going to burn down the library in a week?” It had finally sunk in and became clear to Brixton what she had just said. He felt as if a part of him had died.
“Yes. They’re calling it The Burning Ceremony. Real original, I know. Like it’s some big celebration; a “cleansing of the mind”.” A tear streamed down her already glowing face from sweat.
“Why would they do that?”
“Because they can. They feel threatened. That’s what they do.”
“Feel threatened? By who?”
“By us. All of us who go to that library. All of us who still know how to read. All of us who have an opinion and who care about that place. They’re trying to stop us.”
“From doing what though? We aren’t doing anything.”
“Not yet we aren’t, Brix. But someday we will and that’s what scares them.”
“What, like rebellion to go against them?”
“Exactly.”
Brixton looked around the designated dining room. Books lie scattered across the floor and table. They were everywhere. And she was going to get more?
“What are we going to do with all of these?”
“We’ve got one week and a lot of rearranging to do. I’m going to need your help.”
“Where do we start?”
Brixton could tell that she was in fact telling the truth. She hadn’t lost her mind. Somehow, someway, Sonu found out what the Fatalities planned to do to the library books. She was creative, but there was no way she would have gone this far with a made-up story. To risk getting caught stealing books? She would never do that just for fun.
In a way, he was kind of happy she didn’t tell him the whole story. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to learn how she found out. It had to be from someone on the inside and the thought of his mother in close contact with someone like that scared him. Maybe it was best he didn’t know.
That night, Brixton could hardly sleep. The thrill of going against a Fatal had his stomach churning for hours. If they could sneak in unnoticed with the library and take the books, what else could they do? Would it be possible to do the same with the store? He hadn’t had a decent dessert in years and the cupcakes he saw citizens with when they walked down the streets looked heavenly. His mouth watered every time he saw the swirled frosting and the moist, crumbling cake. Or possibly a glazed ham oozing with juices would be divine.
Of course, his mother would never allow for them to sneak into the store. They were stealing the books for a good reason. They weren’t stealing for the sake of stealing.
Robin Hood and his merry men, he thought. Except my merry men consists of just my mother. Or would she be more like Robin Hood and I’m the merry man?
One good robbery would have to do. What he liked most about taking the books was that it meant he would never have to sneak past the headquarters again. All the questions and the stares made him too nervous. Even just one day without having to walk past that black brick building made this whole escapade worth it.
The days passed and they began to fall into a steady routine. His mother made all of the back and forth trips, while he organized them into categorized piles. Brixton forgot all about that headquarters building and who lurked behind the doors and windows of it.
Each trip became easier. By far that was the easy part. Finding a place to put them was the hard part. Things quickly shifted from an exciting rush to a tortuous day in and day out chore. Every imaginable muscle in his body begged for an end that was nowhere in sight. Blisters erupted like miniature volcanoes of puss all over his hands. When they sat down to rest, neither he nor his mother could sit up in their chairs. Their bodies fell limp and surrendered to the soft cushions of the tufted chairs every evening.
Sonu accumulated so many bruises that she reminded him of a cheetah or some other spotted animal roaming around in the wild.
It kind of felt like that, he thought. Mom does roam the empty streets; ready to pounce on anything that so much as moves a millimeter.
The temptation to celebrate overpowered both Brixton and his mother when she decided they had saved enough books. It was perfect timing too. They hardly had enough space to walk around or sit comfortably without fear the slightest movement would send a book falling into their laps.
In the one week they had, they managed to convert every bit of available space into bookshelves. The walls made of plaster were easy enough to carve into. Those shelves cascaded from floor to ceiling. They wrapped around corners and into doorways. Sonu chiseled at loose bricks in the walls to form smaller cubby holes. Some of the cubbies housed one book while others crammed three or four. It all depended on how many bricks fell out. She only worked on the already loose ones to make sure the structure of the house wouldn’t cave in and crush them. She figured if they were already loose, they weren’t doing much good anyway.
Hardly any visible wall space stood in some places. During that Robin Hood time, they acquired thousands of novels. They had so much that many of them became furniture. Sonu stacked the older, sturdier encyclopedias on the floor. She then found a large recycled piece of glass at the junkyard and placed it on top. They now had end tables by the sofa and the window seat.
The fireplace, packed with shelves and books, seemed slightly ironic to Brixton. That would be the last place he would put them. One spark from the wood burning fireplace and all their hard work would go into flames. The carved whales’ teeth made for excellent bookends for the ones that held the honored position on the mantel.
Good thing we never use the fireplace anyway.
“Too much attention with the smoke and all,” Sonu would say. Only on rare occasions did they use it. When the temperature dropped down to unbearable where coats and blankets wouldn’t suffice, she lit up the wood. On those particular days, nobody would be outside anyway so they hardly worried about anybody spotting the smoke.
Even the space in between the stairs provided the perfect cozy little unit for smaller paperbacks. They literally swam in a sea of hard bounds, textbooks, and volumes of adventure. Their open loft gradually made its way to feeling like a small shoebox that smelled like tarnished leather and mildew.
Although the smell was strong at first, they quickly got used to it and began to like it. It permeated through the kitchen and into his bedroom upstairs.
Oh, his room. Even that received a story-fest makeover. He was curious to know if Sonu stole the books to save them or to use them for her decorating purposes. Of course, they needed to be saved, but his mother did enjoy a good renovation. She rearranged all the books in delectable patterns. His room looked the best of all. They spent a day and a half on his alone.
Only certain squares were chipped away on the old painted plaster wall so when she put the dark books in their cubbies, the entire wall looked like a giant chessboard. Squares she didn’t chip out were already white from the image he could no longer tell what it was.
On the wall with the giant circular window, Sonu allowed admittance for a tree to extend its winding arms through it. The branches begged for freedom to burst through for years as it grew. She took great pleasure in finding the biggest hammer she could to bust out the glass when really she only needed to unclip
