Mr. Lemoncello's Great Library Race

by Chris Grabenstein

  “This is not it,” said Abia, crossing her arms over her chest. “This is simply meaningless….”

  “Not really,” said Kyle. “Where is it crowded and dark and you can see stars during the day?”

  “A planetarium,” said Abia.

  “We don’t have one of those,” said Kyle. “But we have movie theaters!”

  “So?”

  “So you can see movie stars in a crowded, dark movie theater where you can also pay a ton of money for popcorn and pop. Driver?”

  “Please, call me Jessica. ‘Driver’ sounds so chauffeurish.”

  “ ‘Chauffeurish’ is not a word,” said Abia.

  “Should be.”

  “Fine,” said Kyle. “Jessica—take us to the Alexandriaville Cinemark movie theater.”

  The driver slipped the bookmobile into drive.

  “Of course,” said Abia, finally catching on, “ ‘Cine-mark’ rhymes with ‘in a park’! Now drive like you stole this vehicle, Jessica!”

  They zipped down Main Street and hung a sharp left turn on Maple.

  Abia twisted around in her seat and looked out the rear window.

  “The bookmobile ferrying Andrew Peckleman and Diane Capriola is following us. I told you Diane Capriola was a faster riddle solver than you, Kyle Keeley. We have lost our slight and insignificant lead.”

  Kyle sighed and slumped down in his seat.

  Thanks for reminding me of that, too!

  The theater marquee outside the art deco Cinemark movie theater in downtown Alexandriaville listed six different movie titles.

  Five were big blockbusters. One Kyle had never heard of: Another Clue for You.

  “Come on,” said Kyle.

  “Where are we going?” asked Abia.

  “The box office. I want to see Another Clue for You.”

  “Ah, yes. I have heard that one is quite good. Well played, Kyle Keeley.”

  “Thanks.”

  They ran over to the ticket window.

  “May I help the following guest?” asked the blue-haired lady inside the box office. Kyle noticed that she was wearing a little lemon-and-cello lapel pin.

  “Mr. Lemoncello sent us!” said Kyle. “We’d like two tickets to Another Clue for You.”

  The lady thumped a button.

  A tiny square of cardboard shot out of a metal slot in the ticket counter. The lady tore it off at its perforations and slid it through the half-moon window.

  There was a miniature picture puzzle on the ticket stub.

  “Enjoy your show. Next.”

  “Come on,” said Kyle. “Let’s go figure this out!”

  They turned around. Andrew, Diane, Akimi, and Angus were all lined up behind them.

  “We want to see the exact same movie,” whined Andrew, nervously tapping his fingers on the counter.

  “Good luck, you guys,” said Akimi as Kyle and Abia hurried into the lobby to work their clue.

  “Yeah,” added Angus. “You’re gonna need it!”

  Akimi and Angus laughed and slapped each other high fives. They even woo-hooed.

  Kyle couldn’t let it bug him. He and Abia went over to a tall table near the concession stand and studied their clue.

  “It’s another pictogram!” said Kyle.

  “Don’t let the others see that!” whispered Abia.

  “Don’t worry. They’re all getting different clues, remember?”

  Kyle focused on the rebus. So did Abia.

  Kyle figured it out first.

  “Got it!” he said. “We need to ‘find the man who was always meant to work here.’ ”

  Kyle and Abia looked around the lobby. There was a guy tearing tickets. Two guys working behind the concession stand. An elderly man sweeping popcorn off the floor. Still another guy with a flashlight looped through his belt who looked like an usher.

  All five of them wore the telltale lemon-and-cello lapel pins. So did all the women working in the movie theater.

  “How do we find out which one of those men was always meant to work here?” asked Kyle.

  “We could interview them,” said Abia. “This is theoretically a game designed to test our research skills. The one-on-one interview is a time-honored investigatory technique.”

  “But it could take like an hour,” said Kyle. “Maybe longer.”

  “Always searching for a shortcut, eh, Kyle Keeley?”

  “Yes! Because this is a race!”

  The guy working the broom shuffled by, chasing a half-popped kernel of corn that wouldn’t stay in his long-handled dustpan.

  “Very well,” said Abia. “I have found one.”

  “What?”

  “That senior citizen who just swept by. Did you notice his name tag?”

  “No.”

  “He is Mark.”

  “So?”

  “This is the Cinemark movie theater, is it not? Given Mr. Lemoncello’s love of puns, clearly a man named Mark was always meant to work at a cinema named Cine-mark.”

  “Booyah!” exclaimed Kyle.

  The two of them chased after the broom man, who had finally corralled the last pesky piece of popcorn.

  “Excuse me, sir?” said Kyle. “Are you Cine-mark?”

  The old man laughed. “Well, that’s what Mr. Lemoncello always calls me because I know so much about movies.”

  “Um, do you know Thomas Edison?”

  “I’m only seventy-two, son. Not a hundred and seventy-two.”

  “I know, but…”

  “Ah, I’m just messing with you. Hang on.”

  He pulled a sheet of paper out of his pants pocket.

  “Here we go. I’m supposed to say this to anybody who asks me about Edison.” He cleared his throat. “Go to Murphy’s Drugstore and grab what you might need if you were the star of the first copyrighted motion picture shot on an Edison Kinetoscope.”

  Kyle had no idea what the man was talking about. “We have to read Edison’s horoscope?”

  “We should return to our bookmobile,” said Abia. “We can research Thomas Edison’s contributions to the motion picture art form, including his creation known as the Kinetoscope.”

  “Sure,” said Kyle, “we can do an Internet search on our tablet computers on the way to Murphy’s.”

  “We can also consult the many books in our book-mobile. Knowing Mr. Lemoncello, I would not be surprised if several of them were from the 791.43 section.”

  “Which one is that, again?”

  “Books dealing with the cinema.”

  “Right. I used to know that.”

  Abia could do it the old-fashioned way, with books, but Kyle would stick with a quick and speedy Google search.

  Because the race always went to the swift!

  Even though the Fabulous Fact-Finding Frenzy was under way, the Lemoncello Library was still open to the general public.

  Frederick and David Krinkle had returned to Alexandriaville, this time to use one of the computers built into every reading desk under the rotunda.

  “Here it is,” said Frederick, clacking keys with one finger. “The Wikipedia entry I told you about.”

  “And you can change it?”

  “Yes, David. That’s what makes these things so wonderful. And if anybody cares to check, they will see that these edits were made from a computer here in Lemoncello’s library.”

  He finished tapping in his entry. “There we are. A few fascinating facts that all the other contributors to this page somehow failed to mention.”

  David studied the computer screen. “Luigi Lemoncello was a high school dropout?”

  “If it’s on the Internet, it has to be true. Of course, dropping out of high school may have been a good move on Luigi’s part because, as you will notice if you scroll down, he was kicked off his high school chess team for cheating.”

  “That was you, Frederick,” said David. “You went to the bathroom during a tournament and consulted a cheat guide to plot your next move. The teacher in the adjoining stall caught you
.”

  “Funny,” said Frederick. “It seems Luigi did exactly the same thing.”

  The two brothers tittered.

  “Our work here is done,” said David. “It’s time we checked in with our local research assistant.”

  “Yes,” said Frederick. “Hopefully, she has found some information about the blockbuster game we will be announcing for the holidays—before the Imagination Factory announces it first!”

  The two brothers packed up their things and headed into the lobby, with its ludicrous statue of Luigi standing on a lily pad spewing water out of his mouth like a broken drinking fountain.

  “David! Frederick!” hollered the familiar voice of their number one nemesis.

  He was standing near a lemon-shaped floor decal, holding a stopwatch.

  “What brings you back here like a pair of bad pennies from heaven?”

  “We wanted to see your new library,” said David, his eyelid twitching. “It truly is marvelous. So generous of you to give up your valuable game-designing time for such a noble cause.”

  “Thank you, David. And what have you two been up to lately? Mass-producing cheap imitations of my extremely inventive games?”

  “You’re just jealous,” snapped Frederick. “We outsold you in several markets last season.”

  “Two,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “Two is a couple, not several. Two is not even a few.”

  “Well, just you wait for this year!” said Frederick, his face turning the color of a plum. “Your holiday line will be a complete and utter failure!”

  All of a sudden Michael Jordan, wearing his Chicago Bulls uniform, strolled across the marble floor, casually dribbling a basketball.

  “Th-th-that’s Michael Jordan!” blurted Frederick.

  “What’s he doing here?” asked David.

  “He isn’t,” said Mr. Lemoncello.

  “What?”

  “He’s not here. He is, in truth, a hologram.”

  “Impossible.”

  “If I may quote Muhammad Ali,” said Jordan, “ ‘Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion.’ ”

  Mr. Lemoncello beamed and bounced up on the heels of his shoes. “So that’s what I’ve been tinkering with lately. How about you boys?”

  “We have several irons in the fire.”

  “Careful,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “They might melt. And when they do, how will you press the wrinkles out of your stiffly starched shirts?”

  Just then, four young people came bounding up the front steps of the library, dashed through the wide-open front door, and jumped on top of the lemon.

  “We’ve got the answer!” they all shouted at the same time.

  “Voice in the ceiling?” cried Mr. Lemoncello.

  “According to floor pressure sensors,” cooed a computerized voice, “both teams crossed the finish line at the same time.”

  “Very well,” said Mr. Lemoncello, “Miguel and Pranav, Elliott and Katherine, kindly march over to the whiteboards conveniently located at opposite ends of the lobby and write down your fascinating fact about Mr. Jordan!”

  The kids did as Mr. Lemoncello instructed. Katherine pulled out her small black book to make sure she remembered what she and her partner had decided to give as an answer.

  The boys, Miguel and Pranav, couldn’t decide who had the better penmanship. Finally, Miguel handed the dry-erase marker to Pranav.

  “So,” said David, “is this some sort of new game?”

  “Oh, no,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “This is the oldest game in the book: thorough and proper research! We’ve just made it a little more fun. Because if something is fun, more of it gets done! By the way, do you two gentlemen know Miss Katherine Kelly?” He gestured toward the girl with long blond hair. “She hails from Kansas City, Missouri. I believe that’s your hometown as well.”

  “Nope,” said David. “Never met her.”

  “Come on, little brother,” said Frederick. “We need to leave.”

  And they did. Fast.

  “Victory goes to the swift!” declared Mr. Lemoncello. “Or in this case, all four of you swiftees!”

  “I am very impressed,” said the holographic Michael Jordan.

  The two teams had followed their separate clue paths to arrive at the same answer: When he played in the NBA, for good luck Michael Jordan always wore blue-and-white University of North Carolina shorts under his red-and-black Chicago Bulls shorts.

  “Mr. Jordan went to college at UNC, which he led to the NCAA championship in 1982,” said Miguel.

  “North Carolina’s colors are blue and white,” said Elliott. “Mr. Jordan thought the mesh marvels brought him luck, so he wore them like underpants when he turned pro!”

  “Thanks for sharing that,” said Jordan sort of sheepishly. “Any of you kids ever hear of TMI?”

  “Our clues led us to Casey’s Sports on Main Street,” added Katherine, checking her notebook. “A clerk there named Shana told us about the North Carolina shorts.”

  “Our riddles took us to Atomic Athletic,” explained Pranav. “We met a friendly clerk as well!”

  “Proving,” said Mr. Lemoncello, “that there is always more than one way to bake a cake, peel an orange, shine a penny, or find an answer about orange cakes with penny candy on top!”

  “And you can take that to the hoop!” said Michael Jordan as a basketball net appeared on the keystone of the arch leading into the rotunda. Jordan took two giant strides as an arena full of cheering fans and a play-by-play announcer’s excited voice roared out of the ceiling speakers.

  “Uh-oh, catch him if you can. There goes Jordan! Flying through the air! He is airborne!”

  The basketball legend leapt, floated in midair, and, just before he was about to dunk it, tossed the holographic ball over his shoulder to Mr. Lemoncello, who took a jump shot and sent the make-believe ball flying back through the make-believe net.

  A buzzer sounded.

  “Oh, my goodness!” cried the announcer. “What a play. Luigi Lemoncello from downtown at the buzzer with an assist from Air Jordan!”

  Miguel, Pranav, Katherine, and Elliott clapped furiously as Michael Jordan smiled, waved, and disappeared—all while floating six feet off the ground.

  “This Nonfictionator is amazing!” declared Miguel. “It’s the coolest thing you’ve ever invented, sir!”

  “So far, Miguel,” said Mr. Lemoncello with a sly twinkle in his eye. “So far!”

  That’s when Sierra and Jamal, the third team in the Michael Jordan leg of the quest, came strolling up the front steps of the library toting canvas book bags. Both were reading the same book as they stepped through the circular front door.

  “It reminds me most of The Westing Game,” said Sierra.

  “Really?” said Jamal. “I find it to be a cross between Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Gollywhopper Games, and The Puzzling World of Winston Breen.”

  “Still, it’s quite good,” said Sierra.

  “Oh, yes,” said Jamal. “I couldn’t put it down. Neither could my younger brother.”

  They were so absorbed in their book talk they didn’t see the four other players and Mr. Lemoncello eagerly awaiting their arrival. They didn’t even bother to step on the big lemon.

  Finally, Mr. Lemoncello broke their bookish trance.

  “Sooooo,” he said, “did you two find a fascinating fact for us?”

  “No,” said Sierra. “Sorry.”

  “Book Culture, the store on Main Street, was having a huge buy-one, get-one-free sale,” explained Jamal.

  “We couldn’t resist,” said Sierra. She saw the four other data dashers grinning widely. “Are we late?”

  “Yes, Sierra,” said Mr. Lemoncello, “ ‘Late’ would be the right word, according to Roget and his thesaurus.”

  “Oh, well,” said Jamal. “Now we can go hang out in the fiction section and ride the hover ladders. Sierra was telling me about this awesome poetry book by Kwame Alexander.”

  “It’s sort of about basketb
all,” said Sierra. “That’s what Michael Jordan played, right?”

  Mr. Lemoncello just smiled. “Enjoy your time in the library, Sierra and Jamal. Find a good book and get lost in it.”

  “Oh, we will,” said Sierra.

  “Definitely,” said Jamal.

  “We’ll see you two at the gala!” Mr. Lemoncello turned to the two winning teams. “As for the rest of you? Let’s hit the Book Nook Café and grab some lunch. We’ll start the second leg of our Fabulous Fact-Finding Frenzy tomorrow morning. Hmm. The second leg reminds me of my little brother Massimo. At Thanksgiving dinner, he always ate both drumsticks.”

  Mr. Lemoncello led the way back into the rotunda.

  Over at the far wall, Sierra and Jamal floated up the three-story-tall fiction bookcase on a pair of hover ladders. The gliding platforms—with safety braces, handrails, and book baskets—used magnetic levitation technology to take library patrons up to the novel they were searching for (unless you used the browse button, of course—then you just flitted back and forth until something caught your eye).

  Michael Jordan was browsing the fiction wall, too.

  But he didn’t need a hover ladder to levitate. He could just leap up to snag a book as if it were a rebound coming off the backboard.

  Of course, since he was a hologram, he couldn’t actually grab a real book.

  But he sure looked awesome trying!

  As the lumbering bookmobile raced across town, Kyle and Abia sat in the back doing their independent research projects.

  Kyle quickly Googled “Thomas Edison’s first movie.”

  Abia consulted a stack of books from the 791.43 section of the library that were conveniently shelved in the back of the bookmobile.

  “These cinema books are not in this vehicle by accident, Kyle Keeley,” she said.

  “Maybe not,” said Kyle, balancing his lPad on his lap. “But we don’t need ’em. Google just told me what we needed to know: The first silent movie, produced in 1903, was Thomas Edison’s The Great Train Robbery. Plot’s pretty basic. Four bandits rob a train. Posse chases them. Shootout. Bad guys bite the dust. The end.”