He pushed me back.
The library stairs lit up with an orange haze, and the door clicked open. “All right, come on in. It’s pretty dark, but you’ll be able to see well enough.”
The three of us rushed up the steps and inside.
Dad was right. Only two bulbs were working. They lit the round circulation desk and a set of stairs that went down to a door with an EMPLOYEES ONLY sign.
Bo rushed to Dad’s side, and though I knew CJ got scared sometimes—he’s still never seen the entire movie of The Wizard of Oz—he immediately began to explore the darkness.
I stood under the single light at the circulation desk and ran my hand along the scratched surface. Bending down I looked in the RETURN slot and found three books.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and two others I hadn’t heard of.
Harry Potter was one of my favorites. I still remembered the first time I opened the copy I’d received for Christmas. It had rained that day, and the hot chocolate that sat steaming on the nightstand gradually cooled as I sank into Harry’s world.
I set the books down on the desk and looked at the picture that hung on the wall behind. It was of a woman who looked older than Mom and Dad but not quite as old as Grandma and Grandpa. I squinted at the small golden plaque on the base of the frame.
ALMA, PENNSYLVANIA, I read, and then walked behind the desk so that I could see the words better. HOMETOWN OF THE NATIONAL BOOK PRIZE–WINNING AUTHOR LEE WREN. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BIRDS, NATIONAL BOOK PRIZE 1969. Then it gave the dates of her birth and death.
Wow. The librarian back in Pittsburgh told me the National Book Prize was one of the biggest awards you could get as a writer.
A famous author had lived here?
Maybe when I left Alma at the end of the summer, people would say, “Sunday Fowler lived here.”
“CJ … I mean, Sunday?” Dad asked. He climbed on top of a stool, reaching for one of the burned-out bulbs.
I walked out from behind the desk. “Yeah?”
“Could you do me a favor?”
“Uh, sure.”
He handed me the flashlight tucked in his pocket. “Go down into the basement and see how many bulbs I need down there. I brought a few with me but I don’t think I have enough.”
I glanced down the dark steps, the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign lit up by the new bulb Dad had just replaced.
“Thanks,” he said, not waiting for my answer.
I took the flashlight, walked down the stairs that were thankfully illuminated, and then pushed the doors open. My single light bobbed in the blackness, and I scanned the walls until I found a switch. None of the lights were working. I stepped farther inside, first counting the lights above and then scanning the rest of the room. Four bulbs.
There were two desks sitting in the middle of the room, and a big contraption against the far wall that looked like some sort of heater or air conditioner with silver pipes snaking up the walls and across the ceiling. Spiderwebs hung in the empty corners while wisps of an abandoned web caught the beam of my flashlight. A metal bookcase was against the other wall, filled from top to bottom with boxes. I stepped over to inspect them. More books, gritty with dust.
Shining my flashlight over each shelf, I found that all the boxes looked the same. But when the beam reached the top shelf, something glinted. Shifting the light back over, I saw it again.
There was an old step stool sitting beside the bookcase. I dragged it over and climbed up. Standing on my tiptoes to reach, I pushed aside the nearest box to see better. It was some sort of a heavy file cabinet or safe. It had a latch with a tiny silver lock like on a suitcase.
Maybe it wasn’t locked.
I stretched up even more, but my fingertips were only able to brush against the smooth surface.
“Come on,” I whispered, reaching, stretching.
Then there was a flash of light behind me and a roaring “BOO!”
I screeched and toppled off the back of the stool, landing directly on CJ.
He pushed me off. “Ouch.” He hobbled to stand, then dissolved into giggles. “You should have seen your face, Sunday! It was hilarious.”
“You could have killed me, CJ!” A sharp pain bit at my ankle as I groped for the flashlight and got to my feet.
“Well, I didn’t, did I?” he shot back.
Dad’s voice boomed from the top of the stairs. “What’s going on down there? Everything okay?”
“CJ scared the daylights out of me!”
“I was just trying to be funny.”
“Well, you have to be careful, especially in the dark,” Dad said. “Are you ready to go, Sunday? How many lights?”
“Four.”
“Great, thanks.”
I started up the stairs but stopped and shined the flashlight once more at the top shelf. From where I stood, I could see the box perfectly, the little silver lock glinting.
“You coming, Sunday?” Dad called down to me.
What was in there?
“Yeah, I’m coming.” I let the doors close and then ran up the steps.
Tomorrow I’d get the box down and open it.
“ ’Night, Sunday,” Mom said from the door to my room.
I yawned and laid down The Secret Garden on my chest. “Good night.”
“How do you like the book so far?”
“I love it, but I’ve already read it before. Remember? Last year?”
Mom shook her head, running her hand through her hair. “No. I think I remember May reading it a while ago.” She yawned. “But anyway, try not to stay up too late.”
My heart sank. Of course she didn’t remember. “Okay.”
The door closed, and I read until my eyelids drooped. Before sleep completely took over, I tore a small strip of paper from my notebook and slipped it in between the pages. Then I clicked off my reading light and tucked myself under the covers.
Maybe I could be like Mary Lennox and find a boy locked away in a hidden bedroom. Or maybe I could find a lonely hermit and bring him out of his house.
Of course, that meant I had to find myself a hermit or a hidden boy.
Maybe I could crack an unsolved crime.
JEWEL THIEF CAUGHT THANKS TO SUNDAY FOWLER.
Whatever it was, I needed to come up with something soon if I ever wanted to become more than just “one-of-the-six.”
UNFORTUNATELY I didn’t think of any other ideas to help me make my mark as I slept. Nothing came to me over our breakfast except maybe trying to break a world record again. But trying to eat the most Reese’s Pieces hadn’t worked last spring. Instead CJ broke a city record for eating the most donut holes in one minute. Let’s just say my fame disappeared when his name was printed in the Pittsburgh Post.
After breakfast, Dad made us all walk over to the library together, weighed down with cleaning supplies, a vacuum, brooms, buckets, and Mom’s organizing bins.
“Who donated all the money to do this work?” Emma asked, huffing, even though she’d managed to grab the two empty buckets.
Mom grunted. “It was an anonymous donation by someone,” she said. “And a pretty big one.”
An anonymous donation? I never could understand why anyone would want to be anonymous when they were doing something good like donating money. And now, trying to think of a way to be recognized, it seemed even sillier. Who in the world would want to do something that people would notice and then not tell a single soul? Not a middle child, I knew that much.
“Here we go,” Dad said, unlocking the door and pushing it open. “Put the supplies over there. Just try not to block the bathrooms.”
We trudged in, one after the other, and dropped the supplies, then looked around.
The main room looked different as the morning sun filled the dusty windows. It wasn’t nearly as eerie, and I felt silly for being scared. Now the library reminded me of the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty”: the castle, and everyone inside it, asleep because of a spell cast on it by the wicked witch.
And we were going to awaken it.
I took in the room, dusty corners to cobwebbed ceiling. A staircase I hadn’t seen last night ran up the side where more shelves were piled with books. There was a railing around the second floor that allowed you to look down on the circulation desk. I spotted the staircase that led down to the basement. If I got a chance to sneak away without anyone noticing, I could pull down the silver box and see what was inside. Maybe there was something else sitting on one of these shelves, like an antique book worth millions or old pictures of the library. Or maybe the famous author Lee Wren had carved her name into one of the desks.
I let my hand glide across the top of the circulation desk and winced as a splinter dove into my skin. As I tried to pull it out, I thought of Lee Wren walking into the library and placing her books right here. Maybe she drank out of the water fountain or stood right where I stood now. I’d try to read her book this summer.
The room behind the desk was filled with shelves and shelves of books that had been thrown together in the midst of the remodel. Some were stacked one on top of the other until they met the wooden shelf above, and others leaned against one another barely able to stand. The shelves were old, and most of them looked like they were going to fall apart at any moment. There were a few desks covered with carvings. They didn’t match the smooth wood floors Dad had put in, but he was going to refinish the furniture while we cleaned and organized.
I walked around some more, letting my mind wander. An image of a big Reopening Day Party complete with balloons and streamers, food and games, took shape inside my head. Maybe I could organize something like that to stand out? A newspaper article with the headline TWELVE-YEAR-OLD ORGANIZES PARTY OF THE CENTURY scrolled through my head.
But it would have to be big and have something really—
Dad clapped his hands, jolting me out of my thoughts. “All right, everyone!” he said. “Let’s get started.”
May piped in immediately. “You and Mom promised that one of you will take me driving every day, remember?”
“Yes, I know—”
“I’ll go with Mom and May when they leave,” Emma interrupted. “I thought I saw something about a theater production and they might need my experience making costumes.” Ever since she helped out with costumes for the high school’s production of Grease, Emma thought she was ready to stitch for Broadway.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dad said. I could tell he was getting annoyed. He looked over at CJ, Bo, Henry, and me. “What engagements do you have that I should know about?”
CJ shrugged. “Well, I want to make a fort in the trees over there sometime.”
Henry chimed in with a “Me, too!”
“I’m going with Sunday,” Bo said, slipping his hand in mine.
I grinned. Good old faithful Bo. “Well, I don’t have anything,” I said. “I guess I’ll just stay here and help.”
Emma huffed, and when I turned she stuck up her nose and sneered—her sign for “Miss Goody Two-shoes.”
Bo let go of my hand and moved next to CJ and Henry. “Then I want to go with them.”
The warmth from his small hand vanished from my skin. “Bo—” I started. “I won’t be cleaning the whole time.”
“But I want to make a fort. I hate cleaning and putting things away.”
CJ let his arm drape across Bo’s shoulder. “Yeah, he wants to make a fort with us.”
“Yeah, a fort,” Henry echoed, his finger in his nose.
I hoped I sounded convincing when I said, “Fine. I don’t care.” There I was again, standing on the outside.
“Okay, then,” Dad said. “Every day you each need to help out here, even if it’s just taking out the trash or getting everyone breakfast or lunch. Your mom and I and the new librarian will be doing most of the work, but we still expect help. Understood?”
We all nodded.
“Good.” He turned to Mom. “What do you think we should do first, Lara?”
Mom sighed, then walked around a bit. I could practically see her organizing things in her head. She turned and looked at us ready to delegate jobs. I always thought that if she wasn’t a mom she’d be pretty good at working in the army. “First, let’s move the books to this side of the room so that we can clean the other half. Then start separating them. Decide which ones are beyond repair and which are good enough to save, and try to place them in order by their call numbers. The new librarian is coming in a few days and will help, but I’d like to get a head start. Once the books are moved over, we can look at the furniture and see what needs to be fixed and what needs to go into storage. Are we ready?”
We all answered, “Ready.”
“Then let’s go.”
We moved like a well-oiled machine, having organized and cleaned up our own house in the same way. I was happy to eventually sit and flip through the books, smelling the musty yellowed pages and listening to the crinkle of the plastic library covers when I opened them. Most of the due dates stamped on the inside slip were from years ago and most had publication dates from the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties. Seeing Bridge to Terabithia, and The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and Homecoming—books I had read last year—was like meeting old friends. I wondered if the librarian would let me keep the ones that couldn’t be put on the shelves anymore and set them off to the side.
Though I thought of trying to sneak away to the basement to see what was in the silver box, the stacks of books were endless.
May and Emma had slipped off together to make lunch, and it wasn’t too long before we heard the familiar clang of our dinner triangle. Mom had insisted on bringing it with us. “It’ll feel more like home with it hanging off the porch, and besides, that’s the only way that we can call everyone in for dinner.”
The boys dropped the books where they stood, and we all walked back over to the house and sat down on the porch to eat the egg salad sandwiches, apples, and chips.
Seizing the opportunity to slip away, I wrapped my lunch in a paper towel and started back for the library. “Mom, I’ll go see what the basement’s like.”
“All right, Emma … I mean, May. Ugh. I mean, Sunday.”
CJ laughed. “Don’t get scared.”
I walked into the library, then down the stairs through the EMPLOYEES ONLY doors, setting my half-eaten lunch on one of the desks. The basement was still dim since there was only one small window, but Dad had replaced the bulbs, so the black shadows that had been eerie last night were only dusty corners now. The two desks I had seen by flashlight were older and more run-down than the desks and chairs in the main library. I stood on my tiptoes to get a glimpse of the silver locked box.
I should have looked for the key before I came down. Then again, who knew how long I would have by myself before one of my brothers or sisters came poking around? I needed to get the box down and find out what was inside before one of them found me.
After setting aside a stool with wobbly, unstable legs, I pulled up one of the old chairs, tested to see if it would hold me. I grabbed a small cardboard box and set it aside, then reached for the silver one.
It was heavy, so I put it down on the desk, then ran my hand over the dusty top. It was mostly smooth with a few scratches. I took a deep breath and pulled on the lock, hoping that maybe, just maybe, it was broken.
It held fast.
There were a million and one places the key could be in the library, if it was even in the library.
I considered returning the box to its place on the top shelf.
But maybe it held something special inside like a treasure map to a fortune. Or maybe there was treasure inside the box itself?
I had to find out.
After glancing around the small room, I checked both of the old desks. The drawers were empty except for a lone queen of hearts and a few pencils sharpened down to nubs.
Maybe the key was upstairs.
Just in case one of my siblings came down while I went to look, I lifted the box off the d
esk and placed it against the wall, where it blended in with the rest of the messy room. Taking another quick bite of my sandwich, I ran up the stairs, then glanced out the window toward the house.
Whew. Everyone was still eating.
I turned and looked for where a key might be kept. The circulation desk was the most likely place. I walked behind it, opening every single drawer.
The first had little animal stamps and an I LOVE READING stamp. I remembered how much I loved to get a stamp on my hand at the library when I was younger and pressed a small penguin against my skin. Nothing showed up and I moved on. Another drawer had pencils, pens, paper clips, tape, and a stapler. I rummaged through the clutter and finally noticed something silver.
A small key!
I grinned and placed it on the desk. That wasn’t so hard. Still, I should check the other drawers, too.
Once I’d gone through every drawer I had collected seven keys. Actually I’d found eight, but one was too big, so I put it back.
A voice yelled from just outside the library window, “Just meet us back here at five, okay?”
Dad! There was shouting from my brothers, and my mom asked, “Do you have to talk about poop all day long?”
I swiped the keys into my hand and rushed back down the stairs just as a stampede of footsteps entered the library.
Leaving the box right where it was, I began to try the different keys. Nope. No.
“Where’s Sunday?” It was Bo. Usually I liked that he searched me out. But not now. I just needed a few more minutes. I held my breath and tried another key.
Not that one.
His footsteps tromped down the stairs just as the fourth key slipped easily into the lock. I turned it, then pulled down. The box opened!
The basement door swung wide, banging into the wall. I sat on the box, trying to act like I hadn’t been doing anything at all. “Hi, Bo,” I said, trying to catch my breath.
“Hi, Sunday. What are you doing?”
“Oh, just taking a little break. I was looking through some of these boxes.” I got up, slipped the key into my pocket, and went to a cardboard box, lifting up some old books and two cassette tapes that looked like the ones Mom and Dad had showed us once. “You know, just seeing what’s down here.”
A Summer of Sundays Page 3