Akarnae (16 page)

Because the Archives, Alex knew, weren’t on the main level.

Fourteen

Alex had to wait until
classes finished the next afternoon before she could visit the Archives. Unfortunately, she and her friends hadn’t been very discreet about their plans, and Mel and Connor had overheard them talking at lunch. The cousins had invited themselves along, claiming they knew a short-cut—whatever that meant.

When they finally entered the library, Alex wished she’d found a way to dissuade Mel and Connor from joining them, since they hadn’t stopped squabbling with each other and she was starting to get a headache.

“Hurry up, would you!”

“I can’t move any faster than this!”

“Then you shouldn’t have come!”

“Ha! Like you would even know where to go without me!”

“What are you talking about? I found this place first!”

“No you didn’t! I showed you how to get in!”

Alex sighed and rubbed her temples when they stopped for the fifth time.

“You guys need to keep your voices down if you don’t want to get us caught,” Jordan said. Despite his cautious words, he was leaning haphazardly against a bookshelf, not caring that he was disobeying rules himself by eating a pastry he’d managed to sneak past the librarian’s keen gaze.

“What’s the problem anyway?” Bear asked, stealing the
pastry from Jordan and tearing off half of it, handing the rest back. He graciously divided his own portion to share with Alex who smiled at him in gratitude.

As she chewed on the apple and custard goodness, she was able to tune out the incessant arguing that started up again with Bear’s question. But it only took a few bites before the pastry was all gone and she was once again aware of the bickering.

“If you hadn’t forgotten how to—”

“Me! It was you who said that you’d—”

“Don’t blame me for this! I’m the one who—”

They were wasting too much time and drawing too much attention. Alex still wanted to get back to the food court for a quick dinner once they were done, so she decided to intervene.

“
Enough!
” she said, in a not-so-quiet library voice. She immediately lowered her tone, realising that a few students had stopped what they were doing to stare at them. “Remind me again why we’re all here?”

Mel blinked at her. “To visit the Archives. Remember?”

Alex felt the remainder of her patience begin to dissolve. “Not why we’re
here
, but why we’re
all
here. I only need one person to show me how to get down there.”

The others all looked at each other before turning to eye the pastry Jordan was still eating. Like clockwork, every one of their stomachs growled as they realised they could bail on Alex and go eat a proper dinner.

All at once, they began to make their excuses.

“I’ve just remembered—”

“I told Fitzy I’d—”

“I’m supposed to be meeting—”

The only person who failed to come up with something fast enough was Jordan, who was unable to speak since he’d just taken the last bite of his food when they’d all decided to abandon Alex. He swallowed the considerable mouthful with
a grimace and said, quite unconvincingly, “Um, I think I can hear someone calling my name?”

Alex grabbed his arm, leading him forward. “Come on, Sparkie. Just show me where to go and you can leave me there.”

He grumbled something about how unfair his life was and pulled her in the opposite direction. “This way.”

She followed him around a number of shelves, twisting and turning through numerous aisles, before he finally came to a stop. They waited in silence for a few minutes, and the quiet was so uncharacteristic of Jordan that Alex began to worry he was annoyed at having to stay back with her. When she finally looked up at him, she didn’t find the frustrated expression she expected. On the contrary, it seemed like he was fighting a grin.

“What—?” She jumped and only just managed to bite her tongue on a squeal when a hand came to rest on her shoulder a second before Bear stepped into view.

“Took you long enough, mate!” Jordan said, laughing at Alex’s shock.

“I had to make sure they didn’t follow me,” Bear explained. “I actually had to go with them to the food court before doubling back.”

“What are you doing here?” Alex asked, confused by his presence.

Bear looked at Jordan. “You didn’t tell her?”

Jordan laughed again. “Nah. I was having too much fun watching her worry about whether I was mad at her for missing dinner.”

Alex’s mouth dropped. “I was not!”

“Yes, you were,” Jordan said. “You’re so easy to read. You’d think by now you’d be used to the idea that we actually enjoy your company.” He looked at her with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. Then, in a brotherly gesture, he pulled her in
for a rough hug. When he let her go he reached a hand upwards and messed with her hair.

Both her friends laughed at her indignant expression, which was highly ineffective since she now looked as if she’d just fallen out of bed.

“Ha ha ha,” she drawled. Annoyed as she was, she still couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

“You weren’t actually worried, were you?” Bear asked seriously. “About us not wanting to hang out with you?”

The thought
had
crossed her mind, but she only shrugged, feeling embarrassed.

“You should talk to us about that stuff, you know,” he told her. “We’re guys, so you have to clue us in from time to time.”

Jordan nodded his head in agreement. Alex didn’t think she’d ever seen either of them so serious before.

“Okay,” she said quietly.

Jordan reached out to tilt her head up, so she had no choice but to make eye contact. “Promise you’ll talk to us whenever you’re worried about something? No matter how big or small you think the problem is?”

“I promise,” she said, looking at them both.

“Good.” He released her chin. “That’s what friends are for.”

“They’re also good for sneaking into secret levels of the library,” Bear said to lighten the mood. “We only have a couple of hours left before curfew, so we should get moving.”

“Right,” Jordan agreed. “What we need is around here somewhere…”

As Jordan thumbed through the collection of books on the shelf closest to them, Alex turned to Bear and said, “I’m still not sure why you had to make sure Connor and Mel didn’t follow you back?”

“Because where we’re going is secret,” Bear replied.

“But they said they knew where the Archives are.”

Jordan snorted while he continued looking through the books. “Everyone knows where the Archives are. They’re the most non-secret secret ever.”

Non-secret secret?
There was definitely something wrong with his grammar but she let it go. “What’s the problem, then? Why couldn’t they come?”

“You’ll see,” Bear said.

Before she could object, Jordan interrupted. “Now pay attention because you’ll need to remember this for next time.”

He pointed at the book he’d located on the shelf and Alex read the title out loud. “
The Encyclopedia of Current Events?
That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “How can current events be written in an encyclopedia? They’d be out-dated by the time it was published!”

Jordan ignored her and said, “Pull out the book.”

She looked at it with mistrust. “This isn’t going to be one of those totally clichéd pull-out-the-book-and-a-trapdoor-will-appear deals, is it?”

Jordan rolled his eyes. “Just pull out the book already.”

Alex reached for it, her muscles tense and ready to react. She clasped her hand around the spine and took a deep breath, quickly yanking the book off the shelf.

Nothing happened.

Jordan and Bear burst out laughing.

“It’s not funny!” she told them. She couldn’t keep the corners of her mouth from twitching though, and she easily gave into her own laughter.

“All right, all right,” she said, trying to regain her dignity. She looked at the book in her hands and flicked through the pages. “Now, seriously, how do we—” Before she could finish her question, the floor disappeared under her feet, leaving her to slide down a chute in complete darkness.

“JORDAAAAN!” she screamed as she slid faster and faster. “BEAAAAAR!”

Echoing laughter drifted down from above, along with a faint “
Wheeeeeeee!
”

Before she could scream at them again, the slide began to level out and she slowly came to a stop in a well-lit room. There was a flaming torch mounted on the wall beside a sealed wooden door, but otherwise the chamber was empty.

Alex’s head was spinning but she didn’t want to get trampled by her friends, so she quickly got to her feet and steadied herself against the nearest wall. A moment later the still-laughing Jordan slid into view, and Alex didn’t hesitate before hitting him with the heavy encyclopedia she was still holding. He only laughed harder, and when she went to attack him again, he reached out and trapped her hands. It was only then that she realised he was holding a book too. She squinted at the cover, making out the title:
The Encyclopedia of Current Events
.

“What—?”

“Wheeeeeeee!”

Bear came sliding down the chute, effectively interrupting her question. Jordan quickly stumbled to his feet to make way for their friend.

“What a ride!” Bear said, and he laughed as he took in Alex’s harried expression.

“You could have warned me!” she said to them.

“You’d already guessed about the ‘clichéd trapdoor’,” Jordan said, repeating her words with a smirk. “What was the point in warning you when you’d already figured it all out?”

Alex chose to ignore him and turned her attention to Bear just as he was getting to his feet. She noticed that he was also carrying an encyclopedia.

“What’s with the books?” she asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Jordan said, waving the tome in his hands. “The
Encyclopedia
is the ticket down here.”

“But why are there now three of them?”

“It’s also the ticket
out
of here,” Bear answered. “We each need our own because the books activate a single-use Bubbledoor that goes from this level back up again.”

Alex’s mouth opened in an ‘O’ shape before her curiosity took over once again. “But there was only one copy on the shelf. Where did your copies come from?”

Both boys looked at each other and shrugged.

“No idea,” Bear said. “That’s just the library for you.”

Alex didn’t bother to point out that his reasoning made absolutely no sense. It was hardly the craziest thing she’d heard since arriving in Medora.

“Let’s go see these Archives, yeah?” Jordan said, walking over to the sealed wooden door and motioning for Alex to come closer. “Open your book to page seventy-four and press it against the door.”

Alex did as he instructed and waited for the door to open. As the seconds ticked by, she wondered why it was taking so long. Maybe she’d opened the wrong page? She double-checked and tried again.

Still nothing. No movement. No noise. No indication whatsoever that the door was preparing to open.

Alex looked up to see a purple-faced Jordan who, at that moment, finally released the laughter that he’d been holding in. Bear quickly joined him. They’d tricked her—again.

“What did you expect to happen?” Jordan asked once his laughter died down.

She kept her tone flat when she answered, “I expected the door to open, obviously.”

“Did you think to try knocking?”

Alex wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not. She didn’t want to fall for another prank, but before she even had the chance to decide what to do, Bear reached around her and rapped his knuckles three times on the wooden surface. The
latch clicked softly and the door opened wide enough for her to see into the room beyond.

“Wow.”

In all honesty, the room itself wasn’t that impressive. It was just like stepping into a computer lab, with independent cubicles and comfortable-looking chairs facing touch-screen panels. The space was large, but certainly not as large as the entire level of the Tower they were under.

The reason Alex was so shocked was due to the number of
people
in the room. She took in the faces—most of them adults—and asked the obvious question: “If this place is so secret, how do so many people know about it?”

“Like Jordan said before, ‘secret’ is a bit of an overstatement,” Bear said. “We’re not really sure what the secret is—whether it’s how to get down here, or the fact that there’s a
here
to get down to. Either way, most people know about the Archives, and if they don’t, it’s a good bet that someone they know can tell them.”

“It just seems weird that the librarian acted so strangely about the ‘legend’ of the library if everyone knows about it,” Alex murmured.

“Truth is, not many people know about the entrance we took, as far as I’m aware,” Jordan said. “That’s another reason we wanted to get rid of Connor and Mel—just in case they didn’t actually know. It’s not something we’re supposed to share, strictly speaking.”

Alex looked around the room in confusion. “Then how did all these people get in here?”

“There are other entrances to the Archives all around Medora,” Bear said, “but they’re access points only. Bubbledoors transport people directly here from wherever they start. But, like us, they can only ever get back out the way they came in.”

“Very few people would know that the Archives are actually a part of Akarnae’s library,” Jordan said. “Any other students
who have used the entrance we took would most likely believe the encyclopedia acts just like the other access points. But we know differently—we’re still underneath the Tower.”

“How do you know?” Alex asked.

“We’ll show you later,” Bear promised.

“Come on,” Jordan said, stopping her from questioning them further. “Let’s get this search for your disappearing stranger out of the way.”

Alex dutifully listened as Bear explained how to use the touch-screen panels, and after making sure she understood what she was doing, he and Jordan took off to give her some quiet research time. Once they were gone, she brought up a page listing Akarnae’s yearbooks from the past fifteen years and touched the ‘search’ tab. She then eased back into her seat and waited for the new screen to open.