The Friendship Riddle Read Online Free PDF Page B

“That’s good advice,” I said. “You know, I’m supposed to be helping Mr. Diamond with a project. That’s how I found the book in the first place.”
    â€œWell, if you find any more of our juvenile books out of place, you let me know.”
    â€œSure thing,” I said.
    She gave a sharp nod, and George seemed to wink his monkey eye at me.
    Ears still red as hot rods, I went back to shelf reading for Eliot. I was in the seven hundreds, the arts, when I found a book on Romanian operas. I didn’t know that there wereany Romanian operas, let alone a whole book on them. My sperm donor dad put down opera as an interest, and so I thought genetically my own love of it was inside me somewhere. As much as I’ve tried to listen, I hadn’t discovered it yet. Maybe my love was for Romanian operas.
    It was on the very bottom shelf, and as I bent over to pull it out, I must admit I was thinking that this would be the perfect spot to hide another note. I mean, Romanian opera? Not exactly a high-interest topic. Plus the spine was all weathered and tattered.
    I pulled it out, carefully, carefully. A piece of paper spun out of it, and my heart beat like those windup chattering teeth bouncing all over the place. The paper was no wider than a staple and dotted with holes. It was the edging of old computer printer paper. You used to have these long reams of continuous but perforated paper that was fed through the printer by pins. Once you printed your page, you tore it off like a paper towel from a roll, and then ripped off the dotted edges.
    I recognized it right away because my grandmother—Mom’s mom—still had that kind of printer and when she printed, she didn’t bother to pull off the edges, so I always ended up tearing them off for her and I tried to use them to make crafts, but they weren’t very useful, so most ended up in the recycle bin.
    My humanities teacher, Ms. Lawson, would call this “diverging from the task,” but I think it’s interesting. Maybeit’s not 100 percent relevant, but it’s not
ir
-relevant (“ir” as a prefix making the word its opposite).
    So anyway, I picked up this paper. Even though it was not in an origami envelope, I still had hope. It was twisted and I smoothed it out.
    Nothing.
    I felt as let down as a balloon nearly out of helium, hovering inches above the ground.
    I needed to see that other note. I needed to see Charlotte.

    â€œCharlotte?” Eliot echoed my question. “Well, if she’s not upstairs, I suppose she’s gone into the back room. You can go look for her.”
    The back room was where the library staff had their space. There were supplies for cataloging books, and a little kitchenette where they could reheat their lunches. Charlotte and I used to spend all sorts of time there, back when we were friends, but I hadn’t been in ages.
    â€œThat’s okay.”
    â€œIt’s really fine,” Eliot said. “You can grab me some rubber cement when you go to check for her.”
    I scratched my lip. Charlotte had told me it was a bad habit because it looked like I was picking my nose and that I really needed to stop before middle school. I mostly had. Mostly.
    â€œOkay,” I said. “I’ll be right back with the rubber cement.”
    I pushed open the door and it creaked. The buildingwas so old that sometimes it creaked a symphony. I figured I’d just go in, grab the rubber cement, then head back out, and forget about even looking for Charlotte. But she was in there, and the door was so loud that she looked up when I came in, right in my eyes, and I couldn’t just pretend I didn’t see her. Could I? No. She wanted to pretend she didn’t see me. I could see it in the way her eyes shifted left and then down and then back up at me as if I were a train wreck and she couldn’t quite look away. “Hi, Charlotte,” I said.
    â€œHi, Ruth,”