Ten Girls to Watch by Charity Shumway Read Free Book Online Page A

gray room, with stained industrial beige carpet and no receptionist in sight. It felt like the waiting area at a car mechanic’s garage.
    I looked around expectantly, not sure what to do next. After a minute I contemplated taking a seat in one of the chairs. Certainly I was on some sort of surveillance camera, and whoever had buzzed me into the building would send someone to the waiting room eventually? Mindful of the theoretical cameras, I avoided worrying my cuticles or looking for split ends or any of the other biding-time behaviors I typically engaged in when unsurveilled. I smoothed my skirt and adjusted my cardigan (today’s outfit was a combo of red, pink, and tan, which was hard for a redhead to pull off and which may have made me look like a valentine, but which I hoped nonetheless read as capable with a side of pizzazz), and then I waited with what I believed was a look of polite expectation on my face.
    At last a door at the back of the room opened, and in walked a toweringly tall forty-something man who bore a notable resemblance to Eddie Munster in a tan cardigan, though a friendly-seeming Eddie Munster to be sure.
    “Dawn?” he said.
    I nodded, noting our matching cardigans, and we shook hands vigorously as he said, “I’m Ralph, the head librarian. Pleased to meet you. If you’ll follow me back, I’ll show you where we’ve got you set up.”
    He held the door for me, and I followed him into an expanse of neon lights, buzzing above steel cages that separated us from shelves and shelves of books and magazines. Our footsteps clicked and clacked on the cement floor. The smell was the exact slightly musty but glittering-with-possibility smell of the stacks in my college library.
    “The archival materials for Charm are all on level two,” Ralph said, passing me to take the lead. My, what a lot of neck hair he had.
    When we entered the elevator, he pressed –2, which seemed to imply that level two was in the basement. Down we went. So far, Ralph and I appeared to be the only two people in the building, no other signs of life. I expected that maybe level –2 housed all the action, but when we arrived, the elevator opened on an identically barren-of-persons-but-full-of-books landscape. He unlocked one of the steel cages, and I followed him through sets of shelves. Upon closer inspection, I realized that all the books were bound volumes of magazines. First we passed the back issues of Invest, then came the back issues of Couture.
    After these shelves, we reached an open area with a grouping of four desks, all equipped with computers and scanners. No sign or sound of people near the desks, however.
    “We’re working on digitizing everything,” Ralph said. “In addition to overseeing the library, I also oversee the online archives project.” And then perhaps sensing my confusion given the lack of bodies, he said, “Most of the scanning team works the night shift.”
    So maybe it really was just me and Ralph, and “head librarian” actually meant “only librarian.” Finally, we reached the shelves where the back issues of Charm resided. The warehouse archives had up to this point proved far from the gleaming Mandalay Carson experience I’d fantasized about, but the bound volumes of Charm gleamed in their own way. White spined, with the capital letters C-H-A-R-M emblazoned in gold down each one, they looked like treasure.
    “We’ve got ten copies of every issue. The loose volumes are on the shelves over there,” Ralph said, gesturing to the row behind us. “And we’ve got photos and correspondence and all sorts of other materials there too. But the bound copies are here. And they’re the easiest to work with. Every copy since 1946, with a book per year.”
    “Great!” I said, truly excited by the reams of materials, but in the quiet, it sounded louder than I’d intended, like a strange yelp.
    “Let me show you where we’ve got your desk,” Ralph said eagerly. I’d figured I’d be using