Haley Daley, wearing a sparkly blouse, was posing for a wall of photographers who wanted to snap her picture. Her mother was at the party, too. While the cameras were focused on Haley’s smile, Mrs. Daley wrapped up a couple of chicken kebabs in a napkin and slipped them inside her purse.
Now Kyle saw Charles Chiltington. Poor guy must not have read the memo about comfortable clothes. He was still wearing his khakis and blazer, just like his dad. Kyle figured the Chiltington family must own like three hundred pairs of pleated tan pants.
“Hey, Kyle!” Akimi waved at him from near a fake shrub curled to look like a Silly Straw.
“Hey,” said Kyle.
“Did you remember to bring your library card?”
“Yep.” Kyle pulled it out of his pocket.
“Huh,” said Akimi. “I got different books on the back of mine. One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss and Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger.”
“Guess they’re like baseball cards,” said Kyle. “They’re all different.”
“Hey, you guys!” Miguel Fernandez, more excited than usual (which was saying something), pushed through the mob to join them. “Did you try these puffy cheesy things?”
“Nah,” said Kyle. “I’m sticking to food I recognize.”
“The ‘puffy cheesy things’ are called fromage tartlets,” said Andrew Peckleman, coming over to join the group.
“Huh,” said Kyle. “Good to know.”
A waiter passed by with a tray loaded down with small boxes of Mr. Lemoncello’s Anagraham Cracker cookies.
“Oh, I love these,” said Kyle, taking a box off the platter and opening it. “The cookies are in the shapes of letters. You have to see how many words you can spell.”
“Cool,” said Miguel, snagging a fistful of cookies out of Kyle’s box. “Taste good, too!”
“Yep,” said Kyle. “But the more you eat, the harder the game gets.”
“Why?” asked Andrew Peckleman.
“Less letters,” said Akimi, snatching two “B’s” and a “Q” and wolfing them down. “Mmm. Barbecue-flavored.”
Kyle spread out the remaining cookies in his palm: U N F E H A V. He grinned as he deciphered an easy anagram. “HAVE FUN. Sweet.”
“Ladies and gentlemen? Boys and girls?” Dr. Zinchenko, dressed in a bright red suit, strode to the center of the ballroom. “May I have your attention, please? Mr. Lemoncello will be arriving shortly to say a few brief words. After that, I will escort the twelve essay contest winners across the street to the library. Therefore, children, might I suggest that you eat up? Food and drink are not permitted anywhere in the library except in the Book Nook Café, conveniently located on the first floor.”
Miguel grabbed a few more puffy cheesy things.
When she thought no one was looking, Mrs. Daley shoved a napkined bundle of bacon-wrapped shrimp into her purse.
Akimi nibbled a couple of chocolate-dipped pretzel sticks.
“Aren’t you gonna grab some more grub?” she said to Kyle.
“No thanks. I only like food I can play with.”
“One last thing,” announced Dr. Zinchenko. “We, of course, want our winners to have fun tonight. However, I must insist that each of you respect my number one rule: Be gentle. With each other and, most especially, the library’s books and exhibits. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes!” shouted all the winners except Charles Chiltington. He said, “Indubitably.”
“Good thing the library has dictionaries,” muttered Akimi. “Half the time, it’s the only way to figure out what Chiltington’s saying.”
Suddenly, all the adults in the ballroom started clapping. Mr. Lemoncello, looking like a beanpole wearing a tailcoat and a tiny birthday-party fireman’s hat, strode into the room through a side door.
“Thank you, thank you,” he said, stretching the elastic band to raise his kid-sized hat and tipping it toward the crowd. “You are too kind.”
When he let go of the hat, it snapped back with a sharp THWACK!
“As Dr. Zinchenko informed you, I’d like to say a few brief words. Here they are: ‘short,’ ‘memorandum,’ and ‘underpants.’ And let us pause to remember the immortal words of Dr. Seuss: ‘The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.’ Children? …”
Mr. Lemoncello flourished his arm toward the ballroom doors.
“It’s time to go across the street. Your amazingly spectacular new public library awaits!”
Eager to see what was inside the new library, the twelve essay contest winners quickly gathered behind Dr. Zinchenko.
“This way, children,” said the head librarian. “Follow me.”
The crowd cheered as they marched out of the ballroom, all toting their sleeping bags and suitcases. There was more cheering (plus some hooting and hollering) when they reached the hotel lobby and went out the revolving doors into the street.
The new public library, with its glistening gold dome, took up half a downtown block, its back butting up against an old-fashioned office tower. The building was a boxy fortress, three stories tall, with stately columns that acted like bookends, because the windowless walls had been painted to resemble a row of giant books lined up on a shelf.
“It’s like a majestic Greek temple,” gushed Miguel.
“And the world’s biggest bookcase,” added Sierra Russell, who had finally put away her paperback.
Velvet ropes lined a path across Main Street that led to a red carpet leading up a flight of steps to the arched entryway and seriously steel (not to mention round) front door.
Kyle had to smile when he saw what was tethered to the railings on either side of the steps: balloons!
A big bruiser—maybe six four, 250 pounds—in sunglasses and a black sports coat stood in front of the library’s circular door, which had several large valve wheels like you’d see on a submarine hatch. The burly guard wore his hair in long, ropy dreadlocks.
“What’s with that door?” asked Haley Daley, who, of course, had pushed her way to the front. “It looks like it came from a bank vault or something.”
“It is the door from the old Gold Leaf Bank’s walk-in vault,” said Dr. Zinchenko. “It weighs twenty tons.”
Akimi turned around and whispered, “My dad designed the support structure for that thing. Check out the hinges.”
Kyle nodded. He was impressed.
“Why a vault door?” asked Kayla Corson.
“Because,” said Dr. Zinchenko, “one sleepy Saturday, when Mr. Lemoncello was your age, he was working in the old public library over on Market Street. He was so lost in his thoughts, he did not hear the sirens as police cars raced past the library to the bank, where a burglar alarm had just been activated. This door serves as a reminder to us all: Our thoughts are safe when they are inside a library. Not even a bank robbery can disturb them.”
Miguel was nodding like crazy. He could relate.
“It also helps us keep our most valuable treasures secure.”
“There aren’t any windows,” observed Andrew Peckleman. “Probably to stop bank robbers from busting in. But shouldn’t you people have added windows when you turned it into a library?”
“A library doesn’t need windows, Andrew. We have books, which are windows into worlds we never even dreamed possible.”
“An open book is an open mind,” added Charles Chiltington. “That’s what I always say.”
Dr. Zinchenko pulled out a bright red note card. “Before we enter, please listen very carefully. ‘Your library cards are the keys to everything you will need,’ ” she read. “ ‘The library staff is here to help you find whatever it is you are looking for.’ ”
She smiled slightly, tucked the card back into her pocket, turned to the security guard, and said, “Clarence? Will you do the honors?”
“With pleasure, Dr. Z.”
Clarence turned one giant wheel, spun another, and cranked a third.
Noiselessly, t
he twenty-ton door swung open.
The first thing Kyle could see inside was a trickling fountain in a grand foyer of brilliant white marble. The fountain featured a life-size statue of Mr. Lemoncello standing on a lily pad in the middle of a shallow reflecting pool ten feet wide. His head was tilted back so water could spurt up from his mouth in an arc.
Kyle noticed a quote chiseled into the statue’s pedestal: KNOWLEDGE NOT SHARED REMAINS UNKNOWN. —LUIGI L. LEMONCELLO
Beyond the fountain, through an arched walkway, was a huge room filled with desks.
When everybody had shuffled into the entrance hall, Dr. Zinchenko turned to the security guard.
“Clarence?”
Clarence hauled the heavy steel door shut. Kyle heard the whir of spinning wheels, the clink of grinding gears, and a reverberating clunk.
“Wow!” said Miguel. “Talk about a lock-in!”
“I’ll be in the control center, Dr. Z,” said the security guard.
“Very well, Clarence.”
Clarence disappeared behind a red door.
“Now then, children,” said the librarian, “if you will all follow me into the Rotunda Reading Room.”
As the rest of the group started filing into the gigantic circular room, Kyle checked out a display case beside the red door. A sign over it read “Staff Picks: Our Most Memorable Reads.” A dozen books were lined up on four shelves.
One cover in the middle of the bottom row caught Kyle’s eye. It showed a football player wearing a number nineteen jersey dropping back to hurl a pass. Kyle made a mental note of the title: In the Pocket: Johnny Unitas and Me. Tomorrow morning, when the lock-in was over, he might use his library card to check it out for his big brother, Mike.
“Wow!”
Everybody gasped as they stepped into the Rotunda Reading Room and looked up. The entire underside of the dome looked like space as seen from the Hubble telescope: A dusty spiral nebula billowed up, a galaxy of stars twinkled, and meteorites whizzed across the ceiling.
“Ooh!”
The space imagery on the ceiling dissolved into ten distinct panels, each one becoming a display of swirling graphics.
“Those are the ten categories of the Dewey decimal system,” whispered Miguel, sounding awestruck. “See the panel with Cleopatra, the guy mountain climbing, and the Viking ship sailing across it? That’s for 900 to 999. History and Geography.”
“Cool,” said Kyle.
Tucked beneath the ten screens in arched niches were incredible 3-D statues glowing a ghostly green.
“I believe those are holographic projections,” said Andrew Peckleman, waving up at a statue that was waving down at him.
The room under the dome was huge. It was circular, with a round desk at the center that was surrounded by four rings of reading desks.
Kyle saw that half of the rotunda was filled with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The other half had balconies on the second and third floors that reminded him of the open atrium of a hotel he and his family had stayed at once.
While everybody was gawking at the architecture, Dr. Zinchenko said the words Kyle had been waiting to hear all day:
“Now then, who’s ready for our first game?”
“Will everybody please line up behind that far desk in front of the Children’s Room?” said Dr. Zinchenko, gesturing toward one of the wooden tables in the outermost ring of the room.
“How many of you are familiar with Mr. Lemoncello’s classic board game Hurry to the Top of the Heap?”
Twelve hands shot up.
“Very good,” said Dr. Zinchenko.
Overhead, the Wonder Dome dissolved into a gigantic, curved Heap box top.
“This will be a live, three-dimensional version of that game. Each of you will be asked a trivia question. If you are able to answer it correctly, you will roll the dice and advance the equivalent number of desks. When you return to the starting point, you will move into the next concentric circle of desks. When you complete that ring, you will move into the next, and so on. If one of you makes it all the way to my desk at the center, you will be declared the winner.”
“But we don’t have any dice,” said Yasmeen Smith-Snyder.
“Yes you do. See that smoky glass panel in the center of the desk? It is actually a touch-screen computer, currently running Mr. Lemoncello’s dice-rolling app. Simply swipe and flick your fingers across the glass to toss and tumble the animated dice.”
Dr. Zinchenko placed a stack of red cards on her desk. She looked like the host of a TV game show. “Before we begin, are there any other questions?”
Charles Chiltington raised his hand.
“Yes, Mr. Chiltington?”
“What will the winner win? After all, the prize is the most important part of any game.”
Kyle didn’t totally agree, but he was too excited about playing the game to say anything.
“Tonight’s first prize,” said Dr. Zinchenko, “is this golden key granting the winner access to Mr. Lemoncello’s private and very posh bedroom suite up on the library’s third floor. Instead of spending the night on the floor in a sleeping bag, you will be relaxing in luxury with a feather bed, a seventy-two-inch television screen and a state-of-the-art gaming console.”
Okay. Kyle was definitely interested in this particular prize.
Judging from the wide-open eyes and chorus of “oohs” and “wows” all around him, so was everybody else.
Dr. Zinchenko flipped over the first question card.
“What major-league pitcher was the last to win at least thirty games in one season?”
Six players got it wrong before Kyle got it right.
“Denny McLain.”
“Correct.”
He swiped the glass panel, rolled a ten, and advanced ten desks around the room.
“What United States Navy ship was once captured by the North Koreans?”
Miguel nailed that one: “The USS Pueblo.” He flew twelve spaces around the room.
“What did Apollo 8 accomplish that had never been done before?”
Akimi, Andrew Peckleman, and Kayla Corson struck out on that one.
But Charles Chiltington knew the answer: “It was the first spacecraft to orbit the moon.”
“Correct.”
Chiltington rolled a five, landing him in last place.
Kyle’s next question was tougher:
“Who was famous for saying, ‘Book ’em, Danno’?”
“Um, that guy on Hawaii Five-0?”
“Please be more specific.”
“Uh, the one with the shiny hair. Jack Lord?”
“That is correct.”
Kyle breathed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness he and his dad sometimes watched reruns of old TV shows from the 1960s.
But when he flicked the computerized dice, his luck hit a brick wall. He rolled snake eyes and moved up two measly desks.
Meanwhile, Miguel went down with a question about Barbra Streisand. (Kyle wasn’t exactly sure who she was.)
And Charles Chiltington surged ahead with a correct answer about the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and a double-sixes roll.
As the game went on, Kyle and Chiltington, the only players still standing, kept answering correctly and moving around the room, until they were both seated at a desk in the innermost ring—only six spaces away from Dr. Zinchenko’s desk and victory. Kyle was seriously glad he and his mom had played so many games of Trivial Pursuit—with the original, extremely old cards.
“Kyle, here is your next question: What song in the movie Doctor Dolittle won an Academy Award?”
Kyle squinted. He had that movie. An old VHS cassette tape that his mom had bought at a garage sale. Too bad they didn’t have a VCR to watch it on. But even though he’d never seen the movie, he had read the front and back of the box a couple of times.
“Um, ‘Talk to the Animals’?”
“Correct.”
He started breathing again.
“Roll the dice, please, Mr. Keeley.”
>
Kyle did.
Another pair of ones. He moved up two spaces. Now he was only four desks away from winning.
“Mr. Chiltington, here is your next question: Who was elected president in 1968?”
“I believe that was Richard Milhous Nixon.”
“You are also correct.”
Chiltington didn’t wait for the librarian to tell him to roll the dice. He flicked his fingers across the glass pad.
“Yes! Double sixes. Again.” He moved around the last ring of desks, tapping their tops, counting them off even though everybody knew his twelve was more than good enough to carry him to the finish line.
“Congratulations, Mr. Chiltington,” Dr. Zinchenko said as she handed him the key to the private suite. “You are this evening’s first winner.”
“Thank you, Dr. Zinchenko. I am truly and sincerely honored.”
“Congratulations, Charles,” said Kyle. “Way to win.”
“Get used to it, Keeley,” he answered in a voice only the other kids could hear. “I’m a Chiltington. We never lose.”
What happened next was extremely cool.
A holographic image of a second librarian appeared beside Dr. Zinchenko at the center desk. She looked a little like Princess Leia being beamed out of R2-D2 in Star Wars. Except she had an old-fashioned bubble-top hairdo, cat’s-eye glasses, and a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows.
“Here to present our official library lock-in rules,” said Dr. Zinchenko, “is Mrs. Gail Tobin, head librarian of the Alexandriaville Public Library back in the 1960s, when Mr. Lemoncello was your age.”
Overhead, the Wonder Dome had shifted back to its ten Dewey decimal displays.
“How old is she?” asked Sean Keegan.
“She’d be a hundred and ten if she were still alive.”
“But she’s dead and working here?”
“Let’s just say her spirit lives on in this hologram.”
“Mrs. Tobin’s the one who helped Mr. Lemoncello so much,” Kyle whispered to Akimi. “When he was a kid.”
“I know. Her hair looks like a beehive.”
Kyle shrugged. “From what I’ve seen on TV, the 1960s were generally weird.”