We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman (read aloud txt) 📕

to the store. Ike’s battered pickup is parked out front.

“Those guys doing more work for you?” Chad asks.

“No. They are not.” I jump out of the truck and bolt up the stairs. The collapsed bookshelf has been emptied of all its contents and pried off the wall, revealing a ghostly outline.

“What the hell’s going on?” I shout at Ike. “What’d you do to the bookshelf?”

“We had to pull the shelf off to find the source of the leak,” Ike explains. “As I suspected, you all got water in the walls.”

“Where’s Ira?” I demand. “What did you do with him?”

“Do with him?” Richie scoffs. “He went to C.J.’s to get coffee because you don’t have any. What kind of bookstore doesn’t sell coffee?”

“It’s good we came when we did because any more water and this fine old shelf might really have been beyond repair. And that would have been a tragedy.” Ike strokes the wood. “She’s a beaut.”

“Sure is,” Garry replies, fondling the other side of the case. This would be creepy even if Ike hadn’t just deemed the shelf a she.

“Mahogany?” Richie asks.

“Yep. You don’t see craftsmanship like that anymore, do you?”

“No, you do not.”

“Same with these floors,” Ike says. “Red oak.”

“Tongue-and-groove, isn’t it?” Richie asks.

Ike nods approvingly. It’s like any second now, they’re going to have a circle jerk about the wood.

The bell over the door chimes and I swivel around, expecting Ira. But it’s Chad. “Just wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”

“It’s definitely not okay. These guys have commandeered the store.”

“Commandeered?” Richie asks.

“He likes to use big words,” Chad explains.

“No one’s commandeering anything,” Ike says. “We’re conversating.”

“There’s nothing to converse about! I already told you, we’re not painting the building.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Ike says. “We got bigger fish to fry.”

“What? No! No fish. No frying!”

“The water in the walls needs attention and you got some rotting joists.” Ike gestures to a section of floorboard that he’s pried up.

I feel sick. I was gone less than twenty-four hours.

“With the weight of these books,” Ike continues, “and the state of those joists, it’s a miracle the shelf didn’t fall clean through to the basement.”

“That would not be good,” Richie tells me.

“Yes, Richie. I am aware of that.”

“Well, you don’t seem aware, ’cause you didn’t do anything about it,” Richie replies.

“And this nice piece of mahogany,” Ike continues, pulling out his bandana to polish the bookshelf. “You can’t scrap it. Or replace it with metal shelves. Wood like this deserves a second chance.”

“Fine. You take the bookshelf. Give it a second chance, a third even. But leave us out of it.”

“But it’s your shelf,” Ike says. “We’d fix it for you.”

“If you’re talking repairs,” Chad chimes in, “I’d widen the aisles.” He looks bashful. “Just saying.”

“Ain’t a bad idea,” Ike agrees. “Floor space isn’t used as efficiently as it could be. You could sneak more shelves in here. Organize a bit better.”

“Or organize it at all,” Chad jokes.

“It is organized!”

“Yeah?” Garry points to the collapsed shelves. “Then why do you have cookbooks next to child psychology?”

I’m not explaining Mom’s organizational system to Garry. He wouldn’t understand. And it’s none of his damn business.

“It does seem pretty disorganized,” Chad says. “Do you even have an inventory system?”

“We do,” I say. Even though we really don’t. Mom used to keep track of everything on a spreadsheet but that hasn’t been updated for ages.

“A digitized inventory system?” Chad asks.

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly?”

“No.”

“No? How do you sell your stuff online?” Chad asks.

“They don’t!” crows Richie. “I went to the website but just got an error message.”

“I could build a database system,” Chad says. “I’m taking a class.”

“We don’t need a database.”

“What kind of bookstore doesn’t have a digitized inventory?” Chad asks.

“The kind that doesn’t serve coffee,” Garry answers.

“Or have a website,” Richie adds.

“We have a website!”

Chad looks it up on his phone. “Error message. Did you forget to renew the domain?”

I vaguely remember some emails a while back telling us we had to renew. But it was one of a thousand little fires I could never put out. And now the whole place is burning down.

The door rings again and in waltzes Ira, holding two coffees. Behind him is Bev, holding two more.

“Look who I bumped into,” Ira bellows. “Hi, Aaron. Hi, Chad. Do you want some coffee?”

“I’m all good, Mr. Stein.”

“Ira,” says Ira.

“Nice to see you all again,” Bev says. “I was telling Ira I got the title of the book that’s about A Wrinkle in Time but not A Wrinkle in Time. It’s called When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. I’m not sure if it’s pronounced like dead or like deed.”

“Aaron, can you look for When You Reach Me?” Ira asks.

“I need to talk to you.”

“That’s fine, but we help our customers first.”

“It’s important.”

“So are our customers. Please find Bev her book.”

“But, Ira!”

He stops me with a look.

“Fine,” I say, folding my arms across my chest and malingering in the philosophy and puzzles-and-games section because I don’t trust Ira, even hand-selling Ira, with these guys.

Ike starts talking to Ira. “So I checked the plans at the town clerk and you filed for plumbing permits a few years back. I wondered if you had plumbing in the wall?”

“Why are you checking our permits?” I demand.

“That’s the first step in any renovation,” Ike replies.

“Renovation? What renovation?”

“Aaron, I think you’ll have more luck over there.” Ira gestures to the middle grade/career section. He turns back to Ike. “There is plumbing in that wall,” he says. “Annie put it in herself. She wanted us to add a café.”

Sales had been declining, and customers dwindling. Mom had hoped a café would bring in revenue, and also people. We couldn’t afford to hire anyone to do the work, so she ordered a bunch of DIY books and started to do it herself. She was halfway through when the asteroid hit.

“See,” Richie crows. “Bookstores oughta have coffee.”

“Shut up!” I tell him.

“Aaron!” Ira scolds. “Manners. And will you please find Bev her book?”

“I can come back another time,” Bev says. “You