Hiding behind the darkened shadow of a towering spruce, I watched as the yellow school bus, barely recognizable in the darkness of predawn, lumbered past my house and on to the next stop. My opportunity had arrived. At first, I moved cautiously down Freemont, hoping to not be seen by our nosy, coffee-sipping neighbors. Yet, as I slipped further and further away from my house, the fire within my loins grew intensely--yielding power to my weak, boney legs. Pedaling wildly, I raced through the chilled morning air, expelling clouds of steam from my beating chest, as I made my way through the suburban city streets and towards my destination.

Before the sun had fully emerged from the horizon, I was rushing down Wade Street--a main thoroughfare linking the surrounding communities to Dreighton. I laughed madly as I watched all the motorists sit idle in the street, while I raced across empty parking lots and sidewalks. Driving by car, I figured it would take roughly 30 minutes to reach Dreighton. Pedaling as I did, I made it in 45. It wasn't until I reached the Everly overpass, that I realized how exhausted I was. My legs ached, my lungs throbbed, and my face was numb with cold, but silhouetted before me against the first rays of morning was the aging billboard of Norton's Books. I had made it.

Carefully, I walked my bike down the sidewalk towards the front display window, oblivious to the horrid conditions around me. I glanced briefly at a man lying against the peeling façade of the building, his wet eyes drooped, and his hands, beset by tremors shook against the broken shards of glass that littered the concrete. Normally, I would have gone so far as to cross the road to avoid passing someone like him, but that day I felt no fear--after all, I was going to see Guinevere, and soon she would love me.

Looking through the window, I scanned the shelves of haphazardly arranged books, and glanced over the unoccupied furniture--eventually making my way to a small counter at the front of the store. Behind it sat a dour-looking man with ragged, graying hair down to his shoulders. Maybe that's Norton, I thought? Or perhaps it's Guinevere's father. But I had seen her father, or at least who we expected was her father, and it certainly wasn't this man. Could it be her lover? I sickened at the thought, and felt a strange feeling of contempt for this man. "What did you do with Guinevere," I whispered in breathy huff--my words meeting the cold window in the form of fog. Streaking my hand across the window, I wiped the wet steam off the dirtied glass until I could see inside again. As I peered back in, a figure in the back of the store was waving back at me. It was Guinevere. Instantly my haunches clenched, and my stomach lifted. Burning wildly inside, I turned away, hopped on my bike and rode back to Greenville just as quickly as I had arrived.

I did not look at this first encounter as a failure, but rather, as the first step taken in a growing love affair. Emboldened by my first visit, I began riding down to Dreighton every opportunity I had. I told my parents that I had joined the debate team so that I could ride in after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Friday, I played football with the boys, or so my parents believed, and suddenly I was spending much more time at Aunt Lydia's house in Maple Park, which happened to be only three miles from Norton's Books.

For a while, I was never so bold as that first day, when I went to the window and summoned Guinevere to be with me, so I found hiding places within sight of the Norton's Display window. Erma's Chicken n' Beans across the street gave me a full view of the front desk. Northside Beats provided a great view of the back shelves, and the benches outside the Star of the Tabernacle Community Congregation offered a vantage point from which to watch her unload the daily shipments and take out the trash.

Although content with my new viewing stations, I was forced after two weeks to begin buying something from Northside Beats, or the owner would throw me out. So I did, until I ran out of money. Erma's closed by the end of November, and finally, a sign was put up next to the benches at the Community Congregation that read, "All vagrants will be prosecuted. No loitering." All the better though, I figured. If Guinevere and I were to be together, I would need to go in and take her with me--away from the long-haired man that kept her captive.

It was on the first snowfall of the year that I decided to enter Norton's, and tell Guinevere of my desires. The wet slush of the roads had left a streak of brown up the back of my khaki Dockers and striped sweater. Embarrassed, I kept my hands behind my back as I attempted to casually walk through the door, but with each step, my body trembled worse. The store was empty--the long-haired man absent, and Guinevere out of sight. Perhaps she was in the back, I thought. The store smelled strongly of dust and old age. I took a deep breath, imagined that Guinevere was breathing the same air, and tried to calm myself. As I crept behind one of the shelves I noticed a movement in the back storeroom, and immediately recognized it as Guinevere's floating gait. She sang with the most atonal, bellowing voice, a song unrecognizable to me, and set a box of new arrivals atop the counter. Frightened, yet exhilarated by the closeness of my proximity to dear Guinevere, I picked up a wrinkled old copy of a book titled Lolita, and quickly scanned the pages while glancing over at my darling Guinevere. I desperately tried to keep my anonymity, but my repeated stares must have caught her attention, for she began walking toward me almost immediately. I clenched the book tight and tried to mask my shaking. I rammed my nose within the binding to hide my face. I could hear her soft footsteps as she walked about me, adding a book to a nearby shelf. Standing beside me, she reached over my shoulder and inserted an old hardcover into the row of books above me. A wave of her soft hair brushed my shoulder. It smelled like summer. I gasped.

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