by Sarah Kuhn
I stop in my tracks, crossing my arms over my chest and cocking my head at him. “Why? I live here. I don’t need a souvenir of our visit. Is my hair too . . .” I brush away a reddish tendril that keeps flying in my face—the glints of red in my hair get especially bright and brassy in the summer, and I’ve always been self-conscious about that. I tried to dye my hair straight black when I was younger, but that annoying red always pokes through somehow. Maybe it’s offending his precious celebrity eyes.
“No, no,” he says quickly. “I, uh . . . I like it.”
Um, what?! But before we can linger on whatever that was, he barrels on.
“I just . . .” He hesitates, his eyes returning to the gift shop. There’s something going on under all that breezy confidence again. Like there’s A Thing he wants to say, but he knows saying it will make him sound like a mega-douche.
“Sometimes . . .” He pauses again, then gives a little shrug, as if trying to reclaim some of his bravado. “When people recognize me, they take photos or post on social media and—”
I can’t help but laugh. “Are you serious? You’re worried about getting recognized? At the library?”
He gives me a smile that’s a tad too close to a smirk. “You’d be surprised. Anyway, I’m not so much worried for myself as I am for you—all the photos and stuff are particularly intense when I’m out with . . . a person. Hence the camouflage.” He taps the brim of his baseball cap.
“I don’t need camouflage,” I say, rolling my eyes and sweeping a hand through the air. “I’m not famous. And I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself should we meet”—I lower my voice, make it extra dramatic—“your public.”
“Fine,” he says, his smirk widening. Whatever oddness was lurking underneath that easy confidence has vanished now. Maybe it was never there in the first place. “So where are these tiles?”
I lead him to the escalator, and we go up to the second level. I’ll admit, I kind of take him the long way, making sure we go through the crown jewel of the building: the rotunda. I’m gratified when he stops for a moment in that glorious airy open space—craning his neck to drink in the beauty that’s all around him.
“Whoa,” he says softly, taking in the impossibly high curving ceiling, the endless tiled murals that cover the walls. Even the floor is a sea of marbled tiles. My favorite part, though, is the fixture that hangs from the very center of the ceiling, a globe encircled by a ribbon of lights. It looks like absolute magic, suspended midair.
And somehow, this beautiful space is always perfectly quiet, even though the library’s status as a very historical, very beautiful building makes it a prime tourist attraction. Today there are three different tour groups, chattering softly among themselves, being walked around the rotunda by enthusiastic guides.
I gaze at the lit-up globe and feel the quiet and the sheer bigness of this place deep in my bones. When I’m tired of being in the real word, when the shadows of Little Tokyo aren’t enough, I know I can come here and feel utterly transported.
“Not bad, eh, New York?” I murmur to him.
“Are the tiles from Grace’s photo here somewhere?” Henry asks, his voice reverent.
I try to hide my smile. “You’d think so, but no. Those particular tiles are somewhere slightly less, um, epic. Come on.”
I lead him to the side of the rotunda—past the Teen’Scape library-within-a-library, with its comfy couches and lovingly curated displays of YA books—to one of the little nooks I know so well. It’s where the tile art of the wild plant is, displayed over—
“A drinking fountain?” Henry says, his voice skeptical.
“This whole building is stuffed with art,” I say, trying to sound all superior even though that was kind of my reaction, too, when I first saw these tiles. “Not every display can be as majestic as the rotunda. Doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful.”
He leans in, scrutinizing the tiles more closely. They’re set back in a recessed part of the wall that serves as a little nook, a colorful backdrop for the drinking fountain—close enough to admire, far enough away that you have to lean quite a bit to touch this precious art. “So what should we do now? Just stare at this until it gives us more clues?”
“I . . .”
Hmm. That’s exactly what I was planning on doing. But it sounds ridiculous when he says it out loud like that. I buy some time by leaning over the fountain and brushing my fingers against the tiles, like I’m trying to communicate with them. I lean so far, things get a little precarious, me hanging over the fountain—but I really want to see . . .
“Rika.” Henry’s fingertips graze my waist, trying to steady me as I nearly lose my balance. “Be careful!” My shirt has ridden up during my fevered leaning, so his hand brushes over bare skin and I get all goose-bumpy.
I mean. Probably because the air-conditioning is so intense in here.
Ugh. This all feels so haphazard. I don’t know what I was expecting. That I’d get here and look at the same tiles my mother gazed upon just a few hours ago and I’d instantly feel this mystical, magical connection—
I freeze as my fingertips make the most cringeworthy scraping sound against one of the tiles.
Scrreeeeppp.
“What was that?” Henry says, leaning in closer, his hand leaving my waist for the moment.
I run my fingertips over the same tile again.
Screeeeeeepppp!
Same hideous noise. And something about this tile feels . . . different. My heart starts beating faster, thwacking against my breastbone so loudly, I’m convinced the whole library’s going to hear it. Very, very gently, I poke at the tile.
It shimmers a bit—and then it comes loose.
“Holy shit!” Henry exclaims. “I mean, uh . . .” He lowers his voice to a library-appropriate whisper. “Holy shit.”
As carefully as possible, I pull the tile free, revealing a hollow space in the wall behind it. There’s the tiniest bit of blue missing from the vase now, the one that’s valiantly trying to contain the plant.
And in that hollow space is a scrap of paper.
My heart speeds up, my vision narrowing to this one small spot behind the wall. Henry’s saying something in my ear, but I don’t even hear him. My hand shakes as I reach out to grasp the scrap of paper—this tiny thing that must be a clue and therefore must contain the secret to my entire existence. I shimmy back to a standing position, the paper in my hand. It’s folded over and over and over again until it’s barely anything, and my hand shakes even more as I try to unfold it.
I’m still picking at the stubborn folds when I hear a voice behind me scream:
“Oh my god. It is so totally her!”
Here’s the thing about the rotunda: it is vast and beautiful and usually silent. But when someone screams like that, it creates an echo effect that bounces off every gorgeous tiled surface. It basically triples any scream.
Henry and I both turn around, as if in slow motion.
A girl around my age stands behind us, phone raised, snapping away. She’s part of one of the tour groups. And her scream has attracted plenty of other people in all the tour groups.
My brain is processing all this very slowly. My brain is, to be honest, still focused on the folded scrap of paper clutched tightly in my sweaty fist.
The girl lowers her phone a fraction of an inch and beams at me, her eyes wide and shiny. “You’re that girl,” she screeches, her voice bouncing off the rotunda again. “The one from the parade—the one Grace Kimura crashed into!”
The more she screams at me, the more people gather behind her. There’s kind of a mini mob going on, and now they’re all snapping photos of us. I blink at the screaming girl, my fist getting tighter and sweatier around my scrap of paper—like I’m worried she’s going to steal it from me.
“Rika,” Henry murmurs, and I swivel to look at him. His face
has gone pale underneath the brim of his baseball cap, and his breathing is unnaturally rapid. It’s a complete transformation from his usual carefree, confident demeanor. He looks almost . . . scared.
“Oh my gaaawd, and that’s Hank Chen!” Screaming Girl bellows, instantly swiveling her phone to capture Henry’s terrified face.
“What are you guys doing at the library?” someone else calls out.
“Do you know where Grace is?!” yet another person yells.
“Are you, like, together?!” Screaming Girl helpfully chimes in.
Suddenly everyone’s yelling questions and snapping photos, and the mini mob presses closer to us. My face is hot and my fist is getting even sweatier and I can’t think . . . can’t think . . .
I pivot to the right and spot a small hole in the mob, next to the side entrance into Teen’Scape.
I grab Henry’s hand and run.
“Rika . . .” His voice is all shaky, his breathing still rapid and uneven.
Lucky for him, I know this library like the back of my hand. I yank him into the side entrance of Teen’Scape, snaking us around the rotunda and popping us out by one of the library’s sweeping side staircases—like a secret passageway. I am extremely aware that some of the mob has caught on to my sneaky ways and is clattering behind us, still shouting questions.
We reach the bottom of the staircase, and I pull him sharply to the left, taking us up the escalator to the third floor and ducking through the entrance to the popular-fiction section. I hear the mob behind me, their voices echoing up the escalator.
“Which way did they go?”
“Why are they running like that?! You’re not supposed to run in the library!”
“Were they holding hands?!”
I can’t afford to look behind me, so I just keep pressing forward, winding us through the shelves and shelves of books. The din of the mob seems to recede the farther we get into the maze of shelves, the book jungle.
Slowly, the beautiful silence of the library begins to restore itself.
I pull Henry into another one of my favorite nooks, a corner in the very back of this section of shelves, conveniently located right next to a tall, narrow window that looks out onto the city. It lets some light in, but not enough to disrupt my beloved shadows.
Now I can’t hear the mob at all. My breathing slows, and I try to let this dark, silent corner soothe me.
“I think we lost them,” I say. “But we should probably stay here for a few minutes.” I turn to face him, expecting him to make some smartass wisecrack or give me one of his amused grins. Instead I do a double take. Because now he looks . . . well, absolutely awful. His golden-brown skin has a gray cast, his eyes are glassy and blank. And his breathing is still way, way too fast.
“Hey,” I say, reaching out to touch his arm. He flinches, and I drop my hand. “Henry. Are you having a panic attack?”
A bit of recognition flashes in his eyes, disrupting his blank look. Like he’s trying to bring himself back to the present moment.
“It’s okay,” I say softly. I reach out more slowly this time and brush my fingertips against his palm. “You’re here, all right? In the present. All those, uh, people . . . are gone. And I’m here with you.”
His hand closes around my fingertips.
“Can you breathe with me?” I say.
He nods. So I start doing the breathing Eliza taught me. Big breath in through the nose. Hold it for several counts. Long, slow breath out through the mouth. Steady, steady. My eyes never leaving his.
“My friend Eliza gets panic attacks, too,” I say, my voice still soft. “She says sometimes it helps to think of something specific to ground yourself. Like, um, pugs.”
He raises an eyebrow, still doing the breathing.
“Yeah, that’s random—she just loves pugs,” I say, laughing a little. “So if you think of, like, a big room full of pugs, and they’re all, I don’t know, wearing matching bow ties or something, does that calm you down?”
That just makes him raise his eyebrow even more.
“Okay, so not a pug enthusiast,” I say. “Well, look around. Maybe there’s something here that will ground you.”
He nods again, still doing the breathing with me. Still clasping my fingertips.
Then his other hand drifts up and he touches that bright red strand of my hair that keeps flying in my face. And, very gently, tucks it behind my ear.
Our eyes meet again and the silence of the library feels extra heavy, like it’s pressing against us. I am suddenly both hot and cold all over.
He shakes his head and drops my hand, his eyes finally losing that glassy look. His breathing also seems to return to normal.
“Sorry,” he says, sounding like Henry again—but a somewhat more subdued, less smug version of Henry. “I didn’t mean to . . . something about your hair . . .” He gestures vaguely around my face. “I haven’t had one of those in a while. But that screaming girl, that crowd of people . . .” He tries for a half smile and mostly gets there. “It was a lot.”
“Agreed,” I say, trying to shoo away all the hot-cold feelings that seem to have suddenly seeped into my bones. My voice comes out like a little squeak, and I clear my throat. “Um. Are you hungry?” He tilts his head curiously. “’Cause I am,” I barrel on. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
I try for my own half smile—and, I’d like to think, mostly get there.
“But first, let’s stop by the gift shop,” I say. “I need to buy a baseball cap.”
NINE
I take Henry to Grand Central Market, the bustling collection of food stands housed in a giant warehouse-like thing right in the middle of downtown. There’s always a crowd here, but everyone’s hyper-focused on the sizzle and pop of food cooking, on the mingling of delectable scents, on getting the eats they want to inhale as soon as humanly possible. I suppose it feels like we’re all focused on the same goal, and it’s therefore way less scary than a mob chasing you through a usually peaceful building full of books.
We manage to nab a table right next to one of the market’s most Instagram-friendly spots, a giant multi-colored neon sign for Bulleit whiskey. The sign is a graffiti-like collage featuring all kinds of doodles lit up in bright colors—a mermaid, a skeleton in a top hat, a palm tree.
“That’s cool,” Henry says, gesturing to the sign.
“My favorite part is the pickle,” I say, adjusting my brand-new LAPL baseball cap and pointing to a nonsensical illustration of a humanoid pickle lady wearing a bow and high heels and standing on top of a downtrodden-looking male pickle. Watch your pickle back, she says.
“Of course it is,” he says, grinning. “Hey, I just realized: in all the commotion, we never looked at that thing you found behind the tile.”
“Oh my god, I can’t believe I forgot about it,” I say, fishing around in my pocket for the scrap of folded paper that seemed, at least for a few seconds, like the most important thing in the universe.
I manage to unfold it and see that it’s an old, faded photo, its edges dog-eared and torn. The photo features younger versions of the same two girls from the picture at Suehiro. Grace and Auntie Suzy. Arms around each other again, big smiles in place. This time, they’re posing in front of a sun-blasted rock formation topped with wild greenery. But there’s something off about the rock formation. Its edges are square, like building blocks.
“I think . . .” I frown at the photo, trying to scour for whatever clues it might contain. “I think this is the old Griffith Park Zoo. It was abandoned when the zoo moved locations in the sixties, but they left all the animal enclosures and added a few picnic tables, and then nature”—I gesture to the wild greenery, curling around the rock formations like unruly vines—“just kind of grew in around it. These rock formations are the old animal enclosures. It’s like LA’s version of ancient ruins.”
“Sounds fun,” Henry says.
“Yeah, it’s one of those oddball LA things, apart from what people usually think of—the Hollywood sign, Beverly Hills, celebrities. It’s more ordinary, yet also totally weird. It has its own kind of magic going on,” I say.
I flip the photo over—and my heart does a somersault.
Scribbled on the back are the following words:
Tomorrow, seven p.m.
“Oh my god!” I exclaim. “Is this . . . did Grace leave a message for me?”
We both stare at those words, as if more will magically appear if we wish hard enough.
“So this is an actual clue!” Henry says.
I turn to look at him. His dark eyes are lit with glee, his mouth tipped into one of his charming smiles. But there’s something more genuine about this smile—it’s like the visual version of his almost-a-snort laugh. Like he can’t contain the sheer goofy giddiness rushing through him.
Honestly, I can’t either.
“It is a clue,” I say, scarcely able to believe it. “Maybe she wants to meet up with me and explain everything.”
“Then we have to go tomorrow!” he says, his goofy grin widening.
“I . . . wow.” I set the photo down and shake my head, trying to get a handle on the roller coaster of emotions rushing through me. Am I actually going to meet my mother? Who I didn’t even know was my mother until, like, two days ago?
My phone buzzes, snapping me out of my whirlwind of emotions.
“Eliza?” Henry says, leaning over to read the name flashing on my phone screen. His breath tickles my ear, and I flush—then move the tiniest bit to the side, putting space between us. “The same pug-loving Eliza who gets panic attacks?”
“Yeah, she’s one of my best friends,” I say. “We do judo together.”
“You do judo? Oh, that’s right, you told me when you were not arresting me.” Henry gives me a teasing grin. “That’s so awesome. I’ve never studied any martial arts. What’s it like?”
“Um . . . it’s, uh, cool,” I say, scrutinizing the text.
