ACIR HILLS
Time passed by quickly.
I’m sitting on the thin brown carpet, my knees drawn up, my arms around them, and my back against a tall bookcase in the stacks, rocking myself. My shift’s done, and I should be long gone from the building.
Instead, I’m in the back, the canned Christmas music still playing. Lines of bookcases with cheery red and green tinsel tacked up on them fan out from where I sit. The study area is even darker now, though a faint light still glows at my desk out front, and the jolly Santa Claus still beams in the window. The torrent of tears I tried to hold back has stopped…barely.
What a shi.tty Christmas I’m facing.
The library is closed. The students are gone, the front door locked. Ms. Clark, bless her soul, grabbed a ledger from the desk, then left a couple
