Every day I sneak away to the library to read Sherlock Holmes. I think I could walk it blindfolded by now. Exactly eighteen steps up, around the corner to the left, past Keats and Kipling (I always say hello, of course) and down past Hardy, and right next to Dickens. And then it’s ghastly crimes and poisoned corpses and the woman and guessing clues until my head spins. And for a while, it doesn’t matter. Because I’m not there anymore. I’m over the sea and far away, taking tea with the world’s only consulting detective and kind, handsome Dr. Watson. And no one in row twenty-six seems to notice a tall skinny girl with stick-to-your-forehead curls disappear one fingerprint at a time. Not even when they look right at me. Every day at one o’clock.
-diary entry
