My heart hammers in my ears as I clutch the glasses. I don’t have to rewind, guide
the memory back to the start, because there’s only one sad set of images looping inside
these plastic frames; and sure enough, a moment later the darkness wobbles into gray,
and it starts again. I let the stilted memory of Ben loop five times—each time hoping
it will sharpen, hoping it will grow into a scene instead of a few smudged moments—before
I finally force myself to let go, force myself to blink, and it’s gone and I’m back
in a box-filled bedroom, cradling my dead brother’s glasses.
My hands are shaking, and I can’t tell if it’s from anger or sadness or fear. Fear
that I’m losing him, bit by bit. Not just his face—that started to fade right away—but
the marks he made on the world.
I set the glasses by my bed and return the rest of Ben’s things to their box. I’m
about to put my ring back on when a thought stops me.
Marks.
Our last house was new when we moved in. Every scuff was ours, every nick was ours,
and all of them had stories.
Now, as I look around at a room filled not only with boxes but plenty of its own marks,
I want to know the stories behind them. Or rather, a part of me wants to know those
stories. The other part of me thinks that’s the worst idea in the world, but I don’t
listen to that part. Ignorance may be bliss, but only if it outweighs curiosity.
Curiosity is a gateway drug to sympathy,
Da’s warning echoes in my head, and I know, I know; but there are no Histories here
to feel sympathy
for
. Which is exactly why the Archive wouldn’t approve. They don’t approve of any form
of recreational reading.
But it’s
my
talent, and it’s not like a little light goes off every time I use it. Besides, I’ve
already broken the rule once tonight by reading Ben’s things, so I might as well group
my infractions. I clear a space on the floor, which gives off a low thrum when my
fingertips press against the boards. Here in the Outer, the floors hold the best impressions.
I reach, and my hands begin to tingle. The numbness slides up my wrists as the line
between the wall and my skin seems to dissolve. Behind my closed eyes, the room takes
shape again, the same and yet different. For one thing, I see myself standing in it,
just like I was a few moments ago, looking down at Ben’s box. The color’s been bleached
out, leaving a faded landscape of memory, and the whole picture is faint, like a print
in sand, recent but already fading.
I get my footing in the moment before I begin to roll the memory backward.
It plays like a film in reverse.
Time spins away and the room fills up with shadows, there and gone and there and gone,
so fast they overlap. Movers. Boxes disappear until the space is bare. In a matter
of moments, the scene goes dark. Empty. But not ended. Vacant. I can feel the older
memories beyond the dark. I rewind faster, searching for more people, more stories.
There’s nothing, nothing, and then the memories flicker up again.
Broad surfaces hold on to every impression, but there are two kinds—those burned in
by emotion and those worn in by repetition—and they register differently. The first
is bold, bright, defined. This room is full of the second kind—dull, long periods
of habit worn into the surfaces, years pressed into a moment more like a photo than
a film. Most of what I see are faded snapshots: a dark wooden desk and a wall of books,
a man walking like a pendulum back and forth between the two; a woman stretched out
on a couch; an older couple. The room flares into clarity during a fight, but by the
time the woman has slammed the door, the scene fades back into shadow, and then dark
again.
A heavy, lasting dark.
And yet, I can feel something past it.
Something bright, vivid, promising.
The numbness spreads up my arms and through my chest as I press my hands flush against
the floorboards, reaching through the span of black until a dull ache forms behind
my eyes and the darkness finally gives way to light and shape and memory. I’ve pushed
too hard, rewound too far. The scenes skip back too fast, a blur, spiraling out of
my control so that I have to drag time until it slows, lean into it until it shudders
to a stop around me.
When it does, I’m kneeling in a room that is my room and isn’t. I’m about to continue
backward, when something stops me. On the floor, a few feet in front of my hands,
is a drop of something blackish, and a spray of broken glass. I look up.
At first glance it’s a pretty room, old-fashioned, delicate, white furniture with
painted flowers…but the covers on the bed are askew, the contents of the dresser shelf—books
and baubles—are mostly toppled.
I search for a date, the way Da taught me—bread crumbs, bookmarks, in case I ever
need to come back to this moment—and find a small calendar propped on the table, the
word
MARCH
legible, but no year. I scan for other temporal markers: a blue dress, bright for
the faded memory, draped over a small corner chair. A black book on the side table.
A sinking feeling spreads through me as I roll time forward, and a young man stumbles
in. The same slick and blackish stuff is splashed across his shirt, painted up his
arms to the elbows. It drips from his fingers, and even in the faded world of the
memory, I know it’s blood.
I can tell by the way he looks down at his skin, as if he wants to crawl out of it.
He sways and collapses to his knees right beside me, and even though he can’t touch
me, even though I’m not here, I can’t help but shuffle back, careful to keep my hands
on the floor, as he wraps his stained arms around his shirt. He can’t be much older
than I am, late teens, dark hair combed back, strands escaping into his eyes as he
rocks back and forth. His lips move, but voices rarely stick to memories, and all
I hear is a
hushushush
sound like static.
“Mackenzie,” calls my mother. The sound of her voice is distorted, vague and bent
by the veil of memory.
The man stops rocking and gets to his feet. His hands return to his sides, and my
gut twists. He’s covered in blood, but it’s not his. There are no cuts on his arms
or his chest. One hand looks sliced up, but not enough to bleed this much.
So whose blood is it? And whose
room
is it? There’s that dress, and I doubt that the furniture, dappled with tiny flowers,
belongs to him, but—
“Mackenzie,” my mother calls again, closer, followed by the sound of a doorknob turning.
I curse, open my eyes, and jerk my hands up from the floor, the memory vanishing,
replaced by a room full of boxes and a dull headache. I’m just getting to my feet
when Mom comes barging in. Before I can get the silver band out of my pocket and around
my finger, she wraps me in a hug.
I gasp, and suddenly it’s not just noise but
cold cavernous cold hol
lowed out too bright be bright screaming into pillow until I can’t breathe
be bright smallest bedroom packing boxes with B crossed out it still shows
couldn’t save him should have been there should have
before I can shove her tangled stream of consciousness out of my head. I try to force
a wall between us, a shaky mental version of the ring’s barrier. It is fragile as
glass. Pushing back worsens the headache, but at least it blocks out my mother’s cluttered
thoughts.
I’m left feeling nauseous as I pull away from her hug and maneuver my ring back on
to my finger, and the last of the noise drops out.
“Mackenzie. I’m sorry,” she says, and it takes a moment for me to orient myself in
the present, to realize that she isn’t apologizing for that hug, that she doesn’t
know
why
I hate being touched. To remember that the boy I just saw covered in blood isn’t
here but years in the past, and that I’m safe and still furious with Mom for throwing
away Ben’s things. I want to stay furious, but the anger is dulling.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I understand.” Even though it’s not okay and I don’t understand,
and Mom should be able to see that. But she can’t. She sighs softly and reaches out
to tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear, and I let her, doing my best not to tense
beneath her touch.
“Dinner’s ready,” she says. As if everything is normal. As if we’re home instead of
in a cardboard fortress in an old hotel room in the city, trying to hide from my brother’s
memories. “Come set the table?”
Before I can ask if she even knows where the table is, she guides me into the living
room, where she and Dad have somehow cleared a space between the boxes. They’ve erected
our dining table and arranged five cartons of Chinese food in a kind of bouquet in
the center.
The table is the only piece of furniture assembled, which makes us look like we’re
dining on an island made of packing material. We eat off dishes dug out of a box with
a surprisingly informative label:
KITCHEN—FRAGILE
. Mom coos about the Coronado, and Dad nods and offers canned monosyllables of support;
and I stare down at my food and see blurred Ben-like shapes whenever I close my eyes,
so I wage a staring contest with the vegetables.
After dinner I put Ben’s box in the back of my closet, along with two labeled
DA
. I packed those myself, offered to make space for them, mostly because I was worried
Mom would finally get rid of his things if I didn’t find room. I never thought she’d
get rid of Ben’s. I keep out the silly blue bear, which I set beside the bed, and
balance Ben’s black glasses on its button nose.
I try to unpack, but my eyes keep drifting back to the center of the room, to the
floor where the bloodstained boy collapsed. When I pushed the boxes aside, I could
almost make out a few dark stains on the wood, and now it’s all I can see each time
I look at the floor. But who knows if the stains were drops of his blood. Not
his
blood, I remember.
Someone’s
. I want to read the memory again—well, part of me wants to; the other part isn’t
so eager, at least not on my first night in this room—but Mom keeps finding excuses
to come in, half the time not even knocking, and if I’m going to read this, I’d like
to avoid another interruption when I do it. It’ll have to wait until morning.
I dig up sheets and make my bed, squirming at the thought of sleeping in here with
whatever happened, even though I know it was years and years and years ago. I tell
myself it’s silly to be scared, but I still can’t sleep.
My mind swims between Ben’s blurred shape and the bloodstained floor, twisting the
two memories until Ben is the one surrounded by broken glass, looking down at his
red-drenched self. I sit up. My eyes go to the window, expecting to see my yard, and
just beyond it the brick side of Lyndsey’s house, but I see a city, and in that moment
I wish I were home. I wish I could lean out my window and see Lyndsey lounging on
her roof, watching stars. Late at night was the only time she let herself be lazy,
and I could tell she felt rebellious for stealing even a few minutes. I used to sneak
home from the Narrows—three streets over and two up behind the butcher shop—and climb
up beside her, and she never asked me where I’d been. She’d stare up at the stars
and start talking, pick up midsentence as if I’d been there with her the whole time.
As if everything were perfectly normal.
Normal.
A confession: sometimes I dream of being normal. I dream about this girl who looks
like me and talks like me, but isn’t me. I know she’s not, because she has this open
smile and she laughs too easily, like Lynds. She doesn’t have to wear a silver ring
or a rusted key. She doesn’t read the past or hunt the restless dead. I dream of her
doing mundane things. She sifts through a locker in a crowded school. She lounges
poolside, surrounded by girls who swim and talk to her while she flips through silly
magazines. She sits engulfed in pillows and watches a movie, a friend tossing up pieces
of popcorn for her to catch in her mouth. She misses almost every time.
She throws a party.
She goes to a dance.
She kisses a boy.
And she’s so…happy.
M
. That’s what I call her, this normal, nonexistent me.
It’s not that I’ve never done those things, kissed or danced or just “hung out.” I
have. But it was put-on, a character, a lie. I am so good at it—lying—but I can’t
lie to myself. I can pretend to be M; I can wear her like a mask. But I can’t
be
her. I’ll never be her.
M wouldn’t see blood-covered boys in her bedroom.
M wouldn’t spend her time scouring her dead brother’s toys for a glimpse of his life.
The truth is, I know why Ben’s favorite shirt wasn’t in the box, or his mile patch,
or most of his pencils. He had those things with him the day he died. Had the shirt
on his back and the patch in his pocket and the pencils in his bag, just like any
normal day. Because it was a normal day, right up until the point a car ran a red
light two blocks from Ben’s school just as he was stepping from the curb.
And then drove away.
What do you do when there
is
someone to blame, but you know you’ll never find them? How do you close the case
the way the cops do? How do you move on?
Apparently you don’t move on; you just move away.
I just want to see him. Not a Ben-like shape, but the real thing. Just for a moment.
A glimpse. The more I miss him, the more he seems to fade. He feels so far away, and
holding on to empty tokens—or half-ruined ones—won’t bring him any closer. But I know
what will.
I’m up, on my feet and swapping pajamas for black pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt,
donning my usual uniform. My Archive paper sits on the side table, unfolded and blank.
I pocket it. I don’t care if there are no names. I’m not going to the Narrows. I’m
going through them.
To the Archive.
B
EYOND THE BEDROOM,
the apartment is still, but as I slip into the hall I see a faint line of light along
the bottom of my parents’ door. I hold my breath. Hopefully Dad just fell asleep with
his reading light on. The house key hangs like a prize on a hook by the front door.
These floors are so much older than the ones in our last house that with every step
I expect to be exposed, but I somehow make it to the key without a creak, and slide
it from the hook. All that’s left is the door. The trick is to let go of the handle
by degrees. I get through, ease 3F shut, and turn to face the third-floor hall.
And stop.
I’m not alone.
Halfway down the corridor a boy my age is leaning against the faded wallpaper, right
beside the painting of the sea. He’s staring up at the ceiling, or past it, the thin
black wire from his headphones tracing a line over his jaw, down his throat. I can
hear the whisper of music from here. I take a soundless step, but still he rolls his
head, lazily, to look at me. And he smiles. Smiles like he’s caught me cheating, caught
me sneaking out.
Which, in all fairness, he has.
His smile reminds me of the paintings here. I don’t think any of them are hung straight.
One side of his mouth tilts up like that, like it’s not set level. He has several
inches of spiked black hair, and I’m pretty sure he’s wearing eyeliner.
He closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall as if to say,
I never saw you.
But that smile stays, and his conspiratorial silence doesn’t change the fact that
he’s standing between me and my brother, his back where the Narrows door should be,
the keyhole roughly in the triangle of space between the crook of his arm and his
shirt.
And for the first time I’m thankful the Coronado is so old, because I need that second
door. I do my best to play the part of a normal girl sneaking out. The pants and long
sleeves in the middle of summer complicate the image, but there’s nothing to be done
about that now, and I keep my chin up as I wander down the hall toward the north stairs
(turning back toward the south ones would only be suspicious).
The boy’s eyes stay closed, but his smile quirks as I pass by. Odd, I think, vanishing
into the stairwell. The stairs run from the top floor down to the second, where they
spill me out onto the landing of the grand staircase, which forms a cascade into the
lobby. A ribbon of burgundy fabric runs over the marble steps like a tongue, and when
I make my way down, the carpet emits small plumes of dust.
Most of the lights have been turned off, and in the strange semidarkness, the sprawling
room at the base of the stairs is draped in shadows. A sign on the far wall whispers
CAFÉ
in faded cursive. I frown and turn my attention back to the side of the staircase
where I first saw the crack. Now the papered wall is hidden in the heavy dark between
two lights. I step into the darkness with it, running my fingers over the fleur-de-lis
pattern until I find it. The ripple. I pocket my ring and pull Da’s key from around
my neck, using my other hand to trace down the crack until I feel the groove of the
keyhole. I slot the key and turn, and a moment after the metallic click, a thread
of light traces the outline of the door against the stairs.
The Narrows sigh around me as I enter, humid breath and words so far away they’ve
bled to sounds and then to hardly anything. I start down the hall, key in hand, until
I find the doors I marked before, the filled white circle that designates Returns,
and to its right, the hollow one that leads to the Archive.
I pause, straighten, and step through.
The day I become a Keeper, you hold my hand.
You
never
hold my hand. You avoid touch the way I’m quickly learning to, but the day you take
me to the Archive, you wrap your weathered fingers around mine as you lead me through
the door. We’re not wearing our rings, and I expect to feel it, the tangle of memories
and thoughts and emotions coming through your skin, but I feel nothing but your grip.
I wonder if it’s because you’re dying, or because you’re so good at blocking the world
out, a concept I can’t seem to learn. Whatever the reason, I feel nothing but your
grip, and I’m thankful for it.
We step into a front room, a large, circular space made of dark wood and pale stone.
An antechamber, you call it. There is no visible source of light, and yet the space
is brightly lit. The door we came through appears larger on this side than it did
in the Narrows, and older, worn.
There is a stone lintel above the Archive door that reads
SERVAMUS MEMORIAM
. A phrase I do not know yet. Three vertical lines, the mark of the Archive, separate
the words, and a set of Roman numerals runs beneath. Across the room a woman sits
behind a large desk, writing briskly in a ledger, a
QUIET PLEASE
sign propped at the edge of her table. She sees us and sets her pen down fast enough
to suggest that we’re expected.
My hands are shaking, but you tighten your grip.
“You’re gold, Kenzie,” you whisper as the woman gestures over her shoulder at a massive
pair of doors behind her, flung open and back like wings. Through them I can see the
heart of the Archive, the atrium, a sprawling chamber marked by rows and rows and
rows of shelves. The woman does not stand, does not go with us, but watches us pass
with a nod and a whispered, cordial “Antony.”
You lead me through.
There are no windows because there is no outside, and yet above the shelves hangs
a vaulted ceiling of glass and light. The place is vast and made of wood and marble,
long tables running down the center like a double spine, with shelves branching off
to both sides like ribs. The partitions make the cavernous space seem smaller, cozier.
Or at least fathomable.
The Archive is everything you told me it would be:…
a patchworkwood and stone and colored glass, and all throughout, a sense of peace.
But you left something out.
It is beautiful.
So beautiful that, for a moment, I forget the walls are filled with bodies. That the
stacks and the cabinets that compose the walls, while lovely, hold Histories. On each
drawer an ornate brass cardholder displays a placard with a neatly printed name, a
set of dates. It’s so easy to forget this.
“Amazing,” I say, too loud. The words echo, and I wince, remembering the sign on the
Librarian’s desk.
“It is,” a new voice replies softly, and I turn to find a man perched on the edge—
of a table, hands in pockets. He’s an odd sight, built like a stick figure, with a
young face but old gray eyes and dark hair that sweeps across his forehead. His clothes
are normal enougha sweater and slacks—but his dark pants run right into a pair of bright red Chucks, which makes me smile.
And yet there’s a sharpness to his eyes, a coiled aspect to his stance. Even if I
passed him on the street instead of here in the Archive, I’d know right away that
he was a Librarian.
“Roland,” you say with a nod.
“Antony,” he replies, sliding off from the table. “Is this your choice?”
The Librarian is talking about me. Your hand vanishes from mine, and you take a step
back, presenting me to him. “She is.”
Roland arches a brow. But then he smiles. It’s a playful smile, a warm one.
“This should be fun.” He gestures to the first of the ten wings branching off the…
atrium. “If you’ll follow me” And with that, he walks away. You walk away. I pause. I want to linger here. Soak
up the strange sense of quiet. But I cannot stay.
I am not a Keeper yet.
There is a moment, as I pass into the circular antechamber of the Archive and my eyes
settle on the Librarian seated behind the desk—a man I’ve never seen before—when I
feel lost. A strange fear takes hold, simple and deep, that my family moved too far
away, that I’ve crossed some invisible boundary and stepped into another branch of
the Archive. Roland assured me it wouldn’t happen, that each branch is responsible
for hundreds of miles of city, suburb, country, but still the panic washes through
me.
I look over my shoulder at the lintel above the door, the familiar
SERVAMUS MEMORIAM
etched there. According to two semesters of Latin (my father’s idea), it means “We
Protect the Past.” Roman numerals run beneath the inscription, so small and so many
that they seem more like a pattern than a number. I asked once, and was told that
that was the branch number. I still cannot read it, but I’ve memorized the pattern,
and it hasn’t changed. My muscles begin to uncoil.
“Miss Bishop.”
The voice is calm, quiet, and familiar. I turn back toward the desk to see Roland
coming through the set of doors behind it, tall and slim as ever—he hasn’t aged a
day—with his gray eyes and his easy grin and his red Chucks. I let out a breath of
relief.
“You can go now, Elliot,” he says to the man seated behind the desk, who stands with
a nod and vanishes back through the doors.
Roland takes a seat and kicks his shoes up onto the desk. He digs in the drawers and
comes up with a magazine. Last month’s issue of some lifestyle guide I brought him.
Mom subscribed to them for a while, and Roland insists on staying as much in the loop
as possible when it comes to the Outer. I know for a fact he spends most of his time
skimming new Histories, watching the world through their lives. I wonder if boredom
prompts him to it, or if it’s more. Roland’s eyes are tinged with something between
pain and longing.
He misses it, I think; the Outer. He’s not supposed to. Librarians commit to the Archive
in every way, leaving the Outer behind for their term, however long they choose to
stay, and he’s told me himself that being promoted is an honor, to have all that time
and knowledge at your fingertips, to protect the past—
SERVAMUS MEMORIAM
and all—but if he misses sunrises, or oceans, or fresh air, who can blame him? It’s
a lot to give up for a fancy title, a suspended life cycle, and an endless supply
of reading material.
He holds the magazine toward me. “You look pale.”
“Keep it,” I say, still a little shaken. “And I’m fine.…” Roland knows how scared
I am of losing this branch—some days I think the constancy of coming here is all that’s
keeping me sane—but it’s a weakness, and I know it. “Just thought for a moment I’d
gone too far.”
“Ah, you mean Elliot? He’s on loan,” says Roland, digging a small radio from a drawer
and setting it beside the
QUIET PLEASE
sign. Classical music whispers out, and I wonder if he plays it just to annoy Lisa,
who takes the signs as literally as possible. “A transfer. Wanted a change of scenery.
So, what brings you to the Archive tonight?”
I want to see Ben. I want to talk to him. I need to be closer. I’m losing
my mind.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I say with a shrug.
“You found your way here fast enough.”
“My new place has
two
doors. Right in the building.”
“Only two?” he teases. “So, are you settling in?”
I trace my fingers over the ancient ledger that sits on the table. “It’s got…character.”
“Come now, the Coronado’s not so bad.”
It creeps me out. Something horrible happened in my bedroom.
These are weak thoughts. I do not share them.
“Miss Bishop?” he prompts.
I hate the formality when it comes from the other Librarians, but for some reason
I don’t mind it from Roland. Perhaps because he seems on the verge of winking when
he speaks.
“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.