Page 36 of By the Book

“What in the world is going on in here?” I asked. “Are you two insane?”

“What areyoudoing here?” my dad asked.

“Dash, you need to leave,” my mom said. “We’re taking care of this.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

I was about to say more, but sometimes life has a way of punctuating sentences.

Because that was when the door to the genealogy room slammed shut.

Chapter 9

When I tried the door, it opened a fraction and then stopped.

“Someone blocked it,” my dad announced. “We’re trapped.”

I gave him a flat look, but it rolled right off him.

“The killer,” my mom announced.

(They were in an announcing mood, it appeared.)

“What do you mean we’re trapped?” Stewart asked, poking his head up from behind the protective barrier of his book truck. “We can’t be trapped.”

“Nobody trapped us,” I said. It was an idiotic thing to say. It was obviously untrue. And still, somehow, I couldn’t keep myself from saying it. I gave the door another pull. Again, it shifted in its frame and then stopped.

“Let me try,” my dad said.

“What are you going to try?” I asked. “I know how to open a door.”

“Let your father try,” my mom said.

I moved out of the way so my dad could do exactly what I’d done. When that didn’t work (big surprise), my dad changed his stance. He planted one foot on the jamb. His face slowly grew redder and redder.

“You’re going to throw your back out,” my mom said.

“You’re going to have a heart attack,” I said.

“We can’t be trapped,” Stewart said. “Nobody’s at the circulation desk.”

Someone running off with a contraband Danielle Steel seemed like the least of our worries, but I said, “Nobody trapped us in here. Why would someone trap us?”

“Well, we’re trapped,” my mom said. “How do you explain that?”

“A bookshelf fell over.”

“Completely silently? And even though the door opens inward, the bookshelf is blocking it?”

“Maybe it’s a magic bookshelf,” I said—and not in my most, uh, filial tone. “I don’t know. And that’s not the real issue anyway.”

“Maybe I should shoot the lock out,” my dad said. He stepped back from the door, gulping air, and swept back his corduroy jacket.

“No!” my mom and I shouted at the same time.

My dad’s disappointment was palpable, but he let the jacket fall back to his side.

I paused, trying to recalibrate to the unreality of my parents’—well, stupidity. Whatever gravity last night’s death might have produced, it was gone now. My parents were back to sneaking around, snooping, playing detective. (I tried not to acknowledge my own hypocrisy.) And I knew why: because they were back inside their private universe, living out their lives that touched the real world only incidentally. The fact that this was a real murder, and we were in real trouble, didn’t bother them any more than, say, abandoning a ten-year-old boy at home because his social anxiety made him a burden at award banquets.

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