Olivia tucked her eye shadow back into her purse. “But I don’t know the code word,” she said quizzically.
“Not code word,” Sophia said, rolling her black-lined eyes. “Code word. Code word.”
Olivia stared at her. “You Goths can be really cryptic sometimes, you know that?”
“Code word,” replied Sophia, lowering her voice to a whisper, “means we’re meeting in the library.”
“I thought we were meeting in the cafeteria,” Olivia said, slamming her locker shut.
“We were,” Sophia said as Olivia followed her down the hall, “but Ivy changed the plan.”
“Does Camilla know?”
“Ivy’s bringing her,” Sophia explained. “They just had gym together.”
“But why? What’s Ivy up to?” Olivia wondered.
“Beats me,” said Sophia. “I’m just the messenger bat.”
The entrance to the library was at the end of a wide hallway near the principal’s office, and Ivy and Camilla were waiting by the door. Ivy stepped forward and handed Olivia a carrot. With the other hand, she gave Sophia a piece of beef jerky.
“What’s this?” Olivia asked.
“Lunch,” said Ivy matter-of-factly.
“We have work to do,” Camilla declared. Olivia looked at the carrot and took a begrudging bite. Just because vampires call humans “bunnies” doesn’t mean we live on carrots, she thought.
As Olivia and Sophia snacked, Ivy explained her plan. “There’s nothing my father likes more than a well-researched report. He’s always giving these killer presentations to his clients about what he wants to design for them. So I thought, why not prepare our own report to convince him not to move?”
“What would it be about?” Olivia asked with her mouth full.
“How much better Franklin Grove is than Europe,” Ivy answered.
Sophia swallowed her last bite of beef jerky and shook her head. “You think Franklin Grove is better than Europe?” she queried incredulously. “Europe has the Eiffel Tower.”
“Which people can fall off,” Ivy countered.
“It has the fashion shows in Milan,” pointed out Olivia.
“Which create an unhealthy self-image for girls everywhere,” argued Ivy. Camilla nodded vigorously.
Sophia clearly wasn’t convinced. “So what, exactly, does Franklin Grove have that Europe doesn’t?”
“That’s easy,” Ivy said, her dark eyes sparkling. “Us.” With that, she spun on her boot heels and pulled open the library doors.
Olivia couldn’t help smiling. Well, she thought, charging into the library after her sister, it’s worth a shot.
Ivy marched up to the librarian’s desk and found a woman wearing dark lipstick and stylishly chunky black and green glasses, hunched over an enormous book about the Middle Ages.
“Is Mr. Collins here?” Ivy asked. The woman looked up from her book. “Mr. Collins moved to Nashville to play country music. I’m Miss Everling, the new librarian.” She stood, held out her hand, and pumped Ivy’s enthusiastically. Everyone introduced themselves. “Killer sweater,” the librarian said to Sophia, whose top was embroidered with the branches of a bare, crow-filled tree.
You’re the new librarian? Ivy thought, impressed. “Hopefully you can help us, Mrs. Everling,” said Olivia.
The librarian put her hands on her hips. “It’s Miss. Anyway, shoot.”
“We’re doing a presentation on Europe,” Camilla piped up.
“Europe, huh?” Miss Everling said, grabbing a pencil off her desk like it was a sword. “Follow me.”