Half truth

“I want to let you know that the police are on their way so that I can hand over this video. It’s grainy, but I think I see her in it.” He let us stand behind his desk and stood with us, clicking the mouse. He fast-forwarded ten seconds and then slowed it down. My pulse quickened. It was her. She was wearing jeans, a trench coat, and sneakers. Even in black and white she looked beautiful. Her hair was in a long braid, covering her face partially as she typed on her phone. She stopped right underneath the camera to type, leaning against a column and then answered the phone with a huge smile on her face. She was laughing. I could practically hear the laughter in my ears as I watched her. My chest felt heavy. I knew it was me she was talking to. She pushed off the column and hung up, still smiling, as she continued walking.

“Wait wait wait.” I tapped the screen. “Where does she go now?”

“She has to be going into the library,” Jeff said, clicking the video to a stop.

“Is there another angle?”

“I tried it but you can only see her feet.” He clicked another button and a second video started playing. I could see her legs and someone else’s in the shot, but no faces.

“Where are their faces?” I asked. “We need it to be higher.”

“It doesn’t go higher. That camera has been pointing in the wrong direction for months. Every time I fix it, it falls again.”

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” I punched the desk with each curse, then bit my knuckles to stop myself. “Jeff, we need more, man.”

“Is there a video from when she leaves the library?” Nolan asked.

“Nope. She never leaves.”

“What do you mean she never leaves?” Nolan asked.

“It seems impossible, I know. There’s only one entrance, but she never left.”

Nolan and I looked at each other. There wasn’t only one entrance. Both of us ran to the door at the same time.

“Thanks, Jeff,” I called out as we ran.

We pushed the doors to the library hard, nearly knocking out Paper Boy Max, who was walking out.

“I just asked them, they don’t remember seeing her,” he called out as we ran. “I’ll keep checking.”

“Where the hell is the door?” Nolan ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck. The one tu

I lifted my phone and dialed Marcus. He was a nerd. He would know.

“It’s . . . shit. I never use that tu

“Got it.” I hung up and looked at Nolan. “Behind the classics.”

We stood in the middle of the library, taking in the magnitude of it. In a building filled with old books, who was to say what was considered a classic? Nolan called Marcus this time.

“Dude, what the hell is a classic?” he asked, his gaze wandering. He looked at me. “He says it’s around Harry Potter.”

“Harry Potter’s a classic?” I frowned, walking in the direction of the information desk. The girl behind the desk looked up from her book. “Hey, where can I find Harry Potter books?”

She pointed toward the back of the library. I thanked her and headed in that direction.

“No ru

I lifted my hand to stick my middle finger out, but just held it flat and slowed down. I didn’t know that poor girl and she’d just helped me out. Nolan caught up to me.

“Can you believe Harry Potter is a classic?” he asked.

I shot him a look. “Look for the door.”

We walked to the end of the row. There was an emergency exit door, but that was it. I exhaled, putting my hands over my head. Where the hell could this door be? It had to be here. Marcus had taken it. We’d heard about it. Amelia had never come back out of the library. She had to have gone through a tu

“Look,” Nolan said, pushing a door behind us open.

I could’ve kissed him. I slapped him on the shoulder instead and started ru

“There aren’t even cameras on each exit,” I said. “That’s just plain stupid.”

Nolan brought his phone out. He glanced at me. “I’m calling Adam.”

We walked out through one of the exits, the one closest to the apartments, and walked in that direction. I felt like the weight of the world was on my chest. Where could she have gone? What could have happened?

Against my better judgment, I played the game. I shouldn’t have. I didn’t remember anything that had transpired. I remembered the feeling—the anger as I skated the ice, the adrenaline as my legs pushed me forward. My first actual recollection was sitting next to Nolan in the box.

“What the fuck happened?” I asked.

He looked over at me. “What the fuck happened was that you sent someone to the hospital.”

“What?”

“Uh, yeah.” He chuckled. “That’ll teach him not to fuck with the Smash Brothers.”

I blinked, looking around. There was no one on the ice. I did see the blood though. Fuck. I turned to Nolan. “Is the game over?”

“Did you not hear me?”

“Yeah, but is it over?” It wasn’t like this hadn’t happened before. What was hockey without a little blood anyway? I’d already replaced five of my teeth and I hadn’t even started playing pro yet. None of this was surprising.

“Yeah, it’s over. I don’t think they wanted to feel your wrath after that last one.”

“Is he okay?” I frowned.

“Yeah, they called. Concussion, broken nose, split lip.” He shrugged. “He’s fine.”

That was a new record for me. I’d never sent someone to the hospital with all of the above at the same time. My thoughts drifted back to Amelia. She would’ve probably been horrified at whatever I did out there. I found that unlike insistences in the past, this one had left me feeling empty, not any better than I did when I walked out there today. It was the worst kind of feeling, the emptiness.

Rage, I could handle.

Sadness, I could handle.

Emptiness was something I didn’t do well with.