The Hometown Heroes had three medals.
The Midwest team, starring Marjory Muldauer, had two.
The Pacific, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast teams each had one.
“You guys?” said Kyle after doing the mental math. “We only need to win two more medals and we’re the champions!”
Once again, Miguel started chanting that old song by Queen, “We Are the Champions.”
Akimi joined in. Sierra, too.
Then the teammates belted out the chorus in four-part harmony.
“We are the champions, my friend!”
Kyle grinned.
He was definitely looking forward to his next cake day.
“What did you and Mrs. Chiltington talk about?” Andrew Peckleman asked Marjory Muldauer.
They were sitting together on the patio near the motel’s stone-cold gas-powered fire pit.
“How much we both hate what Mr. Lemoncello’s doing at his so-called library. Do you know what insane game they had us play today? Reading while eating.”
Andrew shook his head in disbelief.
“And the food was pizza! Greasy, slimy, cheesy pizza!”
“Pizza spillage can cause major damage to books,” said Andrew. “I’ve seen it. Back when I was a library aide at the middle school.”
“I complained about the messiness, but Mr. Lemoncello popped in on a video screen to remind us that all the books being used in the read-and-eat contest were paperbacks.”
“As if that makes a difference.”
“Exactly. Loopy old Lemoncello said paperback books were meant to be taken to the beach, where they’d have suntan lotion, melting ice cream cones, and sand dribbled all over their pages.”
“How ridiculous.”
“I know. But Lemoncello said books did no one any good sealed up tight. He said books need to ‘have their spines cracked, their covers opened, and their pages ruffled for them to come alive.’ ”
“The man’s a menace,” said Andrew.
“He’s a lunatic.”
“He needs to be stopped.”
“Don’t worry. We’re working on it.”
“Really? How?”
Marjory studied the nerdy boy in his goggle glasses. Yes, he seemed to be a true library lover, but Marjory couldn’t trust him. She couldn’t trust anybody—not when the future of library science was at stake.
“I can’t say,” she told Andrew. “But don’t be surprised if Mr. Lemoncello leaves town. I understand he’s turned his back on Alexandriaville before.”
“Well, he left when he was like eighteen,” said Andrew. “He moved to New York City to start his game company.”
“And,” said Marjory, “from what I’ve heard, he never once came back here until he cooked up his crazy scheme to build a new library in the old bank building as a big publicity stunt.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Mrs. Chiltington.”
“Huh. Mr. Lemoncello told us he built the library to honor the memory of Mrs. Gail Tobin. The librarian who helped him so much when he was our age.”
“Ha! You believe that? That’s just the clever spin Mr. Lemoncello’s marketing department put on this scam.” Marjory stood up. “But don’t worry, Andrew. Your public library will soon be a true public library. Mr. Lemoncello will turn it over to a local board of trustees and flee.”
“And he won’t be coming back?”
“Highly doubtful.”
“Wow. Thanks. I guess.”
“You’re welcome. Excuse me. I need a 641.2.”
“Sure. Enjoy your beverage.”
Marjory marched into the motel lobby, hoping to find a cold bottle of water. But, of course, the only free beverages the Lemoncello Library Olympics people had put on ice in the open coolers were chocolate milk, strawberry milk, and ten different kinds of soda pop, including something called Mr. Lemoncello’s Lemonberry Fizz. All of it junk.
“And a lemon is not a berry, Mr. Lemoncello,” Marjory muttered. “Look it up. Six-three-four-point-three-three-four. Lemons as an orchard crop. That means it’s a fruit!”
Suddenly, a voice boomed through a megaphone. “Who would like to play another game?”
Mr. Lemoncello. It sounded like he was right outside.
“Will all Library Olympians kindly join me at the swimming pool? It’s time to dive into another game!”
“Come on, Marjory,” called Margaret Miles, the Midwest team’s coach, hurrying across the lobby. “We’re only down by one.”
“I thought we were only supposed to play two games per day.”
Margaret Miles laughed. “You know Mr. Lemoncello. He’s all about keeping things a little unpredictable.”
Which is precisely why he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a library, thought Marjory.
Libraries were all about order, control, precision, and predictability!
And that’s exactly how Mrs. Chiltington and her League of Concerned Library Lovers would run things when they became the board of trustees in charge of what used to be the Lemoncello Library.
To help them succeed (and to earn her scholarship from the Willoughby-Chiltington Family Trust), all Marjory had to do was remove one book from the library’s shelves.
She had no qualms about it. No doubts or misgivings.
After all, that was what a library was supposed to do: lend out books, not dribble pizza sauce all over their pages.
She planned on borrowing the book Mrs. Chiltington had requested the very next day.
Marjory would earn her “Go to College Free” card.
And if things went the way Mrs. Chiltington said they would, the Alexandriaville Public Library would finally be free of Luigi Lemoncello.
“Surprise!” cried Mr. Lemoncello.
Marjory was standing on one side of the motel’s swimming pool with the other contestants and their coaches. The blithering buffoon, Mr. Lemoncello, and his head librarian, Dr. Zinchenko, were standing on the other.
“As a library reaches out to the community surrounding it,” said the bizarro billionaire, “so do the games of the first Library Olympiad!”
“So we’re, like, gonna be playing game number nine right here?” said the blond boy from California, whom Marjory had already decided was an idiot. “Tonight?”
“Absolutamundo,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “And although it’s not easy being bad, this next game is. Easy, not bad. Then again, I already know all the answers, which makes any quiz easier, wouldn’t you agree?”
Dr. Zinchenko tapped a switch box with the toe of her red high-heeled shoe. An electric air pump varoomed to life to inflate an enormous movie screen that rose beside her like a giant gorilla balloon outside a used-car lot.
“Our ninth game,” said Dr. Zinchenko, “is inspired by the Dewey decimal classification 510.”
“Mathematics!” shouted Marjory a half second before anybody else.
“Correct,” said the librarian. “Solve two of these mathematically inspired picture puzzles before any of the other teams and you will earn our ninth medal, the Rebus!”
“Remember,” said Mr. Lemoncello, “you only need two to win, which means we need at least nine puzzles. I think. I’ll have to ask Morris, the moose. He’s good with math. Anyway, here it is, your first puzzle! Dr. Zinchenko?”
She read from a stack of yellow note cards. “Name this fortress of intellectual freedom fighters.”
Mr. Lemoncello snapped his fingers and the fully inflated video screen displayed an equation made up of pictures:
Marjory thought the game was absurd, but her mind went to work anyway. It was like a math equation. LION plus BEAR plus GUY WITH STACK OF BOOKS minus ONE minus CAR equaled what?
No. Wait. The third symbol had to be just one word, like all the others. The guy was carrying the books. CARRY?
Marjory added and subtracted the letters as quickly as she could. She mashed the letters all together: LIONBEARCARRY minus ONECAR.
L I O N B E A R C A R R Y
That left L,
I, B, A, R, R, Y.
An extremely easy word jumble.
“A library!” she shouted an instant before Kyle Keeley shouted it, too.
“I heard Miss Muldauer first,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “That’s one for the Midwest, America’s heartland, home of all this great nation’s Valentine’s Day decorations. Well done!”
Marjory smirked.
If she could figure out one more puzzle, she’d win this game and, once again, be tied for first place.
She no longer needed to win Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics for the scholarship money.
But since she was already in the game, she wouldn’t mind crushing Kyle Keeley.
Kyle was starting to panic.
If Marjory Muldauer solved the next “mathematical” picture puzzle, her team would have three medals, just like Team Kyle.
They’d be all tied up.
Again.
And once they were tied, it’d be much easier for the Midwest team to slip into the lead. Kyle’s cake day might never come.
“Time for our second mathematically inspired picture puzzle,” announced Mr. Lemoncello. “This one is the answer to a trivia question. Dr. Zinchenko, if you please?”
Dr. Zinchenko read a question off another yellow card. “In the year AD 35, the Roman emperor Caligula tried to ban a book because it expressed Greek ideals of freedom, which Caligula did not like, because Rome was occupying Greece at the time. Which book did the Roman emperor try to ban?”
A new image filled the inflated screen:
Kyle stared at the second puzzle.
He needed to decipher it, fast. No way was he letting Marjory Muldauer snag this one, too.
Three home runs minus the symbol for the United Nations.
That had to be HOME RUNS minus UN, or HOMERS!
“I think I know this,” whispered Sierra.
Kyle’s world shifted into super slow motion. In his head, he heard Miguel saying, “I think the answer is Flubber.” The last time a game was on the line and Kyle listened to someone who “thought” they knew the answer, he’d lost. To his mom. And that was just a board game. This was way more important.
Kyle ignored Sierra. Made his mind race as fast as it could. He was the team’s “game guy.” That was what everybody kept telling him back when he had wanted to quit. Well, this puzzle was a game. It was his job to win it, no matter what.
THEATER minus EAT minus R equaled THE.
The last two lines were the hardest
ODD (numbers) minus D plus GOAL minus E plus a backward GOAL, or LAOG, equaled ODGOALLAOG.
Sierra tried to get Kyle’s attention again. “Caligula was the Roman emperor in AD 35 and the book he banned was—”
“Hang on,” said Kyle. “I just need to unscramble the last jumble.”
“Yo, Kyle?” said Miguel. “Sierra has the answer.”
“So do I,” said Kyle. He turned to face Dr. Zinchenko and hollered, “Homer’s The Good Ol Gala!”
“Wha-hut?” said Akimi the second Kyle blurted it out.
“Sorry,” said Dr. Zinchenko, “that answer is incorrect.”
“Homer’s The Odyssey,” said Marjory very coolly.
“Ha! That’s wrong!” cried Kyle. “She didn’t even use the ‘G,’ ‘O,’ ‘A,’ or ‘L’ from ‘goal’!”
“Of course I didn’t,” said Marjory. “Because I believe that symbol is supposed to represent the word ‘yes,’ which backward would be ‘s-e-y.’ But I didn’t need the puzzle pictures. I knew the answer because, unlike some people, I’ve actually read a few history books.”
“That’s how I knew it, too,” sighed Sierra.
“Ms. Muldauer’s answer is correct,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “The Midwest team has won two out of two, and therefore, they have also won the Rebus medal. And, if my own mental math is correct, the Midwest team now has three medals, which equals the same number currently held by the hometown team. It’s a three-for-all! A tie! Wow, isn’t math marvelous?”
“Way to go, mon capitaine,” said Akimi, knuckle-punching Kyle in the arm. “Next time, try to remember you’re on a team.”
Kyle and his teammates, along with all the other Library Olympians, were allowed to sleep in the next morning, because thanks to the surprise poolside contest, there would be only one game played that day.
Of course, Kyle didn’t want to sleep in. He wanted to get back in the arena ASAP and retake the lead.
He didn’t like being tied with Marjory Muldauer.
He didn’t like knowing his team had lost the poolside pop quiz because he’d blurted out the wrong answer and hadn’t let Sierra say the right one.
He also didn’t like being this close to losing.
Kyle and Miguel were sitting in the Olympia Village dining room, pushing the bobbing yellow marshmallows around in their Lucky Lemoncello Lumps cereal bowls.
“Sorry about blowing it last night,” he said to Miguel.
“Don’t apologize to me. Tell Sierra.”
“I will. But now we still have to win two of the last three games.”
“Not necessarily, bro. If one of the teams with no medals or just one medal beats us, we’re still in a tie with—”
“Miguel?” Kyle snapped. “We need to win two more games.”
“Yo. Ease up, Kyle.”
“Ease up? If we lose this thing, do you know what people are going to say about us? That we just got lucky the first time. That Charles Chiltington probably would’ve won the escape game if Mr. Lemoncello hadn’t kicked him out on a technicality.”
“Yeah. They might say that. Or they might say, ‘You win some, you lose some.’ But what counts is how you play the game.”
“Well, I am not playing to lose, Miguel.”
“Hey, neither am I. And I’m not playing alone.”
“I know. And we need you to step it up a little.”
“What?”
“You’re the only member of our team who hasn’t won a single medal.”
“Gee, Kyle, thanks for reminding me.”
“Have you guys seen Marjory Muldauer?” asked Akimi as she and Sierra joined the boys at the breakfast table. “I like to keep my eye on our competition at all times.”
“What about all these other kids?” said Sierra, gesturing to the tables filled with the country’s top young bibliophiles. “They’re our competition, too.”
Akimi blew that off with a wave of her hand.
“Come on, Sierra. Little Miss Library from Michigan has won every single one of the Midwest team’s medals for them. She’s our only real threat. Especially if Kyle keeps hogging the ball and missing his shots.”
Kyle sighed. “I’m really sorry about shouting out the wrong answer last night, Sierra.”
“Apology accepted,” said Sierra. “Next time, maybe you could, I don’t know, trust me?”
Kyle nodded. “Definitely.”
Akimi craned her neck and checked out all the other tables. “So where is Marjory?”
“She went to the library early,” said Andrew Peckleman, who was rolling a rubber barrel between tables to collect people’s breakfast trash. “She wanted to do some studying, so my uncle drove her over there.”
“What’s she studying?” asked Kyle.
“How to beat you,” whined Andrew.
“And how’s she going to do that, Andrew? What’d she find to study at the library when none of us even know what the tenth game is going to be?”
“I don’t know. Do I look like a mind reader?”
“No, Andrew, I’d say you look like a garbage man.”
“Kyle?” said Sierra, shaking her head. “That wasn’t nice.”
“In fact,” said Akimi, “it was downright nasty.”
“Yeah,” said Miguel, with his arms crossed over his chest. “What is with you today?”
“Sorry, Andrew,” said Kyle. “I’m just a little on edge.”
“Well, you should be,” said Andrew, adjusting his goggle glasses. “Because Marjory Muldauer
is going to kick your butt, and I can’t wait to watch her kicking it. Now, if you will excuse me, I have more garbage to collect.”
Andrew pushed his barrel away.
Akimi glared at Kyle. Sierra stirred her cereal. Miguel shook his head.
“Andrew’s a decent guy, Kyle,” said Miguel, sounding disappointed. “He didn’t deserve that.”
“I know. I’m sorry. We just really, really need to win today’s game—whatever it is.”
The library was extra packed with spectators for the fifth day of the Olympic games.
Television cameras were everywhere.
Word must’ve spread that unless one of the other medaled teams miraculously swept the final three competitions, the championship was down to two true contenders.
“Welcome back, everybody!” said Mr. Lemoncello, addressing the contestants and the crowd from the second-floor balcony, where he was seated in a canvas director’s chair. He was wearing a floppy beret and an ascot like movie directors sometimes do—in cartoons. “I hope you’re all having fun!”
“Fun?” shouted Mrs. Chiltington, who was back, once again, with her pack of protestors. “Libraries should be about books, Mr. Lemoncello. Not fun!”
Even from a distance, Kyle could see some kind of dark cloud shadow his hero’s eyes.
“Good to see you again, too, Archduchess Von Chiltington. And may I say, for the record, as well as the CD, I agree with thee.”
“Ha! Prove it.”
“My pleasure.” He turned to address the assembled Library Olympians. “Today, for game number ten of the duodecimalthon, we’ll do a little role-playing. You Olympians will play librarians, and I will play the patron who has come here seeking a very particular, very special book.”
He shot Mrs. Chiltington a toothy smile, then pivoted back to the players.
“But I can’t remember the title or the author or whether this book…”
Another smile for Mrs. Chiltington, who wasn’t smiling back.
“…is fiction or nonfiction. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find this one needle in our haystack of five million different titles.”
Mr. Lemoncello whipped off the beret and tugged on an Ohio State Buckeyes baseball cap.