So it passed that, while the frequency of Shane's visits to the library did not ebb a whit, the direction veered greatly. She would collect a stack of books and hide in a corner, watching the boy -- Eliot by name -- over the tops of anthropology primers.
So it passed that, while the frequency of Shane's visits to the library did not ebb a whit, the direction veered greatly. She would collect a stack of books and hide in a corner, watching the boy -- Eliot by name -- over the tops of anthropology primers. She was studying him, his behavior and habits, hoping to witness something utterly unattractive. Maybe he would linger too long in the human anatomy section, perhaps he would read a magazine on hunting, or he could even he extraordinarily stupid and rude. She was delighted that he disappointed on every count.
Eliot was hardly oblivious to this girl sneaking glances at him from the corner, her icy eyes warming his cheeks as he rescued figure study books from the public restroom or picked up the molehills of books that he used to blame on Shane before she had a name to him. He possessed a sharp awareness of all of the regular patrons, if only to avoid their belligerence at pocket change fines. Shane had never issued a cross word at the spinster with whom he worked and, when he considered it more closely, he could only remember having heard her speak above a whisper when his cart threatened to plow her under. But he liked her whisper enough to be hungry to hear more.
Shane had seen him before at school, but he was only one of the thousands of faces that composed the human wallpaper of her high school memories. She never paid much attention to other people, having long since decided they would not likely pay attention to her. He was far too attractive to have been interested in her anyway, save that she was utterly wrong.
After a week of this mutual coyness -- looking at the other if just for the electric charge of averting their gaze, the young lover's equivalent of playing chicken -- Eliot swallowed his pride (difficult when one's mouth is bone dry) and approached her. "Shane--," he had looked her up in the library's computer for the same reason that Shane eavesdropped his name being grunted by the elderly library clerks who never left the front desk "--the library is closing in a few minutes and…"
"I know, Eliot, I'll put my things away…" She was not being obtuse; she was well aware that he was trying to be bravely flirtatious. She simply didn't wish to make it seem too easy for him. Or too difficult, which is why she had answered his use of her name in turn an effort that did not go unnoticed. If the guiltily read teen romances Shane's mother gave her when Shane was sick taught her anything -- and it only very barely had -- it was that men did not truly appreciate any girl who swooned too acquiescently into their arms. She also had learned that male genitalia was often described in the cloaking of weaponry, but that didn't seem applicable at this juncture.
"WouldYouLikeToGoToTheDinerWithMe?" he asked in one breathless word. Once he was finished speaking, he deflated.
Though she thought herself prepared, she blinked at the edges of his glasses for a long moment, seeking to steady herself on the rims. She felt like Alice must have when she credulously quaffed the bottle reading "Drink me." As he backed away defensively, looking as though she were about to spring up at him and cackle derisively at the mere thought of joining him for a meal -- only very rarely a good way to answer an invitation, Shane found -- she accepted his proposal by entangling her fingers in his and having him pull her up from the floor.
They walked there side-by-side, wordless as the summer breeze. After imagining the likely outcomes of her mute attempt at coquetry, she didn't quite know what to make of this tangible result. Eliot, after his spurt of daring, had become taciturn once more, his face a smooth mask betraying none of his frenetic inner monologue.
At the diner, she ordered a hot chocolate and nothing more, as the idea of eating in front of a boy suddenly was frighteningly intimate. Opening her mouth to take a bite seemed forward and chewing obscene. Mutual mastication was out of the question on a first date. Whenever she read accounts of women eating like birds in the presence of men, she had considered this to be a sign of an eating disorder brought on by the systematic degradation of women (particularly if she was reading Paglia or Steinem that week). She realized with chagrin that it might have been that they were too twitterpated to have much of a stomach. Blessed with the metabolism of a hummingbird, Shane was not generally one to turn down the prospect of diner food and milkshakes.
Eliot was not so afflicted or, rather, was afflicted equally but oppositely, eating in order to fill the space between words and quenching the butterflies in his stomach through gluttony. Stomach butterflies can very easily become carnivorous if left unchecked and Eliot bore little meat on his long bones to sate them, should this occur.
Finally, mercifully, Eliot thought to ask Shane the obvious question of her favorite book. The awkward first date distance between them lifted like the curtain on opening night and suddenly, they both silently felt, their time on the stage could begin. Shane rambled on for ten minutes, defining and revising her favorites by genre and author. Eliot leaned his face on his upturned hands and said nothing, having nothing to say; she preemptively asked herself any questions he might have. Far from this being obnoxious and presumptuous, he grew increasingly fond of her for granting him uninterrupted insight. He was frankly enthralled that any person could rattle on so naturally about books while wearing the body of a girl under twenty. Girls on campus went on about what they read, but it never seemed that they enjoyed reading. They read in order to impress. Shane read seemingly without reason, just for the pleasure of it. She was refreshing. It was like watching a butterfly sing about unicorns.
That night, walking her home after teasing one another as to the quality of their respective literary crushes -- she on Tuck Everlasting from the eponymous book, he on Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz -- he kissed her. It was not the first kiss she had ever received in her seventeen years on this earth. That dubious honor was reserved for Rusty, a boy with whom she went to camp when she was twelve. That long ago kiss had been fumbling, lingering in a grape bubblegum odor just below her nose. Eliot's kiss, though apprehensive at first, bloomed from his two lips and planted its roots in her every extremity. What is lacked for a title page, it made up for in its denouement.
He pulled away and blinked at her, as though he had just woken up from a dream of waking. Then, under the yellow streetlights, she was almost certain he blushed.
"You'll be back tomorrow?" he ventured. This was a patently stupid question and he knew it the moment is passed from his mouth; he couldn't remember a time at the library where he hadn't seen her, even when she was no more animate than the dead flowers always at the front desk.
Shane smirked gently and gave him a peck on the cheek to assure him she would.
We Shadows is a serialized novel being written by Xen, also known as Thomm Quackenbush. It didn't happen to you, your best friend, or his cousin. Why? Because it didn't happen. All persons, living, dead, undead, or unliving are purely coincidental. Any real persons are used fictiously. What you are about to read is not a news broadcast. No portion of this book may be distributed without the expressed written consent of Xen. Feel free to rope your friends into reading it, though. Do it or I start shooting PuppyOrphans.
