“I will now play the patron. Before I do, however, I’d like to express my sincere gratitude to my brilliant acting coach, the renowned thespian Sir Donald Thorne, for his assistance in helping me craft my portrayal of this role.”
Mr. Lemoncello cleared this throat and started speaking with a flat and friendly Ohio accent.
“Excuse me, Ms. and/or Mr. Librarian, can you help me find a book? All I remember is that it’s kind of white and brownish on the front. It might be about the opposite of wildlife mixed up with a James Joyce novel, but Joyce didn’t write it, although I think a woman did. I also remember something about a fruit no one has ever heard of before the year 2014. It’s about yea thick. The book. Not the fruit. Can you please find it for me? Right away?”
Mr. Lemoncello whipped off the baseball cap and put the director’s beret back on.
“The first team to locate the book and bring it to me wins our tenth medal, the Thank You medal. You will also, of course, win your patron’s eternal gratitude. Okay, maybe not eternal, but he’ll probably say ‘thanks’ when you hand him the book. Maybe. They do that, sometimes.”
The thirty-two players stood frozen, staring up at Mr. Lemoncello.
Mr. Lemoncello didn’t say anything else.
“Is that it?” asked Stephanie Youngerman from Boise, Idaho.
“Yes,” said Dr. Zinchenko, stepping up to the railing on the second floor beside Mr. Lemoncello.
Then she was silent, too.
“Okay, you guys,” Kyle whispered to his teammates. “Let’s get busy.”
“What should we do first?” asked Sierra.
“Weep,” said Akimi. “That’s the lamest clue I’ve ever heard.”
“Nuh-uh,” said Miguel. “I have a few ideas.”
Kyle and his teammates headed to a desk in the outer ring so they could converse privately.
Marjory Muldauer led her team to a desk on the opposite side of the circle. Pretty soon, all the teams were grabbing desks and firing up the tablet computers built into the furniture so they could explore the library’s online card catalog.
“So what fruit was first discovered in 2014?” asked Akimi, zeroing in on that part of the clue. “Craisins?”
“Hold up,” said Miguel. “You’re being too literal.”
“Miguel’s right,” said Kyle. “Mr. Lemoncello is way too wacky to mean exactly what he said.”
“So what are we looking for?” asked Sierra. “A new apple? A new banana? A new strawberry?”
“Bingo!” said Miguel. “That’s it!” He started tapping the built-in tablet computer’s screen.
Sierra was stunned. “Really? What’d I say?”
“ ‘New strawberry,’ ” said Akimi. “Which, I’m sorry, but I don’t really think is a ‘bingo’ kind of answer.”
“Because,” said Miguel, as quietly as he could, “we don’t need a new strawberry. We need a different kind of ‘new berry.’ ”
“Which one?” said Kyle. “Blueberry? Raspberry?”
Akimi snapped her fingers. “Huckleberry! Because this is a library and Huckleberry Finn is in here.”
“No, you guys.” Miguel found a stubby pencil and a slip of scrap paper. “The 2014 Newbery Medal winner. Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo.”
Akimi’s eyes lit up. “ ‘Flora,’ meaning ‘vegetation,’ is the opposite of ‘fauna,’ meaning ‘wildlife.’ ”
“And,” added Sierra, “James Joyce, the great Irish novelist, wrote a book called Ulysses.”
“And Kate DiCamillo sounds like a lady’s name that isn’t Joyce,” said Kyle.
“Triple bingo,” said Miguel, scrolling through the card catalog entry for the book. “Dang.”
“What?”
“All the copies in the Children’s Room are checked out.”
“Did they also put a copy on the fiction shelves?” asked Sierra.
“Yes! Just one. I guess so adults can check it out, too. That means the only copy in the whole building is right over there.”
Miguel head-bobbed toward the bookcases that wrapped around the back third of the Rotunda Reading Room and climbed all the way up to the base of the Wonder Dome.
“We’re gonna need a hover ladder,” said Kyle.
“And this code.” Miguel showed his teammates a slip of paper with “F.D545f 2013” written on it.
“Punch it into the hover ladder pad!” Akimi said to Miguel. “Go get our book.”
“No way,” said Miguel. “I’m scared of heights. You do it, Akimi.”
“No way. Go on, Kyle.”
Kyle shook his head. “You guys were right this morning. I don’t want to be a ‘ball hog’ again.”
“This ball you can hog. Go!”
“Hurry,” said Sierra. “I think some of the other teams just figured it out, too.”
Kyle dashed across the marble floor.
So did Stephanie Youngerman, the girl from Boise.
And Elliott Schilpp, the skinny genius from Maryland who had won the pizza-eating contest.
Uh-oh, thought Kyle. The Mid-Atlantic team already has one medal. If they win this game, they actually have a shot at being crowned champions.
Kyle ran faster. Fortunately, there were eight hover ladders, one for each team, lined up under the three-story-tall bookcases.
“Only one ladder per team,” announced Dr. Zinchenko.
The instant she did, each of the other teams sent someone scurrying over to float up the fiction wall. Even if they didn’t know what book they were looking for, they knew it wasn’t in any of the Dewey decimal rooms now that the hover ladders had more or less been declared game pieces.
Kyle reached for a hover ladder.
But Marjory Muldauer grabbed its handles first.
“Sorry, Keeley. This ride is taken.”
So were the next three down in either direction. Thanks to Marjory Muldauer, Kyle would have to dash to the very end of the line.
He ran past Stephanie Youngerman, who was furiously tapping in the winning code on her hover ladder’s control pad.
Elliott Schilpp was jabbing in a number, too.
Stephanie Youngerman lifted off first.
By the time Kyle reached his hover ladder and typed in the book code and waited for the safety boots to clamp shut around his shins, three other teams were already floating up the wall: Mountain, Mid-Atlantic, and, of course, Marjory Muldauer for Midwest.
Kyle’s platform finally drifted up from the floor and set off on a diagonal tangent for the 2014 Newbery Medal winner—and a very possible midair collision with the three other players, who were all aiming for the same target.
To his left, Kyle heard keys clacking.
Marjory Muldauer was typing a different code into her pad.
Her hover ladder stuttered to a stop, then shot sideways at a forty-five-degree angle. Kyle stayed on his direct trajectory to Flora and Ulysses, but within seconds, his hover ladder’s infrared collision sensors picked up the approach of Marjory’s platform.
“Yield to traffic,” cooed a computerized voice from the tiny speaker in Kyle’s control panel.
Marjory thumbed her red emergency stop button.
Her hover ladder froze, right where it would block Kyle’s ascent.
“Yield to traffic.” His hover ladder’s safety features had put him in a lockdown mode.
Marjory pretended to be studying the books in front of her.
“That’s not where the book we’re looking for is and you know it!” Kyle shouted at her.
Marjory didn’t say a word. In fact, she looked a little airsick.
Kyle twisted his body so he could see around Marjory’s stalled ladder and watch the final seconds of the race to F.D545f 2013.
Stephanie Youngerman’s hover ladder screeched to a halt and she shot out her arm to grab the book.
Then she started sliding books around on the shelf. Shoving them sideways. Looking behind them.
“I’m here!” she shouted. “But the book isn
’t.”
The crowd of spectators gasped.
Mr. Lemoncello surprised all the floaters by swinging open a window-sized door cut into the bookcases. He poked his head out maybe three feet away from where Flora and Ulysses was supposed to be shelved. “I beg your pardon?”
“Flora and Ulysses,” said Stephanie Youngerman. “The 2014 Newbery winner. It’s not here. Kate DiCamillo’s other books are. Because of Winn-Dixie. The Tale of Despereaux. But there’s only an empty gap where Flora and Ulysses is supposed to be.”
“But this is impossible,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “Dr. Zinchenko? Don’t we have two dozen copies of that book?”
“Three, sir,” said Dr. Zinchenko after popping open another window in the bookcase. “They are all checked out. That was our last copy.”
“This is preposterous!” declared Mrs. Chiltington, striding forward to the front of the viewer gallery on the first floor. Her son Charles and a group of well-dressed ladies and one gentleman in a bow tie pushed their way forward with her.
“Missing books? Silly dinosaur video games? Money wasted on talking statues and holograms and secret panels in bookcases that could’ve been more wisely spent on extra copies of popular children’s books?”
Mrs. Chiltington propped her hands on her hips and scowled up at Mr. Lemoncello.
“This library is a disgrace, sir. An absolute disgrace!”
“Perhaps you are right, Contessa Chiltington,” said Mr. Lemoncello, sounding extremely sad—something Kyle had never heard him sound before. “A library without books? That is, indeed, a disgrace. An absolute disgrace.”
Kyle watched Mr. Lemoncello halfheartedly award the Thank You medal to the Mountain team.
But his mind drifted back to the hover ladder race.
Marjory Muldauer had blocked him on purpose. She wasn’t even trying to go for the book.
Why’d she do that? he wondered. Why’d she want the Mountain team to win this round?
“Hip, hip, hooray,” said Mr. Lemoncello as he limply shook the winner’s hand. “You won the tenth medal. Yippee, huzzah, and various other exclamations of glee. You were the first to reach the empty slot where the winning book should’ve been, which makes me want to sing, ‘Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? An empty hole where a book ought to be.’ ”
Mr. Lemoncello turned to face the crowd.
“Thank you, Library Olympians and library lovers, for joining us here today. Come back tomorrow for the final two games of the first Library Olympics. Now go away! All of you! Go!”
The crowd was stunned into silence.
The control room crew quickly pumped show tunes through all the speakers under the dome to cover the awkward silence. The ten holographic statues ringing the rotunda turned into the Trapp Family Singers and Uncle Max from The Sound of Music. They waved cheerfully and sang, “So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye!”
“That concludes today’s competition,” said the soothing lady’s voice in the ceiling. “The score, after ten of the twelve games of the first Library Olympiad’s duodecimalthon: Pacific, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Mountain teams—one medal. The Midwest team and the Hometown Heroes—three medals.”
“So,” said John Sazaklis, the anchor for the Book Network’s live coverage of the games, “it seems we’re looking at a battle of the bookworms between the two top teams. They’re all tied up, three to three. And there are only two games left.”
“That’s right,” said his sidekick, renowned librarian Helen Burnham. “Of course, one of the four teams with a single medal could dazzle us all and sweep the final two competitions. It’s still possible that this thing could end in a three-way tie.”
“Exciting.”
“You betcha, John. There’s only one thing we know for certain. The South will not rise again. Both the Southeast and the Southwest teams have remained medal-less in these games. I’m afraid those kids have no chance at being declared Mr. Lemoncello’s library champions.”
“Too bad. I really like their cowboy hats and NASCAR tracksuits.”
A half hour later, the library was empty except for Team Kyle, Mr. Lemoncello, Dr. Zinchenko, and the engineers locked behind the red door in the library’s control room.
Kyle and his friends wanted to be there for Mr. Lemoncello in what looked like his hour of despair.
“I’m sure whoever checked out Flora and Ulysses is enjoying it immensely,” said Sierra Russell. “I know I did.”
“Thank you, Sierra,” said Mr. Lemoncello, who was breaking his own library rules, spooning a half gallon of ice cream straight out of its carton while he sat slumped in one of the comfortable reading chairs at the base of the fiction wall. He wore a bib to stop the ice cream from dribbling on his clothes.
“You’re really only supposed to eat food in the Book Nook Café, sir,” said Miguel.
Mr. Lemoncello ignored Miguel and shoveled up another gob of birthday-cake ice cream.
Meanwhile, Dr. Zinchenko had commandeered a hover ladder and sailed up to the spot where the missing book should’ve been shelved.
“The book was here last week,” said Dr. Zinchenko, examining the gap between Kate DiCamillo titles. “I know it was. I made certain of it, right before we locked down the library to the public. Since then, the only ones allowed near the books have been our thirty-two young Olympians….”
“Fascinating,” said Mr. Lemoncello, not sounding fascinated at all. He shoveled more confetti-sprinkled ice cream into his mouth.
Dr. Zinchenko started her slow descent. “I must talk to security about this.”
“Don’t bother, Dr. Zinchenko,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “This is a library. Books check in but they don’t check out. No, wait. That’s a Roach Motel. I forget what happens at a library. Maybe Mrs. Chiltington is correct. Maybe we should find some more mature adults to run this place. We really had three dozen copies of that same title and now they’re all gone?”
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Lemoncello heaved a heavy sigh.
“This is horrible,” shrieked the holographic librarian Mrs. Gause, as once again she flickered to frazzled life behind the circulation desk. “This is what happened last time! First, books started disappearing. History books. One title in particular. All ten copies. Nobody cared. The whole town turned its back on its library. Very important people convinced the mayor to cut our funding. Before long, you couldn’t even find a bookmark or an empty jar of library paste. Then BOOM! Here come the bulldozers and the wrecking ball! So long, library; hello, parking lot. Oh, the horror. The horror.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Gause,” said Mr. Lemoncello, gobbling down his ice cream even faster. “Good to hear from you again. Control room?”
Mr. Lemoncello flicked his wrist.
The hologram vanished.
Kyle approached his hero.
“Do you need anything, Mr. Lemoncello? Anything at all.”
Mr. Lemoncello looked up from his tub of ice cream. The twinkle was gone from his coal-black eyes.
“Just what I’ve been looking for all along, Kyle. My true champions.”
“Don’t worry, sir. We won’t let you down. We’ll win both of the last two medals. I promise.”
Mr. Lemoncello looked at Kyle, shook his head, and sighed again.
The Hometown Heroes’ bookmobile ride from Olympia Village to the Lemoncello Library the following morning was as dreary as the weather.
Kyle and his teammates stared out the rain-streaked windows and watched familiar streets roll by.
“How weird will it be,” said Akimi, “if the next time we head downtown to the library, we’re not famous anymore? What if we’re just a bunch of losers?”
“Thanks for that inspirational thought, Akimi,” said Miguel. “You should really consider a career as a motivational speaker.”
“What if something worse happens?” said Sierra. “What if all that stuff Mrs. Gause mentioned happens again? What if Mr. Lemoncello decides to close his library?”
“Why would he do that?” asked Kyle.
“Because he’s tired of people taking out books and not bringing them back. He looked so sad yesterday.”
“Yo,” said Miguel. “He’s a bazillionaire. He can always buy more books.”
“You guys?” said Kyle. “Dr. Zinchenko said the Flora and Ulysses book was in its spot on the fiction shelf a week ago. And no one has been able to check books out since then except—”
“The thirty-two Library Olympians!” said Akimi, finishing Kyle’s sentence, the way friends sometimes do.
“Yo!” said Miguel. “That means somebody on one of the other teams took the book out of the library. One of the kids Mr. Lemoncello spent so much time and energy searching for.”
“No wonder he was so upset about a single missing book,” said Sierra.
“Yep,” said Kyle. “One of his specially selected library nerds stole that book.” He turned to Miguel. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
—
When the team trooped up the slick marble steps into the library’s lobby, they saw Charles Chiltington, his mother, a bunch of stuffy-looking ladies, and that one guy in a bow tie. This time, they were ringed around the Mr. Lemoncello fountain, which wasn’t gurgling water like it was supposed to.
Each member of Mrs. Chiltington’s crew was carrying a one-word protest sign. Together, they read “IS THIS ANY LIBRARY? WAY TO RUN A.” Bow-tie man, who was holding the “LIBRARY?” placard, was standing in the wrong spot.
Kyle and his teammates lingered in the archway just long enough to hear what Mrs. Chiltington and Charles were saying to the Book Network reporter interviewing them.
“If this library is to be a true public institution,” said Charles’s mother, “then it requires public oversight. It should be governed by a board of community trustees, not by a one-man band.”
“Especially,” said Charles, “when the batty bandleader is a disingenuous and mendacious charlatan.”
“Are you suggesting that Mr. Lemoncello is both a liar and a fraud?” asked the reporter.
“Heavens no,” said Charles. “Don’t be preposterous.”