Lights of the Night

    My breath hitched as I heard the old librarian move around the bookshelves. I moved silently behind another shelf and crouched down. I tried to contain my excitement, but I could feel my body beginning to shake in anticipation. I watched quietly as the old woman scanned the rows of books, looking for movement. I saw a look of exhaustion on the woman's face as she finally sighed and moved towards the front door. I kept moving as well around the bookshelves, easily staying out of her line of vision. The woman turned the lights off and I was left in almost complete darkness. My only source of light came from the moonlight streaming through the windows. The old woman opened the front door and walked out of the building. I heard the click of the lock as she locked up for the day.

       A smile emerged on my face. I had made it. I stood up, looking across the room to the far window. Quietly and quickly, I moved across the room, stopping at the window and sliding my fingers under the small crack I had left in the window earlier in the day. I pulled the window up cautiously. Anxiety suddenly filled my mind. I felt that at any moment, I was about to be grabbed by the old librarian and arrested. I lifted the window until the opening was large enough to lean my head out. "Gracie!" I called in a loud whisper. "She's gone!"

       I listened closely for any response. I was met with silence. "Gracie!" I called again. "I'm down here!" A quiet voice responded. I saw the dark figure of my friend emerge from another section of the bushes below the window. She had a backpack pulled over one shoulder. She moved until she was directly under the window, and I extended my arms. She reached out and locked her small fingers around my wrist as I lifted the petite girl through the window pane.

       With one final pull, Gracie came through the window and we collapsed against the floor. Gracie burst into a paroxysm of laughter, and I smiled as I got to my feet, reaching out to pull her up. As she got to her feet, a her face shifted. She looked at me with a deep seriousness. "Wait, where is it?" I turned around and looked to the center of the room where there stood a bookshelf larger than the other. It stood tall and had a demanding presence to it that seemed to control the room.

       "It's here." Gracie walked behind me as we moved to the bookshelf. "I can't believe we're doing this!" She tapped my arm erratically. My eyes scanned the bookshelf slowly, but it wasn't hard to find what I was looking for. A dim light shined out beautiful from the center of the shelf. "That's it?" Gracie asked. I leaned forward and pulled the book off of the shelf. The dim light illuminating from the book would have been impossible to notice in brightness.

       We moved to the closest table. I placed the book in the center and opened it carefully. Blank pages filled the book. The pages seemed ancient, thin enough to break at any moment. "You got the stuff?" I asked. "Yeah." She placed her backpack in the center of the table and unzipped one side. Gracie pulled out a package of pens and colored pencils. I nodded to the book. "You're the artist." I sat back in my chair. Pulling out one of her pens, she took the book in her hands and slid it closer to her.

       She began drawing slowly on the paper, outlining, shading, and coloring. I observed as a small smile spread across her face. "I'm almost done." I felt my nerves stirring up inside me. Finally, Gracie slid the book towards me. I turned it to see the full picture of a little black dog. The level of detail in the sketch was astounding. I raised my eyebrows. "Wow." I said. "Try it!" Gracie said. Her whole body was vibrating.

       I carefully positioned the book face-down on the floor and waited. After a moment, the book began to stir on its own. My eyes widened in amazement. Slowly from the book emerged a dark liquid that began to form a shape. After another moment, which I wouldn't have believed had I not seen it myself, a tiny black dog blinked back at us. "Lord!" Gracie exclaimed and grabbed my arm.

       "It worked! Girl, keep drawing!" A shot of happiness jumped through my body and I thought for a moment that I would collapse. Gracie seized the book. "Be careful, this thing is old!"

       The further into the night we got, the more unable we were to contain our joy in a way that wouldn't be noticed by surrounding buildings. Gracie drew up beautiful, long strands of lights that we hung up all around us using the nails she drew. We created designed decorations inspired from our favorite placed. She drew a mini Eiffel Tower. I was the one who came up with the idea to create a functioning merry-go-round. That one took her quite a while to draw.

       Our favorite foods came next. Chocolate bread and butter pudding, baked ricotta cake, honey cakes, and bowls of rich, sticky ginger pudding filled the table. We ate until it felt as though our stomach lining might burst. "Gracie! I'm gonna need a cherry pie, then we ride that Merry-Go-Round!" I shouted to her from across the room. Gracie hung upside down from one of the strings of light nailed to the sky.

       "Not in that order! I'm not cleaning up your vomit!" She reached up and took hold of the string before twisting to lower herself to the ground.

       Suddenly, we both halted. Looking towards the front door, we heard the clicking of the keys in the lock. I glanced towards the clock to see that we had run out of time. The library was about to open. "Crap!" I grabbed the book, opened it the page with the sketching of the Merry-Go-Round and touched the page to the one of the plastic horses in the Merry-Go-Round. The large contraption began the melt down into a dark liquid which merged back into the pages. Gracie grabbed some of the surrounding her, pulling down the lights and ripping them as she did so.

       I flipped to different pages, scrambling to find the item on each page and put it back in the magical book. We grabbed the remaining food, throwing it into the book. As the front door began to open, I slammed the book shut and ran towards the window, jumping out and landing in bushes below. Gracie was close behind me. We took off, sprinting away from the library, leaving the poor old librarian behind us to clean up the remaining mess.