I shouldn’t have been surprised that she turned and ran after that; I was more surprised to find myself following her. Her legs weren’t quite as long as mine, but she was quite fast anyway, and much better at dodging around the other people hanging out on the sidewalks, like they didn’t have anything better to do. I nearly knocked a couple kids down, which slowed me enough that she managed to get up the steps and into the library, which I doubt I’d have even noticed otherwise.
I forced myself to calm down as much as possible, not wanting to get thrown out before I reached my prey, while my heart did its best not to explode in my chest. The library was, as usual, not particularly busy, which made it easier to hear where the girl was, even though she was doing her best to be quiet. It also made it harder to pursue with any kind of speed, since I knew if I wasn’t careful I’d just bring the librarians down on me, thus prematurely ending the hunt.
I tiptoed through non-fiction, listening to her footsteps a few shelves over. Turning slightly, I could see her, or at least a strip of her chest, against which she was clutching that book, through the empty spaces between tops of books and bottoms of shelves. She was breathing hard, finally giving me reason to believe I wasn’t horribly out of shape for feeling a little tired.
She was walking the opposite direction as me, and a little faster. If it came down to it, I could probably have caught her if I’d turned around, met her when she hit the aisle. Instead, I kept going to the aisle on the opposite end of the shelves, turned the corner and stopped, peaking again to make sure she was still there. Sure enough, she was, and now just right on the other side of the shelves I was looking through. She’d stopped moving, was now just standing there, all wide eyed, shaking.
Part of me felt bad; it wasn’t too difficult to ignore that part until later. After all, she’d been following me for way too long for me to consider it a coincidence. Didn’t I deserve to know what in the world was going on?
I took it even more slowly then, keeping her in my sight in case she should happen to hear me and dart. Her gaze kept leaping all over the place, and a couple times I was certain she’d seen me, but it wasn’t until I was almost to her that I saw her eyes widen in fear.
Knowing my luck had run out, I jumped forward, snaking my arm through the shelf, taking out a few of the taller books on it in the process, and grabbed her arm. She gave out a strange sound, like a wounded animal, and began to writhe wildly.
I could hear the librarians descending on us, so, when her arm broke free of my grip and she took off, I somehow resisted the urge to give chase, pleased enough with her expression of terror. That is, however, not to say that I minded the little bonus of noticing that she’d dropped that book of hers.
“Did you see what got into that girl?”
I glanced over with a blink and an innocent shake of my head to the librarian. “No clue,” I said. “Can I help you pick those books up?”
“Well, sure,” the old woman smiled.
I had knocked over more books than I’d realized, and, somehow, even after seeing her with it so many times, I couldn’t quite remember what it actually had on the cover. Just some random thing, against what I thought might have been a blue background. There were a couple that looked familiar, so I left them until last so I could decide between them.
Finally, the title of one caught my eye. “Oh, this is just what I was looking for!” I chirped, a little too loudly, earning myself a disapproving glare.
“That’s kind of an odd spelling,” she said, though, once we were at the circulation desk.
“It’s how my name is spelled, actually,” I told her.
“Oh! How interesting!” And, amazingly enough, she actually did sound interested.
“It’s just a weird coincidence,” I said, mostly to myself. It would be a neat little curiosity, perhaps, if the person who had been reading it last hadn’t been stalking me.
I managed to make it out of the library, just barely, before cracking open the book. I was tempted to flip through, hoping for some pictures, but decided instead to start with the first page, not sure what I was expecting to find. Certainly not what I actually found, anyway, that’s for sure.
“‘Aw, fricklestein,’ the girl grumbled under her breath, reaching down with one hand to inspect the rip up the leg of her shorts. It wasn’t that the girl particularly minded showing off her legs – they were, undoubtedly, the best part of her otherwise large and gangly body – but she’d just bought the shorts three days ago.”
I stared at the words for a few minutes, unblinking. I tried to tell myself it was all a coincidence again, but the words dried up in my throat. What was going on?
I tried to read on, but my head was already swimming, and the words began to blur and dance until I felt dizzy enough to fall over. I decided to put it off until I got home, and could devote more time and energy to it. So, I closed “Skye’s the Limit”, and started the slow walk home, alone with my increasingly confused thoughts.