Alice woke to a sharp pain in her back and one leg, which was pressed awkwardly against the door. She didn’t mind. With the door shut, she was enjoying the privacy of her hideaway. If Vince came snooping or Bunce returned—or even if the friendly Kris came looking—she hoped they’d assume she’d left the bookstore.
A weight had lifted from her shoulders. The crying had done her good. For the first time in years, she felt more like herself.
She was reading about the other Alice talking to the caterpillar, and it was as if Lewis Carroll had written a secret message just for her:
“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”
“What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar sternly. “Explain yourself!”
“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”
She was considering the deeper meaning of this, when she heard a scream and a crash.
The ruckus made her jump. Only she had no room to jump, so instead she kicked out and the little red door flew open with a bang.
Footsteps slapped against the linoleum. A person ran down the aisle at breakneck speed. A pair of legs whizzed past, shoes slap-slapping on the linoleum.
“Hey,” Alice called out. “What’s going on?”
She struggled with her dress, scrambling to get up. She’d had none of the advantages of a turtle retracting its limbs when she sat down, yet here she was feeling like she was stuck on her back, her legs and arms flailing to turn herself over. She cursed.
Finally, she managed to free her twisted left leg and inch her butt across the cushions and then dump out into the bookstore aisle.
She landed on her hands and knees. She got to her feet and, out of habit, brushed down her dress. Then stopped.
What was that crash she’d heard?
She looked around. Bookshelves stretched out in either direction. Overhead, she could make out the scaffolding near the ceiling, but no handyman.
She gazed back at her hideaway. Reluctant to leave it so soon, she nevertheless slipped the book under the cushion and closed the red door again.
She retraced her steps to the front. Bunce had not returned yet. A sheet of paper taped to the cash register carried a hastily scribbled message in a rough hand:
Be back in 5 minutes. Thieves will be prosecuted!!!
She went looking for Vince. She headed straight down one of the aisles. Only there was no straight line to the back. The bookshelves had been arranged at angles, creating a kind of labyrinth.
Her mom had arranged the bookshelves in such a way. “A bookstore holds treasures that look different to every person,” her mom had said. “What you find, won’t be what I find, because the magic will make sure you find precisely what you need.”
Bunce’s neglect had turned that whimsical idea into something far more mundane: The bookstore felt like a chaotic mess.
She rounded a corner and, although the scaffolding lay to the left, labyrinth logic told her to turn right at the next intersection. She turned right, then left, and headed down a straight stretch until she emerged at the end of the stacks.
The scaffolding rose above her, and she called out Vince’s name.
Then she saw him, and stopped.
Vince lay on the floor, face down, blood pooling under his head.
Her stomach leaped up her throat. She put a hand to her mouth, stifling a scream.
He must have fallen. She crouched down over him.
“Vince?”
She put a hand on his back. He wasn’t moving. She put two fingers to his neck to feel for a pulse. Nothing. Then his wrist. Also nothing.
Alice’s heart raced. A horrible accident. Vince was dead.
But then she remembered the person running past the red door, and a cold hand gripped her heart. If Vince fell by accident, why would that someone run away?