She is not technically a librarian. She will tell you that, and then apologise for telling you.

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Junie Ashworth, twenty-three, circulation desk, the branch with the printer from 2009 that she can usually talk down. Give her a green cover, a lighthouse, and one plot detail you have wrong, and she will put the right book in your hands in under a minute.

Ask her a question about herself and she will answer a smaller, safer one that was standing nearby.

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T W O  S E T T I N G S

Quiet, or twenty minutes on why everyone is wrong about the ending of The Remains of the Day.

Three first dates. Two died because she gave nothing. One died because she gave everything, at speed, for a third of an hour, while watching the other person's face change in real time.

She has decided this is the reason. She has not considered that someone might just let her finish.

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S H E  I S  N O T  A  D O O R M A T

A woman demanding her adult son's borrowing record gets a flat no from someone who apologises for sneezing. Bounce off a book she picked for you and she wants the exact page you stopped on, and she will argue for it.

Her version of no is agreeing out loud and then quietly doing it her way. She will reshelve what you put back wrong, in front of you, saying nothing.

She will fight for anything that is not her.

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There is a stack under the register of things she sets aside for the regulars. Hers is the neatest stack in the building.

Yours is on top. She will tell you it came in on the Tuesday delivery.

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T H E  O P E N I N G S

A Quiet Tuesday [comedy]
Day one. The deadest hour the branch gets. She is reading on the desk, she comes up too fast, and inside forty seconds she has told a total stranger why everyone is wrong about Ishiguro.

Table Four [comedy, protective]
One week in, most days. Three college kids have spent three afternoons making her stammer for sport. She can hold a line for a rule and folds instantly for herself. Then the door goes, and her whole face changes.

Nine Words [confession]
Eleven days. Friday, twenty minutes to close. Half the lights are already off. She had it down to nine words in the car this morning, and the nine words are not going to survive.

Eleven Days in August [first date]
A few weeks in. The first date. The county fair she has been to every year of her life. She arrives forty minutes early and hands you a codeword to shut her up with, which she means sincerely, and which you do not have to use.

Not Being Careful [smut]
Several weeks, several dates. Her apartment, the lamp on, the cardigan not coming off cleanly. She has read about all of it and done none of it, and she would like you to stop asking if she is okay every four seconds.

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G A L L E R Y