Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library

by Chris Grabenstein

  “A verse which,” boomed Mr. Lemoncello, whose face had just appeared on the video-screen wall, “you would do well to memorize, Mr. Peckleman. ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ ”

  Mr. Lemoncello was dressed in a curled white wig and a long black robe. He looked like a judge in England. He slammed down a rubber gavel on his desk. It made a noise like a whoopee cushion.

  “Will everyone kindly join me in the Rotunda Reading Room? At once.”

  Everybody shuffled out of the meeting room and into the rotunda. They were shocked to see that Mr. Lemoncello himself was seated behind the librarian’s desk at the center of the circular room. This was no hologram. This was the real deal.

  Charles, all smiles, made a grand entrance, slowly descending one of the spiral staircases.

  “Good morning, everybody,” he called out cheerfully. “What’s all the excitement? Did I miss something?”

  “Just your man Andrew trying to cheat,” said Miguel.

  “What? Oh, good morning, Mr. Lemoncello. I didn’t expect to find you here, inside the library. Isn’t today your birthday, sir?”

  “Yes, Charles. And there’s no place I’d rather be on my big day than inside a library, surrounded by books. Unless, of course, I could be on a bridge to Terabithia.”

  “Well, sir, I must say, you’re certainly looking fit and trim. Have you been working out?”

  “No, Charles, today I will be working in.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Today I will be working here, inside the library, supervising the final hours of this competition.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it will take hours, sir,” said Charles. “Not to brag, but I suspect some of us will be going home very soon.”

  “You are correct. For instance, Mr. Peckleman. He will be leaving right now.”

  “What?” whined Peckleman. “Why?”

  “Because you cheated. You tried to steal the other team’s hard-earned information.”

  Peckleman’s eyes darted back and forth. “It wasn’t my fault. It was Charles’s idea.” He whipped up his arm and waggled his finger. “Charles told me to do it. He made me do it!”

  “Mr. Peckleman, please approach the bench, which, in this instance, is actually a desk. Let me see the library card you used to gain access to Community Meeting Room B.”

  Somewhat reluctantly, Andrew handed it over.

  “Is your name Sierra Russell?”

  “No, sir,” Andrew said to his shoes.

  “He stole my card?” said Sierra. She opened her latest book and pulled out the library card bookmark.

  “Whose card do you have, Sierra?” asked Charles.

  “Andrew Peckleman’s.”

  “Aha,” said Charles. “He pulled the old switcheroo, eh?”

  “Because you told me to!” said Peckleman.

  “Really?” Charles said, sniggering. “How dare you make such a scandalous accusation? Do you have any proof?”

  “I don’t need any stupid proof. You bullied me into stealing Sierra’s card!”

  Mr. Lemoncello banged his gavel again. “And thus ends the story of Andrew and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Mrs. Bunny?”

  A hologram of the old lady bunny from Goodnight Moon hopped on top of the librarian’s desk.

  “Goodnight, Andrew,” said the bunny. “Your time with us is all through.”

  Clarence and Clement, the security guards, appeared and escorted Peckleman out of the building.

  “Sir?” said Sierra. “Would you like Andrew’s library card for the discard pile?”

  “No, thank you. That card is now property of Team Kyle.”

  Haley Daley raised her hand.

  “Yes, Haley?”

  Kyle saw her shoot a withering glance at Charles.

  “How may I help you, dear?” asked Mr. Lemoncello.

  “Well, sir, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to switch sides. I want to join Kyle Keeley’s team.”

  “Zap!” said Mr. Lemoncello, waving his arms like a magician. “Zip! You’re now on Kyle Keeley’s team!”

  “Haley?” said Charles. “How can you desert me?”

  “The same way you just deserted Andrew.”

  “Um, do we get her library card, too?” asked Kyle.

  “Indeed you do. Plus any and all information she chooses to share with you. And so, Charles, I ask you: Would you like to quit your team and join Kyle’s?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know, all for one and one for all?”

  “Sir, with all due respect, that may have worked for those three musketeers in a trumped-up work of fiction, but I’m sorry, that is not how things work in the real world. Out here, it’s every man for himself. What good is a prize if everyone wins it?”

  “I see. But Haley knows all the clues you’ve collected.”

  “True, sir. But I doubt she realizes what any of them mean.”

  Kyle could see Mr. Lemoncello’s nose twitch when Charles said that. And it wasn’t a happy-bunny kind of twitch, either.

  “It was a joke, sir.” Charles must’ve seen the nose twitch, too.

  “Oh. I see. Like the one about the boy named Charles. Hilarious. Remind me to tell it to you sometime. Anyway, be that as it may, I insist that you be given a few extra clues to compensate for the fact that all your teammates are either being kicked out of the game or abandoning your ship.” Mr. Lemoncello reached under the desk and pulled out a white envelope. “This, Charles, is for your eyes only.”

  Charles stepped forward and took the envelope.

  “Thank you, sir. That is very generous.”

  “I know. You may also ask me one question. But please, don’t waste your question asking me, ‘Where is the alternate exit?’ because I do not know.”

  “You don’t know?” Kyle said it before Charles could.

  “Haven’t a clue. This entire game was designed by my head librarian, Dr. Yanina Zinchenko, as my birthday present.”

  “But,” said Akimi, “you could just ask Dr. Zinchenko how to get out, right?”

  “Akimi Hughes? Are you one of those people who read the last chapter of a book first to see how it ends?”

  “No, but …”

  “Good. It’s much more fun when the ending is a surprise. Dr. Zinchenko is the only one who knows how and where to exit this building without setting off all sorts of fire alarms. Any clues I personally delivered during the course of this game were completely scripted for me by Dr. Z.”

  “Okay,” said Charles, “here’s my question.…”

  Mr. Lemoncello raised a hand. “Before you ask it, be advised: Your opponents will also hear my answer.”

  “Fine. Why is the book on the bedside table in your private suite From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg?”

  “Because when I was your age, Mrs. Tobin, my local librarian, gave it to me.”

  Miguel raised his hand.

  “Yes, Miguel?”

  “Can we have one bonus question, too?” he asked politely.

  “No,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “However, I will give you one bonus answer, which Charles, of course, will also hear. Your bonus answer is ‘lodgepole, loblolly, and Rocky Mountain white.’ ”

  “What are three different kinds of pine trees?” said Charles, just to show off—and to let Kyle’s team know their bonus answer didn’t give them any kind of advantage.

  “I am told that is correct,” said Mr. Lemoncello, touching his ear.

  He reached under the desk again and this time pulled up a three-foot-tall hourglass, a giant version of the red plastic timers that came as standard equipment in a lot of his games.

  He turned it over.

  “It’s the jumbo, three-hour size,” he said as the sand started trickling down. “Because it is now nine o’clock and you have only three more hours to find your way out of the library. Good luck. And may the best team—or, in Charles’s case, the best solo effort—win!”

  “Let’s se
e what kind of real bonus clues Mr. Lemoncello is serving up today,” Charles said to his empty conference room.

  He really didn’t mind flying solo. It meant he wouldn’t have to share his prize when he won it.

  Winner won all.

  Losers lost all.

  That was just the way the world rolled.

  And Charles knew he would win.

  After all, he was a Chiltington. They never lost.

  Even if he had wasted his question about the Mixed-Up Files book. Turned out that Mr. Lemoncello was just a sentimental sap like Kyle Keeley. The book was there because his beloved librarian gave it to the old fool when he was the same age as all the library lock-in contestants. Boo-hoo. Big whoop.

  And what was all that nonsense about pine trees?

  Preposterous.

  Unclasping the sealed envelope, Charles found two silhouette cards. Each of them was numbered, in case Charles couldn’t figure out which books they would’ve been hidden in.

  Babied? Charles wondered. No. Crawled!

  He examined the second free card.

  Three dinners? Three couples? A restaurant?

  This one was difficult.

  Charles decided to put the two new pieces into the puzzle, to see if their meanings would become clearer:

  Charles was missing only one clue, but he had everything else.

  “You can walk out the way BLANK crawled in in passed restaurant.”

  No. That didn’t make sense.

  In fact, all he was really certain about were the first two lines: “You can walk out the way.”

  The way what? Past the restaurant? The Book Nook Café?

  And what about the image of the football player?

  It came from the Johnny Unitas book. Maybe Johnny Unitas, who had played football back when Mr. Lemoncello was Charles’s age, had owned a restaurant? Perhaps a popular national chain?

  If so, there might’ve been one in Alexandriaville. Maybe right here in the old Gold Leaf Bank building.

  Could the last bit be “In Johnny Unitas’s Restaurant”?

  Or what if Andrew Peckleman had been right all along and it was the NINETEEN that was the clue from the football player card? That would make the final line “In nineteen …” WHAT? Diners? Couples?

  No.

  Anniversaries!

  The three couples in the bonus clue were obviously celebrating their anniversaries!

  Nineteen anniversaries? Was today the nineteenth anniversary of some major event in Alexandriaville?

  Charles shook his head. He knew the phrase would make sense only after he had completed the third line, the only one that still had a blank in it: “BLANK, CRAWLED, INN.”

  What if the missing image is an eyeball? Then the third line could be “I crawled in.”

  Hang on, Charles thought. The one book in the Staff Picks display case nobody had found yet was True Crime Ohio: The Buckeye State’s Most Notorious Brigands, Burglars, and Bandits by Clare Taylor-Winters. The last image was going to be a criminal of some sort.

  That one, single missing book might tell Charles who had crawled into the bank and, more importantly, where they had crawled in. Was this the nineteenth anniversary of a famous bank robbery?

  Charles realized he needed help.

  It was time to use his Ask an Expert.

  That made him laugh.

  Because Charles knew the top library expert in all of America, maybe the world. Someone much more important than Dr. Yanina Zinchenko.

  Kyle Keeley and the rest of that bunch didn’t stand a chance.

  Eager to find out all he could in the final minutes before the Dewey decimal doors reopened on the second floor, Kyle listened as Haley Daley detailed everything she had learned on Team Charles.

  Meanwhile, Akimi added Andrew’s and Haley’s library cards to the list on the whiteboards in Community Meeting Room B.

  “We were piecing together a picture puzzle,” said Haley. “It was like a memory match game, or that old TV show Concentration.”

  “We played one of those, too,” said Miguel. “A rebus.”

  “Right. So far, I’m pretty sure it says something like ‘You walk out the way bandits crawled in.’ ”

  “ ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ ” said Kyle, tapping the Bible verse they had found in the 200s room. “That points to bandits, too.”

  “And the blackbird,” said Sierra. “It wailed like a police siren.”

  “Chasing bandits!”

  “Hang on,” said Miguel. “What about Willy Wonka? Were there criminals in the chocolate factory?”

  “No,” said Sierra.

  “And what about all this?” said Akimi, pointing at the list of library cards. “I added the new cards but it still doesn’t make much sense.”

  BOOKS/AUTHORS ON THE BACKS OF LIBRARY CARDS

  #1 Miguel Fernandez

  Incident at Hawk’s Hill by Allan W. Eckert/

  No, David! by David Shannon

  #2 Akimi Hughes

  One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish

  by Dr. Seuss/Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger

  #3 Andrew Peckleman

  Six Days of the Condor by James Grady/

  Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott

  #4 Bridgette Wadge

  Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

  by Judy Blume/

  Harry Potter and the

  Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling

  #5 Sierra Russell

  The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder/

  The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

  #6 Yasmeen Smith-Snyder

  Around the World in Eighty Days

  by Jules Verne/The Yak Who Yelled Yuck

  by Carol Pugliano-Martin

  #7 Sean Keegan

  Olivia by Ian Falconer/Unreal! by Paul Jennings

  #8 Haley Daley

  Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm/

  A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

  #9 Rose Vermette

  All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor/

  Scat by Carl Hiaasen

  #10 Kayla Corson

  Anna to the Infinite Power

  by Mildred Ames/Where the Sidewalk

  Ends by Shel Silverstein

  #11 UNKNOWN/CHARLES CHILTINGTON

  #12 Kyle Keeley

  I Love You, Stinky Face by Lisa McCourt/

  The Napping House by Audrey Wood

  “Wow,” said Haley. “What a mess.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Akimi.

  “I don’t think it’s another author-title game,” said Sierra, “like up on the Wonder Dome.”

  “Huh?” said Haley.

  “Long story,” said Miguel. “We’ll save it for later.”

  “What we need,” said Kyle, “is some kind of clue to show us how to unscramble this list. Remember what Dr. Zinchenko said when the game started: ‘Your library cards are the keys to everything you will need.’ This clue is the big one, guys. We need to crack it.”

  That’s when Mr. Lemoncello popped his head in the door.

  “Hello, hope I’m not interrupting. We have twenty minutes till the doors open upstairs. Anybody up for an Extreme Challenge?”

  “In case you forgot,” said Mr. Lemoncello, “Extreme Challenges are extremely challenging and sometimes extremely dangerous.”

  “Is Charles doing one?” asked Akimi.

  “He might. I’m going to ask him if he’d like to next.”

  Mr. Lemoncello had changed out of his judge’s costume into some kind of cat burglar outfit—black pants, ribbed black turtleneck, and sporty black beret.

  “Is that costume a clue?” asked Haley. “Because it goes with the whole bandit theme.”

  “Don’t know. But Dr. Zinchenko told me to wear it for the big finale. Is there going to be a finale?”

  “Maybe with Charles,” mumbled Kyle. “We’re sort of stuck.”

  “At least till eleven,” added Sierra. “That’s when the most important clue will ap
pear on the ceiling.”

  “Really?” said Mr. Lemoncello. “That Dr. Zinchenko. The woman knows how to build suspense.”

  “So let’s do the Extreme Challenge,” said Haley. “What do we have to lose?”

  “Um, the whole game,” said Akimi.

  “Not for all of us,” said Kyle. “I’ll do the challenge. After all, I’m the team captain.”

  “You are?” said Haley.

  “We had an election,” said Akimi. “Yesterday.”

  “Oh. Cool.”

  “But, Kyle,” said Miguel, “if you blow the Extreme Challenge, you lose, bro.”

  “Not if my team wins.”

  “No,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “If you lose, Kyle, you lose. You will not be allowed to share in the big prize.”

  “Fine.”

  “I’m going with you,” said Haley.

  “No, you’re not,” said Mr. Lemoncello.

  “I have to. Look, we both know I’d be a fabulous spokesmodel for your games and stuff, but I can’t just glom on to everything Kyle and his team have already dug up. I have to earn my place on this team.”

  “Sorry, Haley. Extreme Challenges are, and always will be, solo efforts.”

  “But …”

  Mr. Lemoncello held up his hand. “No buts. Kyle must face this challenge alone. However …”

  “Yes?”

  “The rest of you can watch his progress on the video screens and cheer him on over the intercom system. You are a cheerleader, aren’t you, Haley?”

  “Yep,” said Kyle. “But she’s never cheered for me.”

  “Well, I will this time. I promise.”

  “Excellent,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “By the way, Kyle, there is no backing out once you commit to the challenge.”

  “Fine,” said Kyle. “Let’s do it.”

  “Go, Kyle, gooooo!” shouted Haley.

  Akimi flinched. “Um, a warning next time … please?”

  “Sorry.”