Page 14 of By the Book

“I thought you meant everyone else,” I said.

“I didn’t.”

“Oops.”

Bobby seemed like he might want to correct my misunderstanding, so I decided to call ahead of us to Mrs. Shufflebottom. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “What happened?”

She didn’t answer at first. Couldn’t, maybe. But by the time we reached her, she had recovered enough to point one trembling hand.

We’d reorganized the billiard room and brought in folding chairs for the guests. A lectern from the library served as an improvised auction block. Offerings for the fundraiser were on display: homemade jams from Althea Wilson glimmered in the lamplight next to an oil landscape by Mr. Li and a framed gift certificate to Newsum Decorative Rock. Millie had donated some of her homemade jewelry, which was super cute, and Fox had provided “Mary Poppins’s first monocle,” nestled in a velvet-lined box. Mrs. Shufflebottom was pointing somewhere in thedirection of the massive, three-tier cake Indira had donated (I hadn’t even known about it until that morning, which was probably—if I’m being real—the only reason I hadn’t managed to, um, requisition it).

And then I saw the pillow. Or what looked like a pillow. The world’s most super-modern and uncomfortable pillow, actually, since it was extremely angular, like two wedges shoved together. And then I realized it wasn’t a pillow. It was a book cradle—the kind of support you used with rare old books to protect their bindings. And even in the weak light, I could tell it was empty.

“It’s gone,” Mrs. Shufflebottom said. “Nathaniel Blackwood’s diary is gone.”

Chapter 5

I herded everyone back into the living room while Bobby put up an improvised cordon around the billiard room. It wasn’t an entirely smooth process. The residents of Hastings Rock were, for the most part, kind and lovely people, and whatever annoyance the cupcake catastrophe had created was washed away in the wellspring of concern. That being said, our lovely little town also had a high population of snoops. Fox and Indira had to corral Pippi (who was fervently speaking into her phone—probably recording her next patrons-only podcast episode, exclusively for the Pippi’s Pineapples tier, live from the scene of the crime). Millie caught Cheri-Ann Fryman trying to sneak past us—the proprietor(ess?) of the Rock On Inn was one of the town’s most celebrated gossips, with a particular love for spreading the good word via Facebook, of all things. And Keme, arms folded across his chest in an appropriately macho pose, rounded up Oscar Ratcliff, who was slinking along one wall in hopes of going unnoticed. All Keme did was glare at him, and poor Mr. Ratcliff actually squeaked before scurrying back to the living room.

“Good job, tough guy,” I told Keme. “I can actually see you growing chest hairs.”

He gave me a big grin, a lot of enthusiastic nodding, all the nonverbal signs that I was the funniest guy he’d ever met. And then he tried to knee-cap me.

“I called it in,” Bobby said as he joined us.

Massaging my knee-capped leg, I asked, “How’s Mrs. Shufflebottom?”

“She’s pretty upset.” That seemed to be putting it mildly; she was sitting in an old-fashioned chair at the end of the hall. The hallway was too dark to make out more than her profile, but every line looked carved by grief. Bobby considered me more closely. “What happened to you?”

I looked at Keme and said, “I fell down the stairs.”

Bobby sighed. “Keme, please don’t beat up my boyfriend.”

For whatever reason, that only made Keme smirk, and he strutted away to join the others in the living room.

“He should be in a psych ward,” I said. “Or a prison. Or a specially designed futuristic prison-style psych ward that only holds sociopathic teenagers.”

“That’s called a high school,” Bobby said. And then, in a different tone, “Incoming.”

My parents appeared in the doorway to the living room and came toward us.

“I’m just saying we shouldn’t have been left in the dark,” my dad was saying. “Literally. If there’s an emergency, he ought to come to us, not to that—”

My mom made a warning noise.

“Nice save,” I told them.

They ignored that, of course.

Bobby did too, but I felt like that was more holding-on-by-his-fingernails-level politeness than anything else.

“We’d better get started, dear,” my mom said. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“Get started on what?” I asked, although I was afraid I already knew the answer.

My dad didn’t even bother replying—he sprinted up the stairs.

“Where’s he going?” Bobby asked.

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