Page 103 - NS 2024

“I spent a lot of time at your house,” She replied. “And my mom never sings, so I always noticed when yours did.”
“Remember when you, me, and Owen did that singing competition?” I asked. Sienna smiled immediately thinking of the memory. It was one of my favorite memories with the two of them. We were pretending to be pop singers on a TV show. We euated better singing with louder singing, and within een minutes the three of us were screaming fragmented lyrics of songs we’d heard on the radio. Our singing was so loud that someone in the neighborhood came over to the lawn and politely told us to shut up.
“I used to want to be a singer when I was a kid,” Sienna said.
“You had the best voice of all of us,” I told her. I meant it. I wondered what her voice
sounded like now, but it wasn’t like I could ask her to sing in the middle of the library. e janitor would nd us too and then we’d all be screwed.
Sienna grinned. “It wasn’t much of a competition, to be fair.”
Our conversation about singing ended when we reached the janitor’s oce. e door opened easily and Owen was sitting inside, twirling around on a swivel chair, running his hands through his hair. He wasn’t locked inside; he was choosing to stay in there. He could have run out and made a grand escape, but he was following the janitor’s will.
“Are you here to rescue me?” Owen asked.
“Sort of...” I started.
“You know you could just leave,” Sienna pointed out.
“anks, Captain Obvious,” Owen remarked.
ere was a phone on the corner of the desk. Beside the phone was a piece of paper with a
list of numbers for various library employees. I grabbed a pen from a jar on the desk, scribbled out one of the numbers, and replaced it with a dierent one.
“What are you doing?” Owen asked.
I held up the piece of paper proudly. “When the janitor tries to call his boss, he’s going to reach me.”
“And he’s going to mistake his y-year-old male boss for a twenty-year-old girl?”
I guess I hadn’t thought that part through.
“I’ll handle it,” Sienna broke into the conversation. “I do very good impersonations.” Owen
looked over at me. “Is she serious?” He asked, sighing. “She’s serious. I can’t believe my fate is in your hands.”
“Your fate?” I replied. “Okay, dramatic.”
“You two are the ones treating this like some giant uest,” Owen pointed out. I shrued. “It’s what Mom wanted us to do. Maybe she wanted us to bond or something.” “I don’t want her death to be a bonding experience,” Owen muttered.
“At least something good is coming out of something so awful!” I exclaimed. “ere are