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got to her feet and the girls followed her toward the back of the building.
    Lena wasn’t feeling particularly patient — more like the opposite. The gears were spinning wildly in her mind. Every answer seemed to lead to a new question. If the tower wasn’t there anymore but it showed up in the picture, what about the boy?
    â€œWhat exactly are we looking for?” Abby whispered as they walked past long, tall rows of neatly shelved books.
    â€œI don’t know yet,” Lena replied. She hoped she’d know when she saw it.
    The librarian stepped inside a quiet room filled with flat files and several machines. “These cabinets hold all the
Narrowsburg Buglers
printed since the paper was first published in 1908,” she said, donning her reading glasses so she could make out the tiny labels on the drawers. She opened one near thebottom. “I would start with late spring of 1997 — that should be far back enough — and work your way forward.”
    â€œGreat, thanks,” Abby said. She pulled open a drawer and ran a finger along the boxes of rolled film. Clearly her tenacity was kicking in. Lena eyed the rows and rows (and rows) of microfilm and felt her heart sink. This was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.
    â€œHere we go. June 1, 1997,” Abby said, pulling the roll out of the drawer. Then she reached back in and grabbed several more boxes. “Can you get the 1999s?” she asked, nearly dropping a bunch of film.
    Lena caught two rolls before they fell to the floor, plucked the last three from the drawer, and followed her best friend to the microfilm machines. Abby started to set herself up on one. There was another beside her, but Lena hesitated.
    â€œI know it would be faster if we each took a machine, but I kind of want to look together,” Lena said.
    Abby slid the film into the machine. “Oookaaaay,” she said, drawing the word out and asking her friend without actually asking:
Are you all right?
    â€œI’m just a little weirded out is all,” Lena replied. Her sleepless night was catching up with her — her head felt like it was packed with cotton.
    Lena pulled a chair up beside Abby’s and together they watched newspaper headlines and articles whiz by on the screen in front of them.
    After what seemed like an hour, but was probably six minutes, Abby paused on an ad for ultra-hold mousse. “Check out that hairdo,” she said, pointing at the image on the screen. The woman in the picture had a puffy bob and bangs with a life of their own — they hovered about two inches above her eyebrows.
    â€œNiiice,” Lena replied halfheartedly. Even though she was the reason they were searching for clues, she felt herself growing more and more anxious. At the moment, she just wanted to get out of there! Lena let out a long breath, adjusted the Impulse at her side, and tried to stop fidgeting.
    Abby finished her second roll of microfilm and slid the end of a third into the machine. The images whirred along in a seemingly endless blur. “I’m not finding anything,” Abby confessed after a while. “You want to take a shot?”
    Lena glanced out the window. A group of kidswas shrieking, running through a sprinkler. Enjoying the heat.
    â€œHello? Lena?” Abby called.
    â€œSorry,” Lena apologized, shaking her head. Poor Abby was doing all the work while she was zoning out. She reached for the next box of microfilm and saw it had been unrolled and lay in coils all over the table beside her. Had she done that? She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. She didn’t remember moving them.
    Lena shivered. “Actually, I don’t want to look anymore,” she said. “This is getting us nowhere. Summer is almost over, and what are we doing? Reading old newspapers! Let’s get out of here.”
    Abby raised an eyebrow at her friend and opened her mouth to say something, then closed