The Late Return

I turn twenty-five on Sunday and I've been weird about it for weeks. Do you ever do that thing where you keep a list in your head of everything you were supposed to have done by a certain age? Because I do, and mine is stupid. Learn a language. Move out of my flat share. Kiss somebody who isn't on a dating app at two in the morning. None of it has happened, and on Thursday night I was lying on my sofa eating cold noodles straight from the box and thinking, well, this is who you are now, Hayley!

Which is dramatic. I know it's dramatic. Twenty-five is not old. But it felt old that night, in the way birthdays do when you've been treating them like deadlines instead of days.

Here's the background, so this all makes sense. I'm a library assistant at the Harrington University Library Annex. It's this converted chapel with stained-glass windows and steel shelves crammed into every corner, plus a rare book vault that's colder than my fridge. I've worked there three years. That's where I met Rory, who is an archivist and my best friend and, in case you're wondering, no, we have never been a thing. Not once. Not even at the Christmas party when everyone else was kissing by the coat rack. We just became friends the boring way, over shared shifts and vending machine crisps.

Rory is twenty-five already, which he reminds me of constantly. He's got this quiet way about him. He doesn't say much, and then he says one sentence and it sits in your head for a week. He's been like that since day one.

So Thursday. Noodles. Sofa. Deadline brain. And then Friday morning I walk into the annex and there's Felix standing on a step ladder in the middle of the reading room, holding a clipboard like it's a royal proclamation.

Felix is our head librarian. He's twenty-nine, he's been here seven years, and he is famous for ideas that nobody asked for. Last spring he tried to start a "quiet book club" where nobody was allowed to speak, which, yes, is just a library. He got offended when we pointed that out!

"Staff meeting!" he shouted down at us. "Mandatory! Well, not legally mandatory, but emotionally mandatory!"

There are eleven of us on the morning shift. We gathered under him like pigeons. Tamara from circulation had her coffee and her usual face, which is the face of a woman who has heard many Felix announcements and believes in none of them.

"It's that time of year again," Felix said, and he did a little drumroll on the clipboard. "The Shelving Derby."

I heard Tamara mutter something unrepeatable.

"The rules." Felix went on. He loves saying that word. "Each team gets one cart of mis-sorted volumes. First person to shelve their entire cart correctly wins. Correctly is the key word. Dewey errors mean a penalty, and I will be checking. The winner takes home the Golden Bookend, which is a brick I spray-painted, and a year of bragging rights."

"Is the Golden Bookend actually gold?" asked Aileen from acquisitions.

"It is gold in spirit." Felix beamed at us. "Last year old Andre won it, put it on his desk, and made sure Diane saw it every single day. She's never forgiven him, so choose your effort wisely."

Andre retired in January, by the way, so if you were worried, don't be. Diane runs the place practically.

Now, normally I sit these things out. I sat out the quizzes and the bake-off and the terrible year Felix made us all do trust falls in the vault. I play it safe. That's everything on my list, isn't it? Nothing on it, nothing risked, nothing lost. Safe, safe, safe.

So I was standing there planning to sit out number whatever-this-is, when Rory came and stood next to me. He didn't say anything at first. He just watched Felix climb down off the ladder and straighten his cardigan.

"You're entering," Rory said. Not a question.

"I wasn't planning on it, actually."

"You are." He turned and looked at me. "I challenge you. Directly. Me versus you, one cart each."

I laughed, because that's what I do instead of reacting to things. "Why me? You've beaten everyone here for three years. You alphabetize your tea bags."

"Funny," he said. "I alphabetize nothing, I want that noted. And I want you specifically."

"Why?" I asked, and I hated how fast I asked it. Like I needed to know.

"Because you never enter anything," he said, plain as anything. "Three years I've watched you stand on the edge of every single one of Felix's disasters. You're the fastest shelver in this building and you know it. You just won't race."

"I'm not fast," I said.

"Hayley. I've seen you clear a returned cart in eleven minutes. I timed it once."

"You timed me?"

"That's not the part to focus on," he said, and he almost smiled, which for Rory is basically a grin. "The part to focus on is the race. You and me. What do you say? Or are you going to spend your last week of twenty-four playing it safe again?"

Okay. So. My heart was doing something embarrassing at that point. Not because of the race, obviously. Because he'd said it out loud, the thing I'd been thinking on my sofa with my noodles. The list. The deadline. The nothing ventured.

It felt like a last chance to surprise myself, which sounds silly for a shelving contest, but feelings don't check how silly their reasons are.

"If I win," I said, "you have to bring me that fancy cake from the bakery on Corner Street. The one with the pistachio."

"Deal."

"And if you win?"

"I gloat for a year," Rory said. "Quietly. You'll barely notice."

"That's a terrible prize."

"It's a great prize," he said. "You accept?"

"Yes. Obviously yes, since you're bullying me into it."

"I'm not bullying you. You could say no right now."

I could have. That's the annoying thing about Rory, he always leaves the door open. And that's the annoying thing about me, I always walk through it when he does. "I accept," I said, and my heart pounded the whole time I said it, which is ridiculous, it's books, it's shelves, it's a Friday.

Felix, who had been hovering as if watching his own birthday present get opened, clapped his hands. "A marquee matchup. The archivist versus the assistant. I'll allow it as a head-to-head, since you're the only two who volunteered."

"Volunteered is strong," said Tamara.

"The derby is tomorrow, Saturday, at nine sharp," Felix announced. "Carts are prepared, randomized, and sealed. No peeking. Hayley, Rory, you'll each take the east wing. Dewey errors cost you thirty seconds each. I have a stopwatch and I am not afraid to use it."

"You're absolutely afraid to use it," Aileen said. "You broke it last year."

"I have a new one."

That was Friday. That evening I went home and stood in front of my wardrobe for a full ten minutes deciding what to wear to a shelving race, which is a sentence I never thought I'd think. I settled on jeans and a t-shirt, because it's a shelving race, Hayley, get a grip. Then I lay in bed going through the Dewey hundreds in my head like a student before an exam. Five thirty-something is math. Seven hundred is arts. I know this. I've known this for three years. Why was I nervous?

Because of Rory, honestly. Because "I want you specifically" was rattling around in my head all night. He doesn't do jokes with teeth in them, he's not that type, but he does do earnest things at you when you least expect it, and I didn't know what to do with an earnest thing like that. I fell asleep somewhere around the six hundreds.

Saturday morning I got there at eight thirty, early, which I never am. The annex smelled like that old paper smell it always has, plus Felix's coffee, which he makes too strong. The stained glass was doing its early thing, all red and yellow stripes across the reading room floor. Felix had set up two carts side by side like it was a boxing ring, and he'd made a paper banner that said DERBY! in what looked like crayon.

"You made a banner," I said.

"I made two banners," he said proudly. "The other one says GO."

Rory turned up at ten to nine with his sleeves already rolled, which felt like a psychological tactic. He nodded at me. "Sleep well?"

"Badly. Thanks for asking."

"Good," he said. "Means you're taking it seriously."

Felix counted us down from ten, which took ninety seconds because he kept adding rules to the countdown. Then he yelled go, and the stopwatch did not work, and Tamara had to shout the time from her phone, and honestly it was chaos from the very first second.

I grabbed my first armful of books and I was off.

I was already three books deep when I heard Rory's cart squeak behind me, which is a sound I know better than my own laugh. That squeak means he's moving fast. Fine. Good. Race on.

The east wing in the morning is all stripes of light and dust and that hush you get under a chapel ceiling. Tamara and Aileen had wandered in to watch, because of course they had, and Diane was pretending to file something at the desk while watching us like it was television.

"Three hundred, social sciences," Aileen called out helpfully.

"Nobody asked you," I said, sliding a sociology text into its slot.

The thing about shelving fast is you can't think. You look at the spine, you know the number, you move. Three thirty-something, math, that shelf, second row, go. My hands were doing it on their own while my brain just stood at the back going hurry, hurry, hurry.

Rory was shelving quiet, which is worse than loud. A loud shelver you can track. A quiet one is either struggling or about to pass you.

"How are you doing?" he asked, calm as anything, sliding two geology books in without even looking at their spines.

"Ahead of you. Obviously."

"You're ahead of me," he agreed, and I could hear the smile in it, and I hated him a little.

Halfway through my cart I hit the disaster zone. Felix had salted it with nasty ones, five-year editions, books with the wrong call number stamped inside, a whole sociology text misfiled under 200s like religion. I caught that one just in time.