Chapter 16

It’s 8.45pm.

Today’s Thursday, which is always a busy night at Biblio. So the earliest I should expect my parents back is 11pm. That gives me plenty of time.

Walking quietly up the stairs so that my friends in the living room don’t realize where I’m going, I try to picture the last time I rummaged through mom’s jewelry box. I would have been a kid back then, maybe five or six years old.

I clearly remember one sunny afternoon in Fall, left at home with gran while mom and dad were at the restaurant. While gran was in the kitchen making our lunch, I crept upstairs to my parent’s bedroom. I went for mom’s makeup drawer first, smearing first my lips, then my eyelids, with her pale silver eye shadow. Then I took the talcum powder from her dresser and sprinkled it all over my head, watching the snowy clouds of talc floating behind me in the mirror. I think I was trying to tur