Page 86 of Sour Lollipops and Sweet Nightmares
“Yeah, well, some people think they know stuff when they just memorized parts of the textbook.”
I was currently staring at Ravi’s answer to Dr. Kellerman’s question. It was right here, word for word. Did it still bother me that he said it before I could? Yes. Because if anyone were going to memorize something from a book titledPrinciples of Sedimentology and Stratigraphy, it would be me. Not him.
“Okay,” Rachel nodded. “I get that you’re mad at someone. But I can’t hate them with you if you don’t tell me who it is or what happened.”
This went far beyond her girl world rules. Besides, if I told her who I was mad at and why, I’d be admitting that four assholes who’d never taken a geology course in their life, actually did pretty well.
“Can we forget it? It’s not important.”
“How can you say that?” She scoffed. “We have to hate people together.”
Ugh. Why did we have to do everything together? I was perfectly fine on my own before she came along.
“You already hate this person.”
“It was that bitch Candice, wasn’t it?”
“What?” Who was Candice?
I seemed to have insulted Rachel somehow. Her lip curled as she cried, “Oh my God, Georgia. I told you about that wench. Don’t tell me you forgot.”
“Pfft, of course not.” I did forget, but if I was piecing this together right, then Candice must be the mystery girl I now had a grudge against. Although I still wasn’t sure why or what she did.
“Good, because that bitch doesn’t deserve a second of your time.”
I had so many questions. What did Candice do? Why did I have to hate her too—that made no sense to me. How did we go from me being mad, to Rachel’s girl grudge?
“I’m going to get us coffee,” Rachel announced and stomped away.
Was she mad at me or Candice? I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was both? Maybe it was neither? But I felt like I should say or do something to make Rachel feel better, but I didn’t know what. Girls were complicated. I missed the simpler times when all I had to figure out was if Jerry was Jerry.
Sighing, I looked over at Rachel, who had already started flirting with a guy in line.
Only she would find a guy at the café alcove in a library. I called this part the café alcove because of the barista and fancy espresso machine by the back wall. Why something like that was in a library, I had no idea, but it fit with the rest of Renfrew’s opulence, and I liked how the scent of coffee mixed with paper.
I would’ve preferred going to the right, where the long communal tables and brass reading lamps were, but since Rachel couldn’t keep her mouth shut for more than two minutes—I timed her once—we were stuck in this not-so-quiet corner next to the creepy spiral staircase.
My eyes wandered over to the wrought iron staircase winding up to the next floor.
The way the designer set this place up, the main floor could technically be considered the second floor. The stairs outside, leading to the main door, took you up a floor. There was another level below and two above. There may have been a basement, but I didn’t know.
I was much more interested in the upper two levels and why they were restricted. There were thousands of books, if not hundreds of thousands, in this room alone. With all that knowledge on this floor, what remained to go up there?
I could understand a rare books section or climate control for first editions. But two whole floors? This wasn’t the lost Library of Alexandria, although I was starting to think that Renfrew had just as many secrets.
There was a symbol I’d found a few places throughout the library. A circle of ivy surrounding three interlocking triangles were carved into a couple of the shelves in the occult section, in the corner of the stained-glass window in the back, and on the bottom step of that wrought iron staircase.
None of the symbols was big. If I hadn’t tripped and fallen last week, I wouldn’t have noticed them. Now, I couldn’t stop seeing them. And they weren’t just in here. I’d found that symbolsprinkled throughout campus on various buildings, including my house.
I had no idea what it meant. I couldn’t find it in any books or online searches. At one point, I thought it might be an architect’s signature, but it wasn’t. That symbol didn’t exist as far as the internet was concerned. It was a complete mystery, not one I wanted to solve. I didn’t care enough for that. I was more curious about what was up those stairs.
“Hey,” Rachel came back with her arm around someone. “Look who I found.”
I looked up at the friendly smile and internally sighed.
Sex appointment Kash. Fantastic.
“Kash was studying over there,” she claimed while plopping down in the chair across from me. “Talk about a coincidence.”
