I took a deep, calming breath, gathering my strength, when the whispering stopped. I sat as still as I could manage, hardly daring to breathe in case it alerted him to my presence. For a moment, everything was still, then someone exhaled gustily, and strode out from the bookcase slipping silently out of the door. I watched as the door closed on Alex's tall frame. As soon as he was gone I let out a long suffering sigh.
Well, that was a twist. I should've just looked into his head, at least tried to understand before jumping to conclusions. Although I had a strong feeling I already knew. Knew exactly who he was talking about. I just didn't understand why. Before I had time to finish these thoughts, a harassed looking Amber came barrelling through the library door, disturbing the dark silence that had descended. I plastered a smile onto my face, not wanting her to think anything was wrong.
'Helen is SUCH a whiner. God, it's not like I send out a newsletter listing all of the names I made up, I should now though. She shouldn't be eavesdropping on my private conversations either-' She complained, slamming her bag down on the table, and sliding heavily into the chair opposite me, with a sour look on her face. Emily, who had managed to slip through the open door after Amber's dramatic entrance, pulled out a chair next to me, and quietly seated herself on it, pulling out her History book.
'Revision,' She mouthed at me, deciding not to interrupt Amber mid-rant. A wise decision. I nodded, feeling as though a hammer was pounding at my skull. By that I mean I had a headache.
'-calls me stuff too. I mean what about the time she made everyone call me 'Cow lick' when my hair wasn't even sticking up? Did I complain? No, I took it like a man and-'
'Just needta look something up,' I mumbled, not waiting for anyone's reply. I strode into an empty row of books, pretending to look for one. When I was sure nobody was around, I let the fake smile slide off my face, replaced by what I'm sure were very unattractive lines of worry. What was happening? So he was using me now? What for? It was as I was struggling to answer these questions, and prevent myself from asking new ones a sudden thought hit me. Who had he been talking to? I know he's weird but why would he say those things out loud. It had sounded like he was answering questions. Whose questions? Ok, this was getting into serious 'mysterious' waters. I've read enough books to know that around this time, the heroine of the story would be doing some awesome heroine-ish thing to 'find out the truth'. Unfortunately, not only do I have no tricks up my sleeve to find this 'truth' of which we speak, I also do not even remotely resemble any heroine I've ever seen (strong, beautiful, loads of well-conditioned hair). Where was that time machine I'd been hoping for, lost in the mail perhaps?
'Can I help you with something?' A pleasant male voice inquired. I jumped, fixing my face into something a little less dramatic. I turned to see the source of the voice. A library volunteer, Ash or Jack or something. He was in a few of my classes.
'Uh, nope it's ok,' I muttered, smiling my thanks, and picking a random book off the nearest shelf to hold out to him. Why I did that I'll never know, when people do that on TV they always pick up a sex book or something. I prayed I hadn't picked up anything too embarrassing, risking a quick glance at the title of the book I was showing him. Something about historical statues, nothing too bad. Thank god. He smiled as if approving my choice, and moved to the next isle, looking for more victims to intimidate into picking up a sex book to show to him, I'm sure. Stuffing the book back onto its shelf, I made my way back to our table, only to find Ambers rant was still in full swing.
'Like if I made an observation about your name, and shared it with a few others you can hardly call it name calling.' She was saying, waving a bookmark in the air to demonstrate her point. Well, we were in a library.
'Ok, yes Helen's a freak. We know please just let it go. What goes around comes around and all that jazz. She'll get her comeuppance.' Emily moaned, plucking the bookmark from Ambers outstretched hand and slapping it onto the table.
