Band of Misfits

Adventures Between Dusty Bookshelves

i.

There was a collective gasp in the librarians' office as Anita the Reference Librarian held the suggestions box upside-down and a couple dozen paper slips poured out.

"We have another one!" screeched Emilie, and plunged her hand into the pile.

From her desk in the corner, Cress, wearing a name tag pinning her as another reference librarian, craned her neck to try to see what was going on.

With a dramatic flourish, Emilie pulled something out of the mound of book suggestions and complaints, and clutched in her fingers was –

A periwinkle paper heart.

"IT'S MINE!"

There was a blur of blue hair across the room and before anyone could blink, Emilie was on the floor and Iko was in possession of the blue heart. She scanned the message scribbled across the paper, and a dreamy smile came across her lips. "How sweet!"

Anita put her hands on her hips irritably. "And what makes you think it was meant for you?"

Iko pressed the heart to her chest and closed her eyes. "Blue."

"What?"

"It's blue. Obviously meant for me." She tossed her head for emphasis and a mass of braids hit Anita across the face.

"What does it say?" trilled Peony, a sweet little thing. Iko angled the paper at her, and she actually swooned. "Oh, don't you get it? Whoever wrote this wanted to get a message to me without anyone knowing. I bet I even know who it is." She stretched out her fingers for the heart.

"Let me see," Anita snapped, starting forward. "I doubt it's for either of you –"

Iko backed away from them, hackles rising – and promptly tripped over Emilie and flattened her, who had been trying to get up off the floor. The blue heart fluttered through the air, was snatched by Peony, who was practically tackled by Anita, who made a wild grab for the heart and missed, and all four of them ended up in a hissing, flailing mass of limbs on the floor.

Cress calmly hopped off the desk and plucked the blue paper heart off the floor. Ignoring Emilie's indignant shriek, she turned it toward the light so that she could read the message scribbled in black pen.

The reference librarian is super cute. Could you please write her name and number on a paper and leave it in my reserved copy of The Seven Stones?

ii.

"Look," said Scarlet, rubbing her forehead, "that doesn't help. If you can't tell me the name –"

"It has a blue cover!" protested the cargo ship boy, whose devil-may-care grin had been replaced with the frazzled look of someone studying for a very long, very important test ... and lost their history textbook. "How many of those could there be, really?"

Tempted to take the nearest blue book and smack it over his head, she sighed. "If you're too proud to ask your teacher what it's called, that's your problem."

He gave her a pleading look. "You're the only librarian who's been willing to help me. If you don't ... I'm doomed."

Scarlet twisted her mouth but didn't say anything, just turned her back and started down the nearest bookshelf passage.