Chapter Four

Wake up. School. Work. Home. Sleep. Wake up. School. Work. Home. Sleep. Finally, it was the weekend.
I slept in extremely late that day just because I could. It was about 12:47 when I woke up, and logged onto the computer.

Damien89: Yo, Paige.

Paige_Turner: Lol hey.

Damien89: How’s it going?

Paige_Turner: I am loving the weekend!

Damien89: Sweet.

A new chat window opened up.

The_Great: Hey, Paige

On the inside I was totally freaking out. Alexander was talking to me! I decided to tell Damien.

Paige_Turner: OMG, DAMIEN, THE GREAT IS IMING ME!

Damien89: Haha. That’s great. Go talk to him.

Paige_Turner: Oh, hi!

The_Great: So, I found a few links that’ll help us with our project.

Paige_Turner: Send them to me?

He set the links.

Paige_Turner: All right, I’ll start summarizing them into notes.

The_Great: All right, cool.

Paige_Turner: Yeah. Can you get like a poster board or something and we can work on that together at school?

The_Great: Sure, I’ll get it by tomorrow.

Paige_Turner: Sweet. See you then!

The_Great: Bye.

I started acting like a fangirl again.

Paige_Turner: Damien, I just talked to him!!

Damien89: Good job.

Paige_Turner: And I get to talk to him tomorrow!!!

Damien89: Yay.

Paige_Turner: Yeah, you sound enthusiastic.

Damien89: Oh, yeah, I’m super excited.

Paige_Turner: I can’t tell if you’re sarcastic or not through text.

Damien89: I’m sarcastic.

Paige_Turner: Oh.

Damien89: Don’t worry, I’m happy for you. Way to pluck up some courage.

Paige_Turner: Gee, thanks.

Damien89: Yeah. Hey, are you busy today?

Paige_Turner: Nope. Why?

Damien89: Just wondering if you wanted to hang out or something. It’s the weekend and all, you know?

Paige_Turner: Oh. When and where?

Damien89: I know a good place you’ll enjoy. Trust me. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes?

Paige_Turner: Will there be food? I didn’t eat breakfast, of course.”

Damien89: Lol. Yeah, I’ll bring something. I’ll come over in about ten minutes, okay?

Paige_Turner: All right. See you!

Damien89: See you soon.

He logged off, and I closed my laptop. I only just noticed my hair was still in the bed-head style, so I grabbed my brushed and tamed it as much as I possibly could.
Finally, I heard a car honk outside. I ran downstairs and noticed Aunt Clara shift positions on the couch. I guess that was her exercise. I went out the door, and saw Damien in his beat up car.
“Hey,” he greeted as I got into the car.
“Hi,” I said back.
“You’re going to love this,” he said, excited. “Don’t worry, there’s food in the back. Stuff my mom cooked.”
“Sweet,” I laughed. “That’s all I really care about. I haven’t had breakfast in so long!”
He smiled. “You’ll care about this, too.”
He stepped on the gas pedal, and drove.
I memorized the way again, just incase I was to go to this place again. Then again, I didn’t even know where he was taking me.
He stopped the car, and I looked out the window.
It was a park. Like, a park. It had a playground for little kids, a field, and picnic benches. It was a park.
“A park?” I asked. “Isn’t that a sort of things couples do? Go to dates and stuff here?”
He smiled. “I thought the park was a good place to eat. But that wasn’t what I was thinking of.”
He pointed the other way from where I was looking. I turned my head.
“Oh. My. God.”
A library. But it wasn’t an ordinary library. It was huge. Not just huge but huge. Bigger than any library I’ve ever seen.
“All the books you can ever want, Paige,” Damien said. “They’re in that building.”
“Holy crap,” I said, still staring in awe.
He laughed at me. I ignored it. “It’s one of the biggest libraries in Chicago. I knew you’d like it.”
I jumped out of the car. I felt like I should’ve sprinted towards this huge library, but I couldn’t, so my legs slowly moved towards it.
“I thought you were hungry?” I heard Damien ask.
“Oh,” I said. “Right. I forgot.”
So we sat down at one of tables, and he brought out the food.
“Thanks a ton, it means a lot,” I told him, stuffing my face.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said.
“I’ll pay you back.”
“I told you before, and I’ll tell you again, you don’t have to.”
I ignored him, and continued to stuff my face. The faster I ate, the faster I could get into that library.
Damien barely ate anything, but when we finished, he started to clean everything up as I anxiously wanted to go into the library.
“All right,” he finally said. “Let’s go.”
Now that I ate something, I was able to sprint. Well, I can’t sprint. I can’t do anything physical. So I ran, and Damien ran behind me, constantly telling me to slow down.
I reached the front door and stopped. He caught up.
“I’ve never seen you run so fast,” he said, panting.
“I’ll do anything for books.”
He smiled, and opened the door.
It was like a paradise. Rows after rows of shelves piled with hundreds and thousands of beautiful books. There was also an elevator, so I knew there were more books to come.
“I wish I could read all the books in this library,” I said. “But where do I begin?” But as soon as I asked that, I didn’t wonder any more. I just begun. I made a beeline to one of the shelves and started picking up the first books that reached my hands. I didn’t even care to look at the title, I just grabbed them.
I heard Damien laugh at me. “Go ahead and take as many as you want, I’ve got a library card you can use.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking another book in my hand.
Soon my arms were too full to carry anything else, so I asked Damien for help. But even then, his arms started to get full of the books I wanted to read.
“Maybe we should come for a second trip?” he asked. I couldn’t even see his face because of all the books he had.
I frowned, but had to agree. “Fine.”
In the center of the bottom floor was a counter that rapped itself in a circle. There was a woman behind it. She looked old, but I felt that was typical for librarians. She was extremely sweet, though: also typical for librarians. Her name was Dolores. She smiled at me and gave me a tote bag to keep my books in. I mean, they didn’t all fit in there, but it was nice of her to try.
“That was amazing,” I told Damien, exiting the library.
He laughed. “I told you that you would love it.”
“Yes, I know. Thanks. It was awesome.”
“Don’t mention it.”
We went back to Damien’s car, and I put all the books in the back seat so that there was actual room for me to sit in the front.
I didn’t realize how badly the time had passed. “Whoa, it’s almost seven o’clock already?” I asked Damien.
“You have no idea how fast time goes in that library,” he answered, laughing.
Silence.
A sudden noise broke the silence. It wasn’t me and it wasn’t Damien. It was a cell phone. My phone was on vibrate, so I knew it wasn’t mine.
“Hold on,” Damien said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “Hey, dad… yeah… I’m with Paige… no… we just went to the--… Dad… No!... Of course not!... What?... You’re sure?... Okay…. Yeah… sure… bye.”
He hung up, and put the phone back into his pocket.
“Your dad?” I asked.
“Yeah. He was wondering where I was and who I was with as if I’m going to get kidnapped or something.”
I smiled.
“He wanted to know if you wanted to come over for dinner tonight.”
“Who? Me?” I asked, slightly surprised that anyone would want me to go to their house for dinner.
“Yeah. You want to?”
“Of course, but—”
“Great,” he cut me off. “It’s pretty late, anyway, so I’ll just take you straight to our house.”
So we drove. I memorized the way again. Turn right away from the library and then another right until you get to this stop sign and then you turn left.
Damien got down from the car. I left the books in there. He led me to his house.
“Dad?” he called walking in the door.
“Hey, son,” David called back. “Your mom’s coming in a bit, ‘kay?”
“Awesome. Paige is with me.”
“Take her in ‘til your mom gets home.”
Damien obeyed, and took me into his house.
It was rather big. Well, bigger than Aunt Clara’s house. Actually, it could’ve been the same size, it’s just there were no cats.
There were stairs. Damien was in front of me, and he climbed up. I followed. There were only a few rooms upstairs, one of which was a bathroom. He took me into one of the ones that wasn’t a bathroom, and sat on the bed in the center.
Damien’s room. I’ve never even thought about his room. It was messy like you’d expect a teenage boy’s room to be, but it had a sort of tone to it that made it a pleasurable room to be in. It could’ve been the bookshelf that stretched across one of the walls, but there was a little something else, too.
“You can sit,” he said, pointing to a chair next to a desk. The desk was as black as my hair was, but it was shiny, unlike my hair. It had a lot of papers on it, but small piles of more books in every empty space. I pulled out the chair, and sat down.
“You’ve got a lot of books,” I said.
He smiled at me. “I knew that’d be the first thing you noticed.”
I smiled back, but didn’t say anything.
“Damien!” called a female voice this time.
The door of his room opened, and a woman came in. She had long fire-red hair that looked like it was starting to turn grey, and I could tell she had lots of make-up on, but through all the make-up you could see she had the same bright green eyes Damien had.
“Hi, mom,” Damien greeted without too much enthusiasm.
The first thing she did was avert her eyes to me. “Hello, who might you be?” she said. Her voice had a slight southern accent.
“Oh, I’m Paige Aarroh,” I answered.
“You’re the new friend Damien’s been talkin’ about?”
I look at Damien, then back at his mom. “Uh, I guess.”
She smiled at me, her grin extremely wide. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve got dinner on the stove, I’m guessin’ you’re staying?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s good. I’ll just go finish up, then. Damien, I want you down in ten minutes to set the table, all right?”
“Got it, mom,” he said, not giving it a second thought.
She smiled again, and closed the door behind her as she left.
“She seems nice,” I said, even though the word “nice” didn’t really describe anything.
“Yeah, she’s awesome,” Damien said.
We stayed quiet for what felt like an extremely long time, and out of habit I grabbed a near-by book and started to read it.
“I would let you borrow it,” Damien said, “but you’ve already got a library in my car, so you better finish those first.”
I smiled, and the door opened again.
“Damien, you and Paige can come down now. I need you to set the table, and I’ll serve dinner.”
We climbed down the stairs, Mrs. Caster leading the way. I sat down at the table as Damien gathered the plates and utensils, and Mrs. Caster bringing in food.
“Wow, Mrs. Caster, that’s amazing!” I said, because it truly was. She had cooked an entire chicken, some mashed potatos on the side and a salad that made my mouth start watering.
“It’s nothing,” she said modestly, blushing slightly.
To a normal family it probably was a fairly normal dinner, but to me it was like a feast. Damien’s family ate all together, and they talked and enjoyed each other’s company. I was extremely grateful that they included me into all of this, because it made me feel like I was almost a part of their family. A feeling that I’ve never really had before.
“This was really nice of you all to do,” I said. “I really enjoyed it.”
“If you’re ever hungry, Paige, you can just come on down here, and I’ll give you anything,” Mrs. Caster told me.
“Thanks, ma’am,” I said.
“We enjoyed your company, Paige,” David said. “I’m glad you came, you should come over more often. Why, you talk more than Damien ever does.”
I looked over at Damien, and smiled at him. He smiled back.
I checked my cell phone for the time, and it was almost 9 o’clock.
“Oh, geez, I really should be getting back to my Aunt Clara’s now,” I said.
“Right, she’s probably worried about you,” David said, but I wanted to tell him he was wrong because Aunt Clara didn’t give a damn about me.
“Damien will give you a ride,” Mrs. Caster said.
“I don’t mind walking.”
“Paige,” Damien said, “I’ll give you a ride.”
I couldn’t argue with him, so we both got up from the dinner table and headed over to his car.
“Don’t forget all your books,” Damien reminded me as we pulled out of the drive way.
“How could I forget the books?”
“I’ll help you carry them in if you’d like,” he said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
“Fine.”
The drive only took about five minutes, and when we got there, I carried about half of the books and Damien carried about half of the books, and he helped me bring them into my room.
“Nice house,” he said, smirking at me. He looked over at Aunt Clara, still asleep on the couch.
“Mhm.”
He left all the books he was carrying on the desk, and I left all the books I was carrying near the bed.
“Homely,” he said, looking around my room.
“It’s better than nothing,” I reminded him.
“Right.” He looked at his watch. “I should go.”
I gave him a sad smile. “Of course. I’ll see you later.”
He waved, and left the room.
By the time I logged onto my computer, I could hear Damien’s car slowly backing up out of the drive way, and going away until the noise faded out.
Alexander was online, but I didn’t send him a message because Ididn’t want so seem anxious or anything. So instead, I left the computer next to me, layed on my bed, picked up a book, and read until the computer decided to do anything.
And then the noise came up for a new message.

The_Great: Hey, Paige, you there?

I put down the book immediately, and placed my laptop on my thighs.

Paige_Turner: Yeah, hi.

The_Great: Listen, do you want to meet me at the library tomorrow?

Paige_Turner: How come?

The_Great: Well, I got the poster board today, and if you’re ready with the notes, we can meet up and start getting it ready.

Paige_Turner: Yeah, I’m ready with the notes.

The_Great: Cool. So you okay with tomorrow?

Paige_Turner: Sure, maybe like around the evening?

The_Great: Sounds good to me.

Paige_Turner: Okay. See you then.

The_Great: Bye.

I smiled to myself. I loved talking with him. I felt like talking to some famous person, and you get this really excited feeling inside of you and you just want to scream. I resisted.
By the time my conversation with the Great finished, Damien had arrived home and logged on.

Paige_Turner: Hey, Damien.

Damien89: Yo.

Paige_Turner: So what’s up?

Damien89: Nothing. You? Well, what could’ve happened between when I saw you a minute ago and now?

Paige_Turner: Haha. Very funny. For your information, a lot did happen.

Damien89: Oh? Do tell.

Paige_Turner: Yes. I’m meeting Alexander tomorrow.

Damien89: You asked him out?

Paige_Turner: No! We’re just meeting to work on the project.

Damien89: Oh. I thought you were going to say something interesting.

Paige_Turner: Well… it’s interesting to me.

Damien89: Of course it is. Well, I’ve got to go. See you tomorrow.

Paige_Turner: Tomorrow?

Damien89: Yeah. Work. See you.

Paige_Turner: Oh. Right. I knew that. See you.