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about hours spent here on her senior thesis. The father bounced a toddler in a tiger-cub outfit on his hip while the girl gazed up at her mom with wide brown eyes. They looked like a poster for the Perfect Family. Lily knew a few families like that at home. The mothers always chatted politely with Lily's mom, but they'd look at Lily with pity when they thought she wouldn't notice.
    The looks had only gotten worse in recent years, as Mom forgot more and more. Lily watched the alum gesturing as she described the carrel where she'd written her thesis. Lily bet that no one had ever looked at that woman with pity. She wondered if Tye would look at her with pity once he knew about her mom.
    Focus, Lily, she told herself.
    She spotted a sign that said VISITORS. One short conversation later (including liberal use of the words "prospective student"), and she was in possession of a temporary visitor's pass. She sailed by the guards, bypassed the reference room with its vaulted ceiling and Gothic windows, and headed to the elevators that bore the label, STACKS. There was a handy-dandy guide beside the elevator door identifying which floor had which set of books. The
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    900s were on C-level, it said, three floors below ground level. Piece of cake, she thought.
    As she rode the elevator down, she wondered how large this library was to have three levels under ground. She pictured secret catacombs deep below the earth.
    The doors slid open on C-level, and she saw her imagination wasn't far off. She stepped off the elevator to face darkened rows of bookshelves. Catacombs indeed.
    Behind her, the elevator whirred as it rose, and then there was silence. No voices. No footsteps. No scratch of pencils, no click of laptop keys, no rustle of pages. Kind of creepy, she thought. She walked forward, and her shoes slapped loudly on the floor. It was so phenomenally quiet that she felt as if she should tiptoe. She wished Tye had come with her. She didn't like the feeling that she was the only person on the entire floor.
    Only the center aisle was lit. Each aisle had its own light switch (either to conserve energy or to increase creepiness). Shadows shrouded the books. Lily hurried down the center aisle, reading the call numbers on the labels: 870s, 880s, 890s, 900s, 910s, 930s. She halted and backtracked. The labels jumped from 919.98 Zoo to 930.0 Abr. Worse, the 915 shelf and the 930 shelf were flush against each other so that you couldn't walk down the aisle to check for the 920s. How did anyone ... She spotted a crank on the endcap of the row.
    Oh. Right.
    Stepping back, she noticed that every other bookshelf was
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    flush against its neighbor and each had a crank to separate the shelves. It doubled the number of bookshelves that could fit on the floor. "Clever, Lily," she muttered to herself. "Way to impress the Old Boys." At least Tye wasn't here to see her flummoxed by sliding shelves.
    As she turned the crank, the shelves groaned and lurched sideways. She imagined a horror movie where the villain squeezed his victims between movable bookshelves. Attack of the Killer Librarian. Definitely a low-budget movie.
    The bookshelves creaked and then settled in their final positions. Silence wrapped around her again. Lily shivered. She never thought she'd be freaked out by a library. On the other hand, she'd never been in a dimly lit, preternaturally silent library buried three floors below sunlight and fresh air. Walking quickly down the row, she scanned the shelves for the call numbers. Like the label had said, the books jumped from 919 to 930. "Where--?" she began to ask out loud.
    Screech! The bookshelf shifted toward her.
    "Hello? I'm in here!" she called. "Please stop turning the crank!" The shelf rattled closer. She darted down the row and burst into the center aisle. "Hey, I said--"
    No one was there.
    The crank continued to turn unaided until the bookshelves slammed together. She leaned forward to examine the crank. She didn't see a motor. So