“Because it’s interesting, first of all. And because we live here now.” Fiona stopped herself before the words “because of you” could fly out too. “If you got lost somewhere in your own town, wouldn’t you want to be able to find your way home?”
“I’d probably just use my phone,” said Arden loftily.
Fiona stuffed the map back into her backpack. “How long is this practice going to take?”
“I’ve got off-ice class, then warm-up time, then my coaching session. Maybe four hours, if I practice my program for a while afterward.”
“Four hours?” Fiona exploded.
“You knew it would be a long morning, Fiona,” said her mom.
“Not that long.”
“You can read, if you’re bored,” said Arden. “Or play games on Mom’s phone. Or you could actually watch me skate. For once.”
Fiona glared at the back of Arden’s seat. “Let me out here.”
Her mom caught her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Are you feeling carsick?”
“No. I just don’t want to be stuck at an ice rink for hours and hours.”
“Fiona.” Her mom sighed. “You didn’t want to stay home alone, remember?”
“I won’t be at home. I’ll be . . . here.” Fiona glanced out the window at the town blurring past. “I can walk around.”
“You can’t just wander around an unfamiliar place.”
“Why not?” Arden’s voice was chilly now. “She’s got her map.”
Their mother sighed again.
They rolled along Old Mill Road, past a row of grand houses that lined the lake, all of them converted into law offices and dental practices now. Suddenly, beside the largest house of all, their mother veered to a stop.
“All right,” she said, squinting through the windshield. “Here’s the deal. You can stay at the library—only the library—while Arden and I are at the rink. We’ll be back by twelve thirty. You have your phone with you, right?”
“Mom!” exclaimed Arden. “We’re already going to be late!”
Their mom craned to face Fiona. “You can call me anytime. And remember your dad’s campus is fifteen minutes away. You can reach him if there’s an emergency. But I don’t expect there to be any emergencies, because you’re going to stay here, at the library. Right?”
“Right,” said Fiona.
“We have to get going. Unless you’re changing your mind again, Fiona.”
“No.” She pushed open her door. “I’m not changing my mind.”
“See you at twelve thirty, ladybug.”
Arden didn’t say goodbye.
Fiona dragged her backpack out onto the sidewalk and listened as the car pulled away.
Before her stood a grand brick mansion. Tall, narrow windows glared down at the street from each of its three stories. A widow’s walk fenced with iron spikes topped its steep black roof, and giant trees clustered close to its walls, cloaking the house in leafy shadows. CHISHOLM MEMORIAL LIBRARY, read a sign in the center of the lawn.
But this didn’t look like a library.
This looked like a house that belonged to rich, strange, secretive people. The kind of people who might keep an insane relative shut up in the attic or collect tanks full of poisonous snakes.
Fiona ventured up the walkway to the porch. At the heavy double doors, she hesitated, wondering if she should knock and wait for a black-suited butler to let her in. But that was silly. This was a library. Besides, nobody had butlers anymore. Did they?
Fiona pushed one thick brass handle. The opening door pulled her into a wide, wood-floored foyer, where the air smelled reassuringly of books. Taking a deep breath, Fiona stepped through an archway into a room that was nearly as large as her entire house.
The room had parquet floors and damask wallpaper and tall, narrow windows bright with sunlight. It also had clusters of tables and heavy armchairs filled with gray-haired people. The gray-haired people all turned to stare at her. So did the librarian behind the broad wooden desk.
For a single, powerful heartbeat, Fiona wished that Arden was beside her.
Arden could belong anywhere. She seemed right no matter where she was. It had to do with the way she moved, as if she always knew where she was going and how she was going to get there. Fiona could tag along, unnoticed and unquestioned, because anyone who glanced at them would see that they were sisters. If Arden belonged somewhere, Fiona must belong there too.
Fiona took a breath, straightening her shoulders. She didn’t need her sister to belong in a library. She could do this on her own.
Gradually, the gray-haired patrons returned to their newspapers and computer screens. The librarian, who was youngish, with olive skin and brown hair pinned up in a mound of swirls, gave Fiona a smile before going back to her work.
Fiona padded along the edge of the room, trying to ignore the glances that followed her.
All around the central reading room were doorways leading to other areas. STUDY, read a sign outside a bookcase-lined alcove with a brick fireplace. A long, rectangular chamber that might once have been a dining room was labeled REFERENCE. CHILDREN’S SECTION, said the sign outside a sunny glass room that had obviously been a conservatory. (Just like in Clue! Fiona thought.) And at one end of the central chamber, next to a sign reading FICTION—SECOND FLOOR, a broad wooden staircase angled upward.
Fiona climbed the steps.
A portrait of a white woman in a sea-green armchair hung above the landing. As Fiona drew nearer, she noticed that the woman was somewhere between middle-aged and old, with silvery-gold hair around her face, and fine lines around her eyes, and a triple strand of pearls around her neck. She wore a regal little smile—the kind of smile someone wears while saying, “This is mine, but you may use it.” But the woman’s eyes didn’t match her smile. Fiona stopped on the landing, leaning closer. There was something in the woman’s eyes that looked . . . was it sad? Or was it something else?
She was still trying to figure it out when a voice behind her said, “Margaret Chisholm.”
Fiona whipped around.
Beside her stood another kid—the only one she’d seen in the library. His face was very round, and his hair was very pale. He looked about her age. Fiona felt a zap of nervousness. She wasn’t good at talking to kids she didn’t know. She either said too little, which made her seem unfriendly, or way too much, which made her seem weird. Why was this boy talking to her in the first place? And had he just called her Margaret? He must have mistaken her for someone else.
“Um—no,” Fiona began. “My name is—”
“That’s Margaret Chisholm,” said the boy, nodding at the portrait. “She left her mansion to the town, so it could become the library.”
“Oh,” said Fiona, feeling stupid. Which was her least favorite thing to feel, especially in front of a stranger. “So she’s . . .”
“Dead?” The boy glanced at the portrait. “Yep. A long time ago. But everybody who’s from here knows about her.”
The boy gave Fiona a look that lasted two seconds too long before jogging down the staircase.
Fiona rocked backward on her feet. The boy wasn’t being friendly either. He was just telling her something he thought she should know. And not knowing it already meant that she definitely didn’t belong here.
She turned back to the portrait. Fastened to the bottom of its frame was a little gold plaque reading OUR STORIES ARE WHAT BIND US TOGETHER.—M.C. Fiona glanced into the painting’s eyes once more. Then she looked to either side, where the landing split into two parallel hallways overlooking the reading room, and scurried away to the right.
The hall led her past a row of rooms labeled POETRY and PLAYS and ROMANCE. And then, on the very last door: MYSTERY.
Fiona darted inside. She found herself in a wood-paneled room more than twice the size of her own bedroom. The floor was covered by antique Turkish rugs, and the ceiling was crossed by heavy beams and hung with antique glass lamps. It was the perfect spot to dive into a mystery novel. Especiall
y because Fiona had it all to herself.
She trailed through the bookshelves, letting her fingertips bump along the books’ spines. Most of them were covered with crinkly clear plastic. But suddenly Fiona’s fingers hit something soft—something that felt like satin, or very cold skin.
Fiona halted. The book she’d touched was bound in dark green leather. There were no words on its spine, not even a little alphabetizing label. Fiona drew it out. The book looked old, like something you’d find in an antique shop, or buried in a trunk in an attic. On its cover, the words The Lost One were embossed above a sketch of a dark forest. Hidden in the forest’s twisted branches were other shapes: hunched figures, things with wings, things with eyes.
Fiona plunked down on the floor between the shelves, her back braced against their solid wood, and opened the book.
Once there were two sisters who did everything together, it began. But only one of them disappeared.
A delightful little shiver ran down Fiona’s arms. She held the book closer and read on.
Chapter Three
Once there were two sisters who did everything together.
But only one of them disappeared.
It was early summer in their small New England town. Lilacs scented the June breeze, and dragonflies dove around the river’s edge where the sisters often went to play. The water wasn’t their only territory. Together, Hazel and Pearl went everywhere. There wasn’t a grassy or leafy spot for miles around that the sisters hadn’t explored. There was no fence they wouldn’t jump, no fruit they wouldn’t steal, no wild animal they wouldn’t touch, no cave they wouldn’t crawl inside.
Together, the girls were fearless.
Theirs was the wealthiest family in town, as everyone knew. Their money could get them out of any scrape, and business took their parents away on long journeys, often for weeks at a time. In the summer, with no school to contain them, the sisters had as much freedom as they could snatch from their housekeeper’s stern hands.
Their stuffier neighbors shook their heads. They tutted to each other that those girls would come to a bad end.
None of them knew how right they were.
A gust of wind shook the tree outside the mystery room windows, sending tiny fluttering shadows across the open page. Fiona wriggled sideways into a beam of sun.
She tried to picture herself doing forbidden things with Arden, climbing over other people’s fences, sneaking into hidden caves. Even in her imagination, Arden wouldn’t go along. She’d be too afraid of injuring her skating ankles.
Fiona returned to the book.
One day, deep in the woods on the far side of the river, Hazel descended from the top of a tall pine. She and Pearl had discovered this ferny, emerald-green grove and christened it the Enchanted Forest. They had spent the spring decking its trees with ribbons and silver bells that Hazel had stolen from their mother’s dressing room, and Pearl, who liked to write and illustrate little stories, had filled a notebook with tales set within its bounds.
Pixie, their shaggy terrier, hopped joyously around Hazel’s legs as she leaped to the ground. He disliked it when Hazel went anywhere that he couldn’t go, and up tall trees was at the top of this list.
“There, there, Pixie.” Hazel rubbed his ear. “Good boy.”
She had begun picking bits of sticky pine bark from her skirt when, from above, there came a terrified shriek.
Hazel’s heart leaped to her throat. The shriek was Pearl’s.
“Pearl!” she shouted. There was no reply.
For just an instant, Hazel’s thoughts flew to the Searcher.
The Searcher was a dark being that skulked through these woods, awaiting the moment when it might catch another wanderer alone. According to the tales that wound through the town, any such unlucky wanderer was never seen again.
But Hazel knew that these were merely stories. And she was too smart for stories.
Besides, the shriek had come from above.
Hazel squinted up into the feathery green boughs. “Pearl!” she shouted again.
This time, there came an answering shout.
“Up here!” Pearl’s voice was high and brittle. “I’m stuck! And I’m slipping!”
Hazel followed the voice to the base of a nearby pine, Pixie bounding along behind her. Through the branches, she caught a flash of lace-trimmed skirt and a glimpse of Pearl’s small, worried face.
Hazel placed her hands on her hips. “How can you be both stuck and slipping?”
“Just HELP me!” A branch overhead shivered furiously.
With a sigh, Hazel pulled herself onto the lowest bough. Pine needles rippled around her, pointing like a million accusing fingers. At thirteen, Hazel sometimes felt like a grown-up, as though she should be responsible for both herself and eleven-year-old Pearl. But more often, she felt sure that she would never grow up at all. She climbed to the next bough, and the next. Pixie whined resentfully below.
“Hurry!” Pearl’s voice urged.
Hazel climbed the rough rungs of the pine until at last, more than two dozen feet above the ground, her sister came fully into view.
Pearl hung from the tree, her hands locked around the branch above her head and her stiff-soled shoes balanced on a branch below. A thick swath of her brown hair was glued to the upper branch, sticking up from her head like the wick of a candle.
The sight nearly made Hazel laugh aloud.
“Hazel,” Pearl gasped, as her elder sister climbed onto the branch below. “I can’t hold on!”
Hazel took a calculating look. If Pearl let go of the branch above to grasp the sturdier one below, the swath of hair would be ripped straight out of her scalp. But if she lost her grip entirely, she would plummet through the branches, all the way to the distant ground.
“Why did you let your hair get wrapped around the tree like that?” Hazel asked. She drew herself onto Pearl’s perch. The bough swayed, and Pearl’s hands clenched tighter.
“I didn’t let it.” Pearl was too scared to sound truly angry, but Hazel saw her nostrils give their telltale flare. “It just happened!”
“Well, you shouldn’t have let it happen,” said Hazel, in her reasonable elder-sister tone, the tone that always made Pearl furious. “Don’t move.”
Hazel braced one arm against the pine’s sticky trunk. Positioned between Pearl and the tree, she reached into her pocket.
“What are you doing?” Pearl whispered, as Hazel drew out her mother-of-pearl-handled pocketknife.
Not an appropriate toy for a young lady, their housekeeper, Mrs. Rawlins, had declared when Hazel bought the knife with her birthday money. But Hazel’s mother had just smiled indulgently, and her father had laughed and said, Let her do what she likes. And so Hazel had kept it. It traveled with her everywhere: to the lake, to the woods, to church, slipped into a purse or pocket with ladylike discretion.
And it was not a toy.
“Just keep still,” Hazel commanded. She gripped her sister’s caught hair with one fist. Leaning against the trunk for balance, she sawed through the hair with the knife’s sharp blade.
Set free, Pearl gasped, letting go of the branch above, her hands flying to the trunk instead.
“There.” Hazel slipped the knife back into her pocket. “I’ll climb down first.”
Hazel descended the tree, branch by branch, making the final jump to the ground, where Pixie performed his joyous dance once more.
Pearl clambered behind, a bit more slowly. She hopped to the needle-matted ground. After a quick glance at her scraped palms, she patted the top of her head. The missing hair left a jagged tuft over Pearl’s forehead, which stood out from the rest of her long tresses like a rent in silk. The tufty hair—and Pearl’s stricken face—were so funny, Hazel couldn’t hold back her laughter any longer.
Pearl stared at Hazel, her face darkening, the ends of her chopped-off hair twitching in the breeze.
“Oh, it’s only hair,” said Hazel, ceasing her laughter at last. “It will grow back
.”
“It will grow back in months,” answered Pearl. “And I don’t care about my silly hair, anyway.”
“Then what’s the matter?”
“Everyone will know.” Pearl’s eyes widened in exasperation. “They’ll know I was climbing trees again. I’ll be punished, and I can’t pretend nothing happened, because the proof is right here on my head!”
“I was climbing too,” said Hazel.
“But you can say that you had to, in order to save me. You’ll be the heroine, and I’ll be the bad one. Like always.”
“Not like always,” Hazel argued, although she knew Pearl’s words held a kernel of truth. Hazel was craftier, cooler headed, and far better at pretending to be the well-behaved eldest daughter of an important family. Hazel missed as many curfews and tore as many stockings as Pearl, but she had more skill at hiding these transgressions. And she was far better at stitching the perfect lies to cover them.
“You know Mother and Father won’t do anything,” Hazel went on.
“Mrs. Rawlins will.” Pearl’s voice was strained. “I was already in trouble for stealing those berries from the Ephraims’ garden. She said if I didn’t behave for the rest of the summer, she would give Pixie away.”
Hearing his name, the dog bumped his nose against Pearl’s hand. Pearl rubbed him absently.
Hazel grabbed Pearl’s other arm. “She can’t get rid of Pixie, silly. He’s ours. Father gave him to us. If Rawbones gets rid of Pixie, Father will get rid of her.”
But the family couldn’t do without Mrs. Rawlins, and they both knew it. If it weren’t for Mrs. Rawlins running the house, it would fall into ruin in no time. In fact, the girls’ father often said that without Mrs. Rawlins, they would all have died years ago of hunger, cold, or sheer dirtiness.
Pearl kept her eyes on the ground. Her face was such a mask of misery that Hazel couldn’t stand it.
At last, with a sigh, Hazel pulled the knife from her pocket. She lifted a hank of her own hair and chopped straight through. “There.”
Pearl stared at Hazel. Her mouth opened as though she was about to say something. The corners of her lips turned upward in the very beginning of a smile.
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