Chapter Text
The lights in the back corner of the library buzzed with an annoying hum that made Book's head hurt even more.
She pressed her forehead against the cool, smooth wood of the desk and let out a long breath that made her glasses foggy. Around her, the usual sounds of detention at Yoyle High School started to fade away. The ticking clock on the wall, the squeaking of shoes on the floor, and the loud scratching of a pencil across the room filled the quiet space.
Slowly, Book sat up and pushed her glasses back up her nose with her finger. She looked over to her left. Coiny was trying to see how many staples he could hook together before the teacher noticed. To her right, Pencil was staring at the ceiling, completely ignoring everything, maybe thinking about her girlfriend.
Book sighed and reached into her heavy backpack. Her fingers moved past her math book, her flashcards, and her extra pencil case. Instead, she grabbed the old, thick journal hidden at the very bottom. It was a hard notebook with edges that were a little ripped, and a big purple rubber band held it shut.
To anyone else, it just looked like a boring chemistry notebook for chemistry notes or word lists. But to Book, it was super important. It was the only place in this whole crazy school where she actually felt like she could control things.
She slid the notebook onto her lap under the table so no one could see it. She took the rubber band off with a quiet snap and flipped through the clean pages until she found the first blank one.
She took a deep breath, clicked her favorite blue gel pen, and started writing.
May 18th.
I hate group projects. I hate them more than the gross lunch food, and I hate them more than the fact that nobody in this school knows how to stay organized.
Today, Mr Four told us our big research pairs for English class. I actually felt a little bit happy at first. I thought it would be a fun chance to read great books and talk about deep meanings. I already had my whole plan ready. I even had three different highlighters ready to color code my notes.
And then, everything went totally wrong.
We did not get to pick our own partners. Mr Four picked names out of a regular old bucket that smelled like chalk and dust.
Book, he called out. I raised my hand, waiting to see which smart student I would get to work with. Ice Cube? Tennis Ball? Even Golf Ball would have been fine, even though she always tells everyone what to do.
And Needle, he said.
Needle.
My heart completely dropped. Of all the people in this school, why did it have to be her? We do not even talk to eachother, and we are totally different. She is a big track star, but she also wears this weird, dark, edgy clothing that I do not get at all. One day she wears a sports shirt, and the next day she is wearing heavy black eyeliner, safety pins as earrings, and giant boots that look heavy enough to hurt someone. She is loud. She just acts without thinking. She takes up so much attention in a room without even trying, and it really bugs me.
When our names were called, she did not even look at me. She just leaned back in her seat, made a noise with her tongue, and said something quiet that sounded like, “Great, the human dictionary.”
We had to sit together for the last ten minutes of class to talk about our project. It was terrible. I tried to show her my neat reading schedule, and she literally pushed it away with one finger. She told me to chill out and said we had weeks to worry about it. Chill out? The assignment sheet is four pages long! She does not take anything seriously. She thinks she can just get through life because she is good at sports and acts cool.
I can already tell this is going to be a total nightmare. We do not just dislike each other, we are opposites. We are like oil and water. If we have to spend more than an hour together outside of class, I am pretty sure someone is going to end up in the office, or even worse, the hospital.
Book stopped writing because her hand was hurting from pressing the pen down so hard. She looked up to see if the teacher noticed her writing so fast, but the teacher was just staring at a phone screen.
She looked down at the page again. The blue ink looked bright and mean.
Book bit her lip. She looked at the empty spaces on the sides of the paper. It was a habit she could not stop. Whenever she was stressed out, her hand just started drawing on its own.
Slowly, without really thinking about it, the tip of her pen started to move. She began making little drawings around her angry paragraphs.
First, she drew a tiny picture of herself hiding under a giant pile of books, looking totally stressed. Then, on the other side of the page, her pen drew a sharp line. A tall, thin shape appeared. It was Needle, drawn with quick lines. It showed her messy, long haircut, her sharp chin, and the big leather jacket she always wore over one shoulder.
Book eyes got small as she stared at the drawing. She added the tiny, silly safety pin earring she had noticed on Needle ear when they were talking earlier.
“Why do I even remember that?” Book thought, suddenly feeling a little warm and embarrassed. “Because it’s obviously distracting. That’s why. It goes against the school rules, and it distracts me.”
She sighed and shifted in her uncomfortable chair. To stop thinking about the annoying project, her mind did what it always did when real life got too stressful. It started making up a story.
She turned the page, totally forgetting about her regular diary entry as she started writing a fic. This was her biggest secret, and she would be so embarrassed if anyone at school found out. She loved writing fanfiction. Usually, she wrote super dramatic romance stories about characters that were inspired by the real people around her.
But lately, the people in her head were not about fictional royalty crap or star crossed forbidden lovers.
Her pen moved fast across the paper, writing a scene that she had been thinking about for days. It was a totally made up, super dramatic moment where two people who were supposed to hate each other got stuck in the same room.
The rain hit the glass of the old greenhouse, Book wrote, her handwriting changing from neat print to pretty cursive. The air smelled like wet dirt and plants. She stood by the door with her wet jacket, her eyes dark. “We shouldn’t be here,” she whispered into the storm.
The other girl walked closer, her heart jamming against her ribs. “Then why did you follow me?”
Book stopped. She stared at the words she just wrote. Her face turned bright red all of a sudden.
She knew exactly who those two characters were supposed to be. It was so embarrassing. It made no sense. She did not like Needle. Needle was rude, dismissive, and represented everything Book found frustrating about her classmates in high school.
But still, Book pen moved to the very top corner of the page. Inside a tiny, neat drawing of leaves, she wrote:
B + N
She stared at it. It looked incredibly juvenile. It looked like something a middle schooler would scratch into a desk.
Panicking slightly at her own boldness, she quickly drew a bunch of scribbles over the letters to hide them. But then, on the next line down, her hand just kept going. She started writing their names together in different ways, matching the letters B-O-O-K and N-E-E-D-L-E together in cool, dark writing, surrounding them with little stars and hearts.
It looked totally crazy. It was half neat like a smart student notebook, and half obsessed stalker type shit. She wasn’t a stalker or obsessed freak at all, ew. It made no sense, just like the two of them.
It is just a drawing practice, Book lied to herself. Her heart rate spiking as she drew a detailed picture of two hands holding each other. One hand had neat nails, and the other had messy black nail polish and a silver ring. It doesn’t mean anything, she thought. It is just a story. Writers make up weird things all the time.
The sharp, shrill blast of the final bell shattered the silence of the library.
Book jumped, and her pen skid across the page, making a big, ugly blue line right through her drawing of the hands. Her hands shook from the trauma of the unexpected shock.
"Okay, detention is done," the teacher called out, not even looking up. "Get out. Do not let me see you back here tomorrow."
The library immediately got super busy. Pencil threw her stuff into her bag in two seconds and ran out the door. Coiny ran right after her, trying to hide his chain of staples in his pocket.
Book suddenly felt super worried. The bell meant the buses were going to leave in exactly seven minutes. If she missed her bus, she would have to walk three miles home in the humid May heat while carrying a super heavy bag full of textbooks.
"Oh goodness, okay," she whispered, her hands shaking a little as she put her pen away.
She grabbed her math book and shoved it into the big part of her backpack. She reached down and grabbed the notebook from her lap. Because she was rushing so much, she did not notice that the purple rubber band had snapped off completely, leaving the pages loose. She stuffed the notebook into the front pocket of her bag, zipped it up fast, and threw the heavy straps over her shoulders.
She stood up so fast her glasses slid down the bridge of her nose. She fixed them quickly, grabbed her jacket, and ran toward the door, counting the minutes left before the buses drove away.
She was looking so hard at the exit that she did not notice the tall, slim figure leaning against the lockers right outside the library.
Needle was standing there with one foot against a locker and her arms crossed. She was wearing her oversized denim vest over a black hoodie, and her long, silver hair was up in her usual let down messy way. She was listening to music with headphones, her eyes closed, tapping her foot to the rhythm that only she could hear.
Book practically charged out of the library, her bag bouncing against her back.
"Watch it," Needle muttered, opening one eye when Book bumped past her.
Book stopped, her shoes sliding on the floor. She turned around, breathing hard. "Oh. Needle. I didn’t see you."
"Clearly," Needle said, pulling one earbud out. She looked Book up and down, her expression neutral but tinged with that mild, effortless boredom that always made Book feel incredibly self conscious. “The buses don’t leave for another five minutes."
"Five minutes is exactly how long it takes to navigate the crowd near the cafeteria," Book said, her voice tight and defensive. "Some of us actually care about getting home on time to start our homework."
Needle let out a short, dry laugh. "Right. Heaven forbid the homework gets delayed by five minutes. The world might end."
Book felt her jaw tighten. "You know, Needle, just because you don't take this semester seriously doesn't mean I have to ruin my GPA. Our project plan is due Monday, and you have not even opened the I emailed you."
Needle sighed, rolling her eyes as she slung her own black canvas bag over her shoulder. "I told you, Book. I’ll look at it. I’ve been at track practice for three hours. My legs feel like lead, and I really don't feel like getting a lecture from a dictionary right now."
A dictionary. The nickname stung, even though Book tried to tell herself it was stupid.
"Fine," Book snapped, turning on her heel. "Don't look at it. But if we get a failing grade on the preliminary thesis because you couldn't be bothered to open a laptop, I am telling Mr. Four exactly whose fault it was."
"Go ahead," Needle called after her, her voice echoing down the hallway. "Tell him. See if he cares."
Book didn't reply. She marched down the hallway, her face burning with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. Why did Needle always manage to make her feel so small? Why did she care so much about what a girl with chipped nail polish and safety pins in her ears thought about her?
She shoved her way through the double doors of the school's main exit, bursting out into the warm afternoon air. The yellow school buses were lined up in a neat row, their exhaust pipes spewing thin plumes of gray smoke into the sky.
Book saw her bus, Bus 4, and accelerated into a jog. She ran up the rubber lined steps right before the driver closed the door, apologized with a nod and walked down the aisle to find an isolated seat in the back.
She dropped inseat, letting out a massive, exhausted sigh. She leaned her head against the window, watching the brick facade of Yoyle High slowly recede as the bus rumbled to life and pulled out of the parking lot.
Her chest felt heavy. She was thinking about the project guidelines, Needle mean voice, and the embarrassing drawings she had just made.
I need to erase those, Book thought suddenly, feeling a wave of fear. What if someone sees them? What if my mom searches my bag? What if I drop that notebook in class?
The idea of anyone, especially Needle, finding those pages made Book feel ill. The drawings were bad, but the story? The sketch of the initials B + N hidden in the leaves? It would ruin her life. Everyone would laugh at her.
Scared, Book pulled her backpack onto her lap. She unzipped the front pocket, reaching inside to grab the notebook so she could rip the pages out and tear them into tiny pieces right away.
Her fingers brushed against her pencil case. They brushed against some gum. They brushed against a crumpled receipt from a bookstore.
Her hand hit the bottom of the pocket.
It was empty.
Book’s heart stopped. A cold, heavy weight dropped into her stomach.
"No, no, no," she whispered, her voice trembling.
She unzipped the main compartment, tearing through her binders, flipping through her AP Calculus textbook, practically dumping the contents of her neatly organized bag onto the vinyl seat beside her. Flashcards scattered everywhere. Pens rolled under the seat in front of her.
The hardcover notebook with the purple rubber band was gone.
A memory flashed through her mind, the sudden blast of the detention bell, her hurried, panicked scrambling, the way she had crammed her jacket and her books together in a frantic rush. The notebook must have slid right off her lap, slick against her skirt, and tumbled onto the library floor. Or maybe it had fallen out of her unzipped bag when she was arguing with Needle in the hallway.
Book stared at her empty hands, the color completely draining from her face.
The notebook, the diary, the stories, the elaborate, embarrassing drawings of Needle’s hands, the stupidly creative ship names, were somewhere on the school grounds. Alone. Unprotected.
Waiting for someone to pick it up.
Fuck.