The Reference Section

There are a lot of terrible people out there, and those who have dealt with a life of suffering at the hands of bullies, abusers, and just general jerks, can easily spot someone who is dealing with the same situations they have been in. Grace Vickery was a student at USM in the early 2000’s and the library on campus was her sanctuary. She had always been a shy girl, and although she had plans to get out of her shell in college she had never found her crowd. So she kept to herself mostly either doing her school work or reading fantasy novels. Either way she was in the library a lot, and formed a close bond with the assistant librarian there who’s name was Mr. Davis.  Her junior year however her safe space was invaded by a group of athletes who were on the verge of being put on academic probation and had set up camp in the library to make themselves at least appear like they were doing something. 

The USM Library

The boys and their girlfriends weren’t just rowdy, whenever Grace walked by they would whisper under their breath and then laugh once they felt she was far enough away. One time a large football player pushed back his chair at just the right time to bump into Grace and she ended up falling to the ground and losing all the papers and books she had been carrying. They all made a big show of helping her up, but “they were snickering the whole time” Grace said. “It was so disheartening, it was the one place I felt at home there, I wasn’t bothering anyone, but as soon as they started coming there I felt like they zeroed in on me as the butt of their joke. One day I just couldn’t take it anymore so I headed deep into the reference section, just so I wouldn’t be near any of them, and so I could have a good cry. I thought I was alone but Mr. Davis came out of the rows and put his hand on my shoulder ‘Don’t let them bother you too much Grace’ he said, ‘they’re insignificant, no better than dumb oxes, and far more useless’.” “I laughed through my sobs,” Grace said, “Mr. Davis sat with me a while and said that the next time he saw them doing something to me he would ban them from the library forever. I got a little nervous at that, I thought it would only make it worse, so I told him not to worry, that I could deal with it. He just nodded and told me if I needed anything to let him know.”

The bullying went on however and as finals week approached Grace was worried that she wasn’t in the right mental state to study and pass all her finals. She cocooned herself in a cozy corner of  the reference section far away from her antagonizers.

“Next time I saw Mr. Davis back there, he asked if things had gotten worse. I told him no it was about the same, I just couldn’t deal with it and study at the same time. He stood up and motioned for me to follow him. He led me through rows upon rows of books, left turns, right turns, I almost lost track of where I was. In the furthest corner of the reference section he stopped, and pointed down a dimly lit row that was filled with dusty books. ‘There are ways of getting even Grace, ways to make people like that regret how shitty they are.’ I didn’t know what to say but was intrigued by the books so I followed him down the aisle. ‘It takes some studying but I know you are good at that’ he smiled, ‘but maybe one day one of them has a freak accident, one comes down with an illness, one is mauled by a rabid dog. These are things we can do with the right words, the right books.’ I can tell you that I was a little disturbed by what he said, but I can’t say it wasn’t appealing to me. To make these assholes pay for treating me like crap all the time, that was something I could get behind.”

Grace tells us that she spent probably an hour going through that section with Mr. Davis, exploring the old books. “Most didn’t have titles, at least not on the cover. When you opened them up a lot were in this weird script that I still haven’t been able to identify. It wasn’t Latin, I studied Latin, it didn’t appear to be Arabic, or a system of language like Japanese or Chinese. I was at a loss and still am.” Grace describes some books as bound in this thin paper like leather, that looked as though it had blue veins running through it, other books had blood stained pages. “All the while we were back there Mr. Davis talked about me joining some sort of exclusive group, one with power, one with the ability to shape the world. But I just couldn’t do it, it all sounded so wrong. I thanked him, but said it wasn’t for me, those people would change eventually or they wouldn’t, I didn’t have to be around them forever, and at the end of the day they meant nothing to me. I wasn’t going to waste however many years it would take to learn whatever it was Mr. Davis was offering just to get back at people that ultimately don’t matter. I still remember that language though, and the feel of the books, some days I regret rejecting him, knowing a spell or two would have been cool, but I also know if I had gone down that path I would have lost something of myself.”

If you are at USM in the library, although Mr. Davis is long gone, perhaps you too can find this hidden batch of books in the back. We do warn you about the dangers of delving into the dark arts however. 

Stay safe out there Maine!