I gently took the map from Aidene's hands. All I can say is: I was confused. My face was stuck in an extremely weird expression. It made no sense. I looked over to Aidene who's Cheshire smile was slowly turning into a confused, nervous one.
"Whaaaaaaaaaaat?" was all the once talkative girl could say as she took her tie off her head and swung it around her neck.
"It makes no sense, this has to be wrong somehow," I said and turned my head to Aidene who was nodding vigorously.
The blueprint showed an extra floor. Our school building from what I had seen had only five floors. The blueprint showed six and from what it appeared it was the first floor which was extra.
"It has to be wrong," I said again.
"Or maybe not." Aidene took the blueprint from my hands and placed it on the ground and sat beside me. I followed her lead.
"Look at the other floors the classrooms are placed exactly where the rooms are marked. It might be correct." Aidene pointed at the other floors.
"The bottom floor or the extra one looks like some sort of... basement. I think so at least. It doesn't have any rooms like the others. Maybe it was the original blueprint but they changed it?" she added.
"No, it looks more like a renovation. Look at these." I said pointing to what looked like the plans of our current classrooms drawn over the original plans.
"Anne! Look at the date." Aidene exclaimed circling the date at the upper right corner of the page with a finger.
"This map was made around 6 years after the school was started. All the way back in 1876." As I said, we attained a lot of useless information about the history of the school and its staff.
"And on top of that I think I remember going through a record of expenses for some sort of disaster I think," she said her excitement rising. She suddenly got up and buried herself among the record books with questionable excitement.
"Here we go," she said as she flipped through a record book and handed it to me with a page opened.
"Read it." she said with childish excitement.
I pushed the book closer to my face as I tried to read faded print.
SCHOOL RENOVATION|
12th of June,1876
The school has been heavily damaged due to the recent disasters. The students have been sent home until further notice. The school does not have enough funds to repair the ground floor, which has been affected the most and is now unstable. Therefore we will be blocking all entrances to the floor and a platform will be built around the building to cover the floor and act as a support for the rest of the building. The students and staff will be brought back after the renovations are completed.
The rest of the record was about the expenses and other legal issues and half of it had been effaced by water damage or what looked like oil stains (where the oil stains came from I have no idea).
Aidene looked at me as I read it,
"Come let's go." and then she suddenly grabbed my blazer and started sprinting, almost injuring me for, definitely not the first time.
She headed towards the less dilapidated section of the library. We ran by the librarian's desk. Where James had finally fallen asleep.
"Bet they found that raccoon that you were too scared to take out, Mike." said an older girl who was now standing beside the sleeping form of James. I recognized her as the other girl who got detention on the first day along with Harris, Kyle, and Rivers and I think her last name was.
"I wasn't scared okay? That thing was the size of a ..." Mike trailed off as he saw Aidene running with me being dragged.
She ran and skidded (dramatically if I may add) to a stop at a corner at the other end of the library where the computers were kept (which means she made me run, or get dragged, a lot).
She quickly switched one on and tapped her foot impatiently as we waited for the century-old computer to start up and typed fervently. Her eyebrows were furrowed and her lips pressed into a thin line. I watched her type but my thoughts got lost... again. From the mystery to studies and finally food. I kept thinking about the cafeteria's olive submarine sandwiches as I watched Aidene search for whatever she wanted and mumbled the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody under her breath.
"Taaaaaaaaaaaa Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" she sang out and turned the computer screen towards me.
"Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone and another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey I'm gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust" she sang in victory.
I was too occupied to tell her to stop.
I looked over to the computer screen and saw the article she had pulled up about an earthquake hitting the area and later a flash flood.
So there was a floor underground like some sort of bunker and the diary might be there and if it wasn't we would have to search the whole school.
OH! Wait I didn't need to do that. All I had to do was stop talking to a crazy girl and maybe get more sane friends like Valentina. No not Valentina, if anything she's worse than Rayners, maybe because of the lack of her brain cells. At Least Rayners had a moderate level of intelligence. I would have said Penelope if we hadn't been getting into fights recently (yes we have been fighting a lot in our dorm). It was like we had declared each other as mortal enemies l after the deal Aidene made was over.
"Let's search for the entrance to the secret bunker during the weekends. The teachers have been giving me enough homework to last at least 3 months." Aidene stated.
"We have a problem, the record clearly stated that the 'secret bunker' wasn't stable." I might have mentioned that she had average level intelligence but she does not have common sense.
"The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Do you understand?"
"Did you just quote Jack Sparrow? You are crazy."
"I'm not crazy. My reality is just different than yours."
"And...now you're quoting the Cheshire cat again, and you've already used that quote before."
Aidene narrowed her eyes at the oil lamps and then looked up.
"They apparently don't use the oil lamps, guess they are only for decor." she mused.
I looked up and realized the lights which hung from the ceiling were illuminating the library. I was about to say something but the words dried up before they could leave my mouth. I looked outside. The rays of light no longer belonged to the sun.
"How long have we been here?" I started stressing out.
"Enough to be three minutes late to dinner." she jabbed her thumb to the corner of the computer which was displaying the time.
Rushing out of the library past the librarian's desk, which was now vacant. That's what registered in my mind, not the yelling of being late and not the scoldings we got for yelling in the library from other students. There was no rule about being in time for dinner or any meal but there was a matter of getting good food and not the leftovers and we also needed to change out of our school uniforms so no one would give us any weird looks (Aidene gets enough of those).
"See ya!" she yelled as we split ways to go to our respective dorms.