I have my books

And my poetry to protect me

I am shielded in my armor

Hiding in my room safe within my womb

I touch no one and no one touches me

I am a rock, I am an island

And a rock feels no pain

And an island never cries

"I Am A Rock"

Simon and Garfunkel

October 14, 2009

Boston, Massachusetts

"Good morning, Deary," Agnes called as she shuffled behind the desk, juggling a large purse, clunky lunch bag, and an overstuffed tote bag. Agnes made a racket as her bags banged and bumped on the way to the area behind where Sarah worked at the front counter in the Boston Public Library. Sarah spun the chair to regard her coworker. Agnes' hair was what she called salt and pepper, which to Sarah was a fancy way of saying dark hair evenly grayed, or white, in contrast to her hair's previous dark brown. She was husky, twice as big as Sarah when they stood shoulder to shoulder. She wore a simple shift dress as always. Sarah wondered how many identical styles of dresses Agnes owned, merely in multiple colors. She thought maybe four. Agnes wore no makeup, her cheeks ruddy and her lips naturally pink.

"Morning," Sarah said, flashing a perfunctory smile. Sarah had a similar work wardrobe. She wore simple dresses, six distinct dresses–different shapes, different patterns, different colors. She wore sweatpants on days she wasn't working. Nothing else was comfortable, with her leg the way it was. Sarah wore conservative makeup, appearing unmade-up to all but a distinguished eye. Never one to be consumed with makeup or fashion, Sarah read books. She had learned how to apply makeup, what colors to choose, from a book.

Alone most of her life, almost everything she knew, she had learned from a book. In foster care for 15 years, the only things she had learned by experience, the normal way people learned, were things she wished she had never needed to: how to fight, how to protect herself…how to rely on only herself because no one else on the face of the earth gave a damn. No one had back then, not her social worker or her teachers, not her coworkers now. Carina was the only one.

That brief exchange with Agnes was the extent of conversation she was likely to have for the entire day. The library was blessedly quiet. She preferred diving into a book to small talk, and thankfully again today, she was spared.

She had lost track of time, how many hours had actually gone by while all her attention was focused on the book she was reading about the French Resistance during World War II, called the Maquis.

"Excuse me, Miss?" she heard in a clear, deep voice.

He had startled her, as her attention had been so focused, she hadn't heard him approach. She looked up quickly to see him, the person who had spoken. Her heart was pounding, she told herself because he had surprised her. It didn't explain the uncomfortable shiver that passed over her skin, the nagging tickle at the base of her skull, but she chose to ignore that.

He was tall and his hair was dark. His eyes were deep brown, masking his pupils, like pools of darkness. Something in his gaze troubled her, but what specifically it was, Sarah didn't know. His shoulders were broad and muscular, and he loomed largely in front of her. She gazed quickly at his hands, resting palm down on the counter. They were large with thick fingers, but cut and bruised, like he had been in a fist fight, or perhaps doing manual labor. His clothes hung strangely–he wore jeans, a little too short, skimming his ankles. The condition of the jeans didn't match the shirt he wore. His plain navy shirt looked clean and tailored, but his jeans were worn, like they had been worn painting or doing yard work.

She blinked and smiled tentatively, wondering why she had taken the time to study him like she had been studying her book. "Can I help you?" she asked.

"This is Boston, am I right?" he asked. For such a seemingly stupid question, he had a smug air about him.

She was taken aback. "What do you mean, like the city we're in?" How could he not know where he was? The library was in the heart of the city.

"Yeah," he laughed. "We're kind of lost and we were looking for a map. This is a library, right? You do have maps, right?" His tone was belittling, somehow turning the tables on her, making her feel dumb for his ignorance.

She hesitated, befuddled and unsure of how to respond. What bizarre questions. "Yes, you're in Boston, in the library," she answered, wondering if he was maybe on drugs, then thinking he looked far too lucid for that. Drug addicts were scattered—he was menacing. She had called the police many times to remove intoxicated individuals. "Do you have a phone?" she asked, reaching, knowing she usually asked this of older people.

He looked confused for a moment, then irritated. His eyes shifted up to the ceiling, and Sarah heard him muttering under his breath, almost like he was counting to himself. Was he muttering a time, or the year? It was so odd. "Oh, no, I lost my phone. Everything would be fine if I had my phone, but I don't." He shrugged and beamed an oily smile. His rapid speech pattern was suspicious. There was something disingenuous about him; Sarah just sensed it.

"What are you looking for?" Sarah asked him, each moment stranger and stranger. "Maybe I can help." The faster she helped, the faster he would be gone, and the sense of unease would pass.

"You know, I think I'd better go find my friend. We can figure it out on his smartphone. Sorry to bother you," he muttered, somehow able to make her feel she had inconvenienced him, though she had been more than helpful.

She smiled stiffly as he nodded and turned away. Who said "smartphone" like that? He didn't seem to be from another country, although accent-less English wasn't an impossibility. It was the weirdest thing she'd seen in quite a while. And she couldn't remember the last time she had gotten such bad vibes from a stranger. Even a stranger who leered at her.

Bad vibes. Carina called it her voodoo. Sarah had a knack for sizing people up instantly, something Carina thought was strange considering how little interaction she had on a regular basis. What Carina could never understand was that in Sarah's isolation, she had a front row seat to observe others in depth, almost always without them even knowing.

"What was that all about?" Agnes asked as she approached from behind.

Sarah wondered how much of the exchange the older woman had overheard. "Did you hear him? Wasn't that weird?"

"Looking half homeless and talking half like a crazy person? That's half better than usual if you ask me," Agnes snorted, pleased with her own play on words.

Because it was a large building open to the public, the library attracted all kinds of people who weren't necessarily library patrons. They weren't looking for books or planning to do research or studying quietly; they were seeking shelter, a place to sit, somewhere to go when there was nowhere else. Sarah knew because when she was younger, she would seek refuge there herself.

The white gash on Sarah's scalp was a memory of the worst of it, a souvenir from surgery needed after splitting her head open when she was pushed down a flight of stairs by a drunken foster parent when Sarah was only eight. She had been removed from her fifth and last foster home at age 14, sent back to the group home after the librarian had noticed the bruises on her neck and arms. One horror traded out for another. Her physical deformity only put her more at a disadvantage. Sarah learned self-defense, promising herself she would never again become someone's prey, that she would never need a stranger to take care of her, or save her, ever again.

"Do you think I should call the police?" Sarah asked.

Agnes blew out her breath. "What's the point in that? If they even come, they don't do anything, especially not for just one guy acting strangely."

It was still unsettling, but Sarah knew Agnes was right. The disquiet inside her had no logical basis, certainly not one the police could help. Just voodoo apparently.

Carina was waiting for her on the stairs when she arrived home from work. The red-head jumped to her feet from her perch on the lowest step as Sarah turned and shut the door.

"What are you doing here?" Sarah asked, pleasantly surprised.

Carina flashed her a crooked smile. "Bad date."

Knowing Carina the way she did, Sarah knew "bad" had to be really "bad" for her to have skipped out on her date and instead hid in the entryway to their building.

"Let me guess. He wanted to split the check with you," Sarah said as she adjusted her crutch so she could climb the stairs. Her right hand on the railing and her left in the crutch, she alternated stepping with the good leg, balancing herself on the banister, setting the crutch up one step, and dragging the bad leg behind. Carina trailed behind patiently.

There was both an elevator and a ramp, required for handicap accessibility, but Sarah declined using them. Instead, she taught herself how to navigate the world with its limitations, teaching herself how to work around them so she was never at a disadvantage. At least to the best of her ability.

"He said he was a feminist…that he thought I should pay. He talked about himself nonstop. I went to the ladies room and snuck out through the kitchen," she huffed.

That sounded about right. "You need to be choosier before you just say yes," Sarah advised.

"Choosier? Like you? So choosy that you say no to everyone?" Carina countered.

"You make it sound like there is an "everyone,"" Sarah protested. "No one even comes near me."

"How can you blame them?" Carina argued. "You're the Ice Queen. You give off "leave me alone" vibes. You just go through your life with your head in a book, ignoring the world."

They reached the second floor, outside Sarah's door. Carina lived two stories above. "I'm tired, Carina. If you want to come in, you can, but I don't want to be harassed about what I do."

"Ok, I won't," Carina vowed as she followed Sarah into her meager two room apartment.

Sarah slowly shrugged off her coat and started putting her things away as Carina plopped onto Sarah's daybed, which served as her sofa when she wasn't sleeping.

"How was work?" Carina asked, dutifully changing the subject.

"Usual," Sarah grumbled. Her strange encounter popped into her mind and she thought of mentioning it. "Oh, but there was this weird guy…"

"That's usual, isn't it?" Carina snickered.

Sarah huffed. "Hmm, I guess. But, I don't know, it was…extra weird. He didn't know he was in Boston…and he was looking for a map. When was the last time you used a map?"

"Was he old?"

"No, maybe 30. Tall, a lot of muscles. Dark and handsome, I guess, but…without the positive connotation," Sarah muttered.

"Was he a creep?" Carina asked. "Did he do something? Did he freak you out?"

Sarah sat beside Carina, shivering involuntarily at the memory. "I mean, I didn't like the way he was looking at me, but not the way you think. We only exchanged a few sentences, and he was polite and everything. I can't explain it, but it was just so…strange. I felt like it was harder to breathe when I was talking to him. Like he was touching me with his eyes. Like I wanted to run away. But I have no idea why. He was just strange and confused, not threatening at all, just maybe a little condescending."

Carina viewed Sarah through narrowed eyes. "You've clobbered purse snatchers without batting an eyelash…but one drug addict has you all in a tizzy?"

Sarah hated that Carina knew about things like that, because she would bring them up at the worst times. Sarah liked blending in, disappearing like a beige shadow. When necessary, she used the skills she possessed to defend herself, or others who were just as helpless; she dealt with the extra, unwanted attention caused by her actions as best she could.

"I don't know," Sarah sighed. Her head, tight from tension slowly building through the day, started to throb. She felt a creeping sense of dread as she recognized the telltale signs of a migraine. She had been dealing with the condition since her head injury 18 years ago, usually sporadic in nature. The older she got, the more headaches she got.

Carina must have noticed the change, because she quickly said, "Another one?" Sarah felt Carina's hand on her knee. She nodded in reply, alarmed at how her head pounded in time with the action.

Carina stood and Sarah stretched out on her bed, anxious for the pillow so she could shield her eyes from the light, buried in her pillow. Thankfully, Carina returned with Sarah's sleep mask and gingerly slipped it over Sarah's blonde hair, sliding it over her eyes, blissfully submerging her into the dark.

"Are you nauseous?" Carina whispered, sensitive to her hearing and her potential symptoms.

"No…" A soft moan that took all her strength.

Silently, Carina returned with Sarah's medication. Sarah opened her mouth, grateful for the bitter pill as it touched her tongue and the cool water that washed it down.

"I'll let you sleep."

The medication kicked in, instantly wrapping Sarah in a drowsy slumber. Carina left, the noises fading in and out as the intensity of the headache receded into the background as sleep blanketed her thoughts.

The bizarre interactions of the day chased her into her dreams.