My dad used to live right around the corner from here--in our youth, my sister and I would walk up the street to check out our stacks of books and enjoy the air conditioning during the summer. The Young Adult section is in the very back corner, like being a teenager is some sort of secret, and in a way it's perfect--lots of privacy and seats to pick through pages. I loved this place until the anonymous man with the curly hair started cruising the aisles to brush up against young girls. It happened to me once and that once was enough. This building turned into a scar, a once-ago, a lost of something I didn't really understand. Now that I'm older and sitting in the back I know I can handle any smarmy individual that might want to fuck with me. But thinking that way makes me sad.

Wow, I haven't taken a seat in one of these private little corrals in a long time. Maybe back with the high school boyfriend, when it was still cool and risky to sit on a lap and kiss in corners. The same paintings are hanging on the same walls. Time seems to freeze some things. I like thinking about some little man furiously putting these kidhood landmarks back into place right before my arrival like they knew I was coming and wanted me to feel right at home. I like pretending that the paintings were put back after being sold for millions of dollars--I kind of like pretending that the staff knows I've come here on pure nostaglia adrenaline, but no one really does. When did I last check out a book here, or study here, or find good music? I remember checking out the microfiche and waiting my turn to the use the 30 minute internet. I remember the anonymous man who ruined my castle full of books.

I am killing time and then hanging out with Steve who always sounds genuinely surprised to hear from me. I had to get out, away from the impending stomach virus that's thrashing through my sister's house, and away from in-town family members who want me to go gamble with them on a boat tonight. All the cousins back together again--some of us have kids, some don't. I'm not very good at gambling and I'm not in the mood to drink with long lost family, or be in a car laced with small talk for a few hours. Everything I drive past today looks different than I remember it and it's adding to the undertone of pinched sadness. This is always bittersweet, especially Middletown. In some ways, the city never changes and there's always some lint in the pockets, and I remember certain streets as if I just biked down them to blast past boundaries. Some of the mansions on Main Street are painted gaudy colors but the ones I remember liking best still look as they did when I was a kid. Right now it's just me and no one to share it with, but I don't think anyone else would appreciate the inconsistencies of my day as much as me so it's alright.

Will I come back here in 5 years, 10 years, 20, and still find the building, still find the books? Will the 3-D maps still be hanging to my back? Will the quiet still unnerve me? Will I miss using encyclopedias the way I do now? Maybe I ask too many questions that have no significant answers, but these are the things I wonder. It doesn't feel like a Friday. It doesn't feel like I live somewhere else now. I could be a ghost right now. Someone avenge my kidhood and all the incidents that brought me translucent here so I may cross over once and for all; forge this girl a home on a rest hellbent with peace.