The Key to Anchor Lake ✓

29 : Blaire

B L A I R E

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Breaking news: the library finally has a copy of The Key to Anchor Lake.

I woke up to a text this morning – okay, this afternoon actually, but I won't feel ashamed for the fact that I'm finally sleeping longer and better – from an unknown number that read:

Blaire Bloxham:

A book on your wishlist, The Key to Anchor Lake by Mary S Nesbitt, has become available at the Anchor Lake Library. You have 48 hours to check it out before it moves on to the next person in the queue. Happy reading!

- Regina Hart, Librarian

I have never leapt out of bed and got changed out of my pyjamas as I did the moment I read that message, but my plan to race into town was thwarted when Elizabeth poked her head out of the kitchen door as I thundered down the stairs, and asked what I wanted for lunch.

The little voice in the back of my head whispered, Your relationship with Elizabeth is a lot more important than a book, which will still be there in an hour or forty-seven. So I slowed my rush and pulled up a seat at the kitchen table, and twenty minutes later, I'm still here.

"Any plans for today?" Elizabeth asks as she passes me a plate with a chicken sandwich and a tipped-out packet of crisps. Most of the fruit has gone, but there's a handful of grapes left. I pluck them off their vine and pop them into my mouth one at a time.

"Just going to town," I say.

"Seeing your friends?"

I nod. It's a lie, but I can't bring myself to tell Elizabeth what I'm really off to do, because she's got a problem with me reading the book. Sure, I'd much rather be reading her copy, with whatever notes she's scribbled into it for whatever reason, but for now, this will have to do. I have to be able to read it for myself – there has to be something missing. Something the others haven't seen.

"What about you?" I ask, like she's going to be anywhere but upstairs. I teeter on the cusp of a quip about her secret attic, and I hold it back. It doesn't seem like a good idea.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," she says. As far as I know, that means she'll be painting. But I've never seen behind that door; for all I know, the paint is a decoy and she actually spends all day watching birds out of the window, or she's got a captive up there.

Oh my god, what if Mary's in the attic?

Sometimes I wish the voice inside my head would get a grip and shut up.

I eat as quickly as I can, guzzling down my sandwich and a banana too fast and giving myself indigestion, and I'm out of the door the moment Elizabeth's finished. Today's not the day for walking; I grab the bike and speed down the road as fast as I can, and there's a sheen of sweat on my forehead by the time I stumble off the bike outside the library.

"Good morning, Blaire!" calls Regina's sunny voice the moment I burst through the doors without an ounce of cool.

"Hi. I got a text?"

"Ah, yes. I thought you'd be down fairly soon." She dawdles over to her desk and sifts through a stack of books beside her computer, and then I see it. That plain white cover and the stark black text, the lack of a description to explain the book or the author.

Finally.

"Do I need to do anything?"

"Just sign your name here for me." She hands over a clipboard, where she's already filled out the title and author and date. "We're not very high tech here, I'm afraid. Bit of an analogue world in here."