G rowing up she had not been told she was beautiful, smart or particularly much of anything. Her eldest sister was the gorgeous one and from the time she was in elementary school through the awful years of junior high and formative years of high school young boys and men found ways to let her know how her looks fueled their desire. Macy was not the smart one of the family. Her younger brother filled this role by his continuous straight A’s, his enrollment in gifted and talented programs, and his placement in the top 1% of standardized tests. Macy was the middle child and was neither intelligent nor pretty and was determined to establish what her qualities were.

In college she discovered perhaps by accident that she was beautiful. Like many students, to finance her education she was required to find employment within the university. She chose the library. As a child she had always been fascinated with the endless rows of books and the nearly soundless environment of such an establishment. Libraries were like museums, only she was both encouraged and allowed to remove objects from their location, turn their pages, and even take them home. Macy knew after the first few days at her job, she would love it forever.

On the fifth floor of the library were lockers. Student employees were to bring their own locks, place their book bag or coat inside, twirl the lock numbers and begin work. On the first day she met Jon.

“That’s my locker,” he said, after Macy had already spun the combination and was headed over to the carts full of books to return to the stacks.

“It didn’t have your name on it,” she said and then went on her way. Her shifts were between classes and generally only a few hours long which allowed her to put books were they belonged and gather discarded ones from whatever place students had left them.

Jon reappeared, stood beside her in a quiet row of finance books and waited until she looked up. “You’re very pretty,” he whispered, “Are you a freshman?”

Macy nodded and pretended to ignore him while keeping him in her peripheral vision as he slipped books almost tenderly into their place on the shelf. This is how their relationship developed. Over the next several weeks Macy feigned non-interest and he breathed complements and questions into her ear. When Macy did respond to him it was generally in the locker room where she felt she could speak without disturbing the sanctuary of the library alcoves. Though she found classes hard and competitive and the general environment of college still confusing, her part-time work made sense because it was organized and precise. She accomplished it at the speed that suited her while spying on her fellow students by the books they left open, spines breaking on human sexuality and reproduction, chemistry and biology. She eavesdropped on their half conversations on cell phones or read class notes left forgotten, the ripped edges bent and frayed from spiral paper. In the library she felt safe and strangely excited as she anticipated just when Jon would show up. Jon got into the habit of bumping Mary. She would be pushing her cart down an isle and he would shove his cart into her legs and thighs, first very gently but increasingly with more force to the point where she felt pain. He also would carry books that would accidentally touch her back or arm, sometimes slightly and sometimes not. Though Macy did not like this, she didn’t think much of it. For her siblings and her had operated under similar games, hurting each other just below the pinnacle of pain at which would cause one or the other to call their parents to their aid. Thus she believed Jon was engaging her in a game in which he was the instigator and she the submissive but seemingly non-responsive partner.

Macy was trapped in the psychology area of the stacks hulling one after another bound journal to its place. It was late in the afternoon and she was mentally going over concepts she needed to know for a biology midterm the next morning. As she put the journals back into place, she also made a point to straighten them, keeping all the spines at the same front level. Jon came up behind her as she was lost in thought and began to run the edge of the book down her back and up along her sides.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, “and that’s the truth.” Handing the book to Macy, she took it without thinking with both hands. He then pushed the book and her hands to a shelf well above her head. Her fingers were penned against the metal and her hand was splayed flat against the orange cover of the book. “Beautiful,” he said again while tracing lines along her back and side. Macy first thought he was using the corner of another book as he generally did and did not realize it was his finger until he pressed it across her lips as if he were silencing her. He had never touched her directly before and she quivered, wondering what it meant. At that moment, he began to put pressure against her trapped fingers and ran his hand along the side of her breast and the rise of her rear. Try as she might, Macy attempted to ignore him even as she felt stirrings build within, feelings she had not felt before. Jon’s hands transversed her skin and she was powerless to stop it. With one final shove, Jon pressed the book into her hands and disappeared for that day.

Macy pretended nothing had happened, as she studied the call number and title of the bright orange book. She placed it on the bottom shelf of the cart. The title of the book was A Stranger’s Kidnapping, by Shelley Ravishing and certainly a free reading book of sorts. As she pushed her cart along, her hands stood red and pink where the metal had been thrust against them. Seeing this bloom of color Macy began to suspect, as she had begun to over the semester, that perhaps her parents were wrong. All along it had not been her older sister who was blessed with looks, but instead it was herself. Truthfully, she was the beautiful one. As she left the library, she checked out the book Jon had given her and put it on her dresser in the dorm room. She didn’t imagine she would have time to read it, but wanted it as a memento. It glowed there on her desk, a flame, a desire, a symbol of him and of her, and of the game they played.

The next day Jon appeared almost within minutes of the beginning of her shift and Macy marveled at how lucky they were to have so many shifts together, especially when she never seemed to have shifts with some of the other employees. There was a daily crew that she passed in the locker room or pushing carts and collecting books. But these people seem to remain on the days they were the assigned and rarely fluctuated. Jon, however, met her almost every other day she worked.

Jon slid his open hand up the back of her jeans and below the edge of her shirt. There he fingered the skin of her belly, inching slowly towards the small swell of her breast. He lingered there below it, teasing her while she pushed books into their place and straighten them in the perfect line of spines she liked to create. Pulling his hand down, he pressed it on the front side of her hip and then suddenly slapped her leg with the other. Macy jumped with surprise, not expecting the well of pain to heat her from face to toe, while the ghost of his touch pulsed under her shirt.

This continued on, Jon touching and then hurting her or hurting and then touching her. Macy began to feel pleasure and need for both the touch and the pain; they were connected in her mind. In her dorm room she would press and then slam the romance book against her body feeling the warmth rise within her and yet knowing somehow that this behavior was both secretive and wrong. Though she had gotten close with her roommate, this was not something she could admit. This relationship was not a boyfriend or a date, of which her roommate had both. It was something altogether else.

Jon’s visits became more frequent and persistence, forcing Macy to both speed through what she was supposed to accomplish at the library and also to dress in clothing both more revealing and looser than she normally wore to class. She began to wear skirts, even though she preferred jeans, and to go braless, her small chest nearly visible under her cotton shirts. Jon praised this change in attire while reminding her how beautiful and sexy she was as his touches begun to leave bruises on her skin. But the marks were not excessive nor large and if she were asked, which she wasn’t often, she would with equal disbelief and surprise look at the green or brown marks on her skin and then shrug her shoulders, while wondering out loud what object she had clumsily banged against. This gave her silent pleasure for these bruises were his and he somehow belonged to her and her to him, why else would she be given these gifts.

Jon asked her to meet him outside the library after dark while squeezing her with just enough pressure to cause her breath to accelerate. She decided to do so even though they had never met or seen each other outside the library. In fact Macy had sometimes thought he lived there among the stacks for she certainly never saw him carrying books of his own or strolling anywhere among the buildings of the university. Yet she had spoken to him in that exchange of playful banter in the locker room and pondered what and how they were to conduct themselves outside on campus. There would be no books and no silence. They would be among noisy others. Would they talk? Would they eat? Would they do what they had done outside?

Macy waited for a long time, but he did not show. Finally because it was too cold she headed back to her dorm room on a Friday night alone. Because she had told the other girls in the hall she was going out, they had gone to a free flick sponsored by the student board. Her roommate also was out as she always was on weekends. Macy took off her shoes and coat, her stack of homework or cable now the only options available.

Then there was a knock. Macy open the door and there stood Jon who glanced down the hall perhaps worried as she was of having to explain him to someone else. Macy yanked him into the room and said with as much gusto as she mustered in the locker room, “About time, loser, I was about to erase you permanently from my memory.”

Jon ignored her and shut off the light. He quickly went over to the curtains and closed them, emptying the room of street and star light. In the dark, she could not adjust to her surroundings. She did not know where he was or where to go. Moving into the center of the room, she heard the click of the deadbolt. Alone there, she wrapped her arms around one another, eyes wide open trying to see anything, but one after another Jon removed all other sources of light from the room. He unplugged the digital clock and its red glow. Macy lets out a little squeal because just before she had seen his silhouette in the dim light. He turned off the DVD/VCR, the computer, and the stereo, encompassing her in blackness.

Macy began to feel the heat creep into her body, that feeling of pain and pleasure, sensing somehow that he could see her even as she couldn’t see him. “Please,” she whispered but he didn’t reply. She heard him move things, rearrange blankets, chairs, and items on her desk, but could not gain her bearings. “Please,” she repeated, walking and turning towards those noises, but when she reached them, he was not there. “Please,” she said and then felt the romance book on her desk and pressed her fingers along its spine to find his. She jumped back and screamed, hitting her head against the lofted bunk. The orange book slammed against the exposed flesh of her leg and the tender side of her arm. She hissed in pain repeating please ever so softly, but to no avail. The assaults continued disembodied. Though the hits arrived where ever she went in the room, she neither saw nor heard him. The more frantically she dashed to escape the slaps, the more rapidly they persisted. But when she stood still, the book landed in her most tender places causing her to cry out uncontrollably. Finally, crouched against the door, her body throbbing, she heard him say beautiful and felt his finger tracing a line up her thigh.