Dictionary

The first time Robin spoke to Vana, she was searching for something in the dictionary. Robin had been reading on the carpeted floor of the nonfiction section, the smell of dusty books and water damage rising from the shelves as she tried to get lost in the small, squished print on her page. But everything about the library, everything about place she held so dearly, felt different that day— the lights seemed too bright, the books like bricks, and the usual quiet...interrupted. By whom was the question that brought Robin to Vana's side.

Thud, thud, thud. Robin looked up to find a pair of heels strutting around her hunched form. Her eyes followed them to the reference section in the right corner of the room. Before she realized it, she was standing, slowly trailing behind the owner of the elegant shoes. She slipped behind the last shelf in the nonfiction section before Reference and peered between books to get a glimpse of her.

Robin's interest in the girl sparked when she found her flipping through Oxford English rather than the Merriam Webster's Collegiate. Most of the people at the library would just pull any old dictionary off the shelf to look for the definition of the word sitting right on the tip of their tongue. Vana was different. She'd brushed her hand along the spines of all the books on the shelf before she settled on the long, narrow book on that now lay before her.

Robin didn't know what to think of that, but it displayed certain characteristics from the girl. She couldn't quite name the feeling.

Vana sighed, closing the dictionary, and looked up. Robin quickly lowered her head down over her book, her sudden movement attracting the other girl's eye. As she stared at the upside down cover, she could feel her face burning. She hoped that Vana hadn't seen her— and if she had, that she thought Robin was simply searching for nonfiction titles in the Zs now. That she thought Robin totally hadn't followed her all the way to the other side of the room because that would be so incredibly odd, and Robin wasn't that odd. She wasn't.

But before she could pretend to be interested in zebras or zeros or even zymurgy, there was Vana, standing in front of her. Vana, in heels with a pink sundress and a denim jacket. Vana, with her high ponytail and wide brown eyes that made Robin more uncomfortable than she'd ever been. Just Vana.

She was overwhelming.

"Hey, do you know what diffident means? I tried to search it up in the dictionary over there but—"

"Diffident. Adjective. 'Hesitant in acting or speaking through lack of self-confidence.'" Robin interrupted, her gaze focused on the button of Vana's jacket. She couldn't look up at the girl's face without feeling as though Vana was staring inside of her somehow. She usually averted her attention to people's noses to simulate eye contact and make them feel less disconnected in conversation, but even Vana's eyes were too wide and too full of emotion for Robin to do anything but stare at her chest.

"Woah. Did you have that memorized?" Vana asked, clearly impressed. But Robin didn't want Vana to be impressed. She wanted her to be halfway out the door.

"Indeed," she replied awkwardly. She attempted to elaborate but only succeeded in boasting. "I have most of the dictionary memorized, actually."

Vana's eyes narrowed, and Robin's heart did that nervous thing in her chest. "Really? Hmm...what's the word modicum mean?"

"Modicum? Noun. 'A moderate or small amount.'"

"What about circumlocution? Word for word from the Oxford dictionary."

Robin's face fell, her eyes widening. Her mental process seemed to stutter when a correction was required of her. She barely managed to utter, "Well, um, I only own the Merriam Webster Collegiate Eleventh Edition."