Plucking my eyebrows reminds me of Fatima, a girl I worked with the summer after I finished grade 10.

In high school, my homeroom teacher was Mrs. Keyzers. My mom nicknamed her “Cocaine Keyzers” due to some supposed drug use, although the only evidence of drug use I ever saw was her unyielding devotion to Jennifer Warnes, which required us to listen to Famous Blue Raincoat every single morning. One day, Mrs. Keyzers came over and asked if I’d like a summer job working at the school. My position would be Textbook Girl — I’d have to inventory and repair all the textbooks in the school, receive and stamp any new books, and distribute all the books as required for September to the appropriate classrooms. A summer job that paid actual dollars, and did not require me to wear a polyester uniform, sounded pretty awesome, so I said yes right away.

The other Textbook Girl was Fatima. She was a senior and this would be her last summer on the job after years of experience, so we kind of had a Mr. Myagi-Daniel type relationship. She was a really nice, sweet girl and taught me everything I know about textbooks — that is, when we bothered to work. We had our own office, a room that was halfway between the second and third floors, a big room that was completely filled with great works of literature. It had a huge window seat with a beautiful view and I spent most of my high school years sitting in that window seat, eating my lunch, reading. I made it through almost every book in that room by graduation.

Our office had a lock on the door and because the lock system in the school was kind of lax, the key to our office opened most of the other doors in the place. The building was almost a hundred and fifty years old, an old stone castle, with balconies and towers and secret rooms and passages. We spent a lot of time getting into places we probably weren’t supposed to be, but I didn’t feel guilty at all — it was more like playing a grown-up version of princess. We were completely unsupervised — the only other people in the building were the janitorial crew and, sometimes, the school secretary. We’d work for a few hours then read for a few hours then have a dance party in the library or climb up the tallest tower or eat our lunch on the roof. It was probably the best job I’ve ever had, and in times of crisis when I have to go to my “happy place,” I go to our little book room with the view.

You’d think after spending eight hours a day with someone for an entire summer, I’d know Fatima like the back of my hand, but actually, I don’t think we were ever all that close. We were both kind of quiet and our chats were mostly polite and surface-level. She was thinking about applying to university and we talked a lot about what she should do for a career, where she should live, that sort of thing. We sometimes talked about music (she introduced me to Elaine Page) and sometimes talked about books (I introduced her to Ernest Hemingway).

One day I was complaining about the fineness of my hair, which frizzed out inside the hot, humid, non-airconditioned school. Fatima had very thick, coarse hair and she said that it caused a real problem when she plucked her eyebrows. Instead of simply plucking, each hair hurt so much that she had to “Pluck…ow!…massage massage massage…pluck…ow!…massage massage massage.” To this day, I repeat the “massage massage massage” mantra every time I pluck.

Neither Fatima nor I were big on beauty tips, being make-up free, fashion-challenged geeks, but I did have a shining moment when I told her that washing her hair twice would make it bouncier and full of body. She loved that one. I wonder if, when she washes her hair twice, she thinks of me and the book room.