Chapter 2: Library Ghosts
The first few days at his new school felt like Adyan was a ghost in a place full of people. The halls buzzed with the sounds of teenagers shouting, gossiping, and laughing. But to him, it was like all the noise was happening just outside his reach. He would walk down the crowded hallways, trying to find his place, but everyone else seemed to belong to something, while he was just... there. Invisible.
In class, he couldn't get anyone's attention. The students all sat in tight groups, already familiar with each other's lives, their jokes, their struggles. Adyan, on the other hand, wasn't part of any group. He was that kid—the one who had an accent they couldn't place, the one whose skin was a little too dark for the dominant crowd. His uniform felt too tight, his shoes too worn. His clothes smelled faintly of the city's dust and the airplane's stale air. It was as if no one saw him, and if they did, they didn't care enough to look longer.
Even at lunch, the cafeteria, a sprawling space with tables full of conversations, felt alien. He didn't sit with anyone. There was no one to sit with. His food sat untouched as he scanned the room, trying to figure out if there was anyone like him—anyone who felt as out of place as he did.
Adyan wasn't someone who got lonely easily, but here, in this massive, unfamiliar world, he felt the weight of his solitude. He was still trying to get used to the rhythm of this new life. The first few days had been overwhelming: trying to navigate the subway system, getting lost more than once, and trying to decipher the city's language. But no matter how much he tried, it felt like he was just existing here, not really living.
The only place he felt any comfort was the library.
It wasn't the biggest room in the school, nor the flashiest, but it was quiet, and that made it a refuge for him. It smelled of old pages and dust—two things that made him feel oddly at home. The rows of books seemed like a fortress of knowledge, their pages holding answers to questions he had yet to ask. Every time he entered the library, he felt like he was walking into a different world. It was like the noise of the school was muffled, and only the whispers of the stories held inside these books were real.
Adyan found himself gravitating toward the library every day after school. He would take a seat in the corner, by the small window that looked out onto the street, and pull out his laptop. Here, no one cared if he was alone. No one seemed to notice him—or if they did, they left him to his own devices. It was his time to think, to figure out what to do with this new life, to plan out Lift and what it could become.
One afternoon, as the rain began to fall outside, a soft patter against the windows, Adyan wandered further into the library. He was drawn to the back corner, where the old, tattered yearbooks were kept. He hadn't noticed them before, but something about their worn pages seemed to call to him. The yearbooks had been placed there, forgotten by most students. The pages had yellowed over the years, the names faded, the photographs slightly warped by time.
That's when he found it—the one yearbook that seemed to stand out. Opened carelessly, it sat on a wooden table near the back, its pages half-turned, left in a state of neglect. But the photo caught his attention immediately. A girl with messy black hair and round glasses stared out from the page, her expression fierce yet distant. Underneath the picture were the words: "Lina Huang, cracked MIT-level algorithm at 13."
Adyan's heart skipped a beat. Lina Huang. He'd heard whispers of her around school, mostly from the computer science students. Some said she was a genius, that she could solve problems they couldn't even begin to understand. She was something of a legend at the school, known more for her ability to code than for anything else. The rumors about her made her seem like an enigma—someone unreachable, someone otherworldly in her abilities. No one could ever keep up with her.
Adyan turned the page, and there she was again, older now, still with the same intense look in her eyes, but with a different kind of confidence. There were comments written around her picture, tiny notes scribbled by people who'd known her at some point. "Always in the lab, never at the parties," one note said. "She's weird, but you can't deny her brilliance," said another.
Adyan didn't know why, but he felt an odd sense of kinship with her. It was as if they both shared the same silent understanding—an unspoken feeling of being apart from everyone else. He couldn't explain it, but it felt like they were connected by more than just this school or their shared love of technology.
He closed the yearbook, his fingers brushing the cover, and something strange happened. For the first time since he arrived in New York, he felt something stir inside him—a flicker of hope. There was someone like him here. Someone who understood what it felt like to be different, to be alone in a sea of people.
The next day, Adyan returned to the library, hoping to find Lina. He sat in the same spot by the window, but this time, he kept his eyes on the door, hoping she would walk in. He didn't know what he would say if she did, but he was determined to speak to her. Maybe she could teach him something. Maybe she could understand what he was trying to do with Lift.
But as the minutes ticked by, the library remained as empty as always, save for the few stray students who drifted in and out. He had a strange feeling that the world around him was moving too fast, and yet he was stuck. Stuck in a place where he didn't belong, but had to stay for a little while longer.
Lina didn't show up that day, or the next.
But still, every time he walked through the library doors, Adyan found himself glancing at the back of the room, wondering when—if—he would ever meet her. Her presence, even though she hadn't yet been more than a figure in a yearbook, had already begun to feel like a bridge. A bridge between the person he was and the person he could become.