"A young man coming back from a vision quest sometimes carries material objects or otherwise symbolical marks handed down to him by his spiritual guide," she mumbled to herself, scanning the page for more information. Josh had seen or experienced something during his vision quest that he didn't want to discuss with anyone except Sani. Could that bear-shaped birthmark have something to do with it? She was almost certain he'd gotten it after his quest. He didn't have it when she knew him as a young boy. And he had looked so absent-minded when she'd asked him. He had sounded so distant.
Hannah jumped up when she heard her cell phone vibrating in her bag. It was a message from Ben. "sis! r u in page 2?? i just saw your car :)"
She stared at the text. Ben's message made it painfully clear that Josh hadn't told Ben she'd been outside the music store. So he obviously didn't want to talk to her. Heck, he hadn't even tried to run after her or call her.
She dropped the phone in her lap, feeling miserable. Okay, Josh had every right to think she wasn't interested in him after the 'kitchen incident'. But he didn't have the right to ignore her like he was doing now. Why was he acting like that?
"You know what? Screw this," she mumbled, switching off her phone. No meeting up with Ben when Josh was tagging along. Things were complicated enough as they were. Besides, she had a perfectly good reason to switch off her phone - she was in the library.
A voice interrupted her train of thought. "Excuse me. Are you still reading that?"
Hannah looked up and saw a brown-haired guy standing next to the couch, pointing at the book about Navajo religion lying on top of her bag. He looked about her age.
"I'm sort of done with it," she replied. "Why? Do you want to borrow it?"
The guy grimaced. "You could say that. I've been searching the library for that book for hours."
"Oh, I'm so sorry! I just took it from the shelf to flip through it here."
"Yeah, thought so. According to the computer system, no one borrowed it, so I knew it still had to be on the premises. My most recent genius idea was to look for people reading books inside the library."
"What do you need it for?"
"I'm writing part of my dissertation about the Navajo culture." The guy extended his hand. "My name's Nick, by the way."