I scrolled aimlessly through my newest playlist. I didn’t know what I was looking for. I wasn’t even sure if I was going to know it when I saw it. I should have been studying for my biology midterm, and I’d been telling myself for the last hour I was just trying to get into the right headspace, but I knew I was just stalling.
But maybe some music would help. I supposed it couldn’t hurt. But nothing on the playlist appealed to me.
Giving up, I flipped my phone over on my desk with a sigh and pulled my binder of CDs from the top drawer. They had actually been my mom’s CDs. I had dug them up from the basement just before high school and brought them with me when I came up to Northfield, Vermont for college.
I remembered my mom laughing when I asked her if I could have them.
Apple, what in the world do you want those for?
I like them, I’d insisted.
Do you friends listen to music like that? she’d asked.
I hadn’t answered her, just shrugged vaguely and carried the CDs, and her portable CD player, upstairs. The truth was that I hadn’t had many friends in high school. She had been sick even then, and I’d spent most of my time caring for her. That made it hard to connect with people. I’d had high hopes for college, but I’d been having just as much trouble connecting with people here in Vermont.
I just didn’t always feel like I really belonged. I’d gone to a few parties with my roommate, Maria, but I’d just felt…awkward. No one had made me feel bad, but I had just felt exactly the way I’d felt all through high school—like I had just landed on an alien planet, and I was trying to figure out the local customs, without any success.
Maybe it would be easier if I felt like my life had a distinct direction. Maria was a nursing major, and she was really close with the people in her classes. I was pretty sure I was going to major in computer science, but those classes didn’t exactly come with a close-knit community.
I chewed my lip as I flipped through the CDs. They were mostly bands from the ‘90s—No Doubt, Blink 182, Spice Girls, TLC, and Brittany Spears. I liked these, but the ones I liked best were at the back—the music from the ‘80s. My mom had been the youngest of three sisters, and her older sisters were both over a decade older, so she had a bunch of ‘80s music—Depeche Mode, The Smiths, Duran Duran, A-ha, and the Cure.
I pulled out an album by The Smiths and popped it into my mom’s old portable CD player. Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want started up, and I closed my eyes, letting myself get carried away.
I knew my interest—okay, my obsession—with music from the ‘80s was a little strange, considering I hadn’t even been born in the 20th century. But I loved music, and there was just something about the music from that era in particular that spoke to me. Maybe it was the lonely nature of the lyrics or the melodies that spoke to my own loneliness, or the desire to…I don’t know. This feeling that I wanted to change my life in some big way.
I blew out a breath and reached for my biology textbook. It was probably time to stop messing around and get to work.
I had barely cracked the book when the door to the dorm flew open and Maria burst in, attached at the lip to her boyfriend. She had arrived with him in tow, and though I thought his name was Oliver, I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable testifying to it in court.
“Hey…Maria?” I started. “Hey, you guys, listen…”
There was no response from either of them. Instead, they crashed into Maria’s bookcase, causing an avalanche of framed photos of her high school cheer team to crash to the floor.
“You guys?” I tried again. “Guys?”
Still nothing.
By this time, Maria and maybe-Oliver were making their way clumsily to Maria’s bed, and not being remotely interested in what was going to happen next, I shoved my biology book into my backpack, slung it onto my shoulder, and headed out.
It was already starting to get dark as I headed toward my favorite place on campus: the library. It was the one place at Northfield College I felt at home, even more than I did in my dorm room. I liked the quiet cubbies and the stern-looking librarians. I even liked the harried student interns who took their jobs way too seriously.
I headed to the third floor, then back to the study cubbies in the oldest part of the library.
Most of the library was newer, built in the early 1990s, but the original library still stood adjacent to it. It was small and didn’t have any central air or heating, but because the building was stone, it always seemed slightly cold. That meant not as many people used it, so it was quieter. It also had my favorite room in the library, the Rare Book Room.
Students were supposed to make appointments with library staff to go into the Rare Book Room, so I’d actually never been inside, but I just liked the vibe of it. I kept meaning to make an appointment to check it out but hadn’t gotten around to it. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen tonight, so I just took a seat in one of the old wooden cubby desks, pulled my headphones back on, and took my biology book from my backpack.
Once I finally got started, it wasn’t hard to get into the material. I hadn’t been doing great in my classes this semester, and I didn’t have high hopes for my grades, but that wasn’t because I wasn’t smart. I just had trouble focusing my energy. But once I did, I could really lock in.
Which was probably for the best. I had no idea how long Maria and her boyfriend were going to be at it. I’d seen her and Oliver make out for hours. The night of homecoming, I’d kept trying to come back to our room, only to have to head out again on some pretend errand.
Sorry about that, Apple, she’d laughed the next morning.
That night, I’d had nowhere to go, so I’d ended up watching videos on my phone in the laundry room. It had been miserable, and I was keen to avoid a repeat. So, on this night, when eleven o’clock rolled around and I looked up to see the student interns started flipping off the lights, I knew I had to act fast.
I quickly scanned the room. There weren’t many places I could hide. I could try the bathrooms, but it seemed likely the interns would check those.
I could see one of them walking toward my section, looking into each aisle of cubbies, and I knew that if I didn’t move now, I was going to be kicked out and destined for another night of watching TikToks sitting on top of a washing machine.
As quietly as I could, I picked up my stuff and stood up. There was only one place to go, and I just had to pray the door was unlocked.
When I reached the Rare Book Room, I was glad to see that the lights were still on. I tried the handle of the door and sighed with relief when it turned. I slipped quietly in and shut the door behind me.
I ducked behind the stacks and dropped my bag. waiting for the lights to go off outside. When they did—and no one came to check the Rare Books—I breathed a sigh of relief.
I was safe. The library was closed, and I had a place to crash while Maria got cozy with her boyfriend in our dorm.
I briefly considered pulling my biology textbook out again, but I’d had enough of that, so I started to explore. The Rare Book Room was beautiful, and I took my time. It was filled with thousands of books, stacked in narrow shelves built of highly-polished walnut. But as I wandered, I realized that I didn’t recognize any of the titles. I would have expected to catch sight of a few first editions, or some history books on ancient Rome or Greece, but that’s not what these were. The spines of these were all things like The Life and Times of Richard Moorehouse, The Second Life of Rosalind Archibald, College Days and Beyond for Annie Watkins, and The Handbook for Living as Jack Joyce.
I didn’t recognize any of the titles, but the room had a wonderful old-book smell, and I let myself relax.
Near the back of the room, I found a section with newer titles. I could tell because the shelves were slightly less dusty, and I bent to look at the spines. On the bottom row, one in particular caught my eye: The Punk Times of Our Lives.
It was a slim volume with a black-and-white checked cover. I picked it up, curious. There was a low angular chair against the wall, so I dropped into it and opened the book.
Almost immediately, I was hooked. The Punk Times of Our Lives was the story of a musician named Edgar right here at Northfield College. He had gone to school here in 1985, and he had loved music. He hadn’t been sure if he even wanted to come to college, but his dad had convinced him, and he’d found some good friends, but he never really felt as though he fit in. Until he found someone. He met a girl and started to write her a song.
I was completely hooked on the story, so I was shocked when I turned the page to find the following page blank.
I turned to the next page, but that was blank, as well.
“What the hell?” I muttered. I flipped through the rest of the pages in the book. All blank. There had to be fifty or sixty blank pages. Edgar’s story had just cut off, right in the middle. There had been no resolution.
“What happened with the song?” I asked aloud.
Baffled, I frowned down at the book. Reading it, it hadn’t been completely clear, but I suspected that it was non-fiction. And if I was right, what the hell had happened to this guy? Why had the story just ended? It felt as though Edgar’s life was left unfinished.
Maybe it was because it was late and I was tired, but I felt a sense of tragedy that I was never going to meet Edgar, never going to hear his music, never knowing what the rest of his life could have been.
I had just started to flip through the blank pages again, but I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a voice speak.
“Well? How did you like the ending?”
I whipped my head up and saw a man—tall with brown hair and an angular, ethereal face—staring down at me.
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