trying to get back to where she started

She ran through the wreck of the lobby. She stared straight ahead as she ran, so as not to be distracted or frightened by any of the chaos or destruction. She had her right hand in her jeans pocket, holding tightly onto the marble, as if it might somehow protect her.

She ran up the short flight of stairs into the library, only to find that the old-fashioned wooden door that she’d never noticed before was closed. She tried the doorknob, but the door appeared to be locked.

She had to get inside. There wasn’t any other choice. She had to get back into the library. She tried the knob again, it turned but the door wouldn’t budge. It was locked up tight.

Then she remembered, she had the key to The Garden Room in in her left pocket, not that that would work. . . . But it was an elaborate key, with the blown glass prism on top that had the red swirls inside, sort of like the cat’s eye marble in her other pocket. Maybe it was a master key. Maybe.

Tess took it out of her pocket. She shut her eyes and made a wish and when she opened them, the key was sparkling. Brilliantly sparkling. And then emitting sparks. And, almost as if it was magnetically attracted, drawn to the keyhole where it affixed itself and turned almost by itself. Tess turned the doorknob and was able to open the door to the library.

But it wasn’t a library. It was a boy’s bedroom—at least she thought it was a boy’s. There was a dark plaid bedspread displayed on the old-fashioned brass bed, with matching pillow cases. The chairs were covered in brown corduroy fabric, made slightly more comfortable by navy-blue throw pillows. There was a standing hockey game table in the back of the room that looked a lot like the hockey table Max and Colin had played on in Colin’s room only two nights before, although it looked slightly newer. In fact, the room looked a lot like Colin’s room. She put the key back in her pocket.

She was holding the marble with her other hand. She let go of it and took that hand out of her pocket, too. But the room stayed the same.

She was in a room that looked like an old-fashioned boy’s room. No library. No chess-table. No bar. She looked down the stairs to see if she might have taken a wrong turn but no, she hadn’t.

She remembered Adele’s words again, “There’s something on the other side of the wall.”