Go out the front door

Anna decided it was not worth the risk to set off the fire alarm. She would go out the front door. Even though it was more likely to expose her to onlookers, she decided it was better to risk a few people seeing her than it was to see off the fire alarm and potentially be seen by a few hundred people. She tried to pick the least conspicuous route, quietly creeping along the bookshelves. When she got to the end of each row, she quickly scurried to the next one, trying not to make a sound.

As she was almost to the exit, there was a sudden motion in front of her. Someone was walking past her shelf! It was a handsome young man with short black hair, dressed in the school uniform. Anna froze, terrified, her heart beating, dreading what would happen if she got caught. She thought she should back away, but there was no way she could reach the other end in time to conceal herself. Even if she was able to get half way back up the aisle, he would still see her, standing there naked except for the book barely covering her. She could turn around and hurry out of sight, but he might still see her, and then he would have a full view of her bare butt as she hurried away. He might even follow her if he saw that.

However, as it turned out, none of Anna’s fears were justified: he was wearing headphones and looking down at his phone, totally oblivious to his surroundings. He walked right by her without a second glance. Anna peeked around the corner to see if he was gone. She could not see him, or anyone else for that matter. Luckily, there was no one at the circulation desk, either. She breathed a sigh of relief. Then, she hurried toward the exit. She was almost home free.

However, Anna was still covering herself with the oversized art book, and that was a problem. Every library book had a magnetic anti-theft strip on it, and it had to be checked out to de-magnetize it. If you tried to walk out the door with a book, without properly checking it out, it would set off an alarm. If Anna remembered that, she would either have to abandon the book and walk out stark naked, or somehow manage to check it out. If she forgot, she would walk out the door with the book and immediately set off an alarm, the thing she had feared this whole time, the thing she had been constantly risking exposure to avoid. There was no telling what kind of attention she would draw then.