The Overdue Library Book: Fern's Adventures: One

Fern has to return an overdue library book.

---

The book lay forgotten on the lowest shelf of Fern’s bookshelf. Fern was preoccupied at his desk, right next to the bookshelf, half reading his textbook and half scrolling through YouTube to find the perfect lo-fi beats to help him focus.

He eventually settles on lo-fi for ghosts, a Halloween themed video. He pulls his highlighter back out and braces himself to face the content on the page.

What makes this Halloween themed? His mind asks, and his hand goes slightly limp as he looks up at the ghost image dancing on his screen. He starts listening more and recognizes some spooky tones but still doesn’t see why he spent so long searching when the stupid ghost edition sounds just like the witch edition he had originally clicked off because it was boring him.

A thump pulls him out of his thoughts, and he notices the light blue mildliner highlighter he had been gripping so tight in his left hand to study was how laying on the carpet next to his bookshelf, taunting him about the pages he still had to read.

He just stared at the pen for a minute. His room was silent other than his shitty air conditioner working its ass off to cool his room down despite it being October First. The uncomfortable feeling from sitting at a dark in a chair for hours without moving made his backache.

Fern stretched his back a little and leaned down to pick up the highlighter and get back to work. He wraps his fingers around his highlighter and lingers there for a moment, not wanting to use his muscles to sit back up to use his brain to read the boring textbook.

He starts examining the lowest shelf of his bookshelf, which contained like 5% books and 95% random things.

With the three books on the lowest shelf, one caught his eye. He drops the mildliner and grabs the book, shooting up immediately.

His computer screen had locked onto a clock, which also showed the date. Fern looked between the inactive screen and the slightly dusty book in his hands, and he audibly gulped.

He stood from his chair, abandoning the open textbook and the highlighter on the floor. He sets the book on the bed and grabs his Doc Marten books from his closet. He sits on his bed next to the book, refusing to make eye contact with it, as he laces up his black boots.

He slides on a flannel our Fruits Basket graphic t-shirt which cost way more than he was willing to accept and picked up his book and apartment key. Exiting his room, he pretends he wasn’t three chapters behind on the reading and goes to the kitchen.

Why did I think I would get back into reading? He thinks as he grabs his emotional support water bottle covered in random stickers he was either given for free or spent an embarrassing amount of money on because he was in a manic state. He fills the water bottle as much as he can with the Brita water filter, and then refills the Brita. Then, he heads out the door.

He checked that he locked the door like three times before finally heading down the stairs. He lived on the 6thfloor of the building and the staircase was outside, so he was immediately chilly. He had also grabbed his favorite spooky tote bag to carry his stuff (keys, book, emotional support water bottle…). The tote bag had three dancing skeletons on it. That’s it.

Fern pulls the tote bag up on his shoulder as he descends the stairs, since his building has no elevator. He immediately feels guilty.

Man, if I ever had a physically disabled friend they would hate me, He thought as he huffed a little going down.Man, no one with a physical disability could even live here. It made him angry.

By the time he makes it to the bottom of the stairs he has already shoved both hands in his pockets in order to preserve warmth.

I’m glad I don’t have girl pockets. He thinks as he sees a girl pass on the other side of the street, breathing into her hands to keep them warm. He then shoves his hands as far into his pockets as he can as he walks to see how big they were before realizing how stupid he looked and readjusting.

(Half his forearm, by the way.)

Once again, he adjusts the tote bag as he walks, half for comfort and half to make sure it was still closed enough so no one could pick pocket him.

Fern gets to the first intersection where he must cross the street and he tilts back and forth on his heels nervously. He hates standing still on the busy streets, it makes him feel like he is about to be mugged or hate crimed. Or both! At the same time!

The light flashes for pedestrian crossing and he quickly hurries across the street. Now hes only a block from the public library. Easy Peasy. He will make it fine.

He is now hyper aware of his surroundings as he pulls out his emotional support water bottle. He chugs a bit of it as he walks, looking at the same stores that were here last time he made this walk of shame.

Hey, at least my outfit looks good. He thinks as he closes the water bottle back up and drops it into the tote. Plus, they don’t know I never even opened the book. For all they know, I was enjoying it so much that I just… read it twice. Yeah. He was trying to make himself feel better for binging so many Netflix shows instead of reading the book.

As he’s walking, he pulls the book out and starts dog-earring and the un-dog-earring random pages. He thought this would create the illusion that he actually read the book.

He was lucky the book drop off was just a chute and not talking to an actual person because the actual person would ask him what he thought of the book and then he would have to lie and say he loved it and they would ask what he liked about it, and it would just make Fern’s social anxiety explode. Literally.

He made it to the library and stood in front of the drop off bin with the overdue book. A sign above the bin said, “Please bring overdue books to the front desk to pay the fee.” He dropped the book in, turned around and vowed to never come back to this library again as he headed toward Starbucks.