Chapter 7

They walked back down the hallway, through the front entrance way and past the massive grande staircase, and back into the library where Michael was still plugging away at his sketch book. He glanced up as they came back in and set his sketching pencil down as Jessica walked over to him with a glass of water and held it out for him to take.

“Thanks,” he said as he took the glass from her, and watched as she set the bags of chips and the jar of salsa on the table in front of them. He took a sip of water and set his glass down on the table, before pushing the chair back from the studio table and standing up. “So, what’s the deal with the library? You never did explain that before you ran out of here to get the drinks.”

“Well,” Jessica said as she set her glass down on the table as well. “My Aunt Sarah collects books, and both of us have always loved to read. Half of my major is English as well, which would explain the book shelf full of ‘classics’, dictionaries, and grammar books over there.”

Both Jake and Michael turned their heads to see the book shelf she was gesturing too, which was against the wall the doors were on, just to the right of where they had walked in.

“Have you read everything in here?” Michael asked, genuinely curious.

“No way,” Jessica said, laughing. “I’ve only lived here for about six years, and there are literally thousands and thousands and thousands of books in here. I would venture a guess that Sarah hasn’t read all of them either, and she’s lived in this house her whole life. She grew up here, and half of the books in here belonged to her parents before they moved out.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jake said as he gazed around the library. There was no doubt the place was impressive. It could rival the libraries of most of the top ten universities in the country, including most of the Ivy League universities as well. “Walk me through this place. What all do you guys have here?”

“If you want me to, I guess we can do that. I mean, it’s a library. They’re books. There’s not much more too it than that,” Jessica said, making it sound like this was the most boring thing they could be doing right now. “But okay. Well, like I said that book shelf over there is where I keep most of my English text books and things like that. That whole wall is actually textbooks and reference books for school. A lot of them are Sarah’s, but I’m catching up to her pretty quickly in terms of the number of text books we’ve acquired over the years. My parents sent up all of my text books from junior high and my freshman year of high school for some reason, so they are all down there as well, all the way in the corner.”

“Are they all English text books?” Michael asked as they walked past rows and rows of books with cracked spines, torn covers, and brightly colored stickers with the word USED stamped across them.

“No, just the first two book shelves on the wall are all English and grammar related. The next two sets of shelves are a combination of math and science text books, work books, and answer books. Sarah used to be a substitute math teacher, and she’ll probably never get rid of any of them. The last three sets of shelves are a weird combination of history, government, and geography. They’re not in any order, and any time I try to do anything with them I just get frustrated and give up on it, so we let it be just a random conglomeration of history and government text books on the first two book shelves, and the last one is mostly general geography stuff. The one book shelf on the left side of the window is packed with maps and atlases, and books detailing the National Parks in all 50 states. Sarah is really big on the idea of traveling, but we hardly go anywhere. Still, don’t ask about any of it. I usually don’t. Kind of continuing with the history theme, that section over there is biographies and auto-biographies of a bunch of important historical figures. One of Sarah’s more recent ridiculous online book shopping sessions gifted us with a complete collection of auto-biographies and biographies of the first forty one presidents and vice presidents, so if you ever need information on one of them let me know and you’re more than welcome to find what you need over there.”

“Who’s Chris Baty?” Jake called from across the room behind Jessica and Michael, who hadn’t noticed that Jake had stopped. They turned around to see him standing in front one of the middle sets of book shelves with a Chemistry book open in his hands.

“What are you talking about?” Jessica asked as she walked over to him. “And what do you mean ‘who’s Chris Baty?’ I’ve never heard of him before.”

“Chris Baty. Right here, look,” Jake said, jabbing his finger at the inside of the front cover. There was a scrawled inscription on the inside cover above the box where a list of names of students who had previously owned the book was printed. The name Chris Baty was the last name on the list, and was printed in the same messy scrawl as the inscription that was in the top corner of the page which Jake read out loud, “This book is the property of the Half-Blood Prince.”

“What? Let me see that,” Jessica said, grabbing the book out of his hands. Sure enough, wedged in the top corner in a barely legible scrawl were the words Jake had just read out loud to them. Her jaw dropped slightly at the visual confirmation of what she had just read, and she looked back up at Jake who had a huge grin on his face. “I wonder if he had greasy black hair and spent too much time by himself.”

“I don’t know who he is or what he did, but Chris Baty is my new hero,” Jake said. Jessica snapped the book shut and set it down on the table that was in front of the large window.

“We’ll definitely have to come back to that. I didn’t know that was there, and I want to know what else he wrote in that book,” she said, looking at Jake who still had a goofy grin on his face.

“I’m intrigued. But continue with the tour. You were saying you have a collection of presidential and vice-presidential auto-biographies?”

“Um. Yeah. Over there,” she said, pointing to the corner where Michael was still standing, scanning the shelves of biographies. She was thoroughly impressed with the fact that Jake not only knew what the message in the book was a reference to, but that he understood it and was just as excited about it as she was. “Yeah. Biographies. Like I said, Sarah collects pretty much any book she finds even remotely interesting or the slightest bit entertaining.”

“I can see that,” Jake said, gesturing to the entire library. “That’s cool though. I really wish I had something like this at my disposal whenever I wanted it.”

You could if you wanted to. No, Jess what the hell are you thinking? Don’t start that. Jessica jerked her head slightly to try to clear out her thoughts. Right now was not a good time for her inner monologue to kick in, especially when she was playing host to two people she had barely just met and didn’t know about some of her quirky habits just yet.

“What’s next?” Michael chimed in, suddenly seeming really eager to see the rest of the library. “Not that I mind it in small doses, but if the rest of the library consists of text books and historical documentation I might be afraid for your sanity.”

“Don’t worry, I’d be afraid for my sanity if we had more historical documentation than we already do,” Jessica said. She had begun to notice that Michael’s moods were strange and hard to read. He had gone from seemingly really polite and genuinely nice at Rob’s place to nothing short of annoying and a bit of a jerk in the car, and now he was back to making sarcastic comments that matched Jessica’s sense of humor. She wasn’t sure what to think about that, but she brushed it off for now and continued playing tour guide to the boys. “Anyway. On the other side of the book shelf with the last of the biographies and auto-biographies we have copies of nearly every single historical document that is relevant to the foundation and structure of this country, as well as most of the major word-wide historical documents. I had to memorize the Declaration of Independence for the government class I took in my junior year of high school, and some how we ended up with pretty much every document penned by our founding fathers. They come in handy every now and then, so I guess it worked out eventually. That’s pretty much it for the ‘educational’ section of this place. Although, this part is pretty self-explanatory.”

“Do you really have ...” Jake trailed off as he did a quick scan of the shelves in front of him. “Do you really have twenty two sets of encyclopedias?”

“We sure do. I’ll take the blame for five of them, the other seventeen are Sarah’s. I’m not even going to get into why we have so many, it’s really not worth it. Although it makes for a good story sometimes.”

“I want to hear this,” Jake said, leaning against the end of one of the shelves. “I mean, it’s not like we don’t have time for it.”

“Well. Okay, I guess. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone who has ever been that interested in encyclopedias,” Jessica said. “When I moved up here, I brought the two sets I had back at home with me. For some reason my parents didn’t think I had done that, but it never occurred to them to ask me what I had done with them since they couldn’t find them in their house. So they bought two new sets and sent them up here about five months after I moved here. Amazingly enough they were two completely different sets from the ones I already had, so after that I owned four different sets of encyclopedias. The last set is one that Sarah got for me as part of my ‘Welcome to Vermont’ gift, which I’m sure makes absolutely no sense at all to either of you since you don’t know my family at all.”

“I’m still confused as to why you needed two sets of encyclopedias in the first place. Especially when you were ...” Jake trailed off again for some quick mental math. “You were sixteen when you moved here, right?”

“Yeah, I was. Don’t question it. I like my books, and I like being able to find information on anything I need when I want it. Anyway. Sarah had about eleven sets already when I moved in, some of them dating back something like a hundred and fifty years. She was using one of the older sets to look something up a while back, and she was getting frustrated when she couldn’t find whatever it was that she was looking for until I pointed out that the particular set of encyclopedias that she was using were published in eighteen ninety two, so therefore it might be a bit more helpful to use a more recent set of encyclopedias to find the information she wanted. If it had been me, I would think the logical thing to do would have been to put back the books I had been using, and move over a shelf to a more recent set of books. But no. Sarah felt it was necessary to go out and buy a whole brand new set that had just been published the previous year. And while she was at it, she went ahead and pre-ordered a whole new set that was in the process of being published and was set to be released about six months ago. They’re right there, and so far the only time they have been touched was when I unpackaged them and put them in order on the shelves after moving some things around,” Jessica said as she pointed to a set of thirty three books bound in dark brown leather with gold writing on the spines. “Somewhere between then and now, she has also bought a full set of Italian, French, and Russian encyclopedias, and managed to acquire a set that had been published in sixteen thirty four in London. That brings our current count up to twenty two sets, and I’m sure we’re not stopping there.”

“That’s a bit crazy, but kind of cool.” Jake had turned around and was running his hand across the spines of one of the older sets on the shelf behind him.

“Yeah, I like it, honestly. Although I never have an excuse for not being able to find information for research papers and presentations, which is slightly obnoxious some times but I’ll deal with it,” Jessica said as she watched both Michael and Jake look around at the multiple sets of encyclopedias that surrounded them. Their library was set up much like a normal library was, with shelves not only lining the walls but also jutting out of the walls in various spots which created smaller sections of the room and allowed for more shelf space and therefore more room to house books.

“Remind me the next time I need to write a paper to just come invade your library. Screw going to an actual library, you guys have more than most colleges would, ” Michael said with a grin as he put a brightly colored volume of the World Book Encyclopedia back on the shelf. “What’s next?”

“The fire place, actually,” Jessica said with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. Sure enough, they emerged from the encyclopedia section and came around the end of the last shelf to be greeted by the sight of the very large brick fire place that ran from floor to ceiling on the first level of the library. The fire place took up about a third of the wall it was on and consisted of dark red and dark brown bricks. There was a dark mahogany mantle piece that matched the rest of the wood in the room, and a variety of different sized picture frames containing pictures of various family members as well as all four of their dogs. Above the mantle and the picture frames (which were all the same vintage looking antiqued gold finish as the rest of the hard ware in the room) was a massive mirror that covered most of the top half of the fire place and was edged in a vintage looking antiqued gold finished frame that matched not only the smaller picture frames below it but the rest of the hard ware in the library as well. The hearth that stuck out at the bottom of the fire place was the same dark red and dark brown bricks and had what Michael and Jake assumed was a dog bed sitting on the end closest to where they were standing. On the floor in front of them was a large area rug that looked more like a tapestry wall hanging than an area rug that covered a part of the cream colored wall to wall carpeting. The rug in turn was in front of an over sized leather sofa and two matching over sized arm chairs on either end of the sofa. Both chairs and the sofa had matching throw pillows tucked in to their corners, and the couch had three blankets of varying patterns draped over it. One was plain and a slightly lighter brown than the sofa, and it was neatly folded and draped evenly over the back of the sofa. The second one looked like it had been folded in a hurry and dropped on the right arm of the couch in a hap hazard manner, and it looked to be a swirled pattern of blues and whites that matched the colors of the paint job on the walls of the entire library. What Jessica, Jake, and Michael had originally thought was a big furry blanket at first glance wasn’t actually a blanket at all but the third (and largest) of the four dogs: Charlie, a Bernese Mountain dog who was curled up in the left corner of the couch, looking very much like a large brown, black and white furry blanket. He opened his eyes lazily at their approach and lifted his head up at the sight of two strange people on either side of Jessica.

“Hey Charlie,” Jessica said, walking over to the very adorable mass of canine fur on the couch. He was only ten months old, but he was already the biggest of the four dogs and he was only going to get bigger. Charlie closed his eyes and stretched slightly as Jessica petted his head. “I was wondering where you were. Michael, when did he come in here?”

“Uh. I wasn’t aware he had,” Michael said, scratching his head as he tried to remember seeing the dog wander in. “Maybe while you guys were getting the drinks and stuff, and I just didn’t notice? Sorry, I don’t know.”

“No, it’s fine. I just don’t remember seeing him come in here at all while I was here, so I was just curious,” Jessica said as Charlie picked his head up at the sound of Michael’s voice. He gave a slight growl and looked up at Jessica, trying to determine if it was safe to have these strange boys in the house with them. “It’s okay, Charlie. They’re fine.”

Jake cautiously walked up next to Jessica and stood by her side, and held his hand out for Charlie to smell. The dog lifted his enormous head and stretched his neck out a few inches to reach Jake’s hand, and gave it a few quick sniffs. Charlie apparently approved of Jake’s presence, because he gave Jake’s hand a quick lick and started to wag his huge fluffy tail. Michael followed Jake’s lead and stepped up to Jessica’s other side, and hesitated for a second before extending his hand out in front of Charlie’s face just as Jake had done. Charlie gave Michael the same reaction he had to Jake, and licked his hand in a welcoming fashion. Jessica was about to ask Jake and Michael if they had dogs of their own, but she was interrupted by a burst of music coming from her cell phone that was tucked away in her back pack.

“Hey green eyes
You wanna go lose some time with me?
Oh my my,
I’ve gotta know
What is this feeling?

I think I’m f f f falling
For lovely Lily
You can’t deny we belong together
It’s crystal clear to see
You belong with me
Lily”

Jessica sighed and walked over to her back pack, which was at the table they had put all of their stuff at when they had first come into the library. She knew it was Sarah calling, but that didn’t make her try to find the phone in her bag any faster.

“Hey green eyes
You wanna go lose some time with me?
Oh my my,
I’ve gotta know
What is this feeling?

I think I’m f f f falling
For lovely Lily
You can’t deny we belong together
It’s crystal clear to see
You belong with me
Lily”

Her phone kept ringing as she un-zipped the front pocket of her bag where she normally kept her phone, but was a bit surprised to not find it where it usually belonged. Another burst of music came from some where a bit deeper in the bag, and she kept digging for the missing phone.

“Hey green eyes
You wanna go lose some time with me?
Oh my my,
I’ve gotta know
What is this feeling?

I think I’m f f f falling
For lovely Lily
You can’t deny we belong together
It’s crystal clear to see
You belong with me
Lily”

She pulled up the front flap of her bag to reveal the main compartment of her bag and heard the music coming from her phone get a little louder, so she knew she was in the right place to find it now. She stuck her hand in between a few books and started to feel around for her phone, and she felt her fingers brush across the familiar feeling of her phone’s key pad. She shoved her hand a bit farther into the bag and wrapped her fingers around the phone before extracting her arm from the bag, phone in hand and still emitting the chorus from one of her favorite songs.

“Hey green eyes
You wanna go lose some time with me?
Oh my my,
I’ve gotta know
What is this feeling?

I think I’m f f f falling
For lovely Lily
You can’t deny we belong together
It’s crystal clear to see
You belong with me
Lily”

The phone fell silent before she had a chance to answer it, but wasn’t worried because Sarah always left her a voice mail when she called. As she un-locked the key pad, the phone beeped with the tone of her voice mail notification just as she had expected it to.

“Sorry, guys. I’m pretty sure that was Sarah. Give me just a minute to call her back,” Jessica said as she punched the button programmed for her voice mail on speed dial. For some reason, the automated voice mail operator’s voice for her phone service had an British accent and it always threw her off for a second when she first connected to her voice mail. Jessica had to switch service providers when she had moved, because the one she had in L.A. didn’t have decent coverage and signal in this part of Vermont. She quickly navigated through the main menu to her messages, and listened as Sarah’s voice came from the ear piece of her phone.

“Hey Jess. I was just trying to make sure you had gotten home alright. I hadn’t heard from you, so I just wanted to touch base and make sure you were all right. I’m staying at the shelter tonight, it’s going to be way too hard for me to get home in this weather. You won’t be able to call me back at the shelter because their phones are acting up because of the storm, and my phone is going in and out of service depending on where I’m standing. If I’m outside I have decent reception, but the ridiculous amount of wind and snow isn’t helping anything. I’ll try calling you back again in a bit, so don’t worry about trying to get ahold of me. I’ll take care of that. Hope you’re all right. Love you.”

Jessica pulled the phone away from her ear and punched the button to delete the message before dis-connecting the call and setting the phone on the table for safe keeping so she could easily find it when Sarah called back. She walked back over to Jake and Michael, who were being licked and loved on by Charlie on the floor in front of the fire place.

“You would think he never gets any attention,” Jessica said as she sank to the ground next to Michael and reached her hand out to rub Charlie’s stomach. He was sprawled on his back on the rug in front of the fire place with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, and looking quite like he was having the time of his life.

“Do you guys want to -” she stared to ask them if they wanted to continue their tour of the library, but was interrupted by her phone ringing again.

“Hey green eyes
You wanna go lose some time with me?
Oh my my,
I’ve gotta know
What is this feeling?

I think I’m f f f falling
For lovely Lily
You can’t deny we belong together
It’s crystal clear to see
You belong with me
Lily”

“Hey green eyes
You wanna go lose some time with me?
Oh my my,
I’ve gotta know
What is this feeling?

I think I’m f f f falling -”

She reached the table and picked up the phone half-way through it’s second round of the chorus. She glanced at the caller ID and didn’t recognize the number, but picked it up anyway just incase it was Sarah who was calling back.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Hey sweetie, it’s Sarah,” came her aunt’s familiar voice crackling from the other end. Jessica could tell Sarah was having a hard time with the reception on her end at the shelter and that she was going to try to make it as quick of a phone call as possible. “Did you get my voice mail?”

“Yeah, I did. You’re staying at the shelter tonight, and have really bad reception. Any thing else?” Jessica asked. She knew her aunt well enough that they could easily have every thing necessary covered in a thirty second conversation.

“Not really, that’s it. You got home okay, I take it?”

“Yeah, no problems at all. The dogs have been fed and we still have power. I’m going to check on the generator as soon as we’re done and then get started on my portfolio and homework.”

“Good girl. I think they have the phone problem solved out here, so if you need me try that number first and then my cell phone, okay?”

“Got it. See you tomorrow, then?”

“Yep. Bye Jess, love you.”

“Love you too,” Jessica said as she hung up the phone and set it back down on the table. She looked back over at Michael, Jake, and Charlie who were all still on the floor in front of the fire place. “Do you guys want to keep the tour going, or are you content to entertain my dog for the rest of the night?”