Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library Read online

  Haley had to smile. It sounded like her ancestor had met Charles Chiltington.

  “And always remember, Haley,” said her great-great-great-grandfather, “every woman’s mind is her kingdom. Rule it wisely, lassie.”

  “I’m trying!”

  “This library can help,” said her great-great-great-grandmother with a wink.

  And when she did, a secret panel in the wall slid open.

  “What’s going on?” said Haley.

  “You’re our third visitor!” boomed the jolly announcer in the ceiling.

  “So?”

  “According to The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms—available in our reference department, by the way—‘the third time is a charm’! Therefore, as our third visitor, you have won this charming bonus.”

  Two bonuses in one day?

  She was right! Mr. Lemoncello definitely wanted Haley Daley to win this game, because clearly he knew she’d be the perfect, best-looking spokesmodel for his holiday commercials.

  “Don’t worry, sir!” Haley said to the nearest TV camera. “I won’t let you down.”

  She hurried through the open wall panel and into the 300s room on the other side.

  Ta-da!

  The first thing she saw was one of the books they’d been searching for all day long: True Crime Ohio: The Buckeye State’s Most Notorious Brigands, Burglars, and Bandits by Clare Taylor-Winters.

  She quickly opened the cover and found the hidden four-by-four card. It took her two seconds to decipher the clue:

  “Bandits.”

  Haley remembered another bit of Irish wisdom, something her dad said all the time: “Never bolt your door with a boiled carrot!”

  She decided to keep this new clue secret and secure. She wouldn’t share it with Charles or Andrew.

  Haley took off her left sneaker, folded the card in half, and slid the clue into her shoe for safekeeping. When her sneak was laced up tight again, she took the True Crime Ohio book off its display stand and tucked it into the bookshelf, making sure it was in the proper position: right between 364.1091 and 364.1093. That way, she’d know where to find it if, for whatever reason, she needed the book again.

  Haley looked up at the nearest camera and flashed it her brightest toothpaste-commercial smile.

  “Goooo, Le-moncell-ooooo! That’s a cheer I just made up. We can use it in one of the commercials—after I win!”

  “Entrance to Community Meeting Room B will only be granted to KYLE KEELEY, SIERRA RUSSELL, AKIMI HUGHES, and MIGUEL FERNANDEZ,” said the soothing female voice in the ceiling after the four teammates had swiped their cards through the meeting room door’s reader slot.

  “This makes sense,” said Akimi. “We needed a place to organize all this material, put it on the walls, and draw a chart like the FBI always does on TV when they’re tailing the mob.”

  “Stole the meeting room idea from me, eh, Keeley?”

  Charles Chiltington was standing in the doorway to Meeting Room A on the far side of the rotunda.

  “No,” said Kyle. “We just needed someplace to throw our victory party after we win.”

  “Not going to happen,” Charles said smugly. “Must I remind you? I’m a Chiltington. We never lose.” And he disappeared back into Meeting Room A.

  After Charles was gone, Kyle led his team into Meeting Room B.

  Miguel posted the bank blueprints he had found up on the walls while Sierra set up the Bibliomania game board on the conference table.

  “I’m glad this room won’t let anybody else in,” said Kyle.

  “And by ‘anybody’ you mean Charles Chiltington, right?” said Akimi.

  “Totally.”

  Akimi grabbed a marker and wrote a neat outline on the dry-erase walls:

  CLUES SO FAR

  DEFINITE CLUES

  1) From the 000s room:

  Get to Know Your Local Library book

  2) From the Art & Artifacts Room:

  Willy Wonka candy (rhymes with “Andy”).

  Find glass elevator?

  3) From the 200s room:

  Bible verse—“Thou shalt not steal.”

  PROBABLY CLUES

  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. Rowling

  #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

  MAYBE CLUES???

  Statues ringed around the dome:

  Thomas Wolfe, Booker T. Washington, Stephen

  Sondheim, George Orwell, Lewis Carroll,

  Dr. Seuss, Maya Angelou, Shel Silverstein,

  Pseudonymous Bosch, Todd Strasser

  “Wow,” said Akimi, stepping back to study the walls. “What an incredible mess.”

  “Yeah,” said Kyle. “Okay, guys—there are eight more book rooms to explore and who knows how many more wild cards. Whose turn is it?”

  “Yours,” said Sierra.

  Kyle flicked the spinner. “Green. The five hundreds. Science.”

  He pulled the first green card from the deck.

  “ ‘Four and twenty were once in a pie. 598.367 might tell you why.’ ”

  “Blackbirds?” said Miguel.

  “I guess.”

  “Well,” sighed Akimi, “let’s go check out another book. There’s still like an inch or two left on our whiteboard.”

  The 500s room was like a miniature museum of natural history.

  In addition to towering walls of books, there was a whole planetarium of stars and constellations projected on the ceiling. Models of planets whirled in their orbits. Sparkle-tailed comets shot around the corners of bookshelves.

  Kyle and his teammates made their way back to the 590s—Zoology.

  Shelving units were arranged in a square around an open area, maybe twenty feet by twenty feet wide. When the team entered the empty space, the lights dimmed and a guy with long wavy hair who looked like an artistic Daniel Boone faded into view. He was wearing some kind of bear-fur coat and toting a musket.

  “Bonjour,” said the hologram.

  “It’s John James Audubon,” said Sierra. “The famous ornithologist.”

  “He gives people braces?” said Kyle.

  “No,” Sierra said with a laugh. “He studied and painted birds.”

  A blackbird with a yellow beak flew into the open area and roosted on a tree branch. The bird and the tree were both holograms, too.

  “This beautiful blackbird from Alexandriaville, Ohio,” said the semi-transparent Audubon image, “can mimic in song the sounds it has heard.”

  And the bird started wailing.

  “Wow,” said Akimi. “That sounds exactly like a police siren!”

  “Yo,” said Miguel. “Freaky.”

  “To learn more,” said Audubon, “be sure to read Bird Son
gs, Warbles, and Whistles written by Dr. Diana Victoria Garcia, with classic illustrations by moi.”

  With that, Audubon sat down on a campstool. An easel appeared, the blackbird struck a pose, and the outdoorsy artist started painting the bird’s portrait, while humming “Blackbird” by the Beatles.

  “Okay,” said Kyle. “This is the strangest clue yet.”

  “Well, here’s the book at least,” said Sierra, who had found 598.367 on the shelf.

  “So what do a blackbird’s wails and warbles have to do with finding our way out of the library?” said Akimi.

  Just then, they heard a very different sound.

  Behind one of the bookcases, something growled, then roared.

  “Did you guys hear that?” said Sierra.

  “Yeah,” said Akimi. “I don’t think it’s a robin redbreast.”

  A very rare white Bengal tiger, with icy-blue eyeballs, crept out from behind a wall of bookshelves and stalked into the open area where Audubon sat painting his bird portrait.

  “Uh, is that another hologram?” asked Miguel.

  ROAR!

  No one stuck around to find out.

  Down on the first floor, Charles and Andrew were working their way around the semicircle of three-story-tall floor-to-dome bookcases filled with fiction.

  It was nearly eight p.m.

  “We need to find that blasted book,” said Charles, craning his neck to study the shelves.

  “I’m getting kind of hungry,” mumbled Andrew.

  “You had a snack this afternoon,” snapped Charles.

  “Well, now it’s time for dinner.”

  “No. We need to find Anne of Green Gables first.”

  The classic by Lucy Maud Montgomery was the middle book on the top shelf in the Staff Picks display case. So far, Charles, Haley, and Andrew had not been able to find it anywhere in the library.

  “Unfortunately,” said Andrew, “they’ve temporarily erased the book’s call number from the database.”

  “So we wouldn’t know what to punch into the hover ladder’s control panel,” grumbled Charles.

  “Actually,” said Andrew, “they might’ve shelved it in the Children’s Room. Or maybe the eight hundreds, with Literature. Could be in the four hundreds, too, because it was originally written in Canadian, which is, technically, a foreign language.”

  “So you have said, Andrew. Repeatedly. But we’ve already searched those other locations. Several times. It has to be here with the other fiction titles. You just need to fly up and find it.”

  “Well,” said Andrew, “I’m kind of afraid of heights.”

  “Fine. Whatever. I’ll go up and grab it. But you have to give me some kind of call number to enter into the hover ladder.”

  “Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote other Anne books. There’s Anne of Avonlea.…”

  Charles dashed over to the nearest library table and swiped his fingers across the glass face of its built-in computer pad.

  “Here we go. Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery. F-MON.”

  “Yes,” said Andrew. “Fiction books are usually put on the shelf in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. Nonfiction titles are classified according to the Dewey decimal system.”

  “How long have you known this?”

  Andrew’s nose twitched. “Since second grade.”

  “So all we ever needed was ‘F-MON’? We could’ve found this book hours ago?”

  Andrew gulped.

  “You are such a disappointment.” Shaking his head, Charles huffed over to one of the hover ladders. He quickly jabbed “F,” “M,” “O,” and “N” into the keypad. The boot clamps locked into place around his ankles. “You owe me for wasting all this time, Andrew. You owe me big-time. If you let me down once more, I swear I will tell everybody you’re a big blubbering baby. I’ll Twitter it and post it on Facebook.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll make you glad you picked me for your team, Charles! I promise.”

  The hover ladder lifted off the floor and gently glided up to the M section of the fiction wall. Shuttling sideways, it carried Charles over to a shelf displaying all the Anne books.

  He grabbed a copy of Anne of Green Gables.

  As soon as he did, the ladder started its slow descent to the floor.

  “What’d you find?” asked Andrew when Charles landed.

  “The clue we needed.”

  He showed Andrew the card that had been tucked inside the front cover.

  “Okay,” said Andrew. “It’s ‘C plus hat’! So the word is ‘chat,’ which, by the way, could also be ‘chat,’ the French word for cat!”

  “Well done, Andrew,” said Charles, even though he knew the clue was really “C plus Anne,” equaling “can,” thereby making the puzzle “You can walk out the way BLANK BLANK inn in past BLANK.”

  The way what did what? he wondered. And what does “inn in” mean?

  Charles desperately needed to find the three missing pictograms.

  Suddenly, Mr. Lemoncello’s voice boomed out of speakers ringing the rotunda.

  “Hey, Charles! Hey, Andrew! Let’s Do a Deal!”

  Game show music blared. A canned crowd cheered.

  Charles turned around and saw shafts of colored light illuminating three envelopes perched on top of the librarian’s round desk. Clarence the security guard marched into the reading room and, folding his arms over his chest, took up a position near the three envelopes.

  “We have a green envelope, a blue envelope, and a red envelope,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “In two of those three envelopes are copies of two of the three pictogram clues you still need. In one, there is a Clunker Card. If you pick an envelope with a clue, you get to keep it—and you get to keep going. But once you pick the Clunker Card, you’re done … and you must suffer the consequences.”

  Andrew raised his hand.

  “Yes, Andrew?”

  “What are the consequences?”

  “Something bad,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “In fact, something wicked this way will probably come. Do you want to do a deal?”

  “Yes!” said Charles.

  The canned audience cheered.

  “All right, then! Charles, you roll first.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Swipe your fingers across the nearest desktop computer panel. The dice tumbler app is up and running!”

  Again, the prerecorded audience cheered. They sounded like they loved watching dice tumble more than anything in the world.

  Charles slid his fingers across a glass pane. The animated dice rolled.

  “Oooh!” cried Mr. Lemoncello. “Double sixes. That gives you a twelve.”

  “Is that good, sir?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Okay, Andrew—your turn!”

  Peckleman tapped the glass. The dice flipped over.

  “Another set of doubles!” said Mr. Lemoncello.

  “Yeah,” muttered Charles. “Two ones. Snake eyes.”

  “Is that bad?” asked Andrew.

  “Maybe,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “Maybe not. Okay, guys—which envelope would you like to open?”

  Charles thought about it while ticktock music played.

  They were given this chance to play Let’s Do a Deal after they located the Anne of Green Gables clue. Coincidence? He didn’t think so.

  “We’ll take the green envelope, sir.”

  Clarence presented the green envelope to Charles.

  “Open it!” said Andrew. “Open it.”

  Charles undid the clasp. Pulled out a card.

  A loud ZONK! rocked the room.

  The card was black. With blocky white type.

  “Uh-oh,” mumbled Andrew. “What’s it say on that card?”

  “ ‘Sorry, kids, you’re out of luck,’ ” read Charles. “ ‘So out of doors you’re all now stuck.’ ”

  Clarence picked up the blue and red envelopes and marched back toward the entrance hall.

  “What’s that mean?” said Andrew.

  “Well,” said
Mr. Lemoncello, “Charles rolled a twelve and you rolled a two. What’s twelve plus two?”

  “Fourteen,” said Charles eagerly, the way he always did in math when he wanted to remind the teacher that he was the smartest kid in the class.

  “Oooh,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “This is not good. In fact, I’d say it’s stinkerrific.”

  “Stinkerrific?” said Andrew. “Is that even a word?”

  “It is now,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “J.J.? Tell them what they’ve lost.”

  An authoritative female voice boomed out of the ceiling speakers:

  “Warning: Due to a Clunker Card, all ten Dewey decimal doors will lock in ten minutes, at exactly eight o’clock. If you are in one of those rooms, kindly leave immediately. The ten doors on the second floor will remain locked for fourteen hours.”

  Andrew panicked. “What? Fourteen hours?”

  “I told you twelve plus two was bad,” quipped Mr. Lemoncello. “Of course, it could’ve been good. If you had picked one of the other envelopes, you would’ve received a clue and a free fourteen-month subscription to Library Journal.”

  Charles did some quick math. “Sir? Does this mean we’ll be locked out of the ten Dewey decimal rooms until ten o’clock tomorrow morning?”

  “Bingo!” said Mr. Lemoncello. “It sure does!”

  “This stinks,” whined Andrew. “We need those stupid rooms to solve your stupid puzzle! Clunker Cards stink. This game stinks. Fourteen-hour penalties stink.”

  Charles did his best to block out Andrew’s rant.

  He needed to think.

  And then it hit him: Kyle Keeley’s team had to be working on some other solution to the bigger puzzle of how to escape from the library. Otherwise, Charles and his team would not have been able to find the nine clues they’d already picked up. Surely, if Keeley’s team had been playing the same memory match game, they would’ve found at least one of the pictograms before Charles, Andrew, or Haley did.