Dorothy exhaled, deep, and moved out from her hiding place. Chandra would be the only person remaining in the library now. That was lucky. She’d been hoping she could manage to catch either Chandra or Willis alone, but, of course, Chandra was her first choice. Chandra had always seemed to like her.

Here goes nothing, she thought.

And she ducked down the docks and over to the library, carefully pushing the doors open.

5

Disco music blared down the library hallway, strings, horns, and electric guitar crashing together like a storm. Dorothy could just make out the rise and fall of Chandra’s (off-key) voice as she sang along.

“‘You are the dancing queen! Young and sweet, only seventeen!’”

Dorothy cringed—she still didn’t like modern music—but she supposed she should be glad for the music. It covered the creak of her footsteps as she made her way down the long hall.

She rounded the corner and found Chandra dancing around a crooked stack of mildewed books that was almost as tall as she was. Chandra wiggled her hips and pumped her hands above her head, the kind of dancing someone did when he or she really didn’t expect anyone to be watching. Dorothy knew she should announce her presence to save the girl from embarrassment, but she couldn’t help staying quiet for a few moments longer.

Chandra grabbed an empty bottle off a stack of papers and held it up to her mouth, belting into it like it was a microphone. “‘Dancing queen! Feel the beat of the TAMBORINE, OH YEAH.’”

Dorothy stifled a laugh. She couldn’t take it any longer. She began to clap, and Chandra released a high-pitched shriek and whirled around, flinging the bottle across the room. It smacked into a pile of papers sitting on an overburdened bookcase, sending them flying to the floor.

“Oh no!” Chandra’s hands flew to her mouth. “Zora’s going to be so pissed. She spent all morning organizing that.”

“I’ve only been here a minute and I’ve, somehow, already managed to anger Zora,” Dorothy said, kneeling to gather the papers. “That has to be some sort of record, even for me.”

Chandra said nothing but hurried over to the ancient cassette player, switching off ABBA. The sudden silence made Dorothy’s nerves twitch.

“I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have snuck up on you,” Dorothy said, standing. She placed the messy stack of papers back on the bookshelf. “It’s just that I was hoping to talk to you when you were on your own.”

“Right,” Chandra said. Dorothy couldn’t help but notice that her eyes were a touch wider than they’d been a minute before. She glanced at the window and then back at Dorothy, swallowing hard. “That makes sense, I guess.”

Dorothy frowned. “I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”