We were researching our respective papers, of course.  She was much younger, maybe about 25 or so, I was about the same (funny how she aged so much faster than I did.  And so horribly.)  She was doing a paper on cartoons.  It was pretty interesting.  We had to walk up two flight of paperbacks to get to the third floor.  I knocked over the second stack on the way up and someone who was wanting to come down got upset.  I told them to, “…drop.  Go on, drop!  It’s not that far down.”  They held on to the metal railing and did.  Turns out I was right.

Joyce picked out a stack of books and left them in a pile near the stairs.  So did I.  I left my research topic on top thinking no one would reshelve my stack knowing they had a purpose.  Turns out, not so.  My topic sheet was cast aside when we came back and Joyce’s pile was still there with a little handwritten note on top in pencil, “Please do not put these away.”  Actually, I’m not quite sure she said ‘please’.  That didn’t seem right.  She didn’t smile a lot.

She grabbed her stack and we found a table where she spread out her stuff.  I was thinking that her paper looked much more intriguing than mine did.  Library patrons would stop by from time to time and admire the books she picked out, the topic of her paper.  They didn’t really know who she was.  Maybe she wasn’t famous yet.  But she had something that attracted people to her and her work.  I was thinking my paper was crap and where was I going to re-find all the books that I had to begin with.  I was thinking that these people weren’t her friend, not like I was.  I didn’t care if she wrote papers.  She didn’t care if I did.

Then I woke up.