Practice Makes Perfect by Sarah Title Page B

herself with.
    â€œHelen. Good, you’re here.” Lou bustled out from behind the desk, purse slung over her shoulder, glasses on her head. If Helen didn’t like Lou so well, she’d be annoyed that she was such a stereotypical librarian. At least her glasses weren’t on a string around her neck. For now.
    â€œHey, Lou,” Helen said, edging around Lou to the chair behind the desk.
    â€œI have this stupid doctor’s appointment, but I shouldn’t be long.”
    â€œTake your time. I can be here all afternoon.”
    â€œJust in case I’m gone—”
    â€œLou,” Helen interrupted. “It’s fine. I won’t burn the place down.”
    â€œYou’re the only one I trust not to do that, you know.”
    Helen looked at her a little skeptically. “Really?”
    â€œWell, at least I trust you not to mess things up too badly.”
    â€œGee, thanks.”
    Lou, apparently immune to sarcasm, waved and was gone.
    * * *
    Helen tapped her pencil on her calendar. The view into the stacks hadn’t changed in the last forty-five minutes, no matter how hard she stared. If only someone would come in. But there were no appointments on the calendar—no way Lou would have left Helen in charge with a scholar coming in—and Helen was tired of working on her own desk schedule.
    She should be sitting up straight, ready to welcome the potential hordes.
    She was bored.
    She looked around. Yup, the view of the shelves behind the desk was still the same. The entrance to the right was still vacant. The stacks to the left were still a mess.
    When Helen got bored, she organized. She hated that it fit that stereotype about librarians, that they were all glasses-wearing, sexless, organizing fiends. She didn’t wear glasses, dammit.
    And she was not sexless.
    Not anymore.
    She didn’t want to think about Henry. She especially didn’t want to think about how horrified she’d been when Henry had told her that he’d run into Grace and Jake last night. But she had nothing to be horrified about; she and Henry weren’t hiding anything. Well, they were hiding something, but only because she was hiding her writing in general, not because she was embarrassed about making out with Henry. Making out with Henry and liking it.
    But if she didn’t like it, it wouldn’t much help with her writing.
    Better not to think about it. It was giving her a headache. Good thing she’d promised Henry no more secrets. She wasn’t cut out for this subterfuge.
    She headed for the stacks to the left. Lou might kill her if Helen somehow messed up whatever inexplicable order things were in. But surely Helen knew enough about the principles of library science to be able to at least make the piles neater.
    She reached for the bulging file folder on the nearest shelf. Bulging file folders weren’t exactly sound archival preservation, but this looked like it contained photocopies. She recognized property tax records— thanks, Henry—and started to straighten the papers to reduce the folder’s bulge.
    And then she dropped it.
    â€œCrap,” she muttered and knelt down on the linoleum, gathering the papers together. “What is it, windy in here?” she muttered, stretching to reach the copies that had slid across the floor and up to the wall. “Are you kidding me?” She hoped Lou really hadn’t put these pages in any order because if she had, they were not in that order now. “File cabinets, Lou.”
    Helen had her shoulder against the wall, reaching for an errant page, but it wouldn’t budge. “What the—” It looked as if it was wedged behind the shelf.
    She pulled on the page and it started to tear. Lou would definitely kill her if she ripped any documents. And now that she looked at it, she saw that this page looked a little different from the rest of the folder—yellower, and kind of beat-up. And attached