“There’s something here,” Stenrik says slowly, his finger tracing the words. “Something we’re not seeing.”
“The storm?” I try. “We’re definitely in a storm.”
“Maybe it’s metaphorical?”
“Everything about this is metaphorical.”
The Chronicle’s glow pulses once, like it’s frustrated with us. The pages try to flip to another section, but I hold them down, determined to understand this one first.
“We’re missing it,” I say. “But I don’t know what.”
He closes the Chronicle carefully. “We can’t think straight anymore. We need a break or we’ll just fail again.”
“We don’t have time for?—”
“We have hours. We can afford thirty minutes of being human.” He pauses. “Or whatever we are now.”
I look at my translucent hands, then at him. He’s right. We’re exhausted, frustrated, and beating our heads against the same verse over and over.
“Okay,” I say. “A break. Then we try again.”
“Want to do something stupid?” I ask.
“Stupider than our current situation?”
“Different stupid.” I stand and head to the back of the library where we keep the donated items nobody wants. Including... “Library cart racing.”
“What?”
“We have three carts. The floor is mostly clear now that we’ve destroyed everything. First one to Biography wins.”
“This is juvenile.”
“This is fun. You remember fun, right? That thing people had before you became winter incarnate?”
I feel his competitive spirit wake up. “What does the winner get?”
“Bragging rights and the last can of soup that isn’t expired.”
“You’re on.”
We line up at the far wall. I take the cart with the squeaky wheel. He takes the one with dignity. Keith appears with a checkered flag he’s made from shadow and newspaper.
“KEITH WILL OFFICIATE! ON YOUR MARKS!”
I grip my cart handles. Stenrik does the same, looking seriously competitive for someone who claims to be above this.
“GET SET!”
The shadow creatures gather to watch. Carl appears to be taking bets.
“GO!”
We run. It’s ridiculous—me in my wrinkled clothes from yesterday, translucent as tissue paper, him in his formal ice elf attire, slightly see-through, both of us pushing library cartslike our lives depend on it. My squeaky wheel screams. His maintains dignity until he takes the corner too fast and?—
CRASH.
We collide at the Mystery section. The carts tangle. We go down in a heap of metal and limbs and I land on top of him, both of us laughing too hard to move.
