Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library Page 10

  Kyle swallowed hard. Then he nodded.

  “All right, you Maniac Magees, here is your picture puzzle. The category is Famous Quotes. You have sixty seconds to solve this rebus.”

  “Wait a second,” said Akimi. “What’s a rebus?”

  “You figure out the words in a phrase by looking at pictures and symbols,” said Kyle.

  “For instance,” added Miguel, “the letters ‘R’ and ‘E’ plus a picture of a school bus would equal ‘rebus.’ ”

  “Oh. Okay,” said Akimi. “If you guys say so.”

  “Are you ready to play?” asked Mr. Lemoncello.

  Kyle looked at his teammates, who nodded.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then on your mark … get set … go, dog, go!”

  Mr. Lemoncello’s image disappeared. Ticktock clock music started playing. The video screens all projected the same picture:

  “We’re officially dead,” said Akimi.

  “Fifty-five seconds,” said Mr. Lemoncello.

  “Okay, we break it up four ways,” said Kyle. “The first and third rows are similar, I’ll do them.”

  “I’ll do the last one,” said Akimi.

  “I’ll take the second row,” said Miguel.

  “I’m four,” said Sierra.

  “Fifty seconds,” said Mr. Lemoncello.

  Everyone went to work.

  “Mine is some guy hitting himself in the thumb but with a ‘gr’ and an ‘o’?” muttered Akimi. “Then the male symbol where the ‘le’ equals ‘rx’? ‘Marx’? Does that make sense? Hello? Kyle? Is my second half ‘Marx’?”

  Kyle didn’t answer. He was too busy deciphering his own clue lines. “ ‘Outlet,’ change the ‘let’ to ‘side,’ ” he mumbled. “ ‘Golf’ minus the ‘g’ and the ‘l.’ The letter ‘A.’ ”

  “Forty seconds.”

  “ ‘Dog.’ ” He dropped to the third line. He just needed the first word. “ ‘Bowling pins’ without the ‘p’ but add an ‘ide.’ ”

  “Thirty seconds.”

  Kyle glanced at Miguel. He was moving his lips, mouthing out his part of the quote. Sierra, too.

  “You guys ready?” Kyle whispered.

  “Hang on,” said Miguel.

  “Twenty seconds.”

  “Okay. Go.”

  Kyle read the first line: “ ‘Outside of a dog …’ ”

  Miguel picked up the thread: “ ‘… a book is man’s best friend.’ ”

  Kyle continued. “ ‘Inside of a dog …’ ”

  Sierra took over. “ ‘… it’s too dark to read.’ ”

  Akimi brought them home: “ ‘Groucho Marx!’ ”

  “Is that your final answer?” asked Mr. Lemoncello.

  “Yes,” said Kyle, and then he repeated the entire quote:

  “ ‘Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.’—Groucho Marx.”

  Bells rang. Chaser lights flashed. The audience went wild. Akimi and Sierra actually squealed and hugged each other.

  “You are correct!” shouted Mr. Lemoncello. “There’s no dead end in Norvelt, not today! Take those five library cards, Team Kyle! You won them fair and square!”

  Charles and Andrew heard a commotion on the third floor. Bells ringing. An audience whooping it up. Girls squealing.

  “Come on,” said Charles.

  They raced up the stairs and peeked into the Electronic Learning Center. Kyle Keeley and his teammates were all hugging each other and slapping high fives. On every video screen in the game room, Charles could see a pictogram puzzle.

  “What’s going on in there?” whispered Andrew.

  “They might be gaining on us,” Charles whispered back. “We need to pick up our pace. Quick—where would I find a book called Hoosier Hospitality written by Eve Healy Aresty?”

  “The nine hundreds room.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Charles and Andrew scurried back to the second floor and the 900s room.

  Where they found Haley Daley holding Hoosier Hospitality by Eve Healy Aresty.

  “Oh, hello, you guys,” she said, slamming the book shut.

  Charles moved toward her. Slowly.

  “Find anything interesting in that book, Haley?”

  “Not really.” She giggled. “Just a bunch of dumb junk about Indiana.”

  Charles knew she was hiding something.

  “I wonder, Haley, if you and I might share a quiet word?” He turned to Andrew. “In private.”

  “Does that mean I’m supposed to leave?”

  “Yes, Andrew. It’s for the good of the team. Trust me.”

  “Okay. But I’ll be right outside that door if you decide to double-cross me or something.”

  “Thank you, Andrew. This will only take a quick minute.”

  Peckleman left the room.

  Smiling, Charles moved even closer to Haley. So close he could smell her bubble gum. Or shampoo. Maybe both.

  “Let’s step over here,” he said, taking Haley by the elbow. “I found another fascinating book that I think you’ll just love.” He guided her to a spot behind a bookcase where their conversation couldn’t be observed by the security camera blinking up in the ceiling.

  Haley went with Charles.

  If he had been looking for the same book she’d just found, that meant he was playing the library escape game along a similar path. Charles Chiltington might have clues Haley could use. Clues she needed.

  “Rumor has it,” Charles whispered, “that your parents wrote your library essay for you.”

  Inside, Haley was grinning. Obviously, Charles would try to bully her into joining his team. Fine. She’d pretend to be frightened.

  “What?” she whispered back, pretending to be terrified. “That’s a lie. My dad just helped me with some of the spelling.”

  “Aha! So you admit it. All the spelling in your essay wasn’t your own?”

  Okay. This was going to take more acting skill than usual. Having someone check your spelling wasn’t against anybody’s rules for anything.

  She widened her eyes. Made her lips quiver. “What do you want, Charles?”

  “For you to join my team.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Two reasons. One, if you’re on my side, your flagrant plagiarism remains our dirty little secret. Two, I know what to do with that silhouette card you just found in the Hoosier Hospitality book.”

  “You do?”

  “Oh, yes. If we share our clues, the pictures will create a phrase telling us how to find the alternate exit.”

  Haley smiled. For real. This was working out perfectly. She’d get all their clues, and even if they all won together, Mr. Lemoncello would definitely make her the real star of his TV commercials. She had “zazz.” Charles and Andrew did not.

  “Okay,” she said. “Deal. I’m on your team.”

  Then she handed Charles the clue she had found in the Hoosier book:

  “Of course!” said Charles. “After all, Indiana is the Hoosier State.”

  “Oh, man,” said Kyle, leading his team around the balcony, back to the Young Adult Room. “Nine library cards. This is fantastic!”

  They gathered around a table.

  “Okay, guys. Time for everybody to put their cards on the table. Literally.”

  The teammates set down their cards. Kyle spread out the five from the discard bowl. Akimi pulled out a pad and wrote all the information on one master list:

  BOOKS/AUTHORS ON THE BACKS OF LIBRARY CARDS

  #1 Miguel Fernandez

  Incident at Hawk’s Hill by Allan W. Eckert/

  No, David! by David Shannon

  #2 Akimi Hughes

  One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish

  by Dr. Seuss/Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger

  #3 UNKNOWN

  #4 Bridgette Wadge

  Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

  by Judy Blume/Harry Potter and the

  Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowlin
g

  #5 Sierra Russell

  The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder/

  The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

  #6 Yasmeen Smith-Snyder

  Around the World in Eighty Days

  by Jules Verne/The Yak Who Yelled Yuck

  by Carol Pugliano-Martin

  #7 Sean Keegan

  Olivia by Ian Falconer/Unreal! by Paul Jennings

  #8 UNKNOWN

  #9 Rose Vermette

  All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor/

  Scat by Carl Hiaasen

  #10 Kayla Corson

  Anna to the Infinite Power

  by Mildred Ames/Where the Sidewalk

  Ends by Shel Silverstein

  #11 UNKNOWN

  #12 Kyle Keeley

  I Love You, Stinky Face by Lisa McCourt/

  The Napping House by Audrey Wood

  “Wow,” said Sierra. “That’s a lot of good books. But what do all those authors and titles mean?”

  “It means we need Charles’s, Andrew’s, and Haley’s cards,” said Kyle.

  “Really?” said Akimi. “Because if you ask me, we already have way too much information.”

  “Well,” said Kyle, “maybe later we’ll find a clue that’ll tell us how to read this clue.”

  “And how are we going to do that?” asked Miguel.

  “Have you ever played this?” Kyle pointed to the Bibliomania box.

  “Nope. Always wanted to.”

  “We were just about to get up a game.”

  “Does this have anything to do with finding our way out of the library?”

  “We sure hope so,” said Akimi.

  “Awesome.”

  “By the way,” Kyle said to Miguel, “what’d you find in the Art and Artifacts Room?”

  “Yeah,” said Akimi. “All those papers you kept trying to hide from us.”

  Miguel grinned. “The original blueprints for the Gold Leaf Bank building.”

  “Clever,” said Kyle. “That way you could look for old exits that might still exist behind new walls.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Find any extra exits?” asked Akimi.

  “Nope. No hidden windows, either.”

  “Yeah, what’s up with that? How come they built this place with so few windows?”

  “To discourage bank robbers, I guess,” said Kyle.

  “Yep,” said Miguel. “The only way in was through the front door. The fire exits could only be opened from the inside, like at a movie theater. The vault itself was all the way down in the basement.”

  “Mr. Lemoncello kept all that security,” said Kyle, “and added his own.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Well, hopefully Bibliomania will lead us to some kind of alternate exit.”

  “And fast,” said Akimi. “Don’t forget, we’re not the only ones playing this game. One of those other guys is probably halfway out the door already.”

  “Okay,” said Kyle, “game play is pretty simple. You spin the spinner and advance your piece the number of spaces the needle points to. You move around the library and go into each of the ten Dewey decimal rooms, where you can pick up a book by answering a clue card. If you guess wrong, you get a new clue card in the same room on your next turn. The first person to fill the ten slots in their ‘bookshelf’ and spin their way out of the library wins.”

  “It’s sort of like Trivial Pursuit,” said Sierra. “And the questions aren’t all that hard because they’re mostly multiple-choice.”

  “Let’s hear one!” said Miguel eagerly.

  The cards were separated into ten multicolored mini-stacks, one for each room. Kyle grabbed a green card.

  “Okay, this is for the eight hundreds room. Literature. ‘Deathly ill and pursued by the Ringwraiths, Frodo Baggins was carried safely across the River Bruinen on the gleaming white elf-horse of Glorfindel named: A) Asphodel, B) Asfaloth, C) Almarian, D) Anglachel.’ ”

  Akimi shook her head like she was having a brain freeze. “Wha-huh?”

  “I think the answer might be ‘A,’ ” said Miguel.

  “They’re all ‘A’s,’ ” said Kyle. “Asphodel, Asfaloth, Al—”

  “It’s ‘B) Asfaloth,’ ” said Sierra. “It’s from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.”

  Kyle flipped the card over and read the answer. “ ‘You are correct. You get a copy of Lord of the Rings to put in your bookshelf.’ ”

  “So, Kyle,” said Akimi, “how exactly is knowing the name of an elf-horse going to help us get out of the library?”

  “Maybe it’s like a secret code,” suggested Miguel. “And the ten book titles will form a sentence telling us how to get out.”

  “Possibly,” said Kyle. “But I see one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s too random. Mr. Lemoncello would have no idea which ten cards we might pick.”

  “Well,” said Sierra, “maybe there are only ten questions. One for each room.”

  Akimi grabbed the card stacks, fanned them out. “Nope. They’re all different.”

  “Hang on,” said Kyle.

  He was remembering something about another game: Mr. Lemoncello’s Indoor-Outdoor Scavenger Hunt.

  How his mother had been able to write to the company and request a fresh set of cards.

  He turned to the video camera mounted in a corner. “I’d like my Librarian Consultation, please.”

  “What’s up, Kyle?” asked Miguel.

  “I’m playing a hunch.”

  The holographic Mrs. Tobin appeared behind the young adult librarian’s desk.

  “How may I help you, KYLE?”

  “My friends and I want to play Bibliomania but we were wondering: Is there a new set of cards?”

  “Yes, KYLE. There is.”

  And a fresh deck of cards popped up through a slot in the desk.

  “We’ll just play one bookshelf,” said Kyle.

  “Because we’re a team now, right, bro?” said Miguel.

  “Right. Plus, we don’t have all day.”

  “Well,” said Akimi, “technically we do. In fact, we have the rest of today and tomorrow till noon.”

  “We’ve got like nineteen hours left,” said Miguel.

  “But Charles and the others,” said Sierra. “They could beat us.”

  “Right,” said Kyle. “After all, he is a Chiltington. And according to Sir Charles, they never lose. Miguel, you’re the newest member of the team. You spin first.”

  Miguel rubbed his hands together. Limbered up his fingers. Practiced flicking his index finger off his thumb. Made sure he had a good snap and follow-through.

  “Would you hurry up and spin before my brain explodes?” pleaded Akimi.

  “No problem.” Miguel flicked the plastic pointer. It whirled around the cardboard square decorated with a sunburst of ten colorful triangles.

  “Boo-yah! The triple zeros. General Knowledge.”

  “Um, that’s not so great,” said Kyle.

  “How come?”

  “You get to move zero spaces.”

  “Oh. Bummer.”

  Akimi shot up her hand.

  “Yes?” said Kyle.

  “Do we really have to spin and count spaces and all that junk? We have a deadline. Clocks everywhere are ticking against us.”

  “Maybe we can just pull a pink card,” suggested Sierra.

  “It’s really not how you play the game,” said Kyle.

  “Um, we’re not really playing this game, Kyle,” said Akimi. “We’re playing the other one. The Big Game. The one with the ginormous prize.”

  “I have to agree with Akimi,” said Miguel.

  “Fine,” said Kyle. “It’s against the rules, but pull a pink card.”

  “You sure, bro?”

  “Just pull a pink!”

  Miguel quickly sorted the new deck into ten stacks of different colors. He pulled the pink on the top of its pile.

  “Hmmm. These are different from the regula
r cards.”

  He turned it over and showed it to the group.

  0 + 27 + 0.4 = ????

  “Easy-peasy,” said Akimi. “The answer is twenty-seven-point-four, because the zero doesn’t change the sum.”

  “Not in math,” said Miguel. “But this isn’t math. This is the Dewey decimal system and there’s always three numbers to the left of the decimal point.”

  “We need to find a book with the call number 027.4,” added Sierra.

  “Fine,” said Akimi. “But I guarantee you it isn’t a math book!”

  The team made their way around the balcony circling the Dewey decimal doors.

  “Here we go,” said Miguel. He slid his library card into a reader on a door labeled “000s.”

  “Okay,” said Miguel, “in here we’re gonna find General Knowledge. Almanacs, encyclopedias, bibliographies, books about library science …”

  “It’s a science?” said Akimi. “Where do they keep the chemicals?”

  “In the library paste,” joked Sierra, who was loosening up. She hadn’t read one page of a book in hours.

  “Found it,” said Miguel, reaching up to pull a book off a shelf. “027.4. Man, it’s old. Look how yellow the pages are.”

  “So what’s the antique’s title?” asked Akimi.

  “Get to Know Your Local Library by Amy Alessio and Erin Downey.”

  Miguel held the book so everybody could see the cover. It was illustrated with a cartoony-looking detective in a checkered hat who was holding up a magnifying glass to examine books on a shelf.

  “Looks like a library guide for kids,” said Miguel, opening the cover to read one of the inside pages. “First publication was way back in 1952.” He flipped through a few pages. “It explains the Dewey decimal system. Contains a glossary of library terms. A brief history of libraries …”

  He reached the back of the book.

  “Awesome.”

  “What?” asked Kyle as he and the others moved closer to see what Miguel had found.