You only need to learn numbers. So you can make us money.”
“She knows her numbers, Dolt,” her mother reminded him again. “But yes, money is important. Money can get you fame.” She gave her husband a sly wink. “And fame can get you money.”
Leeva thought of the locked bedroom directly above them. The shoeboxes came in, but they never went out. “But what is the money for? What are you going to do with it?”
“Do with it?” Mr. Thornblossom’s brow furrowed. “If I do something with it, I won’t have it.”
“But if you don’t do anything with it, it’s only greenish paper in a box. I don’t understand why you want it.”
“That’s because you’re not a genius like me,” he said, tapping his forehead.
Just then, both television programs ended. Leeva had only a few moments of her parents’ attention before the next ones began. She drew herself up to her full height. “I don’t care if they only teach those Human Inanities. I want to go to school and be with other people.”
“People?” her parents shrieked at once.
“You think people are more important than money and fame?!?” her mother demanded.
“You asked what money is for!” her father cried. “Well, then what are people for?!? Ha! Answer that!” His eyes gleamed in triumph, as if it had been quite an accomplishment, turning her own question around on Leeva.
“People are for being famous to,” Mrs. Thornblossom declared. “Obviously. You can’t be famous without people.”
Mr. Thornblossom added one of his rare thoughts. “And to get money from. That’s all they’re for.”
Leeva felt certain that people were for more important things than getting money from and being famous to. Why else would the characters on The Winds of Our Tides be so desperate to reach other characters? Episode after episode, they burst into rooms, careened through towns, and flew across continents in search of other people.
But why did they do all that? What were people for? The question felt important. It felt like the most important question ever asked. It felt like—
“You can’t go,” her mother barked, dragging Leeva back from her thoughts. “Check your Employee Manual.” She shot a sharp look at her husband.
For a long moment, Mr. Thornblossom seemed confused. But then he withdrew Leeva’s Employee Manual and a pen from the pocket of his recliner. He scribbled in the manual, then held it out. “No going to school. It’s right here, under ‘Workplace Location Restrictions’: No leaving.”
Leeva’s newly sharpened wits reminded her of something. “But there’s an exception for making money or getting famous.”
Her mother shook her head so hard her hair-tower snapped. “Yes, but children don’t get famous or rich for going to school.” She motioned toward the manual. “No school. Read it.”
Leeva didn’t take the manual—she knew perfectly well what her father had done, and she knew that it was unfair. Whenever she encountered unfairness, it felt as if something in her chest were leaping to its feet, trying to punch its way out. That something was rising up now, but Leeva told it to sit back down.
She needed an idea.
She retreated to her thinking spot in the kitchen.
She’d left the premises exactly twice before, for the two exceptions allowed. Perhaps there was something in one of those occasions that could help her now.
The last time was three or four years ago, when her father had driven her to the Cheap-O Depot Grocery Warehouse. Leeva had found the store’s aisles a wonderland of colors and signs and smells, but her father had hustled her into an office. There, he thrust the Nutsmore Weekly at the manager, folded to the Help Wanted ads. “Shelf stocker, night shift,” he read aloud. “My daughter will take the job.”
“It includes mopping, Mr. Thornblossom,” the manager had warned. “Floors get pretty filthy.”
“Yeah, fine, she’s tough.”
“And it’s eight p.m. to four a.m. seven nights a week.”
“She’s not doing anything else then.”
“Well, tell her to come in and apply.”
“She’s right here,” Mr. Thornblossom had said.
The manager, sitting at his tall desk, looked right and left, then straight over Leeva’s head. “Where?”
Mr. Thornblossom attempted to lift Leeva into the manager’s view. Never having held his daughter before, he searched in vain for a handle. Finally, Leeva clambered onto the desk herself. Nights out of her house sounded good to her.
The manager’s eyebrows nearly shot off his face. “That’s a child! There are laws!” Then he eyed Leeva more closely, finger to his chin. “She does look strong. Bring her back when she’s sixteen.”
Leeva had no doubt that her father would do that, but she couldn’t wait until she was sixteen.
She thought back to the other occasion she’d been allowed out. It had been even longer ago, but she still remembered.
Her mother had hauled her out of her crib, slapped makeup on her face, shellacked her hair into a fountain, and then wrapped her in sequined netting. Leeva had forgotten all her discomfort when she’d seen the Little Miss and Little Mister Nutsmore Pageant stage. What a dream! Lights, banners, and, best of all, dozens of other tiny girls and boys!
“What’s her talent?” asked the host, checking in contestants on a clipboard.
And just like that, the dream came crashing down. Unlike the other contestants, Leeva had never learned a dance step, a note of music, or a line of poetry.
As her mother dragged her off the stage and away from those other children, Leeva’s tears had cut deep ravines through her makeup and left her false eyelashes dripping off her chin.
The memory still hurt, but in it, she realized now, was a ray of hope.
Leeva got up and went back into the living room. “Those Human Inanities,” she suggested to her mother at a break in her program. “If I went to school, I could learn them and enter that Little Miss and Little Mister Nutsmore Pageant again. I could win.”
“I cancelled that pageant,” her mother snapped. She shoved a stack of Celebrities This Week at Leeva. “These will teach you about fame.”
Her father shoved a stack of Money Monthly magazines at her. “These will teach you about money. Stop talking and go away.”
Leeva didn’t touch the magazines—she’d already seen plenty of them, it was how she’d taught herself to read and do mathematics. And she knew when she was beat, so she did stop talking and she did go away.
Much later, after she’d gotten herself ready for bed and tucked herself in, she lay wide awake thinking about the evening. What came back to her again and again was her father’s question.
What are people for?
The question galvanized her already-crackling curiosity. The answer, she felt certain, was out there.
The problem was, she was in here.
Well, that would have to change tomorrow.
The building beside Leeva’s house was three stories tall, made of rosy-red brick. From her bedroom window, when the lights were on in this building, she’d often seen people inside. She’d start there.
The instant her parents left the next morning (a Saturday, no matter, her parents worked seven days a week), she bolted out the kitchen door. Leeva had been in the backyard before, of course—it was her job to mow its weeds, page six of the manual, “Workplace Duties.” But today, she marched straight to the tall, prickly hedge, the boundary her manual warned she must never cross. Before she could talk herself out of it, she straightened her spine, raised her fists, and crashed in.
The first thing she noticed was the piney, fresh scent. How had she lived between eight and nine whole years without knowing how thrilling it smelled to push through a boundary? That scent was worth all the scratches. She filled her lungs with it and pushed on through.
Leeva emerged beside a large red metal container, printed with the words Book Return. In front of her lay a paved drive.
The drive ran along the side of the rosy-brick building and was painted down its center with instructive yellow arrows.
She stepped out and followed the arrows to the back of the building, where she passed a stoop. Still following the arrows, she rounded another corner. Seeing that the drive only led through a parking lot and then out to the street, Leeva retraced her steps; there’d been a door into the rosy-brick building on that back stoop. She climbed up, walked past pots of herbs, a chair, and a table, and opened that door.
She found herself in a tiny hallway, crowded with boxes, umbrellas, skateboards, gloves, and helmets. Past this clutter, though, was a single spacious, bright room more appealing than any she’d ever seen, even in The Winds of Our Tides. Leeva hid behind a huge picture frame draped in canvas and took it all in for a moment.
Sun streamed through windows whose deep sills were filled with cushions and cheerful scarlet geraniums. Plump chairs and colorful rugs were scattered everywhere. Directly across, double doors stood wide open to the street as if in welcome. Best of all, books and books and books lined every wall and filled tall shelves in the middle of the room.
Leeva had long been curious about books. The people in The Winds of Our Tides had lots of them in their homes, and they seemed proud of them, although no one ever did anything with them, except the children, who read them in their beds. And Leeva had often seen books displayed behind the celebrities on her mother’s programs. But she’d never seen anything like the abundance in front of her. If she were ever to need her picture taken, this certainly would be the place. That wasn’t what she needed today, though.
Leeva stepped out and walked up to the only other person in the place, a sad-faced youngish man seated behind a desk. He was reading one of the books, so apparently grown-ups did that as well. “I have a question,” she said.
The sad-faced youngish man straightened up. He tightened the knot of his tie. “Well, a library is a good place to find answers.”
“Library?” asked Leeva, who had never seen the front of the building with its large sign that read Nutsmore Public Library.
“Your first visit?” The sad-faced youngish man—or maybe he was an oldish boy, it can be hard to tell when someone is wearing a tie—closed his book and really looked at Leeva.
Being really looked at was a new experience, and it made Leeva feel more solid somehow. “My first visit,” she confirmed.
“Library.” He spread his arms. “A place full of books you can read here or take home for a while.”
Leeva gasped. “You’d let me read your books?”
“Not my books. Yours.”
Leeva gasped again. “My books?”
“Your books. This is a public library.” He tapped a nameplate. It read Pauline Flowers, but Pauline had been crossed out and Harry had been handwritten over it. “I’m Harry. I’m the librarian here. Well … actually, it’s only as long as my aunt can’t …” A look flashed over Harry Flowers’s face that was not simple sadness. It was outright misery.
The look barely lasted a second, but Leeva knew it all right. She was an expert in identifying human expressions thanks to her years of studying The Winds of Our Tides—soap operas are first-rate training grounds for identifying emotions: Rage, Desire, Shock, Disgust, you name it, portrayed in extreme exaggeration and slow motion, over and over.
“You don’t like being a librarian?”
“No, no, I do!” he protested. “Although … I’m sorry that I have to be one. I mean, I’m happy I can do it, just …” Here, he flung himself over the desk, as if he couldn’t go on. But then he raised his head and waved toward the nearest armchair. “Oh, I might as well tell you the story.”
Leeva climbed onto the chair. “Your armchair is commodious,” she commented. Commodious—both roomy and comfortable—was a word she’d learned two years before and had been trying to use since. Using a word was the crowning pleasure of acquiring one, but there had never been anything roomy or comfortable in her house.
“Wow, commodious, thanks. So, you see, my aunt is the librarian here. But now she can’t get up and down the stairs, not with her knees, not these stairs, anyway.”
“What’s wrong with her knees?” Leeva asked.
“Cracked, both of them, two months ago. Skate-boarding. Just an ollie with a three-sixty, a move she’d done a hundred times, but she hit a pothole.” And here he shot a mystifying glare out the window that faced the hedge Leeva had just crashed through.
“Can she get them fixed?”
“She could if …” Once more, Harry frowned toward the window. “No, they cut her health insurance. Anyway, the stairs are too unsafe, and she can’t fix those either, no money in the budget, so I am filling in for her.” He pressed a hand to his heart and raised his voice as if he were addressing the ceiling. “It’s an honor to carry on her dream! I ask no more of life than to be allowed to follow in her footsteps!”
It seemed to Leeva that he had practiced this speech before. She swung her feet and listened politely as he explained about carrying on proud heritages and such.
Finally Harry Flowers slumped back in his seat. “So, I’m not a real librarian,” he said, “not unless I go to school for it. I guess I’m only the … well, the acting librarian.”
“Acting librarian?”
“Acting! Yes!” And suddenly, Harry Flowers didn’t look sad. He looked joyful, as if he didn’t usually dare hope for something, but for at least this moment he did dare hope for it. He sprang out of his seat. “Let me show you around.”
The perked-up acting librarian began with a dramatic sweep of his arm. “Here on the first floor is the fiction. Stories.” Then he led Leeva up a spiral staircase. The staircase was missing several chunks of railing, some banisters, and a number of treads. Leeva dodged nimbly around the broken parts, which made it more fun.
“Up here are the informational texts,” he said when they reached the second floor. “Nonfiction.”
The second floor was just as inviting as the first. Leeva wanted to explore it, but Harry took a step down.
Leeva didn’t move. She sniffed deeply. “What’s that?”
“Oh. Cookies. Oatmeal-apricot today. My aunt and I live on the top floor.” He took another step down.
Leeva couldn’t move, though. It was as though her nose had hypnotized her legs. She had never smelled anything so wonderful before. “Cookies?”
“It’s a life goal of hers—to make every cookie recipe in the world. Now that she can’t do her job, it’s become even more important.”
Just then, there came a splashy crash from above.
Harry nodded as if he’d expected it. “Mixing bowls,” he said. “She’s washing the dishes.” There came another crash—this one more metallic. Harry winced. “There go the spoons.”
“It’s kind of loud for dishwashing,” Leeva noted.
Harry nodded. “Aunt Pauline is pretty unhappy.”
“She misses the books,” Leeva guessed.
“No, I bring her books,” Harry said. “It’s matching them up with readers she misses so much. Handing exactly the right book to the right person at the right time and saying, ‘This one.’” Just then came another crash, clinky with broken china. Harry grabbed his temples. “She takes it out on the dishes.”
Often, after an especially miserable evening, Leeva found herself knocking pots and pans around in the sink. “I do, too,” she said. “It makes you feel better.”
The acting librarian gave Leeva a quizzical look and then led her downstairs. There, he settled himself behind his desk. He reached for his book, but then he looked up. “I almost forgot. You had a question.”
“Yes. I want to find out: What are people for?”
