“Good morning, Kyle,” his mom said when he hit the kitchen. She was sitting at her computer desk, sipping coffee and tapping keys. “Grab a Toaster Tart for breakfast.”
Curtis and Mike were already in the kitchen, chowing down on the last of the good Toaster Tarts—the frosted cupcake swirls. They’d left Kyle the unfrosted brown sugar cinnamon. The ones that tasted like the box they came in.
“New library opens Friday, just in time for summer vacation,” Kyle’s mom mumbled, reading her computer screen. “Been twelve years since they tore down the old one. Listen to this, boys: Dr. Yanina Zinchenko, the new public library’s head librarian, promises that ‘patrons will be surprised’ by what they find inside.”
“Really?” said Kyle, who always liked a good surprise. “I wonder what they’ll have in there.”
“Um, books maybe?” said Mike. “It’s a library, Kyle.”
“Still,” said Curtis, “I can’t wait to get my new library card!”
“Because you’re a nerd,” said Mike.
“I prefer the term ‘geek,’ ” said Curtis.
“Well, I gotta go,” said Kyle, grabbing his backpack. “Don’t want to miss the bus.”
He hurried out the door. What Kyle really didn’t want to miss were his friends. A lot of them had Sony PSPs and Nintendo 3DSs.
Loaded with lots and lots of games!
Kyle fist-bumped and knuckle-knocked his way up the bus aisle to his usual seat. Almost everybody wanted to say “Hey” to him, except, of course, Sierra Russell.
Like always, Sierra, who was also a seventh grader, was sitting in the back of the bus, her nose buried in a book—probably one of those about girls who lived in tiny homes on the prairie or something.
Ever since her parents divorced and her dad moved out of town, Sierra Russell had been incredibly quiet and spent all her free time reading.
“Nice shirt,” said Akimi Hughes as Kyle slid into the seat beside her.
“Thanks. It used to be Mike’s.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s still cool.”
Akimi’s mother was Asian, her dad Irish. She had very long jet-black hair, extremely blue eyes, and a ton of freckles.
“What’re you playing?” Kyle asked, because Akimi was frantically working the controls on her PSP 3000.
“Squirrel Squad,” said Akimi.
“One of Mr. Lemoncello’s best,” said Kyle, who had the same game on his PlayStation.
The one he couldn’t play with for a week.
“You need a hand?”
“Nah.”
“Watch out for the beehives.…”
“I know about the beehives, Kyle.”
“I’m just saying …”
“Yes!”
“What?”
“I cleared level six! Finally.”
“Awesome.” Kyle did not mention that he was up to level twenty-seven. Akimi was his best friend. Friends don’t gloat to friends.
“When I shot the squirrels at the falcons,” said Akimi, “the pilots parachuted. If a squirrel bit the pilot in the butt, I got a fifty-point bonus.”
Yes, in Mr. Lemoncello’s catapulting critters game, there were all sorts of wacky jokes. The falcons weren’t birds; they were F-16 Falcon Fighter Jets. And the squirrels? They were nuts. Totally bonkers. With swirly whirlpool eyes. They flew through the air jabbering gibberish. They bit butts.
This was one of the main reasons why Kyle thought everything that came out of Mr. Lemoncello’s Imagination Factory—board games, puzzles, video games—was amazingly awesome. For Mr. Lemoncello, a game just wasn’t a game if it wasn’t a little goofy around the edges.
“So, did you pick up the bonus code?” asked Kyle.
“Huh?”
“In the freeze-frame there.”
Akimi studied the screen.
“Turn it over.”
Akimi did.
“See that number tucked into the corner? Type that in the next time the home screen asks you for your password.”
“Why? What happens?”
“You’ll see.”
Akimi slugged him in the arm. “What?”
“Well, don’t be surprised if you start flinging flaming squirrels on level seven.”
“Get. Out!”
“Try it. You’ll see.”
“I will. This afternoon. So, did you write your extra-credit essay?”
“Huh? What essay?”
“Um, the one that’s due today. About the new public library?”
“Refresh my memory.”
Akimi sighed. “Because the old library was torn down twelve years ago, the twelve twelve-year-olds who write the best essays on ‘Why I’m Excited About the New Public Library’ will get to go to the library lock-in this Friday night.”
“Huh?”
“The winners will spend the night in the new library before anybody else even gets to see the place!”
“Is this like that movie Night at the Museum? Will the books come alive and chase people around and junk?”
“No. But there will probably be free movies, and food, and prizes, and games.”
All of a sudden, Kyle was interested.
“So, exactly what kind of games are we talking about?”
“I don’t know,” said Akimi. “Fun book stuff, I guess.”
“And do you think this new library will have equally new computers?”
“Definitely.”
“Wi-Fi?”
“Probably.”
Kyle nodded slowly. “And this all takes place Friday night?”
“Yep.”
“Akimi, I think you just discovered a way for me to shorten my most recent groundation.”
“Your what?”
“My game-deprived parental punishment.”
Kyle figured being locked in a library with computers on Friday night would be better than being stuck at home without any gaming gear at all.
“Can I borrow a pen and a sheet of paper?”
“What? You’re going to write your essay now? On the bus?”
“Better late than never.”
“They’re due in homeroom, Kyle. First thing.”
“Fine. I’ll keep it brief.”
Akimi shook her head and handed Kyle a notebook and a pen. The bus bounced over a speed bump into the school driveway.
He would need to make his essay really, really short.
He was hoping the twelve winners would be randomly pulled out of a hat or something and, like the lottery people always said in their TV commercials, you just had to “be in it to win it.”
Meanwhile, in another part of town, Charles Chiltington was sitting in his father’s library, working with the college student who’d been hired to help him polish up his extra-credit essay.
He was dressed in his typical school uniform: khaki slacks, blue blazer, button-down shirt, and tastefully striped tie. He was the only student at Alexandriaville Middle School who dressed that way.
“What’s a big word for ‘library’?” Charles asked his tutor. “Teachers love big words.”
“ ‘Book repository.’ ”
“Bigger, please.”
“Um, ‘athenaeum.’ ”
“Perfect! It’s such a weird word, they’ll have to look it up.”
Charles made the change, saved the file, and sent the document off to the printer.
“Your dad sure reads a lot,” said his ELA tutor, admiring the leather-bound books lining the walls of Mr. Chiltington’s home library.
“Knowledge is power,” said Charles. “It’s one of our fundamental family philosophies.”
Another was We eat losers for breakfast.
Kyle and Akimi climbed off the bus and headed into the school.
“You know,” said Akimi, “my dad told me the library people had like a bazillion different architects doing drawings and blueprints that they couldn’t share with each other.”
“How come?”
“To keep everything super secret. My dad and his firm did t
he front door and that was it.”
The second they stepped into Mrs. Cameron’s classroom for homeroom period, Miguel Fernandez shouted, “Hey, Kyle! Check it out, bro.” He held up a clear plastic binder maybe two inches thick. “I totally aced my essay, man!”
“The library dealio?”
“Yeah! I put in pictures and charts, plus a whole section about the Ancient Library of Alexandria, Egypt, since this is Alexandriaville, Ohio!”
“Cool,” said Kyle.
Miguel Fernandez was super enthusiastic about everything. He was also president of the school’s Library Aide Society. “Hey, Kyle—you know what they say about libraries?”
“Uh, not really.”
“They have something for every chapter of your life!”
While Kyle groaned, the second bell rang.
“All right, everybody,” said Mrs. Dana Cameron, Kyle’s homeroom teacher. “Time to turn in your extra-credit essays.” She started walking up and down the rows of desks. “The judges will be meeting in the faculty lounge this morning to make the preliminary cut.…”
Crap, thought Kyle. There were judges. This was not going to be a bingo-ball drawing like the lottery.
“Mr. Keeley?” The teacher hovered over his desk. “Did you write an essay?”
“Yeah. Sort of.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand. Either you wrote an essay or you didn’t.”
Kyle halfheartedly handed her his hastily scribbled sheet of paper.
And unfortunately, Mrs. Cameron read it. Out loud.
“ ‘Balloons. There might be balloons.’ ”
The classroom erupted with laughter.
Until Mrs. Cameron did that tilt-down-her-glasses-and-glare-over-them thing she did to terrify everybody into total silence.
“This is your essay, Kyle?”
“Yes, ma’am. We were supposed to write why we’re excited about the grand opening and, well, balloons are always my favorite part.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Cameron. “You know, Kyle, your brother Curtis wrote excellent essays when he was in my class.”
“Yes, Mrs. Cameron,” mumbled Kyle.
Mrs. Cameron sighed contentedly. “Please give him my regards.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Cameron moved on to the next desk. Miguel eagerly handed her his thick booklet.
“Very well done, Miguel.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Cameron!”
Kyle heard an odd noise out in the parking lot. A puttering, clunking, clanking sound.
“Oh, my,” said Mrs. Cameron, “I wonder if that’s him!”
She hurried to the window and pulled up the blinds. All the kids in the classroom followed her.
And then they saw it.
Out in the visitor parking lot. A car that looked like a giant red boot on wheels. It had a strip of notched black boot sole for its bumper. Thick shoelaces crisscrossed their way up from the windshield to the top of a ten-foot-tall boot collar.
“It looks just like the red boot from that game,” said Miguel. “Family Frenzy.”
Kyle nodded. Family Frenzy was Mr. Lemoncello’s first and probably most famous game. The red boot was one of ten tokens you could pick to move around the board.
A tall, gangly man stepped out of the boot car.
“It’s Mr. Lemoncello!” gasped Kyle, his heart racing. “What’s he doing here?”
“It was just announced,” said Mrs. Cameron. “This evening, Mr. Luigi Lemoncello himself will be the final judge.”
“Of what?”
“Your library essays.”
Eating lunch in the cafeteria, Kyle stared at his wilted fish sticks, wishing he could pull a magic Take Another Turn card out of thin air.
“I blew it,” he mumbled.
“Yep,” Akimi agreed. “You basically did.”
“Can you imagine how awesome that new library’s gonna be if Mr. Lemoncello and his Imagination Factory guys had anything to do with it?”
“Yes. I can. And I’m kind of hoping I get to see it, too. After all, I wrote a real essay, not one sentence about balloons.”
“Thanks. Rub it in.”
Akimi eased up a little. “Hey, Kyle—when you’re playing a game like Sorry and you get bumped back three spaces, do you usually quit?”
“No. If I get bumped, I play harder because I know I need to find a way to get back those three spaces and pull ahead of the pack.”
“Hey, guys!” Miguel Fernandez carried his tray over to join Kyle and Akimi.
He was being followed by a kid with spiky hair and glasses the size of welders’ goggles.
“You two know Andrew Peckleman, right?”
“Hey,” said Kyle and Akimi.
“Hello.”
“Andrew is one of my top library aides,” said Miguel.
“Cool,” said Akimi.
“Mrs. Yunghans, the librarian, just confirmed that Mr. Lemoncello is the top-secret benefactor who donated all the money to build the new public library. Five hundred million dollars!”
“She heard it on NPR,” added Peckleman, who more or less talked through his nose. “So we did some primary source research on Mr. Lemoncello and his connection to Alexandriaville.”
“What’d you find out?” asked Kyle.
“First off,” said Miguel, “he was born here.”
“He had nine brothers and sisters,” added Andrew.
“All of ’em crammed into a tiny apartment with only one bathroom over in Little Italy,” said Miguel.
“And,” said Peckleman, sounding like he wanted to one-up Miguel, “he loved the old public library down on Market Street. He used to go there when he was a kid and needed a quiet place to think and doodle his ideas.”
“And get this,” said Miguel eagerly. “Mrs. Tobin, the librarian back then, took an interest in little Luigi, even though he was just, you know, a kid like us. She kept the library open late some nights and let him borrow junk from her desk or her purse—thimbles and thumbtacks and glue bottles, even red Barbie doll boots—stuff he used for game pieces so he could map out his first ideas on a library table. Then …”
Andrew jumped in. “Then Mrs. Tobin took Mr. Lemoncello’s sketch for Family Frenzy home to her husband, who ran a print shop. They signed some papers, created a company, and within a couple of years they were all millionaires.”
But Miguel had the last word: “Now, of course, Mr. Lemoncello is a bazillionaire!”
“What are you four nerds so excited about?” said Haley Daley as she waltzed past with the gaggle of popular girls in her royal court. Haley was the princess of the seventh grade. Blond hair, blue eyes, blazingly bright smile. She looked like a walking toothpaste commercial.
“We’re pumped about Mr. Lemoncello!” said Miguel.
“And the new library!” said Andrew.
“And,” said Kyle melodramatically, “just seeing you, Haley.”
“You are so immature. Come on, girls.” Haley and her friends flounced away to the “cool kids” table.
“Check it out,” said Akimi, gesturing toward the cafeteria’s food line, where Charles Chiltington was balancing two trays: his own and one for Mrs. Cameron.
“I’m so glad you have lunchroom duty today, Mrs. Cameron,” Kyle heard Chiltington say. “If you don’t mind, I have a few questions about how conventions within genres—such as poetry, drama, or essays—can affect meaning.”
“Well, Charles, I’d be happy to discuss that with you.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Cameron. And, may I say, that sweater certainly complements your eye color.”
“What a suck-up,” mumbled Akimi. “Chiltington’s trying to use his weaselly charm to make sure Mrs. C sends his essay up the line to Mr. Lemoncello.”
“Don’t worry,” said Kyle. “Mrs. Cameron isn’t the final judge. Mr. Lemoncello is. And since he’s a genius, he will definitely pick the essays you guys all wrote.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Peckleman.
“Thanks, K
yle,” said Miguel.
“I just wish you could win with us,” said Akimi.
“Well, maybe I can. Like you said, this is just a Move Back Three Spaces card. A Take a Walk on the Boardwalk when someone else owns it. It’s a chute in Chutes and Ladders. A detour to the Molasses Swamp in Candy Land!”
“Yo, Kyle,” said Miguel. “Exactly how many board games have you played?”
“Enough to know that you don’t ever quit until somebody else actually wins.” He picked up his lunch and headed for the dirty-tray window.
Akimi called after him. “Where are you going?”
“I have the rest of lunch and all of study hall to work on a new essay.”
“But Mrs. Cameron won’t take it.”
“Maybe. But I’ve got to roll the dice one more time. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”
“I hope so,” said Akimi.
“Me too! See you guys on the bus!”
Working on his library essay like he’d never worked on any essay in his whole essay-writing life, Kyle crafted a killer thesis sentence that compared libraries to his favorite games.
“Using a library can make learning about anything (and everything) fun,” he wrote. “When you’re in a library, researching a topic, you’re on a scavenger hunt, looking for clues and prizes in books instead of your attic or backyard.”
He put in points and sub-points.
He wrapped everything up with a tidy conclusion.
He even checked his spelling (twice).
But Akimi had been right.
“I’m sorry, Kyle,” Mrs. Cameron said when he handed her his new paper at the end of the day. “This is very good and I am impressed by your extra effort. However, the deadline was this morning. Rules are rules. The same as they are in all the board games you mentioned in your essay.”
She’d basically handed Kyle a Go Back Five Hundred Spaces card.
But Kyle refused to give up.
He remembered how his mother had written to Mr. Lemoncello’s Imagination Factory when he and his brothers needed a fresh set of clue cards for the Indoor-Outdoor Scavenger Hunt.
Maybe he could send his essay directly to Mr. Lemoncello via email.
Maybe, if the game maker wasn’t judging the essays until later that night, Kyle still had a shot. A long shot, but, hey, sometimes the long ones were the only shots you got.