The Unstruck Sound

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Unlike most of her friends, Saj didn't have a phone, a tablet, or even a laptop. Hasneem always had the latest thing, like the new iPhone that her parents brought her when they were in town for the funeral. She was happy to share, but Saj preferred to use the old desktop computers in the library when she had a research project or needed to type an assignment.

She went there right after school and found middle school boys grumbling as she walked to the door.

"The library's closed. There's some dumb meeting in there," a sixth-grade boy told her.

She knocked on the door. Ms. Birney opened it.

"The library is closed, even for you. There's a YOLE meeting today." Ms. Birney liked to wear sweeping robes and skirts that looked like they were made from Mexican blankets. She had dreadlocks with silver rings and purple ribbons woven in them. She didn't have her purple contact lenses in today, but her hazel eyes sparkled at Saj.

"I need to ask you a question," Saj said.

"Just one questions, Saj." She stepped aside to let Saj in. A couple of the boys who were waiting for Ms. Birney to let them in, too, protested. "No fair!"

Saj and Ms. Birney ignored them.

"The meeting starts in ten minutes," Ms. Birney said. She folded her arms and leaned against one of the library tables.

"You know how at the funeral I asked you if you knew Mr. Williams's son?" Ms. Birney's smile dropped away.

"Yes."

"Okay, well, yesterday, Jane Aimee fired Mr. Williams."

"What do you mean, fired Mr. Williams? Mr. Williams has been here longer than I have."

Mrs. Schneckenberger came in the library. She, too, looked tired, but she had a smile for Saj.

"Hello, Sajidah. I'm afraid the library will be closed today."

"I was just telling her that. Saj, can you go back to the stacks for a quick minute and bring me that book we were talking about? The spine label will have J 292.3923 on it. She'll just be a minute," Ms. Birney told Mrs. Schneckenberger, who settled herself at the conference table at the center of the library. Ms. Birney had taught Saj how to re-shelve books. She even knew how to scan books that were in the book drop and catalog new books that came in. When she was a senior, she looked forward to being a library helper for one class period a day. She went to the non-fiction section and looked for the call number Ms. Birney had given her.

There were two rows of books with that number. Saj was puzzled. She remembered from her primary school days, when Ms. Birney had made them memorize the Dewey Decimal System, that the 200s were religions. She realized that all the 292.39s were about Buddhism. Randomly she pulled one out and opened it.

It was a glossy photo book with color pictures of a country called Tibet. It showed page after page of people who looked just like the monks who had been chanting at Mr. Montegut's funeral. She saw the little metal things they had been spinning. They were called prayer wheels. Monks and even regular people used them as they said mantras. Saj scanned through a paragraph on the importance of the mantra "om mani padme hum." Saj turned the page. She was staring at a picture that must have been taken the same place she had seen when she'd passed out in the cemetery. Her ears buzzed, and her hands felt cold.

The words "sky burial" were on the top of the page. One picture showed vultures circling overhead. Another picture was of a group of vultures fighting over a corpse. There was another picture of monks, young and old, "practicing in the charnel grounds," the caption read. The bright brilliant sky and the mountain top in the pictures were identical to her dream.