The Cornerstone Read Free Page B

not a book… so no help there, then. 
    Also, what did the message writer mean by the sound it made?
    The sound a book made when you dropped it on the floor?
    That was just thud , wasn’t it?
    Last birthday, Max had received one of those novelty cards from his best mate Steve Figson. It played a tune when you opened it: a tinny version of Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-a-Lot. Figgy had loved it.
    Maybe that’s what the cryptic message meant? You opened the book and it warbled a tune at you.
    Opening countless library books, listening for one playing a melody, was as ridiculous as hunting for non-existent notes, so he dismissed the idea immediately.
    Therefore, with no other clues to follow, Max had this:
    There’s a book somewhere in this library that makes a noise and it might be a doorway of some kind.
    The cogs were whirring in his head so loud you could almost hear them.
    Maybe the book isn’t a doorway itself, just close to one...
    He looked around.
    There were two doors in sight. One was a fire exit to his right. The other was a door to the left with big black letters printed on it saying: Private – Staff Only.
    Max listened to what the door had to say and walked over to the fire exit instead to get a better look.
    It was flanked by bookcases on both sides. These looked extremely normal, with no discernable cornerstone-ish quality to either.
    Feeling foolish, he put his right ear to one shelf, straining to hear something over the low rattle of the air conditioning. This yielded nothing other than slight neck strain.
    The fire exit stood at the end of an L shape, created by the aisle Max was in and another at right angles to it. An elderly lady was sat halfway down the other, giving Max a strange look. He offered her a sheepish smile, backed out of her line of sight and went back to the library chair, the de facto base camp for his investigations.
    The staff door was now the only other option, so he walked over to it, praying nobody would come out while he stood there like an idiot with his ear to the bookshelf.
    This proved just as fruitless an experiment here as it had at the fire exit.
    His door options were now severely limited to the front entrance – no books there – and the one leading to the second floor, which housed the local branch of the Citizen’s Advice Bureau.
    Max thought he could use a bit of advice right now, but doubted the earnest volunteers upstairs would be up to speed on mysterious messages left in random books that gave you the creeping heebie-jeebies.
    So what now, genius?
    He looked at the crumpled note again, hoping new instructions had magically appeared on it.
    They hadn’t.
    Standing there in the humid library, Max finally realised what he was doing and his brain piped up:
    ‘You do realise you’ve become obsessed about a scribbled note you found in a stupid book, don’t you?’
    At this point, the futility of the whole exercise hit him like a sack of bricks and all at once he felt like a prize berk.
    Here he was, wasting perfectly good video gaming time in a library, trying to decipher a message that could have been written years ago, and looking like a right idiot listening to bookcases.
    With an angry grunt, he screwed the note up, stuffed it in his pocket and walked off in the direction of the exit.
    Imelda Warrington saw him coming and had a small, guilty feeling of pleasure that the teenager was leaving. Still, she was a professional and had a job to do: ‘Goodbye young man, your library card will be in the post. Please come again soon!’
    She was treated to the stoniest of glares.
    ‘Don’t count on it,’ Max muttered as he marched past.

    By the time he got back to his bike, Max was thoroughly cold and wet from the drizzle. Add this to how stupid he felt and his mood could be described as just this side of apoplectic.

    Max has many endearing character traits. His bad temper is not one of them. His eleven year old sister would attest to this.
    About four years ago, when