“No! You can’t follow me,” Danny told the arrows. Great. Now he was talking to them. Mrs. Contreras would not like that.
His sneakers made screeching sounds as he skidded down the hall. A bright lemon-printed fabric caught his eyes, and he barreled up the flight of stairs, nearly bumping into the tour guide, Anjali Singh. To his relief, the golden arrows beneath his feet faded. Was it because he’d gone too far from the room with Ella St. Clay’s book?
“Hello there!” the librarian said in her friendly, high-pitched voice.
“Hi, sorry, I took a wrong turn,” Danny said, trying to catch his breath. He nearly doubled over at the top of the stairs. He could hear the girl and the dog barking down below. Who was she? Dogs weren’t allowed in the library.
“That’s all right,” Anjali said, smiling with white teeth and sparkly nose ring. “Your class is right down the hall. I forgot my notes. Is everything okay?”
Danny’s mouth was dry from running, so he nodded rapidly. Though he didn’t feel completely okay. Perhaps he hadn’t imagined the moving shadow on the bus that morning. But that shadow had been different from the golden arrows. The shadow was a prickly sensation. The arrows were warm.
When Danny and Anjali stepped into a wide room full of maps, he sighed with relief. No security was coming for him. His classmates were crowded in front of posters depicting what Manhattan looked like a hundred years ago. Ms. Esposito was drumming her fingers on a small wooden table, checking her phone. The twins were whispering in a corner. Had no one truly noticed that he’d been gone?
Was he so invisible?
Then another sensation gripped him. It settled right between his ribs. It was like losing something you loved all over again. He knew that he couldn’t have taken the book. It was protected beneath glass. But after so much time separated from Ella St. Clay’s book, he’d been so close to touching it. To reading the stories after feeling like he was forgetting the words.
The librarian pointed to a map secured beneath the glass as she spoke about the tunnels beneath the city, and the blueprints for Central Park. When she started talking about abandoned forts with old passageways, Teddy and Freddy threw their heads back and made snoring noises. Ms. Esposito rubbed her eyes and tried her best to silence the roar of laughter from the class.
“No flash!” a security guard shouted, and stomped into the room.
Kelly Park had been trying to take a picture of the maps with her cell phone. She shrugged and shoved the phone into her pocket. They spent the rest of the morning exploring the lower levels of the library, and by the time they broke for lunch, Danny saw no signs of the golden arrows or the mysterious girl and her dog. He was starting to think he’d imagined them, too. He should have been relieved. He could go about his day and be the kind of boy Mrs. Contreras wanted him to be: good and ordinary. The kind of boy who didn’t see shadows moving on their own or follow golden arrows into locked rooms.
On the way out, Kelly and her friends clogged up the doorway trying to take a selfie. They winked and stuck out their tongues. Kelly’s arms were covered in temporary tattoos that her parents allowed her to have. She smiled at Danny and waved him over.
“Me?” he asked, and glanced back over his shoulder. No one was there, so surely it had to be him.
“Yeah! Group selfie time.”
Danny had never been asked to be part of a group before. Not unless it was forced on them by a class activity. It was hard to make friends when he’d moved so often, and Teddy and Freddy were always there to tell people how uncool and weird Danny was. Could Kelly Park be a friend he could talk to? He wished there was someone he could tell about the peculiar things he’d seen that day. Maybe this group selfie was the start of a new friendship. But as he began walking over to them, Teddy barreled into him.
Danny managed not to topple over, but by the time he’d steadied himself, Freddy and Teddy had replaced him in Kelly’s group.
“Come on, kids,” Ms. Esposito said, and ushered everyone out.
Danny lingered in the map room as long as he could. He was embarrassed about Teddy pushing him, but mostly he was sad. He’d seen something extraordinary and there was no one to share it with. It was the kind of sadness that made him want to curl into a ball and fall asleep until the bad day had passed. When was the last time he’d felt excited?
It was when he’d made plans with Pili. The days when he’d convinced himself that he had found magic. That moment when he saw the golden arrows and when he talked to the girl in the yellow dress. He wanted that feeling back. Right now, he needed a miracle.
As they spilled a few yards into Bryant Park for lunch, Anjali shouted, “Don’t forget to sign up for your library cards!” Danny and his class ate beside the library on the bright green lawn. He unzipped his backpack and took out his hand sanitizer. After living with the twins, Danny carried it everywhere he went because Teddy and Freddy liked to leave their boogers all over the place.
He sat by himself and opened the brown paper bag lunch that the school provided.
“Hey, Danoodle,” Teddy said, marching up to where he was. “Give me your cookie.”
Danny looked up at him. The other kids were looking at them. Ms. Esposito was all the way across the lawn, chatting with the tour guide. Even if she was there, she never seemed to see the moments that the twins chose to torture him.
“Why are you so mean to him?” Kelly Park asked. She pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest. “Isn’t he your brother?”
“No, he isn’t! Mind your business,” Teddy shouted at her.
Danny tried to give Kelly a small smile, but all his insides felt like they were being liquefied in a blender. It was supposed to be a good day. He was in a place he’d always dreamed of visiting. He’d seen Ella St. Clay’s handwritten book of the stories he loved. He’d made a new friend. Sort of. But the twins were never going to let him have any kind of happiness. Anger filled Danny’s heart. He didn’t want to be their brother, either, but he didn’t have a choice. He stood up and faced Teddy. It was unusual that he’d be without his twin.
“I said, give me your cookie,” Teddy said.
“No.”
“What did you say to me?”
Danny felt his feet grow heavy, as if he were sinking into cement. “I said, no, you can’t have my cookie.”
Then came a cackling laugh from behind him. Danny turned to find Freddy holding both of Danny’s candy bars. He’d stolen them right out of his backpack. Danny was so angry he was shaking.
As the boys ran off with the thieved chocolate, Danny zipped his backpack shut again and ate his lunch in silence while the other kids sat in groups. Kelly gave him a small smile and waved him over, but he didn’t want to be anywhere near the Garner twins.
A squirrel approached him carefully. It was thin and small, with a fluffy long tail. Danny held a piece of bread out to it. “Here you go, buddy.”
He could swear the squirrel winked at him. It was a day of impossibilities, so why was this any different?
While his class filed into the gift shop, Danny dragged his feet behind the chaperone onto the bus. He sat in the front-row seat all by himself.
He thought about what a strange day it had been. He wondered what his sister would have done if she was in his shoes. Pili wouldn’t have gotten scared. When the girl in yellow ran off, Pili would have waited, no matter what the outcome. She also would have kept following the arrows to see what they could possibly want. Pili was braver than he had ever felt. Mrs. Contreras once told him that the pain of being without his sister would get easier. But that wasn’t true.