been plot ing to kil our history teacher. (This is a true story.)

There wasn’t any writing on the spine of this particular journal—I had to take it o the shelf to see the front, where there was a piece of

masking tape with the words DO YOU DARE? writ en in black Sharpie. When I opened the cover, I found a note on the rst page.

I’ve left some clues for you.

If you want them, turn the page.

If you don’t, put the book back on the shelf, please.

The handwriting was a girl’s. I mean, you can tel . That enchanted cursive.

Either way, I would’ve endeavored to turn the page.

So here we are.

1. Let’s start with French Pianism.

I don’t real y know what it is,

but I’m guessing

nobody’s going to take it o the shelf.

Charles Timbrel ’s your man.

Charles Timbrel ’s your man.

88/7/2

88/4/8

Do not turn the page

until you l in the blanks

(just don’t write in the notebook, please).

I can’t say I’d ever heard of French pianism, although if a man on the street (wearing a bowler, no doubt) had asked me if I believed the French

were a pianistic sort, I would have easily given an a rmative reply.

Because the bookstore byways of the Strand were more familiar to me than my own family home(s), I knew exactly where to start—the music

section. It even seemed a cheat that she had given me the name of the author. Did she think me a simpleton, a slacker, a numbskul ? I wanted a

lit le credit, even before I’d earned it.

The book was found easily enough—easily enough, that is, for someone who had fourteen minutes to spare—and was exactly as I pictured it

would be, the kind of book that can sit on the shelves for years. The publisher hadn’t even bothered to put an il ustration on the cover. Just the

words French Pianism: An Historical Perspective, Charles Timbrel , then (new line) Foreword by Gaby Casadesus.

I gured the numbers in the Moleskine were dates—1988 must have been a quicksilver year for French pianism—but I couldn’t nd any

references to 1988 … or 1888 … or 1788 … or any other ’88, for that mat er. I was stymied … until I realized that my clue giver had resorted to

the age-old bookish mantra—page/line/word. I went to page 88 and checked out line 7, word 2, then line 4, word 8.

Are you

Was I what? I had to nd out. I l ed in the blanks (mental y, respecting the virgin spaces as she’d asked) and turned the page of the journal.

Okay. No cheating.

What bugged you about the cover of this book

(besides the lack of art)?

Think about it, then turn the page.

Wel , that was easy. I hated that they’d used the construction An Historical, when it clearly should have been A Historical, since the H in

Historical is a hard H.

I turned the page.

If you said it was the misbegot en phrase

“An Historical,”

please continue.

If not, please put this journal

back on its shelf.

Once more, I turned.

2. Fat Hoochie Prom Queen

64/4/9

119/3/8

No author this time. Not helpful.

I took French Pianism with me (we’d grown close; I couldn’t leave her) and went to the information desk, where the guy sit ing there looked like

someone had slipped a few lithium into his Coke Zero.

“I’m looking for Fat Hoochie Prom Queen,” I declared.

He did not respond.

“It’s a book,” I said. “Not a person.”

Nope. Nothing.

“At the very least, can you tel me the author?”

He looked at his computer, as if it had some way to speak to me without any typing on his part.

“Are you wearing headphones that I can’t see?” I asked.

He scratched at the inside of his elbow.

“Do you know me?” I persisted. “Did I grind you to a pulp in kindergarten, and are you now get ing sadistic pleasure from this pet y revenge?

Stephen Lit le, is that you? Is it? I was much younger then, and foolish to have nearly drowned you in that water fountain. In my defense, your

prior destruction of my book report was a completely unwarranted act of aggression.”

Final y, a response. The information desk clerk shook his shaggy head.

“No?” I said.

“I am not al owed to disclose the location of Fat Hoochie Prom Queen,” he explained. “Not to you. Not to anyone. And while I am not Stephen

Lit le, you should be ashamed of what you did to him. Ashamed.”

Okay, this was going to be harder than I’d thought. I tried to load Amazon onto my phone for a quick check—but there was no service anywhere

in the store. I gured Fat Hoochie Prom Queen was unlikely to be non ction (would that it were!), so I went to the literature section and began to

scan the shelves. This proving fruitless, I remembered the teen literature section upstairs and went there straightaway. I skipped over any spine that

didn’t possess an inkling of pink. Al my instincts told me Fat Hoochie Prom Queen would at the very least be dappled by pink. And lo and behold

—I got to the M section, and there it was.

—I got to the M section, and there it was.

I turned to pages 64 and 119 and found:

going to

I turned the page of the Moleskine.

Very resourceful.

Now that you’ve found this in the teen section,

I must ask you:

Are you a teenage boy?

If yes, please turn the page.

If no, please return this to where you found it.

I was sixteen and equipped with the appropriate genitalia, so I cleared that hurdle nicely.

Next page.

3. The Joy of Gay Sex

(third edition!)

66/12/5

181/18/7

Wel , there wasn’t any doubt which section that would be in. So it was down to the Sex & Sexuality shelves, where the glances were alternately

furtive and de ant. Personal y, the notion of buying a used sex manual (of any sexuality) was a bit sketchy to me. Perhaps that was why there were

four copies of The Joy of Gay Sex on the shelves. I turned to page 66, scanned down to line 12, word 5, and found:

cock

I recounted. Rechecked.

Are you going to cock?

Perhaps, I thought, cock was being used as a verb (e.g., Please cock that pistol for me before you leave the vestibule).

I moved to page 181, not without some trepidation.

Making love without noise is like playing a muted piano— ne for practice, but you cheat yourself out of hearing the glorious results.

I’d never thought a single sentence could turn me o so decisively from both making love and playing the piano, but there it was.

No il ustration accompanied the text, merciful y. And I had my seventh word:

playing

Which left me with:

Are you going to cock playing

That didn’t seem right. Fundamental y, as a mat er of grammar, it didn’t seem right.

I looked back at the page in the journal and resisted the urge to turn forward. Scrutinizing the girlish scrawl, I realized I had mistaken a 5 for a 6.

It was page 65 (not the junior version of the devil’s number) that I was after.

be

Much more sensical.

Are you going to be playing—

“Dash?”

I turned to nd Priya, this girl from my school, somewhere between a friend and acquaintance—a frequaintance, as it were. She had been friends

with my ex-girlfriend, So a, who was now in Spain. (Not because of me.) Priya had no personality traits that I could discern, although in al

fairness, I had never looked very hard.

“Hi, Priya,” I said.

She looked at the books I was holding—a red Moleskine, French Pianism, Fat Hoochie Prom Queen, and, open to a rather graphic drawing of