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have you in London.”
    â€œWell, I’ll think about it,” said Jaya. “Leo and I need to get going now. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
    â€œRight. Another time, then,” said the English guy. He glared at me. His eyes might have been the death rays in Gravity Force III.
    I walked to the elevator with Jaya, fizzing with happiness.
    I tried to think of something to say while the elevator went slowly downstairs and while Jaya said hi to the page at the front desk today—an Asian guy with longish hair—and held the door open for me.
    At last, when we stepped out into sunshine, I thought of a topic. “Where are we going?” I asked.
    â€œCentral Park. It’s not that cold. Did you bring lunch?” She held up a bag. “You can share mine, or we can stop and get you a sandwich.”
    â€œThere’s that deli on Madison,” I said.
    More silence as we walked to the deli.
    I found another topic. “So who is that guy?” I asked, just as Jaya started to speak.
    She’d been saying, “So how’s the research,” but she stopped and said instead, “Who, Francis Chu? He’s one of the repository pages. You’d like him. He plays all these crazy instruments. He can play like three at once.”
    â€œThat sounds cool. But I meant the guy upstairs—the snooty one with the English accent who’s always glaring at me.”
    Jaya laughed. “Oh, that’s Simon. He’s not
that
bad! He’s a guest page from the Burton Repository in London. I guess he does sound a little snooty, but that’s mostly the accent. He’s perfectly friendly . . . if anything, too friendly. That accent is really cute!”
    The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t place it. “He’s friendly to
you,
maybe,” I said. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like me.”
    â€œWell, he doesn’t know you yet.”
    We reached the deli and I held the door open for her. Abigail was there, buying a yogurt. “Oh, good, you found each other,” she said.
    â€œYeah, we’re heading to the park to eat lunch,” said Jaya. “Want to join us?”
    â€œSure,” said Abigail.
    Yow! The pleasure went pouring out of me. I felt like a little kid who drops his ice-cream cone. Had I bored Jaya so much already that she regretted asking me to lunch?
    I bought a smoked turkey sandwich, orange juice, and an apple and followed the girls out of the deli.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    We sat on a bench near the edge of the park, with Jaya in the middle. It was warm for October, but windy.
    â€œSo you guys work at the repository, right? What do you do there?” I asked.
    â€œWe’re pages,” said Abigail. “At least, I’m a page. Jaya’s the head page.”
    â€œWhat do pages do?” I asked.
    â€œA little of everything,” said Jaya. “When you request something from the stacks, we go find it. When you’re done with it, we pack it up and reshelve it. If you break it, we fix it. And if you fall asleep in the Main Exam Room, we wake you up at closing time.”
    â€œThe head page has the hardest job,” said Abigail. “She tells all us other pages we’re doing everything wrong.”
    â€œI do not!” said Jaya.
    â€œYou do so, Miss Bossypants.”
    â€œAre you talking about that time with the ice-cream spoons? Because if you don’t wrap them up all the way, they tarnish.”
    â€œYes, and the time with the aardvark cage, and the time with the quetzal feathers, and the time with the zither . . .”
    â€œAll right, all right! Maybe I do. Do I really? Am I too hard on you guys?”
    â€œIt’s okay, Jaya—I’m just teasing. I
want
you to tell me when I’m messing up. I would hate to ruin a perfectly good zither.”
    Silence fell again, broken only by chewing. This is way too awkward, I thought. She’ll