According to Buzz, who was standing in front of them, their destination, Egg Rock, was exactly one-eighth mile from shore. “A long or short distance, depending on how strong a swimmer you are.”
Clay was not a very strong swimmer. He had never been given a single swimming lesson, not by his brother (who swam even less well than he threw) or his parents (who believed Clay should teach himself). Clay could float, but forward motion was a challenge.
Still, it wasn’t the prospect of the swim itself that was making him nervous; it was the guy standing on the rock, waving at them. Flint. Supposedly, Flint was a certified lifeguard and was there to ensure that nobody drowned, but based on prior experience, Clay had his doubts about how helpful Flint would be in an emergency.
“Ready, Worms?” asked Buzz. “Go for it. And may the Force be with you.”
Clay hung back and went last. It wasn’t required, but everyone else had entered the lake via the rope swing, and Clay felt like he had to do so as well. He swung back and forth over the water a few times—to get the hang of it, he told himself—before letting go. The rope dropped him about twelve feet above the water, and he made a big splash as he plunged in feet-first. He was expecting the bottom to be sandy like the ocean; instead, it was squishy and slimy. Gross, in other words. He pushed himself up as fast as he could.
Once he surfaced, he tried to break into a proper crawl stroke, but he had trouble breathing and he kept doing a frog kick rather than keeping his legs straight. After a couple of minutes of flailing around, he settled into a slow and awkward side-stroke. It was a little embarrassing—an old-lady style of swimming—but he tried not to think about what he looked like.
All he had to do was swim to the rock and back.
Ahead, he could hear the first swimmer getting to the rock. It was Kwan, who cheered loudly for himself after climbing to the top. Typical, Clay thought. Then—splash!—Kwan jumped back in.
“Took you long enough.”
Clay was dizzy and breathing hard by the time he reached Egg Rock. Flint’s smirking face stared down at him from behind a pair of dark sunglasses.
“You going to come up or what, Worm?”
Clay looked for a place to climb up, but the rock was covered with moss on all sides. An orange kayak bobbed nearby, tethered from above.
“What’s the problem? Can’t find a good spot?”
Flint held out his hand to pull Clay out of the water… then yanked his hand away as Clay reached for it. Luckily, Clay was prepared, and he managed to have his mouth closed when he fell back in. If that was all Flint had planned for him, Clay thought, he could handle it.
He swam all the way around the rock until he found a crevice that was relatively moss-free. Mercifully, Flint let him climb up in peace.
The older boy was now lying on a towel that he had managed to transport, dry, across the lake. In his hand was a paperback book with a bright blue cover, also perfectly dry. He looked like he was on vacation, not lifeguard duty. He touched his finger to his sunglasses in mock salute.
“Hate to be the one to tell you this, but maybe you shouldn’t try out for the Olympic swim team.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Clay muttered.
Anxious to get off the rock as fast as possible, Clay waved toward the shore. Buzz gave him a thumbs-up and motioned for him to swim back.
During his time in the water, the younger girls’ cabin had joined the boys on the dock. Clay could see Leira, in her trademark hat and suspenders, standing next to the rope swing. When she saw him looking at her, she turned around.
Flint laughed. “Somebody mad at you?”
Clay was inclined to get back into the water without responding, but instead he looked squarely at Flint. “What do you have against me? What did I do?”
“Who says you did anything?” said Flint. “Maybe I just don’t like you.”
“This is what I don’t understand,” said Clay, ready to jump if Flint took a swing at him or threatened him in any way. “Why go through so much hassle just to mess with me?”
“What hassle?”
“That fire thing, for starters. When you made it look like the bathroom caught on fire. What did you use? A projector? A mirror? That kind of magic takes a lot of work.”
Clay knew what he was talking about. When he was younger, he and his brother would go to magic shows together, with the express purpose of figuring out how magicians created their illusions. Occasionally, they themselves tried to make things levitate or disappear with the aid of mirrors, not often very successfully.
“And where am I going to get a mirror that size around here?” Flint scoffed.
“But you admit you faked it.”
“No.”
“So what are you saying? It was a real fire that just vanished?”
“If you knew anything about magic, you wouldn’t be asking that,” Flint snarled, standing up.
“Fine. I won’t ask.… What about the note? Why do you want me to stay away from her?”
“Who?”
“You know who. The girl in the library.”
Flint’s nostrils flared. “She’s mine.”
“Why? Did you meet her? Did you talk to her?”
“I don’t need to. I saw her.”
He glared at Clay.
From the shore came a shrill whistle.
“Get going, Clay!” shouted Buzz through a bullhorn.
“You heard him,” said Flint. “Get going.”
He took a step toward Clay. His eyes were wild.
Clay meant to stand his ground, but in his anxiety he took an involuntary step backward and slipped on the moss.
Later he would rehearse the fall in his mind, trying to determine whether it had been an accident or whether Flint had tripped him somehow. At the moment, however, the only thing Clay was conscious of was the pain in his ankle and the sound of his skull slamming against rock.
Then…
… blackness…
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
NURSE CORA
… clink… clank…
… plink… plunk… PLONK…
… cling… clang… cling…
… ding… ding… ding…
… DONG…
… ping…
At first, Clay thought it was his alarm clock, waking him for school. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the sound he was hearing was not his alarm; it was the sound of hundreds of bells and chimes of many sizes and shapes. They hung from the ceiling above him alongside crystals and dream catchers and amulets of all sorts, alternately refracting rainbows and casting shadows around the room.
Somewhere out of sight, a bird shrieked repeatedly—Caw… Caw… Caw…—adding another urgent note to the cacophony.
“Good, you’re awake. That means you’re not dead… yet.” A woman looked down at him. She had a face like a shrunken apple, but not unpleasant.
Clay sat up to get a better look. Immediately, he became aware of pain in the back of his head.
“I’m Nurse Cora.”
“Hi,” Clay said, and started coughing.
Nurse Cora, Clay saw, was very short. Her standing height was approximately the same as his sitting. Beautiful in a munchkin-like way, she had long, thick silver hair that reached nearly to the floor and wrapped around her like a shiny coat. Had she been just a little bit smaller, you might have put her in a box and given her to a child to play with.
Next to her was a tall bamboo birdcage that was home to a parakeet whose shrill shrieks Clay deduced he had been hearing.
“My head hurts,” said Clay.
“I’m sorry, you’ll have to speak up,” said Nurse Cora. “I’m deaf in one ear.”
Clay thought she must be deaf in the other ear as well; there was no way she would be able to tolerate the noise of the bells and the bird otherwise.
“I said, my head hurts.”
“There would be something wrong if it didn’t,” said the nurse matter-of-factly. “You slammed it ag
ainst a rock and then you almost drowned.”
“Drowned?”
“Flint fished you out. Wasn’t too happy about it, either, I gather.”
Yeah, I’m sure he wasn’t, thought Clay.
“Don’t worry—you’re going to be fine… probably. Sometimes the effects of an injury like yours are delayed. There is always the possibility of a sudden cerebral hemorrhage. Or brain damage, of course,” she added sweetly. “Let me get you something to make you feel better.”
She walked over to a small table that served as a kind of kitchen with a Bunsen burner and a toaster oven, and she poured from a pitcher of clear liquid with mint leaves and slices of cucumber. Behind her, vials of oils and unguents and jars of herbs filled the shelves alongside many obscure and out-of-date-looking medical textbooks seemingly in every language but English.
“Is that some sort of medicine?”
“The best kind. Water.”
Clay sipped. The water was refreshing, he had to admit. The mint counteracted the sulfur taste of the island’s water. It didn’t make his head feel any better, however.
“How long have I been here?” He half expected her to say days or even weeks.
“Just about an hour… Well, you seem well enough for me to leave you for a moment. Buzz will want to know right away that you’ve woken up.”
“Um, okay. But could I not have visitors for a while? I think I want to rest.”
The nurse studied him. “Very well. But I don’t want you going back to sleep—it could be dangerous. I’ll be back soon.”
The bells tinkled as she left.
Clay got out of bed as soon as the door closed behind her. He was still in his damp bathing suit, but thankfully somebody had brought a pile of clothes for him. It was sitting on a chair beside the bed, next to a stack of books. He waited a moment for his dizziness to subside, then dressed as quickly as he could.
He’d been waiting for days for a chance to revisit the library. This was an opportunity he could not pass up.
In his hurry, Clay bumped into someone as soon as he exited the infirmary.
“Sorry!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t—oh, it’s you!”
Leira looked him up and down from under the brim of her hat. “So you’re okay? I heard you were unconscious, maybe even in a coma.”
“Disappointed?”
“A little,” Leira admitted. “I thought you would be lying on a stone slab, all bandaged up like a mummy. But I guess this way is better. Now you can apologize to me for what a jerk you were. I wouldn’t want you to go to your grave feeling guilty about it.”
Clay smiled. “Is that your way of saying you were worried about me?”
Leira smiled back. “Maybe.”
“Okay, I apologize,” said Clay. “I’m sorry I said that stuff. Even though I didn’t think you were listening—I probably shouldn’t have said it anyway. I don’t think you’re annoying; I think you’re cool. Well, sometimes annoying, but still—”
“So you won’t mind if I steal your wallet again?”
“Well—”
“Check your pocket.”
He patted his pocket. Sure enough, his wallet was missing again. “Aargh. You are so annoying! When did you take it?”
She grinned. “Never let a pickpocket bump into you if you can help it.”
“I’ll remember that.… Now give me my wallet back.”
“First tell me where you were going when I bumped into you.”
“I wasn’t going anywhere, just… getting some fresh air.”
Leira laughed. “You are the worst actor in the world.”
“Okay, I was going back to my cabin.”
She gave him a look. “You’d better do better than that if you want your wallet back.”
Clay weighed his options. “Fine. Promise not to tell?”
“No. I don’t make promises.”
“It doesn’t matter—you won’t tell anyway. Thieves’ honor, or whatever.”
“That only applies if you’re a thief, too.”
“You want me to tell you or not?!”
Clay looked around to make sure they were still unobserved, and then he told her briefly about his llama running away from him and his subsequent discovery of the library. He left out the minor detail of seeing a girl who might or might not have been a ghost.
“So you crossed the Wall of Trust and you didn’t get caught?” She whistled, impressed.
Clay nodded. “And now I want to see if there’s a way into the library.”
“You mean you want to see if the ghost girl is real.”
Clay coughed in surprise. “What? How do you know?”
“That’s what happened to everybody else who went up there, isn’t it?”
“Well, you’re not going with me,” said Clay, peeved. “We’re more likely to get caught if there’s two of us.”
“Who says I want to go? I’d much rather get credit for telling on you.”
Clay gritted his teeth. “You wouldn’t!”
Leira rolled her eyes. “Of course not. I guess I’m just not all that interested in seeing a bunch of books.”
“Right. I remember. Your sister’s the bookworm, not you.”
Leira wrinkled her face in confusion. “What sister? I don’t have a sister.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t. I’m the one who should know, aren’t I?”
“When we were weeding, I was talking about my brother, and you said your sister was a bookworm.”
Leira laughed. “Okay. Whatever you say. Maybe hitting your head really affected you after all. Because you are definitely imagining things.”
Clay shook his head. He wasn’t imagining anything. He knew—absolutely, positively—that Leira had mentioned a sister. Which meant that either she was lying then or she was lying now. But why would someone lie about a thing like that? Maybe Leira just really hated her sibling?
“Now listen to me,” said Leira. “You got lucky last time. If you don’t want to get caught before you go three feet, then you better go the back way, by that old barn.”
“What old barn?”
Leira shook her head in disgust. “How were you going to get there if I didn’t help you? Did you have any kind of plan at all?”
“Just tell me where to go,” said Clay, irritated. “And by the way, what happened to giving me back my wallet?”
Leira giggled, and handed him his wallet. “You are so gullible. It wasn’t even in your pants before. I only have it because I found it outside your cabin door.”
After giving him directions to the library, Leira told Clay to wait one minute before leaving—if anybody was nearby, she’d warn him—and she slipped out the door.
That was when he noticed that his wallet, still in his hand, felt a little stiffer than he remembered. Curious, he looked inside. In the hidden compartment, he found a laminated card.
PRICE PUBLIC LIBRARY
it said in elegant black letters over a drawing of the library tower. His name was typed below.
It was a library card.
Somebody wanted him to go back to the U-BRARY.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN, PART 2
THE BACK WAY
To get to the library via the “back way,” Clay had to hike up the trail that had first brought him to Earth Ranch. Then he was to follow the ridge around the camp, making a circle around the ruins.
From the ridge, he could see Pablo and Jonah standing on ladders in the banana grove. They were cutting off clumps of bananas and tossing them down to Kwan.* Clay experienced a pang of guilt; he should be helping. Of course, he had almost drowned today. Shouldn’t he get a get-out-of-banana-picking-free pass? He kept going.
After a few minutes, the trail dipped down to a small creek and passed through a forest of ferns so tall, Clay could walk under them without crouching. The vog was dense here, and Clay had trouble seeing where he was going. Feathery fern fronds tickled his face, and he slipped a few times in the mud
.
At first he thought it was just the ferns making him jumpy, but soon he became convinced that he was being watched.
And/or followed.
“Leira, I know you’re out there,” he said loudly.
There was no answer.
“C’mon. Just walk with me. This is stupid.”
Still no answer. Maybe it wasn’t Leira. Maybe it was Flint, who wanted to keep Clay from seeing the ghost girl again. But then why wait—why not accost Clay now? He kept hiking.
The real question was how the library card had made its way into his wallet. If Leira was telling the truth and she’d really found his wallet lying outside his cabin, then anybody might have slipped the card in. But who? And why?
Perhaps the ghost girl had escaped the library, planted the card in his wallet, and was now escorting him back to her cold stone tower home? Clay glanced around for a second, as if she might float by or appear out of thin air. Then he laughed at himself for even entertaining the possibility.
Leira had said it should take about twenty minutes to reach the barn, but he had now been hiking for almost an hour. He was beginning to think he might have taken a wrong turn, when he saw a gray wooden structure with a moss-covered roof. According to Leira, the barn was the oldest building on the island, and indeed it appeared to be on the verge of collapse. That is, if the surrounding jungle didn’t overtake it first.
As he drew closer, Clay was startled by the sound of barks coming from inside the barn—startled and scared, because the barn’s door was hanging off its hinges. Whatever stray dog lurked inside could jump out at any second. The barking grew louder, but the dog never appeared. Clay hurried past, not taking his eyes off the barn door.
From there Clay pushed his way through a thicket of bushes, just as Leira had instructed, and he came right up on the back of the U-BRARY.
For a second time, the bees did not bother him. They buzzed around the library tower without paying him any notice. Clay was beginning to think that Pablo had exaggerated their vigilance. Either that or they had decided to let Clay enter their domain unmolested. Was it possible they wanted him to visit the library? The thought was reassuring and unnerving at the same time.