Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board

Chapter 12

"How do you mean, weird?" Mischa asked. "My sister is basically a terrorist. That's weird."

"Like..." I drifted off, suspecting that approaching this territory was probably a bad idea. "Just unexplained occurrences, uneasy feelings. General strangeness."

Mischa took her eyes off the road to shoot me an are-you-kidding-me look. "What are you freakin' talking about, McKenna? Are you losing your marbles, too? I'm not sure if I can handle both of my best friends being whackos."

"I'm not, I'm not," I insisted, embarrassed by how flattered I was that Mischa acknowledged me as one of her best friends. "Just... there's this word that keeps popping up in my life and I can't explain it. Does nohi mean anything to you?"

"It sounds Japanese," Mischa shrugged. "Like, kodomo no hi is Children's Day in Japan."

It was hard to hide my dismay. That didn't seem like much of a clue, and it didn't sound like Mischa had been observing any strange things like I'd been.  While Mischa could surprise me the wide variety of trivia she stored in her head, there was no chance Olivia had learned how to say anything in Japanese before her death. Acquisition of knowledge had not exactly been one of Olivia's interests.

"Really?" I asked. "So, as far as you know, that word doesn't have anything to do with Olivia at all?"

We had stopped at a red light before an intersection, and Mischa stared me down. "I don't know what you're talking about, McKenna. Are you trying to tell me that you think you're getting messages from Olivia... from the other side?"

I took a deep breath. "Before Candace went completely off her rocker, did she tell you that it freaked her out that Violet knew about her half-brothers, even though Candace couldn't remember ever mentioning them to her before? I told you guys what Violet said to me on the track before Olivia died, that spirits tell her things. So, I know it's far-fetched, but maybe Olivia is a spirit now, and she's trying to tell us things. There's been some weird stuff happening at my house, and it's not just me, Trey's seen it, too. I think Olivia is trying to warn us. I think... more bad stuff is going to happen."

The light changed from red to green, but Mischa hesitated before accelerating. "You are seriously, seriously bugging me out."

We drove a few more blocks before Mischa asked, "What kind of bad stuff do you think is going to happen? Are more of us going to die, like Olivia?"

I stared out my window at my little town as we passed through, not wanting to say the words on the tip of my tongue. There was the florist, the feed shop, the pizza place that reliably delivered through snowy winters (Federico's was its rival pizza restaurant across town that only offered take-out during winter months), and as we passed the public elementary school, I said, "Mischa, we have to stop at the library. I need to see something."

Without asking me any questions, Mischa turned right into the parking lot of our small brick public library, just a little further down the road from the elementary school. I'd been going there with my mom my whole life, and had never before paid much attention to the back wing of the library, which rose to two stories and featured enormous floor-to-ceiling windows. Now that I was taking a closer look, that wing of the library, which had been added onto the original structure a decade before I was born, dwarfed the original structure and had been designed in a far more modern style. It was obviously an addition to the original building, and very little effort had been put into making it look like a natural extension.

"I don't get it. What are we looking for?"

I pointed to the wing of the library and turned to Mischa. "Guess whose grandfather paid for that wing of the library? I have reason to believe it might be named after him, too."