I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was definitely something amiss in my meticulously ordered sanctuary. Maybe it was the way the afternoon light hit the fiction section, casting shadows that made the shelves look slightly uneven. Or perhaps it was the scuff mark on the floor that I’d scrubbed three times but still seemed to mock me from beside the biography section.
I pushed my glasses up my nose and let out a frustrated sigh.
They slipped down again.
This was ridiculous.
The library was pristine.
It was organized to a degree that would make most librarians weep with joy, but my brain—my stupid, anxious, perpetually unsatisfied brain—insisted that chaos lurked just beneath the surface.
I strolled over to the reference section, running my finger along the spines, checking for any books that might have shifted even a millimeter out of place. Every student in the school was in class. No one could’ve moved a thing, and yet . . .
Nothing.
Everything was exactly where it should be.
Of course, it was.
“Get a grip, Theo,” I muttered to myself, adjusting a book that didn’t need adjusting. “It’s a library, not a museum.”
But that was the problem, wasn’t it?
I treated this place like it was my personal museum.
Every book was a precious artifact. Every shelf was a sacred display. The thought of students—teenagers with their grubby hands and complete disregard for sacred pages—descending upon my perfectly ordered world made my left eye twitch.
I glanced at the clock.
There was still twenty minutes left in the period.
Maybe I could reorganize the young adult section—not because it needed it, but because the constant activity helped calm the anxious buzzing in my chest.
I was halfway across the floor when I heard the distinctiveclick-clackof heels on linoleum.
My blood ran cold.
Those weren’t just any heels.
They were the heels of doom.
The heels that announced the arrival of the most terrifying creature to ever walk the halls of Mount Vernon High School.
Jessica Martinez.
I turned slowly, like a zebra that had just spotted a lioness peering out from the brush, and sure enough, there she was. Sixteen years old, five feet of pure chaos wrapped in what could generously be called a school-appropriate outfit—if you squinted and ignored the fact that her skirt was definitely shorter than regulation and her top was cut just low enough to make every male teacher in the building break into a cold sweat.
Yes, even the gay ones, though for very different reasons.
She sauntered up to my desk with the confidence of someone who’d never met a rule she couldn’t bend or a teacher she couldn’t fluster. Her glossy blonde hair was pulled back in a high ponytail that swished with every step, and her lips—good God—her lips were painted a shade of red that should have been illegal on school grounds.
“Mr. Jamison,” she purred, sliding a book across the counter with one perfectly manicured finger. “I need to give you something . . . very, very badly.”
“Uh, Jessica. Hi,” I said, shoving my glasses up my nose again. “I, uh, what . . . do you want to give me?”
This was going south and she’d barely uttered a word. I was doomed. The school board would banish me to a back room where I would never see books or students again. I would wither and die without the kiss of the sun on my cheeks or the feel of—
I looked down at the book.Pride and Prejudice. A classic. Safe. Harmless.
