The Apothecary by Maile Meloy

but none of that dispelled my nervousness about sitting with him in the middle of the night on my parents’ couch. It was impossible to imagine any boy from Hollywood High sleeping in my parents’ living room in Los Angeles, and there was no one back home who had made me feel so unsettled and strange.
    I looked at the book—in the excitement, I hadn’t really taken it in before. Pages were slipped in between the bound pages, which seemed to be hand-lettered, in an old calligraphic style. The paper was ivory inside, brown around the edges, and scarred with burn marks. It looked like a very old, important version of my mother’s overstuffed Joy of Cooking .
    “I think the Latin’s really old,” Benjamin said. “Or some of it is, anyway. I’m supposed to be able to read Latin, to be an apothecary, but I’m no good at it.”
    “What language is that?” I asked, pointing to some words made up of letters I didn’t recognise.
    “I think it’s Greek.”
    He flipped another page. There were symbols and little drawings interspersed with the text. One looked like a snake inside a circle. “Maybe that one’s a cure for snakebite,” I said.
    “Why would he need to hide that from those Germans?”
    “Because the book’s valuable?”
    “They weren’t ordinary thieves.”
    “I guess not.” I shuddered, remembering the man with the scar. “Where do you think they took him?”
    “I don’t know. I wish I understood German.”
    “And Latin.”
    “And Latin.”
    “Or Greek.”

    He closed the book and we studied the embossed symbol on the cover. It had a circle at its centre, with an upside-down triangle in it. Around that circle was a star with seven points, inside another larger circle, with smaller circles between the points of the star.
    I ran my hand over it, feeling the ridges and indentations in the smooth, worn leather.
    “That symbol looks familiar,” Benjamin said. “But I don’t know why.”
    “We could ask Mr Danby to translate some of the Latin.”
    “We can’t just go showing it to people.”
    “Mr Danby’s a war hero.”
    “I don’t recall my father saying we could show it to war heroes. He said we had to keep it from anyone who wanted to see it.”
    “Well, Mr Danby doesn’t want to see it,” I said. My eyes were starting to itch with tiredness, and my eyelids threatened to close. “It’s too bad your father had to get kidnapped for you to start doing what he asks you to do.”
    “You’re not taking the seriousness of this, Janie.”
    “I really am,” I said. “I’m just so tired.”
    I laid my head against the arm of the couch, just to rest it for a minute, and the next thing I knew, Benjamin was shaking me awake. It was still dark in the room, and I wasn’t sure where I was. I fought my way out of sleep.
    “The symbol on the book!” Benjamin whispered. “I know where I’ve seen it before!”

CHAPTER 9
    The Physic Garden

    B enjamin came to my study hall at eleven fifteen, saying that the librarian needed another student to help shelve books. The study hall monitor was a tall, sallow young man. “Do you have a note?” he asked.
    “The librarian is buried in books,” Benjamin said. “She asked if you’d mind if she didn’t send a note, just this once.”
    I raised my hand. “Can I go?” I asked. “I want to be a librarian someday.”
    This drew a ripple of laughter from the other students, which got them a frown from the monitor. I knew he felt sorry for me, as the pathetic new girl who stayed in at lunch.
    “All right,” he said. “But tell her to send a note next time.”
    I gathered my things, and when we were sure the hall was empty, we slipped out the main door and down the steps. Benjamin didn’t remember exactly where the Chelsea Physic Garden was, but he knew it was near the Thames, so we walked along the river.
    I know now that the Physic Garden was started in the seventeenth century, as a kind of museum and nursery for medicinal plants. Botanists