“Hey,” I say, reaching out to touch his arm. He flinches, and I drop my hand. “Henry. Are you having a panic attack?”
A bit of recognition flashes in his eyes, disrupting his blank look. Like he’s trying to bring himself back to the present moment.
“It’s okay,” I say softly. I reach out more slowly this time and brush my fingertips against his palm. “You’re here, all right? In the present. All those, uh, people . . . are gone. And I’m here with you.”
His hand closes around my fingertips.
“Can you breathe with me?” I say.
He nods. So I start doing the breathing Eliza taught me. Big breath in through the nose. Hold it for several counts. Long, slow breath out through the mouth. Steady, steady. My eyes never leaving his.
“My friend Eliza gets panic attacks, too,” I say, my voice still soft. “She says sometimes it helps to think of something specific to ground yourself. Like, um, pugs.”
He raises an eyebrow, still doing the breathing.
“Yeah, that’s random—she just loves pugs,” I say, laughing a little. “So if you think of, like, a big room full of pugs, and they’re all, I don’t know, wearing matching bow ties or something, does that calm you down?”
That just makes him raise his eyebrow even more.
“Okay, so not a pug enthusiast,” I say. “Well, look around. Maybe there’s something here that will ground you.”
He nods again, still doing the breathing with me. Still clasping my fingertips.
Then his other hand drifts up and he touches that bright red strand of my hair that keeps flying in my face. And, very gently, tucks it behind my ear.
Our eyes meet again and the silence of the library feels extra heavy, like it’s pressing against us. I am suddenly both hot and cold all over.
He shakes his head and drops my hand, his eyes finally losing that glassy look. His breathing also seems to return to normal.
“Sorry,” he says, sounding like Henry again—but a somewhat more subdued, less smug version of Henry. “I didn’t mean to . . . something about your hair . . .” He gestures vaguely around my face. “I haven’t had one of those in a while. But that screaming girl, that crowd of people . . .” He tries for a half smile and mostly gets there. “It was a lot.”
“Agreed,” I say, trying to shoo away all the hot-cold feelings that seem to have suddenly seeped into my bones. My voice comes out like a little squeak, and I clear my throat. “Um. Are you hungry?” He tilts his head curiously. “’Cause I am,” I barrel on. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
I try for my own half smile—and, I’d like to think, mostly get there.
“But first, let’s stop by the gift shop,” I say. “I need to buy a baseball cap.”
NINE
I take Henry to Grand Central Market, the bustling collection of food stands housed in a giant warehouse-like thing right in the middle of downtown. There’s always a crowd here, but everyone’s hyper-focused on the sizzle and pop of food cooking, on the mingling of delectable scents, on getting the eats they want to inhale as soon as humanly possible. I suppose it feels like we’re all focused on the same goal, and it’s therefore way less scary than a mob chasing you through a usually peaceful building full of books.
We manage to nab a table right next to one of the market’s most Instagram-friendly spots, a giant multi-colored neon sign for Bulleit whiskey. The sign is a graffiti-like collage featuring all kinds of doodles lit up in bright colors—a mermaid, a skeleton in a top hat, a palm tree.
“That’s cool,” Henry says, gesturing to the sign.
“My favorite part is the pickle,” I say, adjusting my brand-new LAPL baseball cap and pointing to a nonsensical illustration of a humanoid pickle lady wearing a bow and high heels and standing on top of a downtrodden-looking male pickle. Watch your pickle back, she says.
“Of course it is,” he says, grinning. “Hey, I just realized: in all the commotion, we never looked at that thing you found behind the tile.”
“Oh my god, I can’t believe I forgot about it,” I say, fishing around in my pocket for the scrap of folded paper that seemed, at least for a few seconds, like the most important thing in the universe.
I manage to unfold it and see that it’s an old, faded photo, its edges dog-eared and torn. The photo features younger versions of the same two girls from the picture at Suehiro. Grace and Auntie Suzy. Arms around each other again, big smiles in place. This time, they’re posing in front of a sun-blasted rock formation topped with wild greenery. But there’s something off about the rock formation. Its edges are square, like building blocks.
“I think . . .” I frown at the photo, trying to scour for whatever clues it might contain. “I think this is the old Griffith Park Zoo. It was abandoned when the zoo moved locations in the sixties, but they left all the animal enclosures and added a few picnic tables, and then nature”—I gesture to the wild greenery, curling around the rock formations like unruly vines—“just kind of grew in around it. These rock formations are the old animal enclosures. It’s like LA’s version of ancient ruins.”
“Sounds fun,” Henry says.
“Yeah, it’s one of those oddball LA things, apart from what people usually think of—the Hollywood sign, Beverly Hills, celebrities. It’s more ordinary, yet also totally weird. It has its own kind of magic going on,” I say.
I flip the photo over—and my heart does a somersault.
Scribbled on the back are the following words:
Tomorrow, seven p.m.
“Oh my god!” I exclaim. “Is this . . . did Grace leave a message for me?”
We both stare at those words, as if more will magically appear if we wish hard enough.
“So this is an actual clue!” Henry says.
I turn to look at him. His dark eyes are lit with glee, his mouth tipped into one of his charming smiles. But there’s something more
