Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
At the library one day Tim discovered, accidentally, that he could take a book out without anyone noticing. He had put the book in his bag while searching for another one, and forgot to check the first book out. The smuggled-out book was about space exploration and had pictures of the first moon landing. Tim cut out all the best pictures and, once it was dark, sneaked out to throw the remains of the book into the creek behind his house. He used some of the pictures in his assignment and glued the rest of them into a scrap book. Tim had an inkling that some people would think he was a vandal to have cut up a book but he mostly just felt resourceful and clever.
Tim kept taking books and everyday congratulated himself on this newfound source of material. His teachers complimented him on his work and commented on the wonderful pictures he was using to illustrate his assignments. He would sometimes be a bit nervous at the library, wondering if he’d be caught. But he figured he would just say what he would have honestly said if he’d been caught the first time, that he had forgotten that he put the book in his bag. It meant he could only take one book at a time for cutting up and had to check out at least one other book fairly and squarely, to maintain the story in case he ever needed to use it.
During the summer holidays, after almost a year of cutting books and dumping their carcasses in the creek, Tim woke from a nightmare. He was sweating and felt like something heavy was pressing down on his chest. He couldn’t get the vision of piles of damaged books out of his head. He suddenly felt so sorry, for the books themselves, for the people who worked at the library and searched for books that were no longer there, and for the other kids who couldn’t use the books for their assignments.
Many years after the year of cut up books, Tim found a job writing code for a company that made software for library security gates. It still made him sad to think of the librarians waiting behind the desk with their stamps and how easy it had been for him to get past them but he took heart in knowing that he was now saving many more books than he had destroyed. He had found his dream job. Protector of the books.