Dad was home alone when I got back from the repository.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he said. “Are you just getting home from school?”
“School got out hours ago, Dad. Today I was interviewing for my new job,” I said. “Remember? I told you about it last week.”
“Oh, that’s right. Where is it again, the Historical Society?”
“No, the New-York Circulating Material Repository,” I reminded him. Dad used to remember things I told him, back when it was just the two of us.
“That’s that private museum with the beautiful stained-glass windows,” he said. “They’re famous. I’ve always meant to go see them.”
“It’s wonderful. You would love it; it’s your kind of place. You should come, especially now that I work there. I bet I could show you around, give you a tour,” I said.
We heard Cathy’s key in the front door and she burst into the room.
“Michael! Come look at the colors I’m considering for the bedroom.” Cathy was constantly repainting the apartment and was never quite satisfied with the results.
“Sure.” He followed her out.
“So you’ll come with me to the repository, Dad?” I asked.
“We’ll talk about it later, Elizabeth,” he said. I wondered if we ever would.
I went to my room and did my homework, rushing through my French so I could take my time with social studies. I wanted to read praise in Mr. Mauskopf’s brown ink when I got the homework back—well argued instead of sloppy thinking. I wanted to deserve it.
At lunch the next day, I stood with my tray listening to the roar of the cafeteria and feeling even more lonely than usual. I looked around for someone to sit with. I saw Mallory Mason across the room. If only I liked her! She would certainly be willing to sit with me, but I didn’t want to be her friend—she was as mean as the kids who picked on her, just less powerful. And sitting with her would spoil my chances of making other friends.
I looked around for other possibilities and spotted Katie Sanduski, a girl from my French class, but she had a book propped up against her backpack. She looked pretty absorbed.
At a table by the window, three girls from math class were talking and laughing and throwing the occasional corn chip at each other.
Should I interrupt Katie’s reading? Should I try to insert myself into the merry chip-tossing trio?
Katie, I decided. Interrupting one person should be easier than interrupting three. But just as I made up my mind, Katie closed her book and got up to bus her tray.
Nothing else for it, then. Maddie, Samantha, and Jo. Gathering my courage, I threaded my way toward them. Before I could reach them, though, three more girls—ones I didn’t know—descended on the table with shrieks and claimed the last three spots.
I turned aside and sat at the nearest empty seat. A couple kids glanced at me, then glanced away. A puddle of spilled soda divided me from them. I ate as quickly as I could and left the cafeteria.
I was ten minutes early to social studies. Peeking through the window in the door, I saw Mr. Mauskopf sitting at his desk alone.
He saw me too. “Come in, Elizabeth,” he said, beckoning with his long arm.
“Hi, Mr. Mauskopf.” I shut the door behind me. “Want my homework?”
“Thank you. So? Did you take the job at the repository?”
I nodded. “I start Tuesday.”
“And how do you find it so far?”
“Pretty interesting,” I said. Weird was the word I really meant, but I didn’t quite feel comfortable saying so to Mr. Mauskopf. “All those zillions of objects. The people there seem really nice. Ms. Callender’s so friendly. And the building is cool too, with the marble floors and all the fancy carved doors. It’s so much bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside.”
“Did you see the famous Tiffany windows?”
“No, my dad mentioned them, but I haven’t seen them yet. Where are they?”
“In the Main Examination Room.”
“Oh. Is that in, like, the medical section?”
Mr. Mauskopf laughed, although I wasn’t aware I’d made a joke. “Make sure you see them next time,” he said. “They’re spectacular.”
Then the rest of the kids came back from lunch and class began.
That afternoon I wished more than ever that I had some friends at school, since there was no one to notice the big event of the day: the great Marc Merritt greeting me in the hallway. At least, I think it’s fair to call it a greeting; he didn’t say anything, he just nodded at me.
I took that as permission to say, “Hi, Marc.” He was with some of his tall friends, though, so I didn’t press it. I heard him explain, “Girl from health ed,” as they walked on.
When I got to the library on Tuesday, Anjali was sitting behind the circulation desk. She sent me upstairs to find Ms. Callender on Stack 6, where the librarians—all except Dr. Rust—had their offices.
Ms. Callender showed me the time clock, a boxy machine mounted on the wall next to a rack of cards with names on them. I found my card and stuck it in the clock’s jaw. The machine chomped down violently, stamping it with the time.
“I’m going to start you off on 2, which is textiles—Textiles and Garb,” said Ms. Callender, punching the elevator button. “Stack 2 was always one of my favorites back when I was a page. If you feel the urge to try things on, well, I won’t tell. I never could resist when I was your age. Just stick to cotton, linen, and wool—they’re pretty sturdy—and make sure you pick the right sizes so you don’t rip anything.” She winked at me.
We went out through a fire door into a long, dim room, like Stack 9, only much more gloomy. “Why’s it so dark here?” I asked.
“We keep the textiles below ground level because of the light. Daylight is terrible for most fibers. It can make them fade or even fall apart. There are desk lamps, though, if you want to read. And the ladies’ room on this floor has a full-length mirror.”
The aisles between the cabinets stretched out into darkness. I heard footsteps echoing a long way off. “It’s spooky,” I said.
Ms. Callender smiled, making her round cheeks bunch up into apples. “You think so?” she said. “Most of the pages find Stack 1 the spookiest. Now, the first thing to remember: always wash your hands and wear gloves. The oils and acids on your skin can damage the cloth.” There was a sink near the dumbwaiters, along with a supply cabinet full of cotton gloves, padded hangers, tissue paper, and cardboard boxes stamped Archival.
“I don’t get it,” I said, washing my hands. “This is a circulating library, right? So people are checking out the clothing and wearing it. That’s got to be worse for it than me touching it with my hands.”
“Yes, you’re right. Technically, almost all of our holdings circulate,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean people can just do what they like with whatever they borrow—they have to return it in the same condition they received it in or they pay degradation fines. And the most valuable objects require a deposit.”
“How much do you have to pay if you get finger acid on something?”
“It depends what you’re handling. Not much if it’s just a T-shirt, more if it’s something like Lincoln’s hat or Marie Antoinette’s wig. With the important holdings, we have so many restrictions that nobody really borrows them but museums, and they certainly don’t wear them. We have an actuary on staff to figure it all out.”
“Marie Antoinette’s wig! Can I see that?”
“Sure.” Ms. Callender touched a button and a dim light illuminated one of the aisles. We walked down it to a door marked *V, which she unlocked. “This is the Stack 2 Valuables Room— *V for Valuables,” she said. The room was crammed with labeled cabinets. She unlocked one and showed me rows of wigs on what looked like china heads. There were blond ones and black ones, wigs with intricate braids and simple buns, long curly wigs like the ones judges wear on British TV shows.
“I won’t take it out, but that one’s the queen’s,” said Ms. Callender, pointing to a white wig. It was tall and rather plain.
“Wow! Was she wearing it when she had her head cut off?” I asked. I looked for bloodstains but didn’t see any.
“No, no,” said Ms. Callender. “Ugh! No, that’s just one of her simpler weekday wigs. She gave it to a lady in waiting, who escaped the revolution disguised as a wig maker and made it to England, where she married a fur trader from Vermont. One of their descendants donated it in the 1960s. He got a tax write-off.”
“That’s amazing! Where’s Lincoln’s hat—can I see that too?”
“Maybe another time. Ask me again when we’re not busy, okay, honey? Now let me show you how to run a call slip.”
Ms. Callender locked up the *V Room carefully and we went back out to the Stack 2 staging area, where the sink and elevators were. A guy about my age was inspecting a call slip under one of the desk lamps.
“Hello, Aaron,” said Ms. Callender. “This is Elizabeth. I’m showing her how to run slips. Mind if we take that?”
“Not at all,” he said, handing her the paper. She spread it on the desk.
It read:
“For your purposes, the most important part is the call number,” said Ms. Callender. “It tells you where to find the object. We use a modified Dewey decimal system to organize the collection, like a conventional book library. The objects are grouped by subject. The first segment of the call number, the prefix—II T&G in this case—identifies the stack and collection: Stack 2, Textiles and Garb. After the prefix comes the Dewey decimal number.”
“So where’s II T&G 391.440944 L46?”
“You can check the wall map. Fifth row east. This way.” I followed her down another dim aisle between cabinets labeled with call numbers.
When we reached the right row, Ms. Callender stopped and twisted a dial on the wall, like a kitchen timer. A light came on in the aisle. “The lights are on timers to save energy,” said Ms. Callender. “That way you don’t have to worry if you forget to turn them off behind you.”
She opened the cabinet door and pulled a small umbrella out of a cubbyhole. “Always double-check to make sure you have the right object,” she said, opening the umbrella gently. She inspected the handle and read a cardboard tag. “This is it.” We headed back toward the desks.
Ms. Callender marked the call slip with her initials and sent the umbrella up to the Main Examination Room in the medium-size dumbwaiter. “That’s the basic idea,” she said. “For today, you can shadow Aaron—he’ll tell you what to do. And let me know if you run into any trouble.”
Aaron was reading a book at one of the desks. “So you’re the new girl,” he said, looking up.
“I’m Elizabeth Rew,” I said.
“Aaron Rosendorn.”
“How long have you worked here?” I asked.
“Two years.”
“You must like it, then,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“What’s your favorite thing about it? Do you have a favorite collection?”
“What do you mean?” His eyes narrowed.
“I don’t know—there are different collections here, right? The textiles on this stack and the china upstairs. Or I heard someone say something about the Grimm Collection, whatever that is. Do you have a favorite?”
He frowned. The light from the reading lamp threw shadows on his high cheekbones and around his nose, giving him an arrogant expression—or maybe that was just how he looked. “Why do you want to know?” he asked. He sounded either stuck up or paranoid.
“No reason—I was just making conversation. Is it a big secret or something?”
“No, not really,” he said. “This is one of the world’s great repositories. It’s an honor to work here.” He looked at me for a few seconds like he was sizing me up. “How did you get the job?”
Was he implying I didn’t deserve it? “My social studies teacher, Mr. Mauskopf. He used to work here himself when he was our age. He knows Dr. Rust and Ms. Callender.”
“Where do you go to school?”
“Fisher.”
“Oh, with Marc Merritt.” Now he sounded even more suspicious and disapproving. What was wrong with this guy? Everyone else here seemed so friendly.
“Yes, Marc’s in my class,” I said.
“How nice for you,” said Aaron. What an unpleasant person, I thought.
A pneum came rattling through the pipes and thumped into the basket. Aaron pulled out the slip and handed it to me. “Let’s see how you handle this,” he said.
“You sure you trust me?” I was a little surprised at my own sarcastic tone. This guy really got under my skin.
“Not yet. That’s the point. The last page, the one you’re replacing—she was a disaster. I’m a senior page. I have responsibilities. I need to see how you work.”
“Was that Mona?”
“No, Zandra. What do you know about Mona?”
“Nothing, really—just that Anjali told me she disappeared. Who’s Zandra, and why was she a disaster?”
“Never mind Zandra. She was a disorganized mess-up and a liar and a thief, and now she’s gone. Let’s see if you’re better.”
Wow, I thought, this guy could be related to my stepsisters. “Fine,” I said. I read the slip, a request for a Chinese headdress. I found the right cabinet easily enough, despite the dim room. But when I reached up for the elaborate headdress, Aaron hovered so close I was afraid he was going to step on my feet. I tilted the headdress to slide it off the shelf.
“Careful! It’s fragile; those bobbles are glass,” he said.
“Back off, you’re making me nervous,” I snapped. “I’m not going to hurt it.” I lifted it down. “See? Safe and sound.”
“All right,” said Aaron. “I just had to make sure.”
I checked the label and carried the headdress down the hall to the staging area, where Aaron showed me how to file the call slip.
The next request was from someone named John Weinstein from Dark on Monday Productions. He wanted to borrow a doublet.
“Who are these people, and why are they borrowing these things?” I asked.
“This guy’s from a theater company, so chances are he’s getting ideas for costumes. Probably Shakespeare. They always borrow doublets when they do Shakespeare,” he said. This time he stood back and let me take the doublet out of the cabinet without comment. We ran a few more slips—my favorite was a delicate mask, with feathers curling around the upper half of the face. Aaron watched me closely, but he didn’t find anything to criticize. He was pretty intense, but I was impressed at how seriously he took his job.
When it was time to take my break, Ms. Callender took me upstairs to see the Main Examination Room. “This is where patrons come to get the items they requested,” she said. “They can sit and work at the tables.”
“Like the main room in the library,” I said.
“Exactly.”
It was a striking space, with tall ceilings, massive, imposing tables, and an elaborately carved staging area where Anjali and the other pages and librarians were bustling around, putting away slips and stacking pneums. I finally got a chance to see the Tiffany windows, but since it was a gloomy afternoon, I couldn’t make out any shapes or patterns in them.
I sat at one of the tables and did homework, then went back downstairs to Stack 2 when my break was over.
One patron requested antique Navajo rugs from New Mexico and kilim rugs from Turkey. They were heavy—it took both me and Aaron to carry them. We spread them out on the big table to check their condition before sending them upstairs in the big dumbwaiter.
“Look at how similar these two patterns are, with those triangles and diamonds and rectangles,” I said. “They’re from different continents, but they look like the weavers knew each other.”
“That’s just because of how they’re woven,” said Aaron. “The yarns cross each other at right angles, so it’s easier to make straight lines than curves.”
“Yes, but it’s more than that,” I said. “The colors are completely different, but look at those zigzags and that border. And the rug from Iran we sent up before looks nothing like either one of them.”
“I see what you mean,” said Aaron. “I wonder what made them choose the same patterns.”
“I wish we could go back in time and ask them,” I said.
“Me too.”
Aaron was much nicer when he was talking about rugs than when he was scolding me about not breaking things, I thought.
Around five, the fire door opened and Anjali came in, pushing a large cart full of objects. “Returns!” she called.
Aaron went running over to help her.
They wheeled the cart over to the center of the stack, Aaron pushing and Anjali steadying it.
“How’s it going, Elizabeth?” she asked. “Having fun?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Good. Don’t let Aaron work you too hard.” She winked at me and vanished through the stack door. Aaron stared after her with a look of naked longing.
“She seems nice,” I said, to break the silence.
He turned to me as if he’d forgotten I was there. “What? Yeah . . . yeah, she’s very . . . nice,” he said.
Seeing the transformation in Aaron made me wonder how it would feel to have someone—even a not-so-nice guy like Aaron—look at me the way he looked at Anjali.
I hoped that someday I would find out.