Jonah decided he didn’t have time to stand there and argue. He whirled around and began pedaling back toward the library just as desperately as he’d been pedaling away from it.
Grown-ups can get kidnapped too, he thought. And she’s a little nutty, she’d probably trust anyone who pretended to believe her crazy theories…. Her theories are just craziness, aren’t they?
Jonah couldn’t think about that right now. He focused on trying to pedal faster. By the time he reached the library, his legs were aching and he was gasping for air. He dropped his bike on the sidewalk and slipped in the door just ahead of a mother pushing a baby stroller and holding a toddler’s hand and taking infuriatingly slow steps, with a play-by-play commentary: “That’s right, you push the button for the automatic door opener and then the door will open, and…”
Jonah dashed through the lobby, past the check-out desk.
“Young man! No running in the library!”
It was a librarian, one of the women his mom always said hello to when she stopped in. Jonah thought maybe this librarian had been in charge of story hour when he and Katherine were preschoolers.
“I just—the conference room—men fighting—danger—”
That was all Jonah could manage, with his lungs threatening to burst.
To her credit, the librarian stopped yelling and sprang into action.
“Show me,” she said.
She rushed along behind Jonah, practically running herself.
They dashed through the stacks, past the magazine section where Katherine had hidden before, past the nonfiction shelves with all the thick books about taxes. Then, finally, Jonah could see into the conference room and—
It was empty.
“Angela?” Jonah called.
He pushed his way into the conference room. Not only was the room empty, but all the chairs were lined up perfectly around the table. And the table was exactly centered in the room, as if it had never been knocked off-kilter by struggling men. The window was closed. The only sign that anything had happened here was a smudge on the glass wall—probably Jonah’s own fingerprints, smeared against the glass when he’d scrambled out a window.
“Just what did you think was going on in here?” the librarian asked. She had her eyebrows raised doubtfully.
Just then Jonah saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head to peer out the window, and there was Angela. She was walking briskly through the far end of the parking lot.
“That’s the woman!” Jonah exclaimed. “The one who was in danger—”
While Jonah was watching, Angela stepped into the cluster of pine trees on the other side of the parking lot. She turned and lifted her hand in a way that might have been a wave at Jonah. And then she just…vanished.
Jonah hadn’t known that it would look like that. He’d heard Katherine’s description of the janitor appearing and disappe#229; he’d heard Angela’s description of the plane doing the same thing. But he hadn’t understood how strange it would be, how it would set every nerve in his body on edge and make him question all sorts of basic tenets about how the world worked. Could gravity be tampered with too? Could…time?
Jonah blinked and stared and stammered, “But—but—” and then he at least had the sense to shut his mouth, because the librarian was looking at him oddly. Already his brain was trying to supply explanations for him— She just stepped behind a tree…. You just blinked and thought you saw something odd—the same kind of explanations he’d tried to use to account for Katherine’s story, for Angela’s. The kind of explanation anyone else, casually glancing out a window, would have accepted without a second thought. But his glance hadn’t been casual: he knew he hadn’t blinked, not while Angela was disappearing. He understood now what Angela had meant when she had said, “I know what I saw. I trust my own eyes.” The scene had been clear and distinct, and he really had seen Angela vanish into thin air.
“Where is this woman?” the librarian asked. “I don’t quite see—”
“She’s gone.”
The librarian narrowed her eyes at him and tilted her head suspiciously.
“So, what was this?” she asked. “A dare? Your audition for drama club? If so, I heartily recommend you for whatever part you’re trying out for, because you really had me convinced—you had me running through the library.”
“I wasn’t lying!” Jonah protested. “There really were two men in here fighting, and they seemed dangerous, and—”
The librarian tapped her chin, her eyes narrowing further.
“How did you see what was going on in this conference room before you ran in the front door?” she asked.
“Um, through the glass? From outside?” Jonah said, which did have a grain of truth to it. Still, his words came out sounding like a question.
“Someone did mention that they thought they heard a girl scream back here, but we thought it was just one of those computer games….” The librarian seemed to be talking mostly to herself. She reached out and grabbed Jonah’s arm. “Come with me. We’ll do a search through the library and you tell me if you see either of those men.”
Meekly, Jonah let himself be led back through the magazine section, past the row of computers, past the reference desk, through the little-kid section where the mother with the toddler was asking with exaggerated patience, “What will it be? Curious George or The Cat in the Hat?”
In the YA section, some kids from school were playing on the computers, and they pointed and giggled when they saw Jonah being paraded around, his arm trapped in the librarian’s grip.
“I don’t see either of the men now,” Jonah said, his face burning with shame. He just wanted to get out of the library, away from the librarian. He could see Chip and Katherine standing hesitantly by the front door, as if they weren’t sure if they needed to come and rescue him or not.
The librarian let go of his arm.