The Department of Lost Books

It all started with a book ban.

When I turned sixteen, I landed a summer internship at my local library. Decked out in my marigold sweater and gray corduroy skirt, I was giddy as the automatic doors opened and I walked to the circulation desk, reporting for duty my first day. I’d always wanted to follow in my mother’s footsteps and become a librarian. The internship was the first step toward letting my love of books make the world a better place.

Nearly two years later, I look around the library, all cold, unadorned shelves, and shudder. I think back to that first day, the tight-lipped man stomping up to one of the librarians, demanding to activate a book ban. She explained the process of challenging a book, even held up the thick packet he'd need to fill out, but he persisted, on the basis that no child should be subjected to the queer YA book he was now waving in the air. The next day, the book, and librarian, were gone.

“This place is depressing,” a flat voice disrupts my thoughts. I look up from what used to be the circ desk but is now just where I sit and wait. I'm met by a pair of emerald eyes that would make a lovely color for a cardigan.

Oh, how I miss wearing cardigans.

The library is too bright, with its stark white walls and the only books still lining the shelves State-sanctioned handbooks. I can’t remember the last time someone came in here, besides me. It’s been 451 days since the final book was banned and removed from the library. The significance of the number is not lost on me, and my heart pounds, wondering if this will bring me any closer to figuring out what the clue, which I was vaguely told by one of the librarians before they disappeared, would come eventually to help set things right. The State assumes I’ve been sitting here every day for the sole purpose of complying with their orders, namely to report anyone who comes in asking for information about where the books went. As if I have any idea.

Charlotte, according to her nametag, looks like she is just a few years older than me. Frizzy auburn waves frame her lightly freckled face and she wears a gray jumpsuit, like me. Like everyone who works for The State.

She scans the room. “I was sent by State Electric, just need to check the thermostat.”

“It’s there, in the back corner near the–” I stop myself. I almost said near the children’s section, but there is no children’s section anymore. “–window.” She nods and walks over, her black work shoes squeaking against the linoleum. I didn’t make a work request for the thermostat, so I am not sure what she’s doing here. I’m not used to having anyone else around. People used to think the downfall of libraries would be AI, but when our services were needed most, it was The State that shut us down, one book ban at a time.

Charlotte removes the cover of the thermostat, presses a few buttons before replacing it, then turns back toward me. Her grin is warm, almost like a hug. She’s not like the other State workers who have come by, looking sullen and resolved. There’s a glint in her eyes that I haven’t even seen in my own reflection for so long. My whole body feels like it's buzzing.

She doesn’t walk back to the front of the counter. Instead, she circles around and leans against the edge of my desk. “Must have been a glitch,” she says, a note of mischief in her tone. “It somehow got switched to Celsius.”

She holds out her left hand to reveal a tiny folded square of paper. “Should’ve been Fahrenheit.” I know whatever it says must be the clue I’ve been waiting for. And I know that look in her eyes, because I feel it for the first time since all the librarians disappeared and the last book was hauled away.

It’s hope.

***

I commit the address on the paper to memory, a skill I learned as they banned more and more books and the only way I could keep the stories in my head was by memorizing them.

“1984 Bloom Drive? 451 degrees? Isn’t this all too obvious?” I ask, my voice a whisper.

“Not to the types who were banning all the books.”

She leaves the library, and after exactly 22 minutes, I put up the ‘Closed for Lunch’ sign on the door. I’m relieved my mom never had to see the library like this. She was Director before she disappeared. I suppress the urge to cry, as emotions are seen as a sign of weakness by The State and I need to be discreet right now. I slip out the back door without even taking one last look. It’s barely a shell of the busy, colorful, space it once was. A place that lives only in my heart now, like the stories it used to hold.

I rush to leave the city limits. Once I'm safely away from the concrete laden sector that’s become my home, I’m shocked to find myself running through a lush field of overgrown wildflowers. I assumed the whole state was covered in cement by now.

I’ve never been more relieved to be wrong.

Once I am out of view of the city, I catch my breath and survey the area. I had almost forgotten what it was like to be surrounded by colors. Pink hibiscus, orange coneflowers, blue violets. I nearly get lost in the impossibility of it all, but then I hear an alarm blaring in the distance. I should have been back at my desk by now, like a proper Citizen of The State. I’m officially on the run.

I’m trying not to panic as I run through the forest, searching for the address on some hidden gate, but the sensory overload catches up with me and I trip over a root. Frantic footsteps approach and I try to scramble away. If I’m caught, I’m not exactly sure what will happen, but I can only assume the worst. The others who have gone against The State disappear without a trace. My foot is too tangled for me to move. I close my eyes and brace myself.

“Lily, come on,” a hushed voice warns, as a clammy hand untangles my ankle from the brush.

“Charlotte?” I gasp. “How did you–”

“No time,” she says, then grabs my hand and together, we run.

Everything flashes bright until we get to a vine covered gate. 1984 Blume is chalked on the iron. Charlotte pulls a washcloth from her pocket and wipes the address away, inserts a gilded key into a lock and we slip inside, Secret Garden style.

“How did you know my name? I never told you?” I ask.

“We've been planning for years. You're the last one,” she says.

“The last what?”

“The last library worker of The Resistance.” She says this as if it was supposed to be obvious, but no one ever explained to me what I was doing, sitting at that desk waiting. The less I knew, the better, a librarian named Lois told me before disappearing 451 days ago.

“Are you a librarian?” I ask.

“Not exactly.”

“How did you end up in the Resistance?”

She shrugs. “I was born for this.”

A heavy weight presses on my chest. There's a Resistance, and I'm part of it.

I follow Charlotte down a path until we reach a patch of grass. She leans down and feels around until something catches. The door of a squeaky hatch reveals a dimly lit underground staircase. I momentarily panic, wondering if I shouldn’t trust her. Is she actually a member of The State, leading me to my punishment? But I hear the faint sound of classical music from the bunker, whispers echoing up the staircase. She’s given me no reason not to trust her, so I descend the stairs. As darkness gives way to light, I nearly faint.

“Welcome to The Department of Lost Books,” Charlotte says.

An underground library, cozy and warm filled with couches covered in colorful throw pillows lies ahead. Librarians I vaguely recognize sit and read on some of them, chat on others. The scent of Earl Gray wafts through the air as an orange cat rubs itself on my leg and tears spring from my eyes.

“Her name is Toni,” Charlotte says.

“Of course it is,” I laugh, and she leads me to a room with an arched doorway.

“Go on, our leader is waiting for you.”

I enter the office, which is littered with stacks of books. “Hello?”

There's rustling from behind a bookshelf, but it stops abruptly when I say, “my name is–”

“Lily?”

I freeze. I would know that voice anywhere.

“Mom?”

She rushes around the side of the bookcase, enveloping me in a hug. “It's you,” we say at the same time, tears streaming down our cheeks.

“I thought you died,” I say.

She seems to study every fraction of my face, her hands cupped on my cheeks. “We've been here, all this time. You're our final recruit. We needed you out there so they wouldn't suspect that I was still alive.”

The shock gives way to curiosity, the cornerstone of all readers. I look around and try to puzzle it together myself, but I can't.

“How did you build all this?” I ask, as she sits at her desk, and I settle into a cushy armchair next to her. She doesn't answer but pulls a hardcover with gilded edges off a shelf behind her.

“What not everyone realizes is that before they came for the libraries, they had already started going after the authors.” She hands me the book. “Do you remember this novel?”

I study the cover, and it feels oddly familiar even though I haven't read it. “I don't think so.”

“This is one of the first authors who was targeted, when you were only a newborn. He and the others went into hiding long before we had to. She opens the book to the back cover, revealing a black and white headshot. It’s grainy, but my heart catches in my throat. I’ve seen this photo before. Mom looks at me, watching the recognition register.

“My father?”

She nods.

He died just before I was born. I was always told it was a work-related accident. “But I thought he was a carpenter?”

She continues. “The plan started long before the public knew what was going on. We knew it was going to take years to orchestrate. To build this.”

I look around the room, the wooden bookshelves and desk and it clicks, knocking the wind out of me. It all felt so familiar. It was like my childhood home, the furniture built by the dad I never had a chance to know.

“So, he built all this?”

“Not alone, but he was the Foreman.”

A crease grows between my brows. “But the book?”

Mom catches my meaning. “Ah, yes. It was never safe for you to know that your father was also one of the first banned authors. It would have been dangerous for you.”

I stare at the photo, something I pushed far back into a drawer in my brain, like an old-fashioned card catalog. “I wish I could have known him.”

A knock at the door makes me jump. Mom takes a deep drawn out breath. She stands to open it, but places her hand on my shoulder first.

“It’s not too late.”

A thin, pale man with wavy auburn hair and bright green eyes walks in. I gasp, my heart thumping.

“Lily,” he says, tears streaming down his cheeks.

When Charlotte walks in behind him, grinning. It starts to fall into place, all the missing pieces of me. She looks as much like him as I look like Mom.

“Bet you didn’t see this plot twist coming,” Charlotte says, and the tension eases as we all fall into tearful laughter.

“I have so many questions,” I blurt out around a sob. I’ve spent years thinking I’m alone, but I actually have a whole family?

“We’ll answer what we can,” Mom says.

I know firsthand how dangerous The State is, I lived it day in and day out. It makes sense that my father had to go into hiding first. What I don’t understand is, why, if I have an older sister, she had to go with him?

“Why didn’t Charlotte stay with us?” I ask.

Dad speaks up. “I had to leave when Charlotte was a toddler, and your mom was pregnant with you. It was the resemblance. It was too dangerous for her. We didn’t know what they were capable of, but we knew we couldn’t take the chance. Trust me when I say, it was the hardest decision we ever made.”

We’re all quiet, the heaviness of what we’ve each been through thick in the air. Mom is the first to break the silence.

“It hasn’t been an easy life for any of us. But now, we’re all here. We can begin the next phase. There are other groups, in their own bunkers, making plans as well.”

Panic rises in my chest. It was one thing when I thought I was just coming to help the librarians and other library workers fight The State. Finding out I have an entire family I have only just met changes everything though. I’ve barely had a chance to process it all, to get to know them. To remember who I was before everything was taken from me. I stand abruptly. “The next part? But why? Why can’t we all just stay here? Where it’s safe? You don’t understand what it’s like now! We can’t beat them. They are everywhere. There’s nothing left for us out there.”

“That’s why we’ve been planning all this time, Lily,” my dad tries to explain, but I panic and run out of the office. The last time I experienced this much change in a matter of 24 hours, it was when my mom disappeared and I lost everything. Now, instead, I’ve gained everything back, and more. My mom talked about my dad when I was little, so everything I know about him is secondhand. But Charlotte? I could never even have imagined her existence. I understand that my mom had to keep it all a secret to protect us, but how can it be that I’ve only ever known a sliver of my own history? Whatever they have planned to fight back against The State, I’m not convinced I am strong enough to make a difference, especially if it could mean losing everything I only just gained back.

Charlotte follows, bringing me to her room. She hands me a t-shirt and jeans to change into, then I collapse in her bed and fall asleep.

When I wake up, there’s a glass of water on the nightstand. I reach for it and take a sip, noticing that there’s also a book sitting there. The one written by my father. I pick it up and examine it. Two dragons protecting a golden city adorn the cover. The title, Sisters of the Lost Empire, is sprawled over it in swirly lettering. I open to the first chapter and read the heading.

All it takes to create an empire is your imagination.

My heart pounds in my ears at the memory it stirs up. My childhood bedroom. A mural above the handmade wooden dresser. Two painted dragons–sisters–holding a banner with that quote.

I read the entire book then walk back through the halls, realizing it’s all modeled after the world in my father’s novel. In my mom’s office, the three of them are sipping tea and reading. When I sit down in the chair next to Charlotte, they close their books in unison and wait for me to speak.

“I spent so much time sitting up there, in that empty, ice-cold library, daydreaming about a place like this, with people who loved me, and books to read, and freedom. I lived a thousand other lives in my mind, imagining myself as the protagonist in all my favorite stories. I dreamed about being rescued and swept away to a secret castle or faraway land. Never could I have imagined it would actually happen though, and I wouldn’t have dared to dream up something so amazing as you three being here.” I take a deep breath, “that said, I know we can’t stay here forever. I know this is about more than just me. So, I’m as ready as I can be. Of all the empires my imagination could have conjured, this one is not only the most impossible, but the best possible.”

Dad smiles warmly at the reference to his quote. “You read my book?”

I nod. “I woke up thinking I'm useless here. The only weapon I've ever known is words. But you created a new world in those pages. A framework for how we fix this. And I haven’t even known Charlotte for twenty-four hours, but I think you’re right about the ending. There’s nothing a pair of sisters can’t conquer.”

Charlotte smirks at me and nods in agreement.

I turn to face Mom, her cobalt eyes mirroring my own. She reaches out and squeezes my shaking hand, but she's steady as ever. Of course, if there's a Resistance, she's the leader. I know whatever she has planned is going to work, because she never does anything halfway. Flames I've tamped down for years ignite in my chest, and the fire in her eyes grounds me.

“Then it’s time,” she says, gesturing widely, “to bring back the books.”