Among Ordinary Spines

She found the book while doing something ordinary and routine during her library shift. A Friday afternoon, a return cart now half-full, the library quiet enough to hear the building breathe. The book was thin, cloth-bound, the color of old slate, and when she turned it over, eyes sliding to where its barcode should be, there was none.

No stamp.

No penciled initials of ownership.

It sat there among its neighboring books as if it belonged, which somehow made it worse. She knew that sometimes people accidentally left their own books at the library, in which case this one would go to lost and found, and that would be that. But this book was already weighing more in her hands than she cared for. When she opened the cover, expecting nothing more than a title page, she met a sentence that knew her name, not the name on her library badge, but the one she had in her own head.

It not only knew her true name, but also something she had done just last month. Nothing could print all of that in such a short amount of time!

She flipped the book closed at once, the soft thud too loud in the stillness, and that’s when she heard the whispering, not close enough to make out words but purposeful, like a note passing from hand to hand. The voices seemed to emanate from the book, weaving between the stacks, dipping and rising, stopping abruptly, and resuming farther away. It was as if she had released them from their cloth binding. She told herself it was nothing, perhaps librarians conferring in careful tones somewhere nearby, but fear had skittered along her skin like spiders. In all that whispering, she thought she heard familiar words.

She carefully set the book back on the cart, but her hands had their own idea and picked the book up, slipping it into a sweater pocket. No one should read this book, she realized.

Thank goodness the library nearly emptied out of patrons, and would be closing soon. Her mind was in a panic spiral over the words she had read in the book. She felt no remorse about pocketing the book and planning to leave the library with it. It would need to be destroyed.

It seemed the book grew even heavier in her pocket, lightly banging against her thigh as she pushed the cart slowly through the aisle.

How could it exist, who could have written it, and when, and then why was all she could think. And then, with more horror, what if someone else had been working the carts that day? What if they had found the book and read about her choices?

At the end of the aisle, she looked for anyone who might have noticed her, but the section was empty. She usually took a long time to leave work, stopping to chat with anyone or to do last-minute things. There was not much at home to pull her there, and ending her job at the library always left her feeling empty. But today, she left so quickly, tossing her volunteer badge on the desk, grabbing her purse from under the counter, and barely managing a goodbye to the staff still closing up, leaving dust motes spinning in her wake.

There was no way on “God’s green earth,” she muttered as her shoes slapped along on the sidewalk. It was one block to the bus stop, and she could feel the book nestled in the deep pocket, tapping against her. No one had seen her do what the book had described; she was sure of that. It had been an impossible choice to begin with, but she had made a decision, and that was that. Life happens that way sometimes.

She needed to look at it again, but steeled herself against doing that here on the street. There would be time enough for that, at home. The inked words describing her moment of “impossible choice” were scrolling in her mind, like ticker tape. Her hand slipped down into the pocket to feel the book. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead. Her breath was short with fear.

On the bus, she chose a seat near the middle, tugged the sweater pocket onto her lap, and rested her hand over the book as if to steady it. She glanced around to see if anyone was watching, but the other passengers were absorbed in their phones or the blur of the passing street. Slowly, against her better judgment, she eased the book out again.

It felt cold in her hands, the cloth cover frayed, its corners softened by age. She opened it to the first page and read. There it was, not her whole day, not her whole life, but the moment itself, set down with unsettling precision. The impossible choice. The breath she had held. The reasons she had told herself afterward. Nothing more. Nothing less.

The bus lurched to a sudden stop. The book slipped from her fingers, struck the floor, and slid under the seats towards the front of the bus.

“My book!” she cried, startled, embarrassed. “I lost my book!”

Someone near the front picked it up and passed it back over the seats. She took it quickly, murmuring thanks, and in her haste, the cover fell open again. For a brief instant, the words were no longer hers. Just a flash, a single scene, stark and intimate, before the page rearranged itself, the ink settling back into the moment that belonged to her.

She looked up at the man who had handed it to her. He met her eyes only briefly, then looked away. She slipped the book back into her pocket and turned towards the window, heart pounding. It had not been her life on the pages of the book; it spoke of a moment in his. Possibly his moment, when he thought no one had been looking. Maybe another impossible decision that had to be made. He had done what he could.

She felt a dawning understanding.

Once home, she carefully opened to the first page again and read what had caused her so much fear. Yes, there she was on the pages making the impossible choice, and that was bad enough. What preceded seemed worse. It now spoke of the hours that pressed her toward the choice. No one could have known all of this, all her inner thoughts.

She had moved halfway across the country. Changed her name. Let nothingness swallow her, just to keep going. In the end, none of it had helped. Not churches that judged, friends who melted away, not even nightly wine had eased the pain.

This book, though, held in her hand, spread relief and so much understanding in those pages. It was as if her pain in that moment had dissolved, as if a friend had told her story with compassion, not judgment.

She swayed a bit, then had a seat on the kitchen chair with the book in her lap.

She thought about how the writing had changed before her eyes, from the man who had returned the book, she understood an implication. The book seemed to bear witness briefly and precisely to each person's life that held it. And then, she hoped, it would let those memories go. Maybe it was like the old Etch A Sketch toys she had as a child. You’d make a drawing and then shake it, and the drawing would disappear, clearing the screen so you could make another. Was this an Angel’s lost novella, or someone’s idea of a practical joke? Neither seemed possible.

The book had quietly rearranged her world until nothing fit the way it used to. She knew the world around her looked the same, and as if to verify her thought, she glanced around her small, cramped apartment. But now life didn’t feel the same, or have the same meaning.

Clearly, the book did not belong to her. For a second, she had thought to destroy it, looking toward where she kept her matches. An instant later, she realized it might be indestructible; it was magical in some way. She couldn’t have that act recorded in its pages. She picked up the book once more. And there, on its pages, was her hand hovering near the matches, the pause before she reached for them. She immediately dropped it to the table, stood, and backed away. Surely just having it in her possession was some kind of cosmic crime.

Knowing that it witnesses her life, anyone’s life seemed supernatural, maybe spiritual, but she never gave much thought to those ideas and was at a loss. More than that, this book showed her that her choices did matter, that her life mattered in a far greater sense than she had ever known. The book was so foreign, so otherworldly, she had no words for it.

She left it on the kitchen table while she washed her hands, while she stood at the window and watched the lights go out one by one across the street. In all her time at the library, hundreds of books had passed through her hands, so much knowledge and wonder had lain in their pages, waiting to be discovered. Never had one come through like this. When she passed the table, she rested her palm lightly on the cover, as if confirming it was still real. She thought clearly about returning it to the library, slowly turning the pages with one hand, and saw that the story had already begun to move in that direction.

She slept deeply and peacefully all night for the first time in days.

The next morning, she returned to the library early. There were special hours on Saturday, and she had the floor to herself for a bit. The building was quiet in the way only libraries are before opening, books patiently waiting on their shelves, each spine declaring its knowledge, each hopeful to be chosen. She walked quietly past the return cart, past lost and found, past the newly installed readers' nook, and stopped in a narrow aisle she hadn’t spent much time in.

The book came easily from her pocket. She held it for an instant, feeling its weight, just one last peek, she thought. Voices drifted through the room, weaving their way to her, whispers indistinct and ethereal. Before she could read, they disappeared into the book with a vibration she felt, causing her to close it abruptly.

She turned and slid the book into the space between two ordinary spines and stepped back. There was no sign, no marker, nothing to draw the eye. The book did not belong to the careless or even the curious, she thought; it belonged to those standing in difficult choices, needing witness and hope. Better yet, the book might find them, as it had her. As she turned away, she felt lighter, full of wonder, not absolved, not forgiven, but steadied. She was not entirely alone. What she had done still mattered.

What she would do next mattered too.

To know that her life still had meaning was enough.

As she stepped through the aisle, her eyes found a gold-gilded spine with no name or catalog number, near the shelf end. With the tiniest tick of a smile, she reached out her hand, hesitated briefly, then pulled it from the stacks.