of authors, all writing under a single pen name.
Only that discovery had been disappointing. The one she’d just made about Sheriff John Hartwell was pleasant. So pleasant that she was too stunned to speak. It was as if every preconceived notion and prejudice she’d had against the sheriff had been blown away in a second, and she was seeing him in an entirely new light.
As she just stood there, staring, Henry came popping up from where he’d been hiding behind the reception desk, having heard every word. He said, matter-of-factly, “Okay, then, you need one library card and some how-to books and videos on dancing. I can help you with that.”
Later, when Katie and the sheriff were gone, Henry allowed himself to guffaw.
“Oh my God. Your face. Your face, Molly, when he said he was going to be a Snappette!”
“Stop it.” Molly took a sip from her water bottle. She’d been carefully hydrating ever since lunch, but now she felt as if she needed more water than ever. “It isn’t funny. Men can dance, too, you know.”
“Um, I think I know that more than you. I’m the gay man with season tickets to the Little Bridge Theater, where they routinely put on Naked Boys Singing! What I’m saying is, our sheriff is going to dance onstage with a bunch of teenage girls and yoga moms. I’m going to post this all over the Little Bridge Facebook community page tonight and love every minute of peoples’ reactions.”
Molly banged her water bottle onto the desk. “Henry, no. Don’t.”
“Why not? It’s going to be public knowledge soon enough.”
“The man has a hard enough job. Let him have his dignity.”
“He already dressed in an evening gown on a float in last year’s pride parade, Molly. I don’t think his dignity is something he worries about too much—unless . . .” Henry grinned at her. “It’s not his ‘dignity’ you’re interested in.”
She felt herself blushing. “Stop it.”
“I knew it! Librarian’s got a crush on the sheriff.”
“Which librarian’s got a crush on the sheriff?” Elijah demanded, appearing at the end of the desk, his copy of It in his hands.
“No one,” Molly said quickly. “It was a joke.”
“Phew.” Elijah wiped his brow in mock relief. “Because if it was you, Miss Molly, I’d be real disappointed, you fraternizing with the enemy and all.”
“Law enforcement officers are not our enemies, Elijah.”
“The po-po? Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not kidding you. Not all of them are—”
“Wrong. Plenty of them’ll pull a brown brother like me over and shoot him, especially when they find out I’m the guy who’s been robbing all those houses down by the new library. They’ll fry my brown—”
“Elijah,” Henry interrupted. “There is no way you are the High School Thief.”
Elijah rolled his eyes. “How do you know? Imagine how dumb you’re gonna feel when you find out it’s me, and all those girls back in school like Katie Hartwell, who won’t even give me the time of day, realize that the great High School Thief they can’t stop talking about was me all along.”
Molly was starting to feel annoyed. In the brief time she’d lived in Little Bridge, she’d come to love Elijah, despite how irritating he could be at times—and how much cologne he doused himself in—much in the way she’d come to love Fluffy the Cat, who constantly hung out at the hotel, even though he clearly belonged to someone else. Both Elijah and Fluffy were equally exasperating and yet adorably vulnerable, each in their own way.
“Elijah,” Molly said, in her best strict librarian voice. “You spend all of your time when you’re not in school here. And you spend the rest of the time playing video games or sleeping. When would you possibly have time to go around robbing houses?”
Elijah opened his mouth to protest, but Molly cut him off. “Look, I get that you want to be famous, and you’re going to be. I believe that in my heart. You’re smart, funny, and very, very intelligent. But give it some time. You don’t have to be famous at sixteen. And you should never want to be famous for doing something that hurts other people—especially something I know you’re not doing.”
Elijah looked a little sulky, lowering his head toward his copy of It, but didn’t seem quite ready to give up yet. “Okay, fine, Miss Molly, you might have a point. Touché. I get it. So how about if it turns out I’m not really the High School Thief, but I