The Tiny Hero of Ferny Creek Library

by Linda Bailey

  “Well,” said Mr. B, “Sophie found this message stuck to the desk drawer. Right, Sophie?”

  “Yes.”

  “So do you think we should try opening the drawer?”

  There was a buzz of voices. A pair of sneakers at the front of the crowd ran to the back, accompanied by a shriek.

  “Don’t be scared,” whispered Eddie. “It’s just me! And blueberry juice.”

  “Let’s give it a try,” said the New Librarian. He pulled on the drawer handle. “Stuck.”

  “Pull harder,” said a girl beside the drawer. Eddie liked the sound of her.

  There was a noisy scraaawwwkkkk, and—

  “There!” said the Librarian. “It’s open. What do you see?”

  Eddie held his breath.

  “Nothing,” said the brave girl. “It’s empty.”

  “Exactly. Does anyone see a ghost in here?”

  Silence.

  “All right then,” said the Librarian. “So that’s the end of that.”

  He started to close the drawer.

  “Oh, no,” thought Eddie. “Don’t!”

  Scraawwkk.

  “It’s stuck,” said Sophie. “Again!”

  Eddie held his breath. . . .

  But Mr. B just laughed and walked away, as if a stuck drawer was the last thing on a busy librarian’s mind. “Oh, good!” he said. “Malcolm’s found that tape we were looking for. Back to work, everyone.”

  Eddie couldn’t help himself. As the children left, he started leaping about with excitement.

  “It’s open!” he told Alfie. “The drawer’s open!”

  Alfie hopped, too. He started to yell, “YAA—”

  You will understand, of course, why Eddie had to put a stop to that!

  When his brother calmed down, Eddie released him and stepped into the open. He stared up at the desk. Remembering his first day in the Library, he half expected to see a small dark head with waving antennae. He could almost hear Min’s voice. “Up here, Eddie. Look up!”

  But that was then.

  “Where’s Auntie Min?” asked Alfie. He was as subdued as Eddie had ever seen him. That’s when Eddie realized—Alfie was worried, too.

  What might they find in the drawer?

  “We should wait till the Squishers are gone,” said Eddie.

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when he changed his mind. “I can’t wait!” he said. “I just can’t!”

  “Me NEITHER!” said Alfie. “Let’s GO!”

  So right then and there, with the Library full of children, the bug brothers attempted a climb. Within seconds, footsteps approached. They scurried back down.

  Again, they tried. More thudding footsteps.

  On their third try, a child strolled up and leaned her stomach against the desk—right beside the crawling bugs. She didn’t see them. She didn’t touch them. But she was far too close for Eddie.

  “We have to wait,” he told Alfie.

  “AAWWW,” said Alfie.

  A new group of children arrived—first grade. It seemed they would never leave. Three of them dawdled at the end, checking out books. Eddie felt a powerful urge to bite them!

  Finally, the Library was empty.

  Eddie and Alfie clambered up the desk. They leaped into the open drawer and raced to the back corner.

  Aunt Min lay there, curled up and still.

  Seeing her, Eddie went cold all over. She looked like . . .

  The Spider. She looked just like the Spider the last time Eddie had seen it, propped up against the baseboard. Shriveled. Dry. Dull. Eyes glazed.

  “Is Auntie Min DEAD?” asked Alfie in his shrill voice.

  “Hush,” replied Eddie. He spoke in the gentlest of whispers. “Aunt Min?”

  And that was when Alfie lost it. He was, after all, very young, and he could no longer contain himself.

  “AUNTIE MIN!” he screeched. “WAKE UP!”

  Eddie was about to scold Alfie. But then . . . he thought he saw Min move.

  “Do that again,” he told his brother.

  “AUNTIE MIN! IT’S US! ALFIE AND EDDIE. SAAAY SOMETHING!”

  Min stirred weakly. A leg jerked.

  “Ooh,” she moaned.

  “Go get some of that blueberry,” Eddie told Alfie. “Run! She loves blueberry, and it’s full of juice.”

  Moments later, the brothers were feeding their aunt fresh blueberry. It was a long time before she could speak.

  In the meantime, Alfie talked enough for everyone.

  “Everything’s OKAY now, Auntie Min. The Grischer is GONE, and the LIBRARY’S SAVED, and we have a NEW LIBRARIAN named MR. B.”

  “What . . . ,” said Min. “What is . . . Mr. B . . . like?”

  Alfie answered immediately. “He looks like Eddie.”

  “Eddie?”

  “YES, Auntie Min. He’s the very same color of GREEN!”

  Min smiled. “Then he must be . . . unusually handsome.” She turned to Eddie. “Is everything . . . truly . . . okay?”

  This was his chance to tell her the whole story, all the parts she had missed—the buttons, the posters, the parents, the niece, the reporter. It took a long time.

  When he finished, Min’s eyes were glowing. “You . . . did it,” she said slowly. “You . . . saved the Library, Eddie . . . so proud.”

  Eddie tried to take this in. “Did I? Did I really? Wow, Aunt Min, I can hardly believe it. The stickies worked!”

  “They . . . certainly did,” said Min. “Excellent . . . writing. Bravo, Eddie!”

  CHAPTER

  32

  In the days that followed, Eddie and Alfie looked after Aunt Min like worker bees tending a queen. They brought her fresh food. They helped her to a spot where she could see sunshine, clouds, and trees through the skylight. They supported her as she began to walk again.

  And early one morning right after dawn, they lifted her out of the drawer and onto the pages of an open book.

  “What’s this?” she cried in delight.

  “It’s Anne of Green Gables,” said Eddie. “It was in Miss Cavendish’s cabinet, and the New Librarian left it here on the desk last night. Miss Cavendish’s niece said it was her favorite book ever—and I remembered that it was one of yours, too.”

  “Oh, yes!” exclaimed Min. “Anne with an e. Always in trouble. Anne is the Squisher I would have been if I had been born a Squisher.”

  She began to walk slowly along the lines, absorbing every word.

  “I feel so much better,” she said to Eddie when she’d finished.

  “Good,” said Eddie. “Alfie and I were worried. We thought you were—”

  “I know. I came close. I lost hope and sank into a very deep torpor. That’s something we bugs can do to survive a bad situation. But we can’t do it for long or . . .”

  She didn’t have to finish her sentence.

  “Alfie woke you up,” said Eddie.

  “Yes, he did,” said Min. “Like the prince waking Sleeping Beauty.”

  “Well,” said Eddie, “not exactly like that.” He pointed at Alfie, who was bouncing on the open book.

  “You’re right,” said Min with a laugh. “Not exactly.”

  As Eddie and Alfie waited for Min’s health to improve, they stayed hidden, as always, during school hours. Eddie was fascinated by all the things children did in the Library, and while Min rested, he and Alfie watched from under the desk. What they saw was probably, to someone like you, perfectly ordinary. But to Eddie, it was new and full of wonder. Finding out about Mars? He couldn’t wait. A poetry slam? How amazing! A library scavenger hunt? How he wished he could join in! And when the fourth-grade students wrote e-mails to their favorite characters, Eddie practically swooned. He was dying to write to Stuart.

  Alfie got fired up, too. He had never shown any interest in reading before, but story time won him over. He especially loved stories that were scary. As he listened to This Is Not My Hat, his eyes almost popped out.

  “There’s a BIG FISH
there, Eddie! LOOK! It’s FOLLOWING him! Doesn’t that little fish SEE?” Hiding behind Eddie, Alfie peeked out alarmed.

  Eddie was shocked. Could this be the same Alfie who had run boldly across the Library floor in full view of giant Squishers?

  But Alfie was also very fond of fearful characters.

  “HAH!” he said, when the Librarian read Scaredy Squirrel. “Scaredy’s so scared, he doesn’t even want to leave his TREE. I never get THAT scared!”

  In the end, though, the thing that affected Alfie the most—in fact, it changed his life forever—was kindergarten. One day when the kindergarteners arrived, the New Librarian opened a very big book. It looked as though it was made for giant Squishers. The story was called Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, and as the New Librarian read it aloud, he held it so the kindergarteners could see the words. They began to join in.

  Watching from under the desk, Alfie figured it out. Those children were learning to read with the giant book!

  So the next time the kindergarteners read the book out loud—Alfie joined in, too. By the time the bell rang, he was reading. Not a lot. But enough to get him excited. And Alfie excited was like a cloud of singing cicadas.

  “I CAN READ, I CAN READ!” he yelled when he joined Min and Eddie in the drawer.

  After that, he was desperate to read. So desperate, in fact, that Eddie wrote some words on stickies for him. He made the words smaller this time and used only one foot to write them:

  bug

  rug

  hug

  But that wasn’t all. Eddie thought very hard about the books he had read and how they were constructed. With this in mind, he wrote the words perpendicular to the glue strip. Each time he finished writing a sticky, he glued it on top of the previous one. He did three stickies that way. Then he put one sticky on backward as a back cover.

  “A book!” said Min when he was finished. “You’ve made a book, Eddie. Your first.”

  “It’s only tiny,” said Eddie.

  “Everyone has to start somewhere,” said Min.

  Alfie loved his new book. He read it again and again.

  On Sunday Min announced that she felt well enough to go home.

  “Really? Are you sure?” asked Eddie.

  “If I have you and Alfie to help me.”

  “YAAAAY!” said Alfie.

  The hard part was getting off the desk. Aunt Min wasn’t heavy now, but she was still very weak and couldn’t support herself. Eddie and Alfie had to figure out how to help her while still holding onto the desk themselves. It took all of Eddie’s strength, and he could tell by Alfie’s grunts that it was just as tough for him.

  When they reached the bottom, Min took a moment to rest. She stood there making the same thrumming sound she had made once before—a haunting sound, full of longing and appreciation.

  “Oh, I do love this place,” she said.

  When they reached the doorway, she paused again.

  “You did it, Eddie,” she said, looking around. “You saved the Ferny Creek School Library.”

  Eddie didn’t know what to say. He looked around, too, taking in a last sweet breath of paper and ink and stories.

  “Can we come BACK for the PARTY?” asked Alfie.

  “Absolutely,” said Min. “Just try to stop us.” Then, leaning on Alfie for support, she stepped out into the hall.

  Eddie turned back one last time. “Bye,” he whispered to the Library. “Don’t go away.”

  The Library didn’t answer. How could it?

  But it seemed to breathe a smile as Eddie left.

  He felt it on his antennae.

  EPILOGUE

  When Eddie and Alfie and Min returned home to the crack-in-the-wall, they were greeted with a welcome such as you have never seen. The excitement was incredible! Never since Grandma Ruth’s Great Escape from the Glass Tank had there been such a glorious adventure in the family.

  For the stay-at-home relatives, the weeks of waiting had been painful. So when all three adventurers walked in, alive and happy, it was almost too much to bear.

  “Min! Eddie! Alfie!” came the cries. There was grabbing and hugging and clutching and clinging, and even a bit of crunching as everyone mobbed the arrivals.

  “Back now!” hollered Pa finally. “Back off! Give them air, for gosh sake.”

  “Pa’s right,” said Ma. “Get back!”

  She swatted away a few grubs, and the rest of the family settled down.

  Their faces all said the same thing.

  Tell!

  Please tell us the story of where you have been, and what you have done, and how you have managed to return from the Great Scary World of Outside.

  And so began three days of stories.

  Yes, it took that long.

  To keep everyone going, there was a three-day feast. As it happened, there had been a pizza party in the classroom on Friday, with cake for dessert. Pa had led a few brave buglets on a daring raid before the Cleaner came, so there were plenty of bits and pieces to snack on when anyone felt hungry.

  “So,” said Ma. “Tell us everything.”

  Well, of course, as you know, there was a great deal to tell—far too much to repeat here. As Min and Eddie and Alfie started to describe their adventures, they realized that between them, they had experienced not one story, but many. Eddie was the one who gave the stories titles, and as you were there for the whole thing, you will probably recognize the titles he made up:

  Aunt Min’s Terrible Accident

  Eddie’s Heroic Journey

  The Sinister Spider

  The Great Page Turn

  The Attack of the Killer Mop

  The Secret of the Yellow Stickies

  The Mysterious Midnight Mouse

  The Ghost of Ferny Creek Library

  Alfie Rides a Shoe

  Actually, you may not recognize that last title. Even Eddie and Min didn’t recognize it.

  “What?” said Eddie when Alfie first mentioned it. “What are you talking about? What shoe?”

  “It’s how I GOT THERE,” said Alfie. “Nobody ever ASKED!”

  It was true, Eddie realized. He had never asked. He had always assumed that Alfie had traveled to the Library the same way he did. A long, hard hike. One foot after another after another.

  “I’m asking now,” said Eddie. “How did you get to the Library?”

  “When I got to the classroom DOOR,” said Alfie, “it was SCARY! I was all by myself, and I didn’t know WHICH way to go! The hall was so BIG!”

  “I know,” said Eddie. “So what did you do?”

  “Nothing,” said Alfie. “I just WAITED.”

  “For what?”

  “For some CHILDREN,” said Alfie. “And then they came, and they were in a LINE, and they were carrying LIBRARY BOOKS!”

  “And then?”

  “One of them STOPPED to tie his SHOELACE. So I ran to his other shoelace and used it to crawl up. Onto his SHOE! It was like riding a HORSE, Eddie. Remember that story about COWBOY SMALL? It was like that! I hung onto the shoelace, and I RODE THE SHOE—all the way to the LIBRARY!”

  Eddie was gobsmacked. So was everyone else. There was a moment of silence, then a cheer broke out from all the little bugs and grubs in the room.

  “YAAAAAAAAAAAY!”

  Eddie joined in. He couldn’t believe he had missed Alfie’s shoe story.

  “Alfie,” he said. “I am sooo happy you followed me.”

  Ma, of course, had a different reaction to Alfie Rides a Shoe. It was the same reaction she’d had to the Mop, Mouse, and Spider stories.

  “Holy Egyptian scarab! What were you thinking!”

  But she did listen—all the way through. And at the end, she always said the same thing. “Thank heavens that’s over, and you’re home safe.”

  Eddie could tell, though, as he watched his mother, that she really did love the stories. She shushed anyone who interrupted, which was usually Alfie. And she often asked to have a part repeated. What she loved m
ost were the stories about family. Anybody’s family, but especially her own.

  Her favorite story, though it never got a title, was how Eddie had rescued Aunt Min from the drawer. After Ma heard that, she walked straight over to Eddie and gave him a hug.

  “Oh, my brave little bug,” she said proudly, right in front of everyone.

  Hearing that, Eddie remembered another moment, not long before, when he had stood on a book on the story-time carpet and read the following words:

  “Oh, my brave little son,” said Mrs. Little proudly, as she kissed Stuart and thanked him.

  “Thank you, Eddie,” said Ma now, with a big smile.

  Eddie felt warm all through.

  It turned out that everyone had a favorite story. Aunt Min loved The Great Page Turn. When Eddie showed how he had pushed, pushed, pushed to get the page to flop over, she clapped with such excitement that she flopped over sideways herself.

  As for the younger bugs, well, most of them were like Alfie. They liked to be scared. They especially enjoyed The Attack of the Killer Mop. Eddie found himself exaggerating some bits, making the tidal wave even bigger than it had been, and the water even filthier. And when he demonstrated his swimming technique, his siblings couldn’t stop clapping.

  Eddie loved telling stories to his family. But he couldn’t help wishing they could be written down somewhere, too, so they would last. Like the stories on the shelves of a Library.

  “Well, why not?” said Min when he mentioned this longing. “Think of the writing you’ve done so far.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t much,” said Eddie. “All I can write is tiny bits.”

  “A writer’s a writer, no matter how small,” said Min.

  Eddie smiled.

  “And besides,” said Min. “I think you’re forgetting something.”

  “What?”

  “Your favorite word.”

  “I have a favorite word?”

  “Well, you use it in . . . difficult moments. You say it whenever you get into a jam.”

  “Really?” said Eddie, puzzled.

  “Yes, dear. Think about it.”

  So Eddie did. He thought about the days on his big adventure when things had gotten tough. He thought about times when he’d felt that he just couldn’t do it. Too small. Too young. Too dreamy. Too green. He remembered that he had often felt useless or hopeless. He had even felt ready to give up.