He stepped around a shelf and found himself face to face with her.

Felda Finnegan.

He hated being taken by surprise. There was absolutely no excuse for it. But he’d been hoping he could at last get his hands on The Sign of the Four. It had been out for two years now, and he thought now that the new Doyle book was published, he could take it without too many people noticing.

He’d not been concentrating, that was the problem. Everything was so distracting these days.

“Good Heavens,” she said. “Greg Duday! Where did you come from?”

“I was just…” he smiled, or rather, pulled his lips back in that self-conscious grimace he was afraid made him look like a hungry goldfish. “I thought I’d see what it was like. The library, you know.”

This was bad. Very bad. He’d set a firm rule for himself never to be seen when he was in the library, and now he was standing there having a low-voiced conversation with someone. He gestured. “I was just over there…”

“But I just came from there. How could I have missed you?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he lied.

“You’re turning pink,” she said, frowning slightly. “That means you’re fibbing, Greg.”

She noticed things. He’d forgotten that about her. “It’s good to see you again,” he said, conscious of his face growing even hotter.

He had to keep looking at her eyes, had to resist the urge to run his gaze up and down her body. A week ago, on Timpani Street, Tel had smacked him across the back of the head and said, “We’re not at the Spotswood, you idiot,” when Greg stopped to watch Solange Reckoner walk by.

“It’s good to see you, too, Greg,” she said, in that voice that meant she wasn’t going to talk about something he plainly didn’t want to talk about, but was going to think about it and bring it up later. When she’d been taller than him, that had been intimidating. Now that he was a little taller than her it was even more intimidating, which was confusing.

“Did you like school?” he asked.

“Finishing school,” Madame Finnegan had called it. “Our girl is off to finishing school on the Mainland,” she’d said that day Greg came over to weed the garden and found Felda gone, the house all echoey and dull without her. No more being let into the room of shelves. No more books being pressed into his hands so he could smuggle them home, no more bringing them back and talking to her about them, hearing what she thought.

When he’d gotten home that evening he’d thought he’d hidden how upset he was until, just before bedtime, Maman had grabbed him, jerked his head back by the hair and poured Appetit down his throat because he’d not eaten supper. Maman watched him closely for two days after, convinced he was getting sick from sheer cussedness. He couldn’t shed a single tear. It had been a nightmare.

“I thought it was all very silly,” she said. “A bunch of girls learning to primp and mince around and talk like white mainlanders. Do you know, they wouldn’t let me read any novels? They said it was bad for us. Imagine!”

“That’s terrible!” he whispered. “You couldn’t read any Sherlock Holmes?” This seemed downright cruel to him.

“No I couldn’t! So I’ve been catching up, coming here and reading as much as I can.”

She stepped back and looked him up and down. Distracting. He wished she wouldn’t. And she was talking too loud. And she still wore those glasses, which weren’t becoming at all.

“You’ve sure changed,” she said.

“I wear shoes,” he said. And he didn’t smell like sweat, dirt and sea-water anymore because Tel was sneaking him into the baths at the club. And he made an effort to keep his clothes clean and his hair brushed. And he was using a wand. And he’d gone to the Spotswood. Papa took him on his last birthday.

And he’d come to realize things about himself that made him think and plan and consider his options. He was not just reading every book he could, but inhaling them, not just Doyle, but Shakespeare, Dickens, and new novelists like Hardy, not just fiction, but books about science, math, music, history… His secrets in his head, all the things he knew that people didn’t know he knew. He’d resolved to continue being a sneak, to keep his mouth slack and his eyes blank so he’d be left alone to decide things for himself, calculate in peace.

And he’d gone to the Spotswood. Had he remembered that? He was fifteen years old. He was a man.

And she? He reminded himself to look at her through his new, adult eyes. He saw a woman who was a bit older than he was and therefore not to be seriously considered. A gauche woman who talked too loudly, even in the library, and, even after a year of “finishing school,” didn’t know how to put herself together.

A woman who knew more about him than he liked.

Nothing like those beautiful, decently unobservant mainland women he saw coming in and out of The Rose, the ladies who tipped him for carrying their bags or fetching them flowers or “finding” their handbags after they’d gone missing. (He didn’t even have to use his wand for that. Just a flick of his fingers, and he could snatch them from across a room. The trick was returning them intact, without so much as a penny taken. Then he’d get a grateful look and a generous gratuity that Maman didn’t need to know about. Another secret to be kept.)

“I was such a grubby little brat back then,” he said. “It was nice of you to waste so much time on me.”

She looked perplexed. “I didn’t think I was just being ‘nice,” she said. “And a friend is never a waste of time.”

“You were a great teacher. The best teacher I ever had.”

“Oh.” She seemed startled, and her smile was gone. “I didn’t know I was teaching you. I thought we were just talking, but… Thank you.”

“Thank you,” he said. She wasn’t as pretty when she didn’t smile. No, he reminded himself, she wasn’t pretty at all now. He didn’t like looking at her eyes.

“I think,” she said after a moment, “I should be getting back downstairs.”

“But I thought you wanted to pick up the latest Doyle. Look, it’s right here…”

“No, not today. It was nice to see you, Greg.”

She turned around and walked quickly away.

He looked at the book waiting there on the shelf. Now he didn’t want it. Now he just wanted to go to Swede’s Hill, where he could be alone and think.

Now he wished he could turn back time and do the last few minutes all over again.