There was something about the island that made the girls forget who they had been. All those rules and shalt nots. They were no longer waiting for some arbitrary grade. They were no longer performing. Waiting. Hoping. They were becoming. They were.

A pair of Blue Noses on the next bench glared their disapproval at Evie’s knee-length dress. Evie decided to give them a real show. She hiked her skirt and, humming jauntily, rolled down her stockings, exposing her legs. It had the desired effect on the Blue Noses, who moved down the platform, clucking about the “disgrace of the young.” She would not miss this place.

For once, Evie didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t really thought of her uncle as very human. He was more like a textbook who occasionally remembered to put on a tie. But it was clear that he was, indeed, human, with a deep wound named Rotke.

The man in the shop peered disapprovingly at Evie through the glass. She pumped her arms and legs up and down in imitation of a marching band, gave the man a salute, and continued her meandering walk to the museum.

Why does anyone do anything? Belief. A belief that they are right and just in their actions. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac, because he believed that God had commanded it. To kill your son is unthinkable. A crime. But if you are acting in the belief that your God, your supreme deity whom you must obey, has demanded it of you, is it still a crime?

Really, being a librarian is a much more dangerous job than you realize.

Evie hadn’t always felt that way. For a year after James had died, she’d cupped his half-dollar pendant between her pressed palms and prayed fervently for a miracle, for a telegram that would say GOOD NEWS! IT WAS A TERRIBLE MISTAKE, AND PRIVATE JAMES XAVIER O’NEILL HAS BEEN FOUND, SAFE, IN A FARMHOUSE IN FRANCE. But no such telegram ever arrived, and whatever possible faith might have bloomed in Evie withered and died. Now she saw it as just another advertisement for a life that belonged to a previous generation and held no meaning for hers.