People have been looking for her all this time. But instead of someone finding her, she found me.
“Spencer, I think she’s been in here a long time.”
“Why? Why stay hidden even in the middle of the night? You don’t.”
“That’s the thing. I’ve never been more alone or more scared in my life than I am now, but I’m not totally alone. I have Ruth and my friend Lana and…”
“Me,” he says. “You have me.”
I nod, feeling the solid heat of his hand in mine again. “Yeah, I do. And she doesn’t. I think something terrible happened to this girl. Something that scared her so much she’ll do anything to stay hidden. But she is not evil. Evil people do not administer first aid.”
“No offense, but that’s some of the shoddiest first aid I’ve ever seen. You need to see a doctor. You said you were dizzy and sick—both signs of a concussion.”
“It’s not that bad,” I say, though I really don’t know. The world still feels a little slanted, and my head hurts so much, it’s like my skull is trying to come apart. “But I’ll make you a deal. I will go to a hospital. I promise. As soon as we help this girl.”
“Mallory…”
“Spencer, I can’t leave her. I have to try to get her out.”
After a beat, he runs a gentle hand down my arm. “I get it. I get wanting to help, but is it really the time for you to be the hero?”
I feel the weight of his question. And the equal weight of the answer.
I press my lips together. “When I left home, I did it because I was afraid Charlie would hurt my mom.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know the rest. I thought that if I left she would follow. She’s my mom, you know? I get that she’s sick and Charlie is so messed up that he can make you feel crazy.” I shake my head. “But she’s my mom.”
Spencer nods. No pushing. Just waiting.
“I figured if she realized how scared I was, how far I’d go to stay away from him…”
“You thought she’d come for you,” he says.
I nod, unable to do a thing about the tears coursing down my cheeks. Spencer steps closer, puts his hands on my face. And I love that he doesn’t wipe my tears away or offer me a tissue. He lets me cry.
“She should have come for you,” he says, and he sounds angry. Not with me, but for me.
“Yeah, she should have. And that’s why I have to stay. Because someone should help this girl. And that someone is me.”
Spencer relents with a sigh. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
He nods. “Let’s go find out where she’s hiding.”
Spencer
Wednesday, November 22, 2:03 p.m.
The supply closet is a dead end. Literally. There are about ten thousand black smears, a ton, strangely, on the carts in front of the back wall, but no helpful notes or maps that explain why the supply closet is the central hub of activity. Or how she gets in and out.
She must have found a master key. We have a few of them, and the building is old. Maybe the library lost track of one years ago and she found it.
It still doesn’t explain what the hell is all over her hands.
I glance up at the dark, dropped ceiling tiles. They could maybe hide her prints. Could she be hiding in the ceiling? How would she get up there? Neither of us has a likely answer for that, so we head downstairs.
Mallory wants to start in the lowest level, which feels smart. The clouds outside aren’t leaving much light in the lower level. We search every possible nook and cranny using the meager light from the windows and the help of my cell phone flashlight, but we don’t find anything. Trained police officers didn’t find anything, so this isn’t a shock.
We climb back to the first floor and Mallory slumps against the wall at the top of the stairs. “Maybe I should call out. Offer help.”
“This girl found you last night. If she is here, it makes sense that she’ll find us, right?”
“She never came out until last night though. And I was injured and in her hidey hole. I think she’s afraid.”
I’m a little afraid too, mostly because Mallory is glassy-eyed and breathing hard. “How’s your head?”
“Awful. I want to find this girl and get this checked—” She gasps, cutting herself off. “Spencer, look.”
There, in the low emergency light, I see what she’s talking about. Four black smears on the wall outside the browsing room, stark against the white paint, like someone did one of those messy charcoal drawings and then dragged their hand down the wall.
“Was that there before?” I ask.
“No.”
It’s possible we missed it on our way down, but I’m almost sure we would have noticed that print. The cleaning crew definitely would have noticed last night, so it hasn’t been there long.
A chill rolls up my spine, and I have to remind myself that this person helped Mallory. Or tried anyway. Real help would include calling an ambulance.
“My hands,” Mallory says softly, peering into the browsing room.
“What?”
She turns to me, face lit with discovery. “I hit my head in the browsing room trying to get out. At one point I had to crawl behind these weird random chairs.”
“The reading nook. Yeah, I know it.”
“Well, I got filthy. My hands and knees were covered in black from the carpet.”
“Are those your prints then?”
“No. I stumbled straight for the stairs. I didn’t touch the wall.”
I let out a slow breath. “That’s the black we’ve seen around. Footprints and smears on books.”
“I saw footprints too, in the cookbook aisle. Honestly, I’ve seen this black stuff all over, but there’s tons of it against that wall.” She inhales. “She’s got to be hiding in there.”
We enter quietly, searching the shelves and desks and study tables. Any dark smudges would be easy to miss in here from the charcoal carpet to the dark wood shelves. It’s eerily quiet, and darker than usual. Still, I know this room. There are long rows of shelves, a couple of study areas, and a reading nook.
This is not a place where someone could live without people knowing.
What are we missing?
“Is there any storage beneath this room?” Mallory asks. She steadies herself with a hand on the shelf, and I feel a prickle of worry in my throat. The back of her hair is matted and dark.
“I think we need to get you to a doctor,” I say. “I don’t think anyone’s in here.”
“She’s in here, Spencer. She’s searching for someone, and she’s alone. Just…please help me try a little longer.”
“I think we have to be missing something. A way in and out. There’s nowhere to hide in here, Mallory. You can’t just disappear—”
A picture on the back wall catches my eye, and I pause, stepping closer.
FAIRVIEW PUBLIC LIBRARY: A CENTER FOR HIGHER KNOWLEDGE, 1929
The sepia-toned photograph shows the long-ago browsing room. The same windows rise behind a different librarian desk, but most of the shelves are missing. The room is filled with long wooden tables surrounded by high-backed wooden chairs. The bookshelves line the walls of the room, except for on the east side, where a large fireplace crackles.
There was a fireplace in this room.
I turn and look at the strange rectangular jut along the east wall where the reading nook sits. I’ve always thought it was the weirdest place to cluster a bunch of chairs, smack-dab in the middle of the stacks, with no good light from the windows at the back. But that awkward jut in the wall isn’t a design mistake. It covers an old fireplace mantel.
I point at the photograph on the wall. “Mallory, I think I know where she’s hiding.”
She swears softly. “The backs of the chairs—they were covered in that black stuf
f. It’s soot, isn’t it?”
“Only one way to find out.”
I head toward the reading area and hear Mallory behind me. I pull two of the heavy chairs out of the way and shine my flashlight along the wall. I press my fingers to the carpet, and they come back black.
Mallory gasps softly. “There.”
She’s pointing at a seam in the wall. Halfway down, strategically hidden by the chairs, I spot small brass hinges. It’s not tall enough to be a door, so I’m guessing an access panel. I train the flashlight beam along the edges of the panel to confirm it. I could walk past this a hundred times a day and not notice.
Mallory points at smudges along the right side of the panel.
They’re familiar. Finger shaped. Ice slides up my spine as I imagine real fingers sliding across that panel. Curling in to pull it open.
I crouch, wedging my hand into the seam until I can get a grip.
Mallory grabs my arm. “Be careful.”
I don’t need to be careful because it isn’t difficult. There’s a wooden scrape as I pull the door open far enough to reveal the black-stained brick of an old fireplace.
This panel could have been opened without moving the chairs, and there’d be plenty of space for someone small to slip through. The possibility moves through me like a shock wave. The girl could have been in this fireplace, but as I push the door wider, it’s clear she’s not here now.
“She’s gone.”
I push the panel far enough open to step inside, crouching so I won’t hit my head. I brace my arm to hold it wide, unnerved by the idea of being closed into the darkness.
It’s a big fireplace, but I can see every inch. Plastic crinkles under my shoe. I move my cell phone light to my feet, spotting the red-and-white wrapper of a pack of crackers. The brand from the vending area. There’s a cap too. A marker? No, a tube of lipstick.
“Do you see anything?” Mallory asks, trying to peer around me.
“Yeah, someone was definitely here,” I say. “But she’s gone. Maybe the thing with your head scared her off. Maybe she thought she’d get in trouble.”
“I don’t get why we keep hearing her upstairs, though. If she’s hiding down here, wouldn’t the crying be from here?”
“No clue,” I say.
Mallory sighs outside, and I step closer to the back of the fireplace, feeling a faint draft from the chimney. Which is weird. The flue would’ve been closed a long time ago. I crane my head and glance up, wondering if that’s how someone got in without anyone knowing. Hell, if she could climb this chimney, I’d be impressed.
It’s pitch-black so I worm my arm inside and flip my phone so the light shines straight up the wide chimney. Four brick walls form a narrow passage all the way up. I can’t tell if there’s grating at the top, but it’s likely. You’d get bats and other pests without some kind of protection. Of course, a human would be strong enough to move it.
“This chimney is huge,” I say, staring up in wonder. “Santa’s dream fireplace.”
“Do you think she climbed out?”
I check the walls with my light, scanning the black-coated brick. Sure enough, I see smears here and there where the bricks are cleaner. Always on the ridges that stick out. If I squint, I can almost see the path.
I give a little laugh, feeling a bizarre rush of admiration. “Actually, yeah, I think she has.” I use my light to follow her path upward. “I think that’s why the food is down—”
Something pops into my line of vision. Long hair and the dark impression of a face.
There’s a person. A person staring down at me.
I jerk back, swearing. I bump my head and scrape my shoulder on my rush to get out of the chimney.
“What’s wrong?” Mallory asks, alarmed. “Spencer?”
“She’s still here. She’s up on the second floor.”
I squirm out of the fireplace, closing the panel tight. Mallory has her hand at her throat. I’m sure it’s the shock of what I’ve told her.
But it isn’t. Mallory is staring at the ceiling. Footsteps thunder across the floor above, so fast and loud, I flinch.
Whoever I saw, she’s running.
Mallory
Wednesday, November 22, 2:39 p.m.
“We need to call the police,” he says. “Right now.”
And he’s right. We do. But there are puzzle pieces filtering through the haze of my fear, and I want to put them together. The footsteps thunder left and right. I hear a panicky cry, and my heart squeezes. She doesn’t know where to go.
“Was she still climbing?” I ask.
“No, she popped her head out. She must have been in some kind of alcove.”
“Another fireplace,” I say. “That’s common, right? They stack fireplaces in the same spot on different floors so they can use one chimney.”
He shakes his head. “There isn’t one. There’s nothing up there.”
“There could have been before. Where are we? What would be above us?”
“I don’t know—the hallway?” Then his face goes soft with the realization. “It’s the supply room. It has to be.”
“They had a fireplace in the supply room?”
“It’s been remodeled. The whole building has, but especially the second floor. Closing off the fireplace probably made the space awkward.”
“Which could be why they turned it into a closet,” I say.
“There were fingerprints all over the carts on the back wall,” he says. “There’s probably an access panel back there. That’s why she was in there.”
The footsteps stop and that cry comes again. Fear still picks at the back of my neck, but I am not my mother. This girl is desperate. She scrawled things on walls. Crawled around in the filthy darkness of a fireplace. No one should have to live like that.
It doesn’t matter that it scares me. What matters is what I choose to do.
“I’m going up there.”
Spencer grabs my arm. His phone screen is lit. He’s already calling. “Wait for the police. I’m calling now.”
“Tell them no sirens,” I say, and he does. He tells them there’s a girl in the library, and she’s scared and maybe sick. He tells them to send an ambulance for me too, and I don’t argue. I head for the stairs, my heart pounding so hard I feel each beat in my ears.
The girl’s ragged sobs are easier to hear now. And there’s no mistaking this for a ghost or my imagination. I can hear the rasp of her clothing against the wall. Staccato breathing and shaky whimpers. She’s up there. Somewhere in that hallway.
“It’s me,” I say softly. “The girl you helped last night.”
“Mallory, don’t do this,” Spencer whispers, but he’s on my heels too.
The cries stop. I don’t hear anything, but she’s not moving, so I keep climbing. “I won’t hurt you.”
Another sob and it hits me right in the chest. I don’t know how old I expected this girl to be, but I thought my age. I thought wrong. She sounds young. A girl younger than me is terrified and crying out in the darkness. As lonely as I’ve been, I haven’t known that kind of isolation.
“Mallory,” Spencer whispers when I’m at the top.
I lift my chin to him. “I’m not leaving her up there. I don’t want her to be alone when the police come. She’s scared enough.”
Spencer’s expression clears. He laces his fingers through mine, and we finish our climb to the top. The hallway is dark, the only light filtered from the boardroom at the end of the hall.
But I can see her, a shadow in the corner, small and still. She tenses, inching away from the wall. A frisson of panic runs through me. Seeing her in the flesh is different than knowing she was here. It changes everything.
“It’s okay,” I say softly, but she bolts for the boardroom. She is a wisp of pale hair and thin legs, but she is real. And she is too youn
g to be alone.
Footsteps rush around inside the room. Her cries turn quiet and panicky.
“I saw your message,” I try. The footsteps stop, so I keep going. “I saw your message, and I know you’re trying to find someone. I want to help.”
The hall stays silent for one beat. And another. Spencer squeezes my hand tighter, and I know what I need to do. This time I don’t have to wait for her to come to me. I can go to her.
“Okay, I’m coming in. Just me. You remember me from last night.”
She whimpers, the fear obvious in her voice as I approach the doorway, holding my hand up to keep Spencer back. I move like I’m underwater, all slow, fluid moments. Nothing jarring. Nothing that might break this spell of calm that’s fallen.
I step inside, and for the first time, I see her clearly.
She is huddled at the wall under the windows. She is crying softly, and her bare feet are stained black with soot from the chimney. It’s on her clothes, too, long streaks of it up the sides of her pants and shirt. Her clothing looks small, like she’s in that awful phase where you grow four inches in two months and your pants never fit right.
When she turns, revealing her profile, I see that’s exactly what it is. She’s almost as tall as me, but her face still holds the round cheeks and soft chin of a child. She’s thirteen, maybe not even that. She’s just a kid, and she’s been in here by herself.
But she’s not alone anymore.
“My name is Mallory,” I say. The girl doesn’t respond. Tear tracks streak through the dirt in her cheeks, old and new. There are layers to her tears. A map of her pain.
“This is Spencer,” I say, and he steps in, but stays at the back of the room. “He won’t come too close. I promise.”
She still says nothing, but she drinks me in with large, hungry eyes. I can hear her breathing, shaky and fast. But she is not running. She is coiled like she could sprint in a moment, but she stays still. And quiet.
There’s something in her clenched fist. A marker.
What You Hide Page 23
