As soon as Harper walked into the library, she knew that Will wouldn’t be there.

She walked from corner to corner, breathing slowly, watchful, nervous. The room felt different.

All the times that Will had said he’d hated school and couldn’t figure out why he’d returned here as a ghost. She saw that differently now and wondered if he had, too. At Riverlark Will was told many times what he wasn’t good at; he’d also found the one thing he was best at. He thought that he was best at being a soldier. But maybe now he’d realised that what he was best at was friendship.

School was where Will had made the greatest friends of his life. Perhaps he’d come back to Riverlark to say goodbye. But being Will, he’d had to do something important for a friend before he could leave. Harper was the lucky one.

It didn’t surprise her that he hadn’t said a proper goodbye to her, whatever that meant. What if it had felt like the day he’d said goodbye to his parents before he went to war? Or the day she hugged her parents at passport control? The important thing was the time they’d had together.

I will never, ever forget you, Will, she thought.

‘Hello?’ called a soft voice.

‘I’m here, Misha,’ Harper replied.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Thinking about all the people who went to Riverlark before us. And about graduation day.’

‘Good, I missed you yesterday. But while you were gone I found loads of new stuff and I had an idea for how to display it.’

Misha described her idea to make the library into a giant timeline. And all along the timeline there would be photos, student work, artefacts, whatever they could find. They’d put arrows from the oldest section through to now: 1877 to 2020.

‘A guided tour of Riverlark,’ said Harper.

‘Exactly.’

‘Misha, that’s perfect. It’ll be like walking through time. Not everyone is going to think it’s cool though. Some people might be awful about it. Like Corey and Briar.’

‘That’s their problem,’ said Misha.

Harper laughed; this was a Misha she’d never seen before. She was different when it was just the two of them in the library.

Harper and Misha asked Miss Weiss the art teacher for thick paper to cover the library windows from the inside: the large one at the front and three others down the side. They used black paper, and some photo corners that Misha had found in a drawer, to start on the displays. In silver pen they wrote neat labels and descriptions, using information from the files and from the history books in non-fiction, and what they could find on the internet, especially from websites with old newspapers.

They took down the old, sun-bleached posters from the library walls, rolled them up neatly and tucked them away. Misha used masking tape on the walls to plan the timeline.

‘William Park has to go in the display,’ said Misha.

‘Yep…good idea,’ Harper replied, trying to look as normal as possible.

At recess, some younger kids opened the door to ask what they were doing. Harper said that she and Misha had been given a punishment and had to clean all the shelves—the covered windows were so that no one would feel sorry for them and try to help. Then she said, ‘But do you want to clean it for us?’ and they ran away.

They weren’t the last visitors. The girls wanted their idea to be a surprise but they weren’t allowed to lock themselves in, so Augie and Jake volunteered to be door security. They enjoyed it so much that they promised to do it every recess and lunch until the project was finished. Harper heard them making up outlandish stories about what was going on.

Hearing all those voices out there asking questions made Harper see the display with new eyes. She wanted it to be something that everyone would like. And for people to see that there was more to the library than they thought.

‘What do little kids like doing at museums?’ Harper asked Misha, who had two sisters in the junior school.

‘Touching everything,’ said Misha, rolling her eyes.

Harper went back into the archive room and rummaged for objects. She found a heavy blue typewriter with clunky grey keys.

‘What about this?’

‘Perfect. Anything with buttons, handles or moving parts. There might be some things we can’t let them play with though, things that are very old and delicate.’

‘We can make labels. But not boring ones like “Do Not Touch”. Funny ones…Like, “You are the best at not touching this! Keep up the good work!”’

Misha giggled. ‘Yeah, that’s better. And let’s ask Cleo to draw pictures for the kids who can’t read yet. She’s great at cartoons.’

‘Definitely. And I’ve got a drawing Cleo did of William Park a while ago. I want her to add one thing to it. And Ro might have something on his computer that will put colour into these photos. It could make them look more real.’

Misha held up the black-and-white photo of the junior cadets. Harper had such a rush of feeling, certain now that she’d never see Will again. She was relieved she had something to concentrate on. And she went back to digging through the archives.