Celebratory story (I would pop champagne, but I don't have any)

Hooray! I have successfully ticked off one of the eleven rewrites that I need to do! And I have completed a basic edit of about one fifth of the book. So progress is being made, if slowly. I also wrote a few hundred words of my young adult novel, so it has been a fairly productive day.

To celebrate, here is an excerpt from a short story I'm working on in-between other things. Just by the way, every poem and story I upload is mine unless I say otherwise, and copyrighted accordingly, yada yada.

November 1994; Richard walks into his new school library for the first time. It smells of dust and the dead husks of spiders twirling in old webs.
He wants:
a special book, one he has not read before. Maybe one with a fold-out map; gold-edged pages; mysterious scribblings in the margin from long-dead student hands.

He finds:
endless coloured spines and floppy paperbacks, their colours garishly exhausted, like old ladies who have slept in their makeup.

He is disappointed. His leather shoes squeak round corners, his hand judders along the rows of spines like a stick rattled along railings. The rest of his class is in the ‘easier’ section. Sweet Valley High, books-of-the-movies. The Mills & Boons that his friends will crowd around, hoping for sex scenes. Paul will read them out in a whisper, Andrew will giggle like a girl and hop on one foot, the others will listen and say ‘eeew’ but feel a sharp, aching nausea in their bellies at the thought of Doing That to a Girl. He thrusts, she moans, five erections quiver towards the battered cardboard cover like magnets towards the North Pole.

Richard, feeling intellectually superior, squeaks to the end of the section and meets a glass cabinet. It looks official and imposing, as if it should hold trophies in a turn-of-the-century gentleman’s club. There is a lock to one side. Inside; a row of brown leather books, their titles tooled in threadbare gold. They are as touchable and dignified as sacred cats, and Richard wants them. He feels a nervous urge to pee, as he does when playing hide and seek, because there is something secret and exciting about these books. A Passage to India, The Plumed Serpent, The Scarlet Letter, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ornate words that suggest rich, dark, heavily perfumed stories. Richard, uncertain whether the cabinet is locked, lays his hand flat on the glass front and draws it back. It slides easily, with a heavy, rumbling sound that makes him jump. He feels like a jewel thief, and because that is more interesting than being Richard, instantly he is a jewel thief, taking out his glass cutters, drawing a perfect circle and reaching in with a gloved hand … Then, just as suddenly, he is Richard again, because now he has the book and there is no need to pretend.
Richard, calls someone, and someone else’s shoes squeak quickly down the rows of books. It’s Paul. Whatya got there? Lemme see, givit.
Paul flicks through the pages and spurts laughter like sneezes. He reads; And she was mad with desire of him. She could not see him without touching him. In the factory, as he talked about spiral hose (whazzat?), she ran her hand secretly along his side.
You’re disgusting, Richie, Paul laughs.
Givit here. Richard snatches it back. It’s literature, D.H Lawrence, it’s not like your stupid books.
Oooh, literature. Come on, it’s lunch and we’re playing touch, says Paul, and squeaks rapidly away. Richard follows.

Richard stands in line, waiting to check his book out. It is heavy in his hand, like the Bible, but instead of little numbers of verses there is just beautiful black text, freckled and scattered with commas, speech marks, exclamation marks, queries. He likes the look of the fat paragraphs and the sudden explosions of direct speech that break up the page. He likes the thin, slightly greasy pages.
Richard!
He walks forward. The librarian here is very librarianish, with grey hair and glasses.
What have you got there? She turns it over in her hand. Richard doesn’t like seeing it upside down, it looks undignified and helpless, like a bug on its back.
You’re not allowed to take these out. Where did you find it?
Richard swallows. Paul is snickering behind him. Richard got out a dirty book and they won’t let him have it!
I found it at the end of one of the rows. It was on the floor.
Someone took it out of the cabinet, she says. She frowns, disapproving. Those are very rare copies. You’re not allowed to take them out.
Then what’s the point? Richard wonders. It’s a library. He feels small, hot and pink, a marshmallow of embarrassment, as he races out to play touch.