“But—”
“Professor, tell her they’ll take her.”
“Oh.” Martin stuffed his hands into the front pocket of his stolen hoodie. “My background’s in history. I don’t know much about—” He broke off when Cassidy’s expression clouded. She chewed on her lower lip and scuffed her shoes on the floor. Seb arched an eyebrow at Martin, a silent command not to screw this up. “But these are really amazing. If it were up to me, I’d accept you for sure.”
Cassidy’s smile said she could tell he was improvising. “Thanks.”
Martin glanced over her head at Seb again, who considered them both for a moment before he nodded and went back to his book.
Cassidy bent to roll up her drawings. As she returned the books to the shelf, Martin wandered over to the table, watching Seb slice through the cover with a steady hand.
“Do you ever make drawings like Cassidy’s?” Martin asked.
“No one’s drawings are like Cass’s.”
“That’s not what I—”
Seb set his knife down again. “I can draw, if that’s what you’re asking. But I started working in repurposed books after art school, and it’s where I focus all my time now.”
“And people are okay with you cutting up their books?”
“I’ll say,” Cassidy said from the other side of the room. “You should see how much some of his pieces sell for!”
Seb shrugged off her compliment. “It’s just a book. I agree that the writer’s work has value. But a book is a mass-produced consumer product. If I worked with old VHS tapes or CDs, no one would give me a hard time.”
“But if they—”
Seb waved him off. “People get so hung up on preserving books, but the books I use are at the end of their lives. They’re on the top shelf of a used bookstore in a town that most of the world doesn’t even know exists. If I don’t turn them into something new, what do you think happens to them?”
“Someone would buy them eventually.”
“Downstairs, we shelve from the middle,” Cassidy said from across the room.
“So?” Martin’s brow furrowed.
“The newest books go in the middle of the middle shelf. The books that don’t sell get pushed to the outside and then eventually up or down a shelf. The ones on the top and bottom shelves are the oldest books in the store. No one is going to buy them. Some of them have been here for years.”
Martin’s frown deepened, his lips pressing together. He’d always believed books had to be taken care of. Shared maybe, but never disposed of. What Seb and Cassidy were saying made sense, though. There was a separation between the words written and the paper they were printed on.
He tilted his head, trying to understand what Seb was doing from this new perspective. “So you carve out the words you don’t want and keep the ones you do?”
“Found poetry. It’s where I started, like the book you had the other day. I mostly work in images now, though.”
“The birds?” The book of songbirds sat on the far corner of the table, feathered inhabitants watching him carefully.
“That’s not one of my better pieces, but yes.”
Not one of his better pieces? Martin hadn’t had a chance to really look at it the last time, but it was cut so intricately, so many small layers revealed. The work and patience it must have taken was incredible.
“Seb shows his stuff in galleries all over the place. I saw one on a field trip to Wilmington last year!” Cassidy came and sat at the table, pulling out a heavy gray book from her backpack.
Seb smiled at her. “I’ve been lucky enough to develop a bit of a following.”
“More than a little! Your Shakespeare project sold for more than six thousand dollars!”
“Shakespeare project?” Martin tried not to sound judgmental. Apparently, nothing was sacred under Seb’s knife.
Seb laughed. “It’s not about the money. And Shakespeare’s overrated. I was doing him a favor. I cut out anything that wasn’t a dick joke or some other kind of innuendo. It was still surprisingly intact when I was done.”
