The music on the sound system changed to jazz standards from the forties, which fit the store’s new nostalgic retro look. Then the lights dimmed, and I jumped. “Sorry about that,” Owen said as he approached. “I just thought it would be best if we weren’t quite so visible from the outside.” He held up a stack of colored index cards. “Ready to plant our clues?”
We had a list of books people were supposed to search for, and we went around the store, sticking the cards in the backs of the books and then re-shelving them. Although we’d created the list, we still had to think about where to go and which section would be most likely to come to mind for each book. We ran through the maze of bookshelves like children, and I felt that if I looked out the corner of my eye, I’d see the books coming to life and dancing the way I sometimes imagined they would after a bookstore closed for the night.
“Ah, here it is,” Owen said, pulling the next book on the list off the shelf and opening it so I could slip the card in. He closed the book and put it back in its slot, then smoothed the shelf so it wasn’t obvious that one book had recently been moved. He glanced at me, then back at the books before saying, “Can I ask you something strange?”
I gulped, wondering what he might consider strange. Would this be a personal question, something about Josh or maybe about the way things were developing between us? “Um, sure,” I stammered.
“Have you been having a bad case of déjà vu lately? I mean, seeing people and thinking they’re familiar, and then you realize that of course they’re familiar because you know them, but that doesn’t seem like why they should be familiar?”
“You too?” I asked, a little breathless. “It’s been happening all the time to me lately.” I hesitated, since this was the kind of thing that might get me sent to a psychiatric hospital, but since he’d started it … “While we’re on the subject, do you ever get the feeling that some of your memories are more like dreams, or like time is passing in just a series of highlight images—like a montage in a movie, sometimes even complete with soundtrack?”
He frowned and licked his lips, then said, “No, I don’t think I’ve run into that. But the memories thing, yeah. It’s like nothing from before a few weeks ago seems real. And I do sometimes feel like a week or more has passed between the time I go to bed at night and the time I wake up in the morning. I remember the things that happened, but not as though I really lived them.”
I laughed, then cut myself off when I realized that I sounded like someone on the verge of madness. “So I’m not crazy, or if I am crazy, then I’m not crazy alone.”