Liar, shaped like a fissure that materializes in windshield glass one day long after pebble’s impact.
But the kid wasn’t. A liar. Unless he was, and if he was he was all liar, professional liar, untruth with cheekbones, the best dissimulator Near had ever seen, and he’d known a few -- bad, good, very good, other. Knew that even a good liar gave it away a little when performing the shift between sincerity and not, a slight hiccup that you might not recognize for a while as what it was until you thought back and it all made sense. Of course.
Assume, then, Jude’s honesty. The circus freak had nothing to do with it. The culprit could have been anyone: the books stacked along the walls belonged to Courtland Farr at the same time as they didn’t, because they were everyone’s, the sum total of generations of Farrs shoving books onto shelves because it was supposed to be a library.
Beside the missingtooth gap left by Travels in Borneo, a newer, wider volume, plastic jacket still intact: The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology. Less close to Boers, but Near wiggled it out one-handed even so, tested its heft in his palm, and flipped it open with a shove of his thumb. All the same, off-kilter horizontal lines one after the other obscuring the words, page after page, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about it, because these were his books now, weren’t they? Angry? Sad? He settled the empty wine glass on the edge of a shelf and plucked another book, ignoring titles, from the next shelf over. The same. The same.
“They’re all fucked up.” Puzzled remained the best he could settle on. Puzzled, mildly disturbed, maybe a tiny bit jealous because hadn’t he wanted to do this once, years and years ago?
But the kid wasn’t. A liar. Unless he was, and if he was he was all liar, professional liar, untruth with cheekbones, the best dissimulator Near had ever seen, and he’d known a few -- bad, good, very good, other. Knew that even a good liar gave it away a little when performing the shift between sincerity and not, a slight hiccup that you might not recognize for a while as what it was until you thought back and it all made sense. Of course.
Assume, then, Jude’s honesty. The circus freak had nothing to do with it. The culprit could have been anyone: the books stacked along the walls belonged to Courtland Farr at the same time as they didn’t, because they were everyone’s, the sum total of generations of Farrs shoving books onto shelves because it was supposed to be a library.
Beside the missingtooth gap left by Travels in Borneo, a newer, wider volume, plastic jacket still intact: The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology. Less close to Boers, but Near wiggled it out one-handed even so, tested its heft in his palm, and flipped it open with a shove of his thumb. All the same, off-kilter horizontal lines one after the other obscuring the words, page after page, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about it, because these were his books now, weren’t they? Angry? Sad? He settled the empty wine glass on the edge of a shelf and plucked another book, ignoring titles, from the next shelf over. The same. The same.
“They’re all fucked up.” Puzzled remained the best he could settle on. Puzzled, mildly disturbed, maybe a tiny bit jealous because hadn’t he wanted to do this once, years and years ago?