I mean. Probably because the air-conditioning is so intense in here.
Ugh. This all feels so haphazard. I don’t know what I was expecting. That I’d get here and look at the same tiles my mother gazed upon just a few hours ago and I’d instantly feel this mystical, magical connection—
I freeze as my fingertips make the most cringeworthy scraping sound against one of the tiles.
Scrreeeeppp.
“What was that?” Henry says, leaning in closer, his hand leaving my waist for the moment.
I run my fingertips over the same tile again.
Screeeeeeepppp!
Same hideous noise. And something about this tile feels . . . different. My heart starts beating faster, thwacking against my breastbone so loudly, I’m convinced the whole library’s going to hear it. Very, very gently, I poke at the tile.
It shimmers a bit—and then it comes loose.
“Holy shit!” Henry exclaims. “I mean, uh . . .” He lowers his voice to a library-appropriate whisper. “Holy shit.”
As carefully as possible, I pull the tile free, revealing a hollow space in the wall behind it. There’s the tiniest bit of blue missing from the vase now, the one that’s valiantly trying to contain the plant.
And in that hollow space is a scrap of paper.
My heart speeds up, my vision narrowing to this one small spot behind the wall. Henry’s saying something in my ear, but I don’t even hear him. My hand shakes as I reach out to grasp the scrap of paper—this tiny thing that must be a clue and therefore must contain the secret to my entire existence. I shimmy back to a standing position, the paper in my hand. It’s folded over and over and over again until it’s barely anything, and my hand shakes even more as I try to unfold it.
I’m still picking at the stubborn folds when I hear a voice behind me scream:
“Oh my god. It is so totally her!”
Here’s the thing about the rotunda: it is vast and beautiful and usually silent. But when someone screams like that, it creates an echo effect that bounces off every gorgeous tiled surface. It basically triples any scream.
Henry and I both turn around, as if in slow motion.
A girl around my age stands behind us, phone raised, snapping away. She’s part of one of the tour groups. And her scream has attracted plenty of other people in all the tour groups.
My brain is processing all this very slowly. My brain is, to be honest, still focused on the folded scrap of paper clutched tightly in my sweaty fist.
The girl lowers her phone a fraction of an inch and beams at me, her eyes wide and shiny. “You’re that girl,” she screeches, her voice bouncing off the rotunda again. “The one from the parade—the one Grace Kimura crashed into!”
The more she screams at me, the more people gather behind her. There’s kind of a mini mob going on, and now they’re all snapping photos of us. I blink at the screaming girl, my fist getting tighter and sweatier around my scrap of paper—like I’m worried she’s going to steal it from me.
“Rika,” Henry murmurs, and I swivel to look at him. His face has gone pale underneath the brim of his baseball cap, and his breathing is unnaturally rapid. It’s a complete transformation from his usual carefree, confident demeanor. He looks almost . . . scared.
“Oh my gaaawd, and that’s Hank Chen!” Screaming Girl bellows, instantly swiveling her phone to capture Henry’s terrified face.
“What are you guys doing at the library?” someone else calls out.
“Do you know where Grace is?!” yet another person yells.
“Are you, like, together?!” Screaming Girl helpfully chimes in.
Suddenly everyone’s yelling questions and snapping photos, and the mini mob presses closer to us. My face is hot and my fist is getting even sweatier and I can’t think . . . can’t think . . .
I pivot to the right and spot a small hole in the mob, next to the side entrance into Teen’Scape.
I grab Henry’s hand and run.
“Rika . . .” His voice is all shaky, his breathing still rapid and uneven.
Lucky for him, I know this library like the back of my hand. I yank him into the side entrance of Teen’Scape, snaking us around the rotunda and popping us out by one of the library’s sweeping side staircases—like a secret passageway. I am extremely aware that some of the mob has caught on to my sneaky ways and is clattering behind us, still shouting questions.
We reach the bottom of the staircase, and I pull him sharply to the left, taking us up the escalator to the third floor and ducking through the entrance to the popular-fiction section. I hear the mob behind me, their voices echoing up the escalator.
“Which way did they go?”
“Why are they running like that?! You’re not supposed to run in the library!”
“Were they holding hands?!”
I can’t afford to look behind me, so I just keep pressing forward, winding us through the shelves and shelves of books. The din of the mob seems to recede the farther we get into the maze of shelves, the book jungle.
Slowly, the beautiful silence of the library begins to restore itself.
I pull Henry into another one of my favorite nooks, a corner in the very back of this section of shelves, conveniently located right next to a tall, narrow window that looks out onto the city. It lets some light in, but not enough to disrupt my beloved shadows.
Now I can’t hear the mob at all. My breathing slows, and I try to let this dark, silent corner soothe me.
“I think we lost them,” I say. “But we should probably stay here for a few minutes.” I turn to face him, expecting him to make some smartass wisecrack or give me one of his amused grins. Instead I do a double take. Because now he looks . . . well, absolutely awful. His golden-brown skin has a gray cast, his eyes are glassy and blank. And his breathing is still way, way too
