By: Sandy Wang

III

Rune turned around and gasped. Both of her grandparents stood in the doorway with their arms crossed, eyes staring menacingly down at her own. She slammed the book closed and attempted to hide it behind her back, but it was too late. Her grandparents charged at her and dragged her into a secret room on the left side of the library, locking her inside.

For two whole hours, Rune screamed for help as loud as she could until her voice turned hoarse, yet no one came to rescue her. However, it only took her a moment of looking around to realize that the door was made of wood, and very old wood too, by the looks of it. They mustn’t have used this room in order for it to be so old, she thought. Therefore, she pried open the door with her fingertips as quietly as she could, as not to awaken her grandparents again.

Searching urgently for the book of monsters, she was struck with the realization that her grandparents had either taken the book with them or hidden it somewhere. Knowing that they probably knew she could escape, she figured that they would have kept the book with them to guard it.

Rune tiptoed to her grandparents’ bedroom and twisted the doorknob, but it was locked. She slumped at the realization that she wouldn’t be able to retrieve the book and save her parents until she remembered a hack she had learned when she took ninja classes. She pulled a bobby pin out of her hair and stuck one end of it into the keyhole, wiggling it around until the lock finally cracked.

After opening the door, Rune scanned the room for the book, but to her dismay, her grandpa was hugging the book to his chest while he was sleeping. Suddenly, Rune cried, “FIRE! THERE’S A FIRE IN THE BASEMENT!” hoping that her grandparents would rush downstairs and leave the book behind. To her relief, that’s exactly what they did.

Rune snatched the book, ripped out the page containing information on the Lepastris, and was just about to leave when she remembered that she didn’t know how to defeat a unicorn, so she flipped through what seemed like a million pages until she finally arrived at the one on unicorns. Shoving the page into her pocket, she turned around to leave, but heard her grandparents coming back upstairs after realizing that there was no fire and they had been tricked.

Looking around the room and seeing no other escape route, Rune jumped through the window right as her grandparents burst into their room, but all they saw was a flash of Rune’s jacket as she leaped towards her definite death.

(to be continued)