Read Online Evil Librarian by Michelle Knudsen - Free Book Online Page B

feet.
    “L? Leticia? You okay?”
    Her eyes turn to track across my face, but she doesn’t seem to be able to focus.
    “Hey,” I say. “Hey. Leticia, come on. Come back.” I’m not sure what I mean by that, exactly. But I’m remembering that when Signor De Luca was all spacey after Annie touched him, he came back to himself after a few minutes. He didn’t seem quite as gone as Leticia does right now, though. But, surely, whatever . . . whatever the hell Annie did to her, it’s just temporary. She’s not going to
stay
this way . . . .
    “Leticia!” I scream suddenly into her face, and she blinks and jerks back.
    “What . . .?” She shakes her head and then she seems to be there again. Mostly. “Cyn? What happened?”
    Annie made you go away. My best friend sucked something out of you like a goddamn vampire, only it wasn’t blood, it was something else, and I don’t understand how any of this can really be happening.
    “You — uh, I think you fainted. Standing up. You’re okay now, though.”
Be okay now. Please please please be okay now.
    “I did? Huh. That’s . . . weird. I don’t . . .” She looks around. “Okay. I guess . . . I guess I’ll go home now.”
    “Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe you should sit down.”
    “Okay,” she says agreeably, not sitting down. I do my best to guide her gently down to the floor. We sit there in the emptying hallway for a minute.
    “Leticia?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Are you really okay?”
    “Sure,” she says. “I feel a little tired, though. I probably should go home now.” Her voice is kind of listless, not anything like her usual vivacious, teasing, energetic self. Slowly, she pushes herself back up to her feet.
    I stand up, too. I feel like I should stop her, but I don’t know what to say. And maybe she should go home. Maybe she just needs to sleep it off or something.
    She gives me a vague kind of smile. “See you tomorrow, Cyn.”
    “Are you really —?”
    “Yeah,” she says, waving her hand listlessly toward me. “I’m fine.” She smiles again and walks off down the hall. I watch her go. I do not feel fine at all.
    I walk outside and drop onto one of the benches that line the scraggly front lawn of the school’s main entrance. It seems like maybe two of every ten kids who pass by me are walking slowly, not talking, sort of drifting along. I watch them, trying to think. Assuming for the moment that I haven’t actually lost my mind, and that Mr. Gabriel really is doing this to everyone, what would be the point? What could he possibly get out of it? Does he just like being surrounded by mindless zombie types? It doesn’t really make any sense.
    A thought occurs to me, and I sit up a little straighter, staring intently at nothing in that way that people do when they are thinking very hard about something.
    Maybe the zombie-ness isn’t the point. Maybe it’s just a side effect of something else. When I watched him earlier, he was touching people, seeming to take something out of them. Maybe
that’s
the point — whatever he’s taking. Which is . . .? Whatever makes people not like zombies most of the time.
    But say that’s true. (I know. I know. But let’s just go with it.) He’s doing something else to Annie. Or something additional, I guess, since she was also kind of zombie-like in Italian. But she’s not usually like that. She’s altered around him, and a little starry-eyed, but not lethargic and sort of
gone.
Usually. Until today. And then she did to De Luca what Mr. Gabriel was doing to those students before first period. And then she did it again, to Leticia.
    Is he turning her into whatever he is?
    I want to skitter away from my own thoughts. I get up from the bench, too agitated to sit still. This is all very nuts. None of it makes any sense. What do I think he is? How could he possibly turn Annie into anything? And why? And how can I ignore the fact that all of this is absolutely
not actually possible
?
    There’s a