487 Jade Lane

Victoria

Chapter Six: I Find Passage Ways to Friendships, And Also to Possible Doom

Although initially Max had been against it, within ten minutes Gwen, Deanna, and I were parading the library. Thankfully, there weren't any corpses anywhere to great us when we entered, and I felt my pulse finally slowing down.

Regardless of their complaints, the guys had left the three of us all alone in the library. I had to hand it to Gwen. Nothing shames a guy more than being called sexist, and if that doesn't shame them, they're obviously too dense for it to register.

We all had our cellphones, and Gwen had retrieved the charger from Ronan's car, so I borrowed it to charge mine. I'd been quick to judge her, and I could tell she'd been quick to judge me as well.

I just don't prefer her at this moment. She seems really artificial and snobby, but she convinced Max to stay. And she also was fighting for the chance to stay and find her boyfriend. She had a way in her eyes that suggested that she loved him with all she had, and I could tell that she'd go on loving him forever. No matter what happened, she would maintain respect and affection.

We'd all gathered at a small clearing in the library. The library was large, with shelves that fell slightly short of an eleven foot tall ceiling, and the body of the room extended impressively with twenty by twenty feet.

There were four maroon covered chairs, and they gave the impression of being comfortable enough to fall asleep within the first few minutes of sitting down. To avoid this predicament, I sat on the edge of the seat, my elbows on my knees as we all sat around a coffee table, the bloodied copy of Scout's rendition of childhood innocence available for our eyes.

"So Brigid had the book with Geevar written in it," Deanna begins, chewing her lip in her teeth. I nodded and Gwen spoke up.

"It could be a name, or it could be code for something,"

"Well don't forget about her charm bracelet," I piped up. "There were three charms. A silver moon, a ruby sun, and a gold star,"

"First things first. We need to find another copy of To Kill A Mockingbird. I have a feeling there has to be another copy somewhere," Deanna muttered.

"I don't think it would hurt to search all the books though. I mean, perhaps that isn't the only book with a note in it?"

Gwen nodded. "Victoria has a point. But what if we spend all this time searching and this copy is the only one with a note?"

I shook my head. "That's a chance we have to take. No one would suspect a note being in a book, unless they opened one. There has to be another note about who's killing us, and why,"

"Then we need to start going through the books. Where should we start?" Deanna looked perplexed as Gwen stood up, looking around, trying to find a good starting point for this ill led expedition we were having.

I sighed. There were mountains of books. It would take hours to go through them all.

Deanna shook her head. "I don't know. But let's just start somewhere different and meet in the middle. Just ruffle through the pages, shaking the book upside down. Search for a name in the inside cover, and write it down on your phone somewhere. If you find any notes, bring both the book and the note forward,"

We dispersed, and I found myself in the realistic fiction section, poring through novels and poetry and all the likes. It made me a little sad, to be completely honest. I used to be an avid reader before I started dating Jesse. It wasn't his fault, it was just the timing. We'd started hanging out and then there'd been studying savagely for all my tests and bringing up all my grades, because I'd applied for this fancy college that I had to get into. And there was also the fact that Jesse didn't read much himself. He was more of a movie guy, which was fine with me.