Day 1 - Janowrimo
Not bad for first day, though I hope to get to 5k before midnight. I'm actually loving my characters. Brand new, never before written characters and I'm just winging it. I especially love the librarian the best so far, but I haven't even gotten to the main story yet.
The Mara Chronicles
Mark Garrick was paying very close attention. He really was. Even though the teacher was starting to drone on and on, he was writing down what she was saying and paying close attention...to the clock above the chalkboard behind her. It was Friday and he, not to mention the entire seventh grade english class, was chomping at their invisible bits to get out at the earliest possible moment. Most of the kids were getting restless, trying not to shuffle their feet. Fortunately for him, Mark had gotten very good at doing two things at once. Namely, writing down notes and watching the oh so slow second hand of the clock. Mrs. Snyder was just wrapping up her lecture on present participles or something similar.
"Ok, class," she said, to which some of the more anxious children shifted in their chairs. That phrase usually meant she was getting down to the end. "You have an assignment coming up in two weeks." She walked around the room, putting a sheet of paper on each desk. "I am handing out the specifics of the paper. You should take note that this will be a significant part of your grade this year. It should be persuasive and well thought out. And please," she stopped with a meaningful look at one of the boys. "I know you CAN spell despite all efforts to the contrary. I want to see correct spelling on all your papers. If there is an excess of typos, I will take it off of your final grade."
3...2...1....Mark counted to himself watching the clock while folding up the assignment paper in his hands. At zero, the bell rang that school was out. There was an onrush of movement as the kids jumped up from their seats and shoved notebooks and pencils into their backpacks. "Two weeks!" Mrs. Snyder raised her voice above the din. "There will be no extensions so don't even ask for any. Everyone have a good weekend." Nobody really heard that last part as they were attempting to file out of the room in as orderly fashion as disorder can accomplish. Mark grabbed his friend, James, and the two of them ducked under the line and out the door ahead of those behind them. Their head start wasn't by much as the rest of the school was pouring out into the main hall. But that was ok because the two boys had to stop at their lockers first anyway.
"You coming over today?" James asked, leaning against the row of lockers to stay away from the main flow. "We can finish Ninja Knights and my mom was talking about ordering pizza in tonight." Mark was stuffing a few essentials from his locker into his bookbag. "Can't," he scowled. "My mom says I can't hang out on weekends till I get my grades back up."
"Aw, man, that's awful." James fiddled with his Gameboy as if in thought. "Do you have to do homework all weekend?"
Mark shut his locker door. "Not if I don't get it done ahead of time. Which means being at the library for at least an hour or two working on that English paper." He faked choking himself over it. "And if I'm not, my mom will know about it. She talks with Miss Eva, the librarian."
"Miss Eva's cool though," James said, sidling along next to Mark as they walked down the crowded hall. "And you've got two weeks till that paper's due. Maybe she'd cover for you."
"She's cool but not that cool. Besides, she's still a grownup."
The boys pushed their way out of the crowd of happy weekenders and through the front double doors into the sunshine. It was a lovely day for a Friday. It was just warm enough to be perfect. Summer was coming and the kids of Johnson's Middle School couldn't wait for it to finally arrive. But until it did, they would have to settle for a perfect weekend. As they came out the door, they would zig zag towards their respective homes. Canton City, Iowa was a rural town but the iconic farms and fields were not far from view. The school was in the middle of the town which could be seen from all sides because of the flat terrain. Beyond the town was the fields that were in the different stages of being plowed and planted. The two boys walked along the sidewalk away from the school and towards the library. James had his skateboard with him and was casually rolling alongside his friend, keeping his eye on the road while he was still on his Gameboy. "So what are you going to do for the paper?" he asked. Mark was watching his best friend's path for him in case he missed an obstacle. But James never did, he had grown up practically with a skateboard under him. "I dunno yet. English is a bore anyway, I'm probably going to have to pick a boring subject. Why do they make us take English anyway? You'd think the fact we can talk English was good enough, but no..." James snickered at that, steering around a bench with his eyes on his video game. It wasn’t far to go, the library was just on the other side of the town hall.
As they passed the impressive stone steps, the two of them ground to a stop at the sound of someone calling to them. "Hey, Mark," it was his dad coming out of town hall. He was in his dress suit with his briefcase under his arm, probably coming from a business meeting with the agriculture company he worked for. Mark smiled at the sight of the suit. He was used to seeing his dad in his dirt covered workclothes out in Mr. Harrison's field out back of their house. Jeff Garrick was no stranger to work, but besides being Mr. Harrison's right hand man, he also handled the business side of the farm for him. He was the only hired hand with a college education in business so that qualified him for the job. Mr. Harrison was very old school when it came to growing crops and selling them so he left the technical stuff and the big business talk to Mark's dad. People skills is what Mr. Harrison called it. "Jeff's got more people skills in his little finger than I've got in my whole farming experience," he told anyone who questioned why he had a hired hand running the show for him in selling and buying. "He's the best I've got. I'd be a fool to not let him do what he does best."
Jeff Garrick came up to the boys and ruffled Mark's hair playfully. "Hi, dad," Mark said. "Big meeting today?"
"Yup, we had a big deal to close today. Our company is merging with another so there's alot of talking that people do before agreeing to work together. How was school?"
Mark screwed up his nose in disgust. "Awful. We have a persuasive paper to write for english and mom's gonna want me to start it now or else."
"Ah, I see. So you boys would be heading to the library then?" The two of them nodded. "Well, have fun. I'll see you when you get home, Mark." He walked away towards his truck parked at the sidewalk. The two boys gave each other a look and shook their heads. Fun at the library? Yeah, right.
The library was somewhat of a landmark for the town. It was rather large for a town as small as theirs. But it had a long standing history in the community. It had been started way back before the town was even a town. It was in the back of someone's house back then. But the town had expanded on it and kept it up really well. Only recently it had gotten computers and internet so the amount of kids who visit had gone up exponentially. But this didn't bother the librarian, Eva Cavanaugh. A child of the sixties, Miss Eva as she was known to the kids in the neighborhood still held to her hippie roots. Her love of books came from a copy of Lord of the Rings given to her as a child. The kids liked her because she was interesting and never talked down to them. The adults liked her because she was good with kids.
Miss Eva looked up from her desk as the two boys came into the library. "Hi there, Mark...James..." She eyed the skateboard and James jumped off and put it under his arm before he got in trouble. "Hello Miss Eva," they both said. "What can I get for you? Need something for a book report? We just got a fresh batch of murder mysteries in the teen section."
"English paper research," Mark said with a roll of his eyes. "Ah, yes I got wind of that rumor this morning." Her eyes sparkled with amusement. "I suppose English teachers have no respect for Fridays." She reached over to a stack of books and set them down in front of her. "I pulled these out in case someone wanted to get a head start on the paper. Though I wouldn't have picked you two to be first at the post."
"Mom's making me do it," Mark sighed.
"I'm only here for moral support," James chimed in. "And the internet, no doubt," Miss Eva smiled as she handed over a pass card so he could use the computers. As he moved away towards the terminals, she turned her attention back to Mark. "So what subject are you going to write about?" Mark pulled out the instruction paper from his backpack. "I haven't decided yet. It says that it's got to be a persuasive paper on a current topic." Mrs. Snyder had underlined the words "Controversial topic recommended" in red. Mark handed the paper to Miss Eva to see what she could make of it. "Well, what are you interested in?" she asked.
"Nothing con...contro...verse..."
"Controversial," Miss Eva supplied. "It means people have strong notions on both sides of the argument."
"You mean like abortion and war and stuff?"
"Exactly." Miss Eva noted the lack of interest in the way Mark was regarding the stack of books she had her hand on. "But I'm thinking those sort of things are not up your alley." She motioned to him and they both walked towards the reference book section. "Let's see, what would a typical preteen man be interested in," Miss Eva began running her fingers over the titles on the bindings, hunting for something Mark might like. That's what Mark liked about her. She wasn't a stuffy, horn-rimmed glasses librarian. "I wish for once they would tell us to write something on video games or comic books or something like that. I could easily write a couple papers on that."
"Aha!" Miss Eva's fingers found something low on the shelf. She pulled out a couple of books to show to Mark. "How do you feel about aliens?" she asked him in mock seriousness. That sounded a bit interesting. "They're alright," Mark said, taking one of the books from Miss Eva. The title said The History of Alien Sightings. "Well, the subject of alien life outside of our own galaxy is very controversial. There are people who believe strongly on both sides of the argument."
Mark flipped open the book briefly and found a drawn picture of what an alien spaceship was supposed to look like. "Coooool..." he said, smiling down at it. Now this was more like it. "I think you've found your subject," Miss Eva said with a smile, watching his reaction. She pointed at the one shelf. "This whole shelf is related to aliens and aliens sightings. There's some on our trips to the moon and probes into space that you could use for reference as well. Lemme know if you want to use the computers at any time too. Have at it, sir." She left him to do his own exploration. Miss Eva had learned over the years that handing a kid the answer was never a good thing. It was better for them to figure it out for themselves.
Mark crouched down, looking through the selection of books. He didn't want to pick too many, he was going to have to read them after all and he only had two weeks. He set the History of Alien Sightings down on the floor as the bottom of his stack and starting pawing through the books on the shelf. Mark wasn't really sure if he thought aliens existed or not but he figured that was irrelevant to the paper. Mrs. Snyder probably wanted both sides of the argument presented equally like she usually insisted on. Of course, he wouldn't mind if aliens were real like in the movies and comic books. Not to mention all of the video games where you have to shoot aliens to win the game. Mark imagined for a second that the whole library was going to be overrun by aliens and he was the only one with a weapon to defend them. He could just see himself rolling out to take an impressive stance in front of the big green ugly aliens and blowing them all away heroically.
Then he came back to reality. Where there were no aliens and he had to write an english paper. This bites, he thought to himself, pulling another book out of the shelf. Oh well, at least I get to write about something moderately cool.
As he set another rejected book back on the shelf, Mark noticed something behind the rest of the books between the bookshelf and the wall. He reached back carefully and came up with one that must have fallen back behind the rest of the books when they were being shelved. It didn't look like a library book. The cover was dusty, presumably from being ignored behind the bookcase for a long time. It was crackly like brown paper. Mark knew some of the kids covered their textbooks with paper like this if they couldn't afford anything else. There wasn't any title on the brown paper bag cover so he slid it off the hard cover under it. That cover didn't help much either. It was a blue flower print with no words on it.
James came up just then, finished with his internet surfing. "Find anything?" he asked as he squatted down next to Mark. "Yeah, I'm gonna write it about aliens."
"Nice," James gave him a high five for the good idea. "What's that?" he asked, looking at the flower print book in Mark's hands. "I dunno, it fell behind the bookshelf. I just found it." Mark opened up the book to a random page and found it covered with penciled printing and a couple of doodles. He flipped through to the front and found a title written in the same pencil on the inside front page. It said, "J. Mara Tate's Journal."
"It's not a library book," Mark said. James got really excited at the title and nudged Mark with his shoulder. "Dude, that's a girl's diary," he lowered his voice to a whisper. "You found someone's secret diary. Maybe they were hiding it back there."
Mark gave him a look. "Who hides their diary in a library?"
"I dunno. Seems like a good place to hide a book to me." James started poking around back where Mark had found the book to see if there was anything else back there. "Funny looking bookmark," Mark said, pulling out a brown piece of string from a spot in the pages. On the end of it was a small chunk of green rock or crystal. "Probably her necklace," James said, inspecting it. "Hey, if you don't find out who she is, can I have it?" Mark yanked it back. "No way," he whispered so that Miss Eva wouldn't hear. "I found it, I get to keep it if that happens."
"Ok fine," James raised his hands in surrender. "But now what do you do with it?"
Mark turned the book over and over in his hands, trying to think of how to answer that question. Finally, he wrapped it back up in the brown paper the way it was and put it into his backpack. "I'll put it in the lost and found, someone's bound to pick it up."
"You're not going to read it?" James prodded. "There might be some juicy stuff in there."
Mark gave him a shove towards the door as he picked up the books he was checking out. "You've got some imagination, James."
"Well, you won't be able to put it in lost and found now. School's closed till Monday, remember?" James was right. He wasn't going to be able to get to the school lost and found until Monday. "I can wait till then. Com'n, I've got to get home before mom calls the library and embarrasses me again." The two of them walked over to the checkout counter carrying a couple of books apiece between them. Miss Eva had her headphones on, her head bobbing to the music as she stamped books behind the desk. She looked up with interest and pulled the headphones down off her ears to around her neck. "Find what you needed, Mark?" she asked. He nodded, piling the three books up in front of her. There were two on alien sightings and one on real space exploration. "Good choices," she approved as she rang him up. "Anything for you today James? I’m afraid that new skateboarding movie isn’t in yet."
James shook his head. "That’s ok, I've still got two graphic novels to finish at home," he said. "Well, make sure you stop and read the words now and again. Stories are more than cool pictures with BAM written all over them." James smiled, knowing she was half kidding him and half serious. “I will, Miss Eva.” The librarian handed Mark his library card back and handed over the stack of books. "These will be due in two weeks, but I'm sure you'll be done with them before then. Good luck with the paper." She waved at them leaving before going back to her headphones and music.
to be continued...
The Mara Chronicles
Mark Garrick was paying very close attention. He really was. Even though the teacher was starting to drone on and on, he was writing down what she was saying and paying close attention...to the clock above the chalkboard behind her. It was Friday and he, not to mention the entire seventh grade english class, was chomping at their invisible bits to get out at the earliest possible moment. Most of the kids were getting restless, trying not to shuffle their feet. Fortunately for him, Mark had gotten very good at doing two things at once. Namely, writing down notes and watching the oh so slow second hand of the clock. Mrs. Snyder was just wrapping up her lecture on present participles or something similar.
"Ok, class," she said, to which some of the more anxious children shifted in their chairs. That phrase usually meant she was getting down to the end. "You have an assignment coming up in two weeks." She walked around the room, putting a sheet of paper on each desk. "I am handing out the specifics of the paper. You should take note that this will be a significant part of your grade this year. It should be persuasive and well thought out. And please," she stopped with a meaningful look at one of the boys. "I know you CAN spell despite all efforts to the contrary. I want to see correct spelling on all your papers. If there is an excess of typos, I will take it off of your final grade."
3...2...1....Mark counted to himself watching the clock while folding up the assignment paper in his hands. At zero, the bell rang that school was out. There was an onrush of movement as the kids jumped up from their seats and shoved notebooks and pencils into their backpacks. "Two weeks!" Mrs. Snyder raised her voice above the din. "There will be no extensions so don't even ask for any. Everyone have a good weekend." Nobody really heard that last part as they were attempting to file out of the room in as orderly fashion as disorder can accomplish. Mark grabbed his friend, James, and the two of them ducked under the line and out the door ahead of those behind them. Their head start wasn't by much as the rest of the school was pouring out into the main hall. But that was ok because the two boys had to stop at their lockers first anyway.
"You coming over today?" James asked, leaning against the row of lockers to stay away from the main flow. "We can finish Ninja Knights and my mom was talking about ordering pizza in tonight." Mark was stuffing a few essentials from his locker into his bookbag. "Can't," he scowled. "My mom says I can't hang out on weekends till I get my grades back up."
"Aw, man, that's awful." James fiddled with his Gameboy as if in thought. "Do you have to do homework all weekend?"
Mark shut his locker door. "Not if I don't get it done ahead of time. Which means being at the library for at least an hour or two working on that English paper." He faked choking himself over it. "And if I'm not, my mom will know about it. She talks with Miss Eva, the librarian."
"Miss Eva's cool though," James said, sidling along next to Mark as they walked down the crowded hall. "And you've got two weeks till that paper's due. Maybe she'd cover for you."
"She's cool but not that cool. Besides, she's still a grownup."
The boys pushed their way out of the crowd of happy weekenders and through the front double doors into the sunshine. It was a lovely day for a Friday. It was just warm enough to be perfect. Summer was coming and the kids of Johnson's Middle School couldn't wait for it to finally arrive. But until it did, they would have to settle for a perfect weekend. As they came out the door, they would zig zag towards their respective homes. Canton City, Iowa was a rural town but the iconic farms and fields were not far from view. The school was in the middle of the town which could be seen from all sides because of the flat terrain. Beyond the town was the fields that were in the different stages of being plowed and planted. The two boys walked along the sidewalk away from the school and towards the library. James had his skateboard with him and was casually rolling alongside his friend, keeping his eye on the road while he was still on his Gameboy. "So what are you going to do for the paper?" he asked. Mark was watching his best friend's path for him in case he missed an obstacle. But James never did, he had grown up practically with a skateboard under him. "I dunno yet. English is a bore anyway, I'm probably going to have to pick a boring subject. Why do they make us take English anyway? You'd think the fact we can talk English was good enough, but no..." James snickered at that, steering around a bench with his eyes on his video game. It wasn’t far to go, the library was just on the other side of the town hall.
As they passed the impressive stone steps, the two of them ground to a stop at the sound of someone calling to them. "Hey, Mark," it was his dad coming out of town hall. He was in his dress suit with his briefcase under his arm, probably coming from a business meeting with the agriculture company he worked for. Mark smiled at the sight of the suit. He was used to seeing his dad in his dirt covered workclothes out in Mr. Harrison's field out back of their house. Jeff Garrick was no stranger to work, but besides being Mr. Harrison's right hand man, he also handled the business side of the farm for him. He was the only hired hand with a college education in business so that qualified him for the job. Mr. Harrison was very old school when it came to growing crops and selling them so he left the technical stuff and the big business talk to Mark's dad. People skills is what Mr. Harrison called it. "Jeff's got more people skills in his little finger than I've got in my whole farming experience," he told anyone who questioned why he had a hired hand running the show for him in selling and buying. "He's the best I've got. I'd be a fool to not let him do what he does best."
Jeff Garrick came up to the boys and ruffled Mark's hair playfully. "Hi, dad," Mark said. "Big meeting today?"
"Yup, we had a big deal to close today. Our company is merging with another so there's alot of talking that people do before agreeing to work together. How was school?"
Mark screwed up his nose in disgust. "Awful. We have a persuasive paper to write for english and mom's gonna want me to start it now or else."
"Ah, I see. So you boys would be heading to the library then?" The two of them nodded. "Well, have fun. I'll see you when you get home, Mark." He walked away towards his truck parked at the sidewalk. The two boys gave each other a look and shook their heads. Fun at the library? Yeah, right.
The library was somewhat of a landmark for the town. It was rather large for a town as small as theirs. But it had a long standing history in the community. It had been started way back before the town was even a town. It was in the back of someone's house back then. But the town had expanded on it and kept it up really well. Only recently it had gotten computers and internet so the amount of kids who visit had gone up exponentially. But this didn't bother the librarian, Eva Cavanaugh. A child of the sixties, Miss Eva as she was known to the kids in the neighborhood still held to her hippie roots. Her love of books came from a copy of Lord of the Rings given to her as a child. The kids liked her because she was interesting and never talked down to them. The adults liked her because she was good with kids.
Miss Eva looked up from her desk as the two boys came into the library. "Hi there, Mark...James..." She eyed the skateboard and James jumped off and put it under his arm before he got in trouble. "Hello Miss Eva," they both said. "What can I get for you? Need something for a book report? We just got a fresh batch of murder mysteries in the teen section."
"English paper research," Mark said with a roll of his eyes. "Ah, yes I got wind of that rumor this morning." Her eyes sparkled with amusement. "I suppose English teachers have no respect for Fridays." She reached over to a stack of books and set them down in front of her. "I pulled these out in case someone wanted to get a head start on the paper. Though I wouldn't have picked you two to be first at the post."
"Mom's making me do it," Mark sighed.
"I'm only here for moral support," James chimed in. "And the internet, no doubt," Miss Eva smiled as she handed over a pass card so he could use the computers. As he moved away towards the terminals, she turned her attention back to Mark. "So what subject are you going to write about?" Mark pulled out the instruction paper from his backpack. "I haven't decided yet. It says that it's got to be a persuasive paper on a current topic." Mrs. Snyder had underlined the words "Controversial topic recommended" in red. Mark handed the paper to Miss Eva to see what she could make of it. "Well, what are you interested in?" she asked.
"Nothing con...contro...verse..."
"Controversial," Miss Eva supplied. "It means people have strong notions on both sides of the argument."
"You mean like abortion and war and stuff?"
"Exactly." Miss Eva noted the lack of interest in the way Mark was regarding the stack of books she had her hand on. "But I'm thinking those sort of things are not up your alley." She motioned to him and they both walked towards the reference book section. "Let's see, what would a typical preteen man be interested in," Miss Eva began running her fingers over the titles on the bindings, hunting for something Mark might like. That's what Mark liked about her. She wasn't a stuffy, horn-rimmed glasses librarian. "I wish for once they would tell us to write something on video games or comic books or something like that. I could easily write a couple papers on that."
"Aha!" Miss Eva's fingers found something low on the shelf. She pulled out a couple of books to show to Mark. "How do you feel about aliens?" she asked him in mock seriousness. That sounded a bit interesting. "They're alright," Mark said, taking one of the books from Miss Eva. The title said The History of Alien Sightings. "Well, the subject of alien life outside of our own galaxy is very controversial. There are people who believe strongly on both sides of the argument."
Mark flipped open the book briefly and found a drawn picture of what an alien spaceship was supposed to look like. "Coooool..." he said, smiling down at it. Now this was more like it. "I think you've found your subject," Miss Eva said with a smile, watching his reaction. She pointed at the one shelf. "This whole shelf is related to aliens and aliens sightings. There's some on our trips to the moon and probes into space that you could use for reference as well. Lemme know if you want to use the computers at any time too. Have at it, sir." She left him to do his own exploration. Miss Eva had learned over the years that handing a kid the answer was never a good thing. It was better for them to figure it out for themselves.
Mark crouched down, looking through the selection of books. He didn't want to pick too many, he was going to have to read them after all and he only had two weeks. He set the History of Alien Sightings down on the floor as the bottom of his stack and starting pawing through the books on the shelf. Mark wasn't really sure if he thought aliens existed or not but he figured that was irrelevant to the paper. Mrs. Snyder probably wanted both sides of the argument presented equally like she usually insisted on. Of course, he wouldn't mind if aliens were real like in the movies and comic books. Not to mention all of the video games where you have to shoot aliens to win the game. Mark imagined for a second that the whole library was going to be overrun by aliens and he was the only one with a weapon to defend them. He could just see himself rolling out to take an impressive stance in front of the big green ugly aliens and blowing them all away heroically.
Then he came back to reality. Where there were no aliens and he had to write an english paper. This bites, he thought to himself, pulling another book out of the shelf. Oh well, at least I get to write about something moderately cool.
As he set another rejected book back on the shelf, Mark noticed something behind the rest of the books between the bookshelf and the wall. He reached back carefully and came up with one that must have fallen back behind the rest of the books when they were being shelved. It didn't look like a library book. The cover was dusty, presumably from being ignored behind the bookcase for a long time. It was crackly like brown paper. Mark knew some of the kids covered their textbooks with paper like this if they couldn't afford anything else. There wasn't any title on the brown paper bag cover so he slid it off the hard cover under it. That cover didn't help much either. It was a blue flower print with no words on it.
James came up just then, finished with his internet surfing. "Find anything?" he asked as he squatted down next to Mark. "Yeah, I'm gonna write it about aliens."
"Nice," James gave him a high five for the good idea. "What's that?" he asked, looking at the flower print book in Mark's hands. "I dunno, it fell behind the bookshelf. I just found it." Mark opened up the book to a random page and found it covered with penciled printing and a couple of doodles. He flipped through to the front and found a title written in the same pencil on the inside front page. It said, "J. Mara Tate's Journal."
"It's not a library book," Mark said. James got really excited at the title and nudged Mark with his shoulder. "Dude, that's a girl's diary," he lowered his voice to a whisper. "You found someone's secret diary. Maybe they were hiding it back there."
Mark gave him a look. "Who hides their diary in a library?"
"I dunno. Seems like a good place to hide a book to me." James started poking around back where Mark had found the book to see if there was anything else back there. "Funny looking bookmark," Mark said, pulling out a brown piece of string from a spot in the pages. On the end of it was a small chunk of green rock or crystal. "Probably her necklace," James said, inspecting it. "Hey, if you don't find out who she is, can I have it?" Mark yanked it back. "No way," he whispered so that Miss Eva wouldn't hear. "I found it, I get to keep it if that happens."
"Ok fine," James raised his hands in surrender. "But now what do you do with it?"
Mark turned the book over and over in his hands, trying to think of how to answer that question. Finally, he wrapped it back up in the brown paper the way it was and put it into his backpack. "I'll put it in the lost and found, someone's bound to pick it up."
"You're not going to read it?" James prodded. "There might be some juicy stuff in there."
Mark gave him a shove towards the door as he picked up the books he was checking out. "You've got some imagination, James."
"Well, you won't be able to put it in lost and found now. School's closed till Monday, remember?" James was right. He wasn't going to be able to get to the school lost and found until Monday. "I can wait till then. Com'n, I've got to get home before mom calls the library and embarrasses me again." The two of them walked over to the checkout counter carrying a couple of books apiece between them. Miss Eva had her headphones on, her head bobbing to the music as she stamped books behind the desk. She looked up with interest and pulled the headphones down off her ears to around her neck. "Find what you needed, Mark?" she asked. He nodded, piling the three books up in front of her. There were two on alien sightings and one on real space exploration. "Good choices," she approved as she rang him up. "Anything for you today James? I’m afraid that new skateboarding movie isn’t in yet."
James shook his head. "That’s ok, I've still got two graphic novels to finish at home," he said. "Well, make sure you stop and read the words now and again. Stories are more than cool pictures with BAM written all over them." James smiled, knowing she was half kidding him and half serious. “I will, Miss Eva.” The librarian handed Mark his library card back and handed over the stack of books. "These will be due in two weeks, but I'm sure you'll be done with them before then. Good luck with the paper." She waved at them leaving before going back to her headphones and music.
to be continued...