Excerpt: Time Immemorious

The computer area is set off slightly from the rest of the library, but there’s not much to obscure faces except the computers themselves; after pacing past the end of each aisle and checking that the tech librarian hasn’t seen a guy come through, slightly longish blonde hair, reading glasses, a few inches taller than me, she’s satisfied he hasn’t been about.

Next is the shelves themselves, a more daunting task due to their imposing height and the irregular placement of various study tables and computer catalogs in between. She decides to start at one corner of the building and stalks along the edge so that when she looks to the right she can see across the shelves as they go by and into the gap on the other side.

Older lady… really older lady… young man with a thick black bowl cut… pair of kids… Elliot from the back? Someone is carefully inspecting the stacks, but is looking the wrong way. Her heart thumps, but just as quickly she calms herself down and continues. He’s wearing the wrong clothing to be Other Elliot…

…unless Other Elliot isn’t wearing the same clothing that Elliot is. All they’re sure of right now is that they’re physically almost identical, right? She quickly turns back and peers around the corner of the shelving. He has a moustache, an ear piercing, the wrong color eyes, and a much older face. False alarm. She sighs and shakes off her panic, then turns back and abruptly comes face-to-cover with a small mountain of hardcover books on two legs. It does not appear to have any eyes and is about to walk into her. She gasps.

Mount Saint Hardbacks erupts into the air in surprise, exposing the arms holding it up, and falls back into place again as its summit slides off onto the floor. Jenn is about to pick them up and apologize when she notices that the eyes are now revealed, and they appear to be quite surprised.

Yep. It’s Elliot.

She stops in mid-apology and instead triumphantly waves her finger in his face, letting out an exuberant “HA!” Several faces pop out of the aisles around them, and she reddens and pulls her arm out of his face a few inches.

Elliot’s still too surprised to say much, but eventually swallows and manages to get out an “Umm! Uh, Jenn! Hi!” Time has apparently decided that this moment is too spectacularly awkward for words and wants to keep it frozen forever. Jenn keeps her finger pointed as she considers what to do with him now that she’s caught him, when he continues. “Where have you been?”

It’s not quite the “what are you doing here” that she was expecting. Time ticks forward again.

“What? Where have I – I’ve been at the school library, where you said we should meet, with Angela! We only came here once we found out you duped us from other… Elliot…” She allows her voice to trail off as she realizes what she’s saying. Oh, crap. Maybe this one is the real one…

Elliot continues. “I… have no idea what you’re talking about, and I’ve been waiting for you here because of your call yesterday? Remember? And I don’t know what –” She cuts him off and spins him around by the shoulders to force-march him back to the lobby.

“Come on. We’re going to go play good-twin-evil-twin and get this figured out right now. Any last requests?”

Elliot swallows. “Well… uh… LOOK BEHIND YOU!”

She jumps.

She spins.

She looks.

As the thoughts flash by that there’s nothing there and she’s facing the wrong way to keep her grip on her quarry, a mountain of hardbacks ambushes her back.

By the time that she’s realized her failure and recovered, Other Elliot has already vanished into the bookshelves.

Cursing herself as a stupid, gullible idiot, she sprints back to the entrance. The librarians could reclaim the smoking desolation on the floor on their own time.