1
On the eve of Mad Purdy’s first class at the Elmswood Public Library, all the leaves on the trees turned red overnight. Mad was a chemist, not a botanist, but she knew the true color of leaves, in the absence of chlorophyll, was yellow. Leaves only turned red on purpose, the result of the creation of a pigment called anthocyanin. Mad was nervous about the class, about standing in front of a room like a teacher. The kids would have questions about the leaves, she worried. Anthocyanin was costly, energy-wise, for a tree to produce. Mad imagined breathing in through her right nostril, breathing out through the left, though she kept her sweaty hands on the steering wheel. Scientists weren’t certain why trees created anthocyanin, though one theory was that it protected leaves from light, which was something Mad understood well—as a cosmetic chemist, she worked in sunscreen formulation, which was less sexy than bath bomb formulation, her project for tonight. It was also possible leaves turned red to attract birds, which would then eat and disperse the tree’s seeds.
Mad didn’t notice any birds when she pulled into the library’s parking lot, but they were already gathering.
The Elmswood Public Library, located in Mad’s West Virginia hometown, was a forty-minute drive from her condo in Pennsylvania—a safe distance, she believed, from the place she’d spent most of her young life, desperate to escape. The commute gave her time to prepare, but she’d instead spent it imagining every disastrous scenario that might unfold over the course of a two-hour chemistry lesson for middle school students. She could forget how to speak or fail to suppress a nervous fart, and then the kids would mock her mercilessly for the duration. The class could be unruly and refuse to listen, or there could be a bully—multiple bullies!—and their victim might start crying, and she would stand there frozen, at a loss for what to do. She was catastrophizing. She hummed to make sure her voice still worked. She’d agreed to teach the class because the young adult librarian was a childhood friend who’d caught Mad off guard, asking what she did on Thursday nights—Mad’s answer to which was nothing—and because her mother had been not-so-gently pressuring her to try something outside her comfort zone. When it came down to it, Mad convinced herself that teaching a roomful of middle school girls was less intimidating than, say, finishing the doctoral program applications languishing on her laptop or going on a date. The class would focus on the chemistry of bath and beauty products—bath bombs, sugar scrubs, lip balms. It would run for six weeks, and then everyone would get off her fucking back. The last thing she wanted was to be a teacher.
The Elmswood Public Library was located in a building that had previously been a bank, and in the rear, there was a vestigial drive-thru window with a pneumatic tube system. The pneumatic tube sending station had been shuttered since the last time Mad had been here, years ago, with a spray-painted sign that said NOT FOR TRASH, breaking the long Elmswood tradition of teenagers depositing into the system undesirable objects—condoms, bad jokes written on cheeseburger wrappers—to fuck with the librarians. There wasn’t that much to do in Elmswood. Mad herself had once driven through with her friends and inserted a glazed donut, squealed off as the vacuum suctioned it away, laughing until they cried. She felt a wash of shame rinse over her as she unloaded her trunk and carried her bags through the library’s back door.
The rear entrance led to the lower level—a dim hallway punctuated by the library’s modest children’s room. Inside, a woman with black hair that flowed past her waist knelt on the floor to change the diaper of a toddler who flailed and screeched against the quiet. The walls were still hung with faded quilts, donated by a long-defunct sewing group. There was a small play kitchen against one wall, a train table. At a desk near the door, an older woman playing Minesweeper on the computer spotted Mad before she could slink away.
“Maddie Purdy!” the woman yelled. “Get out of town!”
Mad dropped her bags and stepped tentatively into the children’s room. “Mrs. Jankowski.”
Mrs. Jankowski was the size of a middle schooler and wore so much perfume Mad worried she would break out in hives when Mrs. Jankowski hugged her. She’d lived three doors down from Mad’s childhood home since the dawn of time, and was always working in her yard when the school bus dropped Mad at the end of the street, so Mad would be forced to engage in conversation on her walk home. Mrs. Jankowski’s house had a stone goose out front, which she dressed in hats and coats to celebrate each holiday or season. Mr. Jankowski had been known for giving out coins instead of candy for Halloween—the world’s shiniest nickels and dimes, and once, to the neighborhood children’s delight, silver dollars.
“Your mother didn’t tell me you were going to be here,” Mrs. Jankowski said.
Mad’s mother hadn’t told Mrs. Jankowski she was going to be there because Mad hadn’t told her mother in the first place, hoping to avoid the expectation of a visit after class, at eight P.M. on a work night, when her mother would already be on her second bottle of chardonnay. Now she’d have to call her.
“I didn’t know you were working here,” Mad said.
“Since my back surgery,” Mrs. Jankowski said. “Can’t be hunching over in the garden like I used to. I have a boy for that now.” She elbowed Mad and winked. “He does the bending over for me. So I work here, and I watch the Korean dramas. Very spicy, some of those Korean dramas.” She winked again. “It’s a nice place to have a chat. In the children’s department, no one expects it to be quiet. You think you’re supposed to be quiet in a library, but babies don’t give a damn. You’ve changed your hair since the last time I saw you.” She touched Mad’s hair, kinked at her neck where her ponytail had been. “It’s longer now.” There was no time for Mad to respond to any of this. “What does your mother think about your hair? You know I always told her, if you pull out one gray hair, two will grow back. I don’t think she listened!”
She nudged Mad and laughed. The toddler ran past them, toward a glass case of painted gourds, and his mother trailed after him, flashing Mrs. Jankowski an apologetic smile.
“I’m supposed to discourage running,” Mrs. Jankowski said, “but I don’t care.”
Mad couldn’t respond to this either, because then Farrah rushed in from the hall.
“You made it!” Farrah said.
Farrah gave Mad a squeeze and pulled her, protectively, away from Mrs. Jankowski. Farrah had taken both her tanning and teeth whitening a few shades too far, but otherwise she looked the same as always, both of a small town in West Virginia and too expensive for it. Farrah and Mad had been classmates since kindergarten, friends by virtue of proximity—their last names started with the same letter, which meant they were always next to each other in line or paired as partners. Otherwise, they made no sense together—Farrah’s father was a doctor, and she had all the things other girls coveted, including an easy beauty that blurred into popularity. Mad was too much of an oddball to sit at Farrah’s lunch table—Mad had worn her grandmother’s costume jewelry to school, or hats she found at the thrift store, because it was fun to dress up. She responded to socially awkward situations by reciting facts about the ocean and harbored a moderate obsession with the possibility of life on other planets. But Farrah’s friendship had given Mad a pass, shielding her from the brunt of her peers’ derision. Now that Mad had moved away and Farrah had stayed, it was easier to repurpose her old jealousy into disconnection.
“I wasn’t sure you’d show,” Farrah said. She was a little out of breath, as if she’d run down here for Mad, though Mad knew she was always like that. Farrah had the air of a person in demand, always being pulled from one thing to the next, even when she wasn’t.
“Here I am,” Mad said. She turned back to Mrs. Jankowski, but she’d already moved on, talking to the mother of the toddler about the painted gourds, which had been donated by a local artist whose work Mrs. Jankowski did not care for. Mad would have to say goodbye later.
Mad followed Farrah up the stairs to the main level, into the library’s open lobby, where the bank teller stations now served as a circulation desk, and up another set of stairs to the mezzanine.
“This part of the library was renovated last year,” Farrah said. The carpet was obviously new, rich green and still off-gassing. The walls of the staircase were hung with photos by library patrons—a blurry bald eagle, a bear dismantling a bird feeder in someone’s backyard. Some nondescript birds Mad couldn’t name. She’d never liked birds. “But the room you’re in has some issues.”
The upper level was small, consisting of two rooms nestled off the wood-railed mezzanine that looked out over the lobby. Mad followed Farrah past the Genealogy Room to a room she’d never been in, the Antiques Room. It was cramped inside—half the room crowded with narrow aisles of books, the other half occupied by a table so enormous it could’ve seated thirty people. Mad tried to imagine standing in front of thirty students and refocused on her breathing.
The table was a rich reddish wood, its surface glassy, opulent and out of place. This room, too, had new carpeting, but the ceiling over the shelving units was torn open, and there were drywall patches scattered across the otherwise maroon walls.
“Something with a pipe,” Farrah said. “There was water damage, and we can’t fix it until the insurance pays up.” Across the room, Mad saw an orange bucket strategically placed to catch drips. “I don’t usually come in here if I don’t have to. The YA department is downstairs. But we put you up here because the kids are so loud sometimes.”
At that, the sole girl at the table, clearly there for the class, looked up from her math homework with offense.
“Here’s your roster,” Farrah said, and handed Mad a folder from the table. “You have eight registered, but you never know. Sometimes no one shows. Sometimes you get a bunch of kids who didn’t register at all!”
Mad took out the roster, and Farrah ran her finger down the list.
“Brandon—his family is from Turkey; he comes to everything. His mom just had a baby and he’s not doing great with it, so he’s going to be a handful. These girls are sisters. Their dad is Black,” she said, implying their mother was white, which Mad understood would cause talk among certain people, even now. “If anyone is a dick to them, you send them down to me.” Before Mad could ask, she continued: “Oh, it’s happened.” Her finger moved on. “And you already know about Harper.”
Harper’s mother, having recognized Mad’s name on the library website, had sent her a long, oversharing email about the recent death of Harper’s older brother. She’d signed Harper up for the class in hopes that she and Mad might find a connection. Mad’s response was brief: she looked forward to meeting them.
Farrah motioned to a rickety card table under the windows. “I have snacks—that’s mostly why these kids come in the first place. Their parents want them out of the house, and the snacks are good.” The snacks were good—Doritos and Oreos, Double Stuf, even. Little cans of soda. “And your materials. I put some plastic tablecloths in there, too. Try not to ruin anything,” she said, walking directly past the ruined walls and ceiling. “Roberta will flip. I’m downstairs if you need anything.” She walked unceremoniously out the door but a moment later popped back in. “I’m glad you made it,” Farrah added. “I really wasn’t sure you’d come. You’re such a recluse!”
Mad felt the girl at the table trying to study her without being obvious about it. She was tiny, dressed in a cartoon T-shirt and running shoes, a reflective band around one arm.
“I’m not a recluse,” Mad said. “I just never go anywhere or do anything.”
* * *
The students trickled in over the next ten minutes, while Mad set up for class. Farrah had provided the dry ingredients plus disposable bowls and spoons, and Mad had brought from home a variety of oils, colorants, and molds. The girl with the math homework stationed herself as far from Mad as possible and kept her small body curled over a textbook that appeared to have calculus equations on the cover. The second student was escorted in by a tight-faced mother in a neat gray suit, who came very close to Mad before speaking.
“This is Quinn,” the woman said, her voice quiet even for a library. “I put her—” She stopped, inhaled, started over. “I put their name wrong on the enrollment form. The form says Flora. But it’s Quinn.”
Quinn wore an oversized hoodie that didn’t entirely conceal recently buzzed hair. They kept their eyes on the carpet, avoiding the people who were talking about them.
“Hi, Quinn,” Mad said. “I’m glad you’re here.” She pulled out her roster and struck through the incorrect name with a flourish. Quinn lifted their eyes.
The mother exhaled heavily. “I’ll be in the back lot,” she told Quinn. “When you’re done.”
Quinn took a seat beside the math girl, who, when asked, told Mad her name was Winnie, after Winnie the Pooh.
“My mom’s a Disney freak,” Winnie explained. “Like, she has tattoos and everything. She runs a website about planning trips and saving money. It’s embarrassing.”
“Wow,” Mad said.
Mad hadn’t spent much time around kids but had convinced herself she could do this because she was a collector of skills—she could navigate by the stars and break free from quicksand—but also because in her heart of hearts, she was still an eleven-year-old girl. Deep down, she wanted nothing more than to have pizza parties and roller skate with streaks of glitter in her hair, to swim with dolphins even though as an adult she knew dolphins were assholes. Wanting to swim with dolphins was why she studied chemistry in the first place—if anyone could save the oceans, it was a chemist. But now she wondered what she’d been thinking when she’d told Farrah yes. Mad had traded her childish dreams for a stable job long ago. She hardly ever performed magic tricks anymore. She still loved to sit in her sleeping bag on the couch and eat pizza, but rarely did she also buy herself a tub of chocolate frosting and eat great spoonfuls of it, even with no one around to judge her.
In her heart, Mad was still her eleven-year-old self, gawky and full of crushes, her dopey feelings so close to the surface, like they were brand new. But in her life, she was different—competent, responsible, safe. She’d been hoping the remnants of her weirdness—visible only in her mismatched socks—would give her a pass with these kids. Now that she was here, though, standing in front of them as they stared at her, she realized all they were going to see was her awkwardness.
The next two students came in together, the sisters Farrah had mentioned. The younger one wore a tiered floral dress, her curly hair in pigtail braids, while the older one wore black lipstick, black nail polish, platform boots with torn fishnets. The older sister took the seat next to Quinn and put on giant headphones, which leaked pop music into the room.
“Do we need goggles?” the pigtailed sister asked. Mad checked the roster. Her name was Lucy, and her older sister was Jude. “Our dad made us bring goggles.”
From a tote bag she produced not safety goggles but the kind for swimming.
“Oh,” Mad said. Maybe she should’ve brought safety glasses herself. “We’ll be talking about chemical reactions, but with bath bombs, the bulk of the reaction doesn’t happen until you submerge them in water, and that’s something you’ll be doing at home, once your bath bomb is dry.” She was going to bore the shit out of these kids, she could already tell. She should’ve brought scented markers, folders with unicorns on them, something that was actually exciting. “But we’re using citric acid, which is … an acid. So just make sure you don’t rub your eyes if you have it on your hands.”
Lucy stood holding out the goggles, confused.
“You don’t have to wear them,” Mad said, “but you can if you want.”
Lucy shrugged and sat next to Jude before affixing the goggles over her hair. Jude, who was tracing shapes into the condensation on her iced coffee, shook her head.
The last few students rushed in just after six, as Mad tried to summon the nerve to begin. First, a girl named Nadira, waylaid by an impassioned whisper-argument with her mother in the hall. Then Brandon, whose chubbiness made him look younger than sixth grade, wearing an outgrown T-shirt and shorts despite the cool fall weather. Harper arrived last, her mother peeking around the doorway to wave at Mad. Harper huffed and directed her mother away with her eyes, and her mother gave Mad a good-humored shrug and disappeared. Harper put a novel in front of her face immediately, a sword glinting from its cover.
“I think that’s everyone,” Mad said, attempting brightness. “Shall we get started?”
“Did you see those owls?” Brandon said.
“I saw them,” Lucy said. “My dad thought they were starlings at first because of the way they were making a cloud, but one flew super close to the car and then we saw it better. Their eyes are weird!”
“You’re weird,” Jude said, and pressed the headphones tighter over her ears.
“What owls?” Quinn asked. They had writing all over their left hand and arm, tiny cursive tattooed on with a pen during the school day.
“There are all these little owls outside,” Brandon said.
“Like a flock of them,” Lucy said.
“In a big cloud,” Brandon added. “And it’s like, shape-shifting.”
“It’s called a murmuration,” Harper said—book still in front of her face—“when starlings do it.”
“My dad said they must be lost,” Lucy said. “Like they got lost migrating somewhere.”
The other students nodded, satisfied with the explanation. It was fall, after all. Some birds would be starting their migrations. Mad didn’t know anything about birds. She’d been worrying about leaves, about the chemistry of leaves. She wasn’t prepared to talk about birds. She felt their eyes on her, conflated herself for a moment with Mrs. Campbell, her own teacher in sixth grade. She could see Mrs. Campbell’s long denim skirt, her suede boots. She could feel her own voice, lodged just below her throat.
Copyright © 2024 by Aimee Pokwatka
