The next day at break, Lael and I stroll into the school library, trying to look as though this is something we do all the time. We avert our faces and slide past the reception desk, but a booming voice stops us.

“Good grief!” says the voice. “It’s going to snow – definitely and for sure.”

With a sigh, we turn to face Mrs Naidoo, the school librarian.

“Good morning, Mrs Naidoo,” we say.

“Make that sleet and hail and hurricane too,” she booms.

For a librarian, she has the loudest voice you’ve ever heard.

“I never thought I would see Trinity Luhabe darken the doors of my library unless someone were holding a gun to her head.”

“What?” I’m insulted.

“I read! I’m a reader. I read all the time.”

“‘Vampire Babes and the Demons Who Love Them’,” she says. (Which is totally a made-up title.) “‘The Ghost Who Loves Me’. ‘I Fell in Love with an Extra-terrestrial’. ‘Betrayed by a Werewolf’.” (More made-up titles. Mind you – I would defs read a book called “Betrayed by a Werewolf”).

“Come on, Mrs Naidoo.” Lael is trying not to grin. “You always told us that reading was reading. Whether it was Shakespeare or the back of a cereal box, you were happy as long as we were reading.”

“Hmm.” Mrs Naidoo won’t concede a thing. “I’d prefer it if your friend didn’t read everything on Amazon Kindle, Ms Lieberman. It’s like she’s trying to put us librarians out of business.”

“How about if I promise to check out an actual paper book before break is over, Mrs N? Then will you help us?”

She beams. “Deal! Now what do you girls need help with?”

We explain that we are interested in finding out how a student died in Sisulu House in the 1960s. I’m half expecting Mrs Naidoo to turn all cold and silent on us. She’d be like, “why do you want to know that?”

And we’d be like, “We’re just interested. It’s a mystery, isn’t it?”

And she’d be like, “You girls shouldn’t meddle in things that don’t concern you.”

And we’d say, “We’re not meddling. We just want to find out the truth. What harm could it do after fifty years?”

And then she’d slam a stapler down on the desk. (No, a punch. A big, heavy one.) She’d order us to get out of the library immediately, and just as we were leaving, she’d yell,

“Do you know what happens to nosy little girls? They get hurt, that’s what. You stay away from the mystery of Jim Grey or you’ll get hurt too.”

Okay, it’s possible that Lael is right, and I do watch too much TV.

Anyway, none of that actually happens. Mrs Naidoo gets swept up in the whole thing, so much so that we have to stop her from taking it all over herself.
“Fascinating!” she keeps saying. “How absolutely fascinating. It’s a real-life mystery, isn’t it? Ooh, I’d love to know what happened. Why don’t I go and do a search on microfiche and you can come to me tomorrow for the…”

“Uh … Mrs Naidoo…” Lael interrupts.

“Yes, dear?”

“We kind of want to do this ourselves. It’s like our project for the term. In fact, we’re thinking of incorporating it into our self-study assignment for History.”

This is news to me, but it sounds like an excellent idea, so I nod along enthusiastically. This way we can spend actual school time on it, not just breaks and afternoons.

Mrs Naidoo pushes her disappointment aside. “Of course, Ms Lieberman, you’re quite right. If you come to the reference room, I’ll show you how to work the microfiche machine. Just promise me you’ll let me read your project when you’re finished? I’m dying to find out what happened to him.”

“Of course!” says Lael.

Mrs Naidoo takes us into the back room where I haven’t set foot since they gave us a tour of the library in, like, Grade One or something. I mean, who needs a reference library when you’ve got Google, am I right? Well, apart from us, obviously, since we’re here.

She dims the lights, and everything goes spooky and dark. Then she switches on a machine that looks like a photocopier, but without a cover. It glows into life. She shows us a cabinet of files with pull-out drawers. Each drawer has a year printed on it and is filled with alpha-betical dividers. In each divider is a strip of what looks exactly like photograph negatives. I only know what they look like because I did Photography Club for a couple of terms. Mrs Naidoo explains that each negative contains an article from a newspaper and is filed alphabetically according to the title of the article.

We watch as she takes one of the negatives out and lies it flat on the glowing machine. She shows us how to look through the viewer to see the article. When it’s my turn, I give a little squeak of amazement. There is the whole article in nice big letters, exactly as it would have ap-peared in the newspaper, pictures and all. I try moving it to the right to see the next column, but it moves to the left.

Mrs Naidoo laughs. “Everything is reversed on a microfiche machine. If you want to move it up, you have to move it down. If you want to move it right, you have to move it left, and so on. It takes a bit of getting used to.”

“This is amazing!” says Lael. “Thanks so much, Mrs N.”

“It’s a pleasure. You girls have got until the end of break. Good luck finding what you’re looking for. If you need any help, just come and ask.”

As soon as she leaves, we rush over to the filing cabinet.

“Okay, what are we looking for?”

“There must have been a newspaper article about his death,” I say.

“What would it have been called?”

“Uh … Brentwood Boy Found Dead in Boarding House?”

We scrabble in the “B” divider for 1968 but find nothing. “Dead Boy Identified as Son of Prominent Farmer?” I suggest.

Nothing under “D” either.

“Late Learner Loved Life.”

Lael gives me a major side-eye, but checks in the “L” divider anyway. Nothing there either. We eventually find it under “S” for school, as in “Schoolboy Found Murdered in Boarding House.”

“Aha,” says Lael. “My headline was the closest.”

I stare at the headline, which has been handwritten in koki pen on a strip of paper on the side of the negative.

“Murdered?” I say. “He was murdered?”

It’s stupid, but this makes it more real somehow. I feel almost as shocked as I did when I first found out he was dead. He seemed so alive when I knew him last term – so real and annoying and Jim-like. Why would anyone have wanted to murder him?

***