The Missing Book

“I’m not getting this,” Manny said.

“Show me where you started,” André said, looking over at Manny and his work.

“Excuse me!” came a voice from behind the librarian’s desk. Manny and André looked up to see Mrs. Nance moving towards them. Mrs. Nance was the school’s librarian, and everyone knew about her long before they started at Breed Middle School. Students past and present heard and told stories of her keeping troublesome students in the closet of the library where she visited whenever she felt hungry. Mrs. Nance was a tall woman; a BIG woman, and some students said she deliberately looked for troublemaking children to put in the closet and save for a future meal.

“Keep it down!” Mrs. Nance said to the boys when she arrived at their table. “This is a library! Do you know what that means?”

“Yeah, we do,” André said with a slight tremble in his voice.

“WHAT?!” Mrs. Nance demanded, her eyes growing behind her glasses.

“Yes, Ma’am!” Manny said hurriedly. “Yes, we know exactly what that means.”

“What does that mean?” Mrs. Nance asked without losing any edge or tone in her voice.

“It means be quiet,” Manny said.

“That’s good,” Mrs. Nance said. “I expect you and everyone else here to do just that.” Mrs. Nance turned around and walked back to her desk. The boys returned to their work without another word. They barely lifted their heads from their books. They just continued with their work hoping they were doing it right and would be able to get the credit for the assignment from their teacher.

At the end of the day, Manny saw André in the hall.

“What do you think of the assignment?” Andre asked.

“Beats me,” Manny said. “We won’t know until tomorrow.”

“It would have been nice if we could have helped each other,” André said.

“You’re right about that,” What’s that woman’s problem, anyway?”

“Who knows?” André answered. “I’ve heard all kinds of things about Mrs. Nance. A lot of people think she’s not really human.”

“I heard she eats children,” Manny added. “She captures them and keeps them in a closet.”

“Maybe she’s some kind of monster. She has these weird powers.”

“Yeah, she gets the powers from a book I heard.”

“Anne of Green Gables,” André said.

“No,” Manny said. “It was Pollyanna.”

“Pollyanna?” André asked. Manny reached into his backpack and pulled out a faded, light-blue book with a girl on the cover. The book was worn but still bound and intact. “Yup,” Manny said. “Pollyanna.” André eyes grew in surprise and his mouth dropped open as he looked at the book in Manny’s hands.

“How did you get that?” André asked.

“I went back to the library after the last bell rang. Mrs. Nance wasn’t at her desk, but a drawer was open. I saw the book there. I grabbed it and got out of the library before she got back.”

“You stole a book from the library?!” André asked.

“It’s not stealing,” Manny said. “It’s a science experiment. Everybody says Mrs. Nance isn’t human. Everybody says all these weird things about her. Everybody says she gets all of these powers from this book. Well, here’s our chance to see if this is true or not.” Manny put the book back in his bag. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll win a Nobel Prize for Science for this.”

“WE?!” André asked. “We?! You’re not including me in this! You did this, you can deal with this by yourself. Enjoy your Nobel Prize. I want nothing to do with this!”

The next day was Friday. Manny mentioned to André he didn’t see Mrs. Nance.

“Maybe she’s gone,” Manny said. “Maybe the evil spirit took on another form and is searching for the book! Maybe we lifted a curse from the school!”

“Great,” André said. “The ‘spirit’ can go to your house and find the book itself. If you go missing, I’ll know it found out where the book was, and I’m going to ask your parents if I can have your PS5.”

“In that case, I hope there’s a ‘Pollyanna’ game I can download on it before you get it.”

Students returned to school on Monday. Manny and André heard teachers talking in classrooms and in the hall. Mrs. Nance was in and everyone was noticing the sharp change in her demeanor. Mrs. Nance ran a tight ship when it came to the library. Sometimes, she would be asked to speak in an English class as students were being assigned a book report. Sometimes she would be in the Social Studies class to remind students of the proper procedure when it came to checking out books needed for a project. Whatever the reason she had to speak to students, Mrs. Nance carried a presence with her. Students knew who she was, and they knew to sit quietly and listen when she was in their classroom. Now she was quiet. Her head was down when she walked.

André and Manny were in the library for their study period. They were constantly looking in the direction of Mrs. Nance. It was strange to them, and all of the other students, to see her as she was that day. Manny kept looking to see if she was going to shape-shift into another being, or maybe even melt without her book.

 Just then, Mr. Quinn came into the library to return some materials he needed for a lecture the previous week.

“How are you today, Mrs. Nance?” Mr. Quinn asked.

“I’m alright,” she said with a not-so-alright tone in her voice.

“Any sign of Pollyanna?” he asked.

“I’m afraid not,” Mrs. Nance said. “I can’t understand it. That book hasn’t left my desk the entire time I’ve worked here.”

Manny got up from the table to throw something away. André got up from the table as if he was getting something from a shelf. He really just wanted to hear what else the adults had to say.

“Oh, well,” Mrs. Nance said. “I suppose it was bound to happen. You know, Mr. Quinn, I really shouldn’t have had that book in the first place.”

“Really?” Mr. Quinn replied.

Mrs. Nance sat back. “I was in the fourth grade. I was a bookworm, you know. It sort of makes sense seeing what I do for a living now. Anyway, I was in a library one day. I had just seen a movie called Pollyanna. It had just come out. I had heard the movie had been based on a book and I was curious to see the book. I enjoyed the movie. I went to the library. I wanted to borrow the book. The librarian’s name was Mrs. Murray. She was a drill sergeant, I’ll tell you. If you sneezed in that library, she would give you a look that would turn you to stone. Anyway, I wanted to check the book out but, as I said before, I didn’t have a library card. She was the only one working in the library that day and she said she couldn’t help me get one. She said it in such a nasty tone. I hated the way she said it. I can still hear her saying it to me the way she did.

“Just then, the phone in her office rang and she went to answer it. I turned around with that book in my hand and ran out of there so fast. I raced home and ran upstairs and put that book under my bed before my mother could call me downstairs and ask me why I needed to run in the house. I don’t know what I was thinking that day,” Mrs. Nance said. “All I know is I read that book from cover-to-cover and I fell in love with that book. I was ashamed of what I had done that day. Even today, I don’t know what came over me to steal a book from the library like that. I wanted to return the book, but I couldn’t. I was afraid Mrs. Murray would catch me with the book as I walked back into the library. I hid that book in my room and there it stayed for the entire time. I loved that book so much I read it again and again, but I always read it when I was alone. I didn’t want anyone, especially my parents to ask me where I got the book.”

“And you brought it with you to this library?” André asked.

“Over time, I forgot I had the book,” Mrs. Nance explained. “It ended up under my bed, in a closet, in a box. It got moved around a lot as I got older and eventually moved into my own home. Meanwhile, the library in my town was replaced by a new one and sometimes there would be a book sale to raise money for the library. I just figured someone thought it was sold in one of those book sales or maybe got lost being moved from the old library to the new one. Over time, I just never returned the book. I just loved it so much and I wasn’t sure how to explain how I ended up with the book or why I was there to return a book that wasn’t checked out.”

The boys walked home that afternoon. They were discussing Mrs. Nance and her book.

“You need to return that book,” André said.

“Huh?” Manny replied, surprised.

“She loves that book,” André said. “She felt bad for stealing it and now she feels even worse. She loves the book and now it’s missing from her.”

“She shouldn’t have stolen the book in the first place!” Manny said. “If she had never stolen it, she wouldn’t have felt so guilty.”

“You stole it! What does that say about you?”

“I didn’t steal it. I rescued it. The book never belonged to her in the first place.”

“So, you’re just going to return the book for her?” André asked.

“I would but I don’t know where she grew up,” Manny answered. “Besides, you saw how upset she was. Would you want to bother someone feeling the way she did? Of course not. She wants to be left alone right now.”

“It’s not right,” André said. “That book should be returned to her. If it was me, I would bring it back to her.”

“Would you? Would you really?”

“Yeah,” André said. “Yeah, I would!”

“Alright, Mr. Morals,” Manny said, reaching into his bag. “Here you go.” He held it out for André.

“What am I going to do with that?”

“You said you would give it back to her.”

“I said I would give it back to her if I were you,” André said.

“Well, here’s your chance,” Manny said. “Pretend you are me and go ahead and return it.”

“You know what,” André said. “Fine. I will return it.” He took the book from Manny.

“And how are you going to do that?”

André had no idea how he was going to do it, but he felt bad for Mrs. Nance and that was something he never thought he, or anyone else at Breed Middle School would ever feel.

André took the book home. He left the book in his bag. He thought of Mrs. Nance stealing the book when she was a young girl. He didn’t want to take the book out of his bag. He didn’t want his parents asking him about the book and he didn’t want to remind himself that he had a stolen book in his possession. He was afraid of Mrs. Nance as it was.

André was at school the next day. Manny saw him.

“So, did you return the book yet, Morals?”

“Shut up,” André said. “I just got here.”

Later that day, Manny was walking into the library. He saw André looking over his shoulder as he turned a corner and disappeared behind a row of bookcases. He also saw Mrs. Nance on the other side of the bookcases. Then there was the sound of books falling to the floor. Mrs. Nance’s head jerked in the direction of the sound and she huffed as she hurried as fast as she could to where the sound came from.

“What happened here?” Mrs. Nance demanded as André bent over picking up books that had fallen. Manny arrived just as André had straightened up.

“I think I bumped into this shelf,” André said holding up the books. “These must have fallen out.”

Mrs. Nance was surprised to see the copy of Pollyanna laying among the books on the floor. She bent over and picked it up. She held it up. “Where did this come from?”

“I don’t know,” André said. “Looks like it fell from the shelf with those other books.”

“I’ve been looking for this book. I wonder how it got here with these other books,” Mrs. Nance said.

“Do you have people helping you? André said. “Maybe they saw it laying around and thought it needed to be put on the shelf.”

“Well,” Mrs. Nance said, “This is usually in my desk but sometimes I leave my desk without closing drawers. Maybe someone saw it and thought it was something that needed to be put away.” She shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is the book has been found and this gentleman found it for me. What’s your name, young man?”

“André.”

“André, who is your English teacher?”

“Mr. Seng.”

“Well, I am going to see Mr. Seng today and see to it you get some extra credit on your next book report. This is certainly a relief. I wasn’t even able to play my PS5 this weekend I was so upset. I’ll certainly be able to play tonight.”

“You play PS5?” Manny asked.

“Of course, I do,” Mrs. Nance said. “You don’t think my entire life revolves around books, do you?”