(L)amina

22nd February, 2005. Tuesday

Rhys was the unwilling subject of gossip and forced sympathy at school. Some of his friends were too delicate with their subject matter around him. He hated it. Nonetheless, he was around them more over the next few weeks, integrating himself more into his class' camaraderie. Lucy hadn't been to school since his return curiously enough. He hadn't seen her since that night in the park.

"Who?" Arlo said, flicking a pencil in his fingers.

"The girl that says fuck a lot. The one with the big hair, and the bigger ego. Lucy." Hans smacked the back of Arlo's head. "Lo here tried to get into her pants and didn't even know her name."

"I was close," Arlo contested.

"Close these days is getting bitch-slapped across the face," Hans joked to Rhys. "We don't see her often. When we do, she is unapproachable, a total bitch. Fancy her?"

"Yeah, know where I can find her?" Rhys asked. After 2 whole weeks, she was nowhere to be seen. No casual sightings, no one knew where she lived except him. He knew much more about her than any of his friends did. He couldn't go to her house unannounced, he knew better than that.

"Who knows? If I knew where she lived I'd drive over right now and rape her tight ass," Arlo mused.

"Whoa! Easy boy!" Hans, restrained a ravenous wolf-barking Arlo from making a scene in class as he pretended to go feral.

"My advice to you is this," Hans said, "You have to get out of your shell by the time she's back in school. The only guys that get to talk to her are the jocks and cool guys, not the part-time closet misfits like us. You'd have to moult, bro."

At the end of the day's lessons, Rhys went to the School Hall's art room. Lucy was there in plain clothes because she hadn't been to school that day. She listened to atmospheric, synthy, drony slow-core on a Walkman. The music gave the amateur art around a soft anima, like they'd move around after the teens left. She sat with a head down on his desk, an arm extended off of it languidly. He peered at her resting eyes and her slack mouth. At her most vulnerable, she was a beautiful being. Being. Beneath everyone's lamina is the subconscious self they so desperately try to hide. What was in that pretty head of hers?

He settled on the sofa and started working on his homework until she woke up. From where he sat, he would be the first thing he saw when she woke up. The muffled female vocals on her Walkman talked sparingly of a love once had, or was it a misfortune of the past? The singer also pleaded for some sort of respite over white noise and minimal instrumentation. The album looped one more time before she finally stirred.

"Like the music?" she asked softly.

"What is this?"

"Karaoke At The Slagheap. I was expecting bedroom pop or something," she said, still resting her head on her outstretched arm.

"It's... strange," Rhys remarked. "I like it."

Lucy gingerly got off the desk. She wore a dark red, loose-fitting t-shirt for a band he hadn't heard of and the most faded of jeans. Her hair was a mess, but much straighter than before. She closed the distance between them, and took her place next to him.

"What are we doing today?" she asked.

"We're going to a library. I have a few theories that I hope remain that way. Just phony mind trips. I'm driving us there in my dad's car. You won't tell, right?"

"I wouldn't tell if you killed someone."

"It's 3.p.m., the library will probably close soon. I don't plan on getting out after it is."

"You're such a bad boy, Rhys." she pouted her lips. "It would be such a shame if you were a bad influence on poor little Lucy!"

"Yeah, right." He laughed. "They'll talk about Lucy and her punk-ass bad boy boyfriend that hates law enforcement, taught her to steal and to be non-conformist."

He hoisted his backpack and books. "We should get going if we're going to get in before they close the library."

With that, plain clothed Lucy and uniform-clad Rhys made their way to his aunt's, where he would get a change of clothes before they left. He snuck the keys to his dad's car out of his parents home a week earlier. Before then, he never thought he would need to use the spare key for anything. After their stop at his aunt's, they trekked on to his former home, a bleach smelling shell of what it used to be.

A wave of melancholy hit Rhys quite hard as the house's silhouette slowly turned into the real deal. There it stood, the charming mid-century cottage in all it's passed glory. Beyond the mailbox that had since spilt its contents, was the car. The paint peeled off the trunk and chassis of the navy-blue 1990 Acura Legend. Alain loved his car so much he drove it like a woman would and somehow never crashed it after a late night pint or two.

"Rhys, are you okay?" she asked after Rhys' mood seemed to take a hit as they were confronted with the front of his childhood home.

"Yeah, We're doing this." He unlocked the car, and in they went.

"So... what is this library like?" she said, kneeing the glovebox in front of her.

"It's a private library. The Rivera-Campbell Family library. It's large and spacious, the outside is lush and green. Mr. Rivera-Campbell I'm guessing was a Millionaire book enthusiast 'cause he turned one of his mansions into a library. His family run it now, I'd say they're doing a pretty good job."

Rhys and Lucy were out of the driveway and were hurrying along the road. Lucy brought the window down and let the wind into her face and hair. "What are we looking for?" Lucy absently against the wind.

Rhys sighed. "Crazy as it sounds, I'm convinced my dreams and hallucinations are actually visions into the future. I've recognized several tarot cards that have to mean something in the real world. Different people could be represented by the cards. All this, it's a puzzle. For whatever reason, I can see the scattered pieces, the world behind its veil." Rhys whizzed through the local business district to the more eloquent of the area's neighbourhoods. He stopped at a red light. "If you think I'm crazy and have completely lost it, we can turn back, I'll understand if you don't want to do this."

~

The Oaksdale Grove gated community was mostly forest, and road. Estates stretched into dense hardwood forest and private deer hunting ground. The Rivera-Campbell estate had the most luxurious trees in the area. The road that lead up to the mansion was lined with large, far-reaching mahogany and cedar trees whose fallen leaves carpeted the road and left a trial behind the advancing Acura. Lucy was transfixed to the beauty and scale of the vegetation in these parts of the city. The road flowed into a large parking lot brimming with cars and people. The classical manor stood majestically in the mouth of several oak trees flanking its sides. A beautiful courtyard ceded into the front building. A circular, concrete planter sat in the middle of the courtyard and acted as large bouquet of flowers. Philodendrons, lilies, crotons, ivies, aloes and exotic flowers neither Rhys nor Lucy had seen before vied for their attention.

Rhys and Lucy breath in the last of fresh forest air as the entered the library and lobby. A female receptionist (librarian?) is sitting at a dark brown about halfway into the red-carpeted lobby passage.

The young, brown-skinned woman wore a black formal jacket over a peach-coloured blouse and had her hair in a tight, high-sitting bun. She's holding a pencil in her slender left hand, and has knowing eyes and a smile that suggested they were welcome.

"Is this your first time here?" she asked the teens, her voice quiet and relaxed. Definitely a librarian.

"Yes," Murmured Rhys.

"Welcome. Feel free to browse the shelves upstairs, when you find something you want to read, take it to a reading room on either floor. If you see a blue sticker on a book, that means it is a rare collector's item, which will require you to fill a form to read it. Is there anything specific that you're looking for?" The librarian spoke patiently and quietly, even without readers in sight.

"We're looking for books on spirituality. Something like a tarot encyclopaedia?"

"Ah." She schemed her personalized index, until she zeroed in on something in long list. "That would be shelf I4, room 4.

"Thank you," Rhys said, and before he and Lucy could make their way there. They were halted. "Just a few more words if you don't mind, dear. No cameras, no check-outs, no drinks or food. We open at 6 in the morning and close at 9 in the evening Monday to Saturday. Happy, reading!"

They nodded and thanked her once again before they were on their way to the shelves. They ascended a spiral flight of stares with a majestic chandelier hanging on the ceiling above.

"I was wondering why you would choose this of all places. Pretty lax, they close at 9, and its so large, they wouldn't find us if we didn't leave. Are you sure you have done this before?"

"No, but I've been here enough to know it can be done. Besides, public libraries close way to early to even try this."

At shelf I2, lay the classical section. The teens looked for familiar favourites, potential favourites and discussed them.

Lucy found a copy of 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov. "Have you read Nabokov's Lolita?" She showed him the green, hardback. They sat with their backs against the shelves with stacks of books strewn around them.

"No, heard the protag is disgusting. Haven't bothered," he remarked as he schemed the illustrations of a random novel.

"It's has some of the best prose I've ever seen. It's a great book. Never thought I would ever love to have read a whole passage about the rape of a child."

"Wait, he rapes kids?" Rhys exclaimed.

Shhhhhhhhhhhh from some way behind them.

"A kid," Lucy whispers, "His 12-year-old stepdaughter."

"Ew, so much for a great book. Does he at least use a condom?" Rhys kept his voice down, more controlled than before.

"Do you really expect someone that fucks child on an almost daily to use a condom?"

He shook his head. "I guess not. Does she at least like it?"

She glared at him. "Of course not, what the hell Rhys? Is that what you'd like to read you sick fuck?" she playfully punched him on the shoulder.

"It's 2005. We have cruder Nabokovs whose books read exactly that way and maybe get banned. The even cruder Nabokovs can't get it passed their publisher without getting arrested."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I would, absolutely. If it's written well enough, who cares? He could have snuck in a few flowery sentences that say so. He toed the line and blurred it," he defended himself.

"You got me there," she conceded. "I wouldn't have stopped reading if I happened to see that."

"Morality in books... I bet there is an author out the there that's skilled enough to write whatever his sick head wants without presenting it crudely enough to trigger the masses. He would accuse critiques of taking it out of context or trying to discredit his work. If I wanted to show readers the loss of innocence or the darkness of a human being, I could simply write another Jeffrey Dahmer. Most people wouldn't like my book, it would be too graphic. William Golding wrote roughly the same stuff, except his subjects are children, they said dumb stuff, and were immature. They beat another kid to death and no one bats an eye. Morality's double standards make it too dysfunctional of a system to do any lasting good for us."

~

When the library was due to be closed, a man browsed the mazes of bookshelves looking for readers. Evading him wasn't very hard for the two teens. With their shoes off, they tiptoed around him and his keen eye. After being sure about his thorough job of looking for lingering people, he left, making sure to turn off the winding overhead lights that were the primary illumination. For a tense few minutes, Lucy and Rhys waited in the dark for him to be out of room 4. It would take him much longer to go through each and every of the sprawling library rooms before he was done for the day, they considered that as they went about their business in the library.

'Fate, Fortune And The Esoteric' the book said. The dark red hardback was coated in dust but still maintained its charming aged paper smell. Under a desk lamp, Lucy curiously looked on as Rhys flipped through the pages. He skipped over sections on Astrology, Numerology, Crystal glazing and aura reading before finally setting on the tarot section.

"I keep on seeing this head, it's been cut off maybe 2 weeks ago," Rhys points at words on the page. The Hierophant. "It's always trying to give me bogus advice or convince me to mass murder people."

"This card indicates that the advice given by authority figures is reliable and useful," Lucy read. "That can't be right."

Rhys said nothing. The exalted figure on the pedestal, the men in front of him. It was just like in his dream on the night of the murder. First the advice was to stay away from Lucy, then the advice was to achieve death and to spread chaos, to relish in the spilt blood of innocents. Reversed, the card meant that the advice was actually unreliable and dangerous.

Six Of Cups. The card indicates being haunted by an unhappy past to the extent that the present cannot be fully enjoyed. Lucy's dream. What was it that was plaguing her? The literally reversed Page Of Swords statue that forces it's way into her dream. The inverted Page indicated a very cunning and manipulative person that uses other people and situations to their advantage.

As Lucy focused her attention on the pages of the book with him, he glanced at her. Cunning and Manipulative. For a split second, she looked satanical in the dim, unfocused light of their desk lamp. He couldn't look at her the same, she felt very far away from him. Lucy. Far away. Lucyfaraway!

The Five Of Cups card indicates unhappiness with the way some event has gone and a feeling of a missed opportunity. This was definitely the man Rhys saw at the head of the table in his dream. The card wreaked of his father and no one else.

Two Of Swords had to be his mother on the other end of the table. The card represents a tense situation that has become intolerable. That intolerable situation being his father, Mr. Five Of Cups getting piss drunk during family dinner. First he kills himself (the poor bastard) and then she kills him, not at all how it happened in real life. Oh, sweet irony!

The Hermit. He recalled the card from the very same hallway he saw The Hierophant and instantly recognized it as himself. Loneliness and self-pity, but also indicates a need to be more self-reliant and in control of events. Who or what is controlling events?

They flipped over more pages to reveal The Moon. The card was exactly as he'd seen it after he woke up in his dream. The card represented confusion and a lack of direction. Lucy, who he adored so much, was the figure in the moon. That placed him among the howling dogs. The moon represented a delusion, a deception. Who really was the enigmatic, trippy Lucy Deubel?

Finally Rhys and Lucy encountered The Tower. It completely changed the tone of what was supposed to be a pleasant evening as it carried a lot of weight and meant something completely different to both of them. Reversed, it signified a misfortune that could have been avoided, or one that had been allowed to develop over a period of time.

Had that misfortune already happened? His mother would have still been alive if he had been home instead of with Lucy. If it had not happened yet, could his being with Lucy eventually be the catalyst?

~