Christopher Boucher - Golden Delicious

He looked up at me. “Still working on that project?”

I shook my head.

“Get a good grade?”

“C,” I said.

“How? I told you the whole story,” said the Memory of Johnny Appleseed.

“I forgot about the project until the day it was due,” I said.

The Memory of Johnny Appleseed smirked and shook his head.

I didn’t move. After a moment, the Memory of Johnny Appleseed looked up at me. “Are you going to just stand there and watch me read?”

“I was really looking forward to reading the end,” I said.

“Early bird catches the worm,” he said.

I stared at him.

“It is my story, after all,” he said.

I just stood there.

“Go away, .”

So I did — I walked out to my Bicycle Built for Two, unlocked it, and rode off the page.

The following day, though, I rode my bike to the Library right after school. I went directly to the Reference section, where a Librarian in a disco suit was stamping and stacking books. I knew my thoughts would be bored in that section, though, so I opened my skull in the lobby and let them run upstairs to Media; only one or two stayed behind in my mind. Then I found The Book of Apples , sat in a corner, and read for the next two hours, absorbing as much as I could. Every once in a while one of my thoughts would find me there and pester me by tugging on my sleeve or walking onto the page I was reading. “Can we go?” one asked.

“Not yet,” I whispered.

“I’m so bored.”

“Then read ,” I said.

I was halfway through Appleseed’s anecdotes about language-planting, though, when I saw the lights overhead flicker. The library was starting to close. I knew what would happen next: the lights would go out altogether, the disco balls would drop, the shelves would slide to the walls and a light-up dance floor would be born. Some books would pick up keyboards and saxophones and drums while other books donned disco suits and dancing dresses. Read: flashing lights; booksweat; music so loud you couldn’t hear your thoughts think !

I put the book back on the shelf and opened my skull to collect my thoughts. Some of them scampered into my skull, but a few stood staring at me. “What are you doing?” said one. “I was really into that story!”

“The Library’s closing soon,” I told the thought.

“Can we check the book out?” said the thought.

I shook my head. “It’s a reference book,” I said.

“Then just take it, man,” said the thought.

Reader: Wait — what?

“You should,” another thought said.

“Who’s going to know?” the first thought said.

Reader: That’s stealing , . Stealing is illegal!

The second thought looked at the Reader. “Don’t you want to understand Appleseed’s planting techniques? How the stories are told?”

Reader: Sure, but—

“I’m not — I can’t — no way,” I said.

“Just put it in under your shirt, wussface,” said the thought.

I thought about it. “There’s a Librarian right there ,” I whispered to my skull. Next to Mothers and Cones, Librarians were probably the most powerful people in Appleseed: they were dizzyingly smart, highly trained, paid a lot of meaning, and great at disco — they knew all the latest moves.

“We have to get out of here,” I told the thought.

“We want the story, ,” said the first thought. “We are not leaving that book here.”

A Librarian in disco gear whisked by. “Music begins in ten minutes!” he sang.

I smiled and nodded and thought to walk away from the shelves, but when I actually tried to move my feet they wouldn’t lift. I knew right away that it was my thoughts, conspiring to control me. “We need to go ,” I told my thoughts.

“No one’s going to miss one book ,” a thought of umbrellas whispered. Before I could object further he grabbed the book I’d been reading off the shelf, climbed my shoulders, opened the top of my head as wide as the hinge would go and stuffed the book into my skull. The book was a hardcover — big, heavy, with sharp corners. The weight on my brain made me shriek.

“Shh! Big baby,” said the thought.

I couldn’t see for a second — I blinked and blinked. My vision reversed, flipped upside down. My arm began tremoring. I let out an involuntary yelp. “You’re messing up his brain, dude,” said one thought to another.

I tried to object — to say “Stop!”—but I couldn’t make words; one of the books must have been pressing on my language center. Then even the thoughts of words vanished. I blurted whatever word was available to me. “Darjeeling!” “Pock.” “Historical!”

Meanwhile, the thoughts struggled to close my skull. I could feel them pushing and shoving one another, trying to make room for the novel they’d crammed into their living space. My eyes fluttered; my vision was blue. I clawed at the hinge on my skull but the thoughts held it closed.

Suddenly I heard the swish of guitars and recorded horns — the disco music was starting.

“Oop,” said the thought. “Time to vamoose, .”

The lights were dimming.

“ ?”

I pulled at the seam of my skull. “Stout,” I said. “Lasso.”

Out on the floor, disco Librarians were starting to assemble. A strobe light yawned, stretched its arms and started turning. I looked out the windows at the dusky purple light.

“Get moving, ,” said the thought.

I tried one more time to reason, to find language to name my thoughts, but I couldn’t. So I forced all my concentration toward a thought of walking: very slowly, one foot in front of the other. I edged away from the shelf, across the Reference section, over the dance floor, and into the lobby. It seemed to take forever to get to the circulation desk. I was sweating and dizzy. At one point I stumbled and a thought said, “Easy. Just act cool, .”

Cool . I tried to remember what that word meant. But I didn’t know.

When we passed the circulation desk, two Librarians in disco suits looked up from a pile of books that they were stamping. “Not staying for the dance?” asked the male discoer.

I stammered. “Yee. I—”

“Say ‘No thanks,’ ” said the thought.

“No — thanks,” I said.

“Sure?” said the female.

“Smile,” said the thought.

I smiled.

“Say ‘Have a good night, though,’ ” said the thought.

“Have a good night, though,” I said.

“Now move,” the thought said, and I pushed open the double doors into the foyer. As I did, though, an alarm rang out — a repeating beep, but a beep that had been eating right, working out, trying to turn its life around. “Dammit. Run!” shouted the thought, but I didn’t — I stopped; I rugged. The Librarians leapt over the desk and stretched their hands out at me. “Hold up just a second there,” said the discoer.

“Shit!” shouted a thought inside my mind.

“It’s the magnetic tags,” said another. “They put them in all the books.”

“Don’t let that fucker touch you, ,” said a thought of violence. “If he does, you punch that fucker in the fucking face .”