“We’re overachievers,” Theo said. He was dead serious, but the librarian laughed again, as if he’d made a joke. Lots of people thought he was making jokes when he wasn’t and didn’t realize he was making jokes when he was. It was irritating.

Maybe he should keep his options open when it came to marriage.

Then again, her glasses were really awesome.

“Well, let me know if you need anything else,” Dr. Little Crow said. She shut the door.

“We should clean up and go,” said Tess. “She’s been really nice, but I feel bad saddling her with Nine all this time.”

“So should we erase the cipher on the back of this letter?” Theo said.

“I vote that we take some pictures and then cover up the back,” Jaime said. “We put it in the sleeve the way it was. I don’t want anyone else to find it, and I don’t want Dr. Little Crow to get in trouble for what we did.”

Jaime pulled the binder toward him and opened it to the sixth letter. He pressed a thumb against the edge of the two papers, the letter and the false back. “Still sticky,” he said. He laid the original letter on the table, placed the false back on top of it, and pressed all around the edges with his thumb. He held up the letter. “Good as . . . old?”

“Ha,” Theo said. He held the plastic sleeve open while Jaime slid the letter in. Once the paper was inside the sleeve, you couldn’t tell that there was anything strange about it at all.

Theo put the binder back on the shelf and lined up the edges. Once he was done, he said, “Ready?”

“Ready,” Tess said.

Theo went to the door and opened it.

Standing right outside was the pale blonde in a red dress—the same blond woman Theo had almost bumped into on the library stairs earlier, or was it a different one? She stared at the three of them for a long, tense moment, a stare so cold and calculating that it made Theo’s skin prickle. Then she smiled suddenly—a tensing of the face, a baring of too-white teeth. “Oh, sorry, children,” she said. “I think I have the wrong room.”

As she click-clacked away, Jaime said, “I don’t think that woman had the wrong room.”

Theo rubbed the back of his neck where the hair was standing on end. “And I don’t think she was sorry.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jaime

Sometimes, Jaime’s father would say he was sorry. “I’m sorry your mother isn’t here to see this new drawing.” “I’m sorry your mother isn’t here to watch you get this award.” “She loved you, more than anything. I’m sorry she isn’t here to tell you herself.”