“I need a book.”
“Really?” said Sierra. “What kind?”
“Like the one you found. Up there.” He gestured to the curving bookcases climbing up the back half of the rotunda.
“Fiction,” said Sierra.
“Right,” said Kyle. “Love me some fiction.”
“Well, what sort of story do you like?”
“Something way up high,” said Kyle. “The higher the better.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“Well, that’s an interesting way to put together a reading list, basing it on bookcase elevation.…”
“I’d like something on the top shelf. Maybe right under the hologram statue of that guy hanging out with the Cat in the Hat.”
“That’s Dr. Seuss,” said Sierra. “He wrote The Cat in the Hat.”
“Sweet,” said Kyle. “But I just like how close he is to that window.”
“Oh, Mrs. Tobin?” Akimi called out. “I need to use my Librarian Consultation.”
“You sure about this?” said Kyle.
“That’s the beauty of being a team. After we burn through mine, we’ll still have yours.”
The hologram librarian appeared and advised Akimi that Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was the book located right underneath the holographic image of Dr. Seuss and the Cat in the Hat.
After Mrs. Tobin vanished, Kyle and Akimi used their desktop computer to find the call number for Huckleberry Finn. Kyle grabbed a pen and scribbled it down on his palm.
“Are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?” said Akimi.
“Yep. I’m going to float up there, hoist myself into that nook where the hologram is, reach over to the window, push it open, and stick out my hand. Technically, I will have found my way out of the library. Nothing in the rules said anything about how far outside we had to go to win.”
“You could fall.”
“I don’t think so. I’m wiry, like a monkey.”
“Seriously, Kyle. It isn’t worth it.”
“Um, yes it is. Did I mention I want to win?”
“You should improvise a safety harness,” suggested Sierra Russell.
“Huh?”
“Well, in this adventure book I read once, the hero was in a very similar predicament. So he removed the curled handset wires from several telephones, bundled them together, and made a safety rope.”
Ten minutes later, Kyle, Akimi, and Sierra had stripped the sproingy wires off a couple of telephone handsets. Kyle looped the cables around his waist and tied the other end to the handrail of the hover ladder. When fully extended, the safety rope would stretch out to a little more than twenty feet.
It should work.
“Be careful up there,” said Akimi.
“Yes,” said Sierra, who wasn’t reading her book anymore. Apparently, watching a real live person risk his real live life by doing something really, really scary was one thing more exciting than reading.
Kyle locked his feet into the hover ladder’s ski boot brackets. “Here we go.”
Serious adrenaline raced through his body as he tapped the call number for Huckleberry Finn into the hover ladder’s book locator keypad.
“When you open the window,” said Akimi, “just shout, ‘I found the way out!’ and we win.”
“Right,” said Kyle. “All three of us.”
“Huh?”
“Hey, Sierra came up with the safety rope idea. She’s on our team now, too.”
“Fine. Whatever. Just don’t break your neck.”
“Not part of the plan.”
Kyle pressed the enter button on the control panel. The platform floated up off the ground and drifted slightly to the right.
“Be careful!” said Akimi. “Watch it!”
“I’m not doing anything,” said Kyle. “This thingama-jiggy is doing all the work. I’m just along for the ride.”
Kyle gripped the handles as the platform rose higher and higher. He sailed past books by Tolstoy and Thackeray. Tilting back his head, he looked up at the semi-transparent statues projected into the curved niches next to the arched windows.
They were a weird mix. A thoughtful African American man in a three-piece suit and a bow tie. A guy with long curly hair, old-fashioned clothes, and a looking glass. A long-haired dude in a scruffy shirt hiding behind cutouts of the letters “P” and “B.” A bald guy with a beard.
Since the statues were really holographic projections, they had chisel-type labels floating in front of their pedestals identifying who the famous people were. The ones closest to Kyle were George Orwell, Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss, and Maya Angelou.
As he continued to climb, Kyle could hear the soft whir of the electromagnets invisibly lifting him toward the ceiling.
And then he heard something much louder.
“What a ridiculous idea!”
Charles Chiltington. He was standing on the second-floor balcony at the far side of the rotunda.
“You know, Keeley, I thought about doing the same thing. But then I noticed something you obviously overlooked: There’s a wire mesh security screen on the other side of those windows.”
The levitating platform stuttered to a stop.
“Enjoy staring at the ceiling, Keeley. I’m off to win yet another game!”
Kyle ignored Chiltington and grabbed hold of the ledge beneath Dr. Seuss’s berth. He tried to haul himself up but his feet wouldn’t budge.
They were locked in place by those ski boot clamps.
And this close to the skylights, Kyle could see that Chiltington was right—there was a security screen on the other side of the windows.
Kyle checked his wristwatch. It was one p.m. He and his teammates had wasted an hour on the lame window idea. He sighed heavily and stared up at the quivering Seuss projection in the bowed niche above his head.
The Cat in the Hat’s mouth started to move.
“ ‘Think left and think right and think low and think high.’ ”
Kyle recognized the voice.
It was Mr. Lemoncello.
“ ‘Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!’ ”
In other words, Kyle was back to square one. He needed to think up a whole new escape plan.
The ladder began a slow and steady descent to the floor—even though Kyle hadn’t pushed a button.
“Don’t listen to smarmypants Charles,” Akimi coached as Kyle coasted toward the floor. “It was worth a shot.”
“I agree,” said Sierra.
A bloodcurdling scream came ringing up the staircase from the basement.
“That’s Haley!” said Akimi. “I saw her go downstairs.”
“That’s where the Stacks are,” added Sierra.
“Come on,” said Kyle. “She could be in serious trouble.”
“You should never help your competition, Keeley,” scoffed Charles as he casually strolled down a spiral staircase. “Unless, of course, you always play to lose!”
Losers.
That’s what Charles Chiltington thought about sentimental saps like Kyle Keeley. A damsel in distress starts screaming and he forgets all about winning the game to go rescue her?
What a pathetic loser.
Unless, of course, Haley Daley was screaming because she had already found the alternate exit.
That made Charles laugh.
Impossible.
Although quite pretty, Haley Daley, the princess of the seventh grade, was a total airhead. There was no way a dumb girl like her could’ve outsmarted Charles Chiltington.
It was time to play his hunch.
Twice already, the head librarian, Dr. Zinchenko, had said, “The library staff is here to help you find whatever it is you are looking for.” She said it once when they were just about to enter the library, again when she was reading the laundry list of rules.
Well, what Charles was looking for was a way out of the building that wasn’t the front door and wouldn’t set off any alarms.
That was why he kept coming
back to the lobby with the gurgling fountain. Why he kept studying the display case labeled “Staff Picks: Our Most Memorable Reads.”
“The staff is here to help,” he muttered. “These are staff picks. Ipso facto, this has to be some sort of enormous clue.”
Inside the sealed bookcase, Charles saw twelve book covers.
One for each of the twelve twelve-year-old players? he wondered.
The display items weren’t actual books. They were cover art mounted on book-sized foam core. Three covers were lined up on each of the case’s four shelves. Since they weren’t actual books with spines, none of the covers included their call numbers.
Charles focused on the three books lined up on the bottom row.
Hoosier Hospitality was on the left. In the Pocket: Johnny Unitas and Me was in the middle. The Dinner Party was on the right.
Charles decided to concentrate on the Johnny Unitas title. He moved into the rotunda and did a quick card catalog search on one of the desktop computers. When he typed “In the Pocket,” a matching cover image popped up.
But still no call number.
In the spot where the identifier should have been, there were instead a censor’s thick black box and the words “I.D. Temporarily Removed from System.”
Scrolling further down the screen, Charles came across a rather unusual annotation: “You didn’t really think we’d make it that easy, did you?”
Charles grinned.
The computer was telling him he was on the right track.
He glanced up from the desk. The Children’s Room was directly in front of him. The book about Johnny Unitas, with its cartoony cover depicting a football player wearing a number nineteen jersey and dropping back to launch a pass, was most likely a children’s book.
Of course, it was also a sports biography.
So would it be shelved with sports books, biographies, or children’s books?
Charles went back to the computerized card catalog. He read the book’s description: “Billy wants to be a great quarterback like his hero, Johnny Unitas, but his coach is worried he’ll get hurt.”
It sounded like fiction. A made-up story. It had to be in the Children’s Room.
As Charles crossed the slick marble floor, something else struck him.
This was like Hüsker Dü?, a memory game he had played when he was in kindergarten. He was on a hunt to find a hidden match for the football book cover he had just memorized. This was, in short, another memory game—that was why the Staff Picks display had been subtitled “Our Most Memorable Reads.”
“Clever, Lemoncello,” he mumbled. “Very clever indeed.”
Charles entered the children’s department. It didn’t take him very long to find the book, because In the Pocket was propped up on a miniature stand on top of a shelf.
“Found it!” Charles proclaimed. Then, savoring the moment, he picked up the book and read the title out loud: “In the Pocket: Johnny Unitas and Me.”
All of a sudden, a row of animatronic geese tucked into a corner of the room started honking and singing.
“They call him Mr. Touchdown, yes, they call him Mr. T.”
The squawking birds startled Charles so much he dropped the book.
When he did, a four-by-four card fluttered out from behind its cover.
Charles bent down to pick it up.
Printed on the card was a black-and-white silhouette. A quarterback, wearing a number nineteen jersey (just like Johnny Unitas), was arching back his arm to throw a pass.
Charles grinned.
He was definitely on the right track.
He tucked the silhouette card into his pocket and hurried back to the lobby to memorize more book covers.
“Ouch! I’m stuck! Help!”
Haley Daley’s cries sailed up the staircase as Kyle led the charge down the steps into the Stacks.
“So, what exactly are the Stacks?” asked Akimi, three steps behind Kyle.
“It’s where the library stores its collection of research material,” said Sierra, who was two stairs behind Akimi.
The three of them reached the basement. It was filled with tidy rows of floor-to-ceiling shelving units.
“Help!”
Haley sounded like she was on the far side of the room, behind the walls of metal storage racks crowded with boxes, books, and bins.
“What is all this stuff?” said Kyle, looking for a passageway, trying to figure out how to get to wherever Haley was.
“Mostly rare books and documents you can’t check out,” said Sierra. “But if you fill out a call slip, you can use this material up in the reading room.”
With a whir and whoosh of its electric motor, a shiny robot the color of the storm troopers in Star Wars scooted across an intersection between bookshelves. It moved on tank treads and had what looked like a shopping cart attached to its front.
“Let’s follow that robot!” said Kyle. “It might know the fastest way to reach Haley.”
The trio dashed up a narrow pathway to where they saw the robot extending its quadruple-jointed mechanical arm to pluck a flat metal box out of a slide-in compartment. The box had been stored in a section of shelving with a flashing LCD that read “Magazines & Periodicals. 1930s.”
“Somebody upstairs wants an old magazine?” said Akimi.
“They’re probably researching the Gold Leaf Bank building,” said Sierra. “I think it was built in the 1930s.”
“Help!” screamed Haley. “I’m stuck.”
“Hang on!” shouted Kyle. “We’re coming.”
“Well, hurry up already!”
“This way,” said Kyle.
They scampered up another aisle, turned right, and saw Haley, her hand jammed through a horizontal slot near the top of the basement wall. To reach it, she’d had to stand on an elevated treadmill maybe thirty feet long. Since the thing was rolling, Haley was jogging in place so she wouldn’t fall on her face. The high-tech conveyor belt was actually a series of rollers. Ten robot carts—staggered so no two were directly across from each other—were lined up on either side.
“I think it’s an automatic book sorter,” said Sierra. “That laser beam near Haley’s ankles probably scans a book’s tag and tells the conveyor belt which of the ten sorting trays to shove it into.”
“You guys?” screamed Haley. “Hurry up and rescue me!”
Kyle stepped back. Tried to assess the situation.
“What is that slot you’re hanging on to?”
“The bottom of the stupid book drop,” said Haley, trotting on the treadmill. “I saw it on the floor plan. People can walk up to it on the sidewalk and return their books. I figured it had to lead down here.”
“Smart move,” said Kyle. “You could crawl through the slot and escape.”
“If you were the size of a book,” Akimi said sarcastically.
“I never got that far,” said Haley. “The minute I stepped onto this belt thing, it started moving.”
Kyle nodded. “Probably a weight-activated switch.”
“A book falls in,” said Akimi. “The sorter starts up.”
“Clever,” said Kyle. “Plus, it gives our game its first booby trap.”
“Well, the game is no fun if you’re the booby stuck in the trap!” said Haley.
Kyle turned to Sierra. “We need to stop the belt so Haley can yank her hand out of that slot without falling on her butt or cracking open her skull. Have you ever read a book where the hero outwits an escalator or a rolling checkout belt in the grocery store or something?”
“No,” said Sierra. “Not really.”
“How about one where the hero just flips an emergency shutoff switch?” asked Akimi. “Because that’s what I’d do if, you know, I found one.”
Akimi was standing next to a wall-mounted switch box. She flicked it down. The conveyor belt slowed to a stop.
“Ta-da! Another chapter for my amazingly awesome autobiography—if I ever write one.”
Haley yanked her hand out of the
book return slot. It sort of popped when it finally sprang free. She collapsed to her knees on the frozen treadmill.
“My hand feels flatter than a pancake,” she moaned.
“Are you hurt?” asked Kyle. “Maybe we should tell the security guys that …”
“What? That I have a boo-boo and need to go home? Forget it, Kyle Keeley. You’re not going to beat me that easily.”
“I’m not trying to—”
Haley showed him the palm of her hand. “Save it, Keeley.” She crawled off the conveyor belt. “One way or another, I’m going to win this game. I just hope starring in Mr. Lemoncello’s commercials earns me some decent money.”
She hobbled around the bookshelves toward the staircase up to the reading room.
When she was gone, Akimi raised her hand. “Question?”
“Yeah?” said Kyle.
“How come the guys inside the control room didn’t flip a switch to shut down the book sorter when they saw Haley doing her cardio cha-cha-cha on it?”
Kyle shrugged. “Maybe they weren’t watching.”
“Actually,” said Sierra, pointing to a square tile on the floor near the book sorter, “I think they were.”
Kyle looked down. The tile was glowing like one of the tablet computer screens upstairs in the rotunda. Kyle read the words zipping across the illuminated square.
“ ‘Congratulations,’ ” he read out loud. “ ‘For helping Haley and being a sport, you’ve earned much more than a good report.’ ”
The tile popped open.
Inside a small compartment was a rolled-up tube of paper with a yellow card clipped to its end.
“Huh,” said Akimi. “I guess somebody was watching.”
Kyle pulled the yellow card off the paper tube. It smelled like lemons.
“What’s it say?” asked Sierra.
Kyle flipped the card over so Sierra and Akimi could see what was printed on it:
SUPER-DOOPER BONUS CLUE.
“Oh, man, that was so dumb!”
Haley could not believe how idiotic she had been.
“Trying to crawl out of a book return slot? Chya. Like that was going to work.”
She was giving herself a good talking-to as she trudged up the steps to the first floor.
Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library Page 7