She looks right at me. Most of the girls I flirt with—because I know what I’m about here—play this game with the coy dialed all the way up. Batting eyes and tugged hair. But Mallory stares me down like a dare: chin up, eyes bright, and her shoulders back like she could take on a wayward truck and maybe do some calculus while she’s at it.
“Okay, I give,” I say. “What’s your whole name, Mallory?”
She hesitates, her grin sliding off her face. “I should go.”
A ripple goes through me. It’s stupid, but I want her to stay and talk to me. About yarn. Or pens. Anything, really. But she’s already walking away.
I step to the edge of the dock, raising my voice.
“But I have your knitting book! How can you walk away?”
“I’m going to the entrance. You’re opening soon,” she says. As she disappears behind the library wall, I hear her laugh.
I’m laughing too, when the dock door swings open behind me. My smile withers the second I turn. It’s Gretchen, but I’ve never seen her like this, so pale and drawn I can only think she’s sick. Or gotten a phone call with terrible news.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, crouching to collect the remaining books.
“Is your sister still in the lot?”
I glance out, but the car is gone. “No. Why?”
She lifts a hand, and her fingers are shaking. “Come inside. Leave those.”
“What’s wrong?” I repeat, feeling itchy and strange. She’s scared, and it’s freaking me out because I’ve never seen her look anything other than happy.
“We found—” She stops herself and presses her lips together like she’s lost the words. Or doesn’t want them to come out. “Just come inside, Spencer.”
I drop the books and follow her in. The door shuts behind us with a soft whump, and then we’re stuck in that tiny room between the dock and the library. I take a breath that smells like cardboard and musty books.
Gretchen stays in front of me when she opens the door to the stacks. She’s blocking most of my view, but the lights are on now. There are whispers in the aisles. The air feels heavy. Wrong. I swallow and my throat clicks. Clicks again.
Gretchen isn’t moving and doesn’t turn to face me when she speaks.
“Stay behind me, do you understand?”
It isn’t a question. I hear sirens in the distance, and they go silent close to the building. The last time I saw a police car here, I was sitting on the roof, but this isn’t like that. My gut tells me this is much worse.
“Do you understand?” she repeats. “Right behind me.”
“Yeah,” I say, and my heart flies like I’m running suicide drills on the ice.
How long was I outside with Mallory? It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes. What could happen in ten minutes?
Gretchen steps into the library, turning right to follow the back wall toward the circulation desk. I follow her, looking around. Trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
More whispering draws my gaze down one of the aisles. There’s something big on the floor, between the 840s and the 920s. A couple of staff members are standing over it, and it isn’t a pile of books.
I see a sweep of fabric and a tangle of long blond hair. Terrible pieces come together in an answer. It’s a person. There’s a person—a girl—crumpled on the floor between two shelves. She’s facing away from me, arm bent awkwardly behind her back.
She is perfectly, horribly still.
My heart climbs with every beat, until I feel it in the back of my throat.
“Spencer.”
I startle at Gretchen’s voice, hurrying to catch up. I don’t let myself look again, but it’s too late. The image of the dead woman is burned into my mind.
Mallory
Sunday, November 12, 10:08 a.m.
This is how I know something happened. They don’t unlock the doors at 10:00. By the time I make it from the dock area to the front of the library, two fire trucks are parked at the curb. The firefighters hop out and I hang back, hoping it’s a false alarm. It’s an old building. Fire alarms can be weird. But then four staff members spill out, including Spencer.
All four look distraught talking to the firefighters. Ten minutes ago, Spencer was outside laughing with me. Now his dark skin is the color of a February sky. This isn’t a false alarm. Something bad happened inside.
Two staff members lead the firemen in. When the ambulance comes, I expect the paramedics to rush, but they don’t. They emerge slowly, opening the back doors and easing out the gurney.
My shoulders hitch.
If someone was hurt, they would hurry. Someone would go in to check. I’ve seen enough squad runs in my neighborhood to know.
My mind is buzzy when a familiar staff member approaches me. She introduces herself as Gretchen and tells me the library is closed for some reason I don’t catch.
I shake my head. “I’m sorry. Can you repeat that?”
She nods, but then swallows hard like she’s got to brace herself to say it again.
The word she uses is emergency, but I think she means someone died. I can’t be sure, but the thought comes with a terrible stab of certainty. That’s why they need the gurney, but they don’t need to rush. That’s why the library is closed. Someone died inside.
We both go quiet. The world does not change. Traffic lights switch. Birds chirp. Everyday life continues, bobbling along the film of this awful scene.
Gretchen smiles. “Keep an eye on our website or social media pages for when we plan to reopen.”
“I’ll check. I hope everything’s okay.” The first bit is a lie. I can’t check. I don’t have a phone, and I won’t have access to the internet unless I go back to Lana’s, which I can’t do in the middle of the day.
Now what? Gretchen slips to the other side of the stairs to meet with other alarmed-looking patrons. I linger on the steps, trying to think. After finishing my timed paper, I was planning to register for the SAT. Or at least start studying some of the vocabulary. The library was the beginning and end of my plans for today.
A police cruiser pulls up to the curb without flashing lights, and my shoulders sag with guilt. Someone walked into the library alive, and now they’re not. This feels so much bigger than my school assignments.
Except that these assignments are the best way to keep Mom and me safe. With good grades and test scores, I might get into a fast-track college program. Maybe I could get a job. With us both working, we could afford an apartment on our own. She wouldn’t need Charlie.
“Hey.”
I whirl around, but it’s not an officer or a fireman. It’s Spencer. He’s taller up close like this, without the desk between us. He tries a smile, but it doesn’t quite land.
“Are you okay to get home?” he asks me.
“I…”
He’s caught me off guard, and my heart trips over its own beat. I’m still looking at the ambulance parked at the curb. The people whispering near the library entrance.
“I could take you.”
I startle. “What?”
“We’d have to walk to my house first. To get a car.”
His grin works this time, revealing perfect and expensive-looking white teeth. Spencer is attractive in a way that makes me think of tropical islands and kaleidoscopes. That last part must be about his eyes, which shift between green and gray and back again. It’s not something I should notice. I have zero time for this kind of nonsense right now.
“I’m sorry. I have to go.”
“You don’t need a ride?”
“A ride?”
“A ride home.”
My stomach binds up. I hitch my bag higher on my shoulder. “No. I’m good.”
He nods, face wan. “We’ll be open tomorrow I think. If you’re coming.”
“Okay.”
&nbs
p; “So I’ll see you around? I’ll be here after school. At four.”
I can’t tell if he wants me to have specifics or if he wants to fill the silence. The latter would make more sense. If we’re talking about nothing, maybe we can stop thinking about the awful thing that happened here. An awful thing he might have seen.
Part of me wants ask him. Or make him forget. But I don’t even know this guy. How would I help?
I sigh. “I really have to go.”
“Sure. Of course.”
There’s nothing else to say. I want to turn, need to turn, but I can’t. I’m staring at the lights behind him. Wondering what he saw. Feeling like I shouldn’t leave him.
“You saw something, didn’t you?”
I direct the question to my shoelaces, but when I meet his eyes, all the hard angles in his face go soft. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” he breathes. “Me too.”
I feel a pull to him in that moment, a connection. There’s something so close, so personal about the space between us now. But I can’t trust those connections. Spencer seems nice, but Charlie seemed nice too. I’ve learned the hard way not to trust how anything seems.
• • •
The Mom issue is solved by Sunday updates. Charlie works two Sundays every month to run system updates while school isn’t in session. Which is exactly when I decide to pay her a visit.
I take a bus, reluctant to spend the money, but eager to shave fifteen blocks off my walk. I still check for Charlie’s car in the parking lot, but once I confirm he’s gone, I take the stairs two at a time, my heart dancing at the sign of our rusty door knocker.
Mom is surprised to see me on her stoop at 12:30 on a Sunday afternoon. She’s wearing a wrinkled shirt, and her hair is limp and greasy, but her belly… Is it already rounder?
I touch her stomach in the open doorway and smile. “Baby’s growing.”
She smiles back, but her face pinches. “We should call Charlie if you want to stay. He said we needed to—”
“I’m not staying.” My chest clenches. It’s hard to see her like this, small and quiet and afraid. Before Charlie, she was different. We rode our bikes and cooked hot dogs on grills in Fenimore Park. Before Charlie, my mom was alive.
She’s always been guy crazy, and there’d been a few steady boyfriends over the years, but none of them stuck. She sometimes cried, saying she was easy to leave. Until Charlie. Charlie got his claws in fast. Looking at her now reminds me that those claws are in deep.
I smile, trying to soothe her. “How have you been?”
Her eyes fill with tears. “I’m worried about you. I don’t know what to do. You call from Lana’s, but then you email that you might stay with another friend. You’ve been so vague.”
She’s right, and it’s not unintentional. “I’ve been at Lana’s. Her mom doesn’t mind.”
“Maria has her own troubles. You can’t stay there forever.”
“It’s not forever. I’m staying with another girlfriend tonight,” I lie. “Hey, I’m doing great in my new school. I’m already a week ahead on all the work.”
She sniffs. “Charlie is so angry about that. Said I let you talk me into dropping—”
I flinch and grab for her hands. “Can we—let’s talk about you, okay?”
Because I don’t want to hear about him. I know what Charlie wants. He wants my mom under his thumb, and he wants me to come crawling back to tell him how right he is. I’m sure he wants us both on a very short leash, and if he doesn’t get it, I don’t know what he’ll do.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, because she hasn’t answered.
“Better. I’m able to eat a little at supper. He’s been bringing soup. I thought I could eat a sandwich, but he says lunch meat is bad for the baby.”
I punch a cheery voice right through my bitterness. “Soup is great!”
Mom isn’t fooled by my bright tone. She sighs and walks farther inside, where she sits heavily on the couch.
“I don’t know what to do,” she says, voice cracking. “I love you, Mallory. I hate that you’re gone. I worry. All the time.”
I rush to her side when she sniffs. Pull some tissue from a roll of toilet paper on the end table. Probably not the first time she’s cried since I left, I think with a guilty twinge.
“It’s okay,” I say. “There have been good things about this break. I’m already starting to study for the SAT. I bet I can start community college this summer. And I can get a job.”
“I know he’s got his issues,” she says, ignoring me. “He’s hardheaded.”
My smile stretches tight. I can’t keep this up much longer. “It’s beyond hardheaded.”
“You never make it easy on him to be the head of this house.”
“Why does he need to be the head? Why do you put up with this, Mom?”
“You don’t understand because you’re young,” she says. “He’s been very sweet, honestly. He even apologized for getting so upset. He’s worried about you too.”
I don’t snort, but almost, and she sees it. I sigh. “The man said I’d come crawling back and that he wouldn’t be so nice then. He hates me, Mom.”
“I’m sure he didn’t say it like that. And he doesn’t hate you. Why do you insist on villainizing him no matter what he does for us?”
Villainizing. I step back abruptly because that is not something my mom says. That is a word Charlie would use.
I feel like I can’t get any air, like the room is getting smaller. Mom is still talking, but I can’t hear her because I’m too busy imagining him pulling strings attached to her jaw. She’s sitting here spouting all the lines he’s fed her. He’s doing this, and he’s not even here.
“I need some answers,” she says. “When are you planning to come home?”
“I think we should wait until the baby comes. You’re feeling better, and I’m doing great. When the baby comes, we’ll talk. We’ll work it out.”
“That’s in January!”
“It could happen sooner.”
“You were five days late,” Mom says. “Before your Nana died, she told me I was two and a half weeks late. Halston babies come late, and she will too.”
She. The word is a sharp hook at the base of my throat.
My mom flushes, and her eyes go bright with mischief. “I’m not gaining enough weight, so the doctor took a peek yesterday,” she whispers. “Ultrasound. It was supposed to be a surprise, but I…wanted to know.”
My chest fills with emotion so light and bright I’m sure I’ll float away on it. “It’s a girl. I’m having a sister.”
Her laugh is unexpected and warm. She almost immediately shakes it off, eyes flitting at the door.
“Don’t tell Charlie. He said it wasn’t right to know. That it steals the joy.”
Her words have the effect of a bucket of ice water. “I won’t be here to tell him.”
It wouldn’t matter if I was here. If I could, I would hide this from him forever, because suddenly, this baby isn’t a helpless, faceless thing. She’s a girl. My sister.
And Charlie will treat her exactly like he treats the two of us.
A shudder rolls up my spine as I imagine the doctor passing a squirming pink bundle into Charlie’s hands. My stomach rolls so hard, I think I might be sick.
I stand quickly. “I really should go. We’ll figure this out, okay?”
“Take your phone. Please. I have to know you’re safe. One email a day isn’t enough.”
We find a compromise. I take my phone and tell her I’ll call her some, but I’ll only power it on once a day. I tell her it’s so I won’t be distracted or tempted to text friends, but it’s really so Charlie can’t track me. He’ll definitely try, so I can’t turn on my phone anywhere near Lana’s or the library.
I hug my mom b
efore I go, pressing my forehead to her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Do you think so?” she asks.
For the first time in a while, I do. I can feel her belly between us, round and firm—a timer ticking down to when my mother won’t be sick and exhausted. She’ll be my mom again.
And I’ll get her to leave him for good.
Spencer
Sunday, November 12, 4:18 p.m.
It’s probably best that Mallory didn’t take me up on that ride because I wasn’t allowed to leave for two hours. Mom had to come because a parent has to be present for a minor to be questioned by the police. I should have remembered that from my climbing adventure.
Mom shows up in a suit with a firm handshake for the officers and a gentle hand for my shoulder.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“Fine. Really. I didn’t see anything.”
“What do you think happened? A heart attack?” Mom asks the police, absently stroking my shoulder.
Her pale hair is pulled into a neat knot at the nape of her neck. I have no idea how she keeps it fastened because you can’t see anything other than carefully coiled hair.
They’re talking in low voices, but I pick up a few words. Autopsy. Pending. Paraphernalia. Mom relaxes, but her frown deepens.
Then it’s my turn. Officer Schooley asks all the general questions. When did I arrive? Where did I walk? Did I hear anything, see anything, notice anything? I tell him about the footsteps I thought I heard, and he jots that down, but otherwise I have nothing for him. I wish I did, but he thanks me for my time and turns away.
So that’s it? I just leave with all this happening here?
Mom squeezes my arm. “Head on to the Audi. I’ll be there in a minute.”
I nod, but linger on the steps and watch her talking to him, concern creasing the corners of her eyes. Once in a blue moon, the creases will appear between her brows, but the Botox fairy takes those away every three months.
Up on the second floor, the administration staff must be in. I can see someone standing at the window, a vague smear of shadow near the curtain. It makes sense, I guess. If someone dies at a library, it seems reasonable to call in the cavalry.
What You Hide Page 5