by Kailee Bee
On the first day I found it, I thought it was just another library.
It sat between two ordinary buildings downtown, wedged in like it had been politely refused space elsewhere but refused to leave. The sign above the door read: CITY ARCHIVE & PUBLIC READING ROOM, though the paint was peeling so badly the words looked like they were mid-disappearing.
Inside, it was quiet in a way that felt intentional.
The librarian looked up when I walked in. She didn’t ask for my name. She just said, “You can leave it at the desk.”
I thought she meant my bag.
So I handed her my notebook.
She nodded like this was correct.
There were no computers. No checkout system. Just shelves of books that didn’t seem to follow any logic I could understand. Some were labeled with years. Some with emotions. One entire shelf was just the word almost repeated in different handwriting styles.
I started walking.
That’s when I noticed the first strange thing.
The books weren’t about people I knew. They were about people who sounded like me, but slightly off. Same tone of voice. Same habits. Same awkward pauses in conversations. But different names.
In one book, I had a different childhood. In another, I never moved to the city I currently lived in. In another, I was someone who always knew what to say at the right time, which made me suspicious immediately.
I turned to the librarian.
“Are these biographies?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Sometimes.”
That was not reassuring.
The next time I visited, I brought a friend.
Or I tried to.
The librarian looked at her and frowned slightly. “She’s not in yet,” she said.
My friend laughed. “I’m right here.”
But the librarian had already gone back to shelving books.
When I checked the shelf near the entrance, I found a thin new volume with my friend’s name on it. The cover was blank except for a date that hadn’t happened yet.
I didn’t open it.
Not immediately.
Over time, I started going alone. It felt easier that way. Inside, I began to notice a pattern.
Every time I visited, the books had changed.
Not all of them. Just the ones closest to me.
Sometimes my name would shift slightly. A letter missing. A letter added. Once, it wasn’t my name at all, just a blank space where it should have been, as if the book was still deciding.
I asked the librarian what was going on.
She finally looked at me for a long moment. “The archive updates based on how you’re seen,” she said.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said.
She closed a book gently. “It doesn’t have to.”
I started paying closer attention after that.
I noticed that certain books only appeared after certain conversations. After someone misheard me. After someone repeated my words like they belonged to them. After I corrected myself before anyone else could.
The shelves were responding to how I was interpreted.
One day, I found a book that stopped me.
It was thin. Almost unfinished. My name was on the cover, but the spelling was slightly off, like someone had typed it quickly and never gone back to fix it.
Inside, there were only fragments.
A sentence I remembered saying once, but cut off halfway.
A description of me standing in a room, unsure if I was supposed to speak.
A blank page where something important should have been.
At the end, there was a note written in small handwriting:
This version is still being revised by others.
I closed the book too quickly.
The librarian was watching me.
“You’re not supposed to read it all at once,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because then you forget it’s not the only one.”
That night, I couldn’t stop thinking about how many versions of me might exist in that place. Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. But literally, on shelves, shifting depending on perception, memory, attention.
The next time I went, I didn’t look for my book immediately.
I looked for empty spaces instead.
And I realized something strange.
There were gaps where books should have been.
Places where nothing had been written yet.
When I asked the librarian about it, she smiled faintly.
“That’s you,” she said. “Unwritten parts.”
I stood there for a long time, not sure if that was comforting or terrifying.
Maybe both.
On the way out, I didn’t leave my notebook this time.
I kept it. Because I wasn’t sure anymore who would write in it if I didn’t.
Art by Alexandra Schmeling, “Main Reading Room of Library of Congress“
About the Author
Kailee loves writing fantasy and completely made-up stories.