Suspicious Minds (Stranger Things Novels #1)(81)

“Cold?” Terry asked behind her.

“You’re done already?” Alice slid the book in her hands—The Three Musketeers—back into place on the shelf. “Let’s get this paper turned in and then you can rest.”

“I don’t need to rest.” Terry paused. “I need to run an errand. Alone. I’ll make it back on my own to the dorm, I swear.”

Alice considered. Terry was as clear-eyed as she’d been in days.

“Stacey will murder us all if anything happens to you,” Alice said.

“Nothing’s going to happen. I just need to stop by the library.”

What trouble could Terry get into at the library? “How about I walk you there and then leave?”

“Deal.”

“But we’re turning in the paper first, per Gloria’s orders.”

Terry hesitated. “You’ll check on Kali tomorrow if you can? Am I doing the right thing not going?”

Alice had no idea. “I’ll let you know when I think you’re getting it wrong.”

“Thank you. That’s probably the best promise anyone can make.”

She wished she could do a lot more. “Fellowship of the Lab.”

“Fellowship of the Lab,” Terry repeated. She had her hand on her tummy again. “We’re family, too.”

“Yes,” Alice agreed. “We are.”

“Come on, kid sister.”





5.


Terry hadn’t been alone in three days or nights. Someone was always with her. Stacey didn’t do things by half-measures, when she bothered doing them.

And Terry wasn’t going to have very long alone here. She wandered through the library until she spotted the reference librarian she liked. Not so long a line today, and so Terry got into it and waited. There was no one else around, and the people who were in the library were busy with books spread across tables, finishing up projects.

Terry felt like she carried a different world with her wherever she went now. These everyday concerns—the finals, politeness, tying her shoes, not crying in public—they all seemed meaningless in the face of her problems and the ache of losing Andrew. She wished she’d gotten to tell him he was going to be a father. She wish he’d gotten to be a father.

But she had to think about the future.

The librarian looked past her at first. “Yes? What can I help you with?”

“Uh, hi,” Terry said. “You helped me out once before. I was wondering, maybe you could again. I have a, well, it’s sort of an odd request. I don’t know where to start.”

“My favorite kind of request.” She waved her fingers to bring it on. “Go ahead.”

Terry swallowed. Then: “Say there was a young woman in trouble and she needed to disappear. How would she go about it? Do you have anything about that?”

The librarian considered her, taking in her shapeless garments, her puffy face and its dark circles. “We don’t have any books, but I do specialize in information.” She paused. “Is this young woman in immediate danger?”

One of many questions of the moment. “That’s unclear.”

“And does she need to disappear forever or just a short time?”

Terry hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Let’s assume forever.”

“Money is the big thing, the more the better, and she’d need a way to make it once she got away.” The librarian kept her voice down. “If someone is likely to look for this person, it’d be best if they thought she was, well, dead.”

Terry had already gotten that far in her head. People didn’t search for the dead. Though she couldn’t figure out how to accomplish faking her own death. And besides that, who were you, if you did that? “How would that work, though? You need a name to live…”

“It’s quite interesting, isn’t it?” The librarian spoke conspiratorially. “I read a novel once where a man took the name of a boy born roughly at the same time as him but who died in childhood. Got away with it until he died. You’d just have to leave the area where the name would be likely to get recognized.”

Terry absorbed that. “Where would I be able to look through obituaries from the early 1960s? See if there are any childhood deaths?”

“This way. I’ll help you pull a couple of years of newspapers. Childhood accidents…you may want to look for news stories, too. Might get a name there. For your purely hypothetical inquiry.”

Terry wondered if something awful had happened to the librarian that made her so willing to help. She wasn’t going to ask.

Ken arrived a handful of minutes after she’d told him to. He pulled out the chair at the table she’d taken up residence at, and looked over at the newsprint in front of her. “Dark,” he said, eyeing the rows of obituaries. “Or are you working on his?”

Terry hadn’t even thought about it. She supposed his parents would write up his obituary for their town paper. Tears stung her eyes.

The librarian circled by the table. “Miss,” she interrupted. “Everything okay?”

Terry’s head darted up as she realized the implication. The librarian was asking if Ken needed to be removed. “Oh yes, it’s fine. He’s a friend. Not…the problem.”