Beauty and The Beasley

Chapter 4

A blue cab pulled up in front a large white building that resembled a school. The walls of its fence were decorated with vivid, colorful spray paintings - the evidence of graffiti artists going about their daily business. A young girl stepped out of the cab, her brown hair flailing about in the merciless wind. She shielded her face with a magazine and ran toward the building to prevent dust from getting into her eyes.

"You're late again, Gemma!" A young man announced as she entered the lobby. The glass doors silently closed, shutting off the sound of the whistling wind outside.

"It's Bree." She corrected distastefully with an eye roll then muttered. "Dumbass."

"Listen, Gemma. . ." The young man began spitefully.

"Will, either get my name right or you shut up." She interjected, tucking the magazine into her bag then slung it across her arm. She brushed back strands of her hair that stuck up in different places.

"You are getting in it today with the boss. He is really unhappy with you sneaking off to God-knows-where on your shift yesterday."

"Name a time when Ed was ever happy. And, i am gonna dimple you if you don't start minding your business and stop stalking me." Bree growled.

"Don't say i didn't warn you." He added.

"Get lost, Will." Bree scowled and headed up the stairs.

The local library was quiet - as it should be - but the windows still shook from the wild afternoon breeze, filling the hallway with a hollow sound. Gordon's private library was the only one of its kind in town; loaded with over ten thousand books including syllabuses for the local schools. It was four storeys high with glass windows and doors, about six different study rooms, three offices and a lobby. It was open twenty four seven but had very little staff; four, to be specific - Pauline, Pepper, William and Bree herself.

The library was owned by Sir Richards Gordon, an elderly statesman who had been voted Mayor twelve years in a row. He had a strong passion for education and had opened up his own private library to support the progressive yet slow academic system in the little town of Maine. Over the years, he became much too busy to run a library and handed full control of it to Edward Luke Kitsch - the most annoying human being in Maine and the biggest bully on planet earth.

Bree mouthed a few angry words as she approached Ed's office. Taking in a deep breath, she fisted a hand to knock but the door swung open revealing Pauline, one of the few library attendants. Pauline looked like she had just escaped a nuclear bombing but had lost one arm in the process. Her blonde and brown hair was held in pigtails and she kept wiping her eyes underneath her glasses with the back of her hand.

Ed was at it again.

Bree fumed but managed to control her burning anger as she could not afford to lose her job. It was the only one she had gotten accepted in even though she had furiously prayed Ed would refuse her. Turned out that he needed one extra person to pick on whenever Sir Richards forgot to send him his paycheck.

Ed was not attractive or nice nor did he possess any characteristic that would identify him as human. He was four inches shorter than Bree with a weird mustache, a temper twice his size and a brown suit he never took off. He had a bald spot in the middle of his head with funny looking blotches on the exposed skin. Around it was graying hair cut short to frame his round face. He had two kids who recently had run away to live with their mother in Kentucky and nobody needed to be told why they made that choice.

He once bought a black Rolls-Royce and the endless amount of pride that came with it from the car store but unfortunately, he had gotten involved in a really bad accident that shattered the car to pieces leaving him with a bad hip and an even worse temper. He always wore a snarl and was a full time grouch. Everyone tried their best to ignore him at the library and in town.