Light as a Feather, Cold as Marble

Chapter 26

Red sky by night, sailor's delight.

Red sky by morning, a sailor takes warning.

The sky outside the St. Ignace public library lightened from the royal blue of late night to an odd shade of salmon as the sun inched over the treetops along the horizon. I remembered my mother telling me and Jennie about that little saying when we were little girls, brushing our teeth with foamy Wintergreen Ice dribbling down our chins, in the bathroom before bedtime. A red sky in the morning meant trouble ahead. Storms. It struck me as funny as I sat in a hard plastic chair near the window, savoring a few minutes of quiet before the day officially began, that my mother had chosen that bit of knowledge to share with us. She had lived her entire life in the Midwest. As far as I knew, she'd never been on any kind of boat other than the ferries at Disney World, and didn't know any sailors.

"What's up," Trey said in a voice still crusty with sleep, plunking down into the chair next to mine. From across the open layout of the library, I heard the ceasing of the thunk, thunk of books hitting the back of the red couch where we'd slept. The abrupt end of the noise was like the sweet relief of setting down a heavy bag after carrying it a long distance. I'd barely slept three hours because of the racket, and the corner of The Great Gilly Hopkins had hit me in the thigh hard enough to leave a bruise when I'd climbed off the sofa to walk around out of fear I'd wake up Trey with my restlessness. "Did you sleep at all?"

"A little," I said, not wanting him to know that my eyes still burned with tiredness. Sleepiness was hardly going to be an advantage that day, as we still weren't exactly sure what to do with Violet once we got her hands on her. But it was precisely for that reason—our unpreparedness—that I knew I would be incapable of lulling myself back to sleep once I found myself awake and staring at the wall earlier that morning.

"What time does this place open?" Trey asked.

I had already crept toward the front doors of the library since waking up to check the decaled numbers on the glass detailing the hours of operation. I had realized, as I had approached the frosty glass, that there was no reason to be paranoid that anyone would unexpectedly stumble upon us; the parking lot couldn't have been more desolate at dawn on a freezing winter's day. "Ten," I said. It was just a little past seven; we had some time to kill, and no destination in mind for where we'd go once the library did open. "It's a Saturday."

Conveniently, there was a small staff room at the library, one of the few areas in the building we hadn't explored the night before. Even with free reign of the place in the middle of the night, we'd still been deterred from venturing behind the counter and opening doors marked STAFF ONLY. But daylight (and hunger) emboldened us. We made a pot of coffee and found a box of instant oatmeal in one of the cabinets. Although there were fancy custard-style yogurts in the fridge and a magnificently shiny red apple on the counter, we didn't dare consume anything that someone would be sure to miss.

"This isn't exactly how I ever imagined spending a Saturday morning," Trey said, mixing Sweet & Low into his oatmeal, "But it's a heck of a lot better than Saturdays at the Northern Reserve Academy."

Just then, we both heard a loud rattling sound coming from outside of the staff kitchen area, and we snapped to attention, mid-chew, mid-breath. Was it possible that the librarians would come to work more than two hours before the library opened? We tiptoed over to the sink and set our mugs and bowls in it silently, and then crept over to the doorway of the kitchen.

"Down," Trey whispered. In unison, we dropped to our hands and knees to crawl behind the counter, assuming that someone had entered the library while we'd been carelessly joking around in the kitchen. We crawled behind the counter toward the library's front entrance and Trey stuck his head out to see if the coast was clear. Outside in the parking lot, a car engine revved as it started—hinting that perhaps we weren't in quite as much danger as we'd thought moments earlier. I leaned over Trey's shoulder to get a peek and we both relaxed as we saw a bright green Smart car pull out of the lot.